Pete and Uncle Joe didn’t fight if I was there. Once Dave came and looked over my shoulder. “Why don’t you try, David?” Aunt Bonnie said.
I tried to invite him, too. “You’d be good, slugger!” I said in my corniest voice. I even nudged him with my elbow, right in front of Aunt Bonnie. She pretended she didn’t see. Dave almost laughed but stopped himself, shrugged, shook his head.
Other times he came and stood in the doorway until I looked up. “Hide-and-seek later on?” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. We both knew that meant if his parents were fighting.
More and more I went over when I knew Dave and Pete were at baseball practice and Uncle Joe was at his summer lifeguarding job, times when I knew Aunt Bonnie was alone in the house.
One afternoon, after school got out, I hung around so long that Aunt Bonnie got out an old box of pastels and showed me how to draw with them, drawing that came out like painting. Faux Pas slept under the table and snorted in her dreams, blowing hot breath all over our feet.
As I pasteled, I looked out the sewing room window at my house. I thought and thought of what I could ask Aunt Bonnie to get her to tell me what I knew she knew about my mom. Finally I said, “Can babies sleep with the light on?”
Aunt Bonnie laughed and said, “Sure!”
That’s what I thought she’d say. “Aimée does, too,” I said.
Aunt Bonnie picked up a piece of charcoal and sketched something at the edge of her painting. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, but she let me look. Grass and trees, so far, a dark sky, a square in the middle—a building maybe. And the moon, big and round and yellow-white. It was abstract—that was the fifty-cent word, Aunt Bonnie told me—without details, clues.
Now she said, “Is there room for a crib in Aimée’s room?”
I shook my head. Aimée’s room was hardly bigger than the bathroom. She and I used to share my room, before she started the lights-on-at-night thing.
“There’s not enough room in mine, either,” I said, thinking of all my shoeboxes.
Aunt Bonnie nodded and kept nodding, sketching along with the song on the radio downstairs. I didn’t want to think about space.
“What do you call it a sewing room for?” I asked. “It’s your studio, isn’t it?” I liked the elegant sound of that word.
Aunt Bonnie’s head came up and she laughed one of her elephant trumpet laughs at me. “Because it always was the sewing room,” she said. “A studio sounds too businesslike.”
“Why, is painting supposed to be a business?”
“No, that’s just the point.”
“What, making money?”
“Yes.”
This stumped me.
“Uncle Joe likes to think of me as an artist,” she said.
“Bight,” I said. “Artists have studios, don’t they?”
“Artists with businesses have studios.”
“But artists who don’t make money don’t?”
She nodded, looking down at her work again.
“So what’s wrong with making money?”
Aunt Bonnie just shook her head. “Maybe someday,” she said.
I don’t think Pete saw Mom after she told him about the baby until we went to cook out in the Ascontis’ yard on the Fourth of July. I saw him go to Mom and hug her very gently, afraid to touch her. It was almost sweet, but he walked away without any word I could hear. Mom saw me watching and shrugged, looking embarrassed.
Pete tried at the beginning of that summer, he really did. He went to Parks and Recreation and got a job as a camp counselor, teaching fourth graders dodgeball and murder ball and medicine ball and arts and crafts (which was a big stretch for him). Unfortunately, it didn’t last, on account of his temper.
Pete and Sandy started playing football, leaving Dave out. When they were together, Pete was always blabbing away about joining the marines or the air force or something, and Sandy sat there and listened and laughed. How could he laugh? He was just a moron, that’s why, and everything he knew about the armed forces he’d learned from watching old war movies on TV.
I knew more than I wanted about war from the Bell, and Dave had read plenty of war stories along with his piles of other books. But we didn’t get into their shoot-’em-up conversations.
Dave and I, and even Lucy, tried getting up games of hide-and-seek, and Sandy probably would have gone along, but Pete always had something else to do. Maybe Pete just didn’t want to hang around with us anymore. He even yelled at Aunt Bonnie one time when I was over there drawing, telling her that if she’d wanted a daughter, she should have had a third kid, like my mom. But that wasn’t even the worst thing he had up his sleeve. He was saving that for the third week in July.
“Pammy!” Aimée yelled in her most boisterous voice. “Didn’t you bring the baseball gloves?”
“Just these invisible ones.” Pammy lifted her empty hand and pretended to throw something across the circle to Aimée, who pretended to catch it.
“Hey!” Aimée said, sounding like Sandy DeLuna, on purpose, I think. “Throw it to me, not through me!”
Aimée was terribly good at thinking up weird games.
Pete and Sandy and Dave came around from the back of Sandy’s house. “Come play invisible baseball with us!” yelled Pammy.
But Dave merely pointed a finger at me, yelled, “You!” and waited to see what Pete and Sandy would do. Pete ignored us entirely and went to shoot baskets in Sandy’s driveway.
“Me what?” I asked in a low voice. I looked sidelong at Dave, but he walked away to Sandy’s basketball hoop to be with the boys.
“How many balls have you got?” Pammy yelled to Aimée, as if she were the equipment manager.
Sandy snorted, startling me. I didn’t expect him to pay attention to us girls when he had Pete and Dave.
“Just one,” Aimée said, getting the joke. She hadn’t grown up with “brothers” for nothing. She pretend-threw a ball to me. “I like the way he says, ‘You!’ to you. …”
“Oh, please.”
“Here, Lucy, catch!” I pretend-threw the ball to Lucy, and wonder of wonders, Lucy stuck out her hand and pretend-caught it.
Aimée pretend-spat (Mom wasn’t all that far away) on the ground and said, “Batter up!”
“He does like you, Chérie,” said Lucy softly. I pretended she was invisible.
Pammy stood in with a pretend bat, and pretend-swung it.
“Hum, babe!” called Lucy. “She’s no batter, no batter, no batter.” She squatted behind Pammy like a catcher.
Aimée glanced over at me, then stuck her leg up in the air and threw a pretend pitch. “Strike one!” Lucy announced.
The boys looked over from the basketball hoop, and Sandy raised one eyebrow at Lucy.
I giggled. It was fun to be weird. “Ball one!” Lucy said.
“Aw,” said Aimée, and stared Pammy fiercely down from the “plate.” This was a different Aimée from the one who played elf.
“If he likes me,” I said, “why doesn’t he ask me to play basketball with them?” Because of Pete and Sandy, I answered myself. Maybe if Lucy and I walked over there together…
“Strike two!” Lucy said. Across the circle Pete body-checked Sandy, almost knocking him off his feet.
“Why would you even want to?” asked Lucy in a low voice. “When you can play invisible ball with Aimée and Pammy and me?” Then she called out, “Ball two!”
“How do you know?” Aimée yapped at Lucy. She had forgotten to be shy, I thought, amazed, all over a pretend game of baseball. “How can you call balls and strikes from way over there?”
“I have special vision,” Lucy replied, her head high.
Over at the basketball hoop, Pete gave a snort worthy of Faux Pas.
Pammy laughed and swung her “bat.”
“Ball three!” Lucy said.
Pammy jumped up and down and wriggled around. “Three balls! My pants can’t hold ’em!”
Aimée looked amazed at fir
st, then nearly wet her own pants laughing. Sandy and Dave were giggling, too. Pete dribbled the ball, his shoulders shaking. Then he slammed into Dave. Dave, caught off guard, hit the pavement.
Pammy yelled, “Whack! Good-bye, Mr. Spalding!” and ran for first base. I pretended to catch the ball and flung myself after Pammy, trying to tag her. Pammy slid into second base.
“Aw!” Aimée stamped her foot and trudged back to the “mound.”
Dave came walking over. “What are you playing?” he asked me.
Lucy said, “Hey, it’s Pete Asconti’s brother!”
“Is he in trouble or something?” Dave asked. Witty, for him.
“Not with me,” said Lucy, flirting. Pete ought to be in trouble.
“Whoopedy-doo for you,” said Dave. “Hey, Pete,” he called over. “Lucy wants you.”
To me he said, “By the way, you’d better stay out of our bushes.” Was he mad at me because Lucy was flirting with him about Pete? Was he mad at Pete for playing rough? Was he mad at Lucy? Lucy turned away, her face dark red.
Pammy stepped up and stared into Dave’s face. “They’re my bushes just as much as yours,” she said.
“What do you think you’re playing?” Dave asked her.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Aimée answered, sticking out her tongue. Dave dropped his chin and looked sideways at me, as if to ask, Did I hear what I thought I heard?
“We’re just playing a game,” I told Dave. I didn’t like his act. Pete was a bully to him, so he was going to bully the little girls—and me!
“What game?” asked Dave.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“It’s an invisible game,” Aimée said.
“Played by visible people,” said Pammy. “Can’t you see us?”
“Yeah, I see ya,” said Dave, nodding.
“Say,” said Pete, suddenly coming up behind me, “where’d you say your sister’s from? The loony bin?”
Sandy cracked up, of course, but Lucy whirled and glared at Pete.
I didn’t want her eyes to look that teary. “Shut up!” I smacked Pete’s arm, more practiced than Lucy at defending little kids against big mouths, more practiced at defending myself.
But Lucy was on the case. “You,” she said to Pete, “can keep your asinine comments to yourself.”
“Oh, really? Who died and made you queen?” He tried to grab her chin.
“Keep away from me!” Lucy said. She slapped his hand aside, but he just clutched her arm and went for her chin again. I grabbed his arm and aimed a sharp kick at his behind. Justice at last, I thought. But Pete got hold of my foot before it reached its target and used it to dump me on the ground, right on my tailbone.
“Hey!” yelled Lucy and Dave. They knocked Pete off-balance and pushed him away from me. I jumped up and—
“Cut it out!” screeched Aimée. “Chérie, make them stop!”
I put my arm around Aimée. “Forget those Ass-contis,” I said. “We’re the visible ones.”
It was astounding how Aimée sucked up her sobs and smiled. She handed Pammy an imaginary baseball. “I’m up,” she said.
Uncle Joe’s voice came out of the Ascontis’ backyard. “Pete, keep your distance,” he said.
But Pete pointed his finger in my face. “You watch your step,” he said. “Marvin Road kids don’t have to play ball here.”
“Yeah,” said idiot Sandy, always on the wrong side.
Dave said nothing.
Aunt Bonnie came down the Rankins’ driveway and said, “Boys?”
Dave turned his back and shot a basket, but Pete started to walk past his mother. She caught his arm. “What was all that about?” I heard her ask. I didn’t catch his reply.
“Some charming friends we have,” Lucy said to me.
“Yes, see how much they like us?”
Lucy turned toward the Ascontis’ house and snapped her fingers. She looked like some kind of a witch with her broom-colored hair and her little yellow glasses. “I prefer him invisible,” she said. But Pete wasn’t about to disappear.
PART TWO
Away from Home
July 1968
CHAPTER 7
WHEN I THINK OF THE SUMMER OF 1968, I still get a knot of nerves in my stomach.
It was the summer when one girl appeared in my life and another disappeared, and at the beginning of the summer I’d never heard of either of them.
It was the summer that I went to Washington and found out more about some presidents than I ever wanted to know.
It was the summer that Dad went to a big helicopter meeting in California and came home to find things much changed.
It was the summer that Pete Ass-conti got himself in trouble at the little kids’ Parks and Rec camp. He’d yelled at some kids who were messing around when he was teaching them baseball (Aunt Bonnie told Mom they were lying down with their feet in the air when they were supposed to be playing outfield—tee-hee). So they’d moved him up to the junior high camp, where Dave went with his goony friends from school, Nathan and Ziggy. It was the same camp Mom just casually went and signed me up for, second and third sessions, without my consent, because she wanted me out of the house. Aimée got to go to the one Pete had just been fired from. I had to go to the one he’d just been hired to. Dave would be there, all but ignoring me the way he had been all summer.
“Just for a few weeks, Chérie,” Mom said. “I’m not going to be driving to the beach or going on picnics or making lunches at home. It’s going to be dead boring around here.”
“Why? What are you going to be doing?” But she wouldn’t say. Something she didn’t want me to know about, plainly. Instead she cajoled and convinced and practically begged and pleaded and all but promised to pay me to go. And I would have gone on July 19, the first day of the second session, if I hadn’t woken up that morning with my period—and cramps.
“Awful in summer,” Mom said.
She brought Aunt Bonnie in to see me when she came over for coffee. “I’m dying,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Aunt Bonnie rolled hers right back. “You’ll live.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, fake snotty.
“And you’ll have to keep your lips sealed about whatever you see here today.”
But camp or cramps or Mom’s dark secret were not the reason I’d hate July 19, 1968, for the rest of my life.
I set myself up in Dad’s TV-watching chair in the living room, reading The Saturdays, one of the books Dave had brought me.
In the kitchen Mom cleaned up from breakfast and began hauling paint cans out of the basement to the back steps. Aunt Bonnie came in.
“What are you painting?” I asked.
“Your house,” she said. “How many days do you think it’ll take before your dad and Uncle Joe notice your house is cherry red?”
“We’re painting the house, Chérie,” my mother said in a tense, exasperated voice. “Now you know the big secret. Promise you won’t tell Dad if he calls.”
“Cherry?” I asked. Aunt Bonnie showed me a little square of cardboard painted a deep, sweet red. I smiled and sank back in my chair. “Shouldn’t be too long before they notice,” I said.
Mom had the radio on good and loud in the kitchen, as usual. I ignored it, especially when Glen Campbell and Dionne Warwick and Simon and Garfunkel went off and the nine o’clock news came on.
Although I tried to read despite the distraction, the news came through to me clearly: Saigon first, Washington second, something or other about a town budget vote nearby, and then the weather, which was muggy and hot and making my head hurt as well as my stomach.
I put my feet on the arm of the chair. Dad’s old blue sweatshirt was on the couch, and I put it on, cozied down inside it. Now I felt cold and clammy. Strange business, cramps.
The ten o’clock news came and went, not much different from the earlier version. I dozed, and read, and listened as Mom and Aunt Bonnie banged ladders and cans and sang.
It was eleven
when the report came on the first time. “Police are looking for clues to the whereabouts of a thirteen-year-old Claybury girl, missing since dusk last night,” the radio said.
Over the thumping of the ladder being moved, I hadn’t even heard the news come on, that newsroom sound of musical notes, the same one, over and over, and typewriter keys that signaled the switch from the music and ads. “Wendy Boland, a Claybury eighth grader with brown hair and blue eyes, was last seen along a road near her home. Listeners with information about the girl or a green station wagon reported to have been seen in the vicinity are asked to contact the Claybury police.” The announcer went on to the news from Hanoi, and I realized that a thirteen-year-old was the most important news story, the top of the hour.
Mom came to look at me. Speckles of red dotted her hands, and there was a red smear on her neck as if she were wounded. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Does your head hurt?”
“A little,” I said.
Mom sat with me for a minute, drinking a glass of water.
“Mom, you’re not climbing up any ladders, are you?”
She gave me a slow smile. “I’m taking care of our baby, Cher,” she said. “Bonnie’s going to do the high spots.” She got a bottle of soda for Aunt Bonnie and headed back outside.
I tried to read. The twelve o’clock news came on. “Chérie? I’m just running out for turpentine,” Mom called.
The radio said, “A Claybury girl”—had they found her, so soon?—“is missing. Thirteen-year-old Wendy Boland, missing since five o’clock last night, was last seen near a neighborhood park. The girl, reported to be five feet tall, with long brown braids and blue eyes, was last seen at the same time that a neighbor observed a green station wagon in the area. Those with information are asked to contact the Claybury police.”
I sat staring at the illustration in The Saturdays. Mona, a character in the book, was thirteen, like Wendy Boland. I wondered who was taller: me or Wendy? I was five feet two, and it was four months before I would be thirteen. Suddenly I didn’t want to be.
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