Crooked (18 page)

“Hi, Polkadot!”

Clara hoped Ham would be in the car with her father, but it was just her father alone. Usually by this time of night, he looked tired and even a little sad, but tonight his face seemed strangely animated, as if he'd just heard good news.

“So how'd you do, Doodlebug?” he asked, looking not at her but at the blank space behind the car as he tried to back out of an iced pothole.

“Fine,” Clara said.

In the heat of the car, she let herself shrink down so that her coat collar brushed her ears and her chin rested on the cold teeth of her zipper. It was a little like the way she crumpled to the floor when the fake pistol sent a fake bullet to her heart. “How come you're late?” she said.

Her father actually laughed. “The strangest thing. A phone call.” He smiled and shook his head to himself. “From an old friend I haven't seen in a while.” He glanced at Clara. “We just got to talking, and I guess I lost track of time.”

A faint rain misted the windshield. Clara began distractedly to push against the curve of her nose. “An old friend of yours, or of yours and Mom's?”

Clara could feel her father choosing his words. “A friend of mine. But one of the reasons she called was in hopes of meeting my family.” The rain was turning sleety. Her father leaned forward to turn on the wipers. Then, in an elaborately casual voice, he said, “She said she left a message earlier today, by the way.”

“It's possible,” Clara said. “There was a bunch of messages for me. I might've erased hers by mistake. What was her name?”

“Lydia. Lydia Upchurch.” Pause. “Only now it's Lydia Elgin.”

Clara couldn't help herself. “She's married, then?”

It took a moment for the question to register with her father, whose mind seemed to be elsewhere. “Oh. No. She used to be, but she's not anymore.”

Clara fell silent.
Naaaaay,
she thought. She never again wanted to go to play practice, where Sands and Sophie were, or to school, where Gerri and Amos were, or to her own home, where her mother wasn't. Clara's face suddenly contorted. Tears welled and slid from her eyes, but her father didn't notice. He was concentrating on his driving. The stoplights made neon streamers on the wet roads, sending a green light across the car as they turned onto Genesee, where the streets had begun to whiten. In Jemison, it was starting to snow again.

27

ALL THE LITTLE DETAILS

The following week felt like a year to Clara. It went on and on. First, her aunt and uncle brought her mother's car back from Dalton. For one thrilling moment, Clara thought her mother had changed her mind and come home, but when Clara rushed inside and said, “Mom?” it was her aunt Marie who stepped out of the kitchen.

There was no more neighing at play practice, but Clara didn't feel like talking to anyone, even when they tried to be nice to her. Being the butt of a joke was the worst, she decided, but being the object of pity wasn't much better.

She avoided Amos. She didn't call him. She wished she'd never met him. Twice, when her father tapped on her bedroom door to say Amos was on the phone, she called out that she was doing her homework and couldn't talk right then.

If Clara had told her mother to say something like that, she would've come in and asked some gentle questions and gotten to the bottom of things, which was what Clara really wanted. But her father wasn't her mother. He just said, “How about if I tell him you'll call him when you're done with your homework?”

Clara had begun to think of her father as twins—Old Dad and New Dad. Two nights that week, New Dad went out after supper. He'd prepared them a full meal and, while cleaning up, had begun to sing some old romantic song about moonlight. When he went out, New Dad didn't say where he was going. He just said he'd be home by eleven, and he was, right on the dot, to check that Clara was safe and in bed.

Thursday, the day before
The Smiling Gumshoe
opened, was dress rehearsal day. The cast practiced twice, once in the morning (mediocre performance) and once that afternoon (worse). “Well,” Mrs. Van Riper said, trying not to sound discouraged, “it could've been better, and I'll bet tomorrow night it will be.” During the practices, Clara looked at no one and spoke to no one, except to deliver her one line.

Between practices, Clara worked at Mrs. Harper's. She did all of her shopping now and cleaned once a week. In recent weeks, Clara had noticed some pleasant changes at Sylvia Harper's house. For one thing, she had a beau. That's what Mrs. Harper called him. They'd met at a mutual friend's house while playing duplicate bridge. Harold Onken was not a young man, but Mrs. Harper liked to point out that he was spry for his age. He drove a long bronze station wagon and often picked up Mrs. Harper about the time Clara did her afternoon paper route, and on these occasions, Mrs. Harper looked thrilled, her makeup fresh, her jewelry thick on the wrists and around the neck, her skirts and jackets obviously new. “Hello, Clara!” she always called. “Mr. Onken and I are off to dine!”

Another change that had occurred was in Mrs. Harper's attitude toward Clara. She was nicer to her. Often, between one chore and another, she would call Clara in to sit down and talk. One or two times, Mrs. Harper even brought out tea and ginger cookies to share while they talked. She would ask Clara questions about school and the play, and once she'd found out about Amos, she always asked about him, too. It was odd. Mrs. Harper seemed to want the real answers, not just the quick, polite ones older people usually wanted. She would listen to something Clara said—about Amos, for example—and then she would say, “Well, how do you feel about that?”

When Mrs. Harper asked this question after Clara had told her about Amos's evening with Sands Mandeville and the subsequent neighing episode, Clara thought about it awhile and then said, “Empty.”

“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Harper said, and somehow, Clara believed she did.

But today something occurred that shined a strange light on these question-and-answer sessions. Clara was dusting the nooks and crannies of Mrs. Harper's upright, fold-out antique desk when she came across an envelope that had notes scribbled on the back of it. Milkman's funeral, it said in ballpoint. Boy's name—Amos. Clara pushed through the little pile of notes.
$200 for horse camp.
The Smiling Gumshoe. One line and death scene.
And
Father not
usual self—“new dad” and “old dad.” And Amos MacKenzie, same
grade, “tall, shy, kind of cute.”

Clara stared in disbelief. She remembered Mrs. Harper pressing for details about Amos, and she remembered finally saying that he was tall and shy and kind of cute. But why would Mrs. Harper write that down? So she would remember Amos when they next talked? It must be the way old people kept their lives straight. It was like putting money in envelopes marked “Paper” or “Milk.”

An hour later, after Clara had watered Mrs. Harper's plants and picked up two bags of groceries at Dusty's Oldtowne Market, Mrs. Harper appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing a housedress and holding a black sweater. “What do you think, Clara? Can a dotty old matron carry off a black sweater with spangles?”

It did have spangles, and plenty of them—pearly spangles around the neck. “It's beautiful,” Clara said, and it was. “Where are you going to wear it?”

“Well, I was thinking I
might
talk Mr. Onken into taking me up to the school to see
The Smiling Gumshoe
one of these nights.” Mrs. Harper smiled mischievously. “Do you think it's worth seeing?”

Clara felt her face get hot. “I doubt it,” she said. “I mean, compared to professionals, we're pretty lame. And I only have one line, so I hope you wouldn't be going on my account.”

“No, I want to see you, of course, but I've always loved school productions.” She looked down at the sweater, which she now held loosely draped over her arm. “It's just been a while since I've thought of going.” She turned to Clara and smiled. “That's the thing, Clara. We're like vessels, or jars. I know you feel empty right now. After Mr. Harper died, I thought I would never, ever fill up again. But I have, a little, and you will, too.”

There was a still moment in the room, and then suddenly Mrs. Harper had laid the sweater carefully over the back of a chair and was helping Clara put the rest of the groceries away. Afterward, she put water on the stove for tea and set out ginger crisps and two cups and saucers.

28

THE DREADS

For Amos, school had taken another turn, this one for the worse. He had a whole group of nasty concerns that he lumped together as
the dreads
. He dreaded seeing Sands or Sophie, and it seemed as if they were everywhere, smiling and reminding him of his deficiencies. He dreaded seeing Eddie Tripp, who seemed to be everywhere but nowhere, watching from some unseen vantage point. He looked forward to seeing Clara, but she was never in any of her usual places, and he dreaded the reason she might be avoiding him. In his spiral notebook, with a ballpoint pen, Amos wrote
dread
again and again and again.

The days dragged on. Bruce had found something new to occupy himself. He called it the Barrineau Project. “Presenting for your consideration one Anne Alexis Barrineau,” he said in his Rod Serling voice, “the cosmo-ultimate example of all that might be hoped for in the female persuasion.” Anne Barrineau had transferred to Eliot, but Bruce had started going to the library where Anne Barrineau studied, walking the routes Anne Barrineau walked, shopping the market that Anne Barrineau shopped. “We're not that different,” he told Amos. “She likes peanut butter crackers and diet Dr Pepper just like I do.”

“Two regular peas in a pod,” Amos said, going for irony.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, grinning. “Maybe we are.”

“So when are you going to make actual contact, Crook?”

Merely thinking of it made Bruce's face turn pink. “Me? Talk to the Big A? Maybe in some alternate universe.”

The Barrineau Project meant Bruce was around less, and Amos's house felt more empty than ever. Amos felt as if he and Liz and his mother rattled around inside its big hollow shell. His father's white milkman clothes still hung in the closet, his tools still hung on the garage wall, his goofy country-and-western cassettes still lay near the stereo. At first, it had felt as if his father's being gone for good and forever, his actual permanent
deadness,
couldn't be true. Now, knowing that it
was
true, that it
had
to be true, Amos had become angry at the unfairness of it, but it was a vague kind of anger—there was no one to get mad at. And now that everything was messed up with Clara, there was nobody to talk to about it.

Wednesday night, when no one was home, Amos walked from quiet room to quiet room. Finally he picked up the telephone and called Clara's machine. “Hi, it's me,” he said in a low voice. “Are you in there? Maybe you're at play practice. Okay, bye.” Wednesday. And he hadn't talked to her since Saturday. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong. He dialed Bruce's number and got his father, whose
hello
was slurred.

“Hi, Mr. Crookshank. It's me, Amos.”

“Who?” Judge Crookshank said in his thick voice.

“Amos MacKenzie. I'm calling for Bruce.”

“Who?” Near the phone Amos could hear the tinkling of ice cubes.

“I'll call back,” Amos said, and went out to sit with the pigeons. He lifted Ruby from her nest, held her close to his chest, and thumbed her smooth, small head. Once, after a long, pleasant telephone talk with Clara, he'd held Ruby like this and whispered, “Know why I like you best? Because you're as close to a red-head as a pigeon can get.” But tonight Amos said something else. He said, “Know what I'd like to do? I'd like to just flap my wings and fly away.” He made an unhappy laugh and kept stroking the bird's head.

Friday morning, Amos slid a note into Clara's locker. As he turned away, his eyes were drawn to the stairwell across the corridor. On the third step, standing perfectly still, watching Amos with a half smile on his face, was Eddie Tripp.

Amos's note to Clara said,
Are we still on for pizza Sunday at
your house?

He heard nothing all day, but after last period, while he was picking up his books, he found a return note in his own locker.
Why wouldn't we be?
it said.

There was something about this question that seemed less simple than it sounded, and Amos realized that one of the many things he'd come to dread—Clara's finding out what he'd done at Sands Mandeville's—might well have come true.

29

LONG DISTANCE

Are we still on?

Clara had been shocked to find Amos's note. She'd presumed that by now, he'd've figured out that she'd heard the Clara-Wilson-is-a-dink story and never wanted to see him again. But Clara's feelings, raw and sensitive six days before, had now boiled down to something hard and salty. So, as she considered it during her classes all day Friday, she decided to have him come on Sunday if he wanted. He could try to defend himself. She could watch him squirm. She'd tried several different responses until she'd found the one she wanted, one that could be understood in at least two different ways.

Why wouldn't we be?

That night, the play opened and was better than they'd ever rehearsed it. From the wings, Clara could see it happening before her very eyes. The students had begun believing they
were
other people, and it was almost possible to imagine they were the molls and gunsels and private investigators they were playing. When Clara said her line and was shot, she actually imagined she could feel herself being shot, and grimaced and contorted and fell as she never had before. When the play was over and she came out to take her curtain call, the level of applause actually rose slightly, and Clara's spirits rose with it.

Backstage, Mrs. Van Riper caught up with Clara and threw her arms around her. “Oh, sweetie, you were so terrific!” she said. Then she released Clara and looked her in the eye. “You know how good you were? For a split second, I thought,
Oh my God,
she's been shot by a real gun!
” Mrs. Van Riper broke out laughing. After she went on to talk to the other actors, Jason Jackson, the smiling gumshoe, came up in his trench coat and porkpie hat. “I just wanted to tell you, you were awesome tonight. You totally had me scared there.” Behind him, Sean Brickman was nodding and grinning broadly. “Me, too. I thought I'd somehow used live ammunition. How'd you do that, anyhow? Make it look so totally real?”

And there was something else, an image Clara would replay with pleasure: twenty feet beyond Jason and Sean, with her head turned in an attitude of listening and her face slightly stiffened with jealousy, was Sands Mandeville.

It took Clara hours to fall asleep Friday night, and she was awakened the next morning by her father carrying the telephone in to her. “It's Mrs. Harper,” he said. He was dressed in jogging clothes, which was news. He hadn't been jogging in years. He winked and waved, and as he left, Clara noticed the sweats were a little tight on him. This was definitely New Dad stuff.

“Hello?” Clara said into the telephone, trying not to sound sleepy.

“Oh, Clara,” Mrs. Harper said, “I'm awfully sorry to wake you.” She sounded far away, and there was highway noise in the background.

“It's okay,” Clara said. “Where are you?”

“With Mr. Onken,” Mrs. Harper said brightly. “We're on one of our little road trips. All he told me when we left is that he was taking me to see the ballplayers. What he meant was that we're going to Cooperstown to see the baseball museum.”

“That sounds like fun,” Clara said, even though it didn't.

“But I'm afraid I did something terribly stupid,” Mrs. Harper said. “I think I went off and left the iron on. Would you be a sweetheart and go by and see if I did?”

Clara said she'd be glad to.

“And could you feed the cats?” Mrs. Harper said. “And the newspaper wasn't there by the time we left—could you bring that in, too?”

“Sure, no problem,” Clara said.

“Oh, and your play!” Mrs. Harper said. “It was splendid! Mr. Onken and I both believed your wound was mortal! And I believe I saw your beau in attendance, in the back, sitting alone.”

“I don't think so,” Clara said. She'd peeked out at the audience before the play, and hadn't seen Amos.

“Oh, yes. We exchanged waves. He cuts
quite
a handsome figure!”

Well, if Amos came to the play Clara thought after hanging up the telephone, it was probably to see Sands and Sophie.

When Clara opened the door to Mrs. Harper's house, the first thing she heard was the ringing telephone. She left the door ajar and told Ham to stay. Clara laid the newspaper on the kitchen table, then went to the laundry porch to check the iron (it was already unplugged). The phone was still ringing. When it stopped, the house felt suddenly too quiet and a little bit spooky.

Clara moved quickly from the pantry to the garage to feed the cats, who were happy to see her. They scissored through Clara's legs, then went to work on the dish of tuna Clara put before them. Then, turning to go, Clara saw something she wished she didn't. Ham sat wagging his tail and staring happily at Clara. Behind him, leading from the front door across the hallway and kitchen, was a line of mud-colored paw prints. “Oh, no,” Clara said out loud, and for a moment wanted to cry. It all felt like too much. But then she took a deep breath and went to the laundry porch for a bucket and rag.

She had just begun the cleaning when the phone started ringing again. It rang and rang and rang.
What if it's Mrs. Harper,
Clara wondered,
and she wants to tell me something else to do?

The telephone kept ringing.

Clara, suddenly exasperated, grabbed for the receiver. “Hello?”

There was a short silence from the other end of the line. “Clara?”

It was a woman's voice, but it wasn't Mrs. Harper's. “Mom?”

“Sweetie?”

“Yeah, it's me. Clara.”

Clara was confused, and her mother seemed confused, too. “You're at Sylvia's on a Saturday?” her mother asked.

“Yeah, just for a couple of minutes. Mrs. Harper's gone. I'm just feeding the cats and stuff. Except Ham snuck in and tracked mud all over the place.”

Her mother chuckled. Then, after a moment, she said, “Oh, sweetie, it's just so absolutely wonderful to hear your voice.” Another silence. Then her mother, trying too hard to be cheerful, said, “How
is
old Ham, anyhow?”

Clara knew that if she was going to keep her vow of silence with her mother, she was going to have to get off the line now, but she couldn't think of any way that wouldn't be awful, and besides, she didn't really want to hang up. “Ham's fine,” she said. She looked down at him. “Except he tracks mud and sheds hair everywhere. When I get home after this, I've got to sweep and vacuum everything because I think this boy may be coming over for pizza tomorrow night, maybe.”

Her mother laughed. “Amos may be coming over, maybe?”

Clara laughed, too, but then something suddenly struck her. “How did you know his name?”

A pause; then, “Oh, I think you must've mentioned him before I left.”

Clara hadn't. She knew she hadn't. But because she wanted to so much, Clara went ahead and told her everything she could think of about Amos, even the part about his being at Sands Mandeville's and calling her a dink.

“I guess
dink
is a pejorative term, huh?” her mother said.

“It means they think I'm stupid.”

“Well, your friend Amos lapsed, and a lapse might be a look into his real personality or might just be a lapse.” A moment passed. “Even the best people do a bad thing every now and then, sweetie.”

“Umm,” Clara said, meaning
yes,
only she wasn't so sure she felt as forgiving as her mother seemed to think she should be.

“Whereas those girls are making snobbiness a way of life,” her mother went on. “Those girls are horrible, and they'll grow up to be unhappy women.”

This was difficult to picture. “Yeah, I guess,” Clara said. Then, brightening, she said, “Anyhow, I got almost as much applause after the play as Sands Mandeville.”

Her mother laughed, but it dissipated quickly. Clara wondered if it was because her mother realized she wasn't going to see Clara in her first play. Or maybe it was just because she was worried how much this phone call was costing. Still, there was one more thing Clara wanted to ask. “Mom?”

“What, sweetie?”

“How come you were calling Mrs. Harper?”

Clara thought she heard her mother inhaling. “Oh, all these weeks I just couldn't stand not knowing what you were doing, and your father wouldn't talk to me and you wouldn't talk to me, so...” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “So Sylvia was nice enough to tell me what you've been doing.” She paused. “Perhaps now I could just deal with you direct?”

“Yeah,” Clara said. “Maybe that would be better.” But she had to hand it to Mrs. Harper, who'd been pretty good at digging up the facts. “What time is it over there?”

“Just past seven. At night. It's dark out.”

In Jemison, it was still bright and sunny. In Spain, it was already night. It was like a different universe, Clara thought. She didn't know what to say, and pretty soon her mother was saying how much she loved Clara, and Clara knew it was time to get off the phone. “Are you ever coming back home?” she asked.

“Well, I won't stay here forever, sweetie, but I'm going to finish out the school year, I know that. I like it here. If you were here, too, it'd be heaven.”

When her mother said this, something small and hard in Clara made her say, “Someone named Lydia's been calling Dad up. Lydia Upchurch Elgin.”

There was a short pause. “Yes, she'd called a couple of times before I left.”

“Well, Dad seems kind of hyped about it. He's out jogging right now, trying to get himself in shape.”

Another pause. “Your father and I are legally separated now, sweetie. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised if he begins to get out a little bit.”

Legally separated.
Clara stared out Mrs. Harper's kitchen window and imagined a thick wall of law books with her parents sitting quietly on either side.

Her mother tried to sound cheerful when she told Clara she would call soon, but Clara could tell she was not cheerful. She wasn't cheerful at all.