Stony River (8 page)

Daddy had never talked to Linda so confidentially. The regret in his voice emboldened her to confess in a quiet voice, “I used to call him Crazy Haggerty.”

“You weren't the only one.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“You said he had strange stuff in his pockets when he died on the train.”

“Did I? Why are you so interested in Mr. Haggerty?”

“I want to know, that's all.” “Well, kiddo, there are some things we're just not meant to know.”

AUGUST 24, 1955
: Linda's twelfth birthday and Mother wouldn't be home from the hospital. Linda was trying to be grown up about it. Daddy said he'd take care of dinner and the three of them would celebrate later that night at the hospital, wouldn't that be fun? But Daddy
didn't know how to make Baked Alaska. Linda considered trying it on her own, but the effort it took on Mother's part was what she liked best.

“Forget housework,” Daddy said at breakfast. “Spend the day with your little friend.”

Tereza showed up at The Island wearing dungarees that didn't fit. “Somebody gave 'em to Allen but they ain't his size.”

“They're too big in the waist for you.”

“Yeah, and they cut into my crotch. I feel sorry for guys. Ever seen a dick?”

“A what?”

“A penis. A guy's pee-pee.”

Linda's face got hot. “I don't think so.”

“Some are stubby like punks. Others are kinda worm-like.”

“How many have you seen?”

“Well, my brother's, natch, but that don't count. Let's see …” She added on her fingers: “Richie, Vinnie, Paul, Vlad”—the greasy-haired boys who blocked the sidewalk and said “all that meat and no potatoes” whenever Linda tried to walk by.

“They smoke cigs,” Tereza said, “and they let me take drags if I kiss 'em.”

Linda was horrified. “Kiss their penises?”

“No, genius, their mouths.”

“Can you taste what they've been eating?”

“Natch.”

“How nauseating.”
Nauseating
was Linda's favorite new word, but Daddy wouldn't allow her to say it at the dinner table. “Don't your folks mind you going with them?”

“They don't ask and I don't tell.”

Linda didn't want to hear any more about the greasy-haired boys. She suggested they play Swiss Family Robinson. Tereza said she wasn't going to pretend anymore until she became a Broadway or
Hollywood star. Linda thought about mentioning it was her birthday, but she didn't want Tereza to play out of pity. She went home and looked up penis in
Webster's Unabridged
and then the words in the definition she didn't understand. Eventually she got to “intercourse” and “impregnate” and began to think about Miranda and Crazy Haggerty.

It made her stomach hurt.

She paged through medical books in the house she'd had no interest in before, searching for the rules of intercourse—reassurance that what happened to Miranda was out of the ordinary, something she didn't have to be afraid of. From Mother's bottom bureau drawer she retrieved a booklet called
Growing Up and Liking It
. Earlier that year the school nurse had sent the sixth-grade girls home with it along with a sanitary napkin, a belt and instructions to discuss it with their mothers. Mother had said, “We won't need this for at least another year.” The booklet was silent on the subject of intercourse. Maybe the child wasn't Crazy Haggerty's. Maybe he'd kept Miranda inside that house because she was like Tereza, wandering off whenever she wanted, kissing boys and looking at their penises.

Daddy brought home a pizza and let Linda have as much as she wanted. At the hospital, Mother held out her arms and said “Here's my birthday girl,” but she didn't look in a party mood. Leaning over to hug her, Linda caught a whiff of talcum.

“We were together twelve years ago in this very hospital,” Mother said in a way that made Linda sad. “The windows were blacked out because of the war.”

Daddy patted Mother's hand. “I remember.” Then to Linda, “Here you go, kiddo, open your present.” He'd brought it in a shopping bag. “Madge wrapped it.” Madge Bryson was Daddy's secretary. Linda had seen her only the one time she'd ever been in Daddy's office. To Linda, Madge was heavily rouged cheeks and a smile that made you feel special. She had used pink paper sprinkled with black polka
dots for Linda's present. Underneath the paper: a Brownie Hawkeye camera with a flash attachment and a box of bulbs.

Linda had asked for a portable radio.

“It's all loaded up, ready to go,” Daddy said.

Linda made a show of looking through the instruction manual. “It's swell.”

Mother said, “Don't take my picture, I look a fright.” Linda hadn't intended to.

Madge had sent along three cupcakes with chocolate icing, paper plates, napkins, plastic forks and three candles. Daddy set the plates and cupcakes on Mother's dinner tray, placed the tray on the bed and lit the candles. He and Mother sang Happy Birthday in a whisper so they wouldn't disturb the other sick people. Linda forced herself to think about all the orphans in the world with nobody to sing to them; she thought about Miranda.

“My cupcake is dry,” Mother said.

Daddy laughed and said, “It would be, wouldn't it?” He pulled up the only chair beside Mother's bed, sat and patted his knee for Linda. She pictured his boxer shorts holding something worm-like and said, “I think I'll go down to the maternity ward and look at the babies.”

FOUR

OCTOBER 28, 1955
. The moon was out by the time Chevy Man dumped Tereza back at Tony's Garage at the corner of Route 1 and Grove, a block from her apartment building. She hustled down the sidewalk, pimply cold in tight white shorts and a Dubble Bubble– pink sweater. She was too busy cooking up the story she'd give Ma and Jimmy to notice Linda on her front stoop across the street. Linda called out but Tereza didn't slow down.

Linda stumbled after her. “Hey, wait up!”

“Beat it!” Tereza hurled the words over her shoulder. Miss Goody Two-Shoes probably wanted to brag about having her weekend homework done already. Tereza should've been in eighth grade, not seventh with Linda, but she'd missed too much. Whenever a school snooped into her injuries, Jimmy would find different work and they'd move.

“What were you doing at Tony's?”

Tereza turned just short of her porch steps. “You seen me?”

“Yeah, after school, getting into a car.”

“You rat on me, I swear I'll kill you.”

“Rat on you about what?”

In work pants and undershirt, Jimmy exploded onto the porch, a long belt wound around his hand. “Get up here, you little whore. I know what you been doing.”

Tereza backed up and Jimmy ran down the stairs. Tereza shoved Linda out of the way as Jimmy let loose with the belt, flicking it like a whip.

“Go ahead, you piece of shit,” Tereza said, dancing around. “The worst you can do is kill me. Do it and make me happy. I dare you.”

Linda dashed back to her house, screaming “Daddy!”

Tereza led Jimmy in circles down the middle of the street. He lashed the pavement with the belt, looking more and more pathetic as she zigged and zagged out of his reach.

“Ooh, big brave man,” she taunted. “Takin' on a
girl
.”

Linda's old man appeared at his front door and stood like a mummy. Linda ran into the street, waving her chubby arms, yelling at Jimmy to stop. It distracted him long enough for Tereza to scuttle to the end of the street, turn left and run like spit along the edge of the highway. Jimmy wouldn't hurt Linda. Even so, Tereza owed her one.

The ground burned under Tereza's thin-soled shoes and her lungs nearly blasted through her ribs but she didn't look behind her until she made it to the White Castle a few blocks away. Jimmy hadn't followed. Winded or too lazy, she didn't care which. She bent over and clutched her knees, panting. Waited to catch her breath before opening the door to the smell of cigs and steamed onions. Richie, the beanpole, and blubbery Vlad perched on stools at the counter with a new guy, coffee cups and a choked ashtray spread out before them.

“Hey, Teeze,” Vlad said, moving his hand like he was jerking off. “Here to suck my dick?”

“Got five bucks?” she asked, still breathing hard. That was what Chevy Man had given her. Enough for fifty Castle burgers.

Vlad and Richie laughed like they thought she was joking.

“You're nibbing out,” Richie said, copping a feel of her left tit as she slid onto the stool beside him. He had a pencil behind his ear, as usual. A doodler: spaceships and ray guns mostly, sometimes the Green Giant with a hard-on.

“Asshole,” she said, slapping his hand away, but she wasn't cheesed off at him. Vlad either. Talking dirty was their way of showing they liked her. She only ever let them stick their tongues in her mouth and flash their dicks at her. Guys were so impressed with their dicks.

“My cousin Buddy from Linden,” Richie said, nodding toward the new guy, two stools away, next to Vlad. “His grandma is my mom's aunt.” Buddy spun slowly toward her and nodded. Pouty lower lip, sleepy eyes, slicked-back hair blonder than Richie's. Under his black leather jacket, a white T-shirt strained against his muscles.

“You a bodybuilder?” Tereza asked.

Buddy smiled at her with half a mouth and cracked his knuckles.

Richie smirked. “The next Charles Atlas.”

Buddy spun off his stool and swaggered toward Tereza, his pointy-toed black boots scraping the floor and his shiny black pants squeezing his thighs. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Turning frosty out there,” he said, not letting his gaze slide down to her chest like most guys.

Something stirred between her legs. “Thanks,” she said, slipping her arms into the sleeves still warm from his body. The jacket weighed her shoulders down. “The name's Tereza, not Teeze.”

“Pleased to meet you, Tereza,” Buddy said. He cupped one of her hands in both of his, as you might a wounded bird. He released it seconds later, turned his small, high ass to her and strutted back to his seat.

“What's with your eyes, Ter-eese-a?” Richie asked. “Your old man try to punch your lights out again?”

She fished around in her pocketbook and pulled out a small mirror. “Mascara,” she said, licking a finger and swiping at the black streaks. Her eyes must have leaked doing Chevy Man. She lifted Richie's cig from the ashtray and took a long drag that went to her head. “He's not my old man,” she said. “My real father speaks three
languages.” She paused to pick tobacco off her tongue. “Jimmy only speaks caveman. Ugga, ugga.”

Richie slapped his thigh and hooted. Vlad's laugh was more like a wheeze.

“He tried to belt-whip me but I got away.”

“Want me to take care of him?” Buddy asked.

She snorted. Who
was
this guy?

“Don't laugh, Teeze,” Richie said. “He can rip a phone book in half and hold me over his head with one arm. Show her, Buddy.”

Buddy's face flushed. “Later, Rich.”

“I'll take a rain check,” Tereza said, although she liked the idea of Buddy hoisting Jimmy off his feet with one hand and flattening his pointy nose with the other.

Buddy stood abruptly. “Time to cruise town. Coming along, m'lady?”

“He's got a cool car, Teeze.”

“What are you, his pimp?” she said. Richie looked hurt. Tough gazzobbies. “Can't,” she said to Buddy. Ma would be having a cow by now, assuming Jimmy had told her what happened. She shook one arm out of the jacket but Buddy held up his hand.

“Keep it until you get home.” He pulled the pencil from behind Richie's ear and wrote his phone number on a napkin. “Call me. I'll come pick it up.”

Richie and Vlad stood to leave.

“See you on the flip side,” Vlad said. He tried to be cool but slobbered when he spoke and lived with his Russian immigrant mother. Some people said they were spies.