“Come on everybody, clap your hands. Now you’re lookin’ good!”

“Come on, let’s twist again like we did last summer.

“Yea, let’s twist again like we did last year.

“Do you remember when things were really hummin?

“Yea, let’s twist again, twistin’ time is here.”

— Chubby Checker (1960)

So why in the Lord’s name does Howard want to build us a bomb shelter, Susan wondered. Married to the man all these years and he still gets these ideas! Parade had shown our missile silos in the Dakotas, but the article just said, “undisclosed location.”

Two weeks underground, according to Howard, and we’re safe from fallout. The glass block — he’d gotten the idea from how they’d built the Pontiac dealership — would let in enough light to count the days. After that, we rebuild and carry on.

When Susan returned from Coffee Club, there was Howard, already home from the office, pointing the contractor to where the jungle gym stood in the side yard. “Your backhoe will get by the garage. I measured.” The man was taking notes.

Ronald was inside with his friend Sandy. The two got along together so well, Susan thought. Lots of fifteen-year-olds just roughhouse around.

“Hey, Mom, we used up the Fizzies.”

“That’s fine, dear. Hello, Sandy.”

“Hello, Mrs. Mumford.” Sandy was such a polite child, so grown up for his age, but still a kid. “Just call me Susan,” she’d told him, but it was still “Mrs. Mumford.” James, his dad, was their minister at Harvest Methodist. Joyce, his mom, was in Coffee Club.

“Is Mr. Mumford really building a bomb shelter?”

“Just for safety’s sake.”

“With a transistor radio and everything?”

“I’m sure.”

“It can be our hangout,” suggested Ronald.

“Dad says it’s just for emergencies, but maybe.” They probably wanted somewhere to try smoking, she guessed. Maybe she should just let them get it out of their system, coughing away in a cement cell.

“Duck and Cover!” yelled Ronald and both boys dived under the coffee table, laughing and pushing one another back into the fallout.

Well, Susan realized, perhaps they’re not totally past the roughhouse stage.

The boys were into another stage as well, she recognized, your son becoming intrigued with sex being a never-ending topic at Coffee Club. Best to let him figure things out at his own pace.

Bearing with your neighbor boy is different, she thought, where you’re just another female about which to fantasize. When she’d lean over the counter, Sandy would inevitably slip to the other side from where he’d have a better shot at her neckline. If her skirt showed a bit more leg than usual, she’d catch his peeks. All silliness, of course, her now and then inviting his efforts, but she had to admit she didn’t mind the notice.

Sandy’s touching her back or elbow meant nothing, of course, but it didn’t escape her that it occurred when others weren’t watching.

General Electric having taken over from General Eisenhower, their new refrigerator was deeper than their old Frigidaire and the new appliance narrowed the dining room passage. Howard had promised remodeling, but with the bomb shelter and all, it might be a while.

She’d been in front of the refrigerator when the boys were leaving, and Sandy had shifted his football to the side she was on and his arm had brushed her in passing. Accidental, she’d told herself, but the next occasion, hearing the boys approach, she’d moved to the same spot, and Sandy again made contact. More than just a brush this time, actually. More like a crossover.

Another time, Ronald and Sandy were heading out into what looked to be a chilly evening. “Wear this, Sandy, so you don’t catch cold,” she’d offered, and in lassoing one of Howard’s scarves over his neck, bumping him with her chest.

“Thanks, Mrs. Mumford,” taking what she thought to be an extra moment to pull away.

And yet another time, the boys were helping her stock the shelter with tinned foodstuffs. Howard didn’t want the transistor’s battery run down, but Susan rather liked the music.

“Come on baby. Let’s do the twist.

“Come on baby. Let’s do the twist.

“Take me by my little hand,

“And go like this.”

Susan rather liked Negro music. This Chubby Checker was nothing in comparison to Nat King Cole, but his music enlivened Howard’s reinforced box.

As Howard’s shelving, deep and high, required Susan balancing on a stool to arrange the Spam reserve, she needed some help. “Can one of you help steady this thing.”

Ronald was reading a pamphlet on radioactivity, but Sandy was willing.

As Susan’s hand on his shoulder wasn’t enough to reach the back of the shelf. “Better hold me,” she suggested, at which Sandy put a hand on her back, and a moment later, to other around her stomach, the edge of his thumb under the hem of her brassiere, His not dropping his hand surprised her, but maybe he didn’t even notice.

Susan glanced back at Ronald, still reading, and remembered when she was their age, how Tommy Lee Evans had reached around to rub her when they were playing Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free. Nobody else even noticed.

“OK, down,” once she’d finished, but with too little warning, as when she stepped down, she slipped part way through Sandy’s grasp, delivering her breast into his open hand.

“Houston, we have a splashdown!” Sandy announced, still cupping as she regained her footing.

It was good he was there to catch her, she decided. She could have taken a spill.

But then there was the other encounter, similar in one respect, but harder to explain away. She’d been saving coffee cans, Howard having said they’d have a multitude of uses in the aftermath.

Ronald and Sandy were doing homework. She liked Ronald’s studying with a friend who buckled down. Maybe something would rub off.

“Can one of you come out and give me a hand,” knowing who’d hop up.

Sandy and Susan hauled the cans to the shelter, opened the hatch and descended.

How did Sandy know where empty cans would go, she wondered, as he placed the stool where they’d stood before. She tried to not breathe when he reached around her, both sides this time and massaged, at first just near her breasts, then on the side and under, and then everything.

She knew she should tell him not to, but like back with Tommy Lee Evans, she didn’t, even when he slid her cashmere up and over. Her brassiere was a good one, but she knew he could tell. Tommy Lee had been furtive, but Sandy seemed to be in no hurry. She busied herself with the tinned tuna as he found her nipples.

What if he unhooks me, Susan wondered. What should she do? What if he lifts up my sweater? Would she let him, just for a little bit? What would be a little bit?

But she was just letting her imagination run wild. Ske’d never...

It wasn’t much more than the other time, she told herself, again safely on the ground. More purposeful on his part, perhaps, but then again, there’d been no Ronald who might have looked their way.

Coffee Club agreed that boys of his age can act out of turn, feeling their oats, as some put it. A neighbor woman the boy gets along with might not cause a fuss as long as he didn’t do it again, or as one of group laughed, too many times again. It’s about letting them grow up.

The two ascended the shelter stairs and shut the cover, word unspoken.

She’d been glad that Howard hadn’t snuggled up that evening, and once he was sleeping, she’d risen and gone to the den.

Coffee Club would understand about a good husband who worked too much, had too many answers and never just reached around to wife’s breasts. In Howard’s Lazy Boy, she did what she thought she’d long outgrown, and tried not to imagine who she was thinking of.

Ronald and his friends were grilling hamburgers, gulping A&W and listening to Chubby Checker, a 431 Westlawn Drive summer evening.

“Come on, let’s twist again like we did last summer.

“Yea, let’s twist again like we did last year.

“Do you remember when things were really hummin’?

“Yea, let’s twist again, twistin’ time is here.”

She couldn’t help but clapping along.

“Come on, Mrs. Mumford.” It was Sandy from the midst of twisters.

Sliding into the throng, she was, as they called it, “rocking and rolling,” laughing at her antics.

“Mrs. Mumford’s looking good!” Sandy hollered.

After the gathering, Ronald had his new binoculars. “Maybe there’s a satellite,” her leaning over his shoulder so they each had a lens, but though they gazed starward for a long time, her breast against his back, they didn’t spot any.

Since when can’t a mother and her boy view the sky together, she decided, the tip of her brassier and the back of his arm in counter rhythm, as they try to spot an artificial heavenly body?

She lacked the gumption to ask Ronald to sleep with her when Howard was away, like what some in Coffee Club, no longer used to sleeping alone — or so they said — did. “Just don’t mention this to your father, honey.” Her friends smiled about sometimes waking up too close together and grinned regarding their boys’ apparent dreams, but it wasn’t like anything happened.

Susan imagined Ronald with her in that way, him just a few inches from her side. Would she pretend to stay sleeping?

But it’s not right to think of your boy that way.

When Susan checked the shelter — Howard liked giving tours. Questions about batteries? Just ask — there at least weren’t the remains of hamburgers. She was tidying up when she realized someone had descended behind her.

“Hi, Sandy,” she managed, “I’ve pretty much got things picked up.”

“Ronald and Mr. Mumford went back inside,” as he slipped one hand around her, the other under the back of her blouse.

“I don’t think...” She’d not have let him, but it was just Sandy.

Later in the kitchen, she assured herself they’d not really done anything, just petted. And yes, she’d been excited, but because of the evening. She delayed finishing the dishes until Howard was asleep and returned to the shelter, lay on the bunk and pretended her hand was Sandy.

Susan didn’t encounter Sandy again until he stopped by when Ronald was bagging at the Piggly Wiggly. “Is Ronald home?” told her he knew he wasn’t.

“He’s working, but come on in.”

It took him a few starts to make clear why he’d come. “About the party. Sorry.”

“Come,” she whispered, as if others were at home.

He’d seemed surprised when she led him to the shelter.

“Ever seen a naked woman?” she asked as she undressed.

“Just my mom.”

“When you were little.”

“Not really. When Dad’s off at one go his church conferences, sometimes we play strip poker.”

This she didn’t expect to hear. The McCalls had been their neighbors for years and it had never crossed her mind, Joyce playing poker, much less that kind of poker, with her son, What if when Howard was also away, she and Ronald were invited to join them. As the boys would likely put on hats, it would only be fair for their mothers to start with scarves. They’d have to remind her about what beats what, though, before they dealt.

Ronald had been saving for a guitar and Judy had offered to show him the chords to the Twist. What might have come of it? Maybe Ronald could have played for a talent show. Maybe he’d have ended up in Judy’s bedroom, a la Sandy in the bomb shelter.

Do mothers ever just now and then trade boys for an afternoon? Probably not commonly, she allowed, but how about when you’ve all played strip poker together. She’d never heard it mentioned in Coffee Club, but she’d keep her ears open.

“But she said we have to stop,” Sandy breaking her train of thought, “because me being fifteen, it’s getting too dangerous.”

“I can see why,” agreed Susan as she freed him from his trousers. “With me, though, I’m not your mom.”

“Right,” as he watched her produce the box of condoms she’d stashed in the cracker tin. She wasn’t the first in Coffee Club to let a neighbor boy cat and mouse her — what they called it — letting him know at the end that he’d not been the cat.

“You want to, right?” she checked.

“Uhh, sure. It’s just that...”

“You’ll do great.”

A boy’s going to lose his boyhood sooner or later. She’d been one on her wedding night, just graduated, but now she knew a thing or two.

Sandy, though, seemed to have little clue, other than that of shoving. Once she got on top, though — a bit constrained head-wise, as Howard hadn’t constructed the bunk with this in mind — she’d time get herself ready before he did what he was himself bent on doing.

At first it was about getting him in, little by little. Then it was about leading him into a rhythm that would get her to her moment before he got to his. At the end it was just it was more about just staying mounted.

“Wow, Mrs. Mumford”

It wasn’t what she’d wanted to happen, of course, but she had to admit that it was maybe what her body had wanted to happen.

She was formulating how to tell Sandy that it couldn’t ever happen again, when, “That you down there, Mom?” unexpected from above the hatch.

It took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Coming right up, Ronald,” in what she hoped was a normal tone, pulling down her skirt as she said it.

The whereabouts of her panties remained a mystery until the next day when Sandy stopped by for Ronald to go to the ball game and slipped them into her apron pocket when they were in the hallway.

Afterwards, she wasn’t even sure how to process it. She’d almost had sex with James when she was doing the Harvest Happenings, keeping the congregation informed about choir practices, famine relief, MYF fundraisers, things that keep folks involved. Him being the only one else in the church building, she’d stuck her head into his office and they’d chatted as she stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders. In doing his forehead, she’d pull him back into her and they’d gotten their clothes off before he thought he heard a noise.

After that, she’d picture him naked when he gave a sermon or mowed the yard, and she supposed he saw her in the same way when she put up a poster about the bake goods sale or waived across the fence. It was rather fun, she thought, them sharing that little secret.

So why now with James’s boy? Maybe it had to do with having done the Twist.

After that, at least, she and Sandy weren’t interrupted when they went to the shelter.

September 14, 1962

Probably no one will ever know the complete chronology. The decision-makers on both sides were killed and much of the who-started-it evidence was vaporized. The best way to leave it might be that Khrushchev and Kennedy equally stood their ground. In any case, it would be a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Howard had been in St. Louis on business when the emergency warning interrupted Huntley-Brinkley. Susan had scarcely time to grab Ronald and Sandy from where they’d been working on a science fair project, or so they said, and as Joyce had just come over to repay a borrowed stick of margarine — “Saved me a trip to the store” — that made four of them dashing for the shelter.

After the tremors hit, then it was silence, the transistor radio emitting nothing but crackles. Susan lit a candle and saw her own fright mirrored in the faces of her three charges. There wasn’t anything to say. Just sit in fear.

Ronald was the first to stir. “I’ll look out.”

“I don’t think you’d better. The radioactivity,” Susan cautioned in her adult voice, but boys, she realized, would always the first to look, the first to fight, the first to die.

Ronald un-cinched the crossbar and cracked the lid. “Holy smokes!” re-engaging the lock. “It’s just gone except for some trees and parts of buildings.”

Susan searched for another thought. “We’re better off here. Somebody will come to rescue us.” Probably nobody believed it, herself included, but the radio spots said that after two weeks it would be safe. Anyway, where would they go to?

Where was Howard? Maybe they’d only rocketed here. Probably she’d never even know. The kids who’d ducked under their dining-room tables and covered their heads? Just blown away.

They were in a concrete box in the ground with lots of food and nothing above.

Susan didn’t mind if Joyce squeezed into bed with her, at least a touch of companionship, but unlike Ronald in the bunk above and Sandy on the floor, neither slept.

September 15, 1962

The toilet was private and rhe lime seemed to keep it tolerable. Changing clothes could wait till the evening’s candle was extinguished. Sandy had Howard’s wardrobe and Joyce could share with Susan ... At least nobody was cold.

They tried to play Rummy, but nobody tried very hard. When Joyce sat on Susan’s lap, Susan wrapped her arms around her and rocked her.

September 16, 1962

Nobody cared to speculate about what life might be like might be above, but Sandy shared his tales of Scouting misadventures and Ronald, his opinions on who’d have been in the World Series. The Yankees all the way. He didn’t care for Roger Maris that much, but could that guy belt ‘em!

Bedtime again came early. With the candle extinguished, it seemed safe to Susan when Joyce pulled off her top, and Susan did likewise. When she pulled Susan against her and kissed her, Susan did it back. When Joyce reached down, Susan let her, and when Joyce pulled Susan’s hand onto her in the same way, Susan allowed it.