Light from a Distant Star (6 page)

“What if he comes here?” Nellie could just picture the horror of it, especially at this delicate time, her mother and Ruth swept off their feet by some wealthy, tanned guy with curly hair and a goofy smile in a Hawaiian shirt, and Benjamin’s devastation. And worse, what would happen to Henry and her?

“I know,” Ruth said, grinning. “I was thinking the same thing.”

A
PPARENTLY, THE CALL HAD BEEN MADE
. T
HE NEXT DAY HER
father came home early from the store. Her mother rushed in moments later. Her last appointment, Lisa Small, a color and cut, had been late, so she’d had to leave her under the dryer. She was taking off her smock when Mr. Cooper knocked on the door. He was wearing a dark suit and white shirt but came in unloosening his tie. It had been in the eighties for the last two days. The Coopers’ whole house had air-conditioning, but the Pecks’ didn’t, just up in Ruth’s room.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. There was a fizzy pop as her father opened a can of ginger ale for Mr. Cooper. Store brand, of course. Lately everything was generic. Not that it mattered to any of them, only Ruth, who said it was just the chintziest way to live.

“Thank you, my friend,” Mr. Cooper said in that smooth way he had. Overbearing, her mother thought, but then her father would remind her of Andy’s difficult childhood, an abusive father and mentally ill mother, so there was a lot he’d had to overcome in order to be successful.

Nellie had positioned herself in the living room near the kitchen door. So far, it hadn’t been a very good day. Bucky had stopped by at noon with Raymond Doyle, a boy in her class she couldn’t stand. They were going fishing at the pond, but Bucky didn’t have a pole. He asked if he could borrow one of the two he’d seen in the barn. She wanted to tell him that if he didn’t get the bikes out of the barn, then they’d have to dump them somewhere. But she couldn’t very well say it in front of Raymond, so she asked Bucky to come in the house for a minute. As she held open the door, Henry started up the steps and for some stupid reason she told him to wait, that they’d be right out.

“Whoa, Nellie!” Raymond whooped and she glared back at him.

“Sure,” Bucky kept saying inside. “Okay, all right. No problem.” He’d come back later and move the bikes himself. But that’d be it, he said, the end of the bike club. From then on, all the profit would be his. He had until tonight, she warned, opening the door. He came down the steps, fumbling with his belt buckle, which sent Raymond hanging over his handlebars, hooting with laughter. Henry had dragged the two poles out of the barn, one for Bucky, the other for himself. No, she told him. He couldn’t go. Not without permission, and as it slowly occurred to her that they were laughing about her and that it was lewd, she felt the strength of her authority fade.

“You’re gonna be in big trouble for this!” her shaky voice threatened as they rode off, the older boys laughing with Henry pedaling double time in their draft. Anything, even under threat of doom, would be better than another boring day with his sister.

So here it was five o’clock and Henry still wasn’t home. Both in their distraction and trust, neither parent had asked yet where he was. Nellie felt sick to her stomach. She was praying he’d make it home from the pond before they both got in trouble.

From the kitchen Mr. Cooper’s voice carried like a whoosh of air, soft and hard to grasp. Sandy laughed nervously, uneasily, at everything he said, while Benjamin’s assurances grew more expansive.

“No need to rush … however long it takes, Andy … don’t want you feeling pressured here …”

“But—” Sandy started to say. Just then the doorbell rang, once, twice, three times, followed by an insistent
tap tap tap
on the glass.

Certain it was Henry, Nellie ran to the door. It was Dolly Bedelia in her purple bathrobe and bare feet. Wet hair dripped onto her shoulders. She’d been taking a shower when the water turned ice cold, she complained as she followed Nellie into the kitchen.

“I was just, like, putting the shampoo in!”

“Oh, Dolly!” Sandy grabbed the emergency flashlight she always kept plugged in to its charger. “I’m so sorry. It’s that old tank.” She opened the cellar door. With the flashlight shining up into Sandy’s face, Nellie saw how lined it was, how old her pretty mother suddenly looked.

“Same problem Lazlo had,” her father said, shaking his head, content to let her mother handle the problem.

Mr. Cooper just sat there with a dazed smile, looking up at Dolly. Bubbles glistened in her hair. The front of her robe was soaked, revealing every swell and hollow of her body.

“Benjamin!” her mother called up the stairs. “Get some matches.”

“Matches, matches,” her father muttered, fumbling through drawers, unable to find any.

“Maybe in the pantry closet.” Nellie went to look. “There aren’t any,” she called back.

“I got some. Here.” Dolly pulled a book of matches from her pocket and gave them to her father, who hurried down the stairs, holding them out in front like a flag. “I just started shampooing. That’s, like, what I do first. Then after, I wash. I mean, you know,” she said, waving a hand down the front of herself. As if for the first time, she seemed aware of the thin purple cloth so darkly plastered against her naked wetness. Slipping into the chair, she crossed her arms on the table.

“Isn’t that always the way, huh?” Mr. Cooper said. He seemed amused.

Oh, Nellie could just imagine his version of this and Jessica’s snarky questions about the strip club dancer being in her kitchen with nothing on under her sleazy bathrobe.

“I knew I shouldn’t’ve waited so long to get ready. Now, I’m gonna be late for work again. Oh, Jesus, that’s not the right time, is it?” She pointed to the wall clock.

“Ten minutes fast,” Nellie lied so she wouldn’t swear again and offend Mr. Cooper, who not only attended church every Sunday but had recently had his picture in the newspaper getting some award from the bishop. From downstairs came tapping on pipes and her parents’ voices calling to each other like underground miners searching for a way out. After the canary died.

“Where do you work?” Mr. Cooper asked.

“The Paradise.” Dolly cocked her head with a perky smile.

“Oh. Well. Maybe you should call and tell them you’re running a little late then,” Mr. Cooper said.

“Yeah, lotta good that’ll do. My boss, he’s a real …” She glanced
at Nellie, raising thin eyebrows that were blond instead of yesterday’s thick brown.

“Dolly’s a singer. She’s got a really nice voice,” Nellie said quickly. She knew from listening at the bathroom wall that she swore a lot. Mostly on the phone, though. So far she’d only had a few visitors. That guy she’d turned away had come back again late one night, stayed a while, then after another argument had stormed out, slamming the door behind him, which her mother considered one of the rudest things one person could do to another—in this house, anyway. Two women who seemed to be Dolly’s age had stopped in last week. They had the same mussed look, like dolls that had been handled too roughly. They didn’t stay very long. Even their walk was similar, teetering down the steps on high wedge-heeled sandals, carrying out armloads of clothes on hangers.

Dolly winked at her. “Nellie’s one of my biggest fans.”

“Of whose numbers I’m sure are legion,” Mr. Cooper said.

“Yeah,” she said uncertainly, as if it might be an insult.

Nellie’s mother and father emerged from the cellar with cobwebs in their hair. Her mother’s cheek was smudged. She apologized again to Dolly. The pilot light had gone out and they’d had a hard time getting it lit. It was probably going to take a while for the water to heat up, so if Dolly wanted, she could use their shower.

“Oh, gee, that’d be great,” Dolly said, jumping up to follow Sandy.

“Excuse me!” Mr. Cooper said, quickly pushing back his chair to stand. He held out his hand. “Here we’ve been talking and I never introduced myself. Andy Cooper.”

“Dolly Bedelia. A pleasure to meet you,” she said in that breathy, sing-song voice with a tilt of her head, and when she leaned to shake his hand, Nellie couldn’t believe her eyes. The front of her robe slipped open, exposing a dark rim of left nipple. In Mr. Cooper’s sly smile Nellie glimpsed their future, and it was bleak. She didn’t breathe again until Dolly was upstairs. The clunk in the pipes as the shower went on wrenched in her chest. Her father and Mr. Cooper resumed their discussion. Her mother had obviously told him to stay on message. First, the building would need to be inspected, Mr. Cooper said. Oh, of course, her father agreed. And that price he’d mentioned, Mr. Cooper
said, well, that was just a ball park estimate. Naturally, her father agreed. Mr. Cooper said he’d feel more comfortable having a commercial appraisal done. That makes sense, her father said. Especially now with real estate values down so much, Mr. Cooper said, adding how he’d probably end up taking a beating, but he did want to help out however he could. Her father didn’t say anything. She wondered if he was already sorting through history, his grandfather and great uncle building Peck Hardware ninety-five years ago, tools as firmly in hand as their confidence in future generations.

“That Miss Bedelia, she seems like a pleasant young lady,” Mr. Cooper said, interrupting their resumed business discussion as Nellie listened around the corner. But she’d lost interest in their talk of inspectors, purchase and sale agreements, lawyers, closing dates.

It was six o’clock. Dolly was gone, Henry was still not home. Something awful had surely happened. She never should have stood there watching him go. Afraid of Bucky’s foul mouth and Raymond’s dirty mind, she’d thrown her brother to the wolves. Maybe even literally. Coyotes had recently been spotted on the outskirts of town. Her little brother had been entrusted to her care and she had become exactly the kind of person she couldn’t stand. A phony. A coward. She was setting the table for dinner when Henry’s bicycle brakes squealed down the driveway. Relieved, but still the coward, she ran out to warn him not to say anything. Their mother thought he’d been in the tree house all this time.

His face was sunburned and dirty and his eyes were bloodshot and red, though he denied crying. Bucky and Raymond hadn’t been fishing too long when they’d gotten sick of it. They told Henry about this amazing place they’d discovered. A sacred Indian initiation site. Sworn to secrecy, he’d been led deep into the woods, to a clearing littered with smashed bottles and burned beer cans. In the middle were charred pieces of wood and ashes from old campfires. First they’d made him take off his shirt, then they’d cut a length of fishing line, and according to ancient rite, tied him to a tree with his hands behind his back. With Henry begging him not to, Bucky yanked down his shorts and underpants. They threw his clothes high over his head into the tree branches.

“This is what you get for tryna get out of the club,” Bucky hissed in his ear. “Next time’s your sister’s turn.”

They’d run off with Henry screaming and begging them not to leave him alone. He said he stood like that, for a long time, his bare back and rear end rubbing almost raw against the rough tree bark.

“Look,” he said, raising the stitched arm. The scar was fiery red and bleeding at two of the stitch points. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, three or four hours anyway, he thought. His rescuers had been an older couple holding hands as their dog trotted ahead. The dog, a greyhound, had found him first. It came running at him, then stood inches away, barking. Listening, Nellie could feel her brother’s terror, helpless, tied to a tree, certain the frantic dog was attacking him. The man used his pocketknife to slice the line on Henry’s wrists while the woman shook the tree to get his clothes down, all but his underpants. They stayed caught on a branch.

“They wanted to call the police, but I said, ‘No, please don’t. They were just fooling around.’ ‘What kinda fooling around?’ the guy said. ‘They do something to you?’ he kept asking.” Henry looked sick.

“What’d he mean?” Nellie asked, and for a moment they couldn’t look at each other.

Henry shrugged, and suddenly she pressed him against the wall, demanding he tell her, because if he didn’t, she was going to have to tell Mom, which, of course, she had no intention of doing.

“He said he was going to—”

“What?”

“Pee on me,” he whispered.

Enraged, she charged out the back door.

“But he didn’t! He didn’t!” Henry called after her.

The Brickmans lived only a few blocks away, in the small cottage behind the Universalist church and the parsonage. The church’s wide circular driveway was where they’d first met Bucky. His grandmother smiled when she saw Nellie at the door. Oh, come in. Come in, she said. Bucky was just finishing dinner.

“Thanks,” Nellie said. “I’ll just wait out here till he’s done.”

But no, she wouldn’t hear of it. As Nellie was led into the turquoise-and-pink
kitchen she felt her vengeful mission losing steam. Please, Mrs. Brickman said, insisting Nellie sit down. Like his wife, Reverend Brickman had pure white hair and looked to be as old as Charlie. His cup trembled as he raised it to his powdery lips. He was unshaven and there were food stains on his T-shirt. Delighted to meet a friend of Bucky’s, they offered her applesauce cake, lime Jell-O, a soda. So far, Bucky hadn’t said a word.