Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (21 page)

At home, Mom and Billy are doing a jigsaw puzzle at the dining room table. So far, they've put down the puzzle's four corners. According to the box lid, it's a picture of a sunset on the ocean and it has 650 pieces, mostly pink, red, gold, blue, or green.

"You're soaked," Mom says. "Get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia."

I go to my room and strip off my shorts and blouse. Even my underwear is wet. My moccasins are sodden lumps of leather, ruined, I'm sure. I pull on dry clothes, flop down on my bed, and turn on the radio just in time to hear the end of "Heartbreak Hotel." Damn. I love Elvis and I love that song. Lonely Street—that's where I live.

I lie there hoping they'll play another Elvis song, but instead it's Carl Perkins singing "Blue Suede Shoes." I remember Bobbi Jo singing it one day down in the park, making us all laugh. She wanted a pair of blue suede shoes so bad, but she never found a pair, not even at Hutzler's.

The rain gurgles in the downspout, drums on the roof, and patters from leaf to leaf in the holly tree. The mockingbird sits on his branch, his feathers wet. He looks as sad as I feel.

What does a bird know? Does it know it will die, do dogs and cats know? I think I read somewhere that they don't know until just before, and then they hide and die where no one can see them. Wouldn't it be better to be like them and not know?

Elephants know. They mourn when an elephant in their herd dies. I read that in
National Geographic.

What's it like to be buried when it's raining? Does the rain seep down through the earth and leak into coffins and run down dead people's faces like tears?

"Nora?" Mom sits down on my bed and touches my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm worried about you."

"I'm
fine
."

"I know you miss Ellie." Mom goes on as if I haven't said anything. "But maybe you should call some other girls from school. Joan Waters, maybe. I see her around town. She always smiles and says hello. She seems like a nice girl. Or Doreen, that little redhead who lives over on Beacon Street. You and she used to be friends. Maybe if you called..."

Mom goes on talking but I've stopped listening. She just doesn't get it. Joan Waters is a stuck-up snob—she runs around with the big wheels. Fat chance she'd want to spend any time with me.

And Doreen is really strange. She walks with her head down and never looks at anybody, like she wants to be invisible or something. A friend like that is all I need.

As for Ellie, I got a postcard from her yesterday, a photo of a sunset on a beach, just like the jigsaw puzzle.
Greetings from Cape Cod,
it said. After I read it, I had a feeling she doesn't miss me as much as I miss her.

 

Dear Nora, wish you were here. Cape Cod is so neat. I met a cute boy yesterday and we talked a long time. I hope I see him again. Guess what. My parents are sending me to St. Joseph's next fall. I don't want to go back to Eastern after what happened. Maybe you can go there too, and it won't be so bad. We'll give the nuns a run for their money. Write soon, Love ya, Ellie.

 

I don't want to go back to Eastern either, but I definitely don't want to go to St. Joseph's. Ellie doesn't know I've been absolved of Catholicism. Neither does Mom, for that matter.

"What did you just say?" I ask her.

"I said I've made an appointment for you to see Dr. Horowitz."

"Why? I'm not sick."

"You don't have any appetite, you're always tired, you never want to go anywhere or see anyone. You've lost at least five pounds this summer. You could have mononucleosis."

"You get mono from kissing," I say. "That's why it's called the kissing disease."

"That's not really true, Nora." She starts describing the symptoms. It occurs to me that she's just read an article about mono in
Good Housekeeping
or
Ladies' Home Journal.
Is your teenager listless, has she lost her appetite, have two of her friends been murdered? She may have mononucleosis.

"Mom," Billy yells, "I put some more pieces together. Come and see!"

"Just a minute." Mom pats me on the shoulder. "We'll take the trolley into Baltimore tomorrow morning. After you see the doctor, we'll have lunch at Miller's."

I turn my face to the wall.

Mom gets up, walks to the door, pauses. "Come on downstairs," she says. "We need your help with the jigsaw."

"I'm not in the mood," I say, keeping my back turned.

"No," she says, suddenly angry, "you just want to lie there and feel sorry for yourself. I've tried to be patient, Nora, I've tried to understand, but this has gone on much too long. Think about someone besides yourself for once."

Ah, I think, so it's come to the old familiar You are so selfish, you are so self-centered, you think the sun rises and sets for you and you alone. Well, who do you think you are? Your friends got murdered and no one knows who killed them and your best friend is on Cape Cod and she's going to Catholic school in the fall and nothing will ever be the same but get over it, grow up, think about somebody else for a change. What's more important—your dead friends or the jigsaw puzzle?

Mom stands there for a while. From downstairs Billy calls, "Come on, Mom. Let Nora sulk, see if I care."

She sighs loudly. "Dinner will be ready when your father gets home. Maybe you could give me some help and set the table."

It's Friday, I think, payday. Daddy won't be home until after seven, and he'll be drunk and he'll try to kiss Mom and she'll turn her face away. Then she'll start in about his paycheck: There should be more, have you been playing the numbers, how do you expect us to live on this? I have bills to pay, Billy needs his teeth straightened, yakety yak, yakety yak ... I can't stand it. My mother hates my father.

I just hope he hasn't brought home a steak. He did that once. Made Mom cook it and all of us had to sit there eating tuna salad while he ate the steak. Truly it was the meanest thing he ever did, but I know sometimes he gets fed up with eating fish every Friday just because he's married to a Catholic.

I don't want my life to be like my mother and father's. I'd rather stay single.

What if I really am sick? What if it's not mono but something worse? I saw a TV show where a girl dies of leukemia. What if Dr. Horowitz tells me I have six weeks to live?

I look around my room at all the stuff I have. The teddy bear my grandmother gave me when I was three, my collection of Storybook Dolls left over from when I was ten or eleven, half a dozen Nancy Drew mysteries,
Lassie Come-Home, The Moffats
—books I loved when I was a kid.
Catcher in the Rye,
the first book I ever read that seemed as true as my own life,
Member of the Wedding,
which spoke to my secret self because Frankie was me and I was Frankie. My diaries, my yearbooks, my sketchbooks and art supplies; photographs of Ellie and me acting silly in the park, hanging upside down on the jungle gym and going down the sliding board; movie stars and posters taped to my wall. And my clothes—a closetful of skirts and blouses and dresses, bureau drawers stuffed with underwear and socks and pajamas and jeans and shorts, my rosary and missal, a palm from Palm Sunday yellowing above my mirror. All the things that will be left behind when I die.

What will Mom do with them? What did Cheryl's mother do? What did Bobbi Jo's mother do? Do you throw them out or give them to the Salvation Army or pack them in a trunk no one ever opens?

I grab my bear and hold him tight. Pooh. I named him after Winnie-the-Pooh because he looks like him, though not so much now with most of his fur loved off and one eye gone and his stuffing leaking out of his paws. I've slept with him almost every night of my life and told him my secrets and cried until he was wet with my tears. When I die, he'll be buried with me.

Sorry for myself, yes, it's true, I'm sorry for myself and sorry for Cheryl and Bobbi Jo and Ellie and Buddy—yes, Buddy, because he didn't do it, I know he didn't do it, and he's living on Lonely Street too.

Friday, July 13

 

H
E
stands at his window and watches two girls walk past the house. He doesn't know them, but they remind him of Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. It's the way their hips sway and their asses jiggle under their shorts. They have the same purses, with long straps and drawstring tops. They swing them casually as they stroll along, laughing and talking. They aren't thinking about dying. Neither were Cheryl and Bobbi Jo that morning. On an otherwise good day, Mister Death sometimes takes you by surprise.

But this is Friday the thirteenth. They should expect something bad to happen.

His brother is in his room as usual, the door closed, listening to Elvis Presley. He himself hates Elvis, who's nothing but an ignorant Southern ex-truck driver who got lucky. He swings his hips, he gyrates, he sneers, he lets his eyelids droop. He has no talent, yet all the girls and their mothers (who should see him for the ignoramus he is) are in love with him.

"Hound Dog," he thinks, what kind of a song title is that? Music for proletarians. The uneducated masses.

Summer vacation is almost half over, and he's uneasy about returning to school. He has no concerns about himself. He knows how to maintain his invisibility. It's his brother. His behavior is unpredictable. He's lost control over him, he worries he'll say something or do something to give them away. He imagines him writing a report called "What I Did Last Summer":
My brother and I killed two girls. He shot them and I helped him hide their bodies. It was my brother's idea, he made me do it, I didn't want to, I'm sorry now, please don't put me in jail.

While he's musing, he sees his father's car turn the corner and pull up in front of the house. He's wearing a suit and tie, his shoes are polished, he carries a briefcase. Superficially he's indistinguishable from all the other men coming home on a Friday night. Ah, how deceptive are appearances.

Soon his mother summons him and his brother to dinner. They sit at the table, the four of them, with little to say to one another. Nothing unusual about that. It's a house of silence occasionally shattered by shouts and blows.

After they have begun to eat, his father says, "I've found a job in Texas. Lots of opportunities there. I think we'll leave here at the end of August. Maybe sooner."

No one is surprised. They all know why they're going to Texas. They never stay anywhere for more than a year or two. In the middle of the night, they leave their furniture behind, rent unpaid, and skip town before their father is arrested for embezzlement, writing bad checks, operating a numbers game, or any other of a number of scams and frauds.

He smiles across the table at his brother. It's a reprieve. Once they're in Texas, they'll be safe. They'll know no one and no one will know them.

His brother doesn't return his smile. Head down, he looks at his plate, his shoulders hunched.

His mother goes to the kitchen for another glass of water. She fools no one, except perhaps herself. They all know what's in the glass. When she returns, she pushes her almost untouched plate aside and lights a cigarette.

He helps himself to a slice of meat loaf. His mother sips her drink and smokes. She has nothing to say, but then she seldom does. His brother finally looks at him across the table. He sees the relief in his face.

W
HEN
I was little, I used to get carsick every time we took the trolley into Baltimore. The bus was even worse. But now that I'm older I'm pretty much over it if I always ride facing forward and don't try to read anything.

Mom and I don't have much to say. I'm still upset about her calling me self-centered and accusing me of feeling sorry for myself. And I'm not happy about going to see Dr. Horowitz. It's not like he and I are in the habit of chatting. He's the stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-ah sort of doctor. So what am I going to tell him? I'm scared of dying and at the same time I can't stop thinking about it. I can't sleep, I'm always tired, I'm unhappy, I'm lonely, I'm scared that I'm crazy. Look what happened when I tried to talk to a priest. I almost got sent to the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. I don't want to go through
that
again.

I decide I'll just tell him I can't sleep. A doctor can fix that with a prescription.

I glance at Mom. She's looking out the window at an old, rundown Baltimore neighborhood. I wonder what it's like to live in one of those sad little row houses, to spend your childhood climbing chain-link fences like two boys we pass. Nobody has a yard. There's broken glass everywhere. People sitting on their front steps look unhappy. The women have their hair in bobby pins. They wear shapeless housedresses like my grandmother wore. One has on socks and high heels. Every single one of them has a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. They don't even remove them to yell at their kids to get out of the street or leave the cat alone.

"That's where we'll end up someday," Mom says glumly. She's still in a bad mood.

"I thought we were heading for a tarpaper shack."

"Don't be sarcastic," she says. "Tarpaper shack, row house, what's the difference? Your father wastes most of his paycheck on liquor and gambling."

It's one of her favorite predictions. We won't be able to pay our bills because Daddy doesn't give her enough money. So it will be a tarpaper shack or a row house. I wonder what she'd say if I told
her
to stop feeling sorry for herself ?

She reaches up and pulls the cord to signal the driver our stop is next. By now we're on Howard Street. It's amazing how quickly neighborhoods in Baltimore change. One minute you're in a slum and the next you're walking past fancy department stores. The women here don't wear baggy housedresses or have bobby pins in their hair or cigarettes in their mouths. They're dressed for shopping—smart little suits, hats, and gloves. Their hair is waved. You can bet they aren't imagining tarpaper shacks in their futures.