“Polly Palm, what?”
Lyle was grinning, his long teeth glowing brighter than the rest of him in the dark car.
“Libby, what was the name your brother had tattooed on his arm? Remember the names we went through? Molly, Sally, and the one I said sounded like a dog’s name?”
“Oh God.”
“Polly, right?”
“Oh God,” I said again.
“I mean, that’s not a coincidence, right?”
Of course it wasn’t. Everyone who keeps a secret itches to tell it. This was Ben’s way of telling. His homage to his secret girlfriend. But he couldn’t use her real name on the tattoo, Miss Disappearing Diondra. So he used the name she used when she was playing. I pictured him running his fingers over the swollen lines, his skin still stinging, proud. Polly. Maybe a romantic gesture. Maybe a memoriam.
“I wonder how old the tattoo is,” Lyle said.
“It actually didn’t look that old,” I said. “It was still, I don’t know, bright, not faded at all.”
Lyle whipped out his laptop, balanced it on tight knees.
“Come on, come on, gimme a signal.”
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t think Diondra’s dead. I think she’s in exile. And if you were going into exile, and you had to pick a name, wouldn’t you be tempted to use a name you’d used before, one that only a few friends knew, a joke for yourself, and a bit of … home? Something your boyfriend could tattoo on his arm and it would mean something to him, something permanent he could look at. Come on,” he snapped at the laptop.
We drove another twenty minutes, trolling the highways until Lyle got a signal, and began tap-tap-typing in time to the rain, me trying to get a look at the screen without killing us.
He finally looked up, a crazy beam-smile on his face: “Libby,” he said, “you might want to pull over again.”
I swerved onto the side of the road, just short of Kansas City, a semi blaring its horn at my recklessness, shuddering my car as it sped past.
Her name sat there on the screen: Polly Fucking Palm in Kearney, Missouri. Address and phone number, right there, the only Polly Palm listing in the whole country, except for a nail boutique in Shreveport.
“I really need to get the Internet,” I said.
“You think it’s her?” Lyle said, staring at the name as if it might disappear. “It’s gotta be her right?”
“Let’s see.” I pulled out my cell.
She answered on the fourth ring, just as I was taking a big gulp of air to leave her a message.
“Is this Polly Palm?”
“Yes.” The voice was lovely, all cigarettes and milk.
“Is this Diondra Wertzner?”
Pause. Click.
“Would you find me some directions to that house, Lyle?”
LYLE WANTED TO come, wanted to come, really, really thought he should come, but I just couldn’t see it working, and I just didn’t want him there, so I dropped him off at Sarah’s Pub, him trying not to look sulky as I pulled away, me promising to phone the second I left Diondra’s.
“I’m serious, don’t forget,” he called after me. “Seriously!” I gave him a honk and drove off. He was still yelling something after me as I turned the corner.
My fingers were tight from gripping the steering wheel; Kearney was a good forty-five minutes northeast of Kansas City, and Diondra’s address, according to Lyle’s very specific directions, was another fifteen minutes from the town proper. I knew I was close when I started hitting all the signs for the Jesse James Farm and Jesse James’ Grave. I wondered why Diondra had chosen to live in the hometown of an outlaw. Seems like something I would do. I drove past the turnoff for the James farm—been there in grade school, a tiny, cold place where, during a surprise attack, Jesse’s little half brother was killed—and I remember thinking, “Just like our house.” I went farther on a looping, skinny road, up and down hills and then out back into country, where dusty clapboard houses sat on big, flat lots, dogs barking on chains in each yard. Not a single person appeared; the area seemed entirely vacant. Just dogs and a few horses, and farther away, a lush line of forest that had been allowed to remain between the homes and the highway.
Diondra’s house came another ten minutes later. It was ugly, it had an attitude, leaning to one side like a pissed-off, hip-jutted woman. It needed the attitude, because it didn’t have much else going for it. It was set far back from the street, looked like the sharecroppers’ quarters for a larger farmhouse, but there was no other house, just a few acres of mud on all sides, rolling and bumpy like the ground had acne. That sad remainder of woods in the distance.
I drove up the long dirt road leading to the house, already worrying my car might get stuck and what would happen if my car got stuck.
From behind the storm clouds, the late afternoon sun arrived just in time to blind me as I slammed the door shut and walked toward the house, my gut cold. As I neared the front steps, a big momma possum shot out from under the porch, hissing at me. The thing unnerved me, that pointy white face and those black eyes looking like something that should already be dead. Plus momma possums are nasty bitches. It ran to the bushes, and I kicked the steps to make sure there weren’t more, then climbed them. My lopsided right foot swished around in my boot. A dreamcatcher hung near the door, dangling carved animal teeth and feathers.
Just as the rain brings out the concrete smells of the city, it had summoned up the smell of soil and manure here. It smelled like home, which wasn’t right.
A long, loose pause followed my knock on the door, and then quiet feet approached. Diondra opened the door, decidedly undead. She didn’t even look that different from the photos I’d seen. She’d ditched the spiral perm, but still wore her hair in loose dark waves, still wore thick black eyeliner that made her eyes look Easter-blue, like pieces of candy. Her mascara was double-coated, spidery, and left flecks of black on the pads of flesh beneath her eyes. Her lips were plump as labias. Her whole face and body was a series of gentle curves: pink cheeks with a hint of jowl, breasts that slightly overflowed her bra, a ring of skin bordering the top of her jeans.
“Oh,” she said as she opened the door, a flood of heat coming out. “Libby?”
“Yes.”
She took my face in her hands. “Holy crap, Libby. I always thought some day you’d find me. Smart girl.” She hugged me, then held me out a bit. “Hi. Come in.”
I walked into a kitchen with a den to the side, the setup reminding me too much of my own lost home. We walked down a short hallway. To my right, a basement door hung open, leaking gusts of cold air. Negligent. We entered a low-ceilinged living room, cigarette smoke blooming from an ashtray on the floor, the walls yellowed, all the furniture looking drained. A massive TV sat like a loveseat against one wall.
“Would you mind taking off your shoes, please, sweetheart?” she said, motioning toward the living room carpet, which was gummy and soiled. The whole house was crooked, beaten-up, stained. A miniature dog turd sat in a lump near the stairs, Diondra stepping deftly around it.
She led me toward the sofa, trailing at least three different scents: a grape-y hair spray, a flowery lotion, and maybe … insect spray? She was wearing a low-cut blouse and tight jeans, with the junk jewelry of a teenager. She was one of those middle-aged women who thought they were fooling people.
I followed her, missing the extra inches my bootheels gave me, feeling childish. Diondra turned her profile to me, marking me from the corner of her eye, and I could see a pointy canine poke out from beneath her upper lip.
She cocked her head to one side and said, “Come on in, sit down. Jeez you’re definitely a Day, huh? That fire-red hair, always loved it.”
As soon as we sat down three squat-leg poodles came running in, collars jangling like sleigh bells, and clambered up on her lap. I tensed.
“Oh crap, you are definitely a Day,” she cackled. “Ben was always all jumpy around dogs too. Course the ones I used to have were big
ger than these babies.” She let the dogs lick at her fingers, pink tongues flashing in and out. “So, Libby,” she began, like my name, my existence was an inside joke, “did Ben tell you where to find me? Tell me the truth.”
“I found you from something Trey Teepano said.”
“Trey? Jesus. How’d you get to Trey Teepano?”
“He has a feed store, in the yellow pages.”
“A feed store. Wouldn’t have called that one. How’s he look by the way?”
I nodded enthusiastically—he looks good—before I caught myself. Then said: “You were with Ben that night.”
“Mmmm-hmmm. I was.” She searched my face, wary but interested.
“I want to know what happened.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Sorry, Miss Libby, this is all so out of the blue. Ben say something to you? I mean, why’d you come looking for me now? Why now?”
“I need to know for sure what happened.”
“Oh, Libby. Ohhh.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Ben is OK taking the time for what happened that night. He wants to take the time. Let him.”
“Did he kill my family?”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“Did Ben kill my family?”
She just smiled at me, those ridgeless lips staying rigid.
“I need some peace, Diondra, please. Just tell me.”
“Libby, this is about peace, then? You think you know the answer, you’re going to find peace? Like knowing is somehow going to fix you? You think after what happened there’s any peace for you, sweetheart? How about this. Instead of asking yourself what happened, just accept that it happened. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Serenity Prayer. It’s helped me a lot.”
“Just say it, Diondra, just tell me. Then I’ll try to accept.”
The sun was setting, hitting us through the rear window now, making me blink with the brightness. She leaned toward me, took both my hands.
“Libby, I’m so sorry. I just don’t know. I was with Ben that night. We were going to leave town. I was pregnant with his baby. We were going to run away. He was going to his house, to get some money. An hour goes by, two hours, three hours. I’m thinking he’s lost his nerve. I finally cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I heard what happened. At first I thought he was killed too. Then I hear, no, he’s in custody and police think he’s part of some coven—a satanic, Charles Manson–type clan they’re looking for. I’m waiting for a knock at my door. But nothing happens. Days go by, and I hear Ben has no alibi, he hasn’t mentioned me at all. He’s protecting me.”
“All these years.”
“All these years, yes. The cops were never satisfied it was just Ben. They wanted more. Looks better. But Ben never said a word. He’s my goddam hero.”
“So no one knows what happened that night. I’m never, ever going to find out.” I felt a strange relief, saying it aloud. I could quit now, maybe. If I could never, ever know, then maybe I could quit.
“I do think you could find some peace, if you accept that. I mean, Libby, I don’t think Ben did it. I think he’s protecting your daddy, is what I think. But who knows? I hate to say this, but whatever happened that night, Ben needed to be in prison. He even says so. He had something inside him that wasn’t right for the outside world. A violence. He does so much better in prison. He’s very popular in there. He penpals with all these women, the women are so crazy about him. He gets a dozen proposals of marriage a year. Every once in a while, he thinks he wants back outside. But he doesn’t.”
“How do you know this?”
“We keep in touch,” she snapped, then smiled sugar. The yellow-orange light of the sunset rayed across her chin, her eyes suddenly in the dark.
“Where’s the baby, Diondra? The baby you were pregnant with?”
“I’m here,” said the Day Girl.
Ben Day
JANUARY 3, 1985
1:11 A.M.
Ben opened the door into the dark living room and thought, home. Like a hero-sailor returning after months at sea. He almost shut the door on Diondra—can’t catch me—but let her in because. Because he was scared what would happen if he didn’t. It was a relief at least they left Trey behind. He didn’t want Trey walking through his home, making his smart-ass remarks about things Ben already knew were embarrassing.
Everyone was asleep now, the whole house doing a collective breath-in-breath-out. He wanted to wake his mom, willed her to turn around the corner, blurry eyed in one of her clothes cocoons, and ask him where in the world he had been, what in the world had possessed him?
The Devil. The Devil possessed me, Mom.
He didn’t want to go anywhere with Diondra, but she was behind him, rage fuming off her body like heat, eyes wide—hurry up, hurry up—and so he started to quietly sift through the cabinets, looking in his mom’s hiding places for cash. In the first cabinet, he found an old box of wheat flakes, opened it up, and swallowed as much as he could of the dry cereal, the flakes sticking to his lips and throat, making him cough just a little, a baby cough. Then he stuck his whole hand in and grabbed the flakes by the fistful, jamming them into his mouth, and opened the fridge to find a Tupperware container packed with diced peas and carrots, a skin of butter on top, and he stuck a spoon in them, put his lip to the plastic rim and shoveled it all in his mouth, peas rolling down his chest, onto the floor.
“Come on!” Diondra hissed. He was still in her purple sweats; she was in nice new jeans, a red sweater and the black menswear shoes she liked, except her feet were so big they were actually men’s shoes. She did not like this acknowledged. Now she was tapping one. Come on, come on.
“Let’s go to my room,” he said. “I definitely have money there. And a present for you.” Diondra brightened at that—even now, her eyes blinkering on and off, swaying with the drugs and liquor, she was distracted by presents.
The lock to his room was snapped off, and Ben got pissed, then worried. Mom or police? Not that there was anything to find. But still. He opened the door, flipped on the light, Diondra closing the door behind him and settling on the bed. She was talking, talking, talking, but he wasn’t listening, and then she was crying and so he stopped his packing and lay down next to her. He smoothed back her hair, and rubbed her belly and tried to keep her quiet, tried to mutter soothing stuff, talking about how great their life was going to be together and more lies like that. It was a good half-hour before she calmed down. And she’d been the one telling him to hurry up. Classic.
He got back up, looking at the clock, wanting to get out of here if they were really going to get out. The door had opened a crack and he didn’t even stop to go close it, wanted it open, the danger making him move faster. He threw jeans and sweaters in a gym bag, along with his notebook filled with girls’ names he’d like for the baby—he still thought Krissi Day was the leader in that, that was a good name, Krissi Day. Krissi Patricia Day or else, after Diane, Krissi Diane Day. He liked that because then her friends could call her D-Day, it’d be cool. He’d have to fight Diondra though, she thought all his names were too plain. She wanted names like Ambrosia and Calliope and Nightingale.
Gym bag on his shoulder, he reached into the back of his desk drawer and pulled out his hidden cash pile. He’d been tucking away fives and tens here and there, had convinced himself he had three hundred, four hundred dollars, but now he saw he had not quite a hundred. He jammed it in his pocket, got down on his hands and knees to reach under his bed, and saw only space where the bag of clothes had been. His daughter’s clothes.
“Where’s my present?” Diondra said, a guttural sound because she was lying flat on her back, her belly aimed up, belligerent, like a middle finger.
Ben lifted his head, looked at her, the smeared lipstick and dripping-black eyes, and thought she looked like a monster. “I can’t find it,” he said.
“What do you mean, can’t find it?”
“I don’t, som
eone’s been in here.”
They both stood in the glare of his single lightbulb, not knowing what to do next.
“You think it was one of your sisters?”
“Maybe. Michelle is always nosing around in here. Plus I don’t have as much money as I thought I did.”
Diondra sat up, grabbing her belly, which she never did affectionately, protectively. She clutched it like it was a burden he was too stupid to offer to carry. She was holding it now, out at him, and saying, “You are the father of this goddam baby, so you better think of something fast, you are the one who got me pregnant, so you better fix this. I am almost seven months pregnant, I could have a baby any day now, and you—”
A flicker at the door, just a swipe of nightgown, and then a foot jutting out, trying to keep balance. An accidental bump and the door swung wide. Michelle had been hovering in the hallway, trying to eavesdrop, until she leaned in too far and her whole moony face popped into sight, those big glasses reflecting twin squares of light. She was holding her new diary, a dribble of pen ink coming from her mouth.
Michelle looked from Ben to Diondra, and then pointedly down at Diondra’s belly, and said, “Ben got a girl pregnant. I knew it!”
Ben couldn’t see her eyes, just the light on the glasses and the smile beneath.
“Have you told Mom?” Michelle asked, getting giddy, her voice a goading hint. “Should I go tell Mom?”
Ben was about to reach for her, jam her back into bed with a threat of his own, when Diondra lunged. Michelle tried to make it to the door, but Diondra got her hair, that long brown hair, and yanked her to the ground, Michelle landing hard on her tailbone, Diondra whispering not a word, you little cunt not a fucking word, and then Michelle twisted away, pushing against the walls with slippered feet, leaving Diondra holding a clutch of hair, which she threw onto the floor, going after Michelle, and if Michelle had only run for Mom’s room it may have been all right, Mom would take care of it all, but instead she went straight for her own room, the girls’ room, and Diondra followed, Ben trailing her, whispering Diondra, stop, Diondra let it go. But Diondra was not going to let it go, she walked over to Michelle’s bed where Michelle was cowering against the wall, whimpering, and she yanked Michelle down by a leg, straightened her out on the bed and sat on her, You want to tell the world I’m pregnant, that your plan, one of your little schemes, some fucking little secret you sell for fifty cents, tell your mommy, guess what I know? I don’t think so you little shit, why is this whole family so stupid, and she wrapped her hands around Michelle’s neck, Michelle’s feet, cased in slippers that were supposed to look like puppy feet, kicking up and down, Ben watching the feet, disconnected, thinking they really did look like puppy feet, and then Debby slowly waking from her zombie sleep so Ben closed the door, instead of opening it wide, calling for his mom, he wanted everything to stay quiet, no other instinct than to stick to the plan which is don’t wake anyone up, and he was trying to reason with Diondra, thinking it would all be OK, Diondra, Diondra, calm down, she won’t tell, let her go and Diondra leaning deeper onto Michelle’s neck, You think I’m gonna spend my life worried about this little bitch, and Michelle scratching, then stabbing Diondra’s hand with her pen, a glint of blood, Diondra letting go for a second, looking surprised, looking like she just couldn’t believe it and Michelle leaned to one side and gulped air and Diondra just grabbed her neck again, and Ben put his hands on Diondra’s shoulders to pull her off but instead they just rested there.