Little Bird of Heaven (9 page)

“Y
OUR FATHER WILL
be staying with your uncle Earl for a while. No—don’t ask me about it, he will tell you himself.”

No longer
Daddy
but
your father.
This subtle change. This abrupt change. Our mother speaking to us of
your father
as she might have been speaking of
your teacher, your bus driver.

This was three days after the news of Zoe Kruller was first released. Three days after the banner headlines in the Sparta
Journal
which my mother had snatched from my fingers.

Three days, during which time Daddy had not been home very much, or had been home and gone away again, and had returned late at night when Ben and I were in bed and supposedly asleep.

“Tell us—what?”

We’d just returned from school. Ben let his backpack fall onto the floor. Since the news of Zoe Kruller had entered our lives Ben had been behaving strangely, loud-laughing, crude as the older boys on the school bus who tormented younger children.

Ben’s face flushed with anger. “Bullshit.”

Ben pushed past our mother, ran upstairs thudding his heels on the stairs and slammed the door to his room. Looking as if she’d been struck in the face our mother stared after him but didn’t call his name—didn’t scold him—so I knew that something was very wrong.

“Mom? What is…”

“I
said.
He will tell you, Krista. Your father. Soon.”

I was stunned. I could not comprehend why Ben was so angry, and
what it meant that
your father
was staying with a relative. I seemed to know that this must have something to do with Zoe Kruller but could not imagine what.

The phone began ringing. We were in the kitchen and something, too, was wrong with the kitchen: there were dishes in the sink, soaking. There was a discolored sponge on the counter that looked as if it had been used to mop up coffee. There was an ashtray filled with butts, and the air stank of cigarette smoke and butts. And this was a
wrong smell,
for this house. And my mother’s face looked shiny and swollen and her mouth was greasy with fresh smears of Revlon lipstick as if she’d been expecting company or possibly company had come and departed and that was why there were dishes in the sink and cigarette butts smoldering in the ashtray and an air of frantic unease that felt like a churning in the guts. I was young enough then to react as a child would react—trying to push into my mother’s arms. But my mother was distracted, upset; she had no time for a needy daughter; the ringing phone seemed to stymie her as if she couldn’t recognize its sound. When I moved to pick up the receiver my mother gave a little slap at me: “No, Krista. Not for you. I’ll take it,
you go away.”

S
O ABRUPTLY MY FATHER
was staying with my uncle Earl Diehl who lived in East Sparta. But Daddy’s things remained at home, most of Daddy’s clothes and Daddy’s tools in his basement workshop and Daddy’s 1975 Willys Jeep he’d been thinking about selling, in the garage.

Each time the phone rang naturally the thought was
This is Daddy!

But Daddy didn’t call until the next evening when we were just sitting down—late—to a meal already delayed and interrupted by phone calls. In a guarded voice my mother answered and waved for Ben and me to leave the kitchen, which we did, hovering nervously in the living room, and after a few minutes my mother called Ben back—“Your father wants to speak with you, Ben! Hurry up”—and Ben took the receiver from her hand shyly and reluctantly; his face flushed red, all he could murmur was
O.K., Dad, yeah I guess so
in a voice close to tears. Then it was my turn, I was dry-mouthed and anxious and like Ben stricken with shyness for how strange it was, how wrong-seeming, to be speaking with Daddy on the phone! I don’t think that either Ben or I had ever spoken on the phone before with our father; I was unprepared for my father’s voice so close in my ear—“Is that Puss? That’s my li’l Puss? Is it? My sweet Puss—is it?” I was unable to say anything more than
Yes Daddy! Yes Daddy
for something seemed to be wrong, there was something wrong with Daddy I could not have identified
He’s drunk. Couldn’t get up the courage to call his family except drunk.
Unexpectedly I began to cry, I was confused and frightened and out of nowhere began to cry, and Daddy said sharply, “Damn, don’t
cry
. Krista, don’t you
cry.
No fucking
crying,
what the fuck’s your mother been telling you, put your mother on the phone, Krista—”

What happened after that, I don’t remember. My mother must have taken the receiver from me, the rest of the evening is a blank.

Hadn’t heard my father’s voice very clearly over the phone and so it came to be a time when I couldn’t hear anyone’s voice very clearly. At school I had difficulty hearing Mrs. Bender. A roaring in my ears like distant thunder. Or in the distance, the roar of one of Daddy’s cars on the Huron Pike Road coming home. On the blackboard—in fact, at our school it was a green board—where chalk-words and numerals melted into one another. My eyes swam in tears. My nose ran. Hunched over my desk desperately wiping my nose with my fingers, shiny wet mucus on my fingers I had to let dry in the air, I’d used up the wad of Kleenex my mother had given me. “Krista? Are you crying? You can tell me, dear.”

Mrs. Bender stooped to peer at me. Mrs. Bender provided me with fresh tissues. Mrs. Bender asked if I would like to step outside into the hall to speak with her—if I had something to say, I might want to say in private—but I shook my head
no.
My mother had cautioned me
Don’t say anything about Daddy. Never say anything about our lives at home. Never anything to be repeated Krista do you understand?

Faint and reproachful in my ears were my father’s admonitory words
Don’t cry! Krista, don’t you cry! No fucking crying.

I was shivering so hard, my teeth were chattering. Like a stark-wet-eyed little doll set to shaking. Somehow it had happened that a daughter of Lucille Diehl—Lucille, who took such pride in her household and in her children!—had been allowed to leave the house on a freezing February morning in just a cotton pullover and slacks beneath a winter jacket, my fine limp pale-blond hair badly snarled at the nape of my neck and my skin hot.

Tenderly Mrs. Bender pressed the back of her cool hand against my forehead.

“Oh, dear! You’re running a fever.”

Shivering turned to giggling.
Running a fever
—how could this be?

In the school infirmary the nurse took my temperature with a thermometer thrust beneath my tongue, making me gag. She examined the scummy interior of my mouth and my throat that throbbed with soreness. She and Mrs. Bender conferred in whispers
This girl, you know who she is—Diehl?

It took much of an hour for the nurse to contact my mother on the phone to tell her please come immediately, take your child home she has a temperature of 102° F and seems to be coming down with the flu.

Coming down with the flu!
This expression was used so frequently in Sparta in the winter, it had acquired something of the lilt and innocence of a popular song.
Coming down with the flu
explained this sick sad collapsing sensation so it wasn’t scary any longer but a hopeful sign, you were just like everyone else.

“B
ULLSHIT.
”

This was what Ben said. Sometimes in disgust, sometimes laughingly. Sometimes in a mutter not meant to be overheard and sometimes rudely loud so that my mother and I had no choice but to hear.

When Mom wouldn’t let us see the newspaper, watch the six o’clock local news or any TV unless she was in the room with us clutching the remote control.

When Mom took telephone calls upstairs in the bedroom with the door shut against us. When Mom no longer summoned us to the phone, to speak with Daddy. In desperation I appealed to Ben to say why, why was this happening, and Ben had no answer except a shrug—“Bull
shit.
That’s all it is.”

I asked Ben what this had to do with Mrs. Kruller being killed and Ben only just repeated in maddening idiocy—“Bull
shit.
I told you.”

“What do you mean—‘bullshit’?”

“I told you, stupid. ‘Bull
shit.’
”

I followed Ben around. I pulled at Ben’s arm. Ben slapped at me, shoved me. I was white-faced in desperation, indignation. I repeated my question and finally Ben relented as if taking pity on me.

“What they’re saying in the news. That Dad is a ‘suspect.’”

“‘Suspect’—what’s that?”

“The police are ‘questioning’ Dad about Mrs. Kruller. He’s ‘in custody’—Eddy Diehl is a ‘suspect.’”

“But—why?”

Of course I knew what a
suspect
was. I knew what it meant when a
suspect
was
in police custody.
Yet I could not seem to comprehend what this had to do with our father, or with us. I was feeling anxious, vaguely nauseated. I could not comprehend why my brother suddenly hated me.

“Why? Because they’re assholes, that’s why. These men she was seeing, one of them did it, ‘strangled’ her—‘murdered’ her—and they’re trying to say that Daddy was one of these men, but everybody knows Aaron’s father is the killer, it’s God-damned fucking bullshit, taking Dad
into custody.”

Ben’s face contorted as if he were about to cry and I was frightened that Ben would cry for if Ben cried and I was a witness, Ben would be furious with me, Ben would never forgive me and would hate me even worse than he hated me now. So I said, in a silly-girl voice, like a girl on a TV comedy whose mere presence evokes expectant titters of laughter in the invisible audience: “Oh, say—know what?—Mrs. Kruller was here, once.”

Ben stared at me. Ben’s eyes glittered dangerously with tears.

“Here? Where?”

“Here. In this house.”

“Bullshit she was! When?”

I tried to think. It must have been last year, last spring. At the start of warm weather. But we were still in school—it would have been May, early June. The memory returned to me like a TV scene that, at first, seems unfamiliar but gradually then reveals itself as familiar, comforting. The school bus from Harpwell Elementary had brought me home unexpectedly early—12:30
P.M.
It was a half-day Wednesday for a teachers’ meeting had been called for that afternoon. Mom was away, Mom had not known about the meeting and the half-day Wednesday. Mom was away in Chautauqua Falls visiting a relative hospitalized for surgery.

The back door was unlocked, Mom had told me—Mom had told Ben and me—just to come inside if she wasn’t home by the time we got home, she was sure to be home by 5:00
P.M.
, she promised.

It was not unusual, to leave a house unlocked. On the Huron Pike Road in the countryside west of Sparta it was not unusual to leave a house unlocked all day, all night.

Nor was it unusual that a mother—a “devoted” mother, like Lucille Diehl—might leave her children unattended for an hour or two, in such circumstances.

And so I walked into the kitchen humming to myself, and there was Mom at the sink—no: not Mom—there was Zoe Kruller at the sink!—pretty Zoe Kruller from Honeystone’s Dairy except Zoe wasn’t wearing her white cord smock and trousers but silky purple slacks and a snug-fitting lavender sweater, no hairnet on her springy hair, Zoe was whistling as she rinsed coffee mugs at the sink and turning Zoe blinked at me with startled widened eyes and after the merest heartbeat of a pause Zoe said in a low throaty smooth voice like honey, “Why it’s—Krissie! Well, say—Krissie! Thought that was you! What brings you home at this time of day, Krissie?”

Zoe’s voice was pitched to be heard. Not just by little Krissie but by someone else, in an adjacent room perhaps. At the time I did not quite
grasp this fact. At the time I was surprised—I was very surprised—but it was a pleasant surprise, wasn’t it?—to see Zoe Kruller in our kitchen, at our sink? Zoe was smiling so hard at me, her cheeks were all dimpled. Her smile was wide and lustrous baring her pink gums. Against her milky skin freckles and tiny moles quivered. In the other room I heard a man’s voice—a muffled voice—but of course it was Daddy’s voice—I knew it was Daddy of course, I’d seen Daddy’s Jeep in the driveway. I told Zoe that it was a half-day at school, I told Zoe about the teachers’ meeting, and how my mother had driven to Chautauqua Falls to visit a relative in the hospital, and how my mother would be home in a few hours. At the mention of my mother Zoe seemed to brighten even more, Zoe said, “That’s who I dropped by to see, Krissie—your mom. Just wanted to say hello to Lucy but Lucy isn’t home—I guess? Where’d you say she went, Chautauqua Falls?”

There came Daddy into the kitchen combing his hair—it was strange to see Daddy combing his hair, in the kitchen—Daddy’s bristly red-brown hair that looked newly wetted as if he’d just had a shower; Daddy was combing his hair back from his forehead in a single sweeping movement; Daddy was wearing one of his fresh-ironed short-sleeved white cotton shirts, and in the breast pocket was a plastic ballpoint pen, the kind given out at S
PARTA
C
ONSTRUCTION;
and Daddy’s face looked ruddy and handsome and Daddy stared at me for a long moment as if he didn’t know who I was, then said, “Krissie. You’re home.”

Quickly Zoe intervened explaining that I had just a “half-day” at school since there was a teachers’ meeting. Zoe explained that she’d told me she had dropped by to see Lucy—Lucille—“But now I guess I’ll be going, since Lucille isn’t here right now.”

By this time Zoe had dried both coffee mugs and put them away in the maple wood cabinet in exactly the places where Mom kept them.

“You don’t have to tell your mother that I was here to visit her,” Zoe said. Zoe stooped to smile at me even harder, and to brush her lips against my forehead. Zoe smelled perfumy and musky and nothing at all like Honeystone’s Dairy. In the hollow of her neck there was a faint glisten of
moisture, I’d have liked to touch with my tongue. Around her neck Zoe was wearing a small golden bird—a dove?—on a thin golden chain. “It can be a surprise, Krissie. I’ll come back tomorrow and surprise your mom so don’t spoil the surprise, Krissie, all right? We’ll keep it a secret between you and me, that I was here today.”