Freaky Green Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I wasn’t in bed actually. I was sitting in the dark at my computer fooling around. I’d been trying to read but couldn’t concentrate. Surfing the Web, you don’t need to concentrate. Almost, you don’t need a brain. Your brain is the Web. You don’t give yourself time to get restless or bored or even scared, just click! and you’re gone.

  I heard a sound outside. The wind was down, there wasn’t much sound from the lake. I listened and heard what sounded like a car motor, but I couldn’t see anything from my room, which doesn’t face the driveway. So I went out into the hall and I watched from one of our sliding glass doors. I saw Dad’s car, with the headlights off. I remember thinking, That’s strange, the headlights are off. Because you never see a car at night driving without lights. And this car was moving very slowly, coasting into the garage. Because our driveway slopes downhill, toward the lake, you can coast, you don’t need to drive. This isn’t something Dad would ordinarily do, coast into the garage, but he was doing it now. And he didn’t lower the garage door afterward.

  It makes a noise like distant thunder. And there’s a thud when it hits the concrete drive you can hear through the house.

  Another strange thing: instead of entering the house through the kitchen, like Dad and Mom always do, Dad left the garage and crossed the lawn to use a door at the far end of the house that nobody ever uses.

  Our house is this weird “postmodernist” house. Two stories, but because of the sloping land, parts of the top story are even with the ground. Just about every room has a door to the outside, but only two or three doors are ever used—you wouldn’t have a key for every door except if you made a point to get it. So I was thinking it was strange of Dad to enter the house by that door, by the furnace room, because he’d have had to get a key for it, he wouldn’t have had that key with him.

  So Dad came into the house by that door, on the far side of the house. You follow the hall past the fitness room, and the indoor pool, and up some steps, and across the living room, and down some steps, and along another hall, and you’re downstairs then in the hall that connects our bedrooms, and Mom and Dad’s bedroom is at a corner of the hall, a big room with its own deck overlooking the lake.

  I saw him. I could feel his footsteps. Actually I came close to calling out, Daddy hi! Because, if Dad saw me awake so late, he’d scold a little but in a way he’d be impressed.

  Because “extreme” things impress him. Physical strain, endurance. Guts, he calls it. He hates weakness like he hates failure.

  When I went back to bed it was 4:50 A.M.

  My mind was so wide-awake, I couldn’t not see the time.

  Okay. I’m feeling better now.

  I mean, I am. I just want this to get over with, please.

  No. I didn’t see Dad actually take the codeine tablets.

  He told us a doctor had prescribed them. So he would sleep for twelve hours at least. He’d had a sinus headache, he said.

  Yes. Dad’s eyes did look bloodshot, I guess. His head seemed to be stuffed—he was sniffing and blowing his nose. He had trouble walking, keeping his balance. Samantha and I pretended to be his nurses, helping him walk. . . .

  No. Not ever before. Not that I remember.

  Yes. Mr. Sheehan coached us. What to say when we were asked about Dad’s medication, how powerful it was, how he’d slept through the night of August 26.

  Yes. Todd, Samantha, our housekeeper, and me. We would all swear that Dad was in such a drugged condition, he could not have left the house.

  And Dad, too. Dad would swear.

  It’s what he told police, isn’t it?

  Can we stop for a few minutes? I’m feeling . . . I don’t feel too good.

  Yes, what I said on September 1 was not right.

  I don’t know if I was lying. I don’t know if I was conscious of protecting my father. There was this belief in our family that everyone was against us. There was the belief that Mom had done it on purpose, that she was hiding somewhere. Mr. Sheehan explained to us what we should say when we were questioned. He had Samantha and me repeat our stories to him. I was very tired—I wanted it all to be over. I would say that Dad had gone to bed around 9 P.M. and had slept for twelve hours through the night. Todd would swear to this, he would swear he’d seen Dad take the codeine tablets, I know that has been his testimony to you. I don’t mean that my brother is lying under oath. I don’t know what is in Todd’s mind.

  Did my aunt tell you that? I wish . . . she had not.

  I don’t want to discuss it. I’m sorry.

  Like I said, I don’t know what is in my brother’s mind.

  Yes. Because he said so.

  Because he is my dad, and he said so.

  Yes I believed him. Always I have believed him.

  Even when I knew better . . . sometimes.

  No. Dad did not threaten me. He loves me.

  I did believe him, but I knew it wasn’t so. I wanted to think that I hadn’t seen what I had seen that night. Because it might have been a dream. I wanted to think it had been a dream.

  Because Dad took my hands in his hands and swore to me that he had not hurt Mom, he had no idea what had happened to Mom, he swore!

  I vow to you, honey. I love you. You know that, Franky, don’t you?

  So I said Yes.

  Except now I know the truth, and I can’t lie for him. I can’t protect him.

  I love Dad, but it’s Mom who needs me. That’s how I see it. The right thing to do is to tell the truth, no matter who it will help, or hurt, so I am telling the truth now.

  I, Francesca Pierson, swear to this court and swear to God.

  III

  IN THE SANGRE DE CRISTO MOUNTAINS,

  NEW MEXICO:

  DECEMBER

  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  It’s an ideal of Freaky Green Eyes, it would never work in actual life. But in this journal, which I call the Lavender Journal, it’s my ideal.

  For the first twenty-three pages, the Lavender Journal is written in Krista Connor’s handwriting. The remainder will be in Freaky’s.

  Sometimes the writing hurts. Sometimes I hate it; the words don’t seem to come. And I have a miserable night, dreams of that bridge over Deception Pass . . . and the long, terrible fall into the water below.

  Other days, it’s easy as talking to someone you trust.

  With a purple felt-tip pen I’ve been writing in the Lavender Journal all that I can remember. Not just my testimony, but all the rest. What happened to my mother, Krista Connor, and to our family as a result. I emphasize facts. I try not to include much emotion. Because emotions are like flames, fire. They flare up, they can cause terrible damage, but they don’t last. Facts endure.

  Here are facts I have recorded in the Lavender Journal:

  —We are living now in the Moreno Valley of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains east of the small city of Taos and the Rio Grande River, in northeast New Mexico. (I love it here!) This isn’t our permanent home exactly, though Aunt Vicky is hoping it will be, if things work out with her new job.

  Aunt Vicky was awarded custody of Samantha and me by a judge for the Seattle Family Court. Since our father, Reid Pierson, was sentenced to fifty years to life with no possibility of parole, he didn’t contest the ruling. No one in the Pierson family did.

  “We have to get away from the Northwest for the winter.” Even before the sentencing, Aunt Vicky was saying this to Samantha and me. The next week she’d quit her job in Portland and flown to Taos, New Mexico, to be interviewed for a new job, the executive directorship of the Taos Institute Foundation. “A terrific job,” Aunt Vicky says, “sponsoring artists, musicians, archaeologists . . .” If Aunt Vicky has any regrets leaving Portland, and her family and friends there, she hasn’t given a sign of it.

  We’re living in a hilly, sparsely populated area about fifteen miles east of Taos, in a stucco-and-adobe Spanish-style house with an orange tile roof, an interior courtyard blooming with crimson bougainvillea, and a
view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the massive sky that’s so unlike the sky back home, I stop and stare at it sometimes, wondering where I am. In the Lavender Journal I try to express what I feel but it sounds weak, silly. The Southwest is a beautiful dream that doesn’t depend upon the dreamer to exist.

  —After Aunt Vicky read my mother’s journal, and gave it to the police, a search team was dispatched to Deception Pass, Whidbey Island, and after three days’ search the bodies were found.

  As the media reported, “badly decomposed and battered.”

  As the media reported, “identification was made through dental records.”

  As the media reported, both Krista Connor and Mero Okawa were determined to have died by “.38-caliber bullets fired at close range.”

  Rings had been removed from Krista Connor’s fingers that would afterward be discovered, and identified by relatives, in a safety deposit box rented in a Seattle bank by Reid Pierson.

  —Rabbit’s body was never found. Only the bloodstains on my mother’s quilt, which were presumed to be his.

  Even after he’d pleaded guilty to murdering Krista Connor and Mero Okawa, Reid Pierson would continue to deny having hurt that “friendly little dog.”

  —At first, after his arrest and indictment by a grand jury, Reid Pierson pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnaping and homicide. Then, as evidence against him mounted, his attorney, Mr. Sheehan, entered a plea of “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity”; when this defense crumbled, since no psychiatrist could be hired to substantiate it, Mr. Sheehan tried to enter a plea of guilty to kidnaping and second-degree manslaughter, which was rejected by prosecutors. (Reid Pierson claimed that Krista Connor and Mero Okawa had assaulted him first, and threatened to kill him, and so he’d been forced to defend himself against them by killing them; he couldn’t explain why he’d forced them at gunpoint into Okawa’s SUV, and forced Okawa to drive them to Whidbey Island, before killing them and pushing their bodies off the bridge.) After weeks of negotiations in the Skagit County court, the defendant decided to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for being spared the possibility of a death sentence.

  —“Rat! Ratting on your own father! You’d better stay out of my way, you little bitch.”

  Todd hates me now. Todd will never speak to me again.

  —Todd has dropped out of college. He lives somewhere in Seattle, we think.

  It is my brother Todd’s belief (you can check the website Todd has established on Reid Pierson) that our father was driven temporarily insane by our mother’s behavior and that he isn’t to blame for his actions in killing her and her “lover”; Reid Pierson should not be incarcerated in a maximum security prison in Okanogan, near the Canadian border.

  Todd believes that Krista Connor’s journal was a “fake” and that everything she wrote in it was “lies meant to incriminate my father,” and that she and her sister Vicky “conspired to poison” me against him. Todd believes that I am a traitor to our father; he has said threatening things to me. The last time we met, in the presence of court officials, he actually lunged at me, grabbed my wrist, and shook me and shouted at me before guards pulled him off.

  My brother’s face, contorted with rage, hatred for me. I will never forget it.

  Don’t hate me. I love you.

  I want to love you. . . .

  You’re my brother, Todd. Of our family only Samantha and you are left.

  —When Todd attacked me, I put on a pretty good show of not being afraid. I was Freaky-quick to protect myself and even managed to kick Todd (in the shin), but afterward I was shaking, and crying. Aunt Vicky and other Connor relatives were there to hug me and console me. I kept asking, “Am I a rat? For testifying against Dad?” Aunt Vicky said sternly, “No. You told the truth. You were damned brave, in my opinion. And now it’s done.”

  —In the Lavender Journal I write And now it’s done.

  Freaky tells me that this is so, I must believe. I must try to believe.

  —Samantha is in sixth grade at East Taos Elementary; I’m a junior at East Taos High. It’s a fairly large school, almost one thousand students, but people are so friendly in New Mexico, it isn’t anything like it would be at Forrester starting in the middle of the school year and not knowing anyone. “Hi, Franky!”—people I scarcely know are always greeting me, and smiling, and I’m made to feel welcome here, if not quite real. The way to handle a new, confusing situation is one day/one hour at a time, as Aunt Vicky advises, and that seems to work. I have to wonder if people “know” me here, but I’m not going to inquire.

  I’d decided not to join any clubs or try out for any teams, just to keep to myself, focus on my schoolwork and writing, but the smell of the school pool, the quivering aqua water and the brilliant tiles beneath, made me change my mind quick. So now I’m on the East Taos High girls’ swimming and diving team. In fact, I’m just about the fastest swimmer on the team, if not the best diver. The other girls respect me—I think we’re going to be friends. When I was trying out for the swim coach, I overheard a girl say to another girl, “Wow! She’s good.”

  —Sure, I miss my Seattle friends. But they’re still my friends. Twyla and I e-mail each other all the time, and talk on the phone, and she’s going to visit me sometime this winter. The first thing Twyla told me after my father’s sentencing was that I’d done the right thing. I know Twyla meant it, because she also said she wasn’t sure she’d have had the guts to do it, in my place.

  —Aunt Vicky describes herself as a “formerly fanatic” horsewoman, and here in New Mexico she’s taken up riding again, and has enrolled Samantha in the children’s riding school. After her first lesson, Samantha is in love. I’ve never seen my dreamy little sister so determined.

  I’m into running, hiking, sometimes backpacking with new friends from school. Mostly we hike out into the foothills—this is canyon and mesa country, striated rock, hills and dry gulches and enormous boulders, stunted trees and cacti, and always the mountains in the near distance. Sometimes we drive to Chaco Park and hike among the pueblo ruins, built a thousand years ago by a long-extinct Indian tribe, the Anasazi. Always the wind is blowing here, there’s shifting sunlight and shadow, a sense of spirits brushing past. There are a number of these villages, so still and peaceful you know they are sacred sites. I’m happy here: I tell myself.

  But sometimes I miss Mom so much. I think of that last conversation I had with her and I want to lie down in the rocks and dirt and never get up again.

  —Before we moved to Taos, Aunt Vicky drove Samantha and me up to Skagit Harbor to empty out my mother’s cabin. Aunt Vicky was co-owner, in fact, but wanted to sell the cabin. “No one in our family will ever want to stay here again.” We’d rented a U-Haul to carry away some of the furniture and Mom’s personal possessions and artworks. Other items we gave away to neighbors and friends who’d come over to help.

  It was a sad time. Melanie kept hugging Samantha and me, touching us, wiping at her eyes. Even Princess nudged at my legs, sniffing and whining. We saw that the Orca Gallery was for sale.

  A tall, good-looking boy of about seventeen, with lank, sand-colored hair, came up to me and said, “Remember me, Franky? Garrett Hilliard.” Garrett! I must have looked surprised, Garrett didn’t look the way I remembered him; and the way he was staring at me, I had the impression he might not have recognized me, either, in other circumstances.

  How we got through the next three or four minutes I don’t know.

  Garrett said he was really sorry about my mother, he’d liked her so much. . . . Then he went blank, couldn’t think of what to say next. I was stammering, “I really loved being in Skagit Harbor, this is such a great place, it was the happiest summer of my life. . . .” Words so incredibly stupid and wrong, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Freaky nudged me: Calm down. Take a breath and hold it. Garrett was saying, “That day I was supposed to take you and your sister sailing, when I came over, I was a little late, I saw your mom’s station wagon in the
driveway but nobody seemed to be around. I knocked at the door, called out who I was, looked around outside for a while, then thought maybe I had the time wrong, or you’d changed your mind and gone somewhere else, so I left and forgot about it. I mean, I didn’t forget, but I . . . I didn’t check back. And then, later . . .”

  I said, “Garrett, I’m so sorry. That was the day my f-father came, and took us . . . back home with him.”

  My face froze, I was terrified I’d burst into tears. Garrett looked stricken, rubbing at his mouth. I felt sorry for us both!

  Somehow, in spite of this clumsy exchange, Garrett and I got along really well. It just took a while. He helped us pack the U-Haul, and the Hilliards invited Aunt Vicky, Samantha, and me back to their house for an early supper, before we drove back to Seattle. Garrett and I exchanged e-mail addresses, and keep in touch. Sometimes daily. The Hilliards are planning to go skiing at Taos Valley over winter break, instead of going as usual to Aspen, so Garrett and I will see each other then.

  —The last time I saw my father was in police custody. Since that time, since he’s begun his incarceration at Okanogan State Prison for Men, we have not communicated.

  My memory of that meeting is like a bad dream.

  I was so shocked, seeing Dad: not just that Reid Pierson was wearing an ugly gunmetal-gray jumpsuit too tight for his shoulders, but something had happened to his thick chestnut hair—he was almost bald!

  I must’ve stood there gaping. It was one of the big surprises of my life. Looking back now, I guess there was almost something comic about my naiveté. It was easier to believe that my father was a murderer than to realize he’d been in disguise, wearing a toupee, for years.

  Around the sides and back of Dad’s head all that remained of his hair was a metallic-gray frizz, and across the crown of his head were a half dozen forlorn gray hairs. Seeing my expression, Dad touched his fingertips to his forehead and said, disgusted and embarrassed, “It’s the bastards’ strategy to humiliate prisoners. If I had a glass eye, they’d take it.”