“You OK?” she asked, plopping down on a stool beside Alice.
“Just tired,” said Alice, smiling.
Annette patted her back. “Maybe you need to eat something.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I think I’d prefer another drink,” she said.
Annette reached into the ice bucket and dumped a handful into Alice’s glass, added gin and tonic, and refreshed her own.
“Have you ever had a real conversation in this town?” said Alice.
“Define real.”
Alice twirled the ice cubes in her glass with her index finger. “Talking about something other than toilet training, husbands, TV, and what’s on sale at the A&P—the God-damn price of peas?”
Alice looked like she might cry. She would turn thirty in a couple weeks--a milestone that still loomed several comfortable years away for Annette--maybe that’s what was really bugging her.
“We have real conversations,” said Annette. But even as the words left her lips she wondered if they were true. Because Alice talked, really, Annette just listened. Unwilling to dwell on the sudden feeling she had somehow failed them both; she rested her palm on Alice’s thigh. “Come on,” she said, after a while, “let’s go check out the returns.”
Annette and Alice drifted toward the opposite wall. With only a small percentage of votes in, Kennedy and Nixon appeared neck and neck, Walter Cronkite said. Outside the Kennedy Hyannis Port compound a reporter stood holding an obviously malfunctioning microphone, little smoke-like puffs—a testimony to plummeting temperatures--emanating from his soundlessly moving lips.
“…expected to be so close we may not have a winner until tomorrow morning, some Kennedy campaign staffers predict,” he said, as the faulty equipment rumbled back to life.
“Well, that’s just crazy,” said Rene, tossing her head. “How could anyone on God’s green earth vote for Nixon after those debates. I mean, the man is positively sour looking. Who wants a president that looks like a hound dog?”
Annette and Alice traded glances. Half those voting for Jack would do so based not on his proposals but on his movie-star looks. It bothered Annette, when she thought about it too long. But like everything else these days, it really bothered Alice.
The volume in the room seemed to rise all at once; the way noise sometimes did at parties, as if God held an audio knob in his hand intent on drowning out any more Rene-like observations.
Across the room, Gerry and Joe sat on folding chairs holding their drinks, seemingly engaged in some kind of deep discussion, oblivious to Colleen leaning against her father’s knee. Annette wondered as she often did if the men ever confided in each other about their worries, their hopes, or their marriages.
“Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall just once?” she’d asked Alice.
“Now that would be one bored-to-death fly,” Alice said. “Let’s see, a treatise on Micky Mantle’s batting average, the merits of Budweiser versus Miller, Marilyn Monroe’s chest size, what have I left out?”
She supposed she was right. Gerry never seemed to have any idea what was going on between Joe and Alice. Of course, he had served on a PT boat in the war just like Jack. Had been trained to give only his name, rank, and serial number.
Annette glanced at her watch. “I’d better get that kid of mine to bed,” she told Alice. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”
Alice nodded.
“Come on, Missy,” said Annette, taking her daughter’s hand.
The men did not look up.
“You think they can really make a go of that new city baseball club next year?” Joe asked.
Annette smiled.
“I’m not sleepy yet, Mommy,” Colleen insisted. But she allowed her mother to lift her without a struggle, her body doubling in weight as it relaxed in spite of itself against Annette’s shoulders.
“Nice talking to you as usual, Colleen,” called Alice, as Annette carried the child upstairs.
She helped Colleen wiggle into her pajamas. “Read me Charlotte’s Web, Mommy,” Colleen said.
“No story tonight, remember,” said Annette. “That was part of our deal.”
Colleen sighed. “Is the window all the way closed?” she whispered.
Annette went to the window and locked it. Ever since Colleen had to get down under her desk and cover her head with her arms as part of the regular bomb drills the government now required of all public schools she’d been obsessed with nuclear war. She had seen some documentary on TV about fallout following the bombing of Hiroshima and become terrified that radioactive waste would somehow sift in through the windows while she slept.
“No one’s going to drop any bombs, Colleen,” said Annette.
“What about the Russians?”
“The Russians don’t want to drop a bomb on us,” said Annette. “If they did, we’d just drop one back. They don’t want to die.”
“Grammy says they’re heathens and there’s no telling what they might do.”
Annette rolled her eyes. Her mother did not seem to grasp the insensitivity of sharing her ideas about Biblical predictions of Armageddon with her impressionable granddaughter. Promises of heavenly salvation did little to assuage a child’s fear of losing her immediate family in a mushroom-shaped poof of smoke.
“Grammy doesn’t know everything,” said Annette. “No one is going to drop any bombs on any of us. I promise. I’ll be right downstairs. You are very safe, OK?”
Colleen nodded solemnly. She did not look convinced.
“When you wake up, Jack will be president,” said Annette.
“Can I have the light on, Mommy?”
Annette kissed her on the forehead, turned on the small nightstand lamp, and switched off the overhead light.
“Leave the door open Mommy?”
“Just a crack. Now goodnight.”
“See you later, alligator,” called Colleen.
“In a while, crocodile,” said Annette, pulling the door almost shut behind her. Party noise wafted up the stairs. Colleen would not be sleeping any time soon.
Downstairs, Annette caught up with her husband, behind the bar again tending to ever-thirsty guests. Rene had begun slurring her words but was still, sadly, comprehensible. “What kind of Catholic girl makes chopped liver?” she asked Annette, stabbing at a cracker.
“It’s pate,” said Annette. “French, very elegant.”
“Take a whiff,” said Rene, holding it up to Annette’s nose. “It’s chopped liver. I have a Jewish neighbor, remember?”
Gerry’s brows knit themselves together across his high forehead. No one could understand how Micky Connor with his heart of gold had ended up with the likes of Rene.
“Seen Alice?” asked Annette, standing on tiptoe to peck at her husband’s cheek.
He shook his head.
”Any word yet on TV?”
“I doubt we’ll hear anything tonight,” he said, handing her a drink. “They’re calling it the closest race in American history. Cronkite said Nixon might demand a recount if it’s as close as they’re predicting.”
“Jesus,” said Annette. “How are we going to get these people to go home?” she mouthed.
“Got me,” he said.