Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  Early that evening the group split up. Jim drove off to visit an aunt. John went to town with Pete, who wanted to buy Western shirts for his guests and teddy bears for the twins. Back at the mobile home, Cheryl looked through a scrapbook with pictures of John and Jim as kids.

  Jim returned disoriented. Between lucid periods during the drive from Detroit, he had rambled about “the devil.” Everyone wrote it off as flashbacks from the T. Now he was talking crazy again.

  Jim picked up his father’s twenty-gauge shotgun and started for the door, saying, “It’s the devil. I’ve got to kill the fucking devil.”

  The girls talked him into putting the gun back on the gun rack and steered him to bed. When John and Pete, returned, everyone else soon turned in. Cheryl, Dawn, and John were sick. The effects from the previous night’s shooting session were wearing off. John had kept to his plan. They hadn’t brought any heroin.

  Pete Fry took a foam rubber mattress from his diesel cab and made his bed in the living room. He was exhausted from six days on the road. He was almost asleep when he heard the voice of his son Jim next to him in the dark living room.

  “Pop, I want to ask you somethin’,” Jim said. “Is it OK if me and the twins move down here and stay with you? I think I’m gonna have to leave Janet.”

  Pete Fry sat up on his portable mattress.

  “Why, you don’t even have to ask somethin’ like that,” he drawled. “Jim Dale, you know the answer to that.”

  Pete suspected his son and his girlfriend were having problems. Something didn’t seem right about the girl.

  “And there’s something else,” Jim said. “I know something that you need to know.”

  “Jim, can’t it wait till mornin’?”

  “No, Pop. This you need to know tonight.”

  The elder Fry reached for a cigarette. But when he struck a light, the glow of the flame revealed Janet sitting in a nearby chair. She had slipped into the living room as they talked.

  Jim held his tongue and shuffled back to his bedroom. Pete Fry figured that whatever his favorite son had to say, he wanted it kept private.

  Christmas morning dawned to a dead freeze that stretched from the Rockies to the Deep South, making for the nation’s coldest holiday in one hundred years. The temperature was eight below in Detroit, and a minus twenty-five in Chicago.

  In Gleason, it was courting zero, and Pete Fry felt an unfamiliar blast of arctic air as his grandson bounced on his chest, waking him at sunrise. What was the front door doing open, Pete complained, especially in this weather?

  “Where’s your daddy?” he asked the twin.

  The boy pointed to the open door. Pete Fry could see his 1974 Ford Gran Torino parked in the driveway. Jim Dale’s boots and coat were by the front entrance. He walked into Jim’s bedroom, where Janet lay alone in bed.

  “Where’s Jim?” he asked. “Are you two havin’ problems?”

  Janet put on her robe.

  “I think he’s outside,” Pete said. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on with you two, but you better get him in here. If you’re arguin’, he’ll stay out there till you make up. I know him. He’s gonna freeze to death out there.”

  Pete Fry pulled on a shirt as he watched Janet go out the front door. She walked directly to his Ford, bent over at the window, and came back inside.

  “He’s dead,” she said. “He’s been shot. He’s been shot with your gun.”

  Pete Fry thought he was hearing things. What did she mean, shot? Then John emerged, fully dressed, from a bedroom. He walked out the front door, looked in the window of the Torino, and returned.

  “Yep, he’s dead all right,” John said.

  Pete Fry ran outside. The windows of the Ford were thick with frost. He couldn’t see a damn thing in the car. What were John and Janet talking about? He jerked open the frozen passenger’s door.

  Jim Dale Fry was slumped under the wheel, his body leaning on the driver’s door. He was wearing only a pair of trousers. Blood covered his face and the interior of the Ford. Pete Fry’s twenty-gauge shotgun was on the seat next to his dead son.

  The patrol cars from the state police and the Weakley County Sheriff’s Department were still in the driveway when the ambulance took Jim Fry’s body away. After the county coroner examined the Torino, a deputy took the twenty-gauge shotgun from the car and handed it to Pete Fry. He told the father it looked like a suicide, and he later made it official.

  “I can’t fuckin’ handle it, man,” John Fry told Cheryl Krizanovic as police radios cracked the cold air. “We have got to go.”

  She knew how John felt. What a time to be sick, she thought. After the police left, John asked her to clean out his father’s Torino. She scrubbed the dashboard and put an old blanket over the bloody seat.

  “Me and Six Pack had a deal,” Fry told Cheryl and Dawn before they left. “If one of us was to die, we promised not to go to the funeral. We agreed to remember each other as we were.”

  It wasn’t until late Christmas, after a day of shock, phone calls, and funeral arrangements, that Pete Fry realized that his Ford was gone. So were the eyeglasses he’d left on the dashboard. Only Janet and the twins were left in the mobile home. She told him the trio had left for Michigan.

  “Why in the hell would they do that?”

  Pete Fry paused, then began fuming.

  “That goddamn eldest boy has robbed me again,” he cursed.

  21

  The snow that dusted the Pointes all week left the Tudor-style homes on Berkshire looking as though they were decorated by Norman Rockwell for Christmas morning. When Jan and Al Canty woke to open their gifts, frost glistened on the diamond-beveled windows that flanked their living room fireplace.

  Al was not an extravagant shopper, by Grosse Pointe standards at least. But he’d always given his holiday gifts for Jan a lot of time and thought. One Christmas he hunted down a rare psychological test she wanted. On another, he sent for a sculpture that caught her eye in northern Michigan months back.

  There was less effort this year. If Al hadn’t pointed it out, she probably wouldn’t have noticed. But he kept apologizing as she opened her gifts. She certainly had no complaints. There was a pendulum clock for the kitchen, some perfume, a couple of stereo albums, a stained glass medallion, and a book for her saltwater aquarium. Al, however, remained troubled.

  No, Al was embarrassed. That was the only way she knew how to describe him when he looked that way. He was blushing, shuffling his feet, and looking at his shoes. She had seen him behave that way before, but only with her. She always felt he was very vulnerable then.

  “I’m, um, sorry. They’re really not much, are they?”

  “Come on, Al, it’s no big deal. They’re fine.”

  She knew he was hanging on her every word. She felt very protective of his feelings when he got like that.

  “It’s the book,” Al continued. “The money I was expecting from the book, and the court evaluations. It won’t come until January. I thought it would be here by now.”

  “Al, it’s no big thing. The gifts are fine.”

  Then Al laughed. That was how he usually came out of one of his boyish spells. Still, it seemed odd that he was so concerned.

  Well, she thought, maybe he’s feeling overextended with his heavier schedule. She already was anticipating their annual vacation after the holidays. They both needed one.

  That afternoon they drove to Gladys Canty’s house for Christmas dinner. En route they stopped at a car dealership to take a look at a new car she had ordered. The car had arrived but still had to be prepped.

  Jan had spotted the new 1983 red Thunderbird when a friend of her father, a Ford executive, was driving it several months back. He was using it as a company car. She loved the T-bird. The turbocharged five-speed suited her new station in life as a professional. Her Volkswagen days were over. The executive offered to tag the car for her, meaning she could buy it at a substantial discount when he returned it to Ford.

&nb
sp; Jan and Al walked across the car lot to eye the car. She brushed off the snow on the windshield and eyed its gray leather interior.

  “Al, I can’t wait,” she said, shivering.

  “Jan-Jan, let’s let the car be one of your Christmas presents.”

  He’s still thinking about those gifts, she thought. Why does he work so hard to make me happy? His tortoiseshell glasses glistened with the reflection of the red car and the white snow. His mouth was grinning, but his eyes were moist.

  “Al, I love you,” she said.

  They hugged before the temperature sent them scurrying back to Al’s black Buick.

  Gladys Canty greeted her two guests with the smell of fresh pecans roasting in her hot oven. She went all out on holidays for her son.

  She knew Bus had always been very sentimental about tradition. And tradition on Christmas meant turkey, sage dressing, cranberry sauce, rum balls, mincemeat and pumpkin pies—and roasted pecans. How her son loved it when she smothered those warm nuts in butter. She’d always loved to see him eat.

  Every year there was enough food to feed a half dozen, though it had only been the three of them every Christmas since Al Sr. died. Bus never liked big gatherings anyway. Gladys Canty knew that Buster was uncomfortable in large groups. He was so unlike his father in that way. Al Sr. always liked to be the center of attention.

  Sometimes Gladys Canty thought her son embraced the role of a recluse, as in the time he became enamored with Howard Hughes. It was after his first wife, Maggie, left him. He bought every biography he could find on the billionaire. Buster talked at length about how Hughes’s financial empire prospered while its neurotic ruler played in a fantasy world that included private marathon screenings of old Hollywood films in empty movie theaters. Yet, Bus said, the man was a genius. Finally, Al Sr. got sick of hearing about it over dinner every evening.

  “To hell with Howard Hughes, goddamnit,” he roared one night. “Lay off Howard Hughes, will you?”

  Al Sr. rattled her best china when he got that way. But Gladys Canty still missed her husband seven years after his death. Christmas always made his absence more poignant. Al Sr. seemed a tough old character, but she knew a lot of it was just an act. She always thought that deep down he wasn’t so sure of himself.

  This Christmas their only child seemed to be feeling particularly good about himself as he brought in a big box with a large red sash and bow.

  “Ma, this one’s for you.”

  He fidgeted as she opened the gift, a nineteen-inch Sony color TV. It must have cost six hundred dollars or more, she thought. That was Bus, spending money as though his checkbook had no balance column.

  “Why, Buster. You didn’t have to do this.”

  But her son was beside himself when she told him she liked the gift. He carried on for a half hour about how great a TV it was.

  For her part of the exchange, she gave him a gold Seiko watch. Jan had told her he had his eye on one.

  After dinner, Bus began to fidget again. They never stayed very long after the meal. But there was one more Christmas tradition Bus insisted on each year. After eating they always went for a short walk. Jan invariably stayed inside.

  They were gone only a little while. It was very cold as mother and son walked, just the two of them arm in arm.

  22

  A Class of ’83 Harper Woods graduate named Dolores Cusmano gazed at the family tree and wondered if the rumors about her old friend Dawn Marie Spens were true.

  She thought of past Christmas nights when Dawn and a few of their best friends had gathered in Dee’s living room for eggnog. Back in high school, they couldn’t wait to be adults. Back then, Dee thought she had a friend for life in Dawn Spens.

  Now the Harper Woods rumor mill was grinding overtime. A couple of boys in the neighborhood said they saw Dawn working the streets in the Cass Corridor. Others sniped she was living with a biker. Dee would have to see that for herself to believe.

  Yet no one, including Dee Cusmano, had heard from Dawn since she dropped out of school in the spring. It wasn’t the first time people had spread dirt about Dawn. Just because she was quiet, some people figured she had an attitude.

  Dee knew better. In fact, she figured she was one of the few people who had invested the time to get to know Dawn. For Dee, that was seven years, and even then she didn’t totally understand the girl.

  Dawn Spens, Dee always thought, was endowed with a curious mixture of brains and bad luck. When they first met in the fifth grade at Tyrone Elementary Dee felt as though she’d found a soul mate. Dee’s mother and father had divorced when she was five. She grew up learning how to take care of herself while her mother worked. Though Dawn’s mother was home, Dawn met her own needs as well. Dee suspected all was not well in Dawn’s bungalow on Elkhart.

  Dawn only hinted at family troubles. Then at age twelve she attempted suicide by overdosing on her mother’s medication. She spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital. When Dawn finally began talking, Dee felt she had helped her open up. Dawn’s parents weren’t divorced then, but Dee guessed they should have been. They fought quite a bit. They split up and reconciled repeatedly.

  “I just wish they would make up their mind,” Dawn would say.

  The Spenses’ household was not the kind of home where kids just dropped by. Dawn was quite guarded about who she invited inside. Dawn’s father, Roy, was no Ozzie Nelson. Sometimes Dee and Dawn would be sitting in the living room when he came home from his job as a machinist.

  “I’ve got people coming over,” he would say coldly. “Why don’t you get lost.”

  Often they went to Harper Woods Memorial Park, across from the high school. Dee shared what it was like before her parents divorced. She tried to bolster Dawn’s spirits. Dee suspected Dawn had it a lot rougher at home than she revealed. Dawn envied the stability Dee found after her mother remarried.

  “You have the ideal family,” she would say.

  The Spenses’ divorce case two years ago was traumatic on everybody. Roy Spens filed, then his wife, Henrietta, countersued, but they continued living together. Mrs. Spens claimed that her husband had “a violent temper,” threatened to shoot her, and gave her fourteen stitches with one beating. A circuit judge ordered Roy Spens to “absolutely refrain from assaulting, beating, molesting, or wounding” his wife.

  In a few weeks they were back again in court. Dawn’s mother claimed her husband was coming in and out of the house drunk at all hours of the night. The police were called. Mrs. Spens told the court she was under medical care for depression. Roy agreed to leave the home.

  But when the divorce was finalized in Dawn’s senior year, it was Roy Spens who got custody of Dawn and her younger sister, Patty. Mrs. Spens left Detroit to live with a man in Windsor, Canada. They eventually would marry. It hurt Dawn quite a bit.

  Dee remembered an odd proposal Dawn’s mother made after she moved. Henrietta’s fiancé had a friend who was serving time in prison. She wanted Dawn to write him. Dee saw some of the letters from the inmate. She could tell he was lonely. But she couldn’t understand how a mother could knowingly fix up her daughter with a criminal.

  “Dawn, just quit writing him,” she said. “You don’t need that kind of hassle right now.”

  Considering all the pressures, Dee never could figure out how Dawn did so well her first two years in high school. Dee had trouble maintaining a C-to-B average. Dawn carried a 3.8 in her sophomore year with little effort. She was naturally bright, and a quick study if there ever was one. She seemed the perfect student. As a junior she managed the school’s bookstore. The yearbook photographer captured her in all-American poses at pep rallies.

  Her choice in boyfriends, however, wasn’t so wholesome, and there were many undesirables to choose from. The high school had a big drug problem. The school had its jocks and its burnouts, but Dee always thought Harper High was equipped with more of the latter. A lot of the kids got their drug money from naive parents. Others stole for it. Some fenced cloth
es snatched from a nearby shopping mall during their lunch hour.

  Dawn was attracted to questionable characters. The first was the son of a Detroit police inspector, but he wasn’t headed for a career in law enforcement. Dee wasn’t sure what he liked more, drugs or stealing. Once, on a dare, he walked into a J. C. Penney store and lifted a miniature TV.

  “What do you see in someone like that?” she asked Dawn.

  “He’s nice to me,” Dawn said. “He takes me places. He pays a lot of attention to me.”

  Dee suspected Dawn craved a lot of love. But Dee wondered if she really knew what it was. Dawn seemed to think love simply was someone making her the center of attention.

  Her last boyfriend, a Detroit dropout named Donnie Carlton, wasn’t bad-looking, but that was about all Dee could say good about him. Dee thought Donnie was a transparent con artist. To Dawn, he was salvation.

  Dawn started dating him during her senior year. She had saved up her money from working at a pizza parlor and bought herself an old Plymouth Duster. In a few months Donnie had ravaged the car in accidents. Roy Spens accused Donnie of stealing some jewelry and banned him from his home.

  Dee began seeing less of Dawn, who started missing classes. She didn’t see her much after school either. She was always with Donnie. Then, one night, Dawn and Donnie snagged Dee’s boyfriend.

  They couldn’t have had worse timing. Dee and her boyfriend were considering marriage after graduation, and they had made dinner plans with her father so he could meet him. The night of the dinner, however, her boyfriend came up missing. He’d been at her house but left with Dawn and Donnie Carlton, who stopped by while Dee was gone. When he didn’t return, she met her father at the restaurant, alone and humiliated.

  It was nearly midnight the following evening when the trio returned. They pulled up wasted in front of her house in Dawn’s Duster. Later Dee learned they had stolen from her room the pain medication her doctor had prescribed for her back. They had gobbled the pills and drunk two cases of beer. Her boyfriend lay in the front seat, barely breathing. She couldn’t wake him up. Dee was furious as her mom emerged from the house to investigate.