The Story of Beautiful Girl (4 page)

Lynnie almost swung her feet up to shove him off but controlled herself, knowing he’d lash her ankles together. Instead, she looked out the window. If Buddy was among the trees, she wouldn’t have to fight Clarence—Buddy would just run up to the car, haul the door open, and save her. The sedan reached the turn onto the country road, and suddenly a sight rose out of the dark. It was the small lighthouse man she’d seen earlier tonight, when they’d come around the bend of this road, searching desperately for a place to rest. She’d touched Buddy’s arm. It was so much like the one from long ago, with her sister, and that had been a safe place. She’d once drawn it for Buddy: a tall, strong place by the sea. She wanted to explain to Buddy earlier tonight that the lighthouse man was how she knew they’d be protected. But the baby was in her arms.

Clarence, following her gaze, looked at the lighthouse man, too. Then he turned forward, threw his arm across the seat, and touched her shoulder. The feel of him brought back so much she did not want to see: the bucket, the growling dogs, the taste of cloth. She shrank away; he just moved his arm closer. As the sedan drove past woods and other houses, she wondered, Was Buddy in that yard? Behind that tree? How long would it be before they ran away again? Before she held the baby in her arms?

How Lynnie wanted to batter Clarence with her feet, to bite and writhe and shriek. Yet she couldn’t. When Buddy came to break her out, she
had
to be in her usual cottage, which she wouldn’t if they tossed her in solitary. So she pressed her feet to the floor and clenched her teeth. Then she looked out the windshield onto the long country road, hoping Buddy would appear before they crossed the river.

*    *    *

She woke when the sedan was slowing down. It was still night, and beside them was the high stone wall of the School. She’d missed the bridge over the river. She’d missed whatever glimpse she might have had of Buddy. Her chest hollowed with disappointment. Above the stone wall, she could see the rain had stopped, but with the clouds too thick to allow the sight of even one star, her throat went acid with sorrow. Over the summer, Buddy had taught her that stars wheeled slowly across the sky throughout the night. Now, without any stars to be seen, she had no way to gauge how close they were to morning.

Then the tower clock came into view, rising on the hill. The clock was all a person could see from the road, the wall sealing off everything except the gate. But the sight did Lynnie no good; she couldn’t read clocks. Still, as Mr. Edgar hummed to the radio, Clarence drew on his pipe, and Uncle Luke snored, she stared at the clock. It glowed yellow as a moon, and with the rain on its face, it seemed to be crying.

Only twice before had she taken in this view. Three nights ago, when she and Buddy had run off, she’d looked back. There it was, the clock that lit all the cottage windows. Buddy pulled at her arm and made his sign for run. With his hand in hers and her trust in him, they ran.

But there was another time, before Buddy, Kate, Doreen—even Tonette. Lynnie was little then, the small self she still hid inside, like a tiny bowl hidden inside a larger one. She lowered her eyes now and looked inside to that smaller self, to the time before she first saw this view, to the time when she had no idea about stone walls.

In that time, she knew the world of her kitchen, where she played inside the bottom cupboard with her sister. They’d open the wooden doors, pull themselves into the kingdom of pots,
and put cake pans on their heads for hats. Her sister knew many words. She knew how to move them up and down, too, into a song. Lynnie would take her sister’s arm and grunt into her wrist, feeling vibrations. One song was their favorite:
A-tisket, a-tasket. A green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love. And on the way I dropped it.

Lynnie didn’t know about dining cottages then. She knew about dining rooms, and the underside of the table, where she and her sister kept Betsy Wetsy dolls and looked at Mommy’s and Daddy’s shoes when they were sitting with serious voices, saying things like “accepting this tragedy” and “her hopeless future” and “we’ve done nothing to deserve a retarded child,” while her sister played jacks and Lynnie picked at the knot in Daddy’s oxfords. Her sister would ask if Lynnie knew what was cooking and then name the smells: “potato latkes”… “hot chocolate.” Lynnie loved smells. She loved putting her face in wool coats under the beds. To this day, she could still smell the sweet scent of her sister’s chewing gum. She could even remember placing her cheek on Mommy’s perfumed chest when she hoisted Lynnie from under the table, saying, “I just can’t do that.”

Although so many years had passed since then—years of bedrooms with forty beds, all with iron frames—Lynnie could still remember her bedroom. It had two pink headboards, one for her bed, one for her sister’s—“Nah-nah,” the first word Lynnie could say (“Finally,” Mommy said, hands clasped in joy when Hannah called her into the bedroom, her face glowing)—and windows with curtains. Lynnie remembered a bathroom, too, but for a long time she sat on the changing table instead, as Daddy said, “Five already and still in diapers and making sounds like a baby.” “Please don’t keep bringing it up,” Mommy said, removing the pins from her mouth.

Lynnie could conjure up the living room, too. It had a carpet and fish tank and books. Books were not as fun as fish. Nah-nah
would sit on the couch and read while Lynnie pulled herself along the floor on her arms to watch fish with their shiny colors. “She still doesn’t crawl?” Aunt This One said from behind. “She’s already six.” Aunt That One said, “It’s been obvious for years that Dr. Feschbach was right.” Mommy said, “She’ll crawl. She’ll walk.” “She’ll never go to school,” Aunt This One said. Aunt That One said, “And think of the shame”—here she whispered—“that her sister will feel, once she can understand.”

Mommy cried. And other people’s crying did something to Lynnie. It came at her like a storm and burst inside and thundered until she had to push it out of her chest, so she’d flip on her back and kick and scream. It always worked, because soon the crying would stop. Sometimes Nah-nah would come to her side, saying, “She doesn’t understand.” Only Lynnie
did
understand. The way to get rid of crying was to kick sadness back into the air.

And Lynnie could still see a restaurant. She could walk by then, and they went inside and sat at a booth, and her parents asked what she wanted. “Burger!” she squealed, one of the biggest words she knew by then, and people stared. They stared again when the food didn’t all make it into her mouth and dribbled like finger paint down her face. The waitress came over with extra napkins. The waitress did not stare. The waitress did not look. Daddy said, “I wish you’d listen to reason,” Mommy got ready to cry, and Nah-nah suddenly said, “Let’s hold hands to the car,” and they went to sing Elvis in the backseat.

Then there was that place called a synagogue, with stained glass and a huge room they walked past to reach a rabbi at a desk, where Mommy sat holding Lynnie on her lap against her big, hard belly, saying, “Everyone’s got their opinion. You know where my husband stands. So I turned to books. Dale Evans said the only place for her retarded daughter was at home. She said the girl was an angel. But Lynnie’s, well, embarrassing.” She swallowed hard.
“Pearl Buck had a retarded daughter, too, and she said they’re happier among their own kind. But Lynnie’s my little baby!” The rabbi folded his hands and said, “I think you’ll regret sending her off. It would feel as if you exiled her into the wilderness.” “Thank you, thank you,” Mommy said, and started to sob, and then Lynnie’s chest was hurting so much, she threw herself to the floor, bucking and wailing, and then Mommy was saying she was sorry and hauling Lynnie away.

And she could bring to mind a playground. Nah-nah in her Brownie uniform ran off to jump rope with friends, and Lynnie stayed in the sandbox, drawing with a stick—circles rolling into circles like a Slinky—until a boy came and stomped all over her design, and then she was on top of him, slapping away. Right away, Mommy was running, pushing the stroller with the twins, flying into the sandbox, pulling Lynnie off the boy, yelling at Hannah on the way home for not watching her sister. “Admit it,” Daddy said that night as Lynnie sat at the top of the stairs and Nah-nah, beside her, hummed their favorite song, taking Lynnie’s arm and, for the first time, pressing
her
lips to Lynnie’s wrist. But Lynnie still heard Daddy. “She’s almost eight. If we don’t place her now, this is what every day will be like. For the rest of all of our lives.”

Then she was sitting a long time in the car. She was in the back, flipping the ashtray lid on the door up and down, up and down, when Nah-nah suddenly said, “Is that Lynnie’s school?”

Lynnie looked up and saw the tower. It rose behind a stone wall, taller than the temple, and Lynnie felt proud. She was going to school, and her school was so big.

The car turned at an opening in the wall and pulled up to a gate.

“It looks like it should have a moat,” Nah-nah said under her breath.

Daddy heard. “Remember our talk last night,” he said.

Mommy said, “Act your age, Hannah.”

Nah-nah turned to Lynnie, and in her eyes Lynnie saw a look she’d never seen on her sister before. Much later, after Lynnie took a dictionary of words and understandings into her mind, she remembered this moment and knew how to identify this look. In other faces before this first view of the stone walls, she’d seen pity, or fear, or ridicule, or contempt. In Nah-nah’s face she’d seen only playfulness and affection. At this moment she saw guilt.

Then a guard was opening the gate, and they were driving up the hill toward a cluster of buildings. Her parents pointed, describing what they knew from the brochure and Uncle Luke’s letters: Those were the cottages where the residents lived, each for a different classification.

“They call them cottages?” Nah-nah said. “Each one’s bigger than
my
school.”

“This is an impressive place,” Daddy said. “It covers twelve hundred acres.”

There were even larger buildings in the center of the property—“That must be the laundry, gymnasium, classrooms, hospital,” Daddy said. “They’re self-sufficient here,” he added, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Hannah. “They even grow their own food.”

Lynnie looked. Beyond all the buildings were fields with crops growing, pastures with cows, chicken coops, all of it tended to by men in denim overalls and gray T-shirts—“working boys,” Daddy said they were called. Beyond where they could see, Daddy said, was a power plant that serviced the school. Near the power plant was a baseball diamond, and beyond that were huts for the staff, whose salaries included room and board. Far beyond the huts, on the other side of a rise, was something Daddy did not know about, so he did not point it out. Only later did Lynnie learn about the cemetery, on the day she resolved to stop speaking.

All this was connected by walking paths, and beneath the
paths were underground passages that were there, Mommy said, “to keep you warm during the winter.” Except for two men in white uniforms, one with three snarling dogs, no one was on the paths. “I think they keep everyone busy,” Mommy said.

“With school?” Nah-nah said.

“Sure,” Mommy said, though she didn’t sound sure.

“And training,” Daddy added. “They teach them to make rugs and how to repair shoes. Good skills for when people get older.”

As they made their way to the parking lot, they did see someone else: a woman in white pushing a boy in a wheelchair. “Oh, these grown-ups must be attendants,” Mommy said.

“Attendants?” Nah-nah said. “I thought this was a school.”

“It’s a different kind of school,” Daddy said, his voice curt. “I told you that.”

Nah-nah looked again at her with guilt, and that was when Lynnie began to get scared.

“And you, Lynnie, stop with the ashtray,” Daddy said.

“It’s only another minute,” Mommy said, and her mouth seemed full of water.

Their car continued up the hill. Lynnie looked one more time to the tower and tried to make sense of the hands. They were standing up straight, pressed tight together. Like the covers of a book that no one wanted to read.

Clarence yanked Lynnie out of the sedan. She stood, wobbly from the trip, and as Uncle Luke talked to him about “you being adequately compensated for extending your shift,” she looked to the cloudy sky. Although she still couldn’t see stars, she remembered how, for the longest time, stars had been nothing more to her than twinkling dots. Then Buddy pointed to the sky on some nighttime landscapes she’d drawn, crushed one of his sugar cubes over the paper, pushed the powder into patterns, and used his
signs to teach her the names of the constellations: Cup, Feather. By tomorrow night, the clouds would have lifted. They’d look at the stars together as they ran away again.

With Clarence at her side and Uncle Luke in the lead, they mounted the marble steps for the building with the tower. It stood out from other cottages, with its oak door, brass handrail, plush hedges, and windows that had no bars. Lynnie, waiting while Uncle Luke removed his keys, shivered inside the old lady’s dress. As much as she hated being bound into the camisole, she was glad for it now, as it shielded her from the wind. She also realized, when Uncle Luke opened the heavy door, that she needed a bathroom and had never used the one in here.

Still in pain from the birth, she wasn’t sure she could hold it in. Yet she could not bear the thought of revealing her need to go, so she squeezed the tops of her thighs. Beneath her dress she felt the pad the old lady had given her, a reminder of what all her time with Buddy had showed her: She could do much more than she’d ever believed.