by Joe Clifford
Kira is the belle of the ball. I am not sure what that means. I hear Mom say that at the dinner table one night when Dan is talking about her. Dad and Wren laugh. I do too. Mom pets my head. I like the way that sounds. Belle of the ball.
She sits on the wood fence, Kira does, and all the boys gather around. I am sweeping the parking lot with the big push broom, picking trash from the weeds, raking the leaves that have started to change color. I need to get the field ready for tonight’s game. I like when the seasons turn over, even though it means some things have to die. It is an important job, Mr. Supinski says. Mr. Supinski is my boss. I have a lot of jobs.
I work for the school and the town, prepping the fields, cleaning up the garbage people dump in the woods outside the stadium. My other job is at the Idlewild Motel. I am a handyman. That is what Mrs. Shuman calls me. She owns the motel. I change light bulbs, empty the trash receptacles, and haul away old mattresses. I also work at the rail yard, clearing out produce freighters. Bums like to sleep in them sometimes. When I find one, I clear them out too. People like Mr. Supinski and Mrs. Shuman hire me because they do not have to pay me. I can do simple, repetitive tasks if someone shows me how to do them first. I am good at imitating. They give me treats and sweets, or reward me with apples when it is harvest season, like I am a horse, then they settle up with Dad later. I do not mind. I like knowing I am contributing to the family.
The boys huddle around Kira to show off their skills, preening like fancy birds. The girls want to be near her too, because if they stand close enough maybe the boys will love them too. Being popular in school is important. I once went to a regular school but not for long. After the first few grades they switched me over to a special school. After a couple years, they stopped sending me there too. I liked going even if I could not learn as fast as they wanted me to. I liked being around other kids like me. I overheard Dad say it was a waste of money. “Like putting perfume on a pig,” he said. I know he loves me. No one would want a son like me. He meant that the special school was expensive and they could never fix me. So why bother?
Kira is already very popular, even though she just got here. She is new, a present just unwrapped. None of the shine has dulled on her. I have been out of the box for a long time. My parts are janky, and I am not nice to look at. I can see the difference between me and other people. When Mom catches me staring at myself in the mirror, she thinks I am accepting simple truths, like I too am a person. I know I am a person. I am not stupid. I recognize I have a heart and brain. Blood runs through my veins. I learned about the parts of a body that keep a person alive. They taught us that at the special school, too. When I stare at myself in the mirror, I am noting the way my forehead is much bigger than other people’s. I want to believe this is because I am actually smart with a big brain and not because I was left in the oven too long. But this is not true. My eyes, so close together, appear crossed, and my forehead is uneven and lumpy. My nose is plump and piggish, and my chin is soft. When I try to speak, my mouth opens and I make sounds. But the words do not make sense. My dead eyes and rolling jaw makes me look like a cow chewing cud in the field. I do not get angry. There is no point getting angry over things I cannot change. I still see beauty too. Even if my face is ugly and my tongue cannot form the words I hear inside my head, there are good things in my heart.
The old oak trees stand tall on the hill behind the field. The autumn winds blow from the west, shedding husks. Leaves swirl in the current, lifted high in the storm. They scatter across the park and pavement. Even though it makes more work for me, I do not mind. The cold air rushing against my skin feels good. Kira waves at me. No one else notices because no one else notices me.
The cold sun shines bright, and the air hurts to breathe in. Winter will be here soon. I do not move. I let the swooping streams carry me away. I close my eyes and leave my body, fly away like a big bird in the sky, soaring above the clouds.
Mr. Supinski hollers at me to stop staring at the girls and get back to work. The girls on the hill laugh. But not Kira. When I do not move fast enough, Mr. Supinski comes up behind me and tugs my earlobe, says it again louder, right in my face, as if my ears do not work. My ears work fine. He flicks one with his dirty, stubby finger. I can smell the hot booze on his breath. I know why he goes back to the storage shed so many times during the day. The girls laugh louder. But not Kira. She looks sad, so I wave back and let her know I am okay.
Standing on the hill behind the football field, her yellow hair shining like straw in the autumn sun, she smiles at me. I do not ever want to forget this day. I want to live it over and over and over again.
CHAPTER SIX
When they got out to the hospital parking lot, Alex, true to her word, refused to get in the car with Riley, no matter what he said, until he finally grew exasperated of pleading with her to just get in the goddamn car and threw up his hands in frustration, and, eventual surrender. No one could make Alex Salerno do anything once she’d made up her mind.
Of course now Alex was stranded. She’d learned what town they were in, Galloway, sixty miles outside of Reine, at least a hundred-dollar cab ride, money she did not have. That’s if she could even get a cab to come out here, which was doubtful. Riley had tried to give her the cash for a taxi, but Alex’s glaring, silent response prompted him to put the bills back in his wallet and get in his car without another word.
Alex stopped an arriving nurse, asking if there was a bus station nearby. There was not. There was only one person left to call.
She didn’t have Tommy’s cell, and after last night, she wasn’t calling her cousin to get it. Alex had to hunt him down at the plant, a process that involved three transfers, two supervisors, and a ten-minute hold. When she got Tommy on the phone, he said he was happy to pick her up but that his shift ended at three, over an hour away, and he’d still have to navigate rush-hour traffic on the 87. Alex could be stuck up there till dark. What choice did she have?
Ashen gray skies stalked the countryside and skeletal trees staked the mangled ridge, hayfields trampled, untended and unruly. Alex hadn’t been paying attention on the way in, trapped in her head. She didn’t recall seeing a single store, and she wasn’t braving a search now, the ravaged landscape offering scant hope. At least she still had cigarettes.
Alex sat on the edge of the loading dock by the big brown dumpster, cracked pallets stacked haphazard beside her. She closed her eyes, feeling herself slip away. Her life was the exact opposite of everyone else’s: awake while everyone slept, sleepwalking while the rest of the world lived.
By the time Tommy pulled up in his battered pickup, the sun had gone down and it was dark, cold; though Alex couldn’t recall exactly when that happened. She only knew at some point the world had turned black, and that when she regained consciousness, she was shivering. She hadn’t moved from that spot on the docks, hiding in plain sight, had anyone bothered looking. All her cigarettes were gone.
“Thanks,” Alex said climbing in his cab, which, like Tommy himself, reeked of grease and gaskets. She kicked aside the paper cups and empty Gatorade jugs, clearing enough space to plant her feet.
Tommy blasted the heat, returning his cracked, stained hands to the wheel.
“You have any cigarettes?”
He plucked the Marlboros Reds from the breast pocket of his gray coveralls. The towering menace of the looney bin loomed behind them like Arkham.
“What was that place?” Tommy’s eyes remained locked on the dark, twisting road. No streetlamps, no moon, no stars. The hospital didn’t invite a lot of visitors.
“State mental ward.”
“What the hell you doing up there?”
Alex waited for the dashboard lighter. “Visiting Benny Brudzienski.”
“Retard killed that girl? What for?”
“That’s where they put him.”
Tommy cast a sideways glance. “What happened to your car?”
“It’s back at the motel.” She did
n’t feel like explaining more than that, which was okay with Tommy, who’d never been much of a talker.
Alex saw she’d been right not to venture off hospital grounds. Nothing but scrub brush and untamed wilderness for miles.
Farmland flipped past. Tractors and front loaders abandoned in the middle of wilted crops. Occasionally, far out, a porch lantern, buried among the wreckage of the heartland, flickered.
“You should’ve seen this hospital,” Alex said, placing her palm against the glass, feeling the cold on the other side. “I’m not saying the place is the Waldorf. But it is not a prison.”
“What else they gonna do? Throw him in gen pop at Riker’s? From what I hear, guy can’t wipe his own ass after that crew got hold of him.”
The way Tommy said “that crew” gave Alex pause. “You know who it was?”
“Who what was?” Tommy thought a second, catching her meaning. “Who ran Benny Brudzienski off the road and took a baseball bat to him?”
“Who said anything about a baseball bat?”
Tommy reached for his own cigarettes. “Why you so interested in Benny Brudzienski?” He pulled out a smoke with his teeth and punched the dashboard lighter. “This because of that cop ex-boyfriend of yours?”
“He was never my boyfriend.” When Alex said it aloud, she almost believed it, which was what her therapist had encouraged all along. What really happened. Reality versus fantasy. A couple months before her eighteenth birthday, Alex argued she’d practically been an adult. “Practically,” Dr. Amy said, “is not the same as ‘is.’”
“Be careful,” Tommy said. “You weren’t around after Benny. Things changed after that.”
“I was living up here then.”
“You might’ve been in town. But you weren’t living here.”
“Reine will always be Reine.”
“I’m not talking about ugly apartments and shit weather. Something horrible happened at the motel.”
“You sound like that reporter, Noah Lee, rambling about plagues and locusts.”
This might’ve been the longest conversation Alex ever had with Tommy, who usually communicated in clipped, one-word sentences.
A pair of headlights flashed in the side-view, a blinding glare. “You didn’t answer me,” she said, watching the car, now behind them, mirroring their moves.
“About what?”
“You know who beat the shit out of Benny?”
The lighter popped out the dash. Tommy shook his head and inhaled the hot metal coils. “I know what everyone else in Reine knows.”
“Which is?”
“Someone put Brudzienski up to it.”
They’d entered the town proper, blue signs marking the interstate ahead. All the businesses closed, residents inside for the night, doors locked and dead bolted. The same headlights were still behind them. Alex tried to shake the ludicrous notion they were being followed. Tommy caught her staring out the window.
“You okay, Alex?”
“Fine. How do you know someone put Benny up to it?”
“You know Reine. Only way to keep a secret up here is if one of you is dead.” He watched the road but sensed her wanting more. “I don’t know who hunted down Benny but I know they were trying to kill him. Got a buddy works as an EMT. Said half Brudzienski’s head was caved in.”
Tommy hit freeway speed. The other car zipped by, zooming in the fast lane, blending with the rest of the blurring lights, and Alex felt relieved, followed immediately by a sense of wonder, all these lives that had nothing to do with her or her little world.
“You see him?” Tommy said.
“Who?”
“Brudzienski.”
“Yeah. Looked messed up. Then again, he was pretty messed up to begin with.”
“He’s worse now. My buddy said they scooped part of his brain off the road. Carried it to the ER in a Ziploc. Had to reconstruct his skull.”
“But you don’t know who attacked him?”
Tommy shook his head. “You hear things.”
“Like what?”
“Like Kira Shanks was a slut. Fucked a bunch of different guys. Pissed people off.”
“I thought she was little miss popular?”
“She was. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t common knowledge. Girl got around. Everyone up here knows the story. Including your cop pal.”
“Riley’s trying to get Benny released, I think. Or clear his name.” Alex stopped. She wasn’t sure what Riley was trying to do. She’d gotten so caught up in their personal drama this afternoon she hadn’t gotten around to asking about his interests in the case. “How come Linda never told me any this?”
“Why would she?”
Tommy was right. Alex and her cousin didn’t talk much. There’d be no reason for Linda to ring down to NYC with periodic Kira Shanks updates.
“I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about it.”
“But you’re certain it wasn’t an accident?”
“Benny Brudzienski getting run over? No, wasn’t no accident. And, no, I don’t have a name. Like I said—”
“Rumors.”
“Rumors.”
Linda acted surprised to see Alex, but she didn’t ask Tommy where he’d been or tear into him for being late, meaning he’d phoned ahead and told her she was coming. Linda asked to speak with her boyfriend, inside, alone. Tommy told Alex not to go anywhere. The front door slammed, leaving Alex out in the cold.
When Alex told Tommy her change of plans—that she’d be in Reine for a few more days—he said she was staying with them, no questions asked.
The apartment was too small to tolerate secrets, and what began as urgent murmuring soon escalated to unhinged screaming. Alex’s willful ignorance couldn’t blot out her cousin’s shouts of “It’s not your decision!” and “Well, I don’t want her staying here!” The bulb in the box buzzed overhead, generations of dead bugs coating the bottom, a winged graveyard. That’s what happens when you get too close to the flame.
There was a little patio table with two weathered wicker chairs, a ten-pin of empty beer bottles and jar of Folger’s instant that was being used as an ashcan. Pairs of sneakers hung from telephone wires. Alex recalled the urban myth about shoes dangling from power lines, how it meant drugs were sold in that neighborhood, a story whose origins no doubt rooted in PTA potlucks and homogenous book clubs. Sheltered white people will believe anything.
Sick of waiting, Alex opened the door. Linda stopped squawking. Tommy plunked down on the couch and grabbed his can of Bud off the armrest, switching on the TV. In the brighter apartment light, Alex saw his knuckles weren’t stained from the job; they were red from the fight last night at the Fireside, the blood too deep in the cracks to scrub clean.
“What’s up?” Alex asked. “Not happy to see me?”
“Wasn’t expecting company, is all.” Linda attempted a grin. “Thought you’d be back in the city by now?”
“I changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“A lot of things.” Alex nodded at Tommy, whose meaty fist wrapped around the beer. “Offer to stay with you still stand?”
“Yup.” Tommy stared straight ahead, watching the talking heads on the evening news.
“Well,” Linda said, drawing out the word, letting her eyes wander over the cramped space of their apartment. “This place is pretty small—”
“Couch is fine.”
“We got a spare room in the back,” Tommy said, switching off the television and prying himself out of the cushions. “You’ll have to clear junk off to make the bed. Been using it as storage. Stay as long as you want.” He headed into the kitchen.
Linda swiped her purse and car keys off the end table, knocking over a baseball bat tucked behind the lamp. She stormed past Alex but didn’t glance over, slapping the screen door with the butt of her palm and stomping down the porch steps to her car. The Louisville Slugger rolled across the hardwood floor.
Alex joined Tommy in the kitchen. “You in a softball league or something?”
“Huh?” He was bent in the fridge, backside sticking out of the box, a bear raiding the pantry, plumber crack on full display.
“You have a baseball bat by the front door.”
“Rough neighborhood. Had a couple break-ins. You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He brought back the last two cans of Bud Light choked in plastic rings and a plate of leftovers that he stuck in the microwave. The kitchen sink overflowed with a week’s worth of dirty dishes. Black-ringed coffee mugs and crusted pasta bowls stacked in a tottering pyramid.
Alex pointed to the path Linda cleared, footprints burned into the carpet, smoke all but rising. “Did I do something?” Alex snatched her beer.
He shrugged.
“I’m serious, Tommy. What have I done to her? Why does she hate me so much?”
“Linda doesn’t hate you.” The bell dinged. Tommy scarfed his dinner standing up at the sink, polishing half the plate in three large bites.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“She’s jealous of you.”
Alex rolled her eyes even though she knew it was true. Her cousin had always had an inferiority complex around her, ever since they were kids, which was strange, given that Alex had grown up in the same dank conditions and squalid bars Linda did. And it’s not like Alex’s adult life turned out any better. At least Linda had a long-term boyfriend, an actual apartment instead of renting a glorified closet in someone else’s house. Linda and Tommy weren’t rich by any stretch, but they had enough income to cover insurance on two cars. They owned cell phones. Tommy was the day shift foreman at the paper cup plant. Steady work, decent pay, health care. Which was more than she had.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m knocking it out of the park.”
“It’s not that.” Tommy halted, scratching the back of his longshoreman’s neck.
