by Tricia Dower
Buddy wanted to eat only the kind of food he’d loved before he found Charles Atlas. On day one, Tereza fixed him crispy fried chicken from a recipe on the cornflakes box. Buddy said it was perfect. They stood together over Lisa’s cradle, watching her open and close her long fingers, wave her arms and pump her chubby legs. They tried to decide who she looked like more. She had Tereza’s black hair (but straight, not kinky), Buddy’s blue eyes and long eyelashes, and her own honey-colored skin, lighter than Tereza’s. Her mouth looked like Buddy’s when she cried. He took tons of photos on the chance he’d catch the devil trying to sneak into her. The film was still waiting to be developed. Tereza asked him how many girls he’d ever given rides to. He wasn’t sure, maybe twenty, thirty. He hated to see them walking alone, especially when it got dark. He said most girls didn’t know how to defend themselves. Tereza reminded herself how protective he’d been of her when they first met.
He hadn’t killed her.
Parents magazine said you could raise a baby’s IQ just by talking to it. Tereza didn’t want Lisa to be dumb like she was so she’d chattered to her until her voice wore thin. On day two she told Buddy, “Let her hear your voice. You’re the smart one.” He read to Lisa from Moby-Dick, said it was his favorite book. “I never knew that,” Tereza said as they huddled together on the back porch settee, wrapped in a musty quilt and watching night close in around them.
“Yeah, I love that barnacled old whale, charging around the ocean, pursued by the evil Captain Ahab.”
“Does Ahab catch him?”
“No. It’s a fairy tale.”
“If those two girls had gotten in the car, would you have taken them right home?”
“I hope so. I like that they turned out brave like you.”
On day three, Buddy woke up jumpier than usual. He cracked his knuckles so bad all morning that Tereza suggested they go for a walk. He needed the exercise for sure. She hadn’t seen him do Atlas in months; the skin of his neck was sitting in folds on his collar. He looked older around the eyes and mouth, too, like time was passing faster for him than anybody else. It didn’t help that he hadn’t shaved in days. They tried to sneak out the back with Lisa in her carriage, but reporters sprang up out of Dearie’s garden beds like weeds.
“How many girls did you kill?”
“Where’d you stash Evvy Shore’s body?”
Their questions wound around Tereza like vines, squeezing the breath out of her. Buddy lunged at the reporters, punching the air with his fists, calling them vultures and cussing until they vamoosed.
In air that was beginning to thaw after the cold winter, they pushed Lisa’s carriage eight blocks to the cemetery, not a sad place if you didn’t come across a kid’s grave. Their shoes made sucking sounds on the squishy ground. Buddy said he wanted to be cremated like his grandfather, couldn’t see taking up valuable space with his dead bones. Tereza said there was lots of time to think about that. She could picture him one day crouching on a sidewalk tightening Lisa’s roller skates with the key, driving her to tap lessons, showing her how to turtle-wax the car. Tereza loved how Buddy’s two big mitts could hold all of Lisa. She wanted Lisa Lange Jukes to feel like the most loved child in the world. Her birth had been like winning a prize, a chance to be a better mother than daughter. Tereza still could hear Ma saying, “You was a terror. Didn’t sleep through the night, wouldn’t go to bed at a regular time, didn’t like to be rocked or held.” Dearie said she’d never seen a better baby, as if Lisa knew what her folks were going through. “I’m glad you’ll have Lisa when I’m gone,” Buddy said.
“Everything will be fine. Maury will get you off.” That evening, after hamburgers with pickles that made her gums sting, she asked, “Could Linda have been one you gave a ride to?”
“I’ve asked myself that a hundred times, Ladonna. But when I looked at that girl in court I knew I’d never seen her. You don’t forget somebody that fat.”
“She wasn’t always that fat,” Tereza said.
They pushed Lisa to a park on day four and sat on a damp gray bench. Even if the grand jury didn’t indict him, Buddy said, his A&P career was over: the others on night shift were nervous around him; he’d be fired before long. The movie theater had replaced Tereza when she went into the hospital to have Lisa. “You should look for something full-time with more money,” Buddy said. “Dearie will babysit.”
“I’ve been thinking about waitressing because of the tips. Someplace I could work shifts around acting lessons. I’d like to see food go in, for a change, instead of hearing it come out.”
Buddy laughed. “I’ll miss you.”
“Maury will get you off.”
He took her hands in his. “The defense doesn’t get to say anything at a grand jury. If they indict me, a judge might not grant bail. I could be stuck in jail a long time before any trial.”
Tereza shut her ears to his words, swallowing the urge to puke, as she had for weeks. If Buddy went to prison, she could still see him and ask his advice about stuff, right? It might be better, in a way, because her gut wouldn’t churn wondering where he was, what he was up to.
Dearie made her famous garlicky spaghetti for supper with meatballs the size of plums. They turned the dining room into a restaurant, Tereza taking orders from Buddy and Dearie—Salad on the side? Bread? Something to drink? She carried the dishes on a tray. Dearie perked up for the first time in weeks. She said that to get good tips, Tereza would need to “project” more of a personality, like an actress throwing her voice. Tereza saw herself giving impressions of famous actors; pictured people lining up for a table in her section, refusing to sit anywhere else.
That night, Buddy didn’t turn his back to her, or curl up into himself and fall asleep as usual. Sitting with his naked back against the headboard, he said, “I need to tell you about something that’s been festering in me.” His face looked ghostlike in the dim glow of a nightlight they’d bought so they could see their way to Lisa in the dark.
Tereza’s gut sat down hard inside her. If he confessed to killing those girls, would he have to kill her to keep her quiet? She parked herself beside him but close enough to her side of the bed to get away. He reached over and gripped her hand. “I know I’m not a normal husband. You deserve better than me.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding. Maybe he was just going to tell her he liked boys better than girls. “I never turned you on, did I?” she said.
“If all it took was love,” he said, “I’d be your Casanova.”
She didn’t know what a Casanova was.
He told her that, when he was fourteen, the devil had taken over his body and kicked a hole in Richie’s garage. Tereza had nearly forgotten about Richie. How long ago had he moved away to who-knew-where? Buddy said Richie’s mom told him that day he was brain-damaged and called the cops. He’d known for sure then that he was crazy because Richie’s mom was a nurse. “The cops tied me to a chair and threatened to send me back to the loony bin.”
“What do you mean send you back? When were you in a loony bin?”
“For a few months when I was twelve. Dearie said that was a mistake, that cops and doctors didn’t understand sensitive kids. But I knew it wasn’t a mistake when I saw that it wasn’t me they’d tied to the chair. It was the devil. They left me standing in a corner.”
“What did the devil look like?”
“Me, of course. That’s what he does.” He brought her hand to his lips, stretching her arm so much she had to sidle an inch or two closer to him. Her flannel PJs rode up into her crack. She wondered if he was getting ready to break something, wished Dearie wasn’t all the way downstairs.
“She made Rich go into hiding,” Buddy said.
“Who did? When?”
“Rich’s mom. Three years ago. I drove him to his house after the cop shot him, praying to any god that would listen. She went bonkers but had to let me in because I was carrying Rich. She took the bullet out with tweezers, him yelling bloody murder, me cryi
ng, scared he was going to die.”
“I’m lost, Buddy. Why would a cop shoot Richie?”
Buddy released her hand, drew his knees to his chest and started rocking back and forth. “We’re cruising town and he says he wants to break into Bing’s Pharmacy. Just to see what could happen. He’s making a comic book about twins whose mother is sick and he wants to get it right. We climb in real easy through an alley window and stand there, hardly breathing, waiting for a siren, flashing lights, a Doberman. Nothing. So we pretend we’re dropping pill bottles into a bag but we’re not touching a thing. Rich is saying stuff like, ‘We wouldn’t have to do this, Bart, if Ma wasn’t so sick and Pop didn’t drink away all the money.’ I’m laughing. Then the cop rattles the front door. We should’ve just ducked down. He probably didn’t see us. But we panic, climb back out the window and crouch behind a row of garbage cans in the alley. Clumsy me knocks one over. It was freezing that night but I can still feel the sweat coming right through my palms. All I remember, after that, was the cop coming up behind us, Rich running, the cop’s gun going off, more shots and the cop falling a few feet away from me. Honest to God, Ladonna, I didn’t know Rich had a gun on him. After I left his house I called the police station to tell them where the cop was. I should’ve seen to him right away, maybe he wouldn’t have died, but I was too scared for Rich.”
Tereza felt like a bone had leaped into her throat. She clawed back through her memories: the women yakking about it in Herman’s ladies’ john, Dearie turning the radio off whenever it came on the news. “The cop from Stony River?”
He gave her a quick, sad smile and rocked harder. “Yeah. Dearie said if I didn’t talk about it, I’d forget it ever happened. But the devil won’t let me forget. He moved into me for good that night. You don’t get away with murder without him in charge.”
“But you didn’t kill him. Richie did.”
Buddy was shaking now, his lower lip quivering. “He was my best friend, the only guy who really understood me, and I didn’t protect him.”
Tereza drew him toward her and he let her hold him until Lisa woke. She brought the baby into bed with them and covered them all with the blanket. Nursed Lisa with Buddy’s head on her lap, his thick arms wrapped around her legs, his veins like little blue rivers running under the skin. He fell asleep with a worried look on his face. She was afraid to move in case he rolled away and took his warmth from her. So she lay Lisa down beside her and sat up the rest of the night—a sharp-eyed owl guarding her chicks. She watched the moon paint the far wall with its milky light. Sniffed in Lisa’s baby sweetness and Buddy’s spaghetti breath. She wondered if he’d loved Richie the way he couldn’t love her.
So what if Buddy was crazy? Everyone she’d ever known was nuts in some way. She didn’t give a whoop about some cop’s murder, either. Or anyone else’s when it came down to it because the only people who mattered were those whose breathing you could hear as loud as your own; your mind couldn’t take in more than that. That must have been how it was for Ma. Once Tereza ran away, all Ma could’ve done was think about Allen and Jimmy. People died and went missing every day. Buddy and Lisa were all Tereza’s heart could take in at the moment.
On day five, Buddy said, “You gotta get some sleep, Ladonna,” and took Lisa downstairs to Dearie. When Tereza woke, Dearie said Buddy had driven to the store for milk and bread.
He didn’t come back.
Two days later a reporter found his car at a motel in Irvington and the cops his body in bloody bathwater gone cool. He’d slit his wrists with Miranda’s knife—black-handled and double-edged, the papers wrote, like the one that had stabbed Barbara Pickens.
Dearie said the cops and the press had hounded Buddy to death, like dogs on a rabbit. For days she paced the house, wailing, or sat on the back porch with her hands curled in her lap all funny, like her fingers were busted. Complaining to Alfie that it wasn’t fair Irene still had Richard and she didn’t have Buddy.
Tereza did her crying alone, on the crapper, in the shower or in bed, turned toward the cold, empty spot beside her. She’d cry until she felt empty, like her insides had poured out. Barbara Pickens’s and Evelyn Shore’s families were pissed off that Buddy hadn’t left a note. Pastor Scott said God was angry, too, at the loss of a tortured soul.
Tough gazzobbies.
Tereza had her own feelings to sort out without worrying about God’s or anyone else’s. At first, she was mad at Buddy for not telling her everything. Then she realized he’d done her a favor. When Lisa got old enough to ask if he’d done those bad things, she could honestly say he’d never said. Lisa wouldn’t have reason to ask about the cop. Tereza was pissed off at everyone who hadn’t taken care of Buddy the way they should’ve. Mostly she was scared she wouldn’t be smart enough to raise Lisa right without him.
But she was also a little proud.
She wasn’t the one who’d split. She hadn’t run away this time.
DADDY BOOKED TIME OFF from work to drive Linda and Mom to the Woodbridge police station where Linda would view the knife Eldon Jukes used to kill himself and determine if it was the one he pulled on her. She hadn’t been to school since the trial, unwilling to face the inevitable taunts; the trial and her humiliation had been widely reported. So what if she flunked the entire year? It took only ten minutes to arrive in the new turquoise Dodge that was supposed to make them all feel better, a few more minutes to park and climb the steps of the yellow-brick building with tall narrow windows.
Detective Roesch was waiting for them at the entrance in a brown corduroy jacket and tan chinos. In his twenties, Linda figured. He was a big-shouldered guy with a crew cut. He escorted them to a small windowless room that had a table with benches on either side. The detective with the scarred face was there and a young woman who looked familiar. The room was cramped and stuffy with the six people it now held and smelled as if it needed a good clean. Linda fought an impulse to flee.
Detective Roesch said, “You met Detective Rotella before, right?”
Linda and her parents nodded.
Detective Rotella said, “This is Miss Haggerty. She suspects the knife in question was stolen from her house in 1955. Miranda: Mr. and Mrs. Wise, their daughter, Linda.”
That name. That wavy hair the color of autumn leaves.
Linda was wrenched back to a summer day a childhood ago when the future was still a sparkly advent calendar, a numbered window concealing a surprise each day. Crazy Haggerty’s daughter hadn’t died and didn’t appear to be a lunatic.
The girl, now a woman, stepped forward and took Linda’s hands in her own long-wristed ones. “I asked to meet you,” she said, “so I could tell you I admire your courage.” Her green eyes felt probing, the press of her palms too intimate. Linda gently extricated her hands.
“Ditto,” Detective Rotella said. “Bum luck not finding the knife before the trial. We would’ve loved to have spared you the ordeal.”
Linda could only nod. She was lost in memory. The Miranda of then had been mysterious, even dangerous. This one you wouldn’t look twice at in her red plaid skirt and white sweater. Close up, though, something about her was unsettling.
Daddy stepped beside Linda and said, “Was James Haggerty your father?”
Miranda turned to him. “He was. You knew him?”
“Only on neighborhood patrol during the war. Not after that. We live just a few blocks from his old house. Your old house.” Daddy dipped his head. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
“Thank you.” Miranda turned toward Linda’s mother. “Mrs. Wise, I sense bravery runs in your family.” Mom lifted her eyebrows and took the hand Miranda extended. Miranda winced, then leaned in and whispered something to Mom. They sidled to a dark corner and exchanged words Linda couldn’t hear until Detective Roesch said, “Can we get started?” Miranda and Mom sat together on one side of the table with Detective Rotella, leaving the other for Linda and Daddy. Linda had never seen her mother take to a stranger so quickly. Detective Roes
ch stood at the table’s end with a plastic bag from which he withdrew a long knife with a black handle. He placed it on the table. Linda noticed Miranda’s shoulders sag.
“Do you recognize this, Miss Wise?”
Linda had envisioned a knife stained with Eldon Jukes’s blood but this one was clean, its blade glinting under the fluorescent light. She reached beneath the table to still a trembling leg, grateful for Daddy’s arm around her shoulders. Her mind flashed to the knife emerging from Georgie’s glove compartment. If she’d begged for her life, as he demanded, would she be dead like that other girl? Had the knife been single-bladed or double? Shorter or longer than this one? Was this a test to confirm she was the liar the jury thought her to be? “The handle looks the same”—her voice cracked, making her hot with embarrassment—“but I can’t say for sure.”
“I understand,” Detective Roesch said. “It’s tough to register details when your life’s in the balance. Miss Haggerty?”
Miranda’s face had turned hard. “It looks like mine.” She picked up the knife and turned it around in her hand, as though weighing it. She ran her fingers up and down the handle and the flat part of the blade. Closed her eyes and took deep breaths. So many breaths that, at some point, Daddy cleared his throat and frowned. “Give her a moment,” Detective Rotella said.
Miranda was motionless for so long that Linda thought she was asleep or unconscious. Then she shuddered, arched her back and cried out as if she’d been wounded. Linda gasped. Daddy started. Mom laid a hand on Miranda’s arm. Detective Rotella stood and gripped Miranda’s shoulders. “No more,” he said.
