His brother doesn't return his smile. Head down, he looks at his plate, his shoulders hunched.
His mother goes to the kitchen for another glass of water. She fools no one, except perhaps herself. They all know what's in the glass. When she returns, she pushes her almost untouched plate aside and lights a cigarette.
He helps himself to a slice of meat loaf. His mother sips her drink and smokes. She has nothing to say, but then she seldom does. His brother finally looks at him across the table. He sees the relief in his face.
Dr. Horowitz
Saturday, July 14
Nora
WHEN I was little, I used to get carsick every time we took the trolley into Baltimore. The bus was even worse. But now that I'm older I'm pretty much over it if I always ride facing forward and don't try to read anything.
Mom and I don't have much to say. I'm still upset about her calling me self-centered and accusing me of feeling sorry for myself. And I'm not happy about going to see Dr. Horowitz. It's not like he and I are in the habit of chatting. He's the stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-ah sort of doctor. So what am I going to tell him? I'm scared of dying and at the same time I can't stop thinking about it. I can't sleep, I'm always tired, I'm unhappy, I'm lonely, I'm scared that I'm crazy. Look what happened when I tried to talk to a priest. I almost got sent to the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. I don't want to go through that again.
I decide I'll just tell him I can't sleep. A doctor can fix that with a prescription.
I glance at Mom. She's looking out the window at an old, rundown Baltimore neighborhood. I wonder what it's like to live in one of those sad little row houses, to spend your childhood climbing chain-link fences like two boys we pass. Nobody has a yard. There's broken glass everywhere. People sitting on their front steps look unhappy. The women have their hair in bobby pins. They wear shapeless housedresses like my grandmother wore. One has on socks and high heels. Every single one of them has a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. They don't even remove them to yell at their kids to get out of the street or leave the cat alone.
"That's where we'll end up someday," Mom says glumly. She's still in a bad mood.
"I thought we were heading for a tarpaper shack."
"Don't be sarcastic," she says. "Tarpaper shack, row house, what's the difference? Your father wastes most of his paycheck on liquor and gambling."
It's one of her favorite predictions. We won't be able to pay our bills because Daddy doesn't give her enough money. So it will be a tarpaper shack or a row house. I wonder what she'd say if I told her to stop feeling sorry for herself ?
She reaches up and pulls the cord to signal the driver our stop is next. By now we're on Howard Street. It's amazing how quickly neighborhoods in Baltimore change. One minute you're in a slum and the next you're walking past fancy department stores. The women here don't wear baggy housedresses or have bobby pins in their hair or cigarettes in their mouths. They're dressed for shopping—smart little suits, hats, and gloves. Their hair is waved. You can bet they aren't imagining tarpaper shacks in their futures.
Dr. Horowitz's office is in a big air-conditioned building on the corner, right across from Hutzler's. We take an elevator to the third floor. While we wait, Mom and I leaf through old issues of Time and Life. The office is full. The woman across from me has a horrible phlegmy cough that I hope isn't contagious. A baby keeps crying no matter what its mother does to comfort it. The baby's big sister whines and fusses and tugs at her mother's arm. The mother looks suicidal.
I count five adults and three children. It will be a long wait.
At last the nurse opens the door to the examining rooms and calls my name.
"Tell him exactly how you feel," Mom says.
"I'm surprised you didn't write a list for me," I say in a voice too low for her to hear. I love my mother, I really do, but when she's in this kind of mood, I can't stand her. One more year until I graduate. Maybe I won't go to college, maybe I'll join the Waves and go to sea like Buddy. Get away from Mom and Dad and Billy and Elmgrove. There's a big wide world out there.
First the nurse weighs me. Jean's been working here as long as I can remember, but she always looks exactly the same. Tight perm, uniform so starched it crackles, glasses, not many smiles.
The scale tells me Mom's right. I've lost almost ten pounds since June. No wonder my skirt feels loose around the waist.
"One hundred and fifteen," Jean says. "Not much for a girl who's five feet ten inches tall."
I shrug. "It's summer. I never eat much when it's hot."
"Well, gain some weight," she says. "You haven't got any reserve. If you get really sick, you'll waste away in no time."
Is she joking? Or trying to scare me? As usual, her face gives nothing away. I decide she thinks I have leukemia. Six months to live. And then off to New Cathedral Cemetery. Nobody would care. Nobody would bother to come to my funeral. After Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, my death would be anticlimactic. Come to think of it, my whole life is anticlimactic.
Dr. Horowitz comes in and tells me to take a seat. He sits across from me. He wears a stethoscope where most men wear ties. "How are you, Nora?"
I shrug. "Okay."
He looks at me. "That's not what your mother says." He steeples his fingers. I've read that's a power position. I consider steepling mine. But I don't.
"She told me you're depressed about your friends' deaths, you're not sleeping or eating well, you lie around the house all day reading."
"I like to read."
"It's not the reading that worries me," he says.
I want to say it doesn't worry me either, but I shrug and study the floor, octagonal-shaped tiles, endlessly repeating patterns in black and white.
Dr. Horowitz starts talking about how difficult it is to accept death, especially when it's violent and unexpected. "It throws you off-course," he says. "It makes you question everything. Big questions, such as the nature of good and evil, the meaning of life, God's power." He pauses and looks at me over his steepled fingers.
Here is the church, I find myself thinking, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.
"Are you afraid of dying?" Dr. Horowitz asks. "Is that why you can't sleep at night?"
Startled, I look him in the eye for the first time. Is it possible he understands what's going on in my head? I nod. "Why did they die instead of me?" I start to cry before I finish asking the question.
"I don't think anyone can answer that," he says gently. "Through no fault of their own, those girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time. You weren't."
"But I can't stop thinking about it. I feel like I'm crazy. I worry about dying, I worry about my mother or my father dying, I worry about my friend Ellie dying. I used to read about murder in the paper but I never knew anyone who was murdered. Until now." Once I've started talking, I can't stop. "I think about the killer and I wonder who he is and if he'll ever be caught. How can he live with what he did? How can he go on day after day without killing himself ?"
"You don't think the ex-boyfriend did it?"
"No." I take the tissue he offers me, I blow my nose, wipe my eyes. "I'm sure he didn't."
"That poor boy," he says. "You might be the only person in Elmgrove who thinks he's innocent."
"Yeah." I blow my nose again, and Dr. Horowitz pushes the tissue box across the desk toward me.
"Have you talked to a priest?"
I nod.
"Was he any help?"
"I don't believe in God anymore." As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn't. Is it normal for a sixteen-year-old girl not to believe in God?
He raises his eyebrows as if I've surprised him.
"Don't tell my mother." I lean across the desk. "Please, don't. She'll get so mad."
He peers at me over his steepled fingers. "Whatever you tell me doesn't leave this office."
Just like a priest, I think. Even if you confess to murder, the priest can't break his vow of secrecy and tell anyone.
&
nbsp; I sit back and smooth my skirt. It's full and tan and printed with small pink flowers. My crinoline puffs it out just right. Next to the ruined purple skirt, it's my favorite. Despite the air conditioning, I feel sweat trickling down my back and soaking my underarms.
"Do you think it might help to talk to a psychiatrist?"
Shocked, I stare at Dr. Horowitz. He thinks I'm crazy. Crazy. Maybe he's planning to send me to Spring Grove in a straitjacket. I'll spend the rest of my life in a padded cell with barred windows.
"No," I whisper. "No. I'm not crazy." Please don't let me be crazy, please don't let people think I'm crazy, please let me be like everybody else ... Why am I praying? Who am I praying to?
"Seeing a psychiatrist doesn't mean you're crazy," Dr. Horowitz says. "Sometimes talking to someone can help you straighten things out."
I start to stand up, thinking I might leave now, but he motions me to stay seated.
"How about something to help you sleep, then?"
I nod.
He busies himself writing a prescription. "Try to eat more. You're too thin. And promise to get out of the house. Go to the library, take a walk, call some people and make plans to go to the swimming pool or a movie. It's not good for you to spend so much time alone."
He hands me the prescription. "Your job right now is to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Trust me, things will get better. Don't worry about God or death or the meaning of life. Just get through each day the best you can."
He smiles at me. I smile back. He doesn't act like he thinks I'm crazy, so maybe, just maybe, I'm not.
He walks me to the door and gestures to Mom to join us. "Nora's going to be fine," he says. "Be patient with her. She's been through a lot."
Dr. Horowitz shakes her hand and then mine. "Try to enjoy the rest of the summer," he tells me.
Ha, I think.
Mom and I step out into the heat of the August day. The ladies in their little suits and hats and gloves look wilted as they trudge along in their high heels and nylons, toting shopping bags from Hutzler's, Hochschild-Kohn, and Stewart's.
"Did you have a good talk with Dr. Horowitz?" she asks.
I nod, but I don't mention the psychiatrist. I know how she'd react to that. Only crazy people need psychiatrists, she'd say, and then she'd get all upset and start thinking that the psychiatrist would blame her for all my problems. I don't tell her about the prescription either. I'll give it to her on the way home and we'll stop at Walgreen's.
We have lunch at Miller's, crab cakes and cole slaw and iced tea, with a hot fudge sundae for dessert. I actually enjoy eating. But I'm still anxious. And worried.
Mom cheers up and acts more like her better self. We stop at Hutzler's to check out the summer sales. She buys me a new pair of moccasins and two Ship and Shore sleeveless blouses. One has a sailor collar and a little navy blue tie. It's white and the other is pink, a good match for the skirt I'm wearing.
I fall asleep on the trolley. Just before we reach our stop, I wake up with my head on Mom's shoulder. I hope I didn't drool.
As we walk home, I think about the prescription folded up tight in my wallet. Suppose one night I took all of the sleeping pills, just did it, an impulse or something. I'd be dead by the next morning. No more worries. No more fear. No more misery. So easy—so, so easy.
I glance at Mom, walking along beside me, talking about the flowers in a yard we're passing. "Aren't they pretty, why can't my daisies look like that, and those marigolds and zinnias, not a droopy one in the whole bunch, she must weed and water every day." Blah blah blah—she's talking about flowers while I'm thinking about dying.
She'd be the one to find me. I can't let myself do that to her. Tiptoe past the medicine cabinet like the little moron, don't wake the sleeping pills.
I decide to throw away the prescription. I don't dare keep those pills in the house.
Not that I want to kill myself. Not that I really think I will kill myself. It's just one more thing to be scared of.
That night, I go up to my room to escape my family. Mom's mad at Dad and she's out in the kitchen, slamming cupboard doors. He's sitting in the living room drinking beer and watching Gunsmoke. He loves Miss Kitty. My brother is mad because I won't play checkers with him. They are driving me crazy.
I listen to the radio for a while, but all the songs remind me of how things used to be. After a while, I start writing a long letter to Ellie. I tell her about seeing the priest and what he said and how I've decided not to be a Catholic anymore.
I know she's more religious than I am, but who knows, maybe she's lost her faith too.
It's three pages long, and I end it by saying Please write soon. I miss you.
On Monday, the mailman delivers a postcard from Charlie, the first one he's sent. Hi, Long Tall Sally, he writes,
Ocean City is GREAT. Having a swell time. I got so sunburned my nose almost peeled off but I'm pretty tan now. I burned my hand getting a pizza out of the oven and had to miss work for a couple of days (tough break, huh!) but it's healed up now. Wish you were here. Your friend Charlie.
It's a good thing I wasn't expecting a love letter.
Ocean City
Saturday, July 21
Charlie
PAUL and I are staying in a room above his uncle's pizza carryout. At night the neon lights on the boardwalk shine in the window. The colors chase each other across the wall, reds and yellows, greens and blues. It's like living in a Wurlitzer jukebox. I thought it would keep me awake, but after the first or second night I was too tired to notice.
We work from eleven a.m. to ten p.m., selling pizza to pretty girls and other less interesting people. If the girls don't have dates, we flirt with them. Sometimes we get lucky and they meet us after work. I made out with a cute girl from Pikesville two nights in a row, but she and her family went home yesterday. That's the bad part about Ocean City. Girls our age are with their families and they only stay a week or two, so just when you're getting somewhere, they leave.
The waitresses at the hotels are in college and they aren't interested in Paul and me. Just as well—they all wear those plaid Bermuda shorts. I hope they go out of style soon. Lots of college guys wear them, but Paul and I are not about to buy a pair.
Except for the girls and the beach and the boardwalk, the best part about being here is that nobody ever talks about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. For the first time since they died, I don't think about them every minute of every day. Not that I've forgotten them. Sometimes late at night Paul and I sit on the beach in the dark, drinking beer and watching the waves roll in. We talk about them in low voices, so low we can hardly hear each other over the noise of the surf. We look out into the dark. Sometimes we can see the lights of a ship way out to sea and we wonder if when we graduate next year we could get jobs on a freighter and sail around the world, what would that be like, what kind of things are out there, people and places and stuff we've never seen. Other nights there's so much mist you can hardly see the stars. It seems like there's no sky, just ocean lit by foam when waves crash, going on forever and ever, sea without end, amen.
Sometimes we wonder about heaven—where it is, how big it is, what it's like, is it really there and if it is can Cheryl and Bobbi Jo look down and see Paul and me sitting here, missing them, remembering the stuff we did together.
My thoughts might drift to Nora then. Long Tall Sally and me out at the reservoir drinking beer and making out and how she let me touch her breasts, and then I miss her and wish she was here on the beach and maybe we'd take our clothes off and skinny-dip.
Maybe I should call a Baltimore radio station and dedicate "Long Tall Sally" to Nora like I used to, but she's so far away now, and I don't want to think of her because then I think of Cheryl and Bobbi Jo and I'm in the park again and I see the cop cars and the ambulances and I see them lifting a stretcher and there's somebody on it covered with a blanket and I know it's either Cheryl or Bobbi Jo and I run, I run with Paul and Gary back the way we came, w
e're cussing and crying and yelling and we see Nora and Ellie and they're standing like statues, pale as stone, clinging to each other, and we shout "They're dead, they're dead, they're both dead," and I want to grab Nora and run away with her deep into the woods and hold her tight and never let her go but she and Ellie are turning away and running in the other direction and they won't stop, not even when we call them. And I glimpse Buddy's car passing Bobbi Jo's house, the goddamn son of a bitch murdering bastard, and I want to kill him like he killed them and that scares the shit out of me.
But sometimes I remember Nora saying maybe Buddy didn't do it and I think, What if she's right? What if it was somebody else? And I wonder how I'd feel if I was Buddy and everybody hated me for something I didn't do. The poor bastard. No wonder he joined the navy.
I never mention this to Paul because he'd get mad and call me a dumbass jerk. Let him think what he wants about Buddy—me, I'm not so sure anymore.
So we've been here five weeks and all I've sent Nora is one stupid postcard. She must think I hate her, which I definitely do not—I really really like her, but I just can't think about her right now.
Anyway, there's this cute girl staying with her family at the Beach Plaza and Paul and I are meeting her and her friend at the arcade Tuesday afternoon, our one day off. Paul's uncle promised to loan us his car so we can go to Junior's for shakes and burgers and then head out to the Shore Drive-In, where we might get lucky. The girls are from Pennsylvania and you can bet they've never heard of Cheryl and Bobbi Jo.
Ellie's Diary
Saturday, July 21
Dear Diary,
I owe Nora a letter, but I don't know what to say. She wrote me she can't imagine going to Our Lady of Mercy because she doesn't want to be a Catholic anymore. She has a bunch of reasons, mostly having to do with what happened to Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, but I can't understand it. Doesn't she realize she's damning herself to hell? How can she throw away the only true religion? Is she going to be a Baptist or a Methodist or something really strange like a Unitarian or a Quaker? Or does she mean she doesn't believe in God at all? I've actually been praying for her to realize how wrong she is, but I can't tell her that—she'd be mad probably. What would I do without Jesus and Mary and all the saints? How could I get over what happened without them?
Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls Page 17
