The mundanity of the kitchen, the ticking clock on the wall, the hum of the refrigerator, and this kind woman with her sandwiches, placemats, and flannel pajamas seemed completely separate from the world I had been in all day. The images of the burned children on the television might as well have been on Mars for all the connection they had to here.
The chair creaked as I sat, and my joints ached with frustration. As I’d been taught, I put the napkin in my lap, and picked up the first quarter of the sandwich. I was lucky. We had owned a plane and a way to get out.
“Is the sandwich all right?”
I had eaten a quarter of it and not noticed. My mouth tasted of dying fish and rotting pickles. I smiled for my hostess. “Delicious.”
FIVE
TIDAL WAVE STRIKES VENEZUELA
CARACAS, Venezuela, March 4, 1952—(AP)—A tidal wave, believed to be caused by the meteorite which struck off the coast of North America, hit the port of Vela de Coro, inflicting heavy damages, reports to the Government said today. Ships anchored in the western Venezuela port were destroyed, and many houses along the waterfront were flattened, the reports said. The extent of the casualties is not yet known.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. I woke up to Nathaniel’s touch on my forehead. The light from the kitchen streamed into the dark living room and caught on the white dress shirt he wore. He was clean and had showered, and for a disorienting moment, I thought that I had dreamed it all.
“Hey…” He smiled and brushed the hair back from my forehead again. “Do you want to sleep out here, or go to the bedroom?”
“When did you get ho—back?” I sat up, stretching the crick out of my neck. One of Mrs. Lindholm’s afghans had been pulled up over my shoulder, and the television was a dark ghost in the corner.
“Just now. Major Lindholm brought me.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “He’s making a sandwich.”
“Did you get something to eat?”
He nodded. “They fed us in the meeting.”
Nathaniel offered his hand and helped me to my feet. All of the cuts and aches and bruises that I had acquired during the day found me in the dark. The backs of my calves burned with each step. Even my arms protested, as I folded the afghan. Was it too soon to take another aspirin? “What time is it?”
“Nearly midnight.”
If he was only just now getting back, the situation was not good. In the dim light his features were too blurred to read. In the kitchen, Major Lindholm scraped his knife across a plate. I set the afghan down. “Let’s go back to the bedroom.”
He followed me down the dimly lit hall to the room that Mrs. Lindholm had put us in. It had belonged to her eldest son, Alfred, who was off at Caltech getting a degree in engineering. While there was a “Leopards” pennant from his high school, the partially assembled Erector set and the Jules Verne collection might have come out of my childhood room. Everything else was plaid or red, which I suspected was his mother’s touch.
When the door was closed, Nathaniel reached for the light, but I stopped him. For a little while longer, I wanted to be in the safety of the night. Here, with just the two of us, and no radio to remind us, we might just be visiting someone. My husband pulled me into his arms and I leaned against him, nestling my cheek into the contour of his chest.
Nathaniel rested his chin against my head and ran his hands through my still-damp hair. He smelled of an unfamiliar minty soap.
I nestled against him. “You showered on base?”
His chin rubbed the back of my head as he nodded. “I fell asleep at the table, so they took a break. I showered to wake up.”
Pulling back, I looked up at him. The shadows seemed deeper around his eyes. Those bastards. After everything he’d been through today, they kept him awake? “They didn’t just send you home?”
“They offered.” He squeezed my shoulders before releasing me. Unbuttoning his shirt, he meandered toward the bed. “I was afraid that, if I left, Colonel Parker would do something stupid. He still might.”
“He’s a schmuck.”
Nathaniel stopped undressing with his shirt halfway down his arms. “You mentioned knowing him.”
“He was a pilot in the war. Commanded a squadron, and haaaaaated having women fly his planes. Hated it. And he was grabby.”
In hindsight, I should not have mentioned that last bit to my husband. Not when he was exhausted. He straightened so fast, I thought he was going to rip his shirt. “What.”
Trying to soothe him, I held up my hands. “Not with me. And not with any of the women in my squad.” Well, not after I had a talk with Daddy. I shrugged. “Benefits of being a general’s daughter.”
He snorted and went back to sliding his shirt off. “That explains a lot.” Scrapes and bruises mottled his back. “I think I have him convinced that it wasn’t an A-bomb, but he’s certain that the Russians aimed the meteor.”
“They haven’t even gotten off the planet yet.”
“I pointed that out.” He sighed. “The good news is that the chain of command is not as broken as he would like us to believe. General Eisenhower is flying back from Europe. Should be here tomorrow morning, in fact.”
I took Nathaniel’s shirt from him and hung it on the back of a chair. “Here? As in Wright-Patterson, or as in America?”
“Here. It’s the closest intact base.”
The numbers sat quietly between us. We were more than five hundred miles from the impact site.
In the morning, I had my first glimpse of what we would be like as old people. Nathaniel could barely get out of bed on his own. During the earthquake, most of the debris had hit him. His back was a collection of hematomas and contusions that would have been better suited to one of Mama’s medical textbooks than a living man.
I was not much better. The only time I recalled feeling worse was the summer I’d had influenza. Still, I could get up, and I was fairly certain that once I was moving around, I’d be in better shape.
Nathaniel took two tries to push himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
“You should rest.”
He shook his head. “Can’t. Don’t want General Eisenhower to be swayed by Parker.”
My foolish husband held out a hand, and I pulled him to his feet. “General Eisenhower does not strike me as the sort of man to be swayed by an idiot.”
“Even geniuses can be stupid when they’re scared.” He grunted as he stood, which did not fill me with anything like confidence. But I know my husband, and he’s the sort of man who will work until his death. He reached for his shirt and winced.
I picked up the bathrobe he’d been loaned and held it out. “Do you want to shower first? Might loosen you up.”
He nodded and let me help him into the bathrobe, then shuffled down the hall. I went to the kitchen to find Mrs. Lindholm. The unmistakable aroma of bacon met me before I was through the door.
I braced myself to have that conversation with every meal. They were kind people, and we’d be sleeping in a field if not for them. Well … maybe that was a little melodramatic. We would have slept in the plane, but still. And then I heard what they were talking about, and the bacon became insignificant.
“… keep thinking about the girls I went to school with. Pearl was in Baltimore.” Mrs. Lindholm’s voice broke.
“There now…”
“Sorry—I’m being such a goose. You want raspberry or strawberry jam with your toast?”
I rounded the corner while the topic was innocuous. Mrs. Lindholm bustled at the counter, with her back to me. She wiped a hand under her eyes.