“You mean it’s over with you two?”
“Most definitely.”
“Meaning you’re back on with Benedetto.”
“Not necessarily. But yes.” She grinned foolishly.
“Honey bunny, you are so stupid.”
“I know.”
“He’ll be bringing home his beer-drinking cronies and they’ll all sit around and talk dick talk and you’ll be left with the wives listening to what miniseries they’re watching that week.”
“Maybe I’ll start watching … oh, dear, no I won’t. Hell. You can still love someone and be different from them. At least, I think not to try is horrible. Not to at least give it a chance.”
“You’ll wind up pregnant.”
“So what? What the heck other sort of way should I want to be, seeing as how I’m in love with him?”
“And you’ll get fat …”
“So I’ll get fat. Christ! At my age there’s no better reason to get fat. At least I’ll be a real person with my own life. You know, you have all these great friends in town who adore you and they all love to have you around, and yeah, sure, of course, you’re beautiful and amusing and who wouldn’t want you around, but they all go home at night to their own places, their own homes. They close the door and there they are, together with their own lives. And where do you go? I mean, don’t you ever want to find someone you can build something with? Instead of … of … of clandestinely screwing around with your sister’s ex-husband?”
And of course, Zinnie stood just at that moment in the doorway with an ashen face.
“Thank you,” Carmela narrowed her eyes and leered at Claire as one would expect a snake to leer. “Thank you very much miss better-than-everyone-else and God forbid you might forget to preach it to them because you’ve just ruined not one but two afternoons.”
Mary and Stan steamrolled through the doorway, pushing Zinnie aside, thrusting plastic bags full of groceries at all of them. Claire got busy right away and then so did Carmela. They buried themselves in cabinets and put away soup cans and dog biscuits and sponges and Jello. Mary just kept handing them things and they just kept on putting away. Stan saw his chance and left and Mary stood there grumbling with her cereal boxes. “Well, Zinnie,” she said, “are you going to just stand there like a lump on a log or are you going to pitch in and help?”
“I was just thinking,” Zinnie drawled, “about the time we all went to visit Carmela and Arnold in their new home in Bayside—”
“Put that ice cream in the freezer before it melts,” Mary said to Claire. “Now what’s the Mayor barking at?”
“And just as we were leaving—boy, it’s funny because I can remember it like it was yesterday—just as we were leaving and I was the last one out and it was so dark on that porch and Daddy was honking to hurry up and I went to kiss Arnold good-bye, did you know he stuck his whole tongue down my throat?”
Right then the kitchen went still and they all looked at Zinnie. “I mean, I was just a teenager—” she started to say, but she didn’t finish, because Mary’s hand shot out from across the room and whacked her smack across the face.
“And another thing!” Mary’s strong voice roared at the three of them. “If the three of ye go after each other like cats, like blessed enemies, for pity’s sake, where will you be when your father and I are gone? What will you do, stand paces apart above my casket? I ask you.”
“Ma—”
“Don’t interrupt me, I’ll be through when I’m through. What did we go and have the lot of you for, if it was only to argue and bicker and hate yourselves till you’re green in the faces and wrinkled with lines running this way from jealousy and that way from envy. And all these years I thought when you’d be grown you’d start to care for each other and I would be able to take a backseat and relax, only no, no, it sure won’t be like that for a while!”
There the three women stood, their heads hung in adult supplication. Nothing had changed. She would mention her casket and they would all fall to pieces and promise to be good wee lassies once again. Until next time.
“Mary?”
“What is it, Stan? Can’t you go back out and bring the dog in? He’s driving me mad.”
“Is Michaelaen in here?”
“Sure I thought he’s with you!”
“He’s out on the lawn, Dad.”
“He’s not.”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“Well, he isn’t there now.”
“Glory be.”
They went out quickly, each of them taking off in separate directions. Michaelaen wasn’t under the porch. He wasn’t in the garage. He wasn’t in anyone’s car, a favorite place of his to be, just sitting in someone’s car pretending he was going somewhere. He was, it became terrifyingly clear, missing.
Zinnie stood in the middle of the lawn and shouted his name, again and again, again and again. Her teeth began to chatter.
“Oh God, it’s all my fault,” Claire came outside after rechecking the house. “It’s all my fault.”
“Shut up,” Carmela told her. “And shut the dog up.”
Johnny arrived with Pokey Ryan in an unmarked car, for Stan had called the 102 immediately. They screeched to a halt and went right over to Zinnie. Johnny put his arm around her and cupped her head in his hand. “Now there’s no reason to be alarmed … we’ve got no reason to think anything’s wrong. But … you know … we just want to be sure. We want to get some help here, okay?”
Zinnie, holding her fist, shook her head yes. She didn’t call his name hoarsely anymore, just every minute or so someone else would and the pain would greet her again, quickly and deeply, another knife in her gut. She couldn’t think and she couldn’t pray. She only whispered over and over, “God. Please. God. Anything. God. Please.”
“Uh oh!” Michaelaen worried. They were all outside. He could hear them. They were looking for him. The darn old Mayor was going to make them find him. It was dark down here. He didn’t like it anymore. Maybe he would just leave the things down here on that old shelf and go. But now he heard something else. It was Mrs. Dixon coming down the cellar stairs. He was more afraid of her than all the others put together. Once she’d even hurt Miguel. And then she’d given him money and stuff and taken all those pictures. He didn’t think he wanted any stuff from her. He’d just hide for a minute and then when she went upstairs he’d go right home. Of course! He knew a good spot. That old refrigerator with the legs on it. It even had a nice light on inside. He climbed inside and shut the door.
“Somebody shut that fucking dog up,” Johnny cried.
“It isn’t the sound of the dog,” Mary murmured. “It’s that other, strange wild sound that’s coming from the von Lillienfeld house. What is that sound, then? It is a banshee wailing, to be sure.”
“Stop that superstitious nonsense,” Stan yelled at her, frightened. “It’s the cat. Von Lillienfeld’s cat. That Siamese.”
“So now we know what but we still don’t know why,” Ryan shuddered. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.
“That’s the sound of the banshee, I tell you.”
“So stay here if you want to, but I’m going over there to see what’s going on.” Stan headed across the street and the lot of them followed. Claire stood where she was. She would have to calm the Mayor down. What was he doing over there on Dixon’s lawn, anyway? Between the cat wailing and the dog barking, she thought she’d go insane. She could turn the hose on him. You’d think he was trying to tell them something, the way he just wouldn’t let up. She went to follow the hose to the nozzle but it ended out back on the sprinkler. What the hell, he was closer to Dixon’s hose anyway. Claire went behind Mrs. Dixon’s garbage cans to turn on her hose. There was one can lopsided on a rock, and as she leaned across it she knocked the lid off. As she went to put it back she caught sight of something down deep in the can. Some magazine or something on cheap paper, a star on a red background and a child on a horse. The star was a pentagram, it occurred to her as she turne
d on the hose. And the child on the horse had no clothes on. She turned the hose back off. The Mayor looked at her. She looked, alarmed, back at the Mayor. With one last, painful snort, he dropped down onto the grass and was finally quiet.
It was quite a while ago—weeks—when this whole thing had started. She and the Mayor had been sleeping on the porch. The garbagemen had made their way down the block and the noise had awakened her. A golden Plymouth had rattled down the block. And Mrs. Dixon had slammed the lid down on the can and hurried back into the house. Mrs. Dixon. What had she been so in a hurry about? Wasn’t that the same day of the first gory murder? Hadn’t she had a strange feeling then? A premonition of some sort? Or had she simply been a witness to somebody getting rid of something they would rather no one saw? A pervert did not a murderer make. And then she noticed the screen right next to her, a little crooked. A little off. A little crooked for a house whose screens were all in straight as little soldiers. It was utterly ridiculous to think of Mrs. boring old Dixon involved in anything underhanded. She was her mother’s friend. Well, if not her friend, at least her dear old neighbor. With never a thought of suspicion. She and Mom walked to church together, after all. Since years. Years and years. They hadn’t always. Something had started it. What had happened years ago? Something with Michael? Hadn’t something happened to Michael that he’d never told her about? He was frightened of Mrs. Dixon. Yes, she knew that now. That’s why he wasn’t afraid to cut through Iris von Lillienfeld’s yard the way the rest of them were. Because the yard next to his own held some secret more terrifying. All his false bravado had been fear. And Mrs. Dixon and good-hearted Mom had taken to walking together to church. Suddenly she remembered where she’d seen that strange captioned picture: in Michael’s bottom drawer. Had Mrs. Dixon given Michael dirty pictures? Claire looked up at the big, fine house. She looked and looked. The garage door was open. Mrs. Dixon still kept Rudy’s cars in there. Old cars, they were. From back in the days when all the cars they made were black. Claire could hardly remember Rudy Dixon, how he was before he’d had his stroke and turned into a whiskered, uriney thing to be left by the window in the front parlor. He’d been sort of bald and flashy back then. Yes, very flashy.
Claire remembered herself as a small girl, out here in the driveway, just like this. Mr. Dixon was pulling out of the garage and he’d stopped to say how do. She’d hated him because he called her Red. “Hi ya, Red,” he’d said. “How do?” His beefy wrist was as still as an animal on the Pontiac door and his cufflinks, roulette wheels, had glittered like gold.
Claire returned to the present with a wheezing gasp.
“Johnny?” She shielded her eyes from the sun. “Johnny, can you come here a second? I don’t know. This is stupid. But there’s this screen loose here in a spot where Michaelaen could possibly have gotten into—”
“Who lives here?”
“Mrs. Dixon. You met her. My mother’s friend.”
Johnny remembered Mrs. Dixon. Hadn’t Ryan even asked him who the hell she was? So many of those Con-Tact sheets they’d taken from Claire’s darkroom had her kisser planted all over them. She was always getting in the way. Even the shots up in the woods were peppered with Mrs. Dixon.
“Who else lives here?” Johnny asked Claire.
“Else? Nobody else. She lives here alone.”
“Here? In this place?”
They looked up at the big well-kept house. It was so big that it suddenly seemed strange to Claire as well. “It’s just that I found something here in her garbage pail and I remember her husband, years ago, having a cufflink like the one I found in Carmela’s car and … Jesus, Johnny, if she has Michaelaen—”
“All right. Calm down. Where’s your mother?”
“They went over to Iris’s house because her Siamese … Johnny, they all think Iris has something to do with this but I don’t believe—”
He peered down into the can and gave a low whistle.
“You run over and get your mother so we can get through the front door and I’ll try and jimmy my way in this way. You tell them something else. Tell them”—he smashed his foot through the window—“that the kids broke her window and they want to get their ball. Or see the damages. Just get inside. And get Ryan over here. Tell him what’s happening.”
“Johnny, if she hurt Michaelaen—”
“Hurry up. Go. Hurry up.”
Claire ran across the street. In her mind’s eye she saw Mrs. Dixon’s plain, pale face. The sound of wind chimes and that face looking up at her from the alley. Those eyes had said something else besides what she had told her, that she’d come to check up on her. She’d looked at her with fear. Because she knew Claire knew without knowing.
Mary pounded on the big brown door. Then she rang the bell. She didn’t know what they thought they wanted her to do over here. What would her Michaelaen be doing over here? Why, if they thought Mrs. Dixon had anything to do with … why the very idea—like walking backward through her memory … so very many years ago … she’d come across her Michael in the garage and Mrs. Dixon in there with him. But, of course, nothing had happened. Nothing, Michael had told her. Nothing had happened and he was crying from the fear of the dark. Or had she told him that so he would think it? She knocked harder on the grand oak door.
“Mary,” Stan called, “we’re going in here whether she opens or not. Just get out of the way and Ryan and I—”
But right then the door opened, a squad car pulled up, Miss von Lillienfeld came outside on her lawn and Mrs. Dixon, seeing them all, pee-ed right down the front of her nice rayon dress.
“Christmas,” said Stan.
“Coming through,” Ryan came up the steps.
“Michaelaen!” Zinnie cried again hoarsely.
“Michaelaen!” they all called, and they went in and went through the house and kept calling. Only Michaelaen was far far away from them now, and even the hum of the fridge from that moment of opening had stopped. Even the hurry up cold had just stopped.
Claire came down the stairs after Johnny. He was back at the furnace, all sooty, glad not to have found Michaelaen there.
“Come on,” he said. “He’s not down here. I checked all over.”
“Where’s my son?!” Zinnie’s voice carried through the whole house. “Where’s my baby?!”
It was finally over. Mrs. Dixon grasped hold of the back of her husband’s cane chair and she knew it was finally over. If only that fool Claire had stayed away. But no. She’d had to return looking just like that little brat Michael who’d started the whole thing. It was all his fault. And now hers. Twins! They were both from the devil, that was where. Stirring things up. Making her remember. Why was Mary Breslinsky looking at her like that? So aghast. Didn’t she know this had nothing to do with her? This was separate.
So why did they keep up this shouting? What did they want? What did Mrs. Breslinsky’s girl Zinnie still want from her? Didn’t she know it was over? Hadn’t she shown them the cameras? She’d never touched Michaelaen. Their precious Michaelaen. They should only know what a little pig he was. What cunning little pigs they all were. Innocent children! Ha! Innocent nothing. Hadn’t her own father taught her all that. A hollow-sounding laugh ripped like gas from her throat.
“Come on, Claire.” Johnny’s voice sounded hollow in the cold, dismal cellar.
She turned with him to go, then looked for no reason back over her shoulder and noticed the trickle of water that ran from the refrigerator. She remembered the sprinkler. Only what would be worse, if he was there or if he wasn’t? “Johnny? Johnny, the refrigerator.”
She held her breath and watched the light bulb naked on a chain.
His head was on the wall of the sour refrigerator and his face, all pearly and closed, the color of drowned abalone. His hands and feet were blue.
“Helllllp,” Claire called with no sound, like a dream where you’re trying to run and go nowhere. But Johnny pulled him out, pushed her out of the way, and was running up the stairs and out
onto the lawn.
“Get me some help here,” Johnny shouted to everyone.
“My baby! Let me see my baby!” Zinnie shrieked, only Johnny wouldn’t let her. He was down giving him mouth to mouth.
“Is he dead?” Carmela cried out.
“Hail Mary full of grace …” Mary prayed.
They were all coming out on their lawns. Everybody was out and they watched without talking. You could hear the short gasps Johnny made into his mouth, you could feel him breathe for him and the hope that waited, praying, inside every heart.
There was nothing.
Johnny lay down straight on top of him, smothering him, warming him, breathing for him. Making him live, goddammit, with all of the fury and faith he had in him. Come on. Come on. Live.
With an arc of his back like a lover’s reply, Michaelaen jerked with one spasm and vomited wildly.
“Yeah,” Johnny said to him. “Yeah.”
And the ambulance came, the paramedics ran over, and Johnny stood up, covered with vomit and furnace soot, and Claire looked at him standing there and thought she would die of this great love that held her.
They brought Mrs. Dixon out with no trouble. They led her down the steps slowly, almost softly, her very best red ruby earrings clasped firmly to her fat, doughy lobes. The neighbors stood about. Mrs. Dixon worried someone would steal her shopping cart off the porch and one of the officers pulled it inside.
“It’s hard to believe,” someone said.
Iris von Lillienfeld leaned on her fence. It was true. Monsters never looked like monsters. They were always ordinary people. That’s how they got away with evil as long as they did. Iris was suddenly beat. She could use, on this night, a stiff drink.
The Mayor, in the shadow, watched it all. He dare not close his eyes now. He wanted to see, be it hell or high water, which way he was going. And he was going. This had all been too much for his old soldier’s bones. Surely, though, it had been worth it. To go out in a bright flame of glory. For he was going. It had all been too much. A hero’s death. Yes, what better way. Perhaps a little sooner than he’d expected … but for the worthiest of causes. He moved himself and shifted his insides until the great pain lessened. One comfort: he would live on in his offspring. That was something. Quite something. He thought of Natasha underneath the screened porch. She would look for him. Sadly. And Stan. How his dear friend Stan would miss him. He wouldn’t want to go on for much longer like this at any rate. And he’d had a fine life. A long life. Up and down these old roads and the sidewalks raised up at the seams from good roots. Strong roots. Well. This night without him would be fine over old Richmond Hill. Very black and right dotty with stars. Ah, see that. Here came Claire looking for him. She cocked her head as she came over closer. “Oh, no,” she whispered softly and she fell to his side and stroked his brave warrior’s fur.
Park Lane South, Queens Page 23
