The Girl Next Door (6 page)
Then our ride was at its peak and the wheel turned faster, the airy sweeping glide at its most graceful and elegant and thrilling as I looked at her, her lovely open face rushing first through a frame of stars and then past the dark schoolhouse and then the pale brown tents of the Kiwanis, her hair blowing back and then forward over her brushed cheeks as we rose again, and I suddenly felt those first two or three years that she had lived and I hadn’t like a terrible weighted irony, like a curse, and thought for a moment, it isn’t fair. I can give her this but that’s all and it’s just not fair.
The feeling passed. By the time the ride was over and we waited near the top all that was left was the pleasure at how happy she looked. And how alive.
I could talk now.
“How’d you like it?”
“God, I
loved
it! You keep treating me to things, David.”
loved
it! You keep treating me to things, David.”
“I can’t believe you never rode before.”
“My parents . . . I know they always meant to take us someplace. Palisades Park or somewhere. We just never got around to it, I guess.”
“I heard about . . . everything. I’m sorry.”
There. It was out.
She nodded. “The worst is missing them, you know? And knowing they won’t be back again. Just knowing that. Sometimes you forget and it’s as though they’re on vacation or something and you think, gee, I wish they’d call. You miss them. You
forget
they’re really gone. You forget the past six months even happened. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that crazy? Then you catch yourself . . . and it’s real again.
forget
they’re really gone. You forget the past six months even happened. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that crazy? Then you catch yourself . . . and it’s real again.
“I dream about them a lot. And they’re always still alive in my dreams. We’re happy.”
I could see the tears well up. She smiled and shook her head.
“Don’t get me started,” she said.
We were on the downside now, moving, only five or six cars ahead of us. I saw the next group waiting to get on. I looked down over the bar and noticed Meg’s ring again. She saw me looking.
“My mother’s wedding band,” she said. “Ruth doesn’t like me to wear it much but my mother would have. I’m not going to lose it. I’d never lose it.”
“It’s pretty. It’s beautiful.”
She smiled. “Better than my scars?”
I flushed but that was okay, she was only kidding me. “A lot better.”
The wheel moved down again. Only two more cars to go. Time moved dreamlike for me, but even at that it moved too quickly. I hated to see it end.
“How do you like it?” I asked. “Over at the Chandler’s?”
She shrugged. “Okay I guess. Not like home. Not the way it was. Ruth’s kind of . . . funny sometimes. But I think she means well.” She paused and then said, “Woofer’s a little weird.”
“You can say
that
again.”
that
again.”
We laughed. Though the comment about Ruth confused me. I remembered the reserve in her voice, the coldness that first day by the brook.
“We’ll see,” she said. “I suppose it takes time to get used to things, doesn’t it.”
We’d reached the bottom now. One of the carnies lifted the crossbar and held the car steady with his foot. I hardly noticed him. We stepped out.
“I’ll tell you one thing I
don’t
like,” she said.
don’t
like,” she said.
She said it almost in a whisper, like maybe she expected somebody to hear and then report to someone else—and as though we were confidants, equals, co-conspirators.
I liked that a lot. I leaned in close.
“What?” I said.
“That basement,” she said. “I don’t like that at all. That shelter.”
Chapter Six
I knew what she meant.
In his day Willie Chandler Sr. had been very handy.
Handy and a little paranoid.
So that I guess when Khrushchev told the United Nations, “We will bury you,” Willie Sr. must have said something like the fuck you will and built himself a bomb shelter in the basement.
It was a room within a room, eight by ten feet wide and six feet high, modeled strictly according to government specifications. You went down the stairs from their kitchen, walked past the paint cans stacked beneath the stairs and the sink and then the washer and dryer, turned a comer and walked through a heavy metal bolted door—originally the door to a meat locker—and you were inside a concrete enclosure at least ten degrees colder than the rest of the place, musty-smelling and dark.
There were no electrical outlets and no light fixtures.
Willie had nailed girders to the kitchen floor beams and supported them with thick wooden posts. He had sandbagged the only window on the outside of the house and covered the inside with heavy half-inch wire-mesh screening. He had provided the requisite fire extinguisher, battery-operated radio, ax, crowbar, battery lantern, first-aid kit and bottles of water. Cartons of canned food lay stacked on a small heavy handmade hardwood table along with a Sterno stove, a travel alarm clock and an air pump for blowing up the mattresses rolled in the corner.
All this built and purchased on a milkman’s salary.
He even had a pick and shovel there, for digging out after the blast.
The one thing Willie omitted and that the government recommended was a chemical toilet.
They were expensive. And he’d left before getting around to that.
Now the place was sort of ratty-looking—food supplies raided for Ruth’s cooking, the extinguisher fallen off its wall mount, batteries dead in the radio and lantern, and the items themselves filthy from three solid years of grim neglect. The shelter reminded Ruth of Willie. She was not going to clean it.
We played there sometimes, but not often.
The place was scary.
It was as though he’d built a cell there—not a shelter to keep something out but a dark black hole to keep something
in
.
in
.
And in a way its central location informed the whole cellar. You’d be down there drinking a Coke talking with Ruth while she did her laundry and you’d look over your shoulder and see this evil-looking bunker sort of thing, this squat concrete wall, constantly sweating, dripping, cracked in places. As though the wall itself were old and sick and dying.
We’d go in there occasionally and scare each other.
That was what it was good for. Scaring each other. And nothing much else.
We used it sparingly.
Chapter Seven
“I’ll tell you, what’s missing from that goddamn Karnival’s a good old-fashioned hootchie-koo!”
It was Tuesday night, the second night of Karnival and Ruth was watching Cheyenne Bodie get deputized for the umpteenth time and the town’s chicken-shit mayor pinning the deputy’s badge to his fringed cowhide shirt. Cheyenne looked proud and determined.
Ruth held a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and sat low and tired-looking in the big overstuffed chair by the fireplace, her long legs stretched out on the hassock, barefoot.
Woofer glanced up at her from the floor. “What’s a hootchie-koo?”
“Hootchie-koo. Hootchie-kootchie. Dancin’ girls, Ralphie. That and the freak show. When I was your age we had both. I saw a man with three arms once.”
Willie Jr. looked at her. “Nah,” he said.
But you could see she had him going.
“Don’t contradict your mother. I did. I saw a man with three arms—one of ’em just a little bitty thing coming out of here.”
She raised her arm and pointed to her armpit neatly shaved and smooth inside the dress.
“The other two were normal just like yours. I saw a two-headed cow as well, same show. ’Course that was dead.”
We sat around the Zenith in an irregular circle, Woofer on the carpet next to Ruth, me and Willie and Donny on the couch, and Eddie squatting directly in front of the television so that Woofer had to shift to see around him.
Times like this you didn’t have to worry about Eddie. In his house they didn’t have television. He was glued to it. And if anybody could control him Ruth could.
“What else?” asked Willie Jr. “What other stuff’d you see?”
He ran his hand over his blond flattop. He was always doing that. I guess he enjoyed the feel of it though I couldn’t see how he’d like the greasy waxed part up front.
“Mostly things in bottles. Stillborns. You know stillborns? In formaldehyde. Little shrunken tungs—goats, cats. All kinds of stuff. That’s going back a
long
time. I don’t remember. I do remember a man must have weighed five, six hundred pounds, though. Took three other fellas to haul him up. Fattest damn thing I ever saw or ever
want
to see.”
long
time. I don’t remember. I do remember a man must have weighed five, six hundred pounds, though. Took three other fellas to haul him up. Fattest damn thing I ever saw or ever
want
to see.”
We laughed, picturing the three guys having to help him up.
We all knew Ruth was careful of her weight.
“I tell you, carnivals were something when I was a girl.”
She sighed.
You could see her face go calm and dreamy-looking then the way it did sometimes when she was looking back—way back. Not to Willie but all the way back to her childhood. I always liked watching her then. I think we all did. The lines and angles seemed to soften and for somebody’s mother, she was almost beautiful.
“Ready yet?” asked Woofer. It was a big thing for him tonight, being able to go out to the Karnival this late. He was eager to get going.
“Not yet. Finish your sodas. Let me finish my beer.”
She took a long deep pull on the cigarette, holding the smoke in and then letting it out all in a rush.
The only other person I knew who smoked a cigarette as hard as Ruth did was Eddie’s dad. She tilted the beer can and drank.
“I wanna know about this hootchie-koo,” said Willie. He leaned forward next to me on the couch, his shoulders turned inward, rounded.
As Willie got older and taller his slouch got more pronounced. Ruth said that if he kept on growing and slouching at this rate he was going to be a hunchback. A six-footer.
“Yeah,” said Woofer. “What’s it supposed to be? I don’t get it.”
Ruth laughed. “It’s dancing girls, I told you. Doncha know anything? Half naked too, some of them.”
She pulled the faded print dress back up to halfway over her thighs, held it there a moment, fluttered it at us, and then flapped it down again.
“Skirts up to here,” she said. “And little teeny brassieres and that’s all. Maybe a ruby in the belly button or something. With little dark red circles painted here, and here.” She indicated her nipples, making slow circles with her fingers. Then she looked at us.
“What’d you think of
that?”
that?”
I felt myself flush.
Woofer laughed.
Willie and Donny were watching her intently.
Eddie remained fixed on Cheyenne Bodie.
She laughed. “Well, I guess nothing like that’s gonna be sponsored by the good old Kiwanis, though, is it? Not
those
boys. Hell, they’d like to. They’d love to! But they’ve all got
wives.
Damn hypocrites.”
those
boys. Hell, they’d like to. They’d love to! But they’ve all got
wives.
Damn hypocrites.”
Ruth was always going on about the Kiwanis or the Rotary or something.
She was not a joiner.
We were used to it.
She drained her beer and stubbed out the cigarette.
She got up.
“Finish your drinks, boys,” she said. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Meg? Meg Loughlin!”
She walked into the kitchen and dropped her empty beer can in the garbage pail.
Down the hall the door to her room opened and Meg stepped out, looking a little wary at first, I thought guessed it was Ruth’s shouting. Then her eyes settled on me and she smiled.
So that was how they were working it, I thought. Meg and Susan were in Ruth’s old room. It was logical because that was the smaller of the two. But it also meant that either Ruth was bunking on the convertible sofa or with Donny and Woofer and Willie Jr. I wondered what my parents would say to
that.
that.
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