Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

She went and peeked out the window at the empty drive.

Artie flung his coat on the davenport and hurried into the kitchen, trying to think as fast as he could. Now that it was too late he realized maybe he should have stayed put at Damon’s Drugs and waited for Roy to show up at five like they planned, but he figured in Wartime all other plans were canceled and everyone rushed right to headquarters, which was home. He was sure Roy would zoom right home when he heard the news, but what if he hadn’t even heard? Would the owner of the Roxy Burlesque walk right on the stage while Bubbles LaMode was bumping and grinding and tossing her clothes away and announce that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor? Maybe the owner didn’t even know himself, maybe they didn’t even have radios in Burlesque House offices. Maybe Burlesque Houses didn’t even have offices. He hadn’t even stopped to think about it. He sure wasn’t going to ask his folks. Even in Wartime, he wasn’t going to betray his brother. Any more than he already had by rushing right home without him, anyway.

Mom and Dad came into the kitchen and Artie yanked open the icebox, pretending to rummage around for something.

“Artie?”

“Son!”

Artie grabbed a dried-up biscuit left over from breakfast and stuffed it in his mouth. He slammed the icebox door shut and turned around to face his folks, chewing like mad.

“We want to know where your brother is,” Dad said.

Artie pointed to his mouth and made a sound like “Mmmf.”

The biscuit tasted like sawdust.

“Of all times,” Mom said, “this is no time for fooling.”

Artie nodded.

“Like I said, he’ll be right along.”

“He didn’t take you,” Dad said.

“He did so! He took me for a ride! A really neat one!”

“He took us all for a ride,” Dad said. “As usual.”

Mom plunked herself down at the kitchen table.

“The Phantom Caveman,” she said. “I should have known.”

“Well, we were going to do that, but then Roy had to do some important stuff with Wings and Bo.”

Dad started getting real red in the face and slammed his fist in his palm, but then he took a deep breath and sat down. Whenever he started flaring up like that he took the deep breath, and instead of getting mad he got philosophical. When he got philosophical, his voice had more of a downstate drawl.

“That Roy,” he said, “would rather climb to the top of a greased pole and tell a lie, than stand at the bottom and tell the truth.”

“I’ll perk some coffee,” Mom said.

Roy wasn’t home by suppertime, so Artie and his folks went ahead and ate the Sunday leftovers. It was one of those meals with long stretches when all you heard was everyone chewing, and then all the sudden there’d be a whole flurry of talk.

“Those boys,” Mom said. “They couldn’t just go and join up, could they?”

“No,” Dad said, “it’s Sunday.”

“How about Monday morning?” Artie asked.

“Lord sake, keep your pants on,” Dad said.

Mom stabbed a piece of ham and just looked at it.

“They’ll still just be boys on Monday,” she said.

Dad put his hand gently on her arm.

“Roy is nineteen years old,” he said.

“He’s still in high school. He hasn’t even graduated from high school.”

“We can’t blame that on the Japs,” Dad said.

Mom sighed, and got this faraway look.

“Geometry,” she said. “It’s still a mystery to me. I passed it, but I see how someone could flunk it.”

Dad blew on his coffee.

“Geometry wasn’t all Roy flunked last year,” he said.

Mom stuck the piece of ham in her mouth and spoke loud and cheerily as she chewed.

“No use crying over spilt milk!”

Dad made a kind of grunt and sipped his coffee.

After a while Mom cleared the table and brought in Iva Tully’s pie for dessert.

Dad took a bite and nodded, smiling.

“Say what you will about Iva Tully, she can bake a pie.”

“Well,” Mom said, “let’s count our blessings.”

Artie spoke up, wanting to help.

“The best thing is,” he said, “Roy’s almost six feet tall.”

Mom and Dad stared at him.

“I mean, no Jap in the world is big enough to beat him.”

Mom burst out crying, and Dad got up and put his hand on her shoulder.

“All I meant was,” Artie said, “it’s a blessing that Roy is so tall and the Japs are so short.”

“Finish your pie,” Dad said to him.

After supper they sat around the radio in the living room and listened to the War bulletins. The news got worse and worse, as reports of all the American ships that sank and the men who went down with them grew. It was awful, but Artie figured it didn’t prove a thing about the Japs being better fighters; it just showed how sneaky they were to attack on a Sunday without any warning or declaration of war.

The radio said F.D.R. was busy writing a speech he would say to an emergency session of Congress tomorrow, but Eleanor was going to talk to the nation.

Mom gave Dad a look.

“I want to hear this, Joe.”

Dad threw up his hands like a surrender sign.

“And no remarks, please,” Mom said.

“Did I make so much as a peep?”

“Thank you.”

Mom went over and turned the radio louder.

The one thing she and Dad disagreed about was F.D.R. And of course Eleanor. Not to speak of their dog, Fala. Dad complained that Mom thought F.D.R. “hung up the moon,” and everything he did was right. Mom believed F.D.R. was the greatest President since Lincoln and wasn’t afraid to say so, which made a lot of people in Town think she was kind of an oddball. Some of them thought so anyway because she wore her hair in a single braid (some people called it a pigtail) and went around most of the time in dungarees and a pair of low blue Keds tennis shoes. Artie thought she was neater than any other Mom and was proud that everyone knew she was smart as a whip, whether they approved of her or not. If she hadn’t gotten married and had kids, she’d have probably been a librarian or schoolteacher.

When. Eleanor came on, Mom sat right next to the radio, like she wanted to be right beside her. In her high voice and the accent Mom said was dignified and Dad thought was phony Eastern, she spoke to the women of America.

“I have a boy at sea on a destroyer,” Eleanor said. “For all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific; two of my children are in coast cities in the Pacific. Many of you all over the country have boys in the Service who will now be called upon to go into action; you have friends and families in what has become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety, you cannot escape the clutch of fear at your heart, and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above those fears.”

Mom took out her handkerchief and rubbed her eyes, which were already red.

Eleanor finished off by saying, “I feel as though I were standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.”

Mom turned the radio off then and blew her nose.

Dad got up and went over to rub the back of her neck.

“Tomorrow’s still a school day, son,” he said to Artie.

Artie nodded, knowing this was one time it wasn’t right to mess around about staying up late. He gave Mom a kiss on the cheek and hugged Dad around the waist and went to his room.

When he got under the covers, Dad came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

“You’ll remember this day the rest of your life,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Usually he didn’t call his father “sir,” but now that the War was on, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Dad clapped a hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and went out, closing the door.