Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Ursula? What are you laughing at?”

  “I’m not laughing! I’m shivering, I guess.”

  It was windy, at dusk of a March day when the sky was the hue and texture of old, gritty, soiled snow.

  We were walking up into the hilly neighborhoods behind Rocky River Boulevard, where I lived. Evidently Matt was walking me home in a circuitous way.

  He told me about his mother driving him into the city, to the fancy shrink’s office on Park Avenue, and how he’d walked out, and since then she was “supremely disgusted” with him, where before she’d been “only normally disgusted.” I asked him what his mother thought about the lawsuit, did she agree with his father, and Matt made a flapping motion with his arms, like a penguin, and said, “Mom is disgusted with me. No further comment.”

  I tried to think: Was my mom disgusted with me at the moment?

  I began to laugh, and Matt asked, “What?” and I said, “I don’t know, it’s just funny. People are disgusted with you, and people are disgusted with me. So—here we are.”

  Matt said, “It’s only logical.”

  We laughed harder. Tears ran down our cheeks. It was hilarious—wasn’t it?

  THIRTY-NINE

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, THE PHONE RANG AND I answered it and it was Matt. “You won’t believe what’s happened, Ursula. What they’ve done to us now.”

  It was so: I could hardly believe it.

  That night, Ugly Girl did cry. In rage, and pity.

  FORTY

  ALEX RAN HOME CRYING.

  “Pumpkin is gone, Mom! They took Pumpkin!”

  It was six twenty P.M. Friday. Alex had been walking the golden retriever in the hilly residential neighborhood in which the Donaghys lived, where houses were set on wooded lots of about two acres and properties were set off from one another by six-foot fences. The drives and lanes of suburban Rocky River curved, and though there were sidewalks, few residents walked. There were few cars passing. It was dusk; wet snowflakes were lightly falling. Alex would tell his mother tearfully that he’d unsnapped Pumpkin’s leash as he usually did, letting her loose, since she was so well trained and never trotted far away. Five minutes later, Pumpkin was gone.

  Matt hadn’t come home from school directly. He’d gone with Ursula to the Rocky River Public Library, where they researched their history projects, and afterward they’d been in Starbucks for another hour. It was the happiest time Matt had had in memory: talking with Ursula, relaxed and laughing. Ursula was encouraging Matt to rejoin the Drama Club, and to write a new play, a comedy—“about how misfits get along. Once they decide, what the hell, they’re misfits.” Matt was encouraging Ursula to rejoin the basketball team before it was too late. “It seems like, from what you say, it’s just your pride stopping you,” Matt said. Ursula laughed. “‘Just my pride’? That’s me.” By the time Matt arrived at his home, Pumpkin had been missing for a half hour.

  Matt entered the kitchen, and Alex ran to him. “They took Pumpkin, Matt!” The boy’s face was wet with tears and his voice trembled. “A car came by, they stopped, and I heard Pumpkin barking, and a door slam, and—she was gone.”

  Matt asked, astonished, “Who took Pumpkin?”

  Alex cried, “I don’t know, Matt! I’m sorry! I wasn’t watching, I guess. I mean—I didn’t know anybody would take her, why would anybody take Pumpkin? I think they must’ve passed by me, in an SUV, and circled the block and came up behind me again, and Pumpkin was sniffing around at the top of the hill by that big brick house with the columns, and—they took her.”

  Alex hadn’t been able to see who was in the SUV but he was pretty certain there were at least two people.

  It was like something on TV, Alex said. It happened so fast.

  Matt knew what this was. “They’ve kidnapped Pumpkin, to punish me.”

  “To punish us,” Matt’s mother said.

  * * *

  Matt’s mother telephoned the police. She tried to speak calmly, repeating what Alex had told her, but her voice shook and she began to cry. Matt took the receiver from her. He said, “Somebody took our dog. Yes, it was deliberate. No, she didn’t ‘run off.’ I said somebody took our dog, about an hour ago. She’s a golden retriever, about seven years old. Maybe seventy pounds. My brother was walking her on Arlington Circle and somebody in an SUV came by and forced her inside and drove off.” Matt answered the dispatcher’s perfunctory questions with rising impatience. “We’ve got some enemies in Rocky River, I guess.”

  Sure it sounded paranoid, ridiculous.

  The fact that it happened to be true was no consolation.

  Matt and Alex went outside to search for Pumpkin, calling her name loudly—“Pumpkin! Hey, Pumpkin!” They rang doorbells, asking their startled neighbors if they’d seen a golden retriever or an unfamiliar SUV. Though Matt knew it was futile. Pumpkin had been taken from him. The anxiety, hurt, anger he was feeling, worst of all the frustration, were part of it.

  Alex kept saying he was sorry, it was his fault, and Matt told him no, no, it was not his fault.

  “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine. But that doesn’t help Pumpkin, does it?”

  After forty minutes two Rocky River patrolmen came to investigate. If they recognized the name Donaghy, they gave no indication, taking notes as Matt, Mrs. Donaghy, and Alex answered their questions. Alex told and retold his account of what had happened. More than once he was asked: “You didn’t get a look at the license plate, son?”

  No. It was too dark to see. The SUV was too far away.

  And it had happened so fast.

  Matt knew that Alex was being made to feel as if he’d failed. He’d made a crucial mistake, he’d done something wrong. A ten-year-old boy! Thin faced, tearful, shivering. Matt’s mother put her arms around Alex to warm him. Matt said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, “Maybe if you put out an alert? Now? Before more time passes? You could catch these people while they still have Pumpkin?” The police officers assured Matt that an alert would be sent out immediately, as soon as their reports were complete and could be filed. Pumpkin was described in detail, and the police were given several snapshots of her. “Looks like a nice dog,” one commented. “Golden retrievers are good dogs. They can get spooked, though, and run off. It happens.”

  “It didn’t just happen,” Matt said excitedly. “It was made to happen.”

  Matt’s mother intervened to explain that there was animosity toward the Donaghy family in Rocky River, and that the dog snatching was obviously related to it. This fact, too, the officers took down without comment. “These clippings have been sent to us in the past month,” Matt’s mother said, showing the officers several newspaper clippings she’d taken out of a drawer. “All from the same person, I’m sure.” Matt and Alex exchanged a surprised glance: They’d known of one of these clippings, with the scrawled red ink message, but not the others.

  Matt was wondering why the police officers didn’t ask him about “enemies.” He waited, but they did not. When they were about to leave, he said, “There’ve been incidents at school . . . guys harassing me, calling me names.” He paused. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his mother or Alex. He’d told no one, and now it seemed like part of his shame, that he hadn’t told. And it was so demeaning! As if Matt Donaghy was a first-class wimp, telling tales to authority. But he wanted Pumpkin back—he was desperate. Pumpkin didn’t deserve to be punished because of him. The officers asked Matt to provide names of people who’d harassed him, and Matt named the senior jocks Trevor Cassity, Duane Stanton, and one or two others. . . . Yet for some reason he couldn’t add that these guys had actually struck him, beaten him, pushed him down a flight of concrete steps and walked away laughing. Not knowing, not caring, if Matt had been seriously injured, even killed. Fag. Sue us! It would be their word against Matt’s, wouldn’t it?

  “And are there others, son? Who might have taken your dog?”

  Matt’s face burned. Of course there were others. Too many to name with
out sounding ridiculous. And Pumpkin might well have been taken by someone Matt didn’t know, had never seen, and could not have named. In Reverend Brewer’s interview in the Rocky River weekly the angry minister had claimed he had “hundreds” of supporters in the region, he was receiving “thousands” of dollars for his defense fund.

  The Rocky River patrolmen left, in no hurry. They addressed Mrs. Donaghy. “We’ll see what we can do about Pumpkin, ma’am. What will probably happen is your dog will be back home by morning, good and hungry.”

  Matt said sarcastically, “Thanks a lot, officers!”

  * * *

  Matt’s mother took a sleeping pill and went to bed early.

  Where was Matt’s father? Neither Matt nor Alex could ask.

  Matt called Ursula at eleven oh three P.M. and told her the news.

  “Oh Matt! Poor Pumpkin! This is terrible.”

  Matt’s voice trembled. “I just hate them so much, Ursula. I hate them. So much.”

  “Matt, you don’t know who they are, exactly. You can’t be sure.”

  “The Brewers. Reverend ‘Ike.’ The football players. Kids who sneer at me every day in school. Who call me fag.” Matt paused. Maybe Ursula didn’t know this? Well, now she knew. He said, wiping at his eyes, “My mom showed the police more clippings she’d been sent, that I didn’t know about. It’s Brewer, or somebody in his congregation, sending that shit, I bet.”

  Ursula said, “Maybe it’s an actual kidnapping. A dognapping. Maybe they’re going to ask for a ransom.”

  “Or maybe just kill Pumpkin and dump her body on our lawn.”

  “Matt! Don’t talk that way.”

  “Which way should I talk?” Matt asked sarcastically. “‘Optimistically’?”

  Matt and Alex meant to keep a vigil for Pumpkin through the night, downstairs in the family room.

  Except by one ten A.M. Alex had fallen asleep on the sofa, exhausted, his eyes reddened from crying. Matt pulled a quilt over him. Matt vowed he would never—repeat: never—say another sarcastic, unkind, or bullying word to his brother again in his lifetime. Never!

  Several times that night, Matt called the Rocky River police to ask if there’d been any developments. He was politely informed that, if and when there were developments, he would be called.

  He wandered the darkened house. He was too restless to sit at his computer. He’d have liked to e-mail Ursula, but he guessed his mood would be too sour, too angry, it wouldn’t be right to subject her to his thoughts, she might like him less, or decide she didn’t like him at all. Or Matt might type out a message detailing his own hatred and how he’d like to kill, yes he’d like to bomb and shoot certain people, and a lot of them, he’d love to kill his enemies, if it would bring back Pumpkin he wouldn’t hesitate for a minute . . . and if Matt clicked SEND, and sent such a damning message out into cyberspace where nothing is ever lost and everything can be used against you, what then?

  Big Mouth. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

  He switched on the TV. But the Westchester cable channel hadn’t yet posted Pumpkin on their “lost” animal site.

  It was one thirty A.M., seven hours after Pumpkin’s kidnapping. Matt tried to call the cable channel but got only a recorded message.

  At two A.M. the phone rang, just once. By the time Matt picked up the receiver, the caller had hung up.

  At three A.M. the phone rang twice. This time too Matt picked up the receiver and the caller hung up.

  Matt said, begging, “Hey, c’mon! Please. She’s just an innocent dog. She never hurt you, she . . .” Matt began to cry, wiping his nose with the edge of his hand. He was feeling weak now—his anger had subsided. The adrenaline rush had subsided. A sensation of sick horror washed over him. He thought of the sweet-natured dog who, even as a puppy, had been shy among strangers. He thought of Pumpkin’s terror, her whining and whimpering, the convulsive trembling of her back legs, her cringing tail. Could Pumpkin sleep? Would they feed her?

  Would they torture her?

  The hairs on the back of Matt’s neck stirred. He’d seen a TV film, a horror film, in which a family’s dog was taken, and parts of the dog (an ear, a paw, the tail) were left on the front porch, smeared in blood.

  “They wouldn’t be that cruel, they couldn’t be. Not to Pumpkin.”

  Matt couldn’t recall how the TV film ended. Maybe he hadn’t seen the ending. A bloodbath, probably. But who killed whom, and how, was a blank.

  He didn’t have a gun. His dad didn’t own guns. He had no idea how you got a gun, actually. If Pumpkin wasn’t returned and Matt had to take revenge, he hadn’t any idea how he would do it.

  Groggy from lack of sleep, Matt shut his eyes. He’d turned the TV to mute but it seemed to him he could hear humming, buzzing. Voices. Jeering laughter. Suddenly he was seeing Trevor Cassity’s face, and there was Duane Stanton, and the others. He was lying on his side in a fetal position, trying to protect his belly, his head. They were kicking him, and they were kicking Pumpkin. So sue us! Fag! Sue us!

  But those guys weren’t monsters. They were just typical Rocky River kids, Westchester kids, spoiled, used to attention because they’d been jocks since middle school, and good-looking. They weren’t well liked but they were “popular.”

  Lots of guys envied them. Hated their guts, but envied them.

  Matt wondered if the police had contacted them. Probably not.

  Their word against Matthew Donaghy’s word.

  The fact was, anyone could have taken Pumpkin. Anyone who knew where the Donaghys lived, and was familiar with their ritual of walking the dog in the early evening, and had reason to hate them.

  Most of the time Matt walked Pumpkin. Alex walked her only once or twice a week, and Mrs. Donaghy less frequently. Pumpkin had always been Matt’s dog. His responsibility.

  If Pumpkin had been taken from him, what could Matt have done?

  Matt was wakened by a ringing phone close beside his head.

  It was six A.M. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa, the TV screen was still on, sound muted.

  Matt fumbled to answer the phone—“Hello? Hello?” At first there was no sound, then he heard it: the yipping, whining cries of a dog in pain.

  “Pumpkin? Pumpkin!”

  The line went dead.

  FORTY-ONE

  “MAYBE I CAN HELP SOMEHOW? AT LEAST I can be with you.”

  So Ursula Riggs came to Matt Donaghy’s house for the first time, and was introduced to Mrs. Donaghy, on the Saturday morning after Pumpkin was abducted.

  Under other, normal circumstances this would have been a significant occasion for Matt and Ursula. But now Matt was so distracted by the situation, waiting always for the phone to ring, he barely had time to worry how Ursula and his mother would like each other. (“Is this Ursula Riggs your girlfriend, Matt?” Mrs. Donaghy asked, puzzled, before Ursula arrived. “The girl who helped you by talking to Mr. Parrish?” Stony faced, Matt just shrugged.)

  By ten A.M. the Westchester cable channel was posting Pumpkin’s photo above the caption have you seen me? and the brief paragraph:

  PUMPKIN—7-yr.-old female golden retriever reported abducted 3/23 Arlington Circle area Rocky River, NY. Reward.

  The Donaghys’ name was not listed, but their telephone and address were provided.

  Also by ten A.M. there were no new developments reported by Rocky River police. When Matt’s mother called headquarters, asking to speak with one of the patrolmen who’d come to the house, she was informed that both officers were off duty on Saturday; but of course the case was being “pursued.”

  Matt took the phone receiver from his mother, intending to ask exactly how the case was being pursued, but the individual at the other end had already hung up.

  After receiving the six-A.M. call, Matt had called Rocky River police to report it and was told that a police officer would be calling him back, but no one had. “My dog was being tortured, I could hear her. I’m sure that’s what it was. Can’t you help us? Please!”
Matt was begging. He was on the verge of tears. And, though it was only dawn, so tired.

  Matt gauged by Ursula’s startled expression that he must look about as bad as he felt. Bruiselike circles under his eyes, for sure. “I feel as if I’ve been running a marathon all night. And I haven’t gotten anywhere.”

  Ursula said vehemently, “We’ll find Pumpkin, Matt! We will.”

  It was too frustrating to wait by the phone, so Matt, Ursula, and Alex went out to canvass the neighborhood another time, in Matt’s car. They drove slowly along the curving streets, seeing few people as they called “Pumpkin! Pump-kin!” out the windows of the car. It was a bright, damp morning; the sun sliced into Matt’s corneas like a laser. He wasn’t able to register the strangeness of Ursula beside him in the passenger seat and Alex in the backseat, his closest friend and his kid brother riding in his car on a Saturday morning, the three of them as focused upon their mission as survivors in a small life raft.

  Matt drove aimlessly. Out to Main Street, where traffic was heavier, and along Route 9. Here there were pedestrians on the sidewalks, and occasionally dogs on leashes. “Look!”—Alex kept saying, nervously, each time he saw a dog whose shape, size, and coloring remotely resembled Pumpkin’s. Matt drove along the edge of the Rocky River Nature Preserve thinking maybe—oh, just maybe—Pumpkin’s abductors might have left her out here. He drove into the suburb of Tarrytown, and north to Ossining, and back south through Rocky River to Briarcliff Manor and beyond. “I guess we’re just wasting time,” he said miserably. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  Ursula had to admit she didn’t know, either.

  They returned to the Donaghys’ house. Nothing seemed to have changed. Matt’s mother was sitting listlessly, drinking coffee, in the family room off the kitchen, staring at the cable channel on the screen. Matt was embarrassed to see that she still wore her bathrobe, knotted tightly at her waist. Her dark hair was disheveled, threaded with gray delicate as cobwebs. Why couldn’t she have changed into daytime clothes, combed her hair, and put on lipstick? Matt was especially mortified that his mother’s eyes had a curious flat glisten, as if she’d taken one of her antidepressant pills. He hoped she was aware of Ursula’s presence. She said, in a tired voice, “Every eight minutes Pumpkin is on. I’ve timed it. Precisely. And the only caller so far was someone who hung up as soon as I answered.”