Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

by Mary Downing Hahn

  Near Forever Amber, I find a copy of Marjorie Morningstar, the story of a teenage girl who wants to be an actress. It's pretty new and I'm surprised to see a used copy. I think it's still number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Everybody's reading it. Maybe it's here because the person who bought it didn't like it after all. Their loss, my gain.

  In the S's, I pick out the English edition of Bonjour Tristesse. It's supposed to be very romantic (in other words, it has lots of sex in it), and I'm pretty sure it's on the Index, but what do I care about the Index now? Or what the Church thinks? I'll read what I want to read, and I want to read this book because the author, Françoise Sagan, is French and about my age, which is amazing. I can't imagine writing a novel, let alone finding someone to publish it. The title means Hello, Sadness. Even I know that much French. It suits my mood perfectly.

  I decide I can buy both books and still have enough left for a cherry Coke at Walgreen's.

  The guy at the cash register looks like a beatnik. Pale and thin, longish hair, a beard, but handsome in a mysterious way. He's wearing a black T-shirt and black slacks. And sandals. I've never seen a boy wearing sandals. I'm kind of scared to talk to him, so I put my books on the counter and wait for him to look up from what he's reading.

  "Seventy cents," he says. His eyes are a brilliant shade of green.

  Still speechless in the presence of so much sophistication, I hand him a dollar and he counts out my change. While he's busy, I peek at the book he's reading. Poems: 1909–1925. It's an old book. I guess he found it here, among dozens of musty books in the poetry section. I can't quite make out the author's name.

  He catches me looking and turns the book toward me. "Have you read T. S. Eliot?"

  I shake my head slowly, aware of the sweat trickling down my spine and soaking my underarms. The name sounds familiar, maybe I've heard of him but I'm not sure. Feeling hopelessly stupid, I just stand there and wish I was smart and sophisticated and wore my hair long and straight and dressed in black and knew who T. S. Eliot was.

  He closes his eyes and recites poetry unlike anything I've ever read, dark and strange and unsettling. Hearing it, I want to do things with words I've never done. I want to know what the poem means, I want to read it myself.

  Suddenly he stops and opens his strange green eyes. "That's T. S. Eliot. The Wasteland."

  "It's neat," I say, blushing with embarrassment. Neat— is that the best word I can come up with?

  "Neat." He smiles. "Yeah, it's neat, all right."

  "I never heard poetry like that."

  He comes out from behind the counter and beckons me to follow him. He's tall and lanky and his T-shirt is slowly fading from black to green. I notice a few holes in it. I can see his white skin through them. His shaggy dark hair clings to the back of his neck. I wonder what Dad would say if he showed up at our front door. Nothing good, that's for sure.

  In the poetry section, he looks for T. S. Eliot's poetry. He has long slender fingers and his nails are short and jagged. He must bite them.

  "Nothing here," he says. "Too bad."

  He looks at me and turns back to the shelves. "How about Walt Whitman? Have you read him?"

  The name sounds familiar. "Didn't he write a poem about lilacs or something?"

  "That's him." He smiles and hands me an old paperback. "Leaves of Grass," he says.

  I look at the price. Thirty cents. If I buy it, I won't have enough left for a Coke. "I can't afford it."

  He leads me to the counter. "Put Marjorie Morningstar back. It's a crappy bestseller. Plus Wouk's a crappy writer. Don't ruin your mind with junk like that."

  I nod. Up until now I hadn't been sure I had a mind to ruin. "Okay."

  "And look, you get ten cents back." He slides a dime across the counter. "How old are you?"

  "Almost seventeen."

  "Still in high school."

  For the first time I wish I was older instead of shorter. "I'll be a senior this fall."

  He smiles again.

  "Do you go to Towson State?" I ask.

  "Towson State? Me?" He laughs like I've said something funny. "I'm home for the summer. I go to NYU."

  "What's that stand for?" I know I should know, but I ask anyway.

  "New York University."

  "You live in New York City?" I'm awestruck.

  "Yeah." He shrugs and studies me with those green eyes.

  "Have you ever been to Greenwich Village?" I ask.

  "Only almost every day. You been there?"

  I shake my head. "My friends and me—and I," I correct myself, "are going to Times Square on New Year's Eve when we're eighteen." And then I remember two of them are not going.

  He's grinning like I'm the funniest person he's ever met. "Times Square—God, that's as bad as reading Marjorie Morningstar" he tells me. "Go to the Village, find a coffeehouse, hear some beat poetry, try some reefer."

  "Reefer?" I don't know what he's talking about.

  He laughs. "On second thought, go to Times Square. Save the Village till you're older. Like twenty-one or something." He puts my books in a bag and hands it to me. "You're a gas," he says.

  I blush again. Is he complimenting me? Or insulting me?

  "Come back and tell me what you think of Whitman," he says as I turn to leave.

  "Okay." I trip over a pile of books and they tumble across the floor. I stoop to pick them up and Leaves of Grass falls out of the bag. The bookstore beatnik comes over and hands me my book. He's laughing.

  "I'll clean up the others," he says. "At the rate you're going, you'll destroy the whole store."

  "I'm sorry, I didn't see them. I—"

  "Don't apologize. The store's a booby trap." He looks at me with his electric eyes. "My name's Larry Brownstein, what's yours?"

  "Nora Cunningham."

  He nods. "Well, Nora, it was nice to meet you."

  "You, too." I back away, clutching my bag. "I'll see you later." As I walk down Center Road, I realize there's a whole world out there, places I haven't been, places I haven't heard of. There are books I haven't read, writers I don't know. Paintings, poems, plays, movies, music. Oddly excited, I don't notice the woods closing in around me, the stillness, the green shade. One more year of high school. And I'll be free.

  ***

  At Walgreen's, I sit at the counter and sip my Coke. I want to make it last so I can bask in air-conditioned comfort as long as possible and think about Larry. How long will it take me to grow enough hair to pull back in a ponytail? Do I dare to wear black clothes to school? How much does a train ticket to New York cost?

  "Nora, I haven't seen you all summer. Where've you been?"

  Startled out of my thoughts, I spin around and see Susan. She's with Julie Ferguson and Nancy Browne, girls I hung out with before Ellie and I became best friends.

  "We thought you'd gone away like Ellie," she goes on. "Somebody told me she was about to have a nervous breakdown because of what happened in the park and her parents sent her to stay with her aunt or something."

  "Did you know Buddy Novak joined the navy?" Julie asks. "My father says he can't believe the navy accepted him. God, he murdered two girls."

  "The police never charged him," I say.

  "Everyone knows he did it," Julie says. "My father's a policeman and he says if they find that gun Buddy's fingerprints will be all over it."

  "Somebody told me you and Ellie saw him on the bridge," Susan says. "He gave you a ride to school—you must've been really scared when you found out why he was there."

  I shrug. I don't want to talk about that day, I want to forget it, pretend I wasn't there, it didn't happen. Before anyone can say anything else, I ask J ulie where she got her lipstick. "I love that color."

  "It's Revlon," she says, "Cotton Candy Pink. They sell it here." She gestures at the makeup section.

  "We're going to the pool tomorrow," Susan says. "Do you want to go?"

  For some reason I say sure, yeah, I'd love to, when all I really wan
t to do is get away from them and go home and read Walt Whitman so I can go back to the bookstore and talk to Larry.

  Five Pines Swimming Pool

  Tuesday, July 31

  Nora

  SUSAN, Julie, and Nancy pick me up the next day. Mom is happier than I am. You'd think I was going to the senior prom or something. I tell her it's no big deal, but she keeps on smiling. My daughter will soon be her old self, she must be thinking. Normal. No need for a psychiatrist after all.

  I haven't been to the pool all summer and I look like it. My legs are as white as a fish's belly. My arms are almost as white as my legs, and my face has more freckles than suntan.

  If it had been a normal summer, Ellie and I would have lain out in our backyards building up a good burn in hopes we'd eventually turn tan. We'd have gone to the pool at least twice a week, bumming rides with Buddy and Cheryl or Paul and Charlie. I'd planned to practice diving. I wanted to learn flips. And I wanted to swim the length of the pool underwater and sit on the bottom and hold my breath for so long a cute lifeguard would dive in to rescue me.

  All that seems stupid now. In the little changing booth, I tug down my bathing suit, hoping to cover my rear end without revealing my breasts. I can never find a suit that fits right. I'm just too tall.

  "Hey, Nora, whatcha doing in there?" Julie calls.

  I push the curtain aside and follow her to the mirror. "You want to borrow this?" Julie holds out the tube of Revlon and I put some on.

  Next to her, I look so plain. Freckles and hair that needs cutting, a bump in my nose that I hate, long neck, collarbones that stick out like my skeleton is working its way out of my body. Julie is short and cute, dirty blond pixie haircut, tan, perfect figure. I like her black and white plaid bathing suit. It's elasticized cotton like mine, but it fits her the way mine doesn't fit me.

  Susan and Nancy are combing their hair. They both have bouncy ponytails.

  The three of them come up to my shoulder. Why do I have to be so tall? It's not fair.

  "Look what I've got." Nancy pulls a bottle of peroxide out of her purse. "We're going to bleach streaks in our hair. You want to do yours?"

  "I guess so."

  I follow them outside, taking care to step in the foot bath of disinfectant at the door. It's cloudy and sort of gray, like old dishwater. Is it for athlete's foot? Ringworm? Best not to wonder why it's there and what it's preventing—or not preventing.

  The noise of the pool slaps me, kids shouting and laughing, splashing water. The smell of chlorine and Coppertone. I see Ralph on the high dive, bouncing lightly, making sure everybody's looking. Sally the cheerleader is perched on the edge of the pool, looking up at him and smiling. She claps when he dives, a perfect jackknife.

  "Wow, did you see that?" Nancy asks. "God, he's so damn cute."

  While the others go on about Ralph's tan and his patch of blond peroxide hair and his build, I watch him sit down beside Sally and give her a kiss. She's wearing his ring on a chain around her neck again. I remember Buddy saying he was after one thing from Cheryl and I hope he didn't get it while they were down in the woods the night before, before ... Oh, how I hate him.

  Beside me, Nancy is opening the peroxide bottle. While we watch, she wets a cotton ball and dabs at the wave of hair dipping across her forehead.

  "How much do you put on?" Julie asks.

  Nancy shrugs. "I've never done it before." She wets the cotton ball and dabs more on her hair.

  "Don't put on too much," Susan warns. "It can turn your hair orange."

  Nancy holds out the bottle. "Who wants to try some?"

  Julie takes it. Instead of bothering with a cotton ball, she bends her head and pours it right on her hair. She's not out for one streak.

  Susan screams. "Are you nuts?"

  "My hair's almost blond anyway," Julie says. "It's only brunettes who turn orange."

  Susan reaches for the bottle. "Give me a cotton ball, Nancy. I just want to try a little. If it doesn't work, I can always put more on."

  While we watch, she touches her hair lightly, dabbing the peroxide on like it's iodine or something.

  "Here, Nora, you try."

  I take the little brown bottle from her and wet a cotton ball. I'm a little more daring than Susan but not quite as daring as Nancy—and certainly no way near as daring as Julie.

  "How long do you think it will take?" Julie asks.

  "I don't know." Nancy lies down on her towel and shuts her eyes. "We shouldn't go in the water right away. You know, the chlorine might do something to it."

  We lie in a row, feet toward the pool, eyes closed, and wait to see what happens.

  The pool's loudspeaker plays old songs. Nat King Cole sings "Nature Boy." Next it's "Mona Lisa." It must be Nat King Cole day at the pool.

  My mind drifts away on that soft, sweet voice to last summer. Ellie and me in the pool turning somersaults underwater, standing on our hands with our feet sticking out of the water, seeing who can sit on the bottom longest, trying to talk to each other underwater and then popping up, laughing. Did you understand what I said? Sure: Bubble bubble bubble.

  Cheryl and Buddy kissing underwater, Bobbi Jo flirting with the lifeguard—I told him I was sixteen and he believed it! He asked me for my phone number—do you think he'll really call me?

  Ellie and me diving off the low dive, trying to improve our style, getting in line for the high dive and jumping off, hitting the water feet first, daring each other to dive but both of us scared to try.

  It's like watching a movie in my head, a story that happened to some other girls in some other time and place.

  I roll over on my stomach and hide my face in my arms so nobody will see me cry. I want to go back to last summer, I want Cheryl and Bobbi Jo to be here. I don't want to be confused and scared anymore. I wish I were still a Catholic and believed in God and thought the world was a safe place and nothing bad happened to people you know. Only strangers in the newspaper got murdered and raped and died in car crashes and drowned when ships sank.

  That Nora, the one who went to Catholic retreats with Ellie, is gone, the one who went to confession and prayed to be forgiven for impure thoughts is gone, the one who believed she was unworthy to receive the body and blood of Christ, the one who wept over the hymn "Mother dear oh pray for me" and said the rosary and the Stations of the Cross and followed the Mass in her missal and gave up candy for Lent—she is gone and she will never come back.

  That Nora is as dead as Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. The bullets hit her, too. They hit Ellie. They hit Charlie. The bullets hit all the kids in Ellie's neighborhood, they hit mothers and fathers and little sisters and little brothers.

  They hit Buddy, too, maybe hardest of all, but nobody noticed, nobody cared.

  I lie there and watch an ant crawling through the blades of grass. Rosemary Clooney is singing "Come On-a My House." Another old song but a good one. I wonder what Buddy's doing and if he thinks of me. I hope he likes the navy. I hope he's made some friends.

  "God," Julie mutters, "why can't they play Elvis? Next it'll be Johnny Ray singing 'The Little White Cloud That Cried.' "

  Susan laughs. "Followed by Patty Page singing 'How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?' "

  But they're both wrong. It's Tennessee Ernie Ford singing "Sixteen Tons." We all groan. I think the pool should hire Gary to play his record collection.

  "Who wants to go swimming?" Nancy asks.

  The pool is packed with people, mostly little kids, screaming and splashing and ducking each other, cannonballing into the water. We jump in the deep end, where there aren't so many kids, and paddle around. We check each other's hair but don't see any blond streaks.

  While we're sitting on the edge of the pool, I see Ralph making out with Sally.

  The others see them too. Julie scowls at Sally. "Lucky duck," she says. "Wish I had a boyfriend like that."

  "I heard he was dating Cheryl on the sly," Susan says to me. "Is that true?"

  I shrug.


  "That's why Buddy killed her," Nancy says. "He was jealous."

  "Why did he kill Bobbi Jo, though?" Susan asked.

  "Because she was with Cheryl," Nancy says. "If she hadn't walked to school that day, she'd still be alive."

  "It's so sad," Julie says. "Poor Bobbi Jo."

  "That's right, isn't it?" Three pairs of eyes turn to me.

  I shrug again. Will they ever get tired of talking about it?

  "God," Julie says. "If you and Ellie had been with them, you'd be dead too."

  I'm saved from answering by Nancy's scream. "Oh my God, Julie—your hair."

  "What's wrong with it?" she asks.

  "It's green!"

  Julie gasps and jumps up. We follow her to the dressing room and peer over her shoulder at the mirror. "Oh, no." She starts to cry.

  "It's the chlorine," Susan says.

  "My parents will kill me."

  "I told you not to put so much on," Nancy says.

  "Stop crying, Julie," Susan says. "A beautician can fix it. My cousin did that to her hair once and she got it bleached or dyed or something and it looked fine."

  "Really?" Julie wipes her eyes and blows her nose.

  We get dressed and leave the pool. My hair has a blond streak, not green and not orange. It looks really good, I think. Natural. Nancy's is like mine but wider, more noticeable. Susan's doesn't even show. She must not have put enough on.

  "I hope Mom will give me the money to fix it," Julie says. "If she won't, I'll die."

  Nancy laughs. "You can always wear a grocery bag on your head, you know, with holes cut out for your eyes."

  "Oh, that's really funny." J ulie glares at Nancy. "I could die laughing."

  "Geez, what's wrong with you? Can't you take a joke?"

  The radio plays "The Great Pretender" and the others sing along. In the back seat with Julie, I look out the side window. We're in Elmgrove's oldest neighborhood; big Victorian houses three stories high line both sides of the street. Towers and cupolas and huge porches—or would they be called verandas? Tall oaks, shady yards, new cars with tail fins like rocket ships in the driveways, the sort of places lawyers and dentists call home.