Stony River (20 page)

Linda had stuffed celery stalks with Cheez Whiz and made popcorn balls for midnight, but the kids didn't stick around until then. Mother acted surprised when everyone left, but Linda thought she'd probably planned it so she'd have the living room to herself to watch Guy Lombardo. Daddy made things worse when the kids were gone by lecturing Mother that kissing games gave “sexually
awakening adolescents a safe outlet for physical desires.” Mother said there would be no such awakening in her house. Linda had stormed up to her room and not come down until noon the next day.

At school today the girls gave her pitying looks and the boys made rude jokes. She'd suffered through the day, praying that a huge sinkhole would open up beneath her desk. She was so full of misery on the cold walk home she almost missed the
FOR SALE
sign at the end of Lexington. She turned and tramped down the middle of the unplowed road. Someone had shoveled a path to the house and cleared the snow off the steps and porch. Linda trod right up to the front door where another sign said
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
.

The boards were off the windows and doors. Maybe Miranda Haggerty was dead. Why else would they sell her house? Linda imagined her own funeral and teared up. The kids would be sorry for leaving her party early and her mother for putting the lights back on.

Unable to find the doorbell, she knocked on the heavy oak door. She stomped her feet to warm her toes and announce herself, but no one came.

She cupped her mittened hands around her glasses and peered through a porch window into an empty room with a wall of shelves rising clear to the ceiling. She knocked again then tried the door. It opened. Maybe the real-estate agent was inside and would show Linda around. She called “Hello” into the echoing hallway. Legs shaking, she stepped inside onto a rubber mat—the only thing in the room—and peered up at the grand stairwell, shrinking back reflexively as if she expected Crazy Haggerty's ghost to float down it. The place smelled like stale crackers. She wanted to explore where Miranda had lived, but her conscience reminded her that an unlocked door wasn't an engraved invitation.

Forgive us our trespasses
.

She backed out and closed the door. Tereza would have called her chicken, but honestly, Linda was merely respectful, not to mention
considerate of Mother and Daddy who would be mortified if she ended up at the police station. If Tereza had taken cover in Miranda's house, she probably tromped all over, rude as could be. But Linda was responsible. The sun was hanging low: Mother would be expecting her to get dinner started.

She reached Jackson Boulevard just as the high-school bus stopped a few feet away. Richie got off and waved. She hadn't spoken to him since he'd phoned about Tereza's balloons. “Hey there,” he called. He pointed to the
FOR SALE
sign. “Buying Crazy Haggerty's?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I have a dollar forty-seven in my pocket.”

He laughed. “They'll jump at that.” He wasn't wearing gloves and blew on his hands. “I'm heading to the Castle. Can I buy you a cup of coffee to warm you up?”

Mother said coffee was too stimulating for children, and she disapproved of the White Castle because she'd heard they used horsemeat during the war and passed it off as beef.

Linda took a big breath and said, “Why, thank you, sir.”

He laughed again.

Her glasses steamed up as they entered the White Castle. Richie gently lifted them from her face, set them on the counter and helped her onto a stool. He winked at the guy behind the counter who was wearing a white paper hat. “The usual, barkeep,” he said, “and the same for the little lady here.”

Linda needed lots of cream and sugar to get the sharp-tasting coffee down. Richie told her his cousin had loaned Tereza a jacket in the Castle the very night she'd run away. She'd returned it to him a few days later, but his cousin didn't know where she was now. Richie didn't know either; Tereza hadn't gotten in touch with him. Linda wanted to learn more about what Tereza had been doing with the “old guys” Richie had mentioned on Halloween, but she didn't want to remind him of her ignorance and risk being humiliated again. She talked about a bunch of other things, but
couldn't remember what later, only that Richie listened as if she had opinions worth hearing. She wondered if he was a better kisser than the boys at Kenny's party had been during Flashlight. They either slobbered all over you or pressed your lips so hard it made your teeth hurt.

She didn't have dinner ready until a half hour later than usual that night. Crossing her fingers behind her back, she told Daddy she'd stayed at school to try out for a play. He told her she had a duty to come home directly after school and take care of things. “Twenty years from now,” he said, “you won't remember if you were in a school play or not.”

“Twenty years from now,” she said, her voice steadier than her nerves, “you won't remember if you ate dinner at five-thirty or six.”

Although he sent her to her room for being disrespectful, his eyes betrayed the faint concession that she might have scored a point.

WATER RUSHING
through the pipes told her Buddy was up. Tereza slipped into dungarees and her tight pink sweater and was in the kitchen when he came in to make his breakfast. She said “Sure” when he asked if she knew it was Leap Day and pretended she knew what he meant about the Earth going around the sun and al-go-rhythms. She sang
I got rhythm, I got music,
wishing he'd jump in with
I've got my man,
which would have been hysterical, but he didn't.

From the dining-room window, she watched him back his car down the drive into the dark morning, his right arm draped over the front seat, his head turned to check over his right shoulder. She pictured herself next to him, breathing in his English Leather, twisting the heater to full blast to keep him warm.

She turned the basement shower on and stood under it screaming
like Fay Wray, practicing for her future career in sci-fithrillers; they'd be a snap compared to Broadway. Actresses in thrillers mostly just screamed and buried their heads in some guy's chest.

She folded the Castro convertible up into a couch so that the basement looked more like an apartment. Imagined a
Photoplay
interview in her Hollywood mansion, recalling when she'd rented some old pink-haired broad's basement, cracking up the reporter with her boss imitation of Dearie saying “terlet,” “goily” and “Hoymin.”

Water rushing through the pipes meant Dearie was up. Tereza followed her nose to the kitchen and the smoky coffee smell. Said, “Toast and joe, same as usual,” when Dearie asked her to name her poison.

“A girly needs more than that if she's going to make a baby someday,” Dearie said. Tereza flashed on Ma pregnant with Allen, one arm resting on her belly shelf like she'd grown it just for that. After breakfast, she screwed up her nose when Dearie cold-creamed her face and made her look at the crap that ended up on the tissue. Yelped when Dearie ripped a brush through her tangled hair and said she had to show her body that she cared more about it.

When the lady from next door ding-donged, Tereza ducked down to the basement. She and Dearie had cooked up the story that she was a friend's niece from Brazil and didn't speak English. The neighbors never demanded to see for themselves. Dearie could have been torturing Tereza with a hot iron for all they knew. It made her think about Miranda Haggerty. Best not to waste your hope on things like guardian angels, Saint Bernards and nosy neighbors.

It was safe to be outside for an hour when school kids trekked home for lunch. Wearing her Grace Kelly coat and the red-and-white striped stocking cap and matching mittens Dearie had knitted her for Christmas, Tereza took Dearie's shopping list (milk, Ex-Lax and Niagara starch) and hotfooted it four blocks over to a little store. Got back in time for spaghetti with meatballs and the radio announcer's
chocolate pudding voice:
Once again,
Backstage Wife,
the story of Mary Noble, a little Iowa girl who married one of America's most handsome actors
. Dearie never missed that program. Tereza was going to
be
a star, not marry one.

After lunch, shuffling on her knees with Dearie as they dusted baseboards along the piss-colored carpet in the parlor, Tereza asked, “How come Buddy's so serious?”

“A real sad sack at times, ain't he? Should've seen when he was little, trying to drown himself in a pail of water once a week. He ain't put his fist through a wall since you came.”

When Dearie took her nap, Tereza descended to the basement. She stepped into her white shorts and the amazing black pumps. Practiced cheesecake poses, lying on her back, legs in the air, or leaning against the bar, hands behind her ass. Even though her tits weren't as big as Marilyn Monroe's, she imagined Buddy going bonkers over them, never wanting to drown himself again. Count your luck, Ma used to say. Tereza eased out the cinder block and counted Miranda's money, adding five dollars from tips. Wouldn't take long to replace what she'd spent.

Water rushing through the pipe meant Dearie's nap was over. Tereza helped her make the supper they'd take on the bus. She got into her uniform, wig, coat and gloves, slipped on the galoshes she'd bought in December with tips and trekked with Dearie to the bus stop, leaning into the stinging wind. As the bus slogged from stop to stop, she watched her ghostlike reflection in the window eat a ham sandwich with mustard that nipped her tongue. Her real father could have been sitting behind her and she'd never know. She plotted the ways she'd get back at Ma and Jimmy if she knew where they were. Maybe being stuck with each other was punishment enough.

She handed out a bazillion towels and soap bars and thought about how the shitters and pissers would scream “It's her!” when
she was famous. They'd be sorry they hadn't asked for her autograph instead of Dearie's.

When Buddy came to pick them up, she climbed in the back and thought about Thanksgiving, when she'd sat up front and ridden with him to her old apartment. He'd waited until she came back down the porch steps shaking like she had a fever. “What kind of mother moves away without her kid?” she'd asked him.

“One who gets a better offer,” he said, his voice as hard as a fist. Tereza thought about the guts it would take to keep your head down in a pail of water.

The day after Tereza discovered her family had split from Stony River, Buddy had gone cruising with Richie, who told him about the balloons. When Buddy told Tereza, she'd laughed and said what a waste of good balloons. Truth was her throat got tight at the thought of a thousand of them sailing the sky looking for her.

She climbed into bed with her little notepad and marked off the day as she had the hundred and twenty-four others since she ran away: four strokes down, one across to make five. February 29 was just one more.

BEST TIME OF THE DAY
was when Dearie could close her door and have a good long chat with Alfie without Ladonna rolling her eyes.

She hung up her uniform, freed her griping waist from the corset and pulled down the slip that had crept up her middle. She closed her eyes for a moment so that her ears could enjoy the sound of no toilets flushing. Opened them again to take in the soft colors that calmed her nerves. After Alfie died, she'd papered their bedroom in a pink and mint green pattern that looked like drizzled icing, hoping it would help her miss him less. Two pink-shaded lamps, one by the bed and the other on her dressing table, gave off a rosy light that blurred her
wrinkles. Not that Alfie cared she was past her prime. She could be natural with him. Didn't have to pretend everything was jake, either, like she did with Buddy.

“Something was eating our little Mary Pickford tonight,” she said aloud. “I probably shouldn't have told her about Buddy sticking his head in the pail. And he ain't put his fist through the wall all that often. But it's easy to lay it on with her—she acts like nobody ever took an interest in her before. I didn't mention the devil holding his head down. The doctors can say whatever they like. You and me both know the boy's always had a better imagination than most.” She smiled at Alfie's urn over on the dresser. “Remember him seeing trees floating in the window and that teacher saying how precocious and sensitive he was?”