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Authors: Kristin Levine
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It was a bill from the hospital.
Payment due. $300. Please pay promptly.
Dad snatched the paper out of my hand. âIâll put these away,â he said without looking at me.
Three hundred dollars was a lot of money. But if I asked Dad about it, I knew he wouldnât answer. âWhen can I see Mary Lou?â I asked instead.
âA week or two,â he said. âSheâs not allowed to have visitors just yet.â
After lunch, we all went out into the yard to hang the laundry and work in the garden. Pinky kept running back and forth under the sheets, Boots chasing her like she was a squirrel. Mom laughed so hard, she almost started to cry. She wasnât even upset when Boots got mud on a pillowcase, just told me to take it down and throw it in the laundry again.
Every time the phone rang, I flinched, but Mr. McKenzie never called. Dad picked corn from our garden for dinner, and Momâs Polish plum cake browned perfectly. But a bit of the gooey plum filling oozed over the side of the pan and burned in the oven. The smell reminded me of that awful car ride, and I spent the rest of the evening trying not to remember, so I couldnât even enjoy the cake.
The next day I kept worrying about running into Mr. McKenzie and Little Skinny at church, but we didnât see them. Afterward, Eddie and I went off to the double feature at the Tivoli. The movie theater was just across from the station where my dad caught the train to go to work. The Tivoli could hold almost 1,400 people and had ushers in little caps and jackets to show you to your seat. There were chandeliers overhead, and even an organ that a little old lady played before the show. When the lights dimmed, I let out a deep breath. Here, at least, I could relax.
The first movie was
Guilty of Treason,
about that Hungarian cardinal József Mindszenty. We prayed for him every day after Mass. Iâd seen the film at least twice before (once at school when the nuns had shown it to us) but I liked it. There was this tough American newspaper reporter who went to visit Mindszenty when he was hiding out in the hills around Budapest. The cardinal had all these great lines. He sounded kind of like a cowboy defending his homestead. âOne must take a stand somewhere. One must draw a line past which one will not retreat.â And âWe shall teach there the gospel according to Jesus Christ, not according to Karl Marx.â
Karl Marx, of course, was the father of communism. The guy whoâd written
Das Kapital
and
The Communist Manifesto
and those other books commies liked to read.
But there was another line in
Guilty of Treason
that I hadnât remembered from before. The characters were talking about how the communists would try to discredit Mindszenty and spread ugly rumors about him in an attempt to reduce his influence. Then the cardinalâs mother says, âIt only takes a little poison to ruin a well on a farm, or to spoil a reputation in a big city.â
Well, I started squirming in my seat when she said that. I mean, Downers Grove wasnât exactly a big city, but planting a commie newspaper . . . wasnât that a little like what she was talking about?
I shook off the thought. It was just a silly joke and I wasnât going to worry about it. I was relieved when
Guilty of Treason
was over and the next movie came on.
Big Jim McLain
starred John Wayne as a congressional investigator fighting commies in Hawaii. That was more like it!
When the movies were over, we walked back to Eddieâs. Main Street went past Mr. McKenzieâs store and I stopped short when I saw it.
The large front window was shattered and pieces of glass glittered all over the floor, as if someone had spilled a bag of ice. A brick lay among the shards. Mr. McKenzie stood outside, waving his hands in distress and talking loudly to the man who owned the hardware store. I could only catch part of what he was saying. âNew
Payment due. $300. Please pay promptly.
Dad snatched the paper out of my hand. âIâll put these away,â he said without looking at me.
Three hundred dollars was a lot of money. But if I asked Dad about it, I knew he wouldnât answer. âWhen can I see Mary Lou?â I asked instead.
âA week or two,â he said. âSheâs not allowed to have visitors just yet.â
After lunch, we all went out into the yard to hang the laundry and work in the garden. Pinky kept running back and forth under the sheets, Boots chasing her like she was a squirrel. Mom laughed so hard, she almost started to cry. She wasnât even upset when Boots got mud on a pillowcase, just told me to take it down and throw it in the laundry again.
Every time the phone rang, I flinched, but Mr. McKenzie never called. Dad picked corn from our garden for dinner, and Momâs Polish plum cake browned perfectly. But a bit of the gooey plum filling oozed over the side of the pan and burned in the oven. The smell reminded me of that awful car ride, and I spent the rest of the evening trying not to remember, so I couldnât even enjoy the cake.
The next day I kept worrying about running into Mr. McKenzie and Little Skinny at church, but we didnât see them. Afterward, Eddie and I went off to the double feature at the Tivoli. The movie theater was just across from the station where my dad caught the train to go to work. The Tivoli could hold almost 1,400 people and had ushers in little caps and jackets to show you to your seat. There were chandeliers overhead, and even an organ that a little old lady played before the show. When the lights dimmed, I let out a deep breath. Here, at least, I could relax.
The first movie was
Guilty of Treason,
about that Hungarian cardinal József Mindszenty. We prayed for him every day after Mass. Iâd seen the film at least twice before (once at school when the nuns had shown it to us) but I liked it. There was this tough American newspaper reporter who went to visit Mindszenty when he was hiding out in the hills around Budapest. The cardinal had all these great lines. He sounded kind of like a cowboy defending his homestead. âOne must take a stand somewhere. One must draw a line past which one will not retreat.â And âWe shall teach there the gospel according to Jesus Christ, not according to Karl Marx.â
Karl Marx, of course, was the father of communism. The guy whoâd written
Das Kapital
and
The Communist Manifesto
and those other books commies liked to read.
But there was another line in
Guilty of Treason
that I hadnât remembered from before. The characters were talking about how the communists would try to discredit Mindszenty and spread ugly rumors about him in an attempt to reduce his influence. Then the cardinalâs mother says, âIt only takes a little poison to ruin a well on a farm, or to spoil a reputation in a big city.â
Well, I started squirming in my seat when she said that. I mean, Downers Grove wasnât exactly a big city, but planting a commie newspaper . . . wasnât that a little like what she was talking about?
I shook off the thought. It was just a silly joke and I wasnât going to worry about it. I was relieved when
Guilty of Treason
was over and the next movie came on.
Big Jim McLain
starred John Wayne as a congressional investigator fighting commies in Hawaii. That was more like it!
When the movies were over, we walked back to Eddieâs. Main Street went past Mr. McKenzieâs store and I stopped short when I saw it.
The large front window was shattered and pieces of glass glittered all over the floor, as if someone had spilled a bag of ice. A brick lay among the shards. Mr. McKenzie stood outside, waving his hands in distress and talking loudly to the man who owned the hardware store. I could only catch part of what he was saying. âNew
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