by Mary Campisi
“They can’t make you do that,” Nina says, and then, “can they?”
She is so naive sometimes. “Did you try talking to them?” I ask.
“There is no talking. There is only telling.”
“Oh, so your house is just like the rest of ours.” Nina lets out a small laugh, but it falls flat between us.
“I’ve always done everything they asked, but this…” Conchetta’s fingers slip from my arm.
“We’ve got two more years until graduation,” I say, “that’s a lot of time.” If I had to stay in Norwood I would be choosing weapons of self-destruction. Frank’s hunting knife? His razor blade? The gun he keeps hidden in his sock drawer? Maybe I would gas myself in the ’57 Chevy.
“We’ll help you,” Nina says, and I wonder how she plans to fight the Andolotti mob. “Sara and I will come up with a plan. I mean, nobody can force you to do something you don’t want to do. Hell, sorry for swearing Conchetta, it’s almost child abuse, isn’t it? Anyway, you’ll be on your own in two years. You can just leave, that’s what Sara and I plan to do.”
“I don’t know how—”
“You gotta stop thinking about your parents all the time and what they want for you. Do you want to be as screwed up as they are, because I’m sorry but any parent who tells their kid they have to give up her dreams to babysit an aunt is sick.”
“But how—”
“Don’t worry”—Nina is on a roll now—“we’ve got a lot of time to figure it out. Sara and I are experts at figuring ways out of here.”
And that’s how Conchetta Louise Andolotti becomes our friend. But now that she’s our friend, we can’t ignore certain things like the bushiness of her eyebrows that we know is the source of cafeteria jokes, or the dark hair on her legs and upper lip that gets her the name Groucho. Friends help friends, right? So, Nina and I buy a razor and a hair removal kit from the A&P and when Frank’s at work and Kay’s at her friend, Tracy’s, we sneak Conchetta into my bathroom and start the makeover. When we’re finished, she runs her fingers along her newly shaven legs, mindless of the four Band-Aid spots on her knees and the smile that spreads over her face is brighter than a burst of Juicy Fruit. Before she leaves, we remove the rosary hanging around her neck and hand her three packs of Dentyne. Friends help friends, right?
Chapter 9
She should have been home by now. How long does it take to get a cheese dog from Benny’s? I should have known by the way she dangled Peter’s name in my face that she’d want more than two tank tops. Well, let Frank find out she’s missed her curfew. I don’t care, damn her.
“Sara!”
The screen door flies open and Frank stumbles into the kitchen, drink sloshing over the sides of his glass. I paste a smile on my face and turn.
He falls into his chair, face flushed and sweaty. “Whew, it’s damn hot out there.” He filches a pack of Camel’s from his shirt pocket, taps one out, and shoves it between his lips. He strikes the front of a Zippo with his thumb and a blue and yellow flame shoots up. The cigarette glows bright, brighter, until the tip of it burns orange. “You gonna smoke when you get older, Sara?” His eyes are half-closed, his lips half-open.
“No.”
“Good.” Pause. “Drink?”
“No.”
His laugh is thin, weightless as it fills the room. “So, you’re not going to drink, not even a little now and then?”
I shrug. “Probably not.” If I can get him to bed, I can sit on the front porch and wait for Kay.
“Good.” His head dips, nods, and his chin tucks in like a second grader learning how to do a somersault. Just when I think he is dozing off, his head shoots up, his eyes more bloodshot than gray. “My old man was a drinker. Did I ever tell you that?”
“You told me.”
“He was a bastard.”
Like father like son.
“Where’s your sister?”
“She’s in bed,” I say.
“Where did she go tonight?”
“Benny’s. She wanted to get a hot dog.”
He blows out a thin line of smoke. “We don’t have hot dogs here?”
I look away. “She wanted to get out for a little while.”
“Hmmph.” He shakes his head. “That girl always wants to run. Not like you.”
Right. Not like me. “She just wants to see her friends.” Why am I defending her? I am so twisted. I hear the front door squeak open.
“What the hell’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Look at me, a liar and an actor. “I’ll go see.” I hurry out of the kitchen and there is Kay, sandals in hand, wobbling toward the stairs.
“Sara? Somebody there?”
Kay freezes, her eyes locked on mine. “It’s just the wind, I guess.” I make a quick motion with my hand, mouth Go, then I am moving past her, pulling the screen door shut, all the while trying to understand what I have just seen. And then it hits me. My sister is drunk.
***
“What are you doing?” Kay’s lifeless form sprawls across the bed. “Hey.” I shake her shoulder. “Wake up.”
She inches one eye open, closes it again. “Go away.”
I grab her shoulder and hip, force her over. “Start talking. Now.”
“What?” she hisses, pushing the hair out of her eyes. “So, I’m a little late. So what?” She snatches her pillow, folds it in half and props her head on it.
“You’re drunk.”
She turns her head and her hair falls over her face again so I can’t see her expression. “Leave me alone.”
I yank a chunk of hair from her face. “What’s wrong with you? Do you want to end up like him?”
She shrugs. “Everybody who takes a drink doesn’t end up like him.”
“You’re thirteen.”
“And a half. Thirteen and a half.”
“Where did you get it?” I bet Rudy Minnoni is behind this.
Kay flops onto her back and lets out a chuckle that turns into a hiccough. “It was just a beer. One. A Bud.” She smacks her lips, lets out another little chuckle. “And I liked it.”
“Who gave it to you?” When she doesn’t answer I snatch her purse from the edge of the bed. It’s the satchel type, big and bulky, the kind that can hold a lot. Even a beer.
“Hey!” She tries to push herself off the bed, falls back. “Leave that alone!”
I yank open the drawstring, flip the bag over, and dump the contents on the bed—wallet, comb, lipstick, pack of Wrigley’s, pocket-size calendar and a small plastic bag with two black capsules in it.
“That’s mine!” She lunges at me, misses and lands stomach first on the edge of the bed.
“Stop it, Kay! Right now.” I stare at the black capsules through the clear plastic.
“They’re not mine. I’m just holding them for somebody.”
I sink onto the bed, balling the baggie in my fist. “Who gave these to you?”
She flings the hair out of her eyes, pushes up on her elbows, and fixes her gaze on my stomach. “I told you, I’m holding—”
“Cut it out. Either you tell me or I swear to God, I’ll tell him right now.”
Her head jerks up. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“And what about you? I’ll tell.”
“Fine. I’ll tell him I’ve been seeing Peter and you tell him you’ve been drinking and doing drugs. Let’s go.” I stand up and head for the door. When she doesn’t say anything, I grip the knob and turn.
“Okay. Okay,” she says again, rubbing her fingers over her face. She looks so young in her blue shorts and my red tank top. Like an Ivory girl.
“So talk.” I am suddenly tired, no, suddenly exhausted.
“It just kind of happened. Tracy and I were walking around uptown and we ended up at the A&P, and there were a bunch of guys there”— she shoots a quick glance at me, then looks away. “And they asked us if we wanted to go cruising, and we said okay, so we did. Nothing happened then, just driving.” Her
gaze inches back toward me. “Then we ended up back at the A&P and Rudy Minnoni asked us if we wanted a drink. And we said yes.”
I knew that scumbag was behind this! “Stay away from him, do you understand? If he’s walking toward you on the street, you cross to the other side.”
Kay nods, her earlier bravado fading with each word. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes rim with tears. “Shit. Shit, shit.” She crumbles against the worn smoothness of the bedspread. “How can you stand it? Don’t you just want to do something to take away the pain?”
I stroke her hair from her face, speak in my gentlest voice. “Sometimes, but that would only make everything so much worse.”
“Why did she have to die?”
What kind of answers can I give her when I have none? “I don’t know.”
“Mothers aren’t supposed to die when their kids are only thirteen.”
Her face is wet, her eyes red. She is so right. “We have to stick together, Kay. You and me. We have to do this for Mom.”
“What about him?”
“He can’t get to you if you don’t let him. You have to pretend around him, like everything’s fine and don’t do anything to get him annoyed.”
“Like breathing?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m supposed to do that for five more years? I’ll go nuts.” She squeezes her eyes shut but fresh tears leak through.
“Things happen all the time, you don’t know if it’ll be that long.” My voice softens, “Who would have thought Mom wouldn’t be here for Christmas?”
“I miss her so much.” Kay sniffs, swipes at her nose.
“Me, too,” and then, “I have an idea that might help. It’s what I do when I need to feel close to Mom.”
“What?” She looks up at me, hopeful.
“I go in the backyard by her roses, and I talk to her, like she’s standing right there.”
“That’s weird.”
“It works. I don’t know how, but it calms me down.” I hold her gaze, will her to believe this. “I swear Kay, she’s there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She is, I tell myself.
“How come I haven’t seen you back there?”
I shrug. “Mostly I go at night.”
“Does it have to be at night?”
”No, you can go anytime.”
This seems to make her happy. “You really think she can hear?”
“I do.”
“And you tell her anything?”
“Anything that’s on my mind.”
“You tell her about Peter?”
“Yeah.”
“You tell her about Dad and the knife?”
“That, too.”
A small smile works over Kay’s face. She is fragile, yet there is a spark of hope in her eyes. “Okay, I’ll try it.”
“Good.”
“Promise you won’t sneak around and try to listen.”
She’s the one who is already trying to figure out a way to eavesdrop on me. Kay loves secrets, but I’m safe because she’s afraid of the backyard at night. “I promise.”
Kay lays her head on the bedspread and closes her eyes. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” I ease off the bed and am ready to pull the afghan over her when I realize I’m still clutching the baggie of pills. “Kay,” I say in a half whisper, “did Rudy Minnoni give you the pills, too?”
“No. I got those from Michael Donnelly.”
Chapter 10
Why do bad things always happen at night? My grandmother Josephine had a heart attack and died at two in the morning the year I turned eleven. Jester, our German Shepherd was totaled by a station wagon just after sunset two years later.
I love the night. And I hate it.
I’ve got to talk to Peter. I wait for night to slide into morning and Frank’s truck to pull out of the drive. Then I am up, throwing on a shirt and shorts and running downstairs. My stomach is jumpy and I fix a bowl of Cheerios with milk to calm it. Four bites later I puke up Cheerios and slime on the kitchen floor. When I see it, I puke again until the yellow comes. There is no one here to put an arm around me and help me to bed, no one to clean up the yellow-Cheerio puke pooling on the linoleum floor.
Peter says life is like a poker game—you play the cards you’re dealt, even up. My cards say I am the one who has to tell him about his little brother. I used to think if you didn’t like your hand, you just got a different deck, but now I see the truth of it. You have to play what you get, sometimes an ace, sometimes a deuce, sometimes both. One hand you get a full house, your mother’s buying you an Easter dress with white patent leather shoes and a white straw hat with a wide pink ribbon and your dad’s taking pictures of you, your mom and your sister by his ’57 Chevy. Everyone is smiling. And the next hand, your mother is dead and you’re huddled in the back of a closet while your father hunts you down with a knife because you overcooked his steak. And you feel responsible, somehow, even though he was the one chasing you with a knife, even though you are the child.
When my stomach settles, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and clean up the Cheerio-puke. Then I leave to find Peter. I am going to his house, even though it is understood that neither of us would do this. We don’t talk about family, not about Michael, who’s in the eighth grade, or Peter Sr., whose picture I saw in the paper again last week, this time for joining the Rotary Club. And we never talk about his mother, Suzanne, or the horrible rumor I overhead Mrs. Archinove telling her neighbor after Mass last Saturday. She said it happened at the A&P and the manager got involved, but I don’t want to know if it’s the truth. Worse, I don’t want Peter to lie and tell me it isn’t if it really is.
The white house at five twenty-three Cranberry Street is massive with half-columns and a wraparound front porch. I count five roof peaks, covered in black and gray shingles that sparkle in the sunlight. There are curtains in all the windows, a pale cream, drawn tight, to keep out the sun and intruders. A pair of granite lions sit on either side of the brick front steps, mouths open in snarling superiority. Hanging ferns sway in the late morning breeze reminding me of a picture I’ve seen in Better Homes & Gardens of a house in Georgia. There is a woman in the picture, wearing a broad-brimmed, straw hat with a pale pink scarf tied in the middle that matches her sundress. She’s admiring her shrubbery. Does Suzanne Donnelly ever do that, being from Georgia and all?
Green hugs the sides of the house, fancy shaved fat bushes with crew cuts, miniature evergreens spiraling to a peak, holly bushes, and boxwoods. Everything is green—moss green, pine green, forest green, evergreen green. There are no flowers, no buds stretching for the sunlight, packed tight with color. I think of my mother’s rosebushes, reds and yellows, bursting with brightness, pinks hanging back like a junior high school girl at her first dance.
I pause, one hand near the doorbell, hoping Peter will understand why I’ve breached the invisible barriers he’s erected around his home. It is during these milliseconds of doubt that the white door with the brass lion knocker flies open and a woman, dressed in a pale melon chiffon concoction that floats to the edges of matching sandals, stares back at me. “Well, well, well, what have we here?”
Suzanne Donnelly. Her sandy blond curls, Peter’s curls, are piled on top of her head, held in place with white combs and black bobby pins, loose strands tickling her neck. Her eyes, which at one time must have been the same turquoise-blue as Peter’s, have faded to the washed-out paleness of a robin’s egg. The frosted blue eye shadow on her lids is clumped and uneven.
“Who might you be?” She smiles, her lips painted with orange-melon lipstick, smudged in one corner, leaving a faint trace of melon on her left cheek. When she speaks, she clings to her syllables, dragging them out like a lazy melody.
“I’m Peter’s… friend.” I'm Peter’s girlfriend. Why didn’t I say that?
“Peter’s friend?” Suzanne Donnelly cocks her head to one side, narrows her faded blue eyes and gives me a knowing half-smile. She
steps back to let me enter, teetering ever so slightly on her high-heeled sandals. “Damn shoes,” she mumbles under her breath. “Come in, Peter’s friend.” As she sweeps her hand, a glitter of diamonds arc the air.
It is then, as I follow the diamonds clustering her fingers that I catch sight of the half-empty glass on the sitting room table. It is a wine glass, slender, with a delicate crisscross pattern. Next to it, is a matching decanter, filled halfway with a dark, maroon liquid.
Peter’s mother runs her tongue over her melon lips, pats a few curls in place and motions toward the sitting room. “Would you like something to drink? A lemonade, perhaps?” she says when she sees me looking at the decanter. Her words are a rushed jumble now. “I like lemonade the best.” She takes a seat on a cream-colored sofa and smoothes her dress. “My daddy used to say, ‘There’s nothin’ better than a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade to put the zip back in your step.’”
“Sure. Thank you,” I say, wondering if the maroon liquid on the table puts a zip back in her step, too. I sit on a matching high-backed chair and fold my hands in my lap.
“Be back in a jiff.” She rises, sways to the left, rights herself and flashes me a quick smile. “Heels can be so bothersome sometimes, can’t they?” She doesn’t wait for my reply but leans on the edge of the sofa, lifts her left leg and yanks off a sandal. “Damn nuisance.”
“Mother!”
Suzanne Donnelly whips around to find Peter standing in the foyer, his handsome face a mix of horror and pain. “Oh, Petey,” she coos, hobbling over to him, one shoe on, one shoe off. “I was just about to serve refreshments. Look who came to see you.” She points a melon nail at me. “Your friend.”
Oh, God.
“What are you doing here?”
I try to slide further back in the chair. “I had to talk to you.” The words fall apart before I finish the sentence. I wish the floor would open up, suck me through the carpeting, the basement, the dirt, down, down, gone.
He stares at me, his blue eyes unreadable. Then he turns to his mother and says in a soft voice, “Why don’t you go lie down, Mother? I’ll help you upstairs.”
“But your friend? The lemonade?” She lifts her head to meet her son’s gaze, a bewildered expression on her face.
