Authors: Christopher Conlon
If she appeared, I thought, I’d go with her. This time I would.
—Eight—
DESPITE MY STELLAR grades, and Lucy’s ever-improving ones (she was managing C’s within weeks), the friction between my guardians and me regarding the time I was spending across the street didn’t abate. Uncle Frank was neutral on the subject, as he was neutral on everything—he was willing to float me some cash occasionally, if I had my eyes on a new pair of jeans or a book or something, always leaning down to me and whispering
sotto voce,
“Don’t tell your aunt, all right?” But other than that he paid little attention to me. Dealing with Frances was left to my aunt, a tired and, I think, rather bitter woman who was preoccupied with appearances. I couldn’t imagine—I still can’t—who on earth could possibly care if I hung out at the Sparrows’ house, but Louise was convinced that the neighbors would all brand us as all “trash.”
“Aunt Louise, who cares what they think?” I asked one night. I was late in coming home: Lucy and I had lost track of time, it was 11:00, and there she was in her chair with her Marlboro, demanding to know what I was doing out at all hours of the night, demanding to know what I believed the neighbors would think of my behavior. “Why would anybody pay any attention?”
“But people do, Frances. That’s what you don’t understand.”
“It’s not people,” I said. “It’s
you
. You just don’t like them.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But it’s more than that.”
The TV was on as we argued, and we both heard the word “Quiet” at the same time. We stopped speaking and looked toward the screen. The Monterey-area news anchor, Bill Bollin, was saying that a body believed to be that of Maria Sanchez, a girl who had been missing for the past several weeks from her hometown of Quiet, had been found in the riverbed north of the town. There was a report from the scene: a man with a microphone asking the local sheriff for details about the case. I recognized the sheriff, Jim Langston—Lucy and I often saw him in his uniform on the streets of Quiet; sometimes he lifted his hat to us and smiled as we rode by—and I recognized the riverbed, too. Lucy and I had wandered around in it. Maybe not in that exact spot, which was quite a distance north, but the topography all seemed familiar.
“There, you see?” Louise said triumphantly. “You see how dangerous it is to be out in the middle of the night?”
“Shh! I’m trying to listen!”
The sheriff was saying that nothing like this had ever happened in Quiet and that state authorities were coming in to help with the case. The reporter asked him if he suspected foul play and the Mr. Langston’s face grew pensive, even, I thought, frightened. “Yes,” he said. “From the condition of the body…Yes. Foul play. Definitely.” The picture cut back to Bill Bollin, and the story was over.
“All right, then,” Louise said. “No more nighttime visits with your friend. I want you in before dark.”
“That’s not fair.”
She gestured toward the television with her cigarette. “Frances, for God’s sake, you
saw
that story! It’s a dangerous world out there. You don’t understand.”
I thought of the crashes and cries in my own home, pictured my mother with a syringe in her arm, glassy-eyed, saw my father moving toward the door, shouting
Get out of here!
as he slammed it in my face.
“I know it’s a dangerous world, Aunt Louise. But Ms. Sparrow is usually there—” a bald-faced lie—“and Lucy just lives across the
street
.”
“Frances, I want you
to be safe.”
“No you don’t!” I exploded. “You don’t! You don’t care one bit!”
“Stop that. Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I’ll talk to you any way I
want
to! You’re not my mother!”
“Frances…”
“
You’re not my mother
!”
With that I ran to my room, slammed the door shut, threw myself onto the bed, and gave myself over to tears.
Thus it was that I became a rebel.
A very timid rebel, to be sure; but a rebel nonetheless. I started to leave my dirty clothes on the floor of my room instead of picking them up, knowing it would mean that Louise would have to come get them. I left dishes and glasses around the house. I stopped organizing my closet and bureau with such obsessive focus—they were still quite tidy, in truth, and I knew Lucy would have laughed if I’d called my room sloppy; still, they weren’t as they had been. More importantly, I began to let my schoolwork slide a bit. Again, the slide was very slight, but I found a grim, dirty-feeling satisfaction to see the occasional B on a quiz sheet. Even Lucy was surprised at me.
In truth, the moratorium on after-dark visits didn’t have much practical effect on our relationship. I just left a little earlier each night, that’s all. We still played, and danced, and horsed around; I still ate bologna-covered pizza with them when Ms. Sparrow was at home. But I had to leave before the
Mystery Theater
came on, so I got Uncle Frank to loan me an old radio of his that was sitting in the garage and I listened to it myself, in my room. It wasn’t the same, of course. But at least Lucy and I could talk about the stories on the bus the next morning.
The weekends were unchanged, too. We rode everywhere, discovered strange things. One afternoon we wandered into the market down the street and found to our astonishment Mr. Cox, the bus driver, standing behind the meat counter. Lucy and I stared at each other wide-eyed, ran back out of the store before he saw us. By the time we reached the curb we were doubled over in laughter.
“Mr. Cox has another job!” I shrieked. It seemed scandalous, somehow.
“Yeah,
Dick Cox
and his
meat
!”
I don’t think even we could have explained why we found this so gasp-inducingly hilarious, except that it was one of those childhood shocks: to learn that an adult in our lives was something else, something
more
than just the bus driver was a bizarre, giddy-making fact. I’d once had the feeling when I was walking and noticed Mr. and Mrs. Lowther, packages in their hands, unlocking the door to a house and stepping inside it.
A house?
I wondered.
Mr. Lowther lives in a house? With Mrs. Lowther?
Another time, a sunny April day, Lucy had decided to root around in the garbage behind the little row of shops on Main Street. “C’mon,” she said, “it’s fun! I told you, I get a lot of my stuffed animals from dumpsters. You find great stuff in here!” She climbed up onto the big metal bin that squatted there. The lid was already open.
“Lucy, I’m not digging around in
garbage
!”
“Don’t have a cow, Franny-Fran. I’m not gonna
dig around
in it. I’m just gonna take a look-see.” She leaned over into it, her rump in the air. “Sometimes,” she said, “you can find, like, candy and stuff. I mean, still wrapped up. They throw it out when it gets old. Once I found a whole bunch of comic books. And—” She stopped then, rooted energetically for a moment, then pulled something out. “Oh, wow!” she cried.
“What? What is it?”
“Ha! You won’t believe it!”
“
What?
”
She climbed back out, stood triumphantly with a rolled-up magazine in her hand. “Wouldn’t
you
like to know,” she said.
“What? Tell me, Lucy!”
“No!” She stuffed the magazine, cover facing her, into the front of her pants.
“Tell me! Come on!”
“No.” She grinned. “C’mon, let’s get out of here!” She jumped down from the dumpster, leapt on her bike. “Well, are you coming?”
I scowled, jumped on the bike. As she pulled onto the sidewalk I tried to grab at the mysterious magazine in her pants. She batted my hands away. “Cut it out,” she giggled. “You’ll see. When the time is right.”
“Oh, I’ll bet it’s nothing anyway. Just an old
Tiger Beat
or
Dynamite.
”
“Oh, no it’s not.”
“Well,” I sniffed, “I don’t care.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
I grabbed for the magazine again. She batted me away.
We rode out to the rest stop, where the usual assortment of travelers was coming and going. Lucy stopped the bike in front of the women’s restroom and we jumped off. “C’mon in,” she said.
“No, I’ll wait out here. I don’t have to go.”
“Come
in
,”
she insisted, grabbing my hand and pulling me.
She checked to make sure the bathroom was empty, then pulled me into a toilet stall and locked the door behind us.
“Lucy, what are you
doing
?”
She grinned, pulling the magazine out of her pants. “Look.”
It was a copy of
Playgirl.
“Oh my God!” I whispered, awestruck.
“Told you it wasn’t
Tiger Beat
,”
she said. She was whispering too.
I felt nervous suddenly, terrified, positive that the police would come crashing through the door at any second to arrest us, haul us off to jail. I could see my aunt and uncle having to come get me, being told that I’d been
detained
for the crime of looking at dirty pictures. I knew what
Playgirl
was—every girl did—but I’d never actually seen one.
She opened it, flipped quickly to the centerfold, and I beheld my first naked man.
“Ew,” I said quietly. “Gross.”
We stared at the magazine for a long moment.
“Why is he so
hairy
?”
I whispered. “He looks like a gorilla.”
“All grown-up men have a lot of hair, stupid. So do ladies.”
“Not
that
much. And not
there.
”
I pointed.
“Yeah, there.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I frowned. “How do you know?”
“’Cuz I’m smart. I’m a lot older than you, Franny.”
“We’re both twelve.”
“Yeah, but you just
turned
twelve. I’m almost thirteen.”
We flipped furtively through the pictures.
“Do you think,” Lucy said, “that Art Green’s is like that?” Art Green was a boy in our class.
“No. I don’t think anybody I know is like
that
.”
She looked at me, giggling. “The teachers are. Mr. Lowther is.”
“No he’s not!”
“He’s a grown-up man, isn’t he? And Mr. Blatt. And”—she giggled again—“Mr.
Dick Cox.
”
We shrieked with laughter, with embarrassment, a giddy criminal high. The thrill of standing in a public toilet stall looking at pictures of nude men sent electric jolts through me, made me tingle and sweat.
But suddenly the bathroom was filled with noise: a bunch of little girls had burst in. We heard the voice of their teacher or whoever it was telling them to
line up, wait your turn,
and then one little girl’s voice saying,
There are two people in that one!
Lucy and I gasped, dropping the magazine. We stood frozen. My heart was smashing against my chest.
“Come on,” Lucy whispered.
“No, we can’t go out there!”
“Yes we can. Don’t say a word. Don’t look. Just go straight out.”
“
Lucy
…”
But she unlocked the door, opened it, and walked unflinchingly across the length of the bathroom. I followed sheepishly behind her, staring at the gleaming tile floor. When we reached the outdoors, we scrambled to her bike.
“Hey!” a little blonde girl called, standing in the doorway. “You forgot something!”
“Forgot what?” Lucy said. Even she seemed a little scared.
“You forgot to wash your
hands
!”
We both laughed then, and rode away as quickly as Lucy could pedal.
We realized only later that we’d forgotten something else, too: we’d left the magazine on the floor of the stall.
Later that afternoon we sat under the pepper tree in the backyard, thumbing listlessly through an issue of
Hit Parader.
“I wish we hadn’t forgotten it,” Lucy said, tossing pebbles against the trunk of the tree.
“I’m glad we did,” I said. “It was disgusting.”
She looked at me and chuckled, shaking her head. “Fran, you’re a spaz.”
“I know.”
“You’re gonna
marry
one of ’em someday, you know.”