Rust & Stardust

by T. Greenwood

  AL

  Al studied Sally’s face. On Sundays when they went to Ella’s for dinner, he couldn’t help but notice how different this Sally was from the little girl he’d once known. She was sweet and kind, as she had always been, but instead of chattering away, legs swinging beneath the table, instead of interrupting their conversations with her questions, rather than squealing with delight at the simplest things (a piece of chocolate cake, a song on the radio), she was reserved. Polite. Quiet.

  “Sally, I hear you won the spelling bee this year? That’s just terrific!”

  Dee, sitting on a stack of books to reach the table, said, “I hate bees! I got stung by a bee! Right on my bottom. I sat down on it.”

  Sally smiled without showing her teeth.

  “That’s a different kind of bee,” Susan explained.

  “What was the winning word?” Al asked.

  “Transmutation,” Sally said softly. “T-R-A-N-S-M-U-T-A-T-I-O-N.”

  “Well, look at that!” Al said, clapping his hands. Dee followed suit, clapping her tiny hands together as well.

  Ella hadn’t eaten anything on her plate; she simply pushed the food from one side to the next.

  “Never even heard of that word before,” Al said.

  “It means to change from one thing to a different thing,” Sally said. “Like alchemy. Turning base metals into silver or gold.” Her eyes widened a little. Just the tiniest spark.

  “Fascinating, Sally. Ella, did you go watch the bee?” Al asked.

  Ella stared at her plate.

  “Mama? Al asked if you went to the bee,” Susan said firmly, reaching for her hand.

  Ella withdrew her hand and clutched it to her side, her eyes wounded.

  Sally spoke louder, her chin jutting out. “The alchemists believed that they could transform something as simple and plain as lead into a higher metal. That it had the potential inside it to become something of value. Something special.” Her eyes were brimming with tears now. Al felt his heart begin to sliver.

  “I’m feeling so tired. Think I’ll turn in early tonight,” Ella said, but made no effort to move from the table.

  Susan nodded. “Okay, Mama. Sally and I can clean up.”

  Sally put her hands on the table, shaking her head, tears running down her cheeks. “But they were wrong,” she said. Her voice was trembling. “It doesn’t matter what you do to it, lead cannot turn into gold. It can never, ever change.”

  Ella looked up, and Al noticed the pain cross her face. He’d seen it a thousand times. Watched as Ella endured. But not once had he ever seen anything but her usual scowl, the hardened response of someone accustomed to suffering. But now, her face softened.

  Al and Sue sat motionless, and even Dee seemed stilled, as Ella set her fork down and reached slowly across the table. Her fingers, knotted and gnarled like tree roots, curled around Sally’s wrist.

  Sally looked startled by her touch. She looked down at Ella’s hand and then back up at her mother’s face.

  Neither spoke a word, but Ella held on, tears rolling down her powdered cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Sally. “I’m trying so hard.”

  Beneath the table, he felt Sue’s own hand clutch his knee, and in that single gesture he felt something like hope.

  ELLA

  Sally was right, of course, Ella knew. People don’t ever change. Not really anyway. Everyone is always fundamentally the same. No alchemical process in the world could change who a person was deep down inside.

  That monster Frank La Salle had proven that he would always be the same: sick inside his soul, feeding off the innocence of girls like Sally, one after the other. The police had revealed that Sally was just one in a long line of children he’d violated. The years he’d spent in prison didn’t change that, didn’t deter him or rehabilitate him.

  Russell, despite the titanic shifts in his mood from one day to the next, was predictable. Ella knew that she, too, remained unchanged; she would always be that child she’d once been, staring at her empty palm after her favorite marble was stolen, standing at Russell’s empty grave, sitting stunned on the sidewalk when she realized her daughter had been taken. She’d always been and would always be a trusting fool. But without trust there was no hope, and without hope, what was there?

  And no matter what it might seem, Sally wasn’t truly changed, either. She might look like an imposter on the outside, a woman now, more reserved and shy, but Ella knew that inside she was still that same bright-eyed little girl that Ella had put on the bus that day. That sweet child in love with the world. No amount of evil could destroy that. A light like that is something that cannot be purloined. The fact that she was able to find brightness among the horror of those years with La Salle was something to be honored, not resented. If only she had that ability herself.

  “Mama?” Sally said. She stood in Ella’s bedroom doorway in the dress that Ella had pressed for her the night before. Her hair was brushed smooth, shining in the sun that streamed through the window. “I’m ready for school.”

  “Come here, sweetheart,” Ella said, motioning for her to come closer. “Your hem’s coming down a bit. Let me sew it up real quick.”

  She reached to the nightstand for her sewing kit and threaded a needle, pricking her finger. A little drop of blood beaded up on her finger and she studied it a moment before she put it to her mouth to stop it from staining the hem of Sally’s skirt.

  “Oh, Mama,” Sally said, reaching for her hand. Studying the wound that was gone as quickly as it was made. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Sally. I’m just…,” she said, “just so glad you’re home.”

  SALLY

  That following spring, Sally got a weekend job at a local restaurant. It made her feel grown-up, all that responsibility. Earning her own money. She even loved the pinstriped uniform with its stiff collar and buttoned front. She was the youngest waitress on the staff; most of the others went to the high school, while she was still just in junior high. The older girls ignored her, except for the one named Gloria who was also new. She was sixteen and had just moved to Camden from Trenton. She wore red kitten heels with her uniform and winked at the boys who brought their girlfriends there on dates.

  The first time they spoke was on Saturday when they ran into each other in the break room. Sally was clocking out after a lunch shift, and Gloria was clocking in.

  “What’s your name?” Gloria asked.

  No one had asked her name in so long. She hesitated. Who was she now? Florence Fogg? Florence LaPlante? Florence Planette?

  “It’s Sally,” she said.

  Gloria wore red lipstick that matched her shoes. Her face was milky white, her cheeks tinged with dime store blusher.

  “I like your shoes,” Sally said. “I had a coat that color once.”

  “They’re all yours,” the girl said, slipping them off and pushing them toward her.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as sugar,” Gloria said.

  And so Sally quickly slipped out of her loafers and exchanged them for the red shoes. Those ruby slippers. There’s no place like home. The heels were a perfect fit. She could be someone else in these shoes. “Thanks.”

  “You got a cigarette, Sally?”

  “We aren’t allowed to smoke in here,” Sally said, feeling her cheeks get hot.

  Gloria rolled her eyes and smacked her gum. “Well, let’s split then,” she said.

  “But you just got here,” Sally said in disbelief. First, at this girl’s audacity. Ditching her shift? And second, that Sally was the one she had approached. Why Sally? Sally had done her best since her return to Camden to become invisible.

  “Well?” the girl asked, arms crossed against her ample chest.

  “Sure,” Sally said, nodding and nodding again, thrilled.

  “We could maybe go to the Woolworth’s and get an ice cream float,” Gloria said.

  “Aren’t you worried about getting fired?” she asked.
>
  “They can’t fire me, the owner’s my uncle.”

  Sally nodded again, grabbed her purse and looked down at her new red shoes.

  “What’s that?” Gloria asked, pointing at the brass ring that pressed against Sally’s chest, and Sally’s fingers flew to her neck, fingering the cold metal reminder.

  Wildwood by the Sea, New Jersey

  August 1952

  SALLY

  Sally knew her mother would never let her go. She didn’t blame her, of course; she was only trying to keep her safe. She was fifteen, going to high school in the fall. No longer a little girl. Still, her mother worried.

  She and Gloria were thick as thieves—joined at the hip, her mother said, and sighed, though Sally could tell she was quietly delighted that Sally finally had one true friend. Instead of telling Ella her real plans, Sally simply asked to stay at Gloria’s house for the weekend. They planned to go to the Farnham pool, maybe catch a movie (they were both just dying to see that new Marilyn Monroe flick), enjoy the last few days of the summer before school started again. After Gloria came and picked Sally up, they didn’t walk to her house but to the bus stop.

  As she stepped through the accordion door onto the bus, she couldn’t help but recall that afternoon just four years—but also a lifetime—ago. She remembered that kind woman, Miss Robinson, who met her at the bus stop. She knew now that Mr. Warner must have tricked her, too. Sally thought of the diving horses, wondered if Miss Robinson ever got a chance to see them.

  “Wanna read a magazine?” Gloria asked, reaching into her straw bag and pulling out the latest movie magazines. Marilyn Monroe was on all the covers. They had talked about trying to find a theater in Wildwood showing Don’t Bother to Knock.

  “No, thanks,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “I’m feeling just a tiny bit queasy.”

  Gloria shrugged and flipped open the Movie Life magazine.

  * * *

  When they arrived at Wildwood, they went straight to the beach after asking a young couple to take their picture by the Wildwood sign, the marquee letters with the bright red arrow. She and Gloria with lipstick smiles and bright eyes.

  On the beach, they spread their blanket out and rubbed their skin with suntan oil, their noses filling with the scent of cocoa butter. They played in the waves, holding hands and rushing into the surf. Sally collected shells, making a little pile. She thought she might bring the prettiest ones home for Dee.

  When the boys approached them, Sally had fallen asleep in a warm cradle of sand, the lapping waves a sort of summertime lullaby.

  “Hey, you girls, wanna come walk the boardwalk with us?” One boy’s lanky body cast shadows across their legs. Another boy stood at his side.

  A quick glance at each other behind their magazines. The language of best friends. A shrug. A why not.

  “Why not?” Gloria said.

  Both of them, these pale and smiling boys, had just come back home from Germany. The Army. They might as well have said they’d just arrived from Mars, for all this meant to the girls.

  “Use a made-up name,” Gloria whispered in Sally’s ear. “I’m Marilyn,” she said, scrambling to her feet and holding out her hand to the tall fair boy with the dimples.

  “And what’s your name?” the handsome, dark-haired one said, looking down at Sally.

  Slowly, she sat up and peered at him.

  “I’m Vivi,” she said, and even as she did, she felt herself changing. Transmutating. “Vivi Peterson.”

  * * *

  All afternoon they rode the carnival rides. The girls clung to each other in the line for the Hell Hole and held hands on the roller coaster before throwing their arms over their heads, screaming. The boys tagged along, spending all their pocket change on carnival games and ice cream. When the sun went down, each couple climbed into a separate Ferris wheel cart and lifted off the ground. From the highest point, Sally could see the entire boardwalk below, the lights on the piers and the phosphorescent sea. When she looked up, the constellations sparkled like sequins above them.

  Afterward, back on Earth, Sally peered up into the heavens again.

  The blond one, Nick (Gloria’s boy), said, “Hey, you know, we’ve got a room at the Rio. We could have some drinks? I make a mean sloe gin fizz.”

  Sally felt herself stiffen, but Gloria nudged her.

  “Sure,” Gloria said. “Why not?”

  * * *

  The boys’ motel room had sliding doors that opened to the pool. The walls of the room were aqua blue, the same color as the chlorinated water. Sally and Gloria sat dangling their feet into the cool blue, and Sally thought of Lena, her golden gams. Where was she now? Did she wonder what had happened to Sally when she and the circus arrived at the Good Luck again that summer? Had she read the papers? Thinking about Lena made her think about Tex, and her heart snagged at the memory, his tail wagging expectantly whenever she was near.

  “Here ya go,” Eddie said, handing her another drink, red with grenadine in her plastic cup. She’d lost count of how many she’d already had. The whole world had a soft sort of glow to it. The water was shimmery, illuminated from below.

  Gloria and Nick were necking on a lawn chair. She watched his hand as it crept up Gloria’s bare back.

  “Hey, lovebirds! How about we take this party inside?” Eddie said, and they all filed into the room after him through the sliding glass door. Gloria tripped and giggled, “Oh, shit!” as her drink spilled on the carpeted floor.

  When the lights went out, Sally felt herself slipping, diving, plummeting beneath familiar deep waters. The ashtray, chlorine, chemical scent of the motel room. The familiar lullaby of the crashing waves. She closed her eyes, allowed herself to be unmoored. This world slipping seamlessly into another.

  This felt familiar, though she didn’t tell him so (this fresh-faced boy with his eagerness and wanting). They lay face to face on the hard mattress in the dimly lit motel room. Her shoes, the red kitten heels her mother still didn’t know she owned, lay discarded on the carpeted floor. (Those scarlet secrets she kept deep in the back of her closet at home—so afraid of what her mother didn’t say, the words as dangerous as blades.) She had taken them off to walk on the beach earlier just after the sun went down. Her hair was gritty with sand now; it cracked and ground in her teeth and between their tangled tongues.

  It was dark here except for the pale pink light from the neon sign outside, blinking, blinking, keeping time with the metronome of sighs coming from Gloria and Nick in the other bed:

  “Marilyn,” he whispered to Gloria now. “You’re so pretty.”

  Sally tried to think only of her own breath, her own heart. And her boy, Eddie, breathed hotly in her ear, his hands pulling her closer until she felt his pelvis pressing against her own hips.

  His want was raw, familiar. Eddie was hungry in an almost angry, entitled sort of way. She knew this, too; it was what her body understood. His longing was palpable, suffocating. He whispered in her ear that he’d been waiting for this, for someone like her, and she knew what it felt like to be wanted.

  From across the room, there was the sound of metal teeth unzipping.

  “Hey now,” Gloria said, laughing first. “Slow down, buddy.” Whispers and the sound of skin against skin, then the shushing of crinoline, of sheets and the sharp sudden snap of a slap. “I said stop!” (Boys at the restaurant called Gloria a tease.)

  “Come on…,” her boy said.

  “Vivi,” Gloria said loudly, her voice close. “Let’s go.”

  Gloria was standing at the foot of the bed where she and Eddie lay frozen, and Sally sat up, dizzy, spinning. Her tongue was numb.

  “Wait,” she said, but Gloria was already slipping on her own shoes, grabbing a cigarette from a discarded pack on the table by the door. There was the tick and hiss of a match, the smell of burning tobacco, the shining tip of her cigarette punctuating her every word. “I said, Let’s go. Now.”

  Gloria opened the motel door, and Sally could see
her silhouette in the doorway.

  Gloria looked like a stranger. Like someone she should know but didn’t. This happened sometimes. People becoming things they were not. Transmutating.

  “Stay,” Eddie said, and it was not a plea but a command. “You go on ahead,” he said to Gloria.

  “Well, I think that’s up to her. Do you want to stay or come home?” Gloria asked Sally.

  Sally’s voice didn’t seem to work. She had been here before: pressed ribs to ribs with someone in a dimly lit room. Perhaps she had been here her whole life. Perhaps she was born on this mattress, birthed on these starched, anonymous sheets. Everyone wanting something of her. Everyone aching. She wondered where home was. If maybe she was already there.

  “You go on. I’ll take her home in the morning,” Eddie said.

  “I’ll stay,” Sally managed to say.

  “Fine,” Gloria said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Then Gloria was slamming the door, and Nick was scrambling after her, drunkenly tripping over Sally’s red kitten heels on the floor.

  “Ah, come on,” he called after Gloria. “Wait!”

  Now they were alone, she and Eddie bathed in pulsing pink light. She knew what would come next: hands, hips, lips. She clung to this understanding as if it could save her. As if her bones and his skin moored her somehow. Breathless, she floated on this raft, which bobbed and dipped on this violent sea of pale pink sheets.

  “Vivi,” he cooed in her ear.

  But then she stopped, pressed her hands against his chest. Shook her head.

  “No,” she said, sitting up. She reached over to the nightstand and clicked on the light.

  Eddie shielded his eyes. “What’d you do that for?”

  “My name’s not Vivi,” she said.

  “What?”