CHAPTER 8
Claire took Floozie up to the woods and let her run around a little bit. It did Claire good as well. The air was fresher here, although the leaves had fallen. The bleak trees cut sharp and crooked lines against one another. Already the light was dim, and this only late afternoon. It was so still. She followed Floozie a little bit in off the road, but she didn’t like to go too far. Danger didn’t fascinate Claire. She was put off by those wild dogs. And, of course, the unlikely but persistent fear of Mrs. Dixon’s presence. There were some horseback riders coming through the path, so Claire let herself wander a wee bit farther in. Then a jogger flew past. An elderly Bavarian couple bummeled by. Those two were always in the woods; they walked in any weather, looking for pilzen or firewood or wild-flowers, according to the season. Claire saw them just about every time she came in here. They were reassuringly constant fixtures in this always-changing place. Claire waved and the couple nodded.
She was glad she had Floozie as an excuse to get away from it all, if only for fifteen minutes. Floozie glanced up from her reverie. She was happy to be here, too, she demonstrated with a wag of her tail. Claire wandered over towards “Make-out Rock,” a monstrous relic from no-one-knew-when and just about everyone’s past. This forest was gaping with glacier holes. The rock probably came from the same era. Way taller than a child it was, and even she still had to reach up to hoist herself up onto it. She looked down at Floozie sniffing along the path, and her eyes stopped at the top of the stone stairway, just visible from her perch on this great rock that was hers and Tree’s old meeting place. From here they had planned to run away, she remembered. She supposed she’d come here for that reason now. As children, they had planned to meet here at midnight and take a Greyhound bus to—where was it? Florida? How they would have found their way to a bus station was beyond them, or at least her. Tree had probably had it all figured out, even back then. Claire had, of course, slept through that nocturnal appointment, never meaning to keep it anyway, just enjoying the thought of hurling such preadolescent defiance at her parents.
Claire wondered if Tree really had snuck out and waited for her, as she always claimed to have done. For Tree had always revelled in her enterprising truancy, had even stolen a gaudy tin biscuit box from her mother and filled it with treasure and buried it just here. So they would have something “to fall back on.” She remembered there was a great deal of trouble from Tree’s mother over that treasure. Tree had sworn her to secrecy or she would “really get killed.” Tree’s parents had both been old, even then, and sickly. Although knowing now what she hadn’t then, Claire figured that they might have both been heavy drinkers. She could remember the smell of stale old people at Tree’s house, that and no other children—a privileged, narrow smell that took her and Tree straight to Tree’s bedroom, no stopping for cookies or popsicles from a nosy, nice mother. Mother-daughter communication amounted to just a call through on the way upstairs and a nod from behind a half-closed curtain amid the drone of muffled afternoon television. And there’d been nobody, Claire remembered distinctly, to bother their play.
She had a quick, fleeting memory of Carmela. Carmela? she asked herself. Yes, something with Carmela, angry and in tears, screaming at the both of them. It was … no, wait, it was because they had taken her paper dolls, or paper doll clothes. Oh, well. With Carmela it had always been something. Her list of atrocities was so long, Claire thought affectionately of her crazy sister.
She looked at her watch. If she went now, she could stop in at rehearsal. She could take a few shots for them as well. Maybe they could use them for the bulletin board outside the church. Or for the playbill. She marched from the woods with the eager enjoyment of someone who’d just gotten her good shot of oxygen, plopped Floozie into what was now “her” bag, and waited at the red light to cross Park Lane South. The traffic was a blur. Suddenly Claire had to go back. She turned and walked up the hill to where she’d stood before. It was just an absurd chance—a shot in the dark—but, she went over to the spot they’d just left, dropped to her knees, and started to dig. Floozie, thrust to the ground without sufficient reason, stood baffled with her feet still in the purse.
Claire huffed and heaved. The ground wasn’t frozen yet and she made good headway. She put a hefty dent in the earth and then she sat back on her heels and inspected her work. Aside from some pine cones, fossilized Hershey’s chocolate wrappers, and a beer bottle cap, there was nothing. But of course there was nothing. What had she expected, a perfectly intact tin box, unbothered by time and six neighborhoods full of enterprising children? She looked up at the black bony treetops, wood etchings against the purple sky. She loved a winter sky. So cold and clear and full of stars. The Bavarian couple passed by again, this time exchanging glances. Claire flogged herself mentally. It was just because of that letter, Tree’s last living letter and what she had written about “revisiting the secret places of their childhood.” And, “only she would know what she meant.” Well, she didn’t know what the hell Tree had meant, and she was getting a little darn tired of making a jackass out of herself. She stood up and brushed herself off. Her hands were filthy. “Let’s get out of here,” she told the dog out loud, as much to reassure herself as the puppy, and they marched down the pretty, now-dark hill, not daring to look over at the pine forest where the notorious Mrs. Dixon had not that long ago brutally murdered two children.
The auditorium at Holy Child converted magically into a gym and so Carmela and her cast seldom got to practice there. Rehearsals were held at the Union Congregational Church Community Room, a wonderful old place, one enormous space surrounded by wooden balconies from start to finish, its deep stage framed in walnut carvings. There were small milk-glass windows near the ceiling that let in shoots of street-lamp light.
“These are Protestants here, Floozie,” Claire explained the importance of anonymity in this place to the dog. “They’ll not take any bending of the rules.” It wasn’t like over at the Catholic Church, where the decrees were so precise with dogmatic rigidity that they tended to skate majestically through with a kind-hearted, understanding look the other way. You didn’t have to tell Floozie twice about the complexities of the human condition. When necessary, as now, she obligingly made herself scarce, burrowing cozily against her old friend the Olympus, and she went accommodatingly to sleep.
Carmela was striding importantly back and forth across the stage. One thing about Carmela, she had the posture and the presence of an aggrieved mother superior. And she had, Claire noted—uh oh, look out—one hand on her hip. Claire made herself invisible and sat down in one of the darkened back rows where she could watch the rehearsal unobserved. The Seven Dorks, Carmela’s rock group, seemed to have been recruited from the hallways of Alcoholics Anonymous, where, indeed, they had been assembled. They milled about, happy house painters-turned-actors, smoking cigarettes and drinking lots and lots of coffee. They had their shiny, fifty-four-cup percolator on the card table there, red light reassuringly set to On. There were things to eat laid out as well. Lots of Boston eclairs and the more sensible carbuncle crullers. Carmela’s scornful authoritativeness didn’t much affect these guys. Oh, they did as they were told, shuffling back and forth into position the minute they were instructed, but they didn’t take her rantings seriously, having faced their own tremendous burdens of self at one time or another in the recovery process. Each one of them had hit incontrovertible bottom and knew who he wasn’t. So each was also, somehow, free. And—to Carmela—alarmingly unafraid. Although she badgered her cast members, Carmela also had a wary respect for them, an innate knowledge that you don’t pick a real fight with someone who has nothing to lose.
She also didn’t like the look of the things they read. Good things by important authors. The Will to Happiness by Hutschnecker. Marguerite Duras in French. In French? She’d picked the book up just to make sure. Yes. She’d dropped it like a hot potato. Let’s see. What else? Oh. The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen. Here were men, who, despite
their obvious weaknesses, thought profound and wonderful thoughts. So, beneath their dissipated bodies in plain, plaid shirts and jeans from Sears, they might even be judging her. And what was this? She nudged the pile of books to get a look at the last. Harold Robbins? Carmela snorted, reassured, and clicked her gum.
She looked down at her dialogue and wondered what, if anything, she was doing. There wasn’t enough action in her play, she knew that. But she didn’t know about things like action. Claire did. Zinnie certainly did. She only knew about motivation. Different kinds of motivation in different kinds of people. Or the lack of it. So she would stay with that. If her womanliness was a failure—she looked down at her useless, flat belly—and her marriage was a failure—she looked mournfully across the stage to Stefan, his cool blue eyes pretending to read a magazine but riveted on that idiotic Portia McTavish … (Oh, she was an idiot all right: She carried an imitation Gucci bag for all the world to see.) Anyway—if all those things about herself were no good, then the least she could do for her long-ago vanished self-respect was to make this little play, out in the neverland of Queens, a good play. A play that would stand up to the scrutiny of, if no one else, herself.
At the same moment, Claire was also watching Stefan, sitting there in the second row behind a copy of Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair? thought Claire. Good grief. He was majestically sprawled out and dapper in his navy blue and camel, had just dropped benevolently by on his way out to Kennedy Airport, supporting his wife in her artistic endeavor, he was, while nonchalantly smoking a Davidoff cigarillo from Havana. They really were well suited, those two, she thought, then stopped herself. No need to be catty.
Zinnie wasn’t here; she wouldn’t be off duty until six, and then she always went straight back to Claire’s house first to look in on Michaelaen. It didn’t matter that she was starring in Carmela’s play. At least not to her it didn’t. She would yawn and laugh, unimpressed. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” she would say. When on any given afternoon you’re sending people off to prison for seven years, and then you’re watching someone else get carried out in a body bag to boot, well, your priorities become simply and carefully organized. Zinnie also didn’t much care for the rest of the cast. She’d locked up nicer whores plenty of times, she’d told Claire out of the side of her mouth, as they’d stood there watching Portia recite her lines. The Dorks were all right, she’d decided although she had a funny feeling one of them was wanted for mail fraud. Anyway, Zinnie wasn’t here now. And where was Narayan? Claire looked around uneasily. Wasn’t he supposed to be here, too? She guessed not, then.
Ah. Portia McTavish was taking the stage. She had most of the lines. Zinnie had refused to memorize very much. “Look,” she’d said, “if you want me in your friggin’ play you can cut down my dialogue to the minimum or I won’t be in it. It’s as simple as that, so you can take it or leave it.”
“We’ll take it.” Carmela had slammed the script down onto the table, shutting up the objecting Stefan. She believed her sister. One word from Stefan and she’d up and leave. Carmela needed Zinnie and she knew it. It wasn’t a great play she had written. It was just a little story no better or worse than any other story out there, but it was brought to life by Zinnie’s magical talent. Now all they had to do was pray she wouldn’t be forced to go make an arrest the day of the performance or she’d be late and God knew what would happen. Stefan was inviting all his snooty friends, and although Carmela had been the one to insist he did, she was worried. What if the show fell on its face and she were made the laughingstock? There were moments she wished she’d never left her cushy magazine job and her nasty column. She sighed. At least then she was the critic and not the other way around. Oh well. Oh God. What were they doing to her dialogue?
“Script!” she cried, and the script girl came running, a girl from the high school Carmela had chosen for her docile nature and her uniform. She liked uniforms. They all did in her family, she remembered. Carmela stood center stage, tapping her head with a yellow number-two pencil. Portia McTavish puffed her sumptuous hair back from her face and perched seductively atop the green velvet settee that Stan had bolted to the floor there for her. It had had to be bolted because Carmela had contrived a scene where the Dorks toppled it over at the end of “Sixteen Tons,” landing prettily in a propositional position at Portia/Snow White’s feet. Carmela had finally decided upon a name for Snow White. It was Lola Schneewittchen.
“Lola Schneewittchen?!!” Portia had cried, horrified. “That’s not a good name!”
“That’s the idea.” Carmela had filed her nails under Portia’s nose. “It’s what you call a spoof.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She’d whirled on Carmela, smelling a rat.
“It means,” Zinnie’d told her, “you keep the new name or you go back to Snow White and you dye your hair black or wear a wig.”
Portia instinctively, protectively grasped her cascade of honey-blond hair. “I’m an actress,” she’d sniffed. “I can make the most out of any name.”
“That’s the spirit.” Stefan had winked at Carmela. “A real trouper.”
This was supposed to have been a dress rehearsal, Claire knew, but the only one who seemed to be in costume was Lola Schneewittchen. Low-cut, off-the-shoulder, and matching the sofa, Portia’s dress made her look no more than a bust of ivory, posed there with her hubba-hubba shoulders going ever so slightly back and forth for all the world to see. It was disconcerting. At least it was annoying Carmela, Claire could tell, what with Stefan sitting there pretending to read.
Down the center aisle came Freddy. He was laden with costumes on hangers and in ripped-up dry-cleaner bags. He could barely see over the bundle as he tripped and grumbled his way down the dark and littered center aisle to the front of the hall. “Why the hell didn’t you send one of your good-for-nothing actors to help me?” he snarled.
“Why didn’t you get one of your useless waiters to go along with you?” Carmela yelled back. “You’re an hour late!”
“The seamstress was late finishing! I stood around that godforsaken dry cleaners on Jamaica Avenue just waiting and with nothing to do! Nothing! With not even a telephone. Christ!” he rasped, struggling up to the stage and dumping the costumes all over Portia.
“That seamstress was your idea,” Carmela followed him with her pointer finger out.
“Watch out!” Portia opened her delicate hands to the air and wriggled free from the pile.
“Well, you see what I’ve got here,” he shouted at her. “Why don’t you try being a little bit accommodating? Who are you, all of a sudden, Her Majesty?”
Portia pulled herself up to her full haughty height and said, “No, dear, we all know the queen here is you.”
“Well, if you know it”—Freddy whirled around and spat back without missing a beat—“then please act like it. ’Cause if you don’t, I’ll just hack off your eyelashes. And heaven knows they’re skimpy enough as it is.” Carmela clapped her hands, delighted.
“That’s it. That’s just the tone I want, Portia. Let’s try it again and I want you to do the last scene just that way, can you do that?” You couldn’t blame Portia; Freddy had walked right into that one. Knowing Freddy, he’d probably done it on purpose.
Portia shrugged and made a face. “Well, I can, of course I can, if you’re sure that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Just fine.” Freddy stamped his foot. “And what about my costumes?”
“Help Freddy get them over to the dressing room,” Carmela ordered Grumpy and Sneezy. She pushed them out of the way. “Kinkaid! Kinkaid, wake up and put that spotlight on Lola Schneewittchen. The purple one. Kinkaid!”
Kinkaid? Claire marveled at Carmela’s aggressive powers of organization. Why indeed not Kinkaid? Retired electrical company employee. Who else? Free labor for Carmela. All workers got a piece of the door. And it would give him something to do, to be a part of this, and make him feel useful. He only had to set it up and show the high school kids wh
at to do. His name would appear stoutly on the program. Claire remembered Iris von Lillienfeld mournfully. Iris would be at the window now, waiting for Kinkaid to come before the leek pie was cold. Was there no end to women’s suffering, she wondered, enjoying herself despite herself. You had to hand it to Carmela, she smiled in the dark; she knew what would work and what wouldn’t. An appreciative laugh rang out from the crew over something Lola Schneewittchen had just said.
Carmela nodded her head. “And wait one-two-three—” She held one hand in the air.”—for the laugh—not too long now—don’t let the silence hit—just take it three counts into the laugh. Piano.” She signalled to the piano player with the other hand, “Begin,” and the song started up. Claire watched her admiringly. If Carmela were jealous of Portia, at least she used it to her own advantage.
The dog moved suddenly around with urgency. “Oh, all right,” Claire whispered and they snuck out the side door to the garden. It was thick with grass and bushes and Claire made herself comfortable on a stone bench between a yew and a Sunday services announcement sign while Floozie gadded about. Claire raised her long brown skirt up to her knees and inspected her naked legs above their old Frye boots in the cold lamplight. She had just recently allowed herself the luxury of not shaving, and had accomplished soft and downy limbs, something she had never had before. All her adolescent and adult life she had thought it necessary to remove what was hers. But now she had defied the dictate. She was at last complete. She had—she used Andrew Dover’s phrase—no remorse. Funny thing to say about your feelings towards a dead wife, that, she mulled, unless you’d killed her yourself. But then maybe not. She checked her suspicions, remembering the police had been quite happy with his alibi, remembering her mother’s and Swamiji’s exchanges of concerned looks. She would not allow suspicion to become paranoia. She breathed calmly in and out. What had been his alibi, after all? He’d been showing, no, he’d gone to look at an empty house with Portia McTavish, hadn’t he? Claire made a face to herself. Those two could very easily be in cahoots. Of course, the cops weren’t stupid. They could figure who was up to no good with whom as well as she could. But they didn’t know any more than anyone else about what had happened that terrible night. There was no evidence of foul play, was there? And treachery isn’t always planned. Lots of times it is a horrible, timely accident whose result benefits someone, as in a sin of omission. It was clear to her if to no one else that Andrew couldn’t be happier over the death of his wife. He could hardly keep it jarred up, he was bubbling over with such enthusiasm. Claire sucked the evening air in greedily and grasped her healthy knees. She was alive. And Tree’s young body lay confined to her grave just across Victory Field and the groaning uncaring traffic rushing up and down Woodhaven Boulevard.
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