Bomb Shelter

I pushed the toy car in the dry earth between the roots of the maple tree in front of our house. Our empty school bus went by. I remember this because it was Saturday, and I’d never seen the bus go by on Saturday.

“Mrs. Farley just drove by in the bus,” I said to my big sister Lila, who had just finished building a house out of Lincoln Logs. She’d even put in a driveway and little bushes on either side of the front door, made out of boxwood twigs stuck in the ground.

“So?” Lila said, not looking up. She was too old to be playing with Lincoln Logs and was just killing time until her friend Vicky came over.

My car was a pink Barbie beach buggy with decals on the side. It had been part of Lila’s Beach Barbie collection when she was younger, and it was too big for the driveway of the little log house. Lila had kept a Matchbox car for herself, a silver Mercedes station wagon.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Mrs. Farley thought today was a school day? She’d wonder why all the kids had missed the bus, and then she’d get to school and realize it was Saturday! That would be funny, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Lila said, putting four sticks into a rectangle behind the log house. “This is the pool. I’m going to make a diving board for it.”

When she’d finished, she stood up and brushed her hands against her cheerleading skirt. Vicky was supposed to show up any minute so they could practice their routine for school. Vicky’s mom was real thin, unlike our mom, and drove a white Cadillac with air conditioning and electric windows. When the Cadillac pulled up in front of our house, my sister went out to meet it. Vicky had her cheerleading uniform on, too, and carried her pompoms — one gold and one blue, the Allendale High School colors.

“Hey, Vick,” Lila said. “Hi, Mrs. Bander.”

“Hello, Lila.” Then she said to Vicky, “I’ll pick you up at five, after my hair appointment,” and she gave them a little wave as she drove away.

The Banders lived in the new development in Tremount. They’d moved there a year ago from New Brunswick when Mr. Bander got transferred. He worked in the big office building out on the highway. Their house was real neat, and they had all brand-new furniture. I knew this because our mother had dropped Lila and me off there once when she had to go someplace. Lila and Vicky played on the trampoline in the backyard, practicing kicks and rolls. They told me there wasn’t enough room for three people, so I sat by myself in the Banders’ wood-paneled den and watched television until I got bored and went upstairs to look around.

The door to Vicky’s bedroom was open, so I peeked inside. She had a white canopy bed with a pink satin bedspread. On one end was a mound of pillows of all different colors and shapes, including one that said, “You’re #1!” and another with a needlepoint yellow smiley face. On the bedside table was a paperback book with a picture on the cover of a long-haired girl riding a black horse that was rearing up, and next to the book was a little dish with a ring and a necklace in it. The ring fit my middle finger. It had a small blue stone. The necklace didn’t look like real gold, but it had a heart-shaped locket that you needed long nails to pry open. The walls were covered with posters and pictures cut from magazines of Scott Baio and the lead singer from the Bay City Rollers and Parker Stevenson, who played Frank on The Hardy Boys. There was also a glass case filled with miniature china animals. I opened the front and took one out, a swan, its white neck curved as if it were cleaning its back feathers. I thought about putting the swan in my pocket, but then I heard something downstairs. When I rushed to put it back, all the others fell over. I shut the glass door and dashed to the bathroom across the hall.

“What is she doing up there?” I heard Vicky ask as she pounded up the stairs.

“I don’t know, Vick. I told her to watch TV ,” Lila said. “She can be a real snoop.”

“I’m in here,” I said. Vicky was right outside the bathroom door. “I’ve got a real bad stomachache.” I had pulled my shorts down and was sitting on the toilet, in case she came in or something.

“She says she’s got a stomachache,” Vicky said, going into her room, “but I think she’s been snooping in here.” Lila came upstairs, and they put Bobby Sherman’s “Seattle” on the record player. I got off the toilet.

The bathroom had blue tile and identical blue sinks right next to each other, so two people could brush their teeth at the same time. They even had blue toilet paper. In the medicine cabinet above the sink was a lot of makeup, a jar of Noxzema, some Clearasil, and a box of floral-scented douche. Inside the box was a clear plastic bottle with a long funnel neck on it. I had seen commercials for Massengill, but I’d never known anyone who used it. On the floor right beside the toilet was an open box of maxi pads, which meant Vicky had gotten her period — before Lila.

“Does your sister have to hang out with us?” Vicky asked as she walked up the steps to our yard, where I was still playing with the oversize pink beach buggy.

“No, she’ll leave us alone — right, Alicia?” Lila said, staring at me hard and pointing to the house. I went inside, because I knew she could beat me up if she wanted to. She had done it before, when I’d crossed the invisible line she’d drawn to divide our bedroom. She’d pushed me against the wall, knocking the wind out of me, and said Daddy had left because I’d been born. It was true he’d left pretty soon after I came along, but my mother said it wasn’t because of me. It was because of him, though I wasn’t sure what it was about him that had made him leave.

On the kitchen table was a note from my mother, who had driven off before we’d gotten up that morning. The note said, “I’ve gone to market. There’s iced tea in the fridge.” I looked in the fridge, but I didn’t see any tea in there.

“Lila, did you drink all the iced tea?” I shouted.

“No!” she shouted back.

I read the note again, then rechecked the fridge. The orange plastic pitcher Mom always made iced tea in wasn’t in there, or on the counter. It wasn’t in the dining room or in the freezer, where we put drinks sometimes if we wanted to make them real cold. I started opening all the cabinets until I found the pitcher, full of iced tea, on a shelf next to a box of Triscuits.

“Lila!” I hollered out the door. “Mom put the iced tea in the cabinet!”

Lila lifted the needle from the record player she had set up outside using an extension cord hanging out the window. She looked annoyed. Vicky continued with the cheerleading routine even though the music had stopped.

“So what?” Lila shouted.

“Why didn’t she put it in the refrigerator, where it’s supposed to go?”

“I don’t know. It was a mistake. Forget about it.” Lila put the record back on, picked up her pompoms, and rejoined Vicky.

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