‘What is it?’ her father demanded. ‘Lizzie, what is it?’
They ran outside. ‘Mommy, don’t!’ called Elizabeth, in terrible distress; but it was already too late. Mommy was screaming, ‘Peggy! Peggy!’ and running across the tennis court to the small, silent snow-angel in its beret and tweed coat.
‘We made it,’ sobbed Elizabeth, miserably. ‘Laura and I made it.’ And father said, ‘Oh, God,’ and broke into a run.
Mommy rushed up to the snow-angel and then she suddenly stopped, and stared at it in horror. She must have encountered its face, its sack-weave face with its empty burned-out holes for eyes and its grinning black raggedy mouth. She swayed from side to side, and then she dropped to her knees in the snow and she let out a scream that was almost inhuman. ‘Peggy! Peggy! Oh, my baby! Agggrrrhhhh!’
Before father could reach her, she had rolled herself over in the snow, and then up on to her knees, and launched herself at the snow-angel in a frenzy of frustration and grief. She pulled off its beret, tossed away its hair, and ripped its face apart with both hands. She clawed, screeching, at the figure’s body, digging out snow as if she wanted to dig out its heart. Then she dropped to the ground and lay flat on her back, shuddering, choking, in a jerking, convulsive fit. Elizabeth could see her eyes roll up into her head and her neck swell: and her feet kick so hard against the ground that one of her black high-heeled shoes flew off. Elizabeth didn’t have to be told what to do. She turned around and ran back to the house as fast as she could.
‘Mrs Patrick!’ she screamed. ‘Mrs Patrick! There’s something wrong with mommy!’
As Mrs Patrick came bustling out, wiping her hands on her apron, Elizabeth ran to father’s library and picked up the telephone. Silence. The telephone was dead. Frantically, she jiggled the receiver-rest up and down, and screamed, ‘Hallo! Hallo! Help! Help us! Emergency! Hallo! Hallo!’ but the phone stayed dead. Too much snow. The lines between Sherman and Boardman’s Bridge must have come down, the same way they had last year, and the year before.
Elizabeth ran back to the kitchen, just in time to meet father and Mrs Patrick, swiftly and grimly carrying mommy into the house.
‘Will she be all right?’ begged Elizabeth, as they laid her on the living-room couch in front of the fire. ‘I tried to call for the doctor but the phone won’t work.’
‘Just watch her, keep her warm, make sure she’s breathing,’ father told Mrs Patrick, ignoring Elizabeth altogether. ‘I’ll go bring Doctor Ferris myself.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mrs Patrick, sorrowfully. She chafed mommy’s hands to warm them. ‘Oh, Mr Buchanan, this is a tragedy, and no mistake. What a tragedy, God help us.’
There was nothing Elizabeth could do but stand beside the couch and watch mommy twitch and mutter, her eyeballs roaming underneath her closed eyelids like caged bears. Laura came in and took hold of her hand.
‘O Holy Mother, smile on us now when we need You,’ said Mrs Patrick. ‘You were a mother, too, remember, O blessed Mary. You were a mother, too.’
Elizabeth squeezed Laura’s hand tight. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ she said; even though she had a terrible feeling that she had probably told one of the biggest lies of her life.
2
Heart of Ice
‘Her kiss was colder than ice. It went to his heart, although
that was half-frozen already. He thought he should die.’
Four
On the day that would have been Peggy’s eighth birthday, 15 June 1943, Elizabeth and Laura took their best friend Molly Albee to the cemetery; and they laid fresh white carnations on her grave. They stood with their heads bowed and their eyes squeezed shut, praying for Peggy’s soul, and trying as hard as they could to remember what Peggy had really looked like.
It was a hot, treacly afternoon. With her eyes shut, Elizabeth could hear the leaves rustling and the hoarse warbling of vireos in the high maples that shaded the cemetery’s southern side.
She could hear a freight train whistling, on the line that ran between New Milford and Danbury.
She also heard a voice whisper, ‘Lizzie,’ quite close to her ear.
She opened her eyes, and turned around. Laura and Molly were both standing on the other side of the grave, and there was nobody else in sight – nobody close enough to have whispered in her ear like that. She frowned, and shaded her eyes against the sun. The shingle pathway was deserted, except for a gardener who was patiently edging the grass, and he was more than two hundred feet away. On the far side of the cemetery, where it was still wooded, she thought she saw something flickering between the trees, but it was probably a rabbit, or a wood-pigeon.
Above Peggy’s grave, a white angel with a sweet, sad face looked down where Peggy lay. The birds had perched on the angel’s head, and her cheeks were streaked with black tears. Elizabeth could never decide if this was disgusting or mystical, or a bit of both.
They walked back through the cemetery and out of the squeaking iron gate. A young bespectacled man with sprigged-up chestnut hair was changing the lettering on the church notice-board. He waved to them, and called, ‘Good afternoon, ladies!’ His name was Dick Bracewaite and they all loved him. The Reverend Earwaker had been ailing lately, with a prostate condition that had proved resistant both to ice-packs and to prayer. Dick Bracewaite had been sent from St Eugene’s in Hartford to stand in for him, and the church had never been so well attended, especially by eyelash-fluttering adolescent girls.
The three girls kept on turning around and giving Dick Bracewaite little finger-waves, until they turned the corner into Oak Street, where they collapsed into fits of laughter.
‘Oh, I love him! I love him!’ said Molly, dancing around and around and swinging her school bag. Molly was big and freckly, with hair like a bomb-burst in a copper-wire factory, and she was in love with everybody, especially Dick Bracewaite and Frank Sinatra.
Oak Street was neat and hot and empty, apart from Mr Stillwell’s green delivery truck parked outside the Stillwell Hardware Store; and Mrs Miller’s station-wagon parked in the shade of the large post oak that stood beside the Sherman Grocery, and which had given Oak Street its name. Mrs Miller’s chocolate-coloured spaniel sat in the back of the station-wagon with its lurid pink tongue hanging out like a brush salesman’s necktie.
There was a feeling of timelessness; as if this summer would never end; and Oak Street would always remain the same, ‘as common and familiar as my breath’ as Thomas Wolfe had put it. But Elizabeth had lately become aware that she was changing. She felt a funny sort of swelling balloon-like tension inside her – and a strange feeling of bewilderment, as if she ought to know something, as if she really ought to understand something, but couldn’t quite grasp what it was. In less than a month’s time, she would be thirteen. To her own surprise, she had lost all interest in her dolls. She had tried very hard to play with them. But even those dolls which she had once adored the most, and to whom she had once confided all of her secrets, now seemed to be lifeless and unco-operative and ineffably stupid. Even the tiny, imaginary family which had once lived in her doll’s house appeared to have moved out, without leaving a forwarding address.
All that interested Elizabeth now was love and romance; love, and romance, and horses.
She read every novel that she could find, from Emily Brontë to Sinclair Lewis. The more romantic they were, the more tragic they were, the more she adored them. Her particular favourite was Anna Karenina, which made her cry, especially when Anna was killed by a train. But she also loved Esther Summerson, in Dickens’ Bleak House, because Esther was so pretty and sweet to everybody, yet characterful, too. She felt a wonderful creepy thrill when Esther met the grizzled old rag collector, Mr Krook; and an even ghastlier thrill when Mr Krook died by spontaneous combustion, leaving ‘a suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling’ and something that looked like ‘the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes
.’
She thought the idea of spontaneous combustion was both fascinating and appalling, and she looked it up in her father’s encyclopedias. There was the Countess Bandi of Casena, in June 1731, of whom only a head, three fingers and both legs were found in a heap of ashes. Then there was the Indian woman who was consumed by flames and whose smoking body was carried between two constables to the District Magistrate near Dinapore.
As soon as she had finished her homework, Elizabeth would open her fat royal-blue notebook, the one inscribed Strictly And Completely Private, and write another short story about love and horses. Her heroines were always confident, clear-eyed girls whose lives were fulfilled except for one thing: their mothers had mysteriously disappeared when they were little. These confident, clear-eyed girls were invariably mad on showjumping, and their long-lost mothers invariably turned out to be world-class showjumpers who had been permanently crippled in tragic riding accidents at the pinnacle of their careers. Unable to face the world, they had closeted themselves away in ‘gloomy, Gothic nursing homes’. Elizabeth gave her stories titles like ‘Her Finest Hour’ and ‘Janet Wins The Day’.
When she was writing, Elizabeth felt elegant and happy and attractive. She circled the showjumping rings of the world, her hand raised to acknowledge the amazed applause of the crowds. And, when she dismounted, he was waiting for her. Tall, strong and gentle, with ‘dark, hyacinthine curls, and eyes like the restless ocean.’
There were villains, of course; but these were always ‘sneering and bony-nosed’ and met various sticky ends, including two who died by spontaneous combustion – ‘incinerated in their own inner iniquity’.
Nobody had read her stories yet; and nobody knew how much she needed them. Ever since Peggy’s death, her life at home had been discordant and unsettling. It was like four different radios playing at once. Father would say one thing; and then he would talk to mommy and mommy would say something else altogether; and then Laura would throw a tantrum and they would all end up saying totally the opposite.
What was worse, she herself was changing so much. Her face seemed to grow uglier and uglier every day, with a long nose just like father’s, and sticky-outy ears, and a neck that went on and on just like a giraffe. She had grown much taller, too. In fact she had grown so much taller than Laura, and so much taller than anybody else in her class, that she walked everywhere with her books clutched to her chest and her shoulders hunched, so that nobody would notice her extreme height. She kept her hair long and straight, held back from her forehead with an Alice band, because she thought it concealed her giraffe-like neck, and she wore her favourite summer dress almost every day. Father had bought it too big for her, in the expectation that she would ‘grow into it’, and she had cried when she had first tried it on, because it made her feel so old-maidish. But she liked it now. At least her shoulders didn’t strain the stitches around the yoke and her wrists didn’t dangle miles beyond her cuffs, like they did with her other dresses, and at least the bodice was loose enough to hide her swelling nipples, about which she was deeply embarrassed. The dress was covered in tiny blue-and-yellow flowers, with a double collar edged in blue-and-yellow piping, and Elizabeth always wore her blue enamel pony club badge with it. She was founder, president, chairwoman and only member of the secret and very exclusive Lake Candlewood Pony Club; and she didn’t even own a pony.
As they walked the whole length of Oak Street, along the hot afternoon sidewalk, the three girls didn’t have to discuss where they were going next. Laura took hold of every telegraph pole she passed, and swung around it, and sang ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree . . . with anyone else but me . . . anyone else but me . . .’ Laura, who had been eleven in April, was prettier than ever. The sun had bleached her blonde curls so that they shone even brighter, and she was petite and trim and easily the most popular girl in the third grade.
‘Do you think Dick Bracewaite ever thinks about girls?’ asked Molly.
‘Well, of course, silly!’ said Laura. ‘He’s a man, isn’t he, and men are always thinking about girls. That’s what Aunt Beverley says, and she should know.’
‘Oh, sure,’ Molly retorted. ‘Your Aunt Beverley is practically a man herself.’
‘She is not!’
‘She is too! My father says you’d only have to cut her hair short and you wouldn’t be able to tell her from Robert Taylor.’
Laura swung her schoolbooks and hit Molly on the shoulder with them. The strap came undone, and they scattered across the sidewalk. Molly chased Laura around and around a telephone pole while Elizabeth tried to rescue them. Loose pages were fluttering everywhere. Molly caught up with Laura and yanked off her hair ribbon, and skipped off with it. Elizabeth was still chasing the last stray page, but she managed to snatch it just before it was blown through the iron grid in front of Baxter’s Realty, and into the inaccessible basement area beneath, which was already littered with leaves and gum wrappers and cigarette butts.
She shuffled the loose pages back together again, but as she did so, she saw that not all of it was geography homework. Laura had written on one page, ‘took me in his arms and kissed me. He was handsomer than Jesus. Their was a holy light almost shining from his eyes. He took off all of his cloths and said that we could be pure like the dissipuls. I took off my cloths too. He said this my darling is what true lovers do. He kissed me again and again and said I was the closest being he had ever known to an angel.’
Laura had caught up with Molly and retrieved her ribbon, and some kind of honour had been satisfied. Now she came back along the sidewalk and saw that Elizabeth was reading her story.
‘Lizzie!’ she screamed at her. ‘That’s private!’
She tried to snatch it but Elizabeth held it out of her reach.
‘That’s private! That’s completely private! How dare you read it! That’s private!’
Dodging away from her, Elizabeth read the next few sentences out loud.’ “We lay on his bed. His pecker was hard. Frank said it was a true sign of love between a man and a woman if the man’s pecker was hard. There was nothing bad about it it was almost divine. He said I should touch it and I held it for a while. He said I could kiss it if I wanted to but I was undessided.” ’
Molly shrieked in hilarity; while Laura furiously danced and jumped all around her. ‘Give that back! Give that back! I hate you! I hate you for ever!’
‘More!’ begged Molly. ‘Read out some more!’
‘ “He bade me close my eyes. I closed my eyes and he stroked my hair and then he stroked my muff.” ’
‘Aaaah!’ shrieked Molly, in delight.
Laura screamed ‘Give that back or I’ll tear up all of your horse books!’
‘More!’ pleaded Molly.
‘ “I felt a heavenly sensation. ‘I love you, darling,’ I mermered. ‘I love you too, my sweet one,’ he replied. He went up and down all the while complimenting me on my beautiful body. Suddenly he cried out. I opened my eyes and saw a veritable fountain coming from his pecker. He said ‘my goodness the time’ and quickly dressed. That was love at its truest. I knew next time I would be ready for doing it properly. Frank kissed me and promised me that he would be gentle.” ’
Elizabeth stopped reading. Her cheeks were hot with embarrassment and shock, and she stared at Laura with her mouth open. Molly had gone into a squealing-fit, and was furiously stamping her sandals on the concrete paving. ‘It’s so rude!’ she kept squealing. ‘Laura, it’s so rude!’
Elizabeth said, ‘I’ll have to tell father.’ She felt terribly grave and responsible. She also felt confused. They had been given a lesson on the fundamentals of human reproduction in class. Their biology teacher, Mrs Westerhuiven, was comparatively young and modern, and had actually demonstrated the erection of a male member (with the aid of a photograph of Michelangelo’s David and her own discreetly-lifted index finger.) All of the girls at school talked about sex during recess. In fact, they talked about scarcely anything except music and make-up and ‘what it’s
going to be like.’ But Elizabeth had never read anything so graphic or lewd as Laura’s story. It scarcely sounded like Laura at all.
‘Pecker!’ squealed Molly. ‘Pecker! I don’t believe it! It’s so rude!’
Laura’s eyes were almost blinded with tears. ‘You mustn’t tell father. Please don’t tell father. It’s only a story, that’s all. I’ll throw it away. I’ll burn it. Just don’t tell him, okay?’
‘Pecker!’ crowed Molly, gleefully. ‘Muff!’
Elizabeth turned the page over, and saw that there was much more written on the other side. ‘None of this is true, is it?’ she asked.
Laura managed to tear it away from her, and crumple it up. ‘Of course it’s not true! It’s only a story! You shouldn’t have read it! It wasn’t even yours to read! It was private! You write stories and they’re private, so why shouldn’t I?’
‘If it’s not true,’ put in Molly, ‘then who’s Frank? That’s what I’d like to know.’
Laura wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘Frank Sinatra, that’s all.’
‘Frank Sinatra!’ shrilled Molly. ‘Frank Sinatra’s much too old for you!’
‘It’s only a story and it’s none of your business!’ Laura retorted. And with that, she picked up her books, and bustled off, running diagonally across the street and heading toward Candlewood Road, and home. Her blonde curls shone in the afternoon sunlight. Elizabeth and Molly looked at each other, and Molly shrugged, and then they carried on walking along Oak Street. They had almost reached the shining, curved, stainless-steel façade of Endicott’s Corner Drugs. Inside, they could see several of their schoolfriends talking and laughing and drinking sodas. Endicott’s was the place where all the kids who lived around Sherman came to mess around after school. The parking-lot at the side was crowded with dented old convertibles, Fords and Chevys and a green Hudson Terraplane with ‘Marcia’ hand-painted all over it. With petrol rationed to three gallons a week (officially, at least) none of the kids ever drove very far, but their cars were essential to their status; and where else could they find to smooch?
Spirit Page 6
