Falling Angels (2 page)

No seed also meant that your mother was pure, like a pure blue sky or pure gold. The girls equated the Virgin Mary’s purity with soft, flawless, hollow, crystal-clear beauty. They loved her because of her purity and because she was like their mother—meek and mild, named Mary, and different from all other mothers.

Instead of doing housework all day and going outside now and then to shop or sweep the porch, their mother went outside once a year. The rest of the time, from six in the morning until eleven at night, she watched t?. Only in the fall, after Aunt Betty had dropped off cousin Mary Jane’s old clothes, did she do anything else. The girls would come home from school and hear the sewing machine humming in the basement. “What are you making?” they’d cry, running down to her. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies” was their mother’s answer. She worked fast, broke thread with her teeth. Her hands were steady. In no time there’d be a new dress for each of them.

Sometimes these sewing fits inspired her to other activity. “Lou,” she’d say,“go out and buy me a bag of cooking apples.” Then she’d bake a pie. She knew how to tap-dance, and if they begged her, and their father wasn’t home yet, she might get her tap shoes from the trunk and click out “Tea for Two.”

Christmas Day was the one time she went out of the house. After breakfast she put on her girdle, her black slip, her black dress with the tiny red and blue flowers, new nylon stockings that their father would bring home the day before, shiny black high heels, and the tomato-red lipstick she used to wear on stage during her hoofer days. Sandy—who was her image, who was so golden and fragile that women in the street threatened in longing voices to steal her—fell into rapture watching their mother dress. Each year she saved the piece of toilet paper their mother smacked between her lips; she sniffed the lipstick scent and kissed the lonely, floating mouth, then put it in her own white-covered Bible, between two pages of all red words, which was Jesus speaking. So far she had three of their mother’s mouths in there.

They were, all of them, in their best clothes for going to Uncle Eugene and Aunt Betty’s. Taking the show on the road, their mother called it. Their father’s nerves were always shot driving there. He chain-smoked, yelled at them in the back seat
to shut up. This year he almost drove into a stopped truck and killed them all without even noticing. Over the screech of his brakes he was asking their mother for the tenth time if she thought Mary Jane would like Cindy the Mardi Gras Doll.

“She’ll dance with joy,” their mother said.

He shook his head. “What the hell,” he said. “The whole goddamned business has gotten out of hand.”

Lou muttered,“Who does he think fat Mary Jane is, anyway? The Queen?” But she knew (their mother told them last year) that it wasn’t the gift he bought for Mary Jane that got him worked up every Christmas, it was Uncle Eugene being a rich bank president and driving an Oldsmobile, though he was the younger brother and only named after the man who wrote “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” while their father, the older brother and named James Agar Field after a president of the United States, sold used cars and drove their old Packard. “Brotherly rivalry,” their mother explained. “Such as Cain and Abel had.”

It turned out that Mary Jane already had a Cindy the Mardi Gras Doll. She dropped the one they gave her back in the box, where it landed upside down with its taffeta underpants showing. Their father pulled out his wallet and tried to give Uncle Eugene money. “Buy her whatever she wants,” he said. “The biggest doll in the store.”

“I’ve got the biggest doll,” Mary Jane said stonily.

From Aunt Betty and Uncle Eugene the three sisters each received what seemed to them an amazing new invention—white roller skates that laced up like ice skates.

“Top of the line,” Uncle Eugene said to their father. “Straight from Germany.” He told Sandy to come over and give her old Uncle Eugene a big kiss, but she kissed Aunt Betty’s soft, powder-smelling cheek instead, and Aunt Betty hugged her too hard and screamed,“Oh, my little beauty!”

“Mary Jane!” Uncle Eugene yelled. “Go show your cousins what you got.”

“Come on,” Mary Jane said, leaving the room. Their mother stood up to get lost in the crowd as far as the kitchen, but Aunt Betty screamed at her to sit down, she’d get her a drink.

“Ginger ale,” their mother said, handing over her glass.

“That’ll be the frosty Friday,” Aunt Betty cried.

Mary Jane led the way down the long hall, swivelling her body to show off the bouncy fullness of her skirt and to remind them that she was the oldest and that in her house she could walk however she wanted to. “Wait ‘til you see,” she said.

“What is it?” Sandy asked.

“Just wait.”

It was a Mary Jane doll. Standing in the middle of the room, its arms bent up in an “I surrender” pose. It was the big doll that Mary Jane spoke of earlier. Incredibly, its face was Mary Jane’s ugly face, and it was as fat as she was. A fat, ugly doll wearing Mary Jane’s pink chiffon dress and pink bow in its tightly curled brown hair, and even wearing Mary Jane’s pointy pink glasses.

Mary Jane strutted over to it and in an exasperated, motherly manner straightened its bow. A man who owned a doll factory made it, she said, from pictures Aunt Betty gave him. Just its head cost a hundred dollars.

“What’s her name?” Sandy whispered. She had a pain in her throat. “Is it Mary Jane?”

“No. It’s Annette.”

“Annette Funicello?”

“Annette Funicello Field.”

Sandy went around behind the doll, and that was better, not seeing the face. With the very tips of her fingers she touched its hair.

“Careful,” Mary Jane scolded. “Her head’s breakable.”

Sandy quickly dropped her hand. Naturally she was jealous, but what had her on the verge of tears was the doll’s ugliness (for even at eight years old Sandy was an aesthete), and more crushing still, the realization that Aunt Betty, whom she had always envisioned wishing upon a star for a beautiful daughter, wanted more Mary Janes, wanted Mary Jane to have a sister, or a baby … whatever a doll this big was.

Norma said, generously,“It’s neat,” although she didn’t play with dolls and couldn’t imagine how her cousin was anything but tortured by this one. Norma gave the doll another glance and felt herself blush. Everyone said that Norma and Mary Jane were the ones who looked like sisters.

“It’s
fat,”
Lou said. She pulled up the doll’s dress. “Big fat bum,” she sang. “Big fat bum.”

“Leave her alone,” Mary Jane screamed. “I’m telling.”

“Oh, who cares,” Lou said, falling on the pink wall-to-wall carpet.

Mary Jane fussed with Annette’s bow. “I know something that you don’t know,” she sang.

Sandy asked,“Is it about Annette Funicello Field?” She couldn’t resist lowering one of the doll’s arms and sliding her finger into its curled-up hand. What if the hand squeezed hers? She would scream.

Mary Jane didn’t answer. She just kept singing that she knew something they didn’t know, until Lou twisted her arm behind her back and ordered her to tell.

“Okay,” Mary Jane said, not putting up a fight. “Just remember, you made me.”

They went down the basement to Uncle Eugene’s workroom. When they were all inside, Mary Jane shut the door behind them and pulled the string on the light bulb that hung down on a wire. Uncle Eugene’s tools were in a mess on the bench. Where they belonged on the wall, he had painted their outlines
in white. Norma said,“That’s what they do around your body when you get murdered on the street.”

“Hey!” Lou yelled. “Aunt Betty! Ha ha! Va-va-va-voom!” She pointed at a calendar that had a colour picture above it of a strange lady, with gigantic bare breasts, sitting with her legs crossed on top of a ladder, filing her nails with a saw.

“Found it,” Mary Jane said, lifting a small metal box out from behind a stack of planks.

“So, big deal,” Lou said. “What’s in it?”

Norma asked,“Is it a dead man’s hand?”

“You’d never believe it in a million years if I told you.” Mary Jane lifted the box up onto a chair and opened the lid.

Papers, letters inside. That’s all.

Lou shoved Mary Jane. “Let’s see.”

“Quit it!” Mary Jane said in a furious voice. She rifled down through the pile, and near the bottom pulled out a paper. A piece of folded-up old newspaper. She slammed down the lid and opened the paper on it.

“Read that!” she screamed at Lou. “You just read that, big smarty pants. I hate you!”

Norma had a premonition. Inside her head there was a cold light that she knew was God’s warning, but she read too, over Lou’s shoulder. “Monday, May thirty-first, nineteen forty-eight,” Norma read out loud. “Gee, before we were even born.”

Lou pulled the paper closer. “Is that Mommy?” she said. “That’s Mommy.”

“That’s your mother!” Mary Jane cried.

“Let me see!” Sandy cried, squeezing between her big sisters.

There was a photograph of their mother in a dark suit and in a hat that had a little white feather sticking out of it. She looked surprised. Behind her was their father’s face, looking mad and too young to be their father.

Norma started to read the headline out loud: “No changes—”

“Charges,”
Lou interrupted. “No charges laid—”

“—in Niagara Falls baby death,” Norma and Lou read together.

Norma looked up at their cousin. Mary Jane’s cheeks were apple red, the same as her doll’s. “Read it!” Mary Jane cried.

“Tray—” Lou said, going on to the subheading. She nudged Norma. “What’s this word?”

“Tragic,” Norma said. “Tragic accident, court rules.”

Sandy sucked in her breath. “A baby died,” she whispered wide-eyed, covering her mouth with her hands.

“You had a brother,” Mary Jane burst out. “I knew. I knew before you did!”

“You never did,” Sandy said. She stood on her tiptoes to see over Lou’s arm. Lou was running a finger under the words as Norma continued to read out loud.

“A Sunday outing …” Norma read. Pretending to read along with her, Sandy said,“outing.”

“No whiteness has come forward,” Norma read.

“No whiteness,” Sandy echoed softly.

“No
witness!”
Mary Jane cried. “Stupid! You can’t even read.
I’ll
read it.”

“Shut up!” Lou cried, giving her cousin a push. “Shut your big fat trap.”

Norma went on reading. ‘“He fell out of my arms,’ Mrs. Field test … testif … test …”

Sandy murmured,“‘He fell out of my arms,’ Mommy said.”

“The fate of Baby Jimmy …” Norma read.

“Baby Jimmy,” Sandy repeated, thinking that this must be their father when he was a baby.

“Read what it says at the end!” Mary Jane cried. Her arm shot by Sandy’s face.

“Ow!” Sandy protested. The sequins on Mary Jane’s sleeve had scratched her chin.

“See!” Mary Jane cried, stabbing a roly-poly finger at the bottom of the column. “See, it says, ‘The ruling came in … in spite …”’ She clicked her tongue impatiently. “Well, anyway, it says that your mother threw the baby over Niagara Falls.
Threw
him, not dropped him. Because he would have landed on the ground if she just dropped him.”

“Liar! Liar!” Lou shouted.

“… to span the bank,” Norma read,“between the wall and the water.”

Lou snatched the paper up, and Norma stepped back. On the radio upstairs a man sang,“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” Norma thought, that’s what cowboys would do. She swaggered over to the calendar lady and touched her finger to the nipple of the right breast. She froze, her finger in the air, stunned by her daring.

“You made me show you.” Mary Jane sounded frightened.

Lou stared at the picture of their mother and father. It felt like a matter of life or death that she remember if she’d seen that feather hat before. “Did the baby die?” Sandy asked. Mary Jane tried to take the newspaper back, but Lou crumpled it into a ball.

“You’re going to get it!” Mary Jane cried.

Lou hurled the ball at her, marched over to the workbench and picked up the hammer. Mary Jane screamed. Sandy screamed. Up in the living room they thumped on the floor to keep it down. Taking the hammer with her, Lou left the room and went upstairs. She marched right past the living room, through her name thundering out of there. Down the hall to Mary Jane’s bedroom.

“Stop!” Annette Funicello’s one raised hand said.

Lou windmilled the hammer.

She windmilled the hammer but didn’t step any closer to the doll. Already her intention had deflected from that dumb,
innocent, one-hundred-dollar breakable head back to the real Mary Jane.

No, back to
him!
(She heard him coming down the hall.)

Near midnight Sandy tiptoed down to her sisters’ bedroom.

She wished that it was her and Norma who shared a room. Norma had a round face with smooth pink half-heart cheeks, and she was big and soft to sit on; she let Sandy sit on her and collapse on her in a game they called Chair. Her voice was low, drifting-off. She never got mad the way Lou did. Lou wasn’t even the oldest, but she thought she was the boss when their father wasn’t around.

Sandy went over to Norma’s bed. “Are you awake?” she whispered.

“Yeah, we can’t sleep,” Norma said. She and Lou had been telling each other that’s why there were no photographs after their mother and father got married, none for three years. And remember before their mother stopped going out for drives, the time they were all in the car, and Lou asked if they could ever go to Niagara Falls, and before their father could speak, their mother made him pull over, and she got out and just walked around in some bushes for about half an hour? Remember seeing her purple pillbox hat (that’s all that showed above the bushes) wandering around?

Norma and Lou had been exchanging these revelations and in long stretches of silence waiting for an entire, lasting sensation of what it was like to have a brother who was dead because your mother dropped him.

Norma absolutely exonerated their mother. Having held several babies, she knew how they squirmed in your arms, how easy it would be to drop one. She could just picture it—their mother being distracted by Niagara Falls, not paying attention for a second, crying,“Oh, little Jimmy!” but he was gone,
rolling across the bank and over the falls. Did he get all smashed up? Since Norma had never seen a waterfall, she imagined calm water at the bottom. She imagined Jimmy in a knitted white bonnet, doing the dog paddle, and his blanket floating around him like a lily pad.