The Belief in Angels (19 page)

As if the color isn’t enough to distinguish the house, Wendy hired a company to blow insulation into the walls to help weather the winters and save money on the heating bills. This particular insulation method involved creating round, baseball-sized holes in the wood siding to allow insulation to be blown in. When they finished the job, they covered the holes with small, louvered, silver discs. She never bothered to have the discs painted to match the wood shingles, and the end result is an electric blue surface dotted with silver discs. Our house now perches on the cliff like a psychedelic Victorian spaceship.

The first sense irritating me as I turn the corner onto our street, however, is not my sight but my hearing: the music coming from our place is blaring at concert level, and it grows louder with each step.

I hate the song that plays—“Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You,” by the Bee Gees. Jack’s favorite song. It’s dirgelike, unlike any other music the Bee Gees have produced. Jack used to play it over and over while David chanted, “Play it again. Play it again,” in a failed attempt at reverse psychology. I say
failed
attempt because Jack kept obliging David, I think because he wanted to bond with him and believed that he really loved the song as well.

VW vans, Beetles, and other cars and motorcycles painted with bright colors crowd our front lawn and line Alethea Road. The crowning glory of “freak,” however, is the 1947 Daimler Hearse bearing the logo
The Hop Shoppe
in an ornate, psychedelic design, which has taken up residence in the driveway. To say it draws attention would be an understatement.

One of Wendy’s friends owned the first head shop in Boston, and they used to use the hearse to advertise it. They originally parked it out on the city street in front of the store. But when the store began attracting attention from the Boston police, they repeatedly ticketed the hearse and finally towed it. After Wendy’s friends rescued the hearse out of its towing debt, it ended up permanently parked in our driveway.

Our neighbor who purchased the ranch house located diagonally across the road from ours is agoraphobic. I totally understand why she has a fear of going outside.

As I walk closer, I can see the party is pulsing in full chaos mode. People spill out onto the lawn and wander down the cliff toward the beach. Wendy’s parties are notorious and sometimes last for days.

When I reach the porch, more people pour out the door. They’re laughing loudly. One of them grabs my arm as I brush by. It’s Dorothy, Wendy’s newest best friend.

Dorothy used to be a Rolling Stones groupie and likes to tell stories about the time she had sex with Keith Richards. She smiles at me and stays, still holding my arm, while her friends keep going. She waves off her boyfriend, a quiet guy named Decker, who lingers on the porch with her.

Decker, a major drug dealer for the Boston community, and Dorothy, a nurse who steals meds from the hospitals she works for, have, like the hearse, become fixtures at our place. Hospitals fire Dorothy when they find out she steals, but she’s never arrested. Sometimes they rehire her. Dorothy has charisma. She’s friendly, and when she isn’t stoned she’s interesting to talk to. Dorothy talks to me in a way that makes it seem like I matter, like my opinions are important.

I can see she’s buzzed. She yells over the blaring music, “Hey, little woman. How are you doing? You getting back from school? Do you wanna go for a quick swim? The seaweed is good for your hair, you know.”

“No thanks. It’s a bit cold for me right now,” I say, laughing.

It’s the middle of September in New England. People who swim in the freezing cold ocean past Labor Day are surfers or nutty.

“Besides, I’ve got chores to do,” I add.

“I dig it. See ya later,” Dorothy says.

I watch her run down the road to catch up with her friends. Dorothy tears her clothes off as they go, as though she doesn’t know it’s chilly.

Wendy and her friends love to take off their clothes. There’s a lot of nakedness that spills out onto the porch, the lawn, and the street, and I’m sure it shocks and amuses our neighbors. It embarrasses me.

“Oh, brother,” I say under my breath. Three more people step out onto the porch. They’re high school students with baggies of dope in their hands, which they hastily hide when they see me. One of them speaks to me.

“Hey Jules, you’re looking foxy. You won’t forget about me when you grow up, now, will you?”

“Not in million years. How could I forget you?”

I talk in a sweet voice he doesn’t recognize as sarcastic. He smiles as he walks away.

It makes me mad that Jack sells marijuana out of our house, especially to high school kids. It’s risky and stupid. He could potentially blow our family apart if Wendy’s arrested.

Occasionally, one of the high school kids will ask me if I can score them dope, and it pisses me off. I’m anti-drug, as are my brothers, and I resent being asked. Jack has started telling them to hide the marijuana and pretend he’s not selling to them anymore.

It isn’t just the high school kids who know our house is a great place to score pot. It also hasn’t escaped the attention of the local police, who cruise by with regularity but never bust anyone. It’s like there’s a conspiracy to ignore Wendy’s behavior. I don’t mind, because allows my brothers and me to remain together—but I am obsessed with the possibility of being arrested along with Wendy and her friends.

I can’t count on my grandfather anymore. My Grandmother Yetta died last summer, and my grandfather seems to drift in a depressed haze. Our visits with him are random and brief. Once Wendy drove us into Boston to collect a check from him and then drove us right back to Withensea. We didn’t even stay for dinner, and what’s worse is my grandfather didn’t seem to mind. So I don’t think there
is
another place to go anymore if Wendy gets arrested and sent to jail.

I survey the scene inside. People pack the room wall to wall, and the air stinks of pot and cigarette smoke. People occupy every piece of furniture, sit on counters, sit on the floor. A man hangs off the bookcase like a chimpanzee. Everyone shouts at each other over the music.

The coffee table overflows with pipe paraphernalia, a large bowl of dope, roach clips, rolling papers, empty prescription bottles, and film canisters. The piano has been shoved in the corner next to the fireplace. Sadly, it’s become scarred with more glass rings, scratch marks, and cigarette burns with each successive party. People sit on top of it as though it’s a throne, and other people sprawl around it like subjects.

I wind my way through the crowd toward the stairs.

Wendy’s still taking occasional classes at Northeastern University, and lots of her young college friends come to these parties.

“How is school?” they ask. “Are you still drawing?”

They question me as if we’re all at a parent-teacher meeting. It’s all formal and stiff and stupid to talk to them this way when I know they’re all high and won’t remember the conversation anyway.

Then someone asks me the dumbest question: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

I hate this question. “I’m ten years old and I don’t plan to have a boyfriend for some time,” I answer.

I smile politely and continue on. When I climb to the top of the stairs, I pass a few people who have just emerged from Wendy’s room. I peek inside to see if Wendy is there. She isn’t. I step inside and chat with the people who are still hanging out until they leave the room.

I close the door and open a window to air out the heavy pot stink. Then I open one of Wendy’s closets. I pull through several racks of clothing before finding
the two vests I want. I stuff them under my blouse and am starting to leave when I see the handle turning and hear Wendy’s voice. I step back into the closet, pull it closed, and push the racks of clothing in front of me. I hear Wendy shouting over the music to someone.

“… fucked me, then he told me he was taking off to sail Saul’s boat through the Panama Canal up to California and left the next day.”

“No shit? Far out! Why didn’t you go with him?”

It’s Dorothy with her. She closes the door behind them, muffling the sound of the music so they don’t have to yell.

Wendy opens the closet and lifts the laundry chute in the floor beside me with a rope hanging from the ceiling of the closet. She drops Dorothy’s wet T-shirt and jeans through the chute, inches away from my feet, and grabs another shirt and pair of jeans from the edge of the rack I’m standing behind.

Wendy’s motorcycle accident a year and a half ago left her with neck herniations that make it difficult for her to turn her head completely without pain. She doesn’t see me standing behind the clothes in the closet.

“I don’t have the dough to go with him. He kept the money from last year’s weed crop and Samuel already gave me money for this month’s bills. I fucking hate asking him for money. I have to make up shitty excuses and I’ve already had enough car trouble for this year, you dig? He takes a fucking pound of flesh, believe me.”

A year ago, Wendy signed us up for welfare checks and food stamps from the government even though my Grandfather Samuel totally supports us. She never reports his money. This embarrasses me and my brothers and leaves our closest friends confused as to how we can afford expensive clothes and summer camp but still qualify for free lunches at school.

I can see through a parting in the clothes as Wendy walks to her bureau and opens one of the top drawers.

I’m familiar with this drawer. Wendy’s pharmacy, a shallow drawer stuffed with pill bottles. I know from my nosy explorations that the bottles hold multicolored pills with prescription labels wrapped around the exteriors that sometimes have Wendy’s or Jack’s or other people’s names on them.

The contents of the pills and their effects remain a complete mystery to me. I have no intention to check any of it out myself, but it’s an impressive collection.

I watch as Wendy opens one of the bottles, shakes a few pills out and throws them back in her throat.

Dorothy asks, “Downers? Benzo?” and when Wendy nods, she holds her hand out and waits while Wendy walks over and shakes one into her hand. Wendy puts the bottle back, shuts the drawer, walks over to the bed and lies down on it.
Dorothy lies across the foot of the bed. Completely naked. I wonder if she came in from the beach through the wall of people at the party without putting clothes back on.

Dorothy rolls herself up, pulls on the T-shirt, and tries on the jeans Wendy pulled from the closet, and I watch as Wendy lights a sandalwood cone in the brass cup on the bureau.

“I wish I had a sugar daddy to take care of me, lady. You don’t know how lucky you are!”

“My father? Samuel’s a bastard and a bully. He’s lied to me my entire life. He acts like he’s penniless but he’s got a fortune—and he wants to dole it out in pennies so he can keep me attached at the hip and begging. Ever since I found out they all lied to me about my parents he’s been afraid I’ll try to find out who my real parents are and tell them to fuck off.”

Wendy never talks about my grandfather this way in front of us kids. I inhale the sandalwood scent that drifts into the closet and remind myself to stay still so I won’t be found.

“You never told me you were adopted. Would you do that … tell them to fuck off?” Dorothy asks.

“Absolutely. They’re crazy. I grew up believing my grandparents were my parents until I was ten and they were too old to take care of me. That’s when I went to live with Samuel and Yetta … who acted like they hated each other. He barely tolerated me, and Yetta smothered me until she drove me crazy.”

My nose tickles from the incense and the wool inside the closet. I think I might sneeze, so I hold my nostrils shut.

“Nobody told me the truth about anything, and when I asked they screamed at me that I was nosy and ungrateful. When they did tell me anything … it was always a lie. Lies on lies. Fuck them all.”

“Well still, it’s nice to have someone to go to when you’re in a jam. Jack’s an asshole, Wendy. I don’t know why you stay with him. I would have left after he banged that stoner chick.”

“He’s so fucking adorable … and not just because of his dick,” Wendy says.