Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

  I got in big trouble for coming home late. My dad was drunk and he hit me so hard he knocked me down. I'm going to have a black eye tomorrow. And how am I going to explain that? Nobody else has a father as bad as mine. I hate him so much.

  But I got ahead of myself. Before all that stuff happened, me and Ellie and Nora skipped school and went into Baltimore to see On the Waterfront again, about the 12th time I think. I love Marlon Brando, we all do, especially when he breaks down the door to Eva Marie Saint's bedroom and she's just wearing her slip and she acts like she hates him but you can tell how much she loves him. Her father hates him and says he's no good. Just like my father hates Buddy and says he's no good. It's my favorite movie.

  I love Rebel Without a Cause too. James Dean and Marlon Brando are my favorite actors. I can't stand it that James Dean is dead. He was so cute.

  Anyway we were talking and me and nora think our parents don't love each other and probably never did. I know this for a fact because I heard my mother tell her sister she married daddy because she thought nobody else would ask her, and what a mistake that was, it ruined her life. Yeah, she's stuck with two kids and a husband who spends every night drinking beer and watching TV and yelling. That is SAD. Ellie says her mother and father really do love each other so that's one out of three. Bobbi Jo's parents seem pretty much okay, so maybe that makes it fifty fifty.

  Well, tomorrow's saturday and we're having a slumber party at Ellie's and I'm going to sneak out and meet Buddy. No curfew because no one will know.

  Bobbi Jo's Diary

  Sunday, April 8

  Last night we had a slumber party at Ellie's. Cheryl had a black eye, she said she ran into a door but I can't quite see how that could happen. But you could tell she didn't want to talk about it so we all said it didn't hardly show which was a lie, but it made her feel better. Later, Ellie whispered to me maybe it was Buddy, maybe he hit her, but I said no, I don't think so, he loves Cheryl too much to hit her.

  The first thing we did was go bowling, it was okay with Ellie's parents as long as we were back at eleven which is kind of early but they didn't want us walking home late at night. Mr. O'Brien couldn't come to get us because his car is at the repair shop.

  I was horrible at bowling—only Nora was worse. We kept bowling gutter balls while Ellie and Cheryl made strikes and spares, I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. Afterwards we went to Howard Johnsons and these guys we'd talked to at the bowling alley followed us. We ended up at the same booth mainly because the boys just sat there without being invited. They were kind of cute. They lived in Fullerton and they went to Western, Eastern's biggest rival and enemy. Their ducktails were longer than Buddy's and they wore tough guy black leather jackets and talked all this cool slang. One of them kept saying, meanwhile back at the oasis the arabs were eating their dates. Then they'd all laugh but I didn't see what was so funny. In the girls' room, Cheryl tried to explain it but I still didn't get it. I don't think Ellie and Nora got it either but they laughed anyway. What's so funny about eating dates.

  They walked back to Ellie's house with us, through the woods and across the bridge and the baseball diamond. Then they wanted to come inside and join the party. It was mainly Cheryl's fault for flirting with them. We were all getting a little scared then, but Mr. O'brien came outside and told them to leave, they called him rude names and cussed and acted like guys in that movie Blackboard Jungle. One even looked kind of like the worst juvenile delinquent in the movie, the one who called the teacher daddyo. When Mr. O'brien said he was calling the cops, they ran back into the park and that was the end of them thank goodness.

  "That's the last time you're walking home from the bowling alley," Mr. O'brien told Ellie.

  Later after the O'briens had gone to bed, we helped Cheryl sneak out the basement window to meet Buddy. "Don't forget to leave it unlocked because I don't know when I'll be back and you might be asleep," she said and ran to his car. On went the headlights and off they went. It was exciting. I think we all kind of wished we had boyfriends to sneak off with. I know I did.

  Well we stayed up really late waiting for Cheryl. We watched the midnight double feature horror film. First they showed I Walked with a Zombie which was a little corny but still scary, especially the jungle scenes with the real tall skinny zombie. He'd just loom up out of the dark like a dead man. Next they showed The Wolfman and it was scarier I thought. Especially when the actor got all hairy and his fingernails turned to claws and his teeth got long and sharp. I can't figure out how they do things like that in movies and make it look so real.

  By then it was after three am and Cheryl hadn't come back. We went outside and looked for her, we walked up and down the street and around the block but there was no sign of her. I was kind of worried those guys might still be around somewhere but I guess they'd given up and gone home. I kept watching for them and I was so jumpy they all started teasing me.

  I don't care if they tease me—it's scary after dark when the streets are empty, no cars even, and all the lights in people's houses are out.

  Back at Ellie's we drank some more coke and ate popcorn and ice cream but I was getting too sleepy to keep my eyes open so I said wake me up when she comes back and I fell asleep, even though I was worried about her.

  Well, just as it was getting light, I woke up and saw everybody gathered around Cheryl. Her face was pink and she was laughing. "You really did it?" Ellie asked. "Did what?" I asked, and they all started laughing. "Don't tell," Cheryl told the others. "Bobbi Jo is too young to know about it." and even though I said I was fourteen and not a baby they said they'd tell me about it when I was as old as them, sixteen to be exact. Two years to wait. "It better be good," I said and they all laughed some more and Cheryl said it was very good.

  Then they all lay down and went to sleep and so did I.

  And now it's the next day and I'm home and feeling grumpy and kind of sick to my stomach from all the stuff we ate and I bet I'll never know what Cheryl did. If they want to act like that, let them. See if I care.

  Lonely Street

  Thursday, July 12

  Nora

  AFTER I get out of Buddy's car, I'm really upset. Why did I ask him if he believed in God? Why did I speak to him in the first place? Why did I get in his car? He must think I'm crazy or something. He's probably right.

  All the time I'm thinking this, I'm running through the rain, splashing in and out of puddles. Even though it's summer, the rain is cold and I'm shivering. Maybe I should have let Buddy drive me all the way home. But what if someone saw me getting out of his car? Better to get wet than start a bunch of gossip.

  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 mo
urn 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.

  Part Seven

  Leaving and Staying

  Mister Death

  Friday, July 13

  HE 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.