Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (12 page)

The next day the phone call's in the paper: "Though the anonymous tip led to the discovery of a dozen .22 shell casings near a forked tree, police weren't able to get the caller to come in, and they suspect it might have been the killer himself."

He can't help laughing when he reads it.

A
FTER
a while, Ellie and I get up and go inside. It's four thirty, time for
The Edge of Night.
When I was little, I listened to soap operas if I was sick and felt too bad to read. Most of them were about love and hospitals, but
The Edge of Night
is more like a detective show. It takes place in a small town where crime is an everyday sort of thing. Nancy Drew would have felt right at home in Monticello. At any rate, it's just unrealistic enough to take our minds off our own edge of night.

Ellie's been here all day because she can't stand to be home alone. Her mother dropped her off on her way to work and she's picking us both up on her way to Hausner's Funeral Home for the viewing. Viewing—people enjoy scenic views, they express their views, they change their views, they take dim views, they view the dead.

When the show's over, we go up to my room and peel off our shorts and blouses and change into black skirts and white blouses, what we wear when we sing in glee club. Our bodies are damp with perspiration. Our clothes stick to us.

We hear Mom come home and go to meet her. "Do I look all right?" I ask Mom. "Is my skirt too tight?" I tug at it, thinking I've drunk too many milk shakes, eaten too many french fries this year. "Should I iron my blouse?"

"You look fine." Mom hugs me.

"My hair, though. It's frizzy. My bangs are too curly."

"Nora, stop thinking about yourself," Mom says.

I blush and look at my feet, sure my white Cuban heels are wrong with my black skirt. Doesn't Mom know how hard this is? I've never been inside Hausner's. I don't even like to walk past it. It sits there like it's waiting for you, a big white house on a green lawn with flower beds and a fountain, right there in plain sight on Delaney Avenue.

It's not a house, though, it's a home, which in this case means a home for the dead. Temporary quarters, a rooming house without bed or board, just a coffin. It's horrible to walk by and know what's in there, who's in there—people who used to walk past just like I walk past. Now I have to go through the door. I have to see what I don't want to see.

A car pulls up out front. Mrs. O'Brien goes into the kitchen to talk to Mom. They both look at Ellie and me from time to time. I can't hear what they're saying, but I know they're glad Ellie and I are here and not at Hausner's. We're safe. Just because Ellie couldn't get her pin fastened. She's wearing it now, I notice. A charm against evil.

In the car, we squeeze into the front seat, Ellie in the middle next to her mother, me by the open window, trying not to think about what the wind is doing to my hair. I remind myself I am not the one who will be viewed.

Mrs. O'Brien makes idle conversation, asking about our day, commenting on the weather, the hottest summer she can remember, pointing out a new jewelry shop on Delaney Avenue, waving to someone she knows. Neither Ellie nor I have much to say. I'm aware of how tense my body is, even my fists are clenched. I try to relax, but next to me, her shoulder touching mine, I can feel the same tension in Ellie.

All too soon, Mrs. O'Brien is parking her car in the lot behind Hausner's. It's packed with cars already. Everything from new Buicks to ratty old cars, the kind kids drive. Buddy's black Ford isn't there. I don't think he'd dare to come.

I walk up the brick sidewalk on shaky legs. The fountain splashes. Flower beds line the walk, blooming with bursts of red and yellow. Bees buzz around the blossoms. The lawn is green, freshly cut, not a weed to be seen. Birds sing in the neatly clipped shrubbery. The heat of the day hasn't cooled, but a little breeze ruffles leaves and flowers and bushes, releasing the scent of roses.

"Come on, girls," Mrs. O'Brien says softly. Taking us each by the arm, she leads us gently inside. After the brilliant sunlight, the green grass, the bright flowers, the hall is so dark I can't see for a moment. Everything is quiet. Thick carpet mutes our footsteps. A strange scent fills my nose—funeral flowers and something else. Furniture wax, maybe. Mrs. O'Brien hands Ellie a pen and she writes her name in both books, Cheryl's and Bobbi Jo's.

I take the pen and write my name beneath Ellie's. I remember signing Cheryl's yearbook just last week—
Good luck to a good friend, may you always be as happy as you are now! Don't forget chemistry and how we almost blew up the whole class! See you this summer! Nora.

How stupid, I think, to have written such a silly thing.

Paul, Charlie, and Walt come in just as I lay the pen down. Sun blind like we were, they almost bump into us. They're wearing suits, white shirts ironed stiff, tightly knotted ties. They look like little boys in someone else's clothes.

We whisper hellos. Mrs. O'Brien gives all three boys a hug. We wait while they write their names in the two books and then we walk down the hall to a sign that says
BARBARA JOSEPHINE BOYD
and
CHERYL LOUISE MILLER.
For a moment, I think there's been a mistake. They've put a stranger in the room. Then I realize that Bobbi Jo's real name must be Barbara Josephine. It doesn't suit her.

Through the open door, we see a crowd of people, kids from school, parents from the neighborhood, teachers, strangers. People are crying. The kids look bewildered, stunned. I'm having trouble breathing, I think I might faint, but I allow Mrs. O'Brien to lead me into the room.

Two white coffins stand side by side, almost hidden by flower arrangements. The Boyds and the Millers stand beside their daughters, their faces pale and worn with sorrow. Mrs. O'Brien nudges Ellie and me forward. We speak our regrets to the Boyds and the Millers, our voices low and indistinct, blurred with sadness and uncertainty. Nothing we can say will ever be enough. Nothing we can say will help. Nothing we can say can make anyone feel better.

"We're so sorry, so sorry." My throat closes up. I can't say anything else.

Mrs. Boyd squeezes our hands, so does Mrs. Miller. "Thank you for coming," they both say, speaking in unison as if they've practiced.

Then we pass the coffins. Cheryl on the right, Bobbi Jo on the left. They look at peace, their faces smooth—too smooth, I think later, and wonder how the funeral parlor hid the bullet wounds. Bobbi Jo has a slight frown on her face, just as she had in life when she was puzzled about something. Cheryl has no expression. Their eyes are closed. They have secrets they'll never tell, they know what we don't know. No motion now, no force. They neither hear nor see—but they know, they know.

We back away, Ellie and me. It's not right to look at them too long. Do we expect them to open their eyes and laugh and shout "Fooled you!"? And then Hausner's will bring in a cake and the party will start and the music will play and we'll all dance, even old aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Next to me, a man is talking to another man about an accident that held up traffic on his way home from work. A woman turns to her husband and says, "Don't forget, we have to stop at High's and pick up a quart of milk."

Her husband lights a cigarette and nods. "Do you have enough cheese and bread?"

Ellie and I move away from the smoke, but most of the adults in the room are smoking, so it's useless. It seems disrespectful to smoke and talk about ordinary things like traffic jams and groceries when two dead girls are lying a few feet away in a bower of flowers.

Nearby a group of women compare vacation plans. One's going to Ocean City, another to Atlantic City, a third to the mountains. Don't they realize Bobbi Jo and Cheryl are never going anywhere again?

Just when I think I might start screaming at people to shut up, Charlie grabs my hand. "Come on, let's get out of here."

I look for Ellie. She and Paul are talking to her mother. "But you haven't had dinner," Mrs. O'Brien says.

"It's too hot to eat," Ellie says. "The flowers, they're making me feel sick to my stomach. The smell..."

"We'll grab a hamburger if we get hungry," Paul says.

"Don't stay out late," Mrs. O'Brien says.

Outside, I take a deep breath of fresh air. Early evening sunlight stretches across the grass, crisscrossing the lawn with shadows. Birds cartwheel across the sky. A car drives by, leaving a trail of music in the air—"Maybelline." The driver doesn't look at Hausner's, doesn't wonder when he'll be inside mourning someone's death.

We get in Paul's old Plymouth and drive away. I can almost hear Cheryl and Bobbi Jo crying "Wait for us, don't leave us here." I imagine them running along beside the car, their fingers reaching for the door handles, but you can see through them, they can't hold on to anything, they fall behind.

"Where to?" Paul asks.

"Maybe Ellie's not hungry," Charlie says, "but I'm starving. How about Top's Drive-In for a burger?"

"Sounds great to me," Paul says. "Any objections?"

We all agree and head down Route 40. The radio blasts "Midnight Special," summer air blows through the car, and we all try extra hard to act like it's an ordinary evening and we're having a great time. We sing along with the radio, we laugh at Paul and Charlie's dumb jokes. "Why did the little moron tiptoe past the medicine cabinet?" Paul asks. "Because he didn't want to wake the sleeping pills," we all shout. "Why did the little moron drive his car off the cliff ?" Charlie asks. "Because he wanted to test his air brakes," we all shout again, laughing like we never heard these jokes a million times, laughing like they're actually funny.

By the time we place our order at Top's Drive-In, Charlie has moved on to sick jokes, like the mother who tells her kid, "Stop running around in circles or I'll nail your other foot to the floor." After two or three, Paul says, "That's about as funny as a truckload of dead babies."

We've heard that one, too, but suddenly the jokes aren't funny. We sit there staring at our huge hamburgers and thick shakes and french fries. I'm not hungry after all.

"I can't believe they're dead," Charlie says in a small sad voice.

"Me either," Paul says.

"I keep thinking the phone will ring," Ellie says, "and it will be Bobbi Jo asking me if I want to go to Walgreen's and have a cherry Coke or something."

I feel a disconnection because I didn't really know either girl as well as the others. They all lived in the same neighborhood and saw each other all the time. I live two miles away on the other side of town.

They start reminiscing then, talking about the time Cheryl got stung by a bee on her behind and couldn't sit down for almost a week, and how Bobbi Jo fell through the ice at the lake and Paul and Charlie pulled her out and their jeans froze on the way home, and Cheryl was the best roller skater in their neighborhood and she loved horses and dogs, and Bobbi Jo was scared to climb down from a tree once and they had to get her father to rescue her. And how about the time Cheryl and Nora were lab partners in chemistry, Ellie said, and they forgot to cover their thistle tubes in an experiment and combustible gas escaped into the classroom and everyone had to evacuate.

"Mr. Haskins almost killed us," I say. "We were so embarrassed."

By the time we finish telling stories, we realize we've eaten everything. I guess we were hungry after all. But I feel bad, because even though we were sharing good stories, it was like talking behind their backs. They weren't here to add their opinion. Maybe we had the details wrong. Maybe we left out something important, maybe Bobbi Jo would have said, "Charlie, you said the ice was safe, you swore it was."

On the way home, we drive past Hausner's. The outside lights are off, but a dim light shines in each window. I wonder which one is Cheryl and Bobbi Jo's. I'm glad they're not lying in the dark. Let perpetual light shine on them ... that's from the Mass, the priest will say it tomorrow.

"Bobbi Jo was afraid of the dark," Ellie says softly. "She couldn't sleep without a night-light."

L
ATE
at night when nobody will see me I drive past the funeral parlor and park a block away just in case somebody recognizes my car. I walk back and sit in the shadows on the front steps. I can smell the roses, which are gray in the moonlight. The grass is gray, the trees are black, and shadows move across the lawn, changing every time the wind blows. Delaney Avenue is deserted, just a strip of gray in the dark. Except for these stupid bugs, crickets or something, making a helluva annoying noise, the night is still. Dead still, you could say.

Behind me is a closed door. I went in there once for my grandmother's viewing and funeral, she wasn't a church type. So I know what it's like. All these rooms, and in each room is a coffin with a dead person inside—a corpse, a stiff—and there are lots of stinking flowers but you smell death anyway.

My grandmother was gray like cement or something, and her mouth was sewed shut and so were her eyes, you could tell if you looked close, and my mother made me look close, she made me kiss her, and she was cold and hard and I hated doing it and I hated my mother for making me do it. I was only seven years old. Just a little kid. I didn't even like my grandmother. She was one mean old lady and never even gave me a kiss when she was alive, so why did I have to kiss her when she was dead?

If I could of gone to the viewing, I would of kissed Cheryl goodbye. I wanted to. I must be crazy for thinking that.

But damn I wanted to see her one last time, she was my girl, I loved her, I loved her more than that SOB Ralph with his stupid basketball team, she would of got tired of him, she would of come back to me like she always did. Or he would of dumped her when he got what he wanted because why else would a guy like him date a girl like Cheryl? He ran with the cheerleaders and the athletes, not girls like Cheryl who took typing and shorthand because she didn't have the money for college.