As we were traveling out Wisconsin Avenue, suddenly cars were pulling over and people were spilling onto the median. Dimma said excitedly, “Boys! It must be Eisenhower coming back from Camp David!” She pulled over and we joined everyone. Rolling very slowly toward us was a convertible limousine. In the backseat sat two old guys with bald heads: Ike and Nikita.
People were shouting and waving, and then there they were, next to us. We were so close to Khrushchev we could see the warts on his face. Ivan shouted, “Dasvidaniya!” The potato face turned, and he smiled and waved to Ivan.
I yelled, “Khrushchev waved at you!” Ivan beamed, the first happy smile I’d seen from him in forever.
We were so excited and so was Dimma, but I couldn’t understand exactly why—wasn’t this America’s greatest enemy? Returning to the Caddy, Dimma said, “Well, wasn’t that something! I’m so glad you boys got to see them!”
I had a chance to quiz Brickie about the event that evening when we were in the kitchen having an early Bachelor Night. He hated Khrushchev, but admitted that seeing an important figure like that—two important figures—didn’t happen every day. “Whatever he is now, he was an ally and a war hero,” Brickie said, flipping our sizzling burgers. “One day you’ll be telling your grandchildren about it. If he hasn’t blown us up by then.”
“Well, I won’t have children or grandchildren, because I’m not getting married.”
“Oh, I suspect you’ll change your mind about that.”
“I might have married Elena.” I think that was the first time I’d said her name since she’d died, and it gave me a pang. “But she’s the only one.”
“I can understand your feeling that way. Elena was a lovely woman.” Brickie was quiet for a minute. “She was…a complex person, John.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man who picked her up from your Fiesta? That was Camilo Cienfuegos, a dangerous Cuban revolutionary.”
“So?” Then Elena’s words popped out of my mouth: “Not everyone in Cuba is bad. They’re trying to help poor people there.”
“They’re Communists, John. And Elena helped them. She wasn’t just aiding refugees.”
This stunned me, as if he’d told me that Elena was an alien from Mars. “You mean…she was a spy?”
“Not exactly. She was…an agent of influence, entertaining foreign men who could give significant money to the revolutionary cause. She also entertained American officials who might tell her things—secrets—about our government, which she may then have passed on to people like Camilo Cienfuegos. She was probably going to be arrested before long. But this is America, not Russia, and you can’t just arrest people without probable cause.”
I said, “What do you mean—entertaining? Like at parties?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.” That again. “And I want you to promise not to tell Ivan any of this. He doesn’t need to know. Or he may know already, poor boy. You need to know because I think you’re old enough to understand that people are not always what they seem. You musn’t be too trusting on the face of things.”
“That’s exactly what Elena told us.” I hated hearing all this, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to the guy on the motorcycle?”
“He got back to Cuba, we assume. And Elena had intended to go with him. The police stopped them for speeding, and that’s why Elena came home that night. But they didn’t realize who Camilo was, and later let him go. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Camilo…disappears before long. Damn—I forgot about our hash browns.”
I was confused and angry and sick of hearing bad things about Elena, which I wasn’t sure I believed anyway. I ate my burger in silence.
Brickie sat down with his plate and a Scotch. “And not a word of this to Ivan, or anybody else. Understand?” I didn’t answer and decided that I wasn’t going to speak to Brickie anymore. Or at least not until tomorrow.
After eating, I went over to Ivan’s backyard. The day had been so sunny and beautiful, but the sky had suddenly turned leaden, and a fierce, cold wind had blown in, heaving the huge oak branches up and down in slow motion, while their leaves waved furiously like little hands until they fell with the gusts, brilliant scraps of color against the gray sky. We became excited, the brisk air telling us that it would soon be Halloween. “Let’s be Eisenhower and Khrushchev for Trick or Treat!” Ivan said. To please him, I offered to be Khrushchev. Ivan said, “We’ll put a stocking on your head to make you bald, and make Play-Doh warts for your face! You can carry a shoe and bang it and say, ‘We will bury you!’ at every house!” It was great to see Ivan happy.
We whirled around in the wind and leaves till dark, then Brickie called me in. Ivan became serious again. “This cold and wind will definitely kill all the spiders now, if there are any still around.”
“I thought we were through with spiders,” I said.
“We are. I’m just sad about them dying.”
“There’s always next summer,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s always next summer.”
But by New Year’s, some of our neighbors—the Shreves and the De Haans—had moved away from Connors Lane. And not long after that, Josef was posted to the Philippines, taking Ivan with him, and this smashed my broken heart all over again.
Max had begun to draw away, spending more time with friends from Hebrew school and getting serious about playing basketball. We were still close friends, but I was aware of the age gap between us getting wider. Beatriz and I stayed good friends, too, but she was sucked further into the world of girls and had even less time to spend hanging around, although she and Max, of all people, did start walking together to Doc’s and talking on the phone. I felt jealous and betrayed and started calling them Popeye and Olive Oyl, which didn’t sit well with them, so I gave that up.
My mother did come back from St. Elizabeths, and I was very happy about that, at least until she started dating. Brickie and Dimma stayed on with us, maybe to keep an eye on things. My father married Carline and got a steady job managing a restaurant. Slutcheon got sent off to Charlotte Hall, after all—no more looking over our shoulders. And, as Brickie predicted, just before Halloween, Camilo Cienfuegos did probably disappear over the Straits of Florida.
Of course, nothing was the same without Ivan and Elena. Ivan and I wrote to each other a few times, and I learned he was sent to a boarding school in London, and I was glad about that. I didn’t tell him about Max and Beatriz ditching me, which would only have made him worry. The last time he’d written, he sent a little purple drawing of a pirate vinegaroon, and all the note said was “Your blood brother, Ivan.” I never saw or heard from him again.
Life went on, as it will. That summer stayed with me, surreal footage that seemed more and more like a movie with every passing day. We kids were merely flotsam and jetsam on the crazy river that life is, and even though we’d hit the whitewater of the adult world, we’d come up, bobbing along, but never again quite so buoyant. I can see that much of the drama was just Washington, where things can change fast, weirdness and treachery can prevail, people and things are neither what they seem nor what they are said to be, and the world’s issues and events are played out in neighborhoods like Connors Lane. And everybody is forever moving on. Eventually, I would, too, although wherever I happened to be, if I heard “The Twelfth of Never” or glimpsed a beautiful spiderweb, my heart bumped up hard against the indelible memories of our darling Elena and my dearest friend, Ivan.