“I love you, Hook.”
“I love you, too.”
“Are you ashamed of me? Do you hate me?”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“I’m not ashamed of you. I never hate you.”
“Good.”
Bethany left the kitchen with some energy. I never told my pop about the pills.
11
A fine mist changed over to light rain, and I woke up. I lay on my back, and I could feel uneven grass clumps under my ass. My blue mourning suit was soaked completely through. I could hear ducks quacking overhead and the sound of water falling onto rocks. For a moment, or a minute, or maybe five minutes, I lay still and could form no thoughts whatsoever, only feel the rain washing me, like a dead man or a stroke man.
I tried to stand, but a crackly stiffness and pain wouldn’t let me raise my head, clench my fist, or even bend my arm. I lay still again and listened. The falling water was close, very close. I realized that I was cold, only I wasn’t sure if it was being wet or on the ground or what. I closed my eyes and opened them and tried to think. The water on the rocks was too much in my mind, and the thick beer and vodka ran all around my body. I could feel my heart pumping. I couldn’t think at all, and there was nothing to do under the rain. I closed my eyes and slept.
It was like a blink—only when I opened them again, the rain had stopped and the sun was coming in and out of the clouds. It felt good on my wet body, the parts I could feel. I tried to raise my arm, and this time, even though that deep, dry pain cracked me, I could. I raised it about ten times, each time putting it down gently on the grass, until my shoulder and elbow and fingers felt a part of me; then I did it to the other arm. I pushed myself into a sitting position, but the fullness of the pain, the pulling and tightening, was unbelievable. I lay back down and rolled to my side, and my fat legs plopped over like two sides of beef. I pushed into a kneeling position and tried to stand. It’s very hard not being able to stand. There’s a helpless, hopeless feeling. I couldn’t think, and now I couldn’t stand.
I flopped forward and landed with a thump on my stomach. I lay there for a minute until my heart stopped racing, and finally I formed a thought. I have done something to my body, I thought. I have overdone something, like the first day of basic training when we ran and climbed the rope and the next morning our fingers had raised blisters and our arms and shoulders ached. There were pieces of that ache in this ache. I raised my legs and slowly lowered them to the grass, feeling a little more limb each time. I pushed myself up to my knees and slowly stood. I was on my feet. I opened and closed my fingers and took a step and another and another. A mechanical man stiffened in the rain.
The Raleigh was about ten feet from where I slept, and when the sun hit it, sparks bounced off the stainless-steel headlight. I picked it up and set the kickstand down. The tires had lost a little air to a slow leak, but most of the good Sunoco air was still in place. What the hell did I do? What? I rolled down to the gas station and pumped up the tires—then what? And what was this place? I looked back to the grassy mound I had slept on. It looked familiar and the square white cinder-block building next to it looked familiar.
“Pump house,” I said. “Shad Factory.”
I walked in the direction of the falling water and could see the ivy-covered factory ruins before I saw the falls. They seemed smaller and mysterious in the early, cloudy sun. I stood on the flat cement border of the dam and watched the water roll thinly the twenty or so feet to the river below. It was high summer, and the pump house had been adjusted to allow a minimal flow over the dam, but I could see the same pools below me. A man and a boy were fishing the river. The kid had one of those spin-cast outfits, and I could see a night crawler dangling from his hook. He cast it downstream while the man, who fly-fished sort of heavily, with a slam of the fly on the water, cast across stream. I watched for a while, and I thought about my pools.
“Hey.”
The boy looked up at me. He was maybe ten or twelve.
“Throw it up the falls.”
“What?”
“Throw your worm up into the falls. The swirls of the falls. It’ll go into the pools.”
“What pools?”
“There’s deep holes up by the falls.”
The man kept casting in a whipping, angry way, slapping his big bug on the water, letting it go down about ten yards, then retrieving it so rapidly it made a scary zzzzz sound. The boy turned up to the falls and threw his worm.
“Here?”
A long shadow flashed its white belly and pounced like a murderer. At first the boy thought he was wedged under a rock, until the pickerel shot from his pool to another, like a missile.
“Dad!” he screamed. “Daddy!”
“Play him, George,” the man said, a little sourly.
The boy’s rod bent and straightened and bent again.
“What do I do, Dad?”
“Play him. Play him.”
The boy reeled frantically, and the long fish rolled out of the pools toward him.
“I’ve got him!”
“Play him.”
“I’m playing him!”
As suddenly as the fish took the crawler, it was gone. The boy fell back a little at the snap of his line.
“I lost him,” the boy said disgustedly.
“You didn’t play him.”
“I played him.”
“You didn’t play him right.”
“Hey,” I called from above. “There’s a lot more up there. And the perch are up there, too.”
“What was that?”
“That was a pickerel.”
The lake itself hadn’t changed, but the shore that had been heavy underbrush and small trees gave way now to lawns and homes. The last time I’d been up here was a couple of days before basic training. I was nineteen and working for Horton’s Fish Market. Like I said, I never got to college, so I was put into the army, but a couple of days before I went to Fort Dix, I rode my Raleigh up here. I could have taken my pop’s car, but I was still a runner then, and I got my fishing gear and the weighted nymphs I tied in the winter and rode up. It was November. Pretty cold, but the fish get harder, stronger in cold water. I remember there was nothing here, not one house.
Now there were houses everywhere. And some had Winnebagos in the yards, and some had boats on trailers, satellite dishes pointing to the stars, dogs, everything.
I felt for my cigarettes, but they weren’t in the suit pockets, so I walked back to my Raleigh to see if I had dropped them on the ground. I even tried my seat pouch, but I couldn’t find them. I remembered a small store at the top of the lake where I used to stop and get a candy bar. Maybe it was still there. I snapped up the kickstand and sat on the bike. Pain shot from my ass like bullets, and I know bullet pain. I didn’t realize how swollen and bruised my poor, fat ass was. My God, I thought. I must have filled up the tires and ridden all the way to Shad Factory in the middle of the night. And I didn’t remember anything about it. The memory was stored in my ass, and my legs, and my soft, aching arms.
I walked the bike down the pump-house path to the footbridge and out to the road. I headed away from the houses so I could come up behind that little store, if it was still there. After half an hour, I had to take off my suit jacket because the sun had burned away the clouds. I put it over the seat and walked on.
My memory of Rehoboth was cornfields in the summer, and a lot of time, coming home, I’d steal a few ears of the sweet white ones for us. This August there was still corn, and it was high and beautiful and smelled the way manure and hay make the fields smell. It was wonderful, and I walked slow, which was the only way I could walk, being a porker pushing a bike, but even if I could have gone faster, I believe I wouldn’t have.
Another half hour later, the store was there. Still. So while there were houses instead of the dark woods, somewhere there were cornfields and variety food stores. I leaned my bike in the shade and noticed an air pump at the corn
er of the store. I filled the tires again, brought the bike back to the shade, and walked in.
The store smelled good, like lettuce and coffee, and I was getting hungry. I wondered if they had those thick apple squares with frosting on them. I could have a few of those and some soda. I was dry.
“Cigarettes, too,” I said out loud.
“Yes?” a young woman at the checkout stand said.
“I was just . . . uh . . . I guess I need . . . do you know those big apple squares? There’s like two in a pack, and they’re covered with frosting?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll look around.”
The vegetables looked pretty. I never looked at vegetables, because I didn’t eat them anymore, unless it was a potato. Or corn, I’d eat corn. I walked over to the cookie section, and I found the apple squares right away. I picked up four packages. Then I got a quart of root beer. I was very hungry now, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything for a while. Since last night anyway. I put the root beer back and got a quart of Narragansett Lager. I read where beer had lots of nutrients and things. I put the apple squares and the beer on the counter.
“Two packs of Winstons, too.”
The girl reached for the cigarettes, and I reached for my money.
“Wait a sec,” I said. “I might’ve left my money . . . crying out loud . . . I might have forgot my money. Just a sec.”
I walked out to the bike and went through my suit jacket. I found four quarters. “Jesus Christ.”
I went back in.
“I got to put the stuff back. I only found a dollar.”
She put the Winstons back in the cigarette rack, and I put the beer and the apple squares back.
“Bananas are six for a dollar,” she said. “I won’t charge any tax.”
I hadn’t had a banana in years and years.
“Six for a dollar?”
They all smelled good, and I picked the ones that had the least brown spots. I gave her the four quarters, had a long drink of water at the fountain by the door, and then I ate three bananas outside by the Raleigh. Bananas are easy to chew, and they fill you. The air was getting heavier as the night rain evaporated, but it had that sweet summer smell, and the wetness brought up the hay and manure and other things I’d forgotten. A pickup truck came out of a side road cut into the corn and turned onto the pavement. As it went by, I could see Bethany clear, on the back of the flatbed, balanced perfectly in her splayed pose, her hair straight in the breeze, her twenty-year-old skin shining in the sun. And she was gone. I was never alarmed to see Bethany, but I wasn’t thinking about her. At least I don’t think I was. I reached into my pocket and took out Pop’s letter from Los Angeles. I reread the first part again. That she died. That she was fifty-one. That it was exposure, and that it was L.A. I guessed that Pop had sent dental records and inquiries everywhere over the twenty-seven years she’d been gone. My pop was full of energy. I read some more.
The 1931 Cohen/Hughes Act by the California legislature allocates funding for the retaining of the deceased body until implicit instructions are received from next of kin, should they exist. Please advise the details of interment as soon as possible.
Again, the County of Los Angeles extends its sympathy to you and your family.
I folded up the letter and slipped it back in my pocket. I got another drink of water, put the bananas in my suit jacket pocket, and walked off with my Raleigh. I wondered if the big country club was still around here, and the log cabin and the rose farm and the turkey farm. When I got to the top of the hill, I bit my tongue against the pain in my sore ass and coasted toward Taunton Turnpike.
12
By 1961 Bethany had started to go places where we didn’t know she’d gone. These were technically not disappearances. Mostly they’d last anywhere from two hours to a day and a night, and even though the Ide family would be frantic, we never panicked and never, ever used the word “disappearance.” My pop would do his drive, and I’d do my bike, and Mom would call around to neighbors and friends and eventually the police. Because of the Red Bridge thing, which was the first time her voice had tried to kill her, the Ide family became less concerned about what people might think of Bethany. When she was gone, we just wanted her back. So we rode and biked and called.
Now, this is about her junior prom, so I have to throw in two things that may or may not make it a little clearer. First is Bobby Myers, who was her date. Bobby had gone with Joanie Caveletti, who was to East Providence High School what Brigitte Bardot was to France. She was a hot item, and she was cool. I was still in junior high, but she was a legend. An enormous chest. There it was. That just said it all.
Bobby was not one of the nicest kids in school. He combed his long blond side hairs straight back, and his flattop stood about an inch high and at attention because of thick butch stick. So first impression, even to us little kids, was that he was a punk. He wore a leather jacket, too, but the problem was, he also had one of his EP letters sewed on the back, set against the shiny black leather. We all saw that the girls could not resist, because while Bobby Myers and his pals from the Riverside plat dressed and acted like mondo punks, they were the mainstay of the mighty townie football team, and baseball stars as well. The combination was lethal, and Bobby took full advantage. That was how the lovely and large Joanie Caveletti became his girlfriend. They went together from September of Bobby’s junior year until right before April, when Joanie apparently discovered that Bobby Myers was a dick with ears and dumped him. Bobby was devastated that a girl would abuse him in that way, and he rebounded by asking Bethany to the junior prom. Bethany had been in the back of Bobby’s mind since the time she stripped off her clothes in the parking lot. He’d never been with a nut before, and he remembered her nice little breasts and other things.
Bethany had never had a boyfriend before and didn’t know how a girlfriend and boyfriend were supposed to behave.
“Meet me at my locker,” Bobby would say.
“Okay.”
Like that. It was simple. And Bobby would give her a ride home and call her. This was turning into a good Bethany year. She had a couple of girls at school that she liked, and now Bobby Myers—who by the way was an Old Spice man—was her boyfriend.
When Bethany would come home from a Saturday date, usually a movie and a hamburger, Mom would ask casually how the date was.
“Neat.”
“What did you do?”
“Movie, you know.”
“Is Bobby a nice boy?”
“He’s a mondo,” I would say.
“He is not. He’s very nice.”
And he was being nice. He’d always open the car door for her and always seemed to be paying tremendous attention to the things she’d say, but I had a suspicion in the cloudy part of my achy brain that old Bobby Myers was planning something. Biding his time. Waiting. I hated him. I hated him, but I worried about him, too, because it was obvious to the Ides that cool Bobby Myers had not met the voice yet.
East Providence had an excellent baseball team that year, and Bobby Myers was certainly heading to his second all-state selection at third base. He had good range, a strong arm, a quick release to turn a double play, and, as much as I hated to admit it, a sweet, natural swing that cannot be taught. He would simply challenge the pitcher to put his best stuff in that strike zone. Bethany went to almost every home game and sometimes even wore a baseball jersey with Bobby’s number on it. It was a powerful moment in the life of a high-school baseball player. And while he basked in glory, my junior-high team lost sixteen straight and I was hitless in the last thirteen. But I’m not dwelling on it. No.
Being a gentleman was a strain on the mondo punk from Riverside plat. Sometimes he’d lose his temper and punch one of his friends, which is what they were always doing to one another. Still, anybody could tell he was determined to be a nice boy with my sister, until he made his move. That’s what guys like that do. They wait. They’re patient. In a lot of ways, they’re like good ac
tors. I think that’s probably why, as the years went by and I grew out of my life, I never felt completely bad for Bobby Myers. He had made a slick plan but never considered that other things are out there waiting, too.
Bethany’s prom was May 11. It’s a date I remember. Like April 1 or December 25 or November 22. It’s a life date, and there has never been a more—and I know that a brother should not say this—beautiful, amazing prom girl in this whole country. Her dress was black and sleek. And she had blue heels on that clinked on the kitchen floor in a special way. She had silk stockings that caught the light a little and threw it off in sparkles, and her long hair was curled bouncy around her head. Bethany’s eyes were made up, too. I had never seen her eyes fixed, and they looked huge and hopeful. She wore Mom’s serious pearls and cameo earrings. It was like you couldn’t breathe around her; she took the oxygen out of the air.
My pop gave her a big, happy hug and told her she was beautiful. He was careful to hold his lit Camel away from her hair. Mom cried.
“What do you think, Hook?”
“I think you look great.”
“You think Bobby will like it?”
Bobby Myers was a dog. Bobby Myers was a greasy little shit.
“Yeah, he’ll like it.”
The doorbell rang, and there was Bobby. Black tuxedo slacks, white dinner jacket, red bow tie and cummerbund, fresh wads of butch stick. He adjusted his crotch and came in. The folks took pictures, and then they left. We watched them get into Bobby’s father’s Chevy Impala, and they were gone.
We stood on the front lawn in silence, and the clouds came in. My pop lit another Camel.
“She sure looked lovely,” Pop said.
“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” Mom said.
“Uh-huh,” I agreed.
The sun was doing a peekaboo in the high afternoon clouds, and it got cold suddenly. Pop reached over and took Mom’s hand and squeezed. I knew that Norma Mulvey would be watching, and I looked over to Bea’s house. I wanted to wave, but it was already too late, so I looked off in the direction of Bobby and all his secret plans.