Authors: Christopher Conlon
“Let’s play some tunes,” Lucy said, putting a 45 on the record player: Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” I watched her from the doorway as she danced lightly with the music, eyes closed, tousling her hair. “My mom gets these records from the jukebox at work,” she told me. “Once people don’t play them anymore, the owner gets rid of them and gets new ones. I mean, he just throws them
away.
So I get them now. It’s cool. The only thing is, they’re kind of old. But some of them are great. I listen to them all the time. Music just
does
something to me.”
I sat down gingerly on the bed. The sheets, I noticed, smelled. I took a stuffed tiger in my hands and looked at it.
“That’s Gus-Gus,” she said, smiling as she danced. “All of these guys have names, every one. There’s Gilbert and Short Stack and Miss Mooch, Boo-Boo and Rag Bag and Big Sam…I guess I have like fifty or sixty. And I love ’em
all.
”
I was surprised—I certainly hadn’t associated Lucy Sparrow with anything like cute stuffed animals. I suspected Melissa Deaver and her ilk hadn’t either. I felt that I was being allowed to peer into Lucy’s secret heart, to see aspects of her that no one else saw. It was a strange, exhilarating feeling.
I should explain that, for whatever reason, I did not then (nor do I now) possess a gift for friendship. I was always the child who sat in the corner studying her book, never participating in games or sports unless I was forced to. When that happened, I invariably embarrassed myself, falling and skinning my knee at hopscotch, striking out or dropping the ball in softball. I was humiliated by my body, my buck teeth, my skinny frame that caused other children to call me “Skeleton” or “Scarecrow.” I was smart, I knew, but I also knew that I would trade all the brains in my head for the kind of personality and grace that would allow me to be part of the lives of the other kids, the ones who mattered.
So what for anyone else would have been just a minor, quickly forgettable hour or two at a friend’s house was, for me, something quite extraordinary. In fact, I was not only amazed at Lucy; I was amazed at myself. Whatever shallow pools of self-confidence I had ever possessed when I lived with my parents were utterly depleted that strange morning I was made to board a bus to Santa Barbara, of all places, for “a little visit with your aunt and uncle”—even though I knew, bewildered as I was, that for
a little visit
I couldn’t possibly need as much luggage as was being sent along with me.
Why do I have to go? Are you coming too?
For all our apparent wealth—modest, but wealth—I was dimly aware that not all girls lived with parents who used needles and syringes in the middle of the night, who seemed to pass out for days on end, who had peculiar people visiting the house at odd hours; parents who would constantly warn (in a gentle, humorous tone, yet with cold steel in it)
Don’t tell anyone what goes on here.
I knew, I knew! I was a bright girl, I didn’t have to be taught twice. I learned my lessons and lived by them. Of course I told no one. I kept my body, my clothes, all my possessions as neat as humanly possible, as perfect as they could be, so that I myself might become worthy of the two of them, worthy of anyone, that someone—Mom or Dad or some bright stranger—would come to me at last and say:
You’ve done wonderfully, you’re an angel on earth, I love you, little girl, I love you.
Instead there had been the bus one gray Saturday morning, the suitcases, the claims that I would remember Uncle Frank and Aunt Louise as soon as I saw them, the assurances that it’s just for a little while, honey, your dad and I have to work some things out, we’ll see you soon,
Mom it’s the middle of the school year, why, what’s happening?
Hush, Franny, just hush, have a lovely trip, you’ll hear from us soon.
I was too stunned even to cry, sitting breathless and wide-eyed on the bus seat for hours, adrift, my moorings gone. Nothing changed when I arrived at the bus station and was greeted by a gray-haired man and woman who, I was quite certain, I had
not
met before, and driven for what seemed a long time to this small house in the middle of a housing track in this dusty, nondescript town.
When do I get to be with my parents again?
Soon, soon.
From then on I hardly spoke, hardly made eye contact with anyone, which made my visit with Lucy Sparrow all the more remarkable. Some part of me knew that I should not risk friendship, not place in jeopardy my safe and orderly self, yet Lucy was so open and giving that I could hardly help looking at her with gratitude and love from that first day, this girl who was loud and smelly and obviously poor, this girl who put the Wings record “My Love” on her little player and said, “C’mon, slow dance with me, I’ll pretend you’re a boy,” and, astonishingly, I did, I stood and allowed her to place her heavy arms around me, allowed her to lead me in slow circles in her bedroom until I finally raised my arms to her shoulders as well. Holding on. Holding on for dear life.
2
FROM THEN WE were inseparable. We sat together on the bus, played tetherball and soccer at recess—not real games, just the two of us kicking the ball back and forth, laughing, tumbling hysterically into the grass—and passed notes to each other in Math and Science and English. (What did we write so feverishly about? I can’t imagine, now.) I would stay for hours with her at her house, doing homework—or really, helping her, since Lucy was a weak student. I would be shocked to see an essay she’d written or some Math problems she’d attempted to solve; she was far behind me in ability, despite the fact that she was actually a year older than me, at thirteen officially a
teenager
(“I was held back one year”). Occasionally, or perhaps more than that, I simply did her work for her, though she never asked me for this service. Partly I was angry—not with her, but with the adults in her life who, I perceived, had been so criminally negligent with her education, with
her
. But mostly I just wanted to please her, to make her happy, this girl who had chosen me among all the dozens of others she might have chosen, the one and only person who had looked at me and thought,
Yes, I find you acceptable, I want you to be my friend.
“C’mon, Franny-Fran,” she would say. “I can write the stupid essay myself. Though I’ll admit I like the grades you get for me. Except they’re never A’s!”
“Mrs. Mainer wouldn’t believe it if you turned in an A essay, Lucy,” I said, honestly. “She’d think you copied it.”
She nodded. “You’re right. I’m not good with essays, am I? Shit, I’m not good with school.”
“It’s not your fault. Here, let me show you.” And we would pour over the assignment together, with me attempting to encourage Lucy’s participation while still ensuring that the final product would arrive safely in the B range—such a change from her usual D’s and F’s.
Lucy sometimes visited my house (though I didn’t think of it that way; I thought of it as Frank and Louise’s house), but not as often. It was clear that, for whatever reason, Louise did not like Lucy. She would merely grunt a greeting when we came in, frowning and muttering some instruction to
keep it down
or
not make a mess
. As a result, we would stay mostly at Lucy’s. Her mother was almost never there, and this fact, which had once seemed so shocking, began to be attractive. We turned on records as loud as we wanted, dancing and singing along to them. We ate whatever we found in the refrigerator. We played Nerf football in the living room, knocking over vases and pictures. I read stories to her from my favorite books, fantasy tales about unicorns and fairies and angels. We watched TV together, but not much: TV was dulling to the mind, soporific, and what I wanted, needed—we both did—was just the opposite. Instead, Lucy would turn on her radio at seven p.m. and tune in a station from Los Angeles, a fading, wavery but listenable signal, and we would sit together, often in the dark, as the news headlines drifted by and then the creaking door of the
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
opened. “I love this show,” she would say. “With TV you see things, but with radio you see
clear.”
We would burrow together under our blanket, hand in hand, munching popcorn or candy, listening raptly. Sometimes I would brush her hair as we listened, carefully untangling it in dozens of places, smoothing it with my palm. The stories—mystery, science fiction, surprisingly grisly horror—sometimes made us squeal with fright, or what we pretended to each other was fright.
Soon enough—too soon, always too soon!—eight o’clock would arrive, and with it my curfew, my forced return to the exile that was supposed to be my home. In bed I would feel an aching loneliness, an actual physical sensation in the pit of my stomach. Lucy was so close then, only across the street, but as far away as if she’d lived in another galaxy.
Naturally the popular girls in school looked askance at our friendship. It made no difference to us. Suddenly the taunts that had been so hurtful before seemed only silly, childish. There was never any threat of physical violence—Lucy was by far the biggest and strongest girl in the school, no one would have imagined trying to fight her—and so it never went farther than the occasional muttered “Lezzies” or “Dykes” as we passed by in the hall. We found it fantastically funny. (At her house we would play-act as these girls, pretending to be them and creating riotous send-ups of their personalities and mannerisms.) Once as we wandered along the edge of the football field we heard several girls chanting, “
Lu
cy and
Fran
ny sittin’ in a
tree
,
k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”
Lucy stopped, glanced back at them, and then grabbed my head and kissed me straight on the lips. It was as un-erotic as a kiss could possibly be, and we dissolved into shrieks of laughter. Those girls never chanted anything at us again.
I would like to report that we had many deep, soul-sharing conversations, but in truth we did not, at least until the end. I did not ask, did not
think
to ask, what had become of Lucy’s father; and I have no recollection of ever telling her about my parents. Instead we had
fun.
In many ways Lucy and I acted younger than we were, silly-girlish, as if together we were discovering the joys of childhood which neither of us had previously known. At that age it’s the friendless who suffer; friendship makes one invincible. For the first time in my life, I found myself strong, confident, untouchable. It made no difference if I rounded a corner to hear, “Hey, it’s Concentration Camp” or “Here comes Bitchy Britches.” I began to think of them as children, as mere naughty kids. I was something else now, something better, something
more.
I even began getting into trouble at school, like other kids did; very mild trouble, it’s true, but still, tiny flaws appeared in my armor of perfection. Several times teachers would demand to see the notes Lucy and I had been passing; one even made us change our seats so that we were far apart in his classroom. It made no difference. It was all grist for our imaginations later, our sense of mockery and fun, our feeling that the two of us were a single unassailable unit, and would be forever.
Lucy had an old red Schwinn bicycle, a “boy’s bike,” as they were still known in those not yet entirely enlightened times. Rusted and dented, it was still serviceable, and we would ride together around the neighborhood in the afternoons or at twilight. I sat behind her, pressed up against her body, my chin on her shoulder, arms wrapped around her waist. Once, I remember, she let me in on what she claimed was a secret: “See that old van there?” she said, stopping the bike for a moment.
“Yes. It’s Mr. Silva’s.”
She glanced mischievously at me. “I drive it sometimes.”
“Oh, come on, Lucy, no you don’t.”
“I swear to God. He leaves his keys in it every night.”
“How do you know how to drive?”
“I don’t. Not really. But my mom showed me how to shift gears once in her car.”
“Where do you go with it?” I asked, deeply skeptical.
She shook her head. “Just around the neighborhood. Late at night I sneak out, just drive it around really slow. I always park it right where it was before.”
I dismissed this as Lucy’s fantasy, and while I said nothing, I felt slightly disappointed with her, that she would feel the need to lie to me, to
me.
But it was easy enough to let it go, to just enjoy her, to enjoy myself, life.
On Saturdays we would glide into town, sometimes stopping at the grocery store for an ice cream bar or a big sixteen-ounce bottle of Coke we would share and then immediately return for the deposit. There was little in the town, really, to interest two girls like us: no movie theater, no drug store, no fast food restaurants. So we amused ourselves with the comic books in the grocery store, stocked anew each Thursday afternoon by the owner, a large friendly woman named Estelle (she never minded our loitering, our reading without buying: I suspect she knew Lucy was poor, and anyway, we always bought a snack). We wandered around the few shops, rode by the restaurant where Lucy’s mother worked—and sometimes went in, managing to cadge free appetizers from her. We went to the library, a lovely old Victorian building, and chatted with the librarian, the unbelievably ancient Mrs. Klibo (she was probably sixty); I would get a book, generally a small paperback which I could stuff into the waistline of my pants for the return ride home, while Lucy flipped through big
Life
and
Look
picture books. “You’re such a wonderful reader, Fran,” Mrs. Klibo would say to me confidentially, out of Lucy’s hearing. “I hope you can make your poor little friend a reader too. You’ll try, won’t you?”