Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

  I try not to listen to the Platters, but they get in my head anyway. Julie and Nancy and Susan sing along the way Ellie and I used to, but I just sit there silently, hoping no one can tell how lonely I am. Lonely for my old life, lonely for Ellie and Charlie, for Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, for Buddy. Yes, for Buddy. Poor lonely Buddy with his big ears and sad little fuzzy head.

  Pretending, pretending, pretending. Sometimes I think my whole life is pretending.

  Nancy lets me out first. They say goodbye and promise to call me and wave and smile and drive away. I watch the car disappear. They won't call me. I scarcely said a word all day, didn't crack a joke or laugh or even smile much. What a drag I am. What a boring girl. Why would anyone want to be my friend?

  Avoiding Mom, I sling my bathing suit and towel on the clothesline, go to my room, lie down on my bed, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading Bonjour Tristesse. If only I lived in France. Life would be different there. I'd be different there. Sophisticated. I'd never trip over things or drop them. I'd wear black and my hair would be long and straight—there must be something you can do to make curls go away. Maybe I'd have a lover on the Left Bank. He'd look like Larry from the bookstore only he'd be French. Somehow I'd learn French and read Madame Bovary in a café while I drank black coffee in one of those little cups and smoked Gauloises, a cigarette they smoke in France.

  Part Nine

  The End of Summer

  What Is the Grass?

  Saturday, August 18

  Nora

  TO my surprise Susan calls me a few days later. I go to the movies with her and Nancy and Julie and see Guys and Dolls. I fall in love with Marlon Brando all over again. We all do. We love his pinstriped suit and his gangster accent. I think he's sexier as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, but the others go for him as Sky Masterson. Maybe because he's in technicolor.

  We go to the pool two or three times a week, and I actually learn how to do a flip off the diving board, even though I almost kill myself. We rent skates at the roller rink and I fall down a lot, but a sailor asks me to skate in couples. We bowl and I still excel at gutter balls. I laugh more than I've laughed for a long time.

  I start to feel a little more comfortable around them, especially now that they've given up asking about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. It's not like being with Ellie, of course, but it's kind of nice to go places again. And it makes Mom happy.

  Julie goes to a beauty salon and has some kind of expensive treatment to get the green out. Her mother made her pay for it, which means she had to use all the babysitting money she'd been saving for fall clothes. We all think that was really mean of her mother.

  My hair has one little blond streak, but since I need to get it cut, I expect it will be gone soon. Mom doesn't like it and Daddy got mad and said did I want to look cheap and I said everybody does it. They said I wasn't everybody. It's as if they have a button and when they push it that's what comes out of their mouths. When I have kids, if anybody ever marries me, that is, I hope I can come up with something better than "You're not everybody."

  When I'm not hanging out with Susan and Julie and Nancy, I read. Now that I'm going out more often, Mom isn't always nagging me to get my nose out of a book. She lets me lounge around on a blanket in the backyard and work on getting a good tan while I read. With ants crawling on my legs and bees buzzing in the clover, I read Leaves of Grass. I savor it, I let the words roll round in my mind until I can almost taste them, until they flow through me like blood in my veins. Walt Whitman is unlike any poet I've ever read—the rhythm, images, and words he uses, the pictures he makes in my mind. At night, I spend hours trying to draw what I see when I read, but throw most of them away. Why is it so hard to move a picture out of your head and onto a piece of paper?

  Parts of the poem make me feel the way I do at Mass when the priest reads the last Gospel. There's mystery in the words, things I don't understand with my mind but feel with my heart. I decide Leaves of Grass will be my Bible and Walt Whitman will be my God. I study a picture of him, an old man with a beard. He looks like a prophet or even God himself.

  I want to memorize the whole poem but that's impossible. Bits and pieces of it stick in my mind, though. When no one is around to see or hear me, I sometimes whisper to the lawn, "'What is the grass?...it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.'"

  At church, I say to myself, "'Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?'" It's a good thing the priest can't hear my thoughts.

  I write these and other quotations in my diary, but I don't copy down the parts that disturb me and excite me and make me feel like I'm bursting out of my body. Things like the wind brushing your flesh and young men bathing naked and the beauty of their bodies. Things that remind me of making out with Charlie and how much I liked kissing him. And Buddy, too. Sometimes I think about kissing him the way I kissed Charlie, of letting him touch my breasts. And Larry—how would it be to kiss him?

  These things are too private to put in a diary your brother might find. Or your mother.

  One day I finally get the nerve to walk to the bookstore. I'm going to tell Larry I love Walt Whitman, I'm going to say he's changed my life, he's made me think things I never thought before.

  Mr. Long, the owner, is sitting at the counter. He's an old guy and sort of scruffy. Always needs a shave and a haircut and a bath—You use Dial, don't you wish everybody did?—but he's really nice.

  Anyway, he smiles when he sees me. I've been coming here since I was ten and looking for Nancy Drew books.

  "I haven't seen you for a while, Nora," he says. "I just got in a set of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books—are you still reading those?"

  I shake my head. "After you read a few they're all the same. The killer will be the really charming person, the one you'd never guess."

  Mr. Long grins. "Too true, too true."

  Yeah, too too true, I think. In real life, murder isn't like anything Agatha Christie ever wrote about. Sometimes the killer gets away with it.

  "Maybe you should try a different writer," Mr. Long goes on. "You might like Edmund Crispin. The Moving Toy Shop is one of my favorites."

  I nod, but while he's talking, I'm looking for Larry. I hear someone moving around in the back and hope it's him. Please let it be him. I have to see him.

  Finally I ask, "Is Larry here?" I blush and trip over my words. I must sound like I have a crush on Larry. Maybe I do.

  Mr. Long shakes his head. "He went back to New York last week."

  "Oh." I shrug like it doesn't matter, it isn't that important.

  "I miss him," Mr. Long says. "He was a good worker. Loved books. Poetry especially."

  I struggle to hide my disappointment. "If you see him, will you tell him I really love Walt Whitman?" My face feels so hot I must be on fire.

  "I should have known it was you." Mr. Long reaches under the desk and comes up with a book of T. S. Eliot's poetry. "He couldn't remember your name, but he said if a tall girl came in and said she liked Walt Whitman, I was to give her this." With a smile, he hands the book to me. "And here I am thinking you still liked Agatha Christie."

  The phone rings and he turns away to answer it.

  "Thanks," I whisper. Clutching the book, I leave the store and find a shady place. I sit down on the grass and slowly open the book. On the title page, there's a scrawl of handwriting: To the tall girl whose name I forget—sorry sorry sorry—I'm glad you liked Walt Whitman, I knew you would. When you're older, come to Greenwich Village and look me up. We can talk about Whitman and Eliot. "Missing me one place, search another; I stop somewhere, waiting for you." Larry Brownstein.

  Is that just a line he likes in Leaves of Grass, or does he really mean he's waiting for me? I wish I could get on the train to New York tomorrow and find him and escape this town, this place, these people forever. I think I might be in love with him.

  I read the first lines in The Wasteland, the ones Larry recited, and I hear his voice. I see his dark h
air straggling down his neck and his electric eyes and his pale skin and his black clothes and his sandals. He's everything I don't know about. Which makes him scary and attractive at the same time.

  I go back to the store and tell Mr. Long to thank Larry for me. I ask if he ever comes home, maybe at Christmas or something, and Mr. Long shrugs and says, "With Larry, who can tell?"

  With anyone, who can tell?

  A Talk with Ralph

  Monday, August 20

  Nora

  A COUPLE of days later, I run into Ralph in the drugstore. I've been avoiding him all summer, but this time I almost bump right into him, which forces us to look at each other.

  We say hello and I start to turn away but he stops me and says, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

  "About what?" I ask him, though I know damn well there's only one thing for us to talk about.

  "Just some stuff that's on my mind." His face is red and he fumbles for words.

  The next thing I know we're sitting at a booth in the back of the drugstore drinking cherry Cokes and he's saying, "Look, Nora, I know you must hate me for not going to her funeral."

  "Her funeral?" I look at him as if I don't know who he's talking about. He doesn't want to say her name, I think, but now he has to.

  "Cheryl." He says her name in a low voice and looks at the table as if he's talking to it instead of me. "Cheryl's funeral. I didn't go."

  "Yeah," I say, "I noticed."

  "I couldn't," he says. "I got up that morning, I put on my suit, but I couldn't get my tie right. I looked at myself in the mirror and I knew I should go, I really did, but somehow, somehow..." He shrugs.

  "Somehow you just didn't," I say.

  "I've never known anyone who died," he says as if this is a valid excuse. He swallows hard. "I was scared," he whispers, still studying the scratched tabletop. "I didn't want to see her—or Bobbi Jo either."

  I lean toward him. "Do you think I wanted to see them? Do you think Ellie or anybody else wanted to see them?"

  He shakes his head. His glass has left a wet ring on the table. He traces it with his finger.

  "I was scared too," I tell him. "We all were, but we went to the funerals anyway."

  He keeps on tracing the ring, smudging, smearing, altering it.

  "It was the first time I went to a visitation or a funeral." I look at the top of his head, streaked even blonder now, at the crisp collar of his blue shirt, at his wristwatch with the luminous dial on a chrome stretch band. "I didn't want to go, but I had to," I tell him. "They were my friends."

  "I liked her," he mutters. "She was, well, she..." His voice trails away as if he can't come up with anything to say about Cheryl. Like what a good dancer she was or what she and he did down in the woods all that time. Or if Buddy was right when he said guys like Ralph only wanted one thing from girls like Cheryl.

  So I suck up the last of my Coke and say, "I notice you're back with Sally now." It's kind of nasty, but the longer we sit here, the more I hate him.

  He nods. His fingers have found the ashtray and he's sliding it around the table. "Well, I just wanted you to know, wanted to say, uh, I mean, I wanted..." He stalls again. "Look," he says, "I have to go. I'm supposed to meet my mother at the dentist's office—in fact I'm already late."

  I watch him leave. He's in such a hurry to get away from me, he almost knocks a kid down on his way out of Walgreen's. God, I am so glad he's leaving for college soon. I won't have to see him when school starts. Or Don either. Good riddance.

  Buddy's Letter

  Friday, August 24

  Buddy finally writes to me. It's embarrassing, but my heart beats a little faster when I see the envelope. It's not as if I'm in love with him or anything, at least I hope not. Mom hasn't seen the mail yet, so I run up to my room and read it there.

  Dear Nora,

  I bet you didn't think I'd write but here I am. It's been a while since I left but you have no idea how tough the Navy is. When I get off duty I'm usually too tired to pick up a pen, I either fall asleep or go out with some of the guys and get a beer. Tonight though I thought I'd write you a letter which I hope you answer because so far I haven't gotten any mail, not even from my folks.

  I gotta say I don't much like the Navy. Officers boss you around all the time and you have to salute and say yes sir and no sir and act like you respect them, even if their jerks, especially if their jerks. They make you swab decks and clean the heads and eat crappy food and obey hundreds of rules most of which are stupid but I signed on for three years so I'm stuck, it's not the kind of job you can quit.

  I'm at sea now, I can't say where but there's lots of water as far as I can see. Ha ha.

  I think about Cheryl every day and night. I write letters to her in my head, I tell her what I'm doing and how much I miss her, sometimes I forget she's dead. Out here away from everybody it's easy to think of her hanging out with you and Ellie and Bobbi Jo, and I'll see her when I come home on leave, she's just so real to me. I keep her picture in my wallet and sometimes I show it to guys and tell them she's my girl and they all think she's really pretty and I'm a lucky SOB. So far, nobody here knows anything about what happened in Elmgrove. If I'm lucky it'll stay that way.

  One night when I was drunk I got her name tattooed on my arm. The guy did a nice job, put it inside a heart. It's on my bicep which is bigger now from all the work I do.

  I hope you're having a good summer, better than mine. Maybe when I come home on leave we could go to a movie or something but it's okay if you don't want to.

  Well write soon and tell me how you are and what your doing.

  As Ever,

  your friend Buddy

  I read the letter a couple of times. The parts about Cheryl are so sad I feel like crying. Poor Buddy, I think, oh, poor Buddy. I wish I could stroke his fuzzy head and make him forget Cheryl.

  If he asks me to a movie when he comes home, should I go? I start worrying, My parents will have a fit. Ellie will hate me. Susan and Nancy and Julie will think I'm crazy.

  I feel like I'm breaking out in a rash just thinking about it. Prickly heat maybe.

  But I also know I will go if he asks me, even if I have to lie. And if he kisses me again, I will kiss him back.

  Ellie Comes Home

  Tuesday, August 28

  Nora

  THE week before school starts, Ellie calls. She's back, she's sorry she hasn't written more often, she wants me to come over and spend the night like I used to.

  "Why don't you come here?" I ask.

  There's a heartbeat of silence. "I asked first," she says with a laugh.

  How can I tell her I don't want to go to her house? I don't want to see Bobbi Jo's mother or her little sisters or her father, I don't want to see the park. I just don't, don't, don't. I try to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. Except Cheryl and Bobbi Jo and this is the first time I've thought of them for days, maybe even weeks, and I feel terrible. Awful.

  "You don't want to come here, do you?" Ellie sounds a little mad, a little sad.

  I twist the phone cord. "It's, I, well. I really want to see you, I've missed you so much, but, well ... it's just..." My face burns with embarrassment.

  Ellie doesn't say anything for a while. I breathe, she breathes. Finally she says, "School starts next week. I'll be at St. Joseph's. We'll never see each other."

  When Ellie starts crying, I cry too. If we could just go back to the night before they died, if we could just figure out what was going on and change something, maybe everything would be the way it used to be. But deep down inside, I know we can't go back. No matter how much we want to.

  Nora's Second Dream

  Tuesday, August 28 Night

  Nora

  THAT night I sit up late reading A Certain Smile (or, if you know French, Un certain sourire), Françoise Sagan's newest book, which I checked out of the library despite a disapproving look from Miss Snyder, who knows my mother and probably thought if I were her daughter I wouldn'
t be allowed to read French novels.

  When I'm too tired to read, I turn out the light and stare into the darkness. I wonder what it's like to be twenty years old in Paris and have an affair with an older man. I wonder if my life will ever be that passionate. Somehow I doubt it.

  I want to sleep but my room is hot and the cicadas are thrumming and the more I try to relax the tenser I get.

  I think about Ellie's phone call. I should go over to her house. Maybe I'd get used to being there, maybe I'd stop thinking about the murders. After all, we've been best friends since tenth grade-two years. In and out of each other's houses, going to parties, hanging out with kids in her neighborhood. I'll miss her when school starts and she's not there. I'll miss her parents, too. I'll miss eating dinner at her house and spending the night there, sharing secrets in the dark, wondering what we'll be like when we're grownups. Will we get married, will we have kids, will we still love Elvis. What if a war starts, what if the Russians drop the bomb, what if the world ends.

  But deep down inside I know we can't go back to the way we were. Neither can Buddy. Neither can Charlie or Paul. What happened in the park has changed us. The things we know now are things we can't forget.

  I turn on my side, I flip over on my back, I curl up, I stretch out. I lie on my stomach. But I can't sleep.

  Downstairs, Mom and Dad are arguing. I hear her say, "You never think about the future, you never take any responsibility for this house or your children. I'm at my wits' end." Dad mumbles something that sounds like, "Oh, honey." A door slams. The bathroom, I think. The only place in this house anyone has a speck of privacy. The kitchen screen door creaks open and slams shut. He's gone out in the yard to sit in a lawn chair and smoke, drink a beer or two. He probably hopes she'll go to bed and wake up tomorrow in a better mood.