Bliss

When the popping slows, I turn off both burners. I empty the popped kernels into a brown paper grocery bag from under the sink, and then I tilt the saucepan and dribble in the butter. When I’m done, Sandy takes the saucepan and drags her finger around its inside edge. She sticks her finger in her mouth.

  “Blech,” I say.

  “It’s just butter,” Sandy says.

  “I know,” I say. Clementine loved butter too. We didn’t have it very often, but when we did, she’d sneak slices and eat them whole.

  “Then why’d you say ‘blech’?”

  I tilt my head. Did I actually hurt her feelings by saying “blech”?

  “I was just teasing,” I say. “I myself don’t like to eat plain butter, but hey, it’s a free world.”

  “Have you tried it?”

  I glance at the pan, where the leftover butter is congealing into blobs. “Uh . . . no.”

  “Then how do you know you don’t like it?”

  “I guess I don’t. I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  “In Malaysia they eat dogs,” she says. “You think that’s gross just because you’ve never had it?”

  I roll my eyes. I’ve already let her win, for heaven’s sake.

  “Is it because they’re cute?” she goes on. “Cows are cute too, you know.”

  “Not that cute. Anyway, I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Bullshit,” she says. “You eat meat loaf! I’ve seen you.” She leans back on the counter, and her shirt stretches tight at her chest. Her breasts are enormous. “Face it: If you were born in Malaysia, you’d eat dog. If you were born in Tibet, you wouldn’t eat meat at all, because you’d be a Buddhist. People do what they’re told, plain and simple. They follow meaningless, boring rules and live meaningless, boring lives.”

  “Ahh,” I say. “Except for you, of course.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because you eat butter straight from the pan.”

  She arches her eyebrows, like Hey, I call it like I see it.

  “Whatever,” I say. “I’m not going to eat Snoopy just to make a statement.”

  Sandy laughs. It catches me by surprise, and pleasure bubbles up inside me.

  “You are so weird,” I say.

  I take the popcorn and head for the living room, and we both plop down on the sofa.

  “Nice pad,” Sandy says, surveying the room. “Your grandmother’s loaded, huh?”

  “Not loaded,” I say. It’s so embarrassing to talk about money.

  “Sharon Tate was loaded,” Sandy says. “Well, her husband was, I guess. And so were the LaBiancas.”

  “You mean the people in California who were murdered?” I ask.

  “No, I mean the other Sharon Tate and the other LaBiancas.” She grabs a handful of popcorn. “You see the article about them in the paper this morning?”

  I shake my head. “My grandmother doesn’t want me reading about stuff like that.”

  “Why, because if you read about it, you might do it?” She snorts. “Yeah, you’re such a killer.”

  “I could be,” I say, for the sake of my self-respect. “I’m certainly as much a killer as you are.”

  “Pffft,” Sandy says. “You’re soft.”

  “I am not soft!”

  “Bliss. You’re a marshmallow. But maybe if I work with you, we can toughen you up.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” I say. “That’s just what I want—to be a tough marshmallow. So, are you going to tell me about the article?”

  “You sure you can take it?”

  I shove her, and she smiles goofily. My intuition tells me that she hasn’t been touched in a while.

  She munches more popcorn and fills me in on the latest developments in the murder investigation. While the cops have asserted loudly and repeatedly that “counterculture influences” were at play in the slayings, they’ve been coy about naming names. But at last they’ve identified an official suspect, Sandy tells me. His name is Charles Manson. He’s the leader of a cult called “The Family,” and the cops think he came up with the idea of the murders and then commanded his followers to carry them out.

  Charles Manson—or Charlie, as Sandy calls him—has a pretty rough past. He’s been jailed for assault before, and also for stealing cars and passing stolen checks. Also for raping a prostitute.

  “Which is ironic, because Charlie’s mother was a prostitute,” she says. “You knew that, right?”

  “Um, no,” I say.

  “A third-rate whore, and a drunk to boot. When Charlie was a kid, she sold him for a pitcher of beer.”

  “Sold him? To who?”

  She props her feet on Grandmother’s coffee table. “And when he was in juvie? Like, ten years later?” She looks at me as if to say, Get ready, because here comes the big one. “He himself was raped.”

  “Raped? By who?” I’m not an innocent—Mom and Dad were pretty frank about sex—but I can’t get my head around how a boy could be raped.

  Sandy looks at me. Her eyebrows go up and stay up.

  I still don’t get it—and then I do.

  “Oh,” I say, feeling my face get hot.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But even so, even if he had the worst childhood in the world . . . that doesn’t justify murdering those poor people.”

  “If he murdered those people. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?” She spits a kernel into her hand, leans forward, and places it on the coffee table. “I’m just saying it’s predictable, that’s all. It’s logical. Pick on someone all his life and eventually he’s going to fight back.”

  My eyes stay on the lone popcorn kernel. I’ve got to remember to clean up it before Grandmother gets home. Also, I should tell Sandy to take her feet off the table, or at least take her shoes off.

  “Thou shalt not kill,” I say softly. I get a flash of Flying V’s shiny face. She used to read to me and her girls from the Bible. “It’s one of the Ten Commandments.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sandy says. “Just like ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oxen,’ which I’m sure plays an equally big role in your life. And don’t forget ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Don’t tell me you’ve never stolen anything before.”

  This, at least, I have an answer to. “When I was nine, I stole three lemons from a neighbor’s tree.”

  “Three lemons?” Sandy says. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I gave them back, though.”

  “You gave back three lemons.”

  “They weren’t mine. I felt guilty.” Lemons, lemons, I think. There’s something else about lemons . . .

  “You’re such a freak,” Sandy says happily. “And what do you mean, ‘neighbor’? I thought you lived on a commune.”

  “Before that, we lived in a halfway house. My dad was the social worker.”

  Sandy makes a sound that shows she’s impressed, but she doesn’t push for details. She rustles her hand in the popcorn and says, “Last year, I stole a necklace from Alice Sommersby’s locker during P.E. It had a solid-gold teddy bear hanging from it. An eighth-grader wearing a teddy-bear necklace—can you imagine?”

  I can’t. Or maybe I can. Alice Sommersby is in my geometry class, a snub-nosed girl who wears an armband to show she’s a hall monitor. She wears her hair in pigtails.

  “So . . . you took it to punish her for having bad taste?” I ask.

  “No, I took it to punish her for marking me tardy one day. What’d she have to do that for?”

  I push off my shoes, draw my legs to my chest, and wrap my arms around my shins. I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore. Yes, people should challenge conventions. No, Sandy shouldn’t steal teddy-bear necklaces from snub-nosed girls named Alice.

  “Okaaay, I didn’t really,” she confesses, perhaps sensing my unease. “But I wanted to.” She nudges the bag into my line of vision. “Popcorn?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Fine, more for me. Anyway, the man
who was murdered the second night—Leno LaBianca, remember him?”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “Well, the killers left a carving fork stuck in his chest. No, wait, his stomach. And they used his blood to write ‘Rise’ on the wall of his house.”

  Queasiness churns inside me. Why would anyone do that?

  “As in, ‘Rise up and revolt,’” Sandy elaborates. “That’s what it meant. And ‘Helter Skelter’? Which they wrote in blood on the refrigerator? They were saying, ‘It’s all going to get turned upside-down, the entire social order. Just because you’re rich, just because you’re beautiful . . . don’t think that means you’re safe. ‘Cause you’re not.’”

  I shiver. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who can’t talk about this. I don’t want to be a marshmallow, especially when I’ve already been accused of being soft. At the same time, it brings me no pleasure to imagine some poor man with a fork embedded in his stomach.

  “But you don’t think it was Charles Manson,” I state slowly. “Or his cult, or whatever. You don’t think they were the ones who did all the . . . blood stuff and all that.”

  “Did I say that? No. I just said ‘innocent till proven guilty.’ If no one can prove anything . . .” She shrugs. There’s a smear of butter on her lip, and her tongue flicks out to swipe it up.

  “Sharon Tate, the first victim?” Sandy says. “She was pregnant.”

  I run my finger along the corded trim of the sofa cushion. “I know. So sad.”

  “I think of that baby, of that brand-new life, and I just think, ‘What a waste.’”

  Heaviness presses down on me. What I think of is the violence and the terror and the senseless wrongness of it.

  But yes. A waste.

  “You okay?” Sandy says.

  I lift my head. She’s gazing at me—no, staring at me, her eyes boring into me—but beneath the glitter of her pupils is pain, hot and raw. She feels the suffering of the world too, I realize. Just like me. And just like me, she hates it.

  The weight on my heart doesn’t go away, but I’m grateful to share this moment with her, in the way that humans do.

  “So, didn’t you say something about watching TV?” she asks.

  Puzzled, I draw my eyebrows together.

  She jerks her chin at the remote. “You have to turn it on for it to work.”

  “Ha, ha,” I say. It dawns on me that she’s kindly changing the subject, and I wonder if it’s that obvious how discomfited I am by the notion of death. Guess I wouldn’t make such a good killer after all.

  I unfold my legs so I can stretch toward the coffee table. “Um . . . do you like Let’s Make a Deal?”

  She does, and we watch as a lady with poufy hair gives up a crisp hundred-dollar bill for what’s behind a closed door, which turns out to be an oversize high chair. One of the prize models is sitting in it, dressed like a baby and sucking a pacifier. Sandy cackles.

  “Did you see the one where the man gave up a thousand dollars for an ornery old goat?” she asks. “Boy, was he steamed.”

  “They should know not to choose the door,” I say. “They should stick with what they’ve got.”

  “Ehhh,” Sandy says. “You never know. Could be a zonk, could be something great.”

  I suppose she’s right. It’s like a metaphor for life: No one wants an ornery old goat, but we can’t resist opening the door anyway. We can’t keep from hoping.

  ver the next several weeks, Sandy takes to phoning me almost every evening. Sometimes I hear a woman calling out in the background, and Sandy has to get off. Other times, Sandy talks and talks. On those occasions, I have to be the one to end the conversation, and she doesn’t like it.

  “You say, ‘Well, I should let you go,’ as if I’m the one who wants the conversation to be over,” she said to me once. “Why do you do that?”

  “I don’t know, Sandy. Sheesh.”

  “If you want to get off, you should just say so. If I’m boring you, you should just say so.”

  “You’re not boring me!” I said automatically. After that, it was even harder to end our chats. Although . . . why? Why is it so hard for me to say, “Well, gotta go”?

  And Sandy isn’t boring. Sandy is many things, but boring isn’t one of them.

  Tonight she tells me about a reward that Sharon Tate’s husband has offered for any information that might lead to her killer.

  “You know who her husband is, right?” Sandy says from her end of the line. “Roman Polanski?”

  “A movie director?” I say. I think that’s what I’ve heard.

  “Not just any movie director. A famous movie director. He directed Rosemary’s Baby, which is about a woman who’s impregnated by the devil.”

  “Ick,” I say. “Bad idea on the woman’s part.”

  She trumpets a laugh. “Maybe—but her kid’s going to have a hell of a legacy.”

  “Hell of a legacy?” I say. “Ha, ha.”

  “Oh, man, I didn’t even mean that. It just came out.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  I shift positions. It’s after nine o’clock, and I need to get off. I’m already in my nightgown.

  “Do you think it’s possible?” she asks. “The whole idea of devil’s spawn?”

  “Devil’s spawn?” I say dubiously.

  “Satan planted his seed in Rosemary’s womb without her knowing it,” Sandy says. “He made her his vessel so that his child could be brought forth into this world.”

  “Immaculate conception,” I say, thinking of Jesus and Mary.

  “Exactly! If God can do it, why can’t Satan?” Sandy is getting excited. “And don’t you think it’s weird that the woman who was killed after Sharon Tate was named Rosemary? Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “For real?”

  “For real. Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.” She pauses. “I think it’s a sign.”

  “Of what?” I say.

  “I don’t know. Just . . . a sign.”

  “I think it’s sick,” I say. “I hope Charles Manson gets the death penalty.”

  Sandy snorts, and I know her well enough to interpret its meaning.

  “You don’t think it’ll happen?” I say. “I disagree. They said on the news that they’re sure he’s the one behind the murders.”

  “But they’ll never prove it. Even if they make an arrest, the trial will go on and on. It’ll last forever.”

  “You sound glad,” I say.

  “No, I’m interested, that’s all. And you are too. Admit it.”

  “Maybe . . . but I don’t want to be. And before you say it—yes, I’m soft, fine. I think we should focus on what’s good in the world, that’s all. People are basically good.”

  She makes a raspberry sound. It reminds me of the bluhbluh day, and it must remind Sandy too, because she says, “What about Melissa and Heather? You think they’re basically good?”

  “Well . . . sure.”

  “What about your peer mentor, Sarah Lynn Lancaster?” Her voice frays, the way it always does when she brings up Sarah Lynn.

  “My ex–peer mentor,” I say wearily. “And I don’t know, Sandy. I hope so, don’t you? Maybe she—” I break off.

  “Maybe she what?” Sandy says.

  Maybe she was mean to you, maybe she’s self-absorbed, but that doesn’t make her evil. That’s what I want to say, because I just don’t think Sarah Lynn Lancaster falls into the same category as Charles Manson, no matter what she did to wound Sandy so deeply.

  Instead I say, “Well, listen, I should probably let you—”

  “Oh, come on,” Sandy says.

  “It’s late,” I plead. “I have to go to bed.”

  “No, you don’t. Don’t you want to keep talking?”

  I tilt my head back on the sofa. She makes it so hard sometimes!

  “You don’t like it when I talk bad about people,” Sandy says. “I know. But that’s because you’re too nice for your own good.”

&
nbsp; “Whatever,” I say.

  “It’s okay to be honest,” she goes on. “You don’t have to be sweet all the time. And anyway, you don’t know the whole story. You don’t know what she . . .”

  “Who? Sarah Lynn?”

  Sandy pauses. Then she says, “Never mind, it’s nothing. Like you said, I shouldn’t talk bad about people, even people who do sick, nasty things.”

  I could strangle her, because of course I’m now dying to know. Sick, nasty things?

  But two can play at this game, so I say, “You’re absolutely right. I’m proud of you.” Grandmother’s slippers whisper down the stairs. “And now I’ve seriously got to go.”

  “Wait,” she says. “Do you want to have a sleepover on Saturday?” She runs the words together, a train rushing past.

  “Oh, Sandy . . . I wish I could.”

  “Never mind,” she says quickly. “Stupid. Stupid!”

  “It’s just that I have to go shopping with my grandmother, and Saturday’s the only day she has free. Afterward, we’re going to go to Herrin’s for dinner.”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t care.”

  I feel a pang. She obviously does. “Well . . . how about Sunday? Want to do something on Sunday?”

  “I’m busy,” she says sullenly. “I have volunteer hours at the nursing home.”

  “You volunteer at a nursing home?”

  “I play the harp for the residents.”

  “You play the harp? That’s so cool.” I cannot for the life of me visualize Sandy playing a harp, but I love that she does. I love that there are hidden facets to everyone’s life.

  “You could come with me, I guess,” she says.

  “I could? Um . . . okay.”

  “Really?”

  Grandmother glides into the living room in her long pink housecoat. “Bliss, it’s past your bedtime.”

  I cover the bottom half of the phone. “Can I volunteer at a nursing home on Sunday?”

  Her eyebrows form surprised peaks. Then she nods. “I don’t see why not. Do you need transportation?”

  “Do I need transportation?” I ask Sandy.

  “No, my mom can pick you up.” She’s happy now, and I think what a difference it makes in how she sounds.

  “Okay, groovy. But I have to hang up now—my grandmother is standing right here.”