by Mary Campisi
“I know.”
“By the time I got home, it would be four o’clock. That’s just too damn late.”
“It’s okay.”
He looks up at me then, his silver eyes bright. “It’s not like I’m not going to pay Peck to teach you. She charges three fifty a shot.”
“Thank you.”
“Ten times on the road, that’s thirty-five dollars.”
“I appreciate it.”
He scratches his head. “That’s not even counting car insurance.” His fingers move down to the stubble on the side of his cheek. “I’d sure as hell save a lot of money if I made you wait until you’re twenty.”
He is going to change his mind. I look away. Why can’t just one thing go right for me?
“Sara?”
“Yes?” I drag my gaze to his, narrowing my eyes so he won’t see the tears.
“What the hell. Peck will be a good teacher.”
“Thank you,” I say. And mean it.
He smiles then, and his voice is rough. “You get that license and we’ll take this baby out.” He pats the hood of the Chevy. “I’ll let you drive, too.”
“That would be great.”
“Peck can show you the road and teach you the basics, but I’ll give you the lessons people forget, the simple ones that can cost your life.” He waits for me to nod, then goes on, “Take something as simple as a car in a garage. No big deal, right? Right. Unless, the car is on and the garage door is closed.” He picks up his glass, takes a quick swig. “Then what happens?”
“You get carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“You die,” he corrects. “When you say it the way you do, it sounds like all you have to do is take a pill or get to an emergency room and you’ll be fine.” He waves a beefy finger at me. “The truth is, you die. Too late for the hospital. By the time somebody finds you, you’re dead.”
“That’s horrible.”
He shrugs. “If you don’t mean to do it, it is. But some people want to die that way. They go to sleep and then they’re dead.”
How can he talk about people killing themselves as though it were acceptable, even natural? “I’m sorry, I still think it’s horrible,” I say.
“It’s only horrible if you don’t mean to do it and it happens by mistake. But for the ones who want to be done, it’s peaceful, like falling asleep, except you wake up in a different place.” A faint smile hovers on his lips. “For those people it’s the living that’s a bitch, not the dying. And the horrible thing for these poor sons of bitches is when some do-gooder shuts off the engine and opens the door, thinking he’s trying to save a life when all he’s doing is prolonging a death.”
“What if they just think it’s what they want but it really isn’t?”
“There are too many people walking around dead for me to believe that. If I were in that car,” he says, pointing to the Chevy beside him, “with the engine running and the garage door closed, I’d damn well know what I was doing. And nobody, not Jesus Christ himself, better try to stop me.”
“You’re not… you wouldn’t…”
“Me?” His eyes glitter, dark shards of steel, boring into me. “Nah, not me.” He shakes his head, laughs, takes another swig of Cutty Sark. “All I’m saying is life’s a bitch and then you die, one way or another.”
***
Ms. Evelyn ‘Peck’ O’Grady might be retired, but there is still plenty of teacher left in her. I arrive at one thirteen Beech Street the next morning at nine o’clock sharp.
“Come in, Sara.” Ms. O’Grady opens the screen door and I step into the house that’s been whispered and wondered about for as long as I can remember. The sitting room is a glum attempt to preserve the treasures of the O’Grady family in proper decorum and good taste with a doily-covered sofa and side chairs, heavily laced curtains, mother of pearl vases and gilt framed pictures of a young Samuel and Earla O’Grady. A single nightlight shines in the corner of the room, illuminating a three foot statue of the Virgin Mary, hands extended in supplication.
“I’ve made a list of projects,” Ms. O’Grady says, removing the red pen she’s tucked behind her ear to jot down another few items in a steno notebook. Her thin frame is covered in a blue T-shirt and jeans, her feet in black Keds. “We’ll start in the basement, and work our way upstairs.”
Upstairs? Frank said basement and yard work.
She must see something on my face because her voice softens and she says, “Thank you, Sara. It’s always so much easier when two people share the work. Patricia threw out her back hauling boxes from the basement and Dr. Blatenbush ordered her on bed rest and muscle relaxers.”
“It’s okay, I’m glad to help.” Sure.
“Well, then,” she says, “I hope you don’t mind getting that outfit dirty.”
“These are old clothes.”
She nods her cropped head. “Smart girl. Let’s get started. Follow me.”
“Evelyn.” A thin, reedy voice trickles down the hallway. “Bring my sweater. I’m cold.”
Mr. O’Grady. Cold? I’m sweating to death.
“Yes, father.” Ms. O’Grady slips past me into the next room.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Frank Polokovich’s daughter, Sara.”
“What’s she doing here?”
I inch closer, curious to match the voice, the man, and the feet.
“Remember I told you she was coming to help clean up the basement for the garage sale?”
“You paying her?”
“Yes.”
How much?”
“I don’t know, I guess it depends on how much work she does.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
I peek around the corner and spot the back of a gray Barcoulounger. Mr. O’Grady is sitting in it and all I can see is the back of his thin, veiny right arm.
“I can’t, Father. I’ve tried but it takes two people.”
“Who’s going to fix my oatmeal?”
“I will. Once I get Sara started I’ll come up and fix it.”
“Don’t be forever. You know I can’t take my pills on an empty stomach.”
Ms. O’Grady bows her head, looks away and spots me out of the corner of her eye. I slink against the wall and inch my way back to the center of the sitting room.
“I won’t be long.” Her words vibrate like a deflating tire.
“I’ll need my toenails clipped, too. Bring the clippers when you come back.”
Ugh! The feet! I sniff hard. No stinky cabbage smell… yet.
Ms. O’Grady emerges from the living room. “Come on, Sara, we’ve got a lot to do.”
This is the understatement of the century. We climb down rickety wooden steps, open-slatted in the back. Boxes stack five high at the bottom of the steps, heaps of clothing scatter an old picnic table, a fishing pole and wading boots hang from the cobwebbed rafters. Vases, lamps, trinkets—junk—line the makeshift plywood shelves along the walls.
And this is only what I can see. Once I step around the corner, there’s a whole other half of basement. I’ll be stuck here until I’m twenty-five! Thanks, Frank, thanks a lot.
“We’ll start with the clothes.” Ms. O’Grady snatches her red pen from behind her ear and places a check in the steno book. “All of it goes. We’ll fold it and box it up.” She points to the stacks of boxes at the base of the step. “Get one of those.”
I know the Salvation Army accepts all donations, but honestly, these clothes are gross, even for desperate people. Wool vests with big brass buttons, polyester pants hooked to suspenders, printed aprons, white shirts worn to yellow, pleated skirts that I couldn’t get my leg in, hand-knit booties. I snatch the booties, lift them to my nose. No cabbage. There’s a whole O’Grady timeline here. “How old are these clothes?” I ask Ms. O’Grady when we close the fourth box.
“Five, ten, twenty-six years. Father wouldn’t let us touch anything after Mother died, but now, he’s got it in his head that he’s dying, too, and he wants
to get rid of everything.”
“Is he, dying I mean?”
Ms. O’Grady shakes her cropped head. “He’s not dying. He’s just tired of living.”
By late afternoon, we have twelve boxes for the Salvation Army. It takes three trips in Ms. O’Grady’s green Caprice Classic to drop them off. On the way home, she pulls into Mini-Mart to grab us a drink. Ms. O’Grady likes Orange Crush, says it reminds her of when she was a little girl and she and her sister used to dunk saltine crackers in their glasses and then lick off all the orange from the cracker. She tells me that story when we are sitting in the Mini-Mart parking lot, sipping our drinks. Her dark eyes glitter with the telling, and when she leans over and whispers that the orange mustaches made her father turn five shades of red and his nose pinch up, she laughs and says that was part of the reason they did it. It is then I wonder about the tale that filters through town breathing new life with each retelling.
Is this the same woman who sucked in life on a full breath, let it weave through her body like patchwork pieces, no beginning, no end, and declared she would die if she stayed one more day in Norwood?
And if it is, why did she come back? Why hadn’t she stayed in Buffalo, rented a room from a gray-haired couple, got a cat, taught typing to young business-minded women who wanted more than the title of housewife? And why most of all had she hacked her hair short, wiped off her red lipstick and crept back to town, the brunt of Norwood gossip, then and now?
Is the real Evelyn O’Grady hidden inside this woman sitting next to me, tucked away so nice and neat and secure, that she might never find her way out again? Has she ever tired of the sameness, the face of her father turning five shades of red, his nose pinching up when she does something he disapproves of, even though she is a grown woman? Or, does she no longer do anything or even think anything that he would disapprove of?
“Ms. O’Grady?”
“Sara?”
“There’s something I want to ask you.” All I want to know is if she really went to Buffalo and if she did, why she came back and does she regret it?
“Not now.” Her dark brown gaze flits over me, kind and sad, all at once.
She lifts her can in salute and it is then I notice the faint orange line above her upper lip. And I know, with my whole heart, that Evelyn O’Grady has indeed laughed and loved, and run away to Buffalo and there is a piece of her, no matter how her father has shorn her body and stripped her spirit, that still lives.
Chapter 13
The transformation of Conchetta Louise Andolotti, Chapter One.
Conchetta’s thick, black hair is five inches shorter, thanks to Mrs. Tegretti’s scissors. And the fat braid is gone. Now she wears a hair band—red, orange, yellow, green, anything but black, or blue. Her eyebrows are plucked and arched, and she’s been practicing with the pale blue eye shadow Nina bought. Nina’s been buying a lot for this project—small, gold hoop earrings, Bonne Bell blush and lipstick, Love’s Baby Soft powder, even a red T-shirt, (probably her first), from Angie’s Style Boutique.
“You shouldn’t be buying all this stuff, Nina.” We are sitting cross-legged on my bed waiting for Conchetta to come out of the bathroom where she’s trying on the shirt.
She shrugs. “No big deal.” Her voice drops to a whisper, “We need to figure out how to get her a new bra.”
Nina possesses a careless confidence that I have always wanted but will never have. It is this assurance that enables her to stuff her wiry tangle of chestnut hair under a baseball cap and wear flip flops while the rest of us are clomping around in Dr. Scholl’s. Maybe this is what attracts guys, because they swarm to her, despite her crooked front teeth and boy body. They are wasting their time. Nina hates guys. Or at least she says she does. But I’ve seen her watching Jay Galeston cruise through town in his blue Vega. If I hated guys, I’d never have gone out with Peter Donnelly. If—
“Hey, earth to Sara.” Nina is stretching her skinny body toward me. “Don’t worry about the bra, okay? I’m not going to embarrass her by asking if it’s her grandmother’s.”
“What?”
“You weren’t paying attention, were you? God, are you still thinking about that asshole?”
“No.”
“Yeah, you are. He’s a jerk. You don’t need a guy. There’s only a few decent ones anyway.”
“Like Jay Galeston?” I say, trying not to smile.
“Shut up.” She smiles, too.
Maybe she doesn’t even know how she feels about him yet. Maybe it’s still all new, and fragile, and hopeful. I don’t want to think about this so I reach for the first thought that jumps into my head. “Does your Mom know you’re buying Conchetta all this stuff?”
“No. So what?”
“So, if she finds out you’re draining your bank account, she’ll kill you.”
Nina’s smile turns sly. “I didn’t touch that damn account, not a single penny.”
“Where—”
“Let’s just say I ‘borrowed’ it from my old man’s wallet. Two bucks here, five there. It’s not like he’s going to notice.”
“You stole it?”
“Well, maybe technically, but I’ll give it back to him eventually. Anyway, if I’m using it to help Conchetta, is it really stealing?”
Is it? I’m trying to decide when Conchetta appears in the doorway. The red shirt clings to her breasts, falls softly to expose a shape and definition we didn’t know existed.
“Is it… is it okay?”
Nina whistles and jumps off the bed. “Look at you! You should wear red all the time. And orange, and green, and yellow.”
“You really think I look okay?”
Conchetta’s dark eyes are on me, waiting. “Yeah, I really think so.”
She stands up straighter then, her smile spreading over us.
Maybe Nina is right, maybe borrowing from her father isn’t such a big deal, even if she never pays him back. I don’t know, there are too many things I don’t know about anymore.
“So”—Nina unfolds her spindly legs over the edge of the bed and leans back on one arm, studying Conchetta—“now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at you, all duded up. The hair, the makeup, the shirt. Now you’ve got to get out and go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. You can’t just hibernate in your house all weekend.”
“I’m going to five o’clock Mass on Saturday.”
“Wow, really? I’m sure Father Torrence will be very impressed with your new haircut, and the red shirt will blow him away. He probably won’t be able to say Mass.”
“Where’s she going to go, Nina?” I ask. “Benny’s? The bowling alley? This is Norwood.”
“No kidding. The flies are limited in Norwood. So, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do here.” She taps her chin, grins, and says, “We’ll go to the bowling alley tomorrow night. And in two weeks, there’s a dance at the Teen Center.”
“We never go to those,” I say.
“Well, we’re going to start.”
***
I cram my days with Nina and Conchetta, and packing up Ms. O’Grady’s basement. After six visits to the O’Grady’s, I still haven’t seen more than Mr. O’Grady’s right arm but at least I haven’t smelled his stinky feet either.
I stay very busy most days, but the nights swallow me with sadness, until one morning the sadness rolls away and anger takes over. Peter let me believe he was someone he wasn’t, let me believe in something he didn’t. I am not so foolish as to realize he did not once apologize, or say he would stop pushing.
Pretend. That’s what he wanted me to do. Or better yet, separate the two Peters—the one with the girlfriend named Sara Polokovich who drives around in a blue Chevelle and shares double dips and French fries at Benny’s Hot Dog Deluxe, and the other Peter, the one who steals Black Beauties and ‘ludes’ from his psychiatrist father and sells them on the street.
Well, no thank you.
“Sara! Sara!”
I crack open an eye. “Hey.”
“Oh, Sara”—she crouches on her knees, her lips pulled down—“I have some terrible news.”
“What?”
Kay leans closer, whispers in my ear, “It’s about Peter.”
She knows Peter is a pusher. I open my mouth to tell her that I didn’t know, that sometimes you just don’t know.
“I saw him kissing Kelly Jordan.” She presses one hand to her mouth as though to pull the words back. “I’m so sorry. I know you were crazy about him.”
Well. My gut pumps bile to my throat. Does Kelly Jordan think it’s okay for him to keep ‘ludes under the floor mat of his Chevelle? What if he sells it to her friends, maybe her little sister, Moira? I bet Kelly Jordan doesn’t know Peter is Jekyll and Hyde. Come to think of it, she probably doesn’t even know who Jekyll and Hyde are.
“Say something, Sara. I didn’t know if I should tell you, but I didn’t want you to hear it from anybody else.”
“It’s okay, really.” Funny, how she is worried about hurting my feelings. It has been okay for her to point at my hair and tell me that braids went out five years ago and tan pants make my butt look big and have I ever noticed that my right ear is higher than my left? Just a little, but I notice, she says. And now she is worried about me.
“I don’t understand,” Kay says. “He’s your boyfriend.”
“Was. Not anymore.”
“You broke up? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I lift a shoulder. “I really didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh.” She looks at me then, that knowing of a thirteen-year old. “He dumped you, huh?”
Sometimes a lie is easier than the truth. “Yeah.”
“Bastard,” she whispers. “No good piece of shit.”
