Your Eyes in Stars (2 page)

M
OVIES IN THE
cellar at Holy Family were frantic affairs with the priests running up and down the aisles, making sure teenagers weren’t sitting too close or God forbid necking.

Richard Nolan was there with his father, a levy bailiff who was not very popular in Cayuta. He had the job of repossessing automobiles whose owners couldn’t afford the monthly payments. There were more and more cars being hauled away. It was just another example of how the Depression was affecting everyone, even the Joys. They were one of the most prominent families in our town.

That night, when Richard came over to say hello, he asked us if we knew what these seven words had in common:
act
,
ample
,
it
,
plain
,
port
,
position
, and
press
.

“I will never guess it,” said Elisa.

“Give up, Jessie?”

“I give up,” I said.

“They all form new words when the prefix
ex
is added,” Richard said. “
Exact
,
example
,
explain
—” He held his hands up. “See?”

“Who cares about that?” I said.

Elisa said, “Me. I love games with words.”

“Then you’re going to love Richard!” I said.

Richard fled.

Before the movie began, Father Lardo made a little speech, a bawling out, really, intended for someone in the audience.

“I don’t know to whom I’m speaking,” he said, “but I have an idea you know who you are, and I have an idea you’re here tonight.”

Father Lardo liked to wear mufti whenever he could, instead of the white collar. He wore a black sweater and black jeans, with a bright-red muffler wrapped around his neck.

“Someone pushed Mr. Nolan’s Buick down Retribution Hill last night before he could impound a new Oldsmobile belonging to Horace Joy. Whoever you are, don’t think you can get away with this. You broke the law! Okay, no one likes these automobile impoundments. They’re humiliating to the owners. It seems like an unfair law. But remember”—Father Lardo shook his finger at the audience—“an outlaw is far, far worse than a bad law.”

“Who would do such a thing?” Elisa asked me.

I knew who would, but I would never give Richard away. Because his father was the levy bailiff, he always knew what car was being confiscated, what night. Three or four times he’d secretly foiled his father’s plans to take another car.

I said, “Last night they were going after Mr. Joy’s car. He doesn’t have an enemy in the world, so any number of us could have done it.” I shouldn’t have included myself. My enemy in the Cowpies was Mr. Joy’s daughter, J. J. I liked him just fine, but I’d never do anything to make life easier for her family.

“Who is this Mr. Joy?” Elisa said.

“A big shot,” I said. “He owned Joystep Shoes before he got wiped out in the stock market crash. A lot of Cayutians are out of jobs now.”

Just as the film was about to start, Wolfgang Schwitter made his grand entrance.

“That’s Reinhardt Schwitter’s son,” I said. “Wolfgang. He’s the tall one. He’s the oldest.”

“How old? He seems very old. In his twenties?”

“Eighteen, nineteen. He’s just very sure of himself.”

Wolfgang was turning in every direction, bowing, waving, smiling, just as though he were the star of the evening, not this Lew Ayres of Hollywood, California.

“He is handsome,” said Elisa.

“We say sharp,” I said. “He’s very sharp.”

“Yes,” she said, hugging herself because they never heated the cellar before the audience got there, and maybe Elisa felt a chill go through her too, at the sight of him.

Wolfgang was at his best that winter night. He had on a belted camel’s hair coat, these tight brown flannel pants that grabbed his ankles, showing just a peek of his argyle socks and shiny penny loafers. There was snow on the sidewalks outside, but typically Wolfgang strode through it without boots, no cap over his thick, curly black hair, a light-brown scarf to match his eyes. I’d seen him in his new blue Nash Rambler with the rumble seat, top down in any kind of weather, radio playing loud. Look at me. Look at me…. Who wouldn’t? I always thought.

Wolfgang’s brother, Dieter, was with him. Dieter was younger, my age. He was the opposite of his brother. Mousy, drab, short. It was well known around town that Wolfgang wanted to become a New York Broadway actor. Of all things, Dieter wanted to be an accompanist. He would settle for sitting on a piano bench while a whole theater of fans applauded a singer, a violinist, or some other performer with his name featured at the top of the program.

“Is your brother here?” Elisa asked just before the lights dimmed.

“These days he’s doing a disappearing act,” I said. At least I never saw him. I was amazed when Richard told me
that Seth had been in on last night’s rescue of Mr. Joy’s Oldsmobile.
Rescue
was Richard’s word for it, of course. My mother said that Richard was a “bleeding heart.” She didn’t mean it in a nice way, but I thought there was something fine about Richard’s way of helping people, some he didn’t know at all. Richard had given one of his good winter jackets to a tramp last November, when the snow came down day after day, relentlessly.

“QUIET!” Father Lardo barked.

The movie had begun.

I
T WAS A
grim movie about the World War, the fate of several young men who fought in it, and one who opposed it. I didn’t like war movies, but Elisa said since this new leader, Hitler, was gaining popularity in Germany, she should learn about it. Hitler could cause a war, she said.

Afterward we were hurried out of the cellar, almost as if Father Lardo wanted to wash his hands of acting as a chaperon for a few dozen teenagers. Outside, a bus from Paris Arts & Science waited to return preppies and their profs.

Once again Wolfgang Schwitter stationed himself in a prominent place, as though he were the host of the occasion. He stood on the top step of Holy Family Church as we all climbed the stairs and filed out the front door.

“Hello? Wolfgang? Wolfgang Schwitter?” Elisa said to him.

“What is it?” He had to bend over to talk to her, he was so tall.

“I’m Heinz Stadler’s daughter. I’m Elisa.”

“How do you do,” he said, bowing but not offering his hand; all the while he was looking around at everyone but her.

“I guess you don’t know my name,” Elisa said.

“Well, now I do,” he said, and for a brief moment he gave her the benefit of his smile, which any toothpaste company would be proud to feature in its ads.

It was one of those moments when you wanted to smash someone’s face in for being so rude and careless about someone you were rooting for. There were times since we’d first moved to Cayuta I’d even feel sorry for myself. I’d be sitting in the cafeteria at a table with other girls, all talking, no one meeting my eyes. My eyes would be searching theirs, beseeching theirs: Notice me. That was before I’d learned to turn the tables: Never look at them, be the loner, the snob, whatever it took…. I wished Elisa had never spoken to him.

Then Wolfgang noticed the gold dachshund pin Elisa had fixed to the collar of her coat. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you possibly think of selling me your pin? I know it’s a strange request, but we just lost our dachshund, and that would be some solace to my mother.”

“I can’t. It’s my grandmother’s pin.”

“Oh well…I tried.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Then good night, Phyllis.”

He turned away, and Elisa and I walked along Genesee Street together, a light snow falling, so cold out we could see our breaths in front of us. Elisa with furry earmuffs and I with red, burning ears.

I wanted to blot out what had just happened, not mention it the same as I wouldn’t want someone to see and hear me being humiliated.

“If you want to know what I think of him,” I said, “I think he’s a seven on a scale of one to ten.”

“Lower,” Elisa said.

“Lower? You were the one raving about him.”

“Oh. Lew Ayres,” she said. “Why only a seven?”

“Who did you think I meant?”

“I thought you meant Wolfgang Schwitter,” she said. “He called me Phyllis, did you hear that? He doesn’t spend much time making conversation, does he?”

“He’s that way with everyone. I don’t think he even knows my name.” I didn’t think he was that way with everyone, but I knew he didn’t know my name.

Elisa said, “More even than how someone looks, I count how someone acts toward you. That Richard Nolan we met tonight? He knows how to make you feel welcome.”

I didn’t tell her she shouldn’t take that personally, either. Richard really was that way with everyone unless
the person was mean to animals or unkind to misfits, paupers, and losers.

“How come you got those movie tickets from Mr. Schwitter?” I asked Elisa.

“My father knows him. Reinhardt Schwitter is a pacifist, like my father.”

“The way Lew Ayres was in the movie?”

“Yes. And the way I am too. And my father.”

“If we ever had a war, I might be one too,” I said.

“
Bitte! Bitte!
” she said, which I would hear often from her, a German way of expressing exasperation with something or someone, the way we’d say, “Oh, please!” She stopped herself from laughing. “You are not a pacifist! With all those gangster posters? They kill people, those gangsters.”

“I don’t collect the gangsters. I collect the posters.”

“I’m surprised your family lets you hang up posters like that.”

“My father gets them for me,” I said.

But I decided that in the beginning the less she knew about my family, the better. I already sensed there were vast differences between us, starting there.

I said, “I heard your father’s a farmer.” My mother had heard that. He was thin and dapper, with wavy brown hair and blue eyes the color of Elisa’s. Like Wolfgang Schwitter, he drove a convertible. His was a swanky black
Duesenberg with a white ragtop. I adored that car, though the Myrers would never own one like it. My father said if one of them ever rolled over, you were a goner.

“
Vater
is not exactly a farmer,” said Elisa. “He is a professor. He’s Herr Doktor Heinz Stadler, a name that means nothing on this side and everything on the other.”

“How can he be a professor farmer?”

“
Vater
teaches new ideas in agriculture to graduate students. He’s here to study hydroponics at your Cornell University.”

“The last thing he looks like is a farmer,” I said. I’d watched him a few times from my bedroom window. He always had a lighted cigarette hanging from his lips, and he walked briskly as though he had an important appointment.

“
Vater
comes only on weekends from the university,” she said. Then she grabbed my arm to stop me. “What’s that?”

“It sounds like a bugle.” I looked at my watch. It was exactly nine thirty, the time the prison whistle blew signaling lights-out on The Hill. It was as much a part of the town as the lake was, as Joyland Park and Hoopes Park were. Weeknights during the school year, like a lot of kids playing outdoors, I had to start home when the whistle blew. Weekend nights curfew for me was eleven o’clock.

“Listen!” Elisa cried.

The bugler was playing taps.

I whispered the words to myself: “…from the lake, from the sky…safe-ly rest….”

The bugler had begun another round. It came from the prison’s loudspeakers.

We stood side by side listening, our shoulders hunched against the cold. In a few houses ahead of us on Genesee Street, people had come out to hear better, winter coats over their shoulders.

Who could help listening? Who anywhere had ever heard such a melancholy wailing?

“This is new,
ja
?” Elisa said when it was over.

“It’s never happened before,” I said. “I think it’s the new man, the lifer who came in last week. Daddy said he plays bugle, trumpet, and cornet.”

“The brass instruments, ha? What is a lifer?”

I told Elisa a lifer was a con who was locked up forever.

“And some are executed, yes?”

“Not here anymore. But we’ve had some very famous murderers. We had Rhubarb Boxer the first year we got here. He was famous for killing rich wives with rhubarb leaves. He ground them up and put them in salads. Rhubarb leaves are lethal! That’s why you never see any leaves on rhubarb in stores.”

“Aren’t you afraid to have murderers so near?” she asked me.

“No. In fact sometimes the prisoners work down in our yard. Sometimes murderers. My father prefers them.”

“Why?” Her eyes were popping out of her head.

“Because they’re different from thieves and swindlers. Robbing and swindling are habitual behavior, so you have to watch yourself around their kind. But murder isn’t a habit.”

“I never thought of that,” Elisa said. “I never knew about rhubarb leaves either.”

“Eat a few and you’ll croak in two weeks. No known cause of death.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, the things you know!”

We began walking again, almost jogging, it was so cold. Those who had come outside to hear the bugler went back inside.

“My whole family are musicians,” Elisa said. “All except me. But I love good music, as they do, and that was good music! Does this new lifer have a name?”

“I don’t know it,” I said, “and if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you about him. My father has rules against discussing the prisoners with anyone.”

“I don’t want to be just anyone,” Elisa said.

“Nobody does.”

“So find out,” she said. “Find out everything about him.”

“H
IS NAME IS
Slater Carr,” my father said. “All we need is another inmate! We’re bursting at the seams as it is.”

“Can’t you tell the superintendent that?”

“I asked for him, Jess. I can’t pass him up. The way he plays? It wouldn’t be fair to The Blues.”

There were more prisoners than ever before. It was because of the hard times. It was because people were driven to do desperate things. They had too many bills and too little money. Some, like Horace Joy, had lost everything, taking all the Joystep employees with him.

“Did Slater Carr kill someone?” I asked my father.

“He was involved in a planned robbery where the victim was shot to death. He was convicted at trial, though he didn’t pull the trigger.”

“Was it because of a woman? Was it what’s called a crime of passion?”

My father said, “It was what’s called a crime of stupidity.
He’s just twenty, sweetheart. That young man has a God-given talent, and now the only way he can show it off is in a prison band.”

“But I bet you’re glad for the band’s sake.”

“I’d rather hear him playing at Carnegie Hall any day! He’s ruined his life.”

“There must have been a great love in his life who wanted expensive things like diamond rings and mink coats,” I said.

“Don’t spin one of your stories around this poor fellow. He’s a sad sack, honey. All our inmates are, really.”

My father hadn’t liked it when I’d invented the idea that Bonnie and Clyde nicked their arms with a safety pin and pressed them together to commingle their blood. Then they said together, “Blood of my blood. Heart of my heart.”

My father had said angrily, “Where did you hear that malarkey?”

“She makes things up!” Seth had said.

Sometimes I did make it up. Other times I got ideas from my mother’s under-the-mattress library. Most of the books there had belonged to Rhubarb Boxer, the last inmate who was electrocuted at Cayuta Prison. Once he was executed, my father brought a box down from The Hill and told my mother to “do something with these.” He couldn’t have looked at them. He’d probably imagined my
mother would give good books to a good cause, Catholic Charities or someplace like that.

Not those books! Those books weren’t going anywhere. Those books had titles like
The Harem
,
Torment
, and
The Body’s Rapture
. My mother kept them under her mattress, and from time to time I got one of them out, sneaked it back to my room, and read the purple prose wide-eyed, my heart banging.

Seth had always laughed at the “histories” I invented for the cons.

My father never called them cons. He called them inmates. He never called them by their first names. He called each one mister.

Some evenings when he walked down from The Hill and opened the front door, I was waiting there, as I’d been that night, hoping for news about the new arrival.

“That’s enough about our bugle boy,” Daddy said, after we’d talked awhile on the front steps. “Where’s your mother?”

He was a big man, tall and stout. He had been Blocker Myrer, a star football player at the University of Alabama. He had wistful blue eyes that seemed some days to be remembering times his name was in headlines on the sports page and crowds stood to their feet and shouted, “Blocker! Blocker! Blocker!”

“Mother’s in the music room,” I said. “She’s been
playing the same song over and over.”

“Maybe she wants to get it perfect.”

“‘Ah! Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee.’” I imitated my mother’s soprano.

“‘Ah! I know at last the secret of it all!’” my father sang back. He was chuckling. He thought it was as funny as I did: Olivia Myrer singing at her piano about the mystery of life.

But my mother could find mystery and intrigue inside a Post Toasties box. Olivia Myrer lived for gossip, dreamed of scandal she would know the insides and outsides of, and often in the evening stood in darkened rooms of our house, holding up one slat of the venetian blinds for a secret look at the neighbors’ doings. I would have bet my life that was what she had been up to that night since she had stopped playing the Steinway.

“Daddy, is Slater Carr going to play taps every night?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s a musician, that’s all I know.”

“Is he a Negro?”

“No, he’s not a darkie…. I’m going to make your mother and me a nightcap. Do you want a Coke?”

“No, thanks.” Before I left Elisa that night, she’d said, “Let’s wave good night to each other at exactly midnight.”

Meanwhile I planned to find Mugshot, the cat, and
take him up to my bedroom to listen to dance music on the radio.

I was too self-conscious to dance, but I knew all the popular songs word for word. So did Richard.

“Arthur?” Olivia Myrer called out. “Is that you?”

“I’m making us grasshoppers, honey.”

“Did I actually hear a bugle playing earlier? I never heard anything like it!”

“I’ve got me a first-class bugler, Olivia.”

“He made me sad,” she called back. “I never felt like crying before when I heard taps.”

On my way past the music room I stopped short, ducked my head in the door, and shouted, “Boo!”

My mother jumped away from the blind, holding her hand over her heart. “You scared me, Jess!”

“Who were you spying on, the Stadlers?”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up that you’re going to be friends with the Stadler girl,” my mother said, “just because she came over here to meet you.”

“We already are friends, or why would she come here?”

“She was probably just snooping.”

“Then why would she ask me to a movie, and why would we wave good night at midnight exactly?” I said.

My mother said, “We’ll see how many other movies she invites you to and how many nights you wave to each other at midnight exactly. We’ll see.”

My father came into the music room with two green drinks in cocktail glasses.

“What’ll we see?” he asked.

“Your daughter has dreams of becoming bosom pals with Miss Germany.”

“Who said I wanted a bosom pal? What do you call Richard?”

“A boy isn’t a bosom pal of a girl for obvious reasons,” my mother said. She took a sip of the grasshopper and smiled at my father. “Thank you, dearest.”

“You’re welcome…. Why wouldn’t Jessie become good friends with Miss Germany?”

“Because the mother thinks she’s better than anyone else.”

“She’s just aloof,” I said. “She’s not gregarious.”

“Where’d you learn that word?” my father asked.

“Her sidekick taught it to her,” said my mother. She looked at me and said, “Richard Nolan. Right?”

“Wrong,” I lied. “Elisa Stadler.”

“I bet you haven’t met the mother,” my mother said.

“Not yet.”

“Don’t hold your breath while you’re waiting. I’ll bet you never get inside that house either.”

“Who cares?” I said.

“Miss Germany waltzes into this house as if she owned it, but I very much doubt you’ll get a return invitation.”

“Maybe I don’t want one,” I said.

“Mrs. Stadler is not just aloof! She has no manners. And she’s a renter, so how dare she put on airs! Who knows what her background is!”

“Olivia, don’t talk that way,” my father said. “We have to live in this town.”

“I have to. You don’t. You live up on The Hill.”

“But I’m always thinking of you, sweetheart. Always.”

“Pfffft!”
My mother tried hard not to smile. She enjoyed my father’s teasing her, but she pretended not to notice it. She pursed her small lips and ran a hand through her wiry red hair. She was such a little woman to have hooked this huge husband with hands like a bear, towering over her.

“Let me tell you what the mother had to say to me one day in the aisle of Holy Family,” said my mother. “I said to her that since we are new neighbors, we should get to know each other. Then I said, ‘Do you want to stop by the house now? Now is as good a time as any.’ She said, ‘Oh, I cannot. My husband is waiting outside.’ And I said, ‘Bring him. Of course I want to meet Mr. Stadler.’”

My father said, “She said, ‘Herr Stadler and I have very little time together. Not enough time for neighbors, I fear.’”

My father and I had heard that story three or four times. He said, “Ollie, maybe it’s as simple as that. They prefer their own company.”

“No, Arthur, she was incinerating something. What I don’t know.” I knew the word she meant to say was
insinuating
, and of course the warden did too.

My father was always amused by her malapropisms. He said, “You don’t know what she was incinerating, but it burns you up.”

My mother didn’t get it. She never got it.

“You’re exactly right, Arthur. It burns me up!”

Seth was a mama’s boy, and he didn’t like it when our father made fun of her without her knowing it. Seth would cuss out the warden behind his back. At seventeen Seth was going through a stage where he was angry with our father most of the time.

My father said it was a natural stage.

He said Seth was just jockeying for position in a house of two males.

“You never let him win, though,” my mother said. She always let Seth win.

“It’s just a game, Ollie. All fathers and sons play it.”

“It isn’t a game to Seth,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t take it seriously.”

He didn’t either. What my father took seriously was
what went on up on The Hill.

What my father took really really seriously was the Bands Behind Bars Annual Award, known as the Black Baaa.

Last year he had lost again to The Louisiana Stripes, a band from New Orleans.