The Funhouse (4 page)

She headed toward the front gate. She looked back several times, afraid that Conrad would change his mind and come after her.

Tent walls rippled and thrummed and snapped in the wind, pulling at anchor pegs.

In the sheeting rain that was now laced with tendrils of fog, the dark Ferris wheel thrust up like a prehistoric skeleton, weird, mysterious, its familiar lines obscured and distorted and made fantastic by the night and the mist.

She passed the funhouse, too. That was Conrad’s concession. He owned it, and he worked there every day. A giant, leering clown’s face peered down at her from atop the funhouse; as a joke, the artist had modeled it after Conrad’s face. Ellen could see the resemblance even in the gloom. She had the disconcerting feeling that the clown’s huge, painted eyes were watching her. She looked away from it and hurried on.

When she reached the main gate of the county fairgrounds, she stopped, abruptly aware that she had no destination in mind. There was no place for her to go. She had no one to whom she could turn.

The hooting wind seemed to be mocking her.

* * *

Later that night,
after the storm front passed, when only a thin, gray drizzle was falling, Conrad climbed onto the dark carousel in the center of the deserted midway. He sat on one of the gaily painted, elaborately carved benches, not on a horse.

Cory Baker, the man who operated the merry-go-round, stood at the controls behind the ticket booth. He switched on the carousel’s lights. He started the big motor, pushed a lever, and the platform began to turn backwards. Calliope music piped loudly, but it wasn’t able to dispel the dreary atmosphere that surrounded this ceremony.

The brass poles pumped up and down, up and down, gleaming.

The wooden stallions and mares galloped backwards, tail-first, around, around.

Conrad, the sole passenger, stared straight ahead, tight-lipped, grim.

Such a ride on a carousel was the traditional carnival way to dissolve a marriage. The bride and groom rode in the usual direction, forward, when they wanted to wed; either of them could obtain a divorce by riding backwards, alone. Those ceremonies seemed absurd to outsiders, but to carnies, their traditions were less ridiculous than the straight world’s religious and legal rituals.

Five carnies, witnesses to the divorce, watched the merry-go-round. Cory Baker and his wife. Zena Penetsky, one of the girls from the kootch show. Two freaks: the fat lady, who was also the bearded lady; and the alligator man, whose skin was very thick and scaly. They huddled in the rain, watching silently as Conrad swept around through the cool air, through the hollow music and the fog.

After the carousel had made half a dozen revolutions at normal speed, Cory shut down the machine. The platform gradually slowed.

As he waited for the carousel to drift to a stop, Conrad thought about the children Ellen would have one day. He raised his hands and stared at them, trying to envision his fingers all red with the blood of Ellen’s offspring. In a couple of years she would remarry; she was too lovely to remain unattached for long. Ten years from now she could have at least one child. In ten years Conrad would start looking for her. He would hire private investigators; he would spare no expense. He knew that, by morning, Ellen would not take his threat seriously, but
he
did. And when he found her years from now, when she felt safe and secure, he would steal from her that which she valued most.

Now, more than at any other time in his mostly unhappy life, Conrad Straker had something to live for. Vengeance.

* * *

Ellen spent the
night in a motel near the county fairgrounds.

She didn’t sleep well. Although she had bandaged her wounds, they still burned, and she couldn’t find a comfortable position. Worse than that, every time she dozed off for a few minutes, she was plagued by bloody nightmares.

Awake, staring at the ceiling, she worried about the future. Where would she go? What would she do? She didn’t have much money.

Once, at the deepest point of her depression, she considered suicide. But she quickly dismissed that thought. She might not be condemned to Hell for having killed the child-thing, but she surely would be damned for taking her own life. To a Catholic, suicide was a mortal sin.

Having forsaken the Church in reaction to her mother’s zealous support of it, having been without faith for a few years, Ellen discovered that she now
believed
. She was a Catholic again, and she longed for the cleansing of confession, for the spiritual uplift of the Mass. The birth of that grotesque, malevolent child, and especially her recent struggle with it, had convinced her that there were such things as abstract evil and abstract good, forces of God and forces of Satan at work in the world.

In the motel bed, with the covers drawn up to her chin, she prayed often that night.

Toward dawn she finally managed to get a couple of hours of uninterrupted, dreamless sleep, and when she woke up she did not feel depressed. A shaft of golden sunlight pierced the high window and came to rest upon her, and as she luxuriated in the warmth and brightness, she began to feel that there was hope for the future. Conrad was behind her. Forever. The monstrous child was gone. Forever. The world was filled with interesting possibilities. After all the sadness and pain and fear that she had endured, she was long overdue for her share of happiness.

Already, she had put Conrad’s threat out of her mind.

It was Tuesday, August 16, 1955.

ONE

A
MY
H
ARPER

1

On the night
of the senior prom, Jerry Galloway wanted to make love to Amy. His desire didn’t surprise her. He always wanted to make love. He was always pawing at her. He couldn’t get enough of her.

But Amy was beginning to think she’d had enough of Jerry. Too much of him, in fact. She was pregnant.

Whenever she thought about being pregnant, she got a hollow, cold sensation in her chest. Afraid of what she would have to face in the days ahead—the humiliation, her father’s disappointment, her mother’s fury—she shivered.

Several times during the evening, Jerry saw her shivering, and he thought she was just bothered by a draft from the gymnasium’s air conditioning. She was wearing a lacy, green, off-the-shoulder gown, and he kept suggesting that she put her shawl over her shoulders.

They danced only a few of the fast songs, but they didn’t miss a single slow number. Jerry liked slow dancing. He liked to hold Amy close, pressing her tight against him as they glided somewhat clumsily around the floor. He whispered in her ear while they danced; he told her that she looked terrific, that she was the sexiest thing he had ever seen, that all of the guys were surreptitiously staring at her cleavage, that she made him hot, real hot. He pressed so tightly against her that she could feel his erection. He
wanted
her to feel it because he wanted her to know that she turned him on. To Jerry’s way of thinking, his erection was the greatest compliment he could pay her.

Jerry was an ass.

As Amy allowed him to maneuver her around the crowded room, as she permitted him to rub his body against her under the pretense of dancing, she wondered why she had let him touch her in the first place. He was such a creep, really.

He was handsome, of course. He was one of the handsomest boys in the senior class. A lot of girls thought Amy had made a wonderful catch when she’d latched on to Jerry Galloway.

But you don’t give your body to a guy just because he’s good-looking, she told herself. My God, you’ve got to have higher standards than that!

Jerry was handsome, but he wasn’t nearly as intelligent as he was good-looking. He wasn’t witty, clever, kind, or more than minimally considerate. He thought he was cool, and he was good at playing Joe College; but there was no substance to him.

Amy looked around at the other girls in their silks and satins and laces and chiffons, in their low-cut bodices, in their Empire-waist dresses, in their backless gowns and long skirts and pumps, in their elaborate hairdos and carefully applied makeup and borrowed jewelry. All those girls were laughing and pretending to be ultra-sophisticated, glamorous, even world-weary. Amy envied them. They were having so much fun.

And she was pregnant.

She was afraid she was going to cry. She bit her tongue and held back the tears.

The prom was scheduled to last until one o’clock in the morning. Afterwards, from one-thirty until three o’clock, there was an extravagant breakfast buffet in one of the town’s nicest restaurants.

Amy had been allowed to come to the prom, but she hadn’t been given permission to attend the breakfast. It was all right with her father, but, as usual, her mother objected. Her father said she could stay out until three because this was a special night, but her mother wanted her home by ten, three whole hours before the prom ended. Amy always had to be home by ten on weekends, nine o’clock on school nights. Tonight, however, her father interceded on her behalf, and her mother grudgingly compromised; Amy didn’t have to be home until one o’clock. Her mother didn’t like making that concession, and later, in a hundred small telling ways, she would make Amy pay for it.

If Mother could have her way, Amy thought, if Daddy didn’t stick up for me now and then, I wouldn’t be permitted to date at all. I wouldn’t be permitted to do anything except go to church.

“You’re dynamite,” Jerry Galloway whispered as he took her in his arms for another dance. “You make me so hot, baby.”

Dear, dear Mother, Amy thought bitterly, just look at how well all your rules and regulations have worked. All your prayers, all those years you dragged me to Mass three or four or five times a week, all those nightly recitations of the rosary that I had to take part in before I could go to sleep. You see, Mother? See how well all of that has worked? I’m pregnant. Knocked up. What would Jesus think about that? And what will you think about that when you find out? What will you think about having a bastard grandchild, Mother?

“You’re shivering again,” Jerry said.

“Just a chill.”

A few minutes after ten o’clock, while the orchestra was playing “Scarborough Fair,” and while Jerry was pushing Amy around the dance floor, he suggested they cut out and spend the rest of the night together, in their own way, just the two of them, just (as he so transparently put it) proving their love to each other. This was supposed to be a special night for a girl, a time to store up good memories, not just another cheap opportunity to screw around in the backseat of her boyfriend’s car. Besides, they had arrived at the dance only two and a half hours ago. Jerry’s eagerness was unseemly and more than a little selfish. But after all, she reminded herself, he was just a horny teenager, not a real man, and certainly not a romantic. Besides, she couldn’t really enjoy herself anyway, not with everything she had to worry about. She agreed to leave with him, although what she had in mind for the remainder of the evening was much different from the steamy makeout session he was contemplating.

As they left the gymnasium, which the decorating committee had tried desperately to transform into a ballroom, Amy glanced back wistfully, taking one last look at the crepe paper and the tinsel and the carnations made out of Kleenex tissues. The lights were low. A revolving, mirrored globe hung above the dance floor, turning slowly, casting down splinters of color from its thousand facets. The room should have looked exotic, magical. But it only made Amy sad.

Jerry owned a meticulously restored, fussily maintained, twenty-year-old Chevrolet. He drove out of town, along narrow, winding Black Hollow Road. Eventually he pulled off on a single-lane dirt track near the river and squeezed the car in among the high brush and the scattered trees. He switched off the headlights, then the engine, and he rolled down his window a couple of inches to let in a warm current of fresh night air.

This was their usual parking spot. It was here that Amy had gotten pregnant.

Jerry slid out from behind the wheel. He smiled at her, and his teeth looked phosphorescent in the calcimined moonlight that streamed through the trees and the windshield. He took Amy’s right hand and put it firmly on his crotch. “Feel that, baby? See how you get to me?”

“Jerry—”

“No girl has ever gotten to me like you do.”

He slipped one hand in her bodice, feeling her breasts.

“Jerry, wait a minute.”

He leaned toward her, kissed her neck. He smelled of Old Spice.

She took her hand off his crotch and resisted him.

He didn’t take the hint. He removed his hand from her bodice only long enough to reach behind her for the zipper to her dress.

“Jerry, damn it!” She shoved him away.

He blinked stupidly. “Huh? What’s wrong?”

“You’re panting like a dog.”

“You turn me on.”

“A knothole would turn you on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I want to talk,” she said.

“Talk?”

“People do, you know. They talk before they screw.”

He stared at her for a moment, then sighed and said, “All right. What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s not what I
want
to talk about,” she said. “It’s what we
have
to talk about.”

“You aren’t making sense, baby. What is this—a riddle or something?”

She took a deep breath and blurted out the bad news: “I’m pregnant.”

For a few seconds the night was so perfectly still that she could hear the soft gurgling of the river washing along the shore twenty feet away. A frog croaked.

“Is this a joke?” Jerry asked at last.

“No.”

“You’re really pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Ah,” she said sarcastically, “what an eloquent summary of the situation.”

“Did you miss your period or what?”

“I missed it last month. And I’m overdue this month again.”

“You been to a doctor?”

“No.”

“Maybe you aren’t.”

“I am.”

“You aren’t getting big.”

“It’s too early to show.”

He was silent for a while, staring out at the trees and the black, oily river beyond. Then: “How could you do this to me?”

His question stunned her. She gaped at him, and when she saw he was serious, she laughed bitterly. “Maybe I wasn’t paying much attention in biology class, but the way I understand it,
you
did it to
me
, not the other way around. And don’t try to blame it on parthenogenesis, either.”

“Partho-what?”

“Parthenogenesis. That’s when the female gets pregnant without having to find a male to fertilize her egg.”

With a note of hope in his voice, he said, “Hey, is that possible?”

God, he was a dolt. Why had she ever given herself to him? They had nothing in common. She was artistically inclined; she played the flute, and she liked to draw. Jerry had no interest whatsoever in the arts. He liked cars and sports, and Amy had little tolerance for conversation about either of those things. She liked to read; he thought books were for girls and sissies. Except for sex, cars, and football, no subject could engage him for more than ten minutes; he had a child’s attention span. So why had she given herself to him?
Why?

“Oh, sure,” she said in answer to his question. “Sure, parthenogenesis might be possible—if I was an insect. Or a certain kind of plant.”

“You’re sure it can’t happen to people?” he asked.

“God, Jerry, you can’t really be that dumb. You’re putting me on, aren’t you?”

“Hell, I never listened to old Amoeba Face Peterson in biology,” Jerry said defensively. “That stuff always bored my ass off.” He was silent for a minute, and she waited, and finally he said, “So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll get an abortion,” she said.

He brightened up immediately. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s the best thing. It really is. That’s smart. That’s the best thing for both of us. I mean, you know, we’re too young to be tied down with a kid.”

“We’ll cut school on Monday,” she said. “We’ll find a doctor and set up an appointment to have it done.”

“You mean you want me to go with you?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“For Christ’s sake, Jerry, I don’t want to go by myself. I don’t want to face it alone.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he said. “You can handle it. I know you can.”

She glared at him. “You’re coming with me. You’ve got to. For one thing, you’ll have to approve the doctor’s fee. Maybe we’ll have to shop around for the best price.” She shuddered. “That’s up to you.”

“You mean . . . you want me to pay for the abortion?”

“I think that’s fair.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. Probably a few hundred.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“What?”

“I can’t pay for it, Amy.”

“You’ve had a real good job the past two summers. And you work weekends most of the year.”

“Stocking shelves in a grocery store doesn’t pay a whole hell of a lot, you know.”

“Union wages.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You bought this car and fixed it up. You have a pretty good savings account. You’ve bragged about that often enough.”

He squirmed. “I can’t touch my savings.”

“Why not?”

“I need every dollar for California.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Two weeks from now, after graduation, I’m going to blow this stupid town. There ain’t any future here for me. Royal City. What a laugh. There’s nothing royal about this dump. And it sure ain’t a city. It’s just fifteen thousand people living in a dump in the middle of Ohio, which is just another, bigger dump.”

“I like it.”

“I don’t.”

“But what do you expect to find in California?”

“Are you kidding? There’s a million opportunities out there for a guy with a lot on the ball.”

“But what do you expect to find there for
you
?” she asked.

He didn’t understand what she meant; he didn’t feel her slip the needle in. “I just told you, baby. In California, there’s more opportunities than anywhere else in the world. Los Angeles. That’s the place for me. Hell, yes. A guy like me can go real far in a city like L.A.”

“Doing what?”

“Anything.”

“Such as?”

“Absolutely anything.”

“How long have you been planning to go to L.A.?”

Sheepishly, he said, “For about a year now.”

“You never told me.”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“You were just going to quietly disappear.”

“Hey, no. No, I was going to keep in touch, baby. I even figured maybe you’d come along with me.”

“Like hell you did. Jerry, you
have
to pay for the abortion.”

“Why can’t
you
pay for it?” He was whining. “You had a job last summer. You’ve been working weekends just like me.”

“My mother controls my savings account. There’s no way I can withdraw that much cash without telling her why I need it. No way.”

“So tell her.”

“God, I can’t. She’d kill me.”

“She’d scream a lot, and you’d probably be grounded for a while. But she’ll get over it.”

“She won’t. She’ll kill me.”

“Don’t be stupid. She won’t kill you.”

“You don’t know my mother. She’s very strict. And she’s . . . mean sometimes. Besides, we’re a Catholic family. My mother is very devout. Very, very devout. And to a devout Catholic, abortion is a terrible sin. It’s murder. My father even does some free legal work for the Right-to-Life League. He’s not so fanatical about religion as my mother is. He’s a pretty straight guy, but I don’t think he’d ever approve an abortion. And I
know
my mother wouldn’t. Not in a million years. She’d make me have the baby. I know she would. And I can’t. I just can’t. Oh, God, I can’t.”