Except for a wisecrack that Larry made about my former obsession with Winona Ryder, my interview with him was pretty dull. I lied and told him that Winona and I had struck up a very lively correspondence, which I hoped to publish someday in book form. He shook his head and laughed. Then I said stupid stuff I didn’t really mean about how proud we all were of him. I tried to look at his fake leg without being obvious about it, but he caught me looking and told me I could touch it if I wanted to.
“I’m what they call ‘baloney’ now,” he informed me.
“What?”
“Baloney. That’s what we’re called. Those of us without a leg b’low the knee. Get it? Below knee.”
I couldn’t laugh. I just stood there, slightly stunned while he laughed hard enough for both of us.
“Does it hurt?” I asked him.
“Like hell. But tell ya the truth, I got pills. Pills for everything. Pills t’ dull the pain. Pills t’ keep me from getting too bummed. Pills t’ do something for my kidneys. Pills t’ help me sleep. Sleep is tough, man. Sleep’s the worst.”
Suddenly I remembered the old days right after Dad ran off with Chrissie Bettinger. I slept over at Electra’s house, ate dinner there, watched movies on their big-screen TV; and sometimes Electra and I would make brownies and drink milk out of martini glasses. We painted our nails in matching colors, wrote letters to Winona Ryder, gave each other peanut butter facials. And eventually I would forget I had a home of my own. At the time, I loved that old house and Electra’s whole nutty family. They were always yelling at one another from separate rooms. They’d have whole conversations, calling from floor to floor, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Sometimes they’d laugh at me because my voice didn’t carry as well as theirs did and they always had to say, “What?” in a way that made everyone laugh out loud. Especially Larry. That guy could really laugh. Sometimes when Electra and I horsed around with him, he called us “crackheads.”
“You two are a coupla crackheads,” he’d say. “Yup, that’s what you are.”
That was our cue to crack our heads together, which made Larry lose it every time. Never failed. We could always make him laugh. Once we snuck into his room in the middle of the night and watched him sleeping. We sat there snapping our fingers louder, then louder, trying to see if he would wake up. He never did. We could have lit a fire in the room and it wouldn’t have disturbed him. He could really sleep, that guy.
“I’ve got to go.”
I wandered over to the food table, where I ate too many pickles. Then I happened to notice Carol Silva-Hernandez, the reporter from NEWS 5. You couldn’t miss her, with her shiny, dark-brown bob. She was carrying a microphone with a NEWS 5 logo on it and being followed around by a big burly guy and his camera. Together they were trying to interview random people about Larry, but from the looks of it, they kept striking out. Not one of the folks who were approached knew Larry for real. I mean from before he was a hero. They just stared with their mouths full of chips and shook their heads whenever Carol asked a question.
Finally she snagged Electra, who instantly lit up at the prospect of appearing on TV. Carol couldn’t believe her luck. As she fussed with her hairdo and straightened the synthetic fabric of her shell top, she practically screamed at her cameraman to “Roll tape! Roll tape!” And he did.
Carol didn’t look like much—just a short-waisted woman in her mid-whatevers with a tiny nose, big eyes, and better-than-average diction; but once that camera got rolling, she really came to life. Suddenly everything about her seemed broadcast quality—eyes, nose, teeth—and even her chintzy red, white, and blue pantsuit fell into place.
“I’m here in Neptune, New Jersey, talking with the proud sister of war hero Larry Wheeler. Electro … Shoot. Can we take that again, Gary? I’m here in Neptune, New Jersey, talking with Electra Wheeler, sister of recently returned roar hero. Shoot. One more time.”
She got it right eventually. She was a very determined lady, a professional all the way. But Electra wisely used the extra time to get her dreads under control, and I could see her trying to adopt a suitably humble expression for the camera. That’s when I got my big idea.
I strolled up to them, very cool, very self-assured, and politely said, “Excuse me. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Electra woke up from her humble little dream and stared at me—hard.
“I’m busy right now,” Electra said to me.
“Not you,” I replied, a little too coolly. “I want to talk to your reporter friend here.”
The silence was momentarily broken by the sound of an exploding firecracker out in the parking lot, which caused several neighborhood dogs to start yapping their heads off. Time seemed to stand still as Electra just turned away, leaving me standing there.
“So I’m wondering if you can do a story on my cousin, Leonard Pelkey,” I said to the reporter from NEWS 5. “Maybe you heard of him. He’s famous around here. Or was. He’s been missing for—”
“Phoebe!” Electra said, biting into the air in front of her. “This is so not the right moment, okay?”
That’s the exact thing about Electra that really bugs me the most. She thinks she knows just what sort of thing should happen and when. It’s as if she had received a manual in the mail that explains what is appropriate and what is not. Then she acts surprised as hell because apparently I didn’t get the manual or I got it and didn’t bother to read it. Of course, Rule Numero Uno in this manual is Now is not the right moment. Manual or no manual, I made up my mind that right then was the exact right moment, because when, I reasoned to myself, would I ever again be near a TV reporter? And besides, as Mrs. Rivera had said, it’s a free country.
“You have to do a story about my cousin. You have to.”
Carol smiled at me like I was a suicide bomber with a strong will to live. Maybe reporters for NEWS 5 are forced to attend classes in conflict resolution, because our gal-on-the-go took a deep breath and said, “Phoebe? May I call you Phoebe?”
I nodded noncommittally.
“How about you let us finish up here and then you and me, we can have a talk about your cousin. How’s that?”
She was smooth and, like I said, professional, but she didn’t fool me for a second. This was just a more professional way of saying, “This is not the right moment.”
The next thing that happened shocked me. I carpe diemed the moment and began screaming something like, “You people! You’re all proud of ol’ Larry here because he was off fighting evil in Iraq. But do any of you know what evil looks like? Evil is here—right here in Neptune, New Jersey!”
By this time, just about everyone within earshot was staring at me. I’m sure they thought I had flipped out. Maybe they thought I was premenstrual.
“I dunno what’s wrong with you, Phoebe,” Electra shouted, interrupting me. “Leonard’s just missing, that’s all. Nothing bad’s happened.”
I suddenly remembered Deirdre throwing lettuce at my father at the Fin & Claw, I remembered how Aunt Bet told her customers that our family problems amounted to basically nothing. And then it occurred to me that people like Electra and Aunt Bet just want things to add up to nothing, so they say it over and over and thereby make it nothing, when in fact it is definitely something.
I grabbed the pile of Leonard’s posters from my shoulder bag and threw them. The air exploded in a burst of yellow. It was a beautiful sight. To tell you the truth, after a day filled with so much red, white, and blue, all that yellow came as an enormous relief. But once the pages settled to the ground and Leonard’s face was staring up at us from all over the pavement, there was really nothing left to say. I had made my point. So I ran into the parking lot and as far away from everyone as I could get.
I tried to call Deirdre on my cell, but the illuminated readout informed me that I was out of range. This made me so mad, I screamed and threw my brand-new phone into the bushes with all my might. I was disgusted with myself, because then I had to go traipsing into
the bug-infested underbrush and crawl on my hands and knees to find the stupid thing.
“Is it later yet?”
I heard the voice before I recognized where it was coming from. His car was parked haphazardly, and waves of heat were rising from the hood. There he was—Travis—lying across the front end of his very dented, burgundy-colored Nissan Sentra, like a perfect desert mirage.
“What?” I said, making my way out of the woods. “Sorry. What’d you say?”
“The ride. You said maybe later. Is it later yet?”
“No,” I told him. “It’s now.”
“Get in,” he said.
ten
OVER BREAKFAST MOM informed me that our pal Chuck would be stopping by at two thirty, and she wanted me to be present. She actually said the word “present.”
“Present?” I said, repeating her.
I made my eyebrows rise as high as they would go, but she didn’t see them because she was busy dumping the last of her morning coffee down the drain.
“Yes,” she replied. “I want you here. Two thirty.”
Even though it was Monday, her day off, she acted as though she had a schedule.
“Deirdre, too?” I asked.
“No. Just you. And me.”
“Why not Deirdre?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because she doesn’t need to be here.”
Mom started going through her purse, doing her ritual inventory—keys, lip gloss, mascara, blush, shopping list, money, Advil. It was what she did when she got nervous.
“Who decided that?” I asked her.
“Who decided what?”
“Who decided me and not Deirdre?”
“Whaddaya mean?”
I waited for her to close her purse and look up at me so I could see the blank expression on her face; it was perfect.
“Did you decide this or did Chuck? Am I going to be interrogated? Am I a suspect?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He wants to talk with us.”
Us used to mean Deirdre, Mom, Dad, and me. Then Dad left us, and us meant the three people he left behind. For a while Leonard tried to become a part of us, but I think all parties have to agree to the deal if it’s going to work and that never happened, because mostly I was never up for it and Deirdre had resigned from us, including the us that was just her and me. Apparently us had been whittled down and somehow had become just Mom and me.
As Mom stood in front of the mirror, poking and prodding her hair into place, I thought I might tell her about what had happened between Travis and me the other night in his car out on Beach Road. I thought for a moment that a confession of this kind would solidify our usness and make us buddies; but every time I tried to imagine her reaction, all I could see in my mind was her face going white with anger. Wouldn’t she freak when she found out that the boy from the mall had kissed me hard on the mouth? She might even scream when I described how he had pressed his lips against my neck, waggled his tongue in my mouth, and jiggered his hand up inside my blouse. Of course there was always the possibility that she might just hear me out and do nothing other than make a small, strangled sound at the back of her throat and smile.
I decided if I told her, she would be bugging me for weeks, searching my face, my clothes, trying to figure out if I was still a virgin. She wouldn’t care about how softly Travis said my name into my ear, or how he found a way to climb smoothly on top of my thighs in that front seat, or how gently he slid his left hand down between my jeans and abdomen or how long he was able to keep his fingers positioned there without moving a knuckle. She would merely want to know if I’d said no to him and at what point.
“Deirdre! C’mon! Now!” Mom yelled up the stairs. Then she turned to me and without really seeing me, she said, “I’m driving Deirdre over to Mina’s for an overnight. Help me out and clean up a bit around here.”
Poor Deirdre. She didn’t have anyone kissing her in the front seat of a Nissan Sentra. She still didn’t have a car of her own, and there was no boyfriend in sight. She had passed up our father’s offer of a new car when she graduated and she had even turned down a possible date with several irresistibly gorgeous seniors. On both counts, everyone thought she was crazy or at least in a state of clinical depression. Meanwhile, she hadn’t been accepted into a single college, mostly due to the fact that she hadn’t applied. She kept meaning to, and her SAT scores were decent enough, but no one pushed her, no one insisted, and then suddenly it was too late and everyone began to talk glowingly about the community college as if it were a real institute of higher learning instead of a dumping ground for students with bad grades, out-of-date hairstyles, and lousy attitudes.
Anyway, that’s the reason I figured Mom didn’t want Deirdre at the meeting with Chuck that afternoon—her attitude. It was lousy. She also wouldn’t stop ragging everyone about Mr. Buddy being a possible suspect in the case of Leonard’s disappearance, and we had been down that road plenty. As it turned out, Chuck had interviewed both Mr. Buddy and Ms. D, and afterward he announced that they were both in the clear as far as he could tell. But Deirdre wasn’t convinced.
“Just you wait,” she kept saying.
Chuck stopped by at exactly two thirty, and by two forty the three of us were sitting in the living room sipping iced lemonade. Mom and I sat side by side on the couch. Chuck plopped down on the green chair opposite us. Because Chuck had placed his blue binder on the coffee table in front of us, I had a feeling that we were about to enter Phase Two of the investigation, and I was curious to find out what had brought us to that point on that particular afternoon.
He began by reporting that there had been no real news regarding Leonard’s whereabouts. And this, he told us, could be considered either good news or bad news depending on how we chose to look at it. For example, it was good news because a lack of evidence often meant the victim (in this case, Leonard) could still be alive and hanging out somewhere beneath the radar. The bad news was that the longer it took to locate a victim, the less likely it was that that person would ever be found.
Chuck pulled out a pile of papers from his black binder; and as he held them lightly in his big, rough hands, he made a short speech about Megan Nicole Kanka.
Megan Kanka grew up in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. She was only seven years old when a two-time sex offender with a history of child molestation invited her into his house to present her with a puppy. There was no puppy waiting for Megan. There was only rape. And death. Eighty-nine days after Megan disappeared, the state legislature of New Jersey passed a law in her honor. Megan’s Law still stands. It requires that community workers, teachers, parents, and neighbors be notified whenever a known sex offender decides to settle in a New Jersey neighborhood. There are now similar laws throughout the nation, though none are as strict as the one in my home state. Everywhere else, the sex offender has to register but no one is notified.
In the county where we live, there were sixty-three sex offenders listed on the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry at that time. All of them were men. Twenty-four had tattoos. Forty-five had prior offenses against women or girls; eighteen had been caught with boys younger than sixteen years of age.
A thin puddle of sweat had accumulated on the curl of Chuck’s upper lip, and his forehead was also pretty moist by the time he had finished his explanation. He took a swig of lemonade and then directed his gaze at me. He asked me if I understood.
I was, like, “Hello? This is the twenty-first century. I watch TV.”
Chuck seemed satisfied with my response, and so he continued.
“I’m going to show you some pictures of men in Monmouth County who have prior convictions for assaulting young boys. I want you to look at them and tell me if you’ve ever seen any of them. Arright?”
Mom and I nodded.
Chuck laid them out on the table one by one. They had the faces of carpenters, repairmen, delivery guys, the kind of men we saw every day of our lives all over the pl
ace but never really noticed. Each one of them was particular, with his own hairstyle and his own face. These were mug shots, so the subjects weren’t smiling at all and every one of them seemed to have the same deeply sad and utterly lost look in his eyes. You could almost feel sorry for them, the way you might feel sorry for a favorite uncle or cousin who had lost his shoes. They looked sorry for themselves. Each one had his own computer-generated page on which details were listed—age, weight, height, race, hair, and eye color. Information about the make and license plate number of the guy’s car was also included, along with his indentifying body marks and finally what he was accused of doing.
The crimes were described in a style curiously lacking in detail, as if someone had drawn a veil over the actual events.
* * *
After flipping through the pages one by one, my first thought was, Well, none of these guys ever actually killed a kid. Leonard could be alive somewhere. Violated, but still alive. Odd as that sounds, I found the thought encouraging.
Then another thought occurred to me. These were just the obvious few, the men who’d been caught. There must be hundreds of men driving around Monmouth County every day in their Sunbirds, Corollas, Blazers, Cherokees, Spectrums, Prizms, Luminas, looking for a victim. Hundreds of men who hadn’t yet been found out, photographed, and registered were probably still at large doing what they do. Where were their faces? How many pages of them would appear in Chuck’s database but only after being caught, accused, turned in?
Once, a few years ago, Deirdre and I passed a parked blue Chevy Malibu over on Oakland Street. A guy with a face like a fist was sitting low in the driver’s seat. His window was rolled down, and he looked as though he was struggling to open a bottle of something that he was holding in his lap. He called us over to help him. Deirdre got there first, and that’s when she realized it probably wasn’t a bottle of ketchup or whatever that he was struggling with. It was something more personal. Deirdre grabbed my arm and quickly pulled me away from the car. She made me promise not to tell Mom no matter what. At the time I was very disappointed, because I was on the lookout for the opportunity to see an actual penis. Just out of curiosity. Deirdre told me that if that had been my first experience of seeing a penis, I would have been scarred for life.
Absolute Brightness Page 11
