Dead to Me (2 page)

A dark look crossed his face. “Annie and I were supposed to meet yesterday. When she didn’t show, I called a buddy of mine at the LAPD to see if she’d turned up
anywhere.”

In my world, when I’m looking for someone and they’re not where they’re supposed to be, I call them up. I ask their friends. Maybe I go by their house or the place where they
work. Why would Jerry Shaffer contact the police unless he’d expected my sister to be dead, hurt, or under arrest?

I glared at him and started to speak, but he held up his hand to stop me.

“Alice, your sister is a real sweet girl. Real sweet, and a lot smarter than those she chooses to associate with.” He looked at me meaningfully. “But she isn’t any kind
of angel.”

Annie had just turned sixteen when she left home, the same age I was now. I thought about that, about how I’d live if I were out on my own in Los Angeles right now, where I’d sleep,
the kinds of friends I might have to make to get by. When Annie left, I missed her, I wanted her back, I cried over her, but I never worried about her. She’d seemed like a grown-up to me. Now
the idea of her striking out on her own and landing without a scratch seemed a little far-fetched.

“It’s okay,” I said, swallowing hard.

Jerry continued. “The cop told me a girl was found in MacArthur Park beaten up pretty bad, so I came here to see about it.”

He leaned back in his chair and bobbled the toothpick from side to side in his mouth. “Where do your parents think you are right now, anyway?”

“I told them I was spending the night at my friend Cassie’s house.”

As lies went, it had not been my best effort. Even my oblivious mother had her doubts, since it had been years since I stayed overnight at a friend’s house—or, for that matter, had
friends.

“I’ll take over here for tonight,” he said. “You go home, put in an appearance. No telling how long we might have to keep this up.”

I snorted. There was no we between me and Jerry Shaffer.

“Not likely. I’m not leaving Annie.”

He leaned forward, clamping his palms together and fixing his black eyes on mine.

“Do you know what parents do when their daughters aren’t where they’re supposed to be? They start making phone calls. To the police. To hospitals.” He cleared his throat,
stalling as he picked over his next words. “You need to do this for your sister. Go home, Alice. Keep them from asking too many questions about where you are, and you might buy me a little
time to get to the bottom of this.”

I met his stare and held it. Jerry Shaffer could have walked into Annie’s room with his mother, his priest, and his first-grade teacher, all attesting to his good citizenship and general
trustworthiness, and I still wouldn’t have left him alone with my sister.

“You could be anybody,” I said. “For all I know, you’re the one who did this. Now you’re just waiting for me to leave so you can finish the job.”

He sighed and slouched down in the chair, stretching out his long legs under the bed. “Would I have told you my name? Shown you my business card? If I wanted to hurt Annie, wouldn’t
I have knocked you over the head by now and gotten on with it?”

I didn’t answer. All I knew was that there was no way for me to be sure about Jerry Shaffer.

Without another word, he took a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his coat and smoothed it out on the nightstand by Annie’s bed. Then he took out a pencil stub and hunched
over the page, scribbling intently for what seemed like ages. When he finished, he tore off a thin strip of the paper and handed it to me along with the pencil. I felt a spark of recognition when I
saw the jumble of letters and knew immediately what I had to do to decode them.

“Who taught you how to do this?” I asked.

“Who do you think?” Jerry said, leaning back in his chair. “When I tell you I’m Annie’s friend and that I’m here for her, I mean it. Go home and get some
sleep, Alice.”

I looked at the strip of paper, then at Jerry Shaffer, then back at the paper and what he had written there. There’d been no way for me to be sure about Jerry Shaffer—and then he
gave me one I couldn’t ignore.

I wrote my phone number down on the slip of paper and handed it to him.

“Will you call me if anything changes?”

“I promise,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Alice.”

“Okay.”

On my way down the hall, I spotted one of the orderlies making his rounds. I recognized him—he’d been to Annie’s room twice to change her bandages since I’d been there. I
pulled him aside and asked if he’d stop by a little more often. There were five dollar bills in my purse, more money than I usually spent in a week. I gave him all of it.

At first, he wouldn’t take the money, but I pressed the bills into his hand.

“Please,” I said. My throat started to tighten, and I could barely get the word out.

I swallowed down the tears that threatened to come and folded the orderly’s fingers around the money.

“Take it. Make sure nothing happens to her.”

This time, the orderly nodded and put the money in his pocket, even though what I was asking of him was impossible, and we both knew it.

M
y parents couldn’t be famous themselves, so they decided to have children to do it for them.

My father was the head of the publicity department at Insignia Pictures. He spent his days telling the world how wonderful movie stars were, and I think he actually believed it himself.

Before she met my father, my mother was a very minor starlet. She started out dressing hair at Warner Bros. Studios, but then her good looks caught somebody’s eye and she was brought in
for a screen test. The parts she got were never any good—harem girl, bathing beauty, third chorus girl from the left. Getting married gave her a meatier role, one with lines.

If my parents knew anything about being parents, I’m pretty sure they learned it from the movies. They kissed our cheeks and patted our heads, but mostly it seemed as if they were always
leaving for drinks, parties, movie premieres—places we weren’t welcome.

Annie and I didn’t mind, though. We liked being on our own. Annie was the undisputed leader of the neighborhood kids. If she wanted to go to the pool that day, or the park, or the library,
Annie decreed it, and everyone went along with her. I never got the feeling that she cared whether anyone came or not. She’d just say, “I’m going to the drugstore for a cream
soda,” and they followed her.

It was always understood that when she said “I,” she meant me, too. She always made a place for me, watched out for me, and I hung on to her for dear life.

There was one situation in which our parents demanded our presence around the house, and that was when they threw a party. About once a month, our mother would come up to the bedroom we shared
carrying a set of matching outfits—there was usually a theme: sailor suits or gypsies or something like that. She’d dress us up and send us around with trays of finger sandwiches and
olives. If we ever got distracted from our duties, she’d immediately materialize, nudge one of us in the back, and whisper in a perky voice, “Circulate, my dear! Circulate!”

After enough people had remarked on how precious we were, she’d shuttle us off to bed, making a big show of kissing us good night in front of her guests.

It was always movie people, no one you’d have heard of, but people from my father’s department, office people, and some of my mother’s old friends from her acting days.
Occasionally someone important would turn up, if they were in the neighborhood, if they needed a quick drink before moving on to a better party. I always knew who these people were because Annie
and I were always dragged over for introductions that were supposed to look spontaneous but were actually quite well rehearsed.

“Now, let me hear you do it again, Alice.”

“Hello, Mr. Dietrich. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, thrusting my right hand forward with plucky enthusiasm. Of course, I knew how to shake hands properly, and I knew
that grown-ups didn’t stick out their hands like they were directing traffic when greeting one another, but Mother insisted I do it this way. She said it made me look more youthful and
endearing.

“And how old are you, little girl?” my mother asked, affecting a gruff, low-pitched voice.

“I’m seven.”

“Sir,” she said in her normal voice. “Remember to say ‘sir,’ Alice.”

“I’m seven, sir.”

Back to the old-man voice. “And how do you like school?”

“I like it very well, sir.”

My mother groaned. “Say it with a little more
pep
, Alice.”

“I like it very well, sir!”

“That’s better. Try to stay bright and sunny, Alice. People will always respond better to you if they think that you’re a cheerful person.” She sighed. “Now, if
only we could do something about those freckles.”

She introduced us to anyone important, or anyone she thought was important. Anyone who wasn’t one of the threadbare office drones, thwarted artists, or blowsy husband-hunters who showed up
anyplace they were lucky enough to be asked.

When we were older, she made me play the piano for them and she made Annie sing. The rehearsals we went through for those parties were ten times worse than practicing introductions and passing
olive trays.

Even so, I loved to hear Annie sing. She had a full, throaty alto voice like Judy Garland, and when she sang something she really loved, like “Over the Rainbow” or “My Funny
Valentine,” I could see her go somewhere else. She wasn’t singing to a room of our parents’ drunk friends anymore. When she sang, she might as well have been in her own room,
singing for nobody but herself.

I would never have gone so far as to say that our parents loved her more than me, but it was clear they considered her more
promising
. Where Annie was “beautiful” and
“smart,” I was “cute” and “clever.” Annie was charming; I was pleasant. Annie danced ballet and tap and took voice lessons, and I backed her up on the piano. And
we both went to those awful parties.

Things changed when Annie started high school. Our parents sent her out to talent shows, where Annie sang insipid, perky little songs while I accompanied her. Annie also sang at other
parties—Hollywood parties—parties at which I wasn’t invited to perform, since I was too young to be beautiful or glamorous, but too old to be cute. My mother zipped Annie into
dresses with full chiffon skirts and as low a neckline as a fifteen-year-old could pull off, and pinned her hair into complicated twists on top of her head.

“Mother, it hurts,” Annie complained.

“Glamour hurts, dear. Just wait until next week when I take you in to Stella for a rinse,” she said, tugging at Annie’s scalp. “We’ll turn this straw into gold
yet.”

Other things changed, too. Boys started calling the house, asking for her, sometimes two or three a night. Once or twice, I answered the phone and pretended to be her, but was always found out
within a few sentences. Each of Annie’s boyfriends annoyed my parents more than the last, until she finally stopped bringing them home at all. She’d say she was going to the library to
study or meeting a girlfriend for a soda, and then she’d meet her friends at the beach or go to the drive-in in Van Nuys.

I missed spending all my time with her, but I also liked not being half of a set—the boring, tagalong half. The more Annie fought with our parents, the more I tried to be the perfect
daughter, clearing the table while they screamed at each other across it. After she stormed out, I’d sit in the living room and do my homework. I made good grades, friends they more or less
approved of—I did whatever they asked me to do. The better I was, the less attention they paid to me.

But I wanted to have it both ways, too. When Annie snuck in through our bedroom window reeking of cigarette smoke and giggly with beer, I’d be waiting under the covers to press her for
details. Annie liked telling me these stories. I guess I was a good audience, young enough to be shocked and old enough to be impressed. Besides, she knew I’d never rat her out to a woman who
used to dress us in sailor suits for her friends’ amusement.

She told me about the time she and her friends snuck into a drag show at a Central Avenue jazz club, and how they raced their cars up and down Highway 1. She told me about the pair of GIs who
showed up at their beach party and disappeared with one of the girls before anyone figured out they’d stolen all the beer.

“Sandy says she’s moving to San Diego with one of them,” Annie told me. “He took her out to this spot real far away from where we were and told her a bunch of goofy
stuff, and then Sandy said they wound up exchanging marriage vows right there on the beach.”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Annie nodded. “It is very silly. Especially since he left town the next day. Without Sandy, I might add.”

“Poor Sandy.”

“I don’t know that she really deserves our pity,” Annie sighed. “I’ve been trying to tell her that he’s not coming back for her, but she won’t listen.
She just moons around the hallways at school, trying to look tortured and wise. Alice, promise me you’ll never marry a GI on leave.”