Read Online Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy - Free Book Online Page B

“Oh, all right,” because how could she leave her friends to die? “Cash in advance,” Lou said. By the end of the school year Lou had made three bucks.
    Their father started to have drills, which were nothing like the ones they’d had at school, where the most important rule was to stay calm. He would blow a whistle, sometimes in the middle of the night, and the girls had to run like crazy to do their assigned tasks: Norma, shut and latch the windows and lock the front door; Lou, pull off the electricity switch and turn off the valve to the water heater; Sandy, shut off the furnace switch. The next morning their mother always claimed she’d slept right through, despite the fact that he went on blowing the whistle and shouting “Move it!” until they were lined up in front of the shelter hatch. Down inside he shone the flashlight on his stopwatch and announced how long it had taken. He shone the light in their faces and told them how they could shave off those precious seconds.
    He slept down there. He put in an electric outlet so that he could listen to his Judy Garland records. The girls imagined him dancing with the shovel, smooching it: “How’s about a little kiss, baby.” They loved him being out of the house in the evenings, because they could change the channels, say whateverthey felt like and go to bed late. As long as their mother’s mug was filled with whisky, and the t? was on, she didn’t care what happened.
    The Saturday before the last week of school their father announced that they were going down the bomb shelter for two weeks. All of them, including their mother.
    The girls didn’t get it. Did he mean have a drill every day for two weeks? No, he meant stay down for two weeks. Sleep there? they asked. Sleep there, he said, eat there, not come out for two whole weeks.
    “Oh, my lord,” their mother said quietly.
    “Watch t? down there?” Norma asked.
    “No t?. We’ll be living as if the bomb’s dropped and all electricity is out.”
    Sandy wanted to know what if the phone rang?
    “We’ll tell everyone where we are beforehand.”
    “But won’t you have to go to work?”
    “Nope. I’ve got two weeks coming.”
    They still didn’t get it. “Two
more
weeks, Daddy?” Norma said.
    “Alrighty,” he said, clapping his hands,“we’ll be going down a week from today. So this Friday I want the sheets and blankets out on the line for an airing. I want the water changed. I want you all to have baths.”
    “But when are we going to Disneyland, then?” Lou asked.
    “We’re not,” he said.
    They weren’t down the shelter an hour when Norma got her first period. Thinking the cramps were from gas, she went into the little closet bathroom and sat on the toilet.
    A few seconds later she called Lou in. “I’m dying,” she whispered, touching the blood in the crotch of her underpants and holding her finger toward the lantern.
    “You moron,” Lou whispered. “It’s the curse.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Well, what else? What a goddamn moron.”
    “Do you have it?”
    “No,” Lou said, as if she wouldn’t be caught dead.
    Norma looked at the dark stain on her underpants. She was dripping blood into the toilet now. “What am I going to do?”
    “Use Kotex. But I guess there isn’t any down here.” She scanned the shelf beside the toilet. Band-Aids, toilet paper, Turns. “I know there’s some in Mommy’s closet, because I just bought her a box.” She opened the door. “Mommy? Can you come here?”
    “What’s going on?” their father asked.
    “Nothing. Mommy?”
    Their mother’s slippers flapped as she crossed the floor.
    “Norma’s menstruating,” Lou whispered to her.
    Their mother covered her mouth with both hands.
    “Do we have any Kotex down here?” Lou asked.
    “Jim,” their mother said, turning around. “Lou just has to scoot up to the house for a sec.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” he yelled. “There’s radiation out there.”
    “Well,