Mockingbird (7 page)

  "I've got to go. What she's paying should cover you, but just in case–" He peels a trio of twenties out of his money clip. "Here. Get a cab. Go rent a motel room for the night. I have a quick run up to Erie, and I'll be back tomorrow."

  "You're really leaving me. Please. Stay."

  "Go on. It'll be fine."

  "Fine," she says. "I don't – you know what? I don't need you. This is what I do best. Walk. Wander. Alone. It'll be fine."

  "It will be fine."

  "It
will
, it totally will. Later, Louis."

  "Miriam, I'm sorry–"

  But she doesn't want to hear it. She's worked up. Miriam's already hopping out of the truck, his voice lost to the slamming door.

  The truck grumbles, reverses, and is gone.

  The Gates of Hell remain open. Just for her.

  "You going in or what?" Homer asks.

  She almost doesn't. Something about this place gives her a bad vibe and she's not even through the gates. She can't see the school yet – it's a winding drive that takes an elbow curve into the woods. All she has before her are the iron gates, the guard's booth, and a brass plaque on pale brick that says
The Caldecott School
in dizzying calligraphic loops and whorls.

  Going back to school always gave Miriam the pissshivers. Even though it's late summer and the Caldecott School starts its year early, the feeling is the same: The days are getting shorter, mornings darker, evenings creep on like a stalker outside your window. With the end of summer comes the start of school, and school was never a good time for Miriam. The classes, sure. Tests. Papers. Lectures. Those were fine. But the other kids. Mean, shitty little fucks. Grade school – elementary and up – is like being dropped in a dunk tank filled with starving piranha.

  And they never get full.

  Every part of her wants to run away. Even though she's an adult. She doesn't have to do this anymore.

  But Homer snaps the fingers on both hands at her. "Come on, now, shit or get out the outhouse."

  Miriam jogs through the gates.

  They close behind her with a mechanical whine.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  
Clang
. The way is shut.

  Still, her fingers tingle. While every other part of her – down to the twisting, thrumming marrow – wants to bolt for the woods, her hands know where they want her to go. They want to feed. They want to taste death.

  Five-fingered vampires, they are.

  "I… walk?" she asks Homer.

  He leans out of the booth, looks up and down the drive, and then scowls at her. "Where the hell else you planning on going? It's one road. It goes to one place. You want a map and a hang-glider?"

  "I just figured you had a golf cart or something."

  "Oh, I got one up my ass but my doctor says I should keep it up there in case it tears something bad coming out."

  "You're funny. You. Are. Funny. You missed your calling, Homer. Should've been a comedian."

  "Why'd the chicken cross the road?"

  She knows she shouldn't bother, but says anyway, "Why?"

  "To peck you in the butthole so you hurry the hell away from my guard booth. Like I told Mister Truck Driver, it's lunch-time and I am goddamn hungry."

  "Okay. Bye, Homer."

  "See you on the way out, Miss Black."

  "How far is the school?"

  "Far as it needs to be." He laughs.

  Asshole.

  She likes him.

  Time, then, to go back to school.

  The road is paved, no potholes, smooth as a beetle's back. Trees rise up on each side of her, these trees nothing like the scrub pines of Nowhere, New Jersey – these tall legacy oaks ringed in dark wet bark, each a silent sentinel, each a judging spire.

  Soon she hears it: the murmur of river water.

  The river reveals itself before too long. Five minutes later, the trees give way to a grassy uneven bank, and beyond it the Susquehanna churns and shushes, Ovaltine waters gurgling forth.

  The drive bends again, and there she sees the Caldecott School.

  Ah, Victorian overindulgence. The middle of the school looks to be an old manor house, three stories high, the grim Gothic windows paired awkwardly with gingerbread trim. Each roof is red like a child's wagon, the walls a kind of gray-green, a clayey painted smudge dull in contrast to the house's red.

  To the left and right of the house are the rest of the school – the bulk of it, really, plainly added on long after the original house was built. The two wings are almost prison-like in their austerity. Down to the wrought iron bars on the windows.

  The Caldecott crest – eagles, books, a knight's helmet and other bullshit frippery – flies on a flag. The flagpole comes up out of a massive VW-bug-sized hunk of anthracite coal, which itself sits in the middle of the circular drive.

  From here, the school looks silent, dead, no movement. No students, no teachers, not even a pair of ugly-ass pigeons.

  Again that feeling: a twist, a twinge in her gut.

  Like at any moment a big tentacle is going to burst out of the front door, coil around her, and drag her into its depths. Past other kids who mock the way she looks, walks, chews, exists.

  Fucking school.

  
Let's get this over with
, she thinks.

  Time to find "Miss Wiz."

 

Miriam passes an art class on the back lawn of the school, kids sitting in a half-circle around some wispy moonbeam teacher in a batik frock, all of them trying to sketch a fallen leaf.

  Closer to the river, though, Miriam sees her target – no, that's not it, that's not right. Not target. Not victim. Customer.

  How things have changed.

  The woman sits on a park bench underneath a red maple, the leaves shuddering and shushing above her head as squirrels bound from branch to branch.

  School squirrels are forever unafraid.

  The woman is dowdy. Frumpy. Not what Miriam expected. Pink blouse, gray slacks, a build like a linebacker gone to seed. She's got a sweet face. A lullaby face. Were you to go to sleep every night and see that face, you'd feel safe, comforted, snoozy.

  As she sees Miriam approach, she stands, offers her hand.

  "Miss Wiz," Miriam says. She's not sure how to begin this exchange, so she snaps her fingers and points a pair of finger-guns at the woman. "Pow pow".

  The woman seems taken aback.

  Miriam clarifies. "We probably shouldn't shake hands. Because of the thing. You know.
The thing
. The reason I'm here."

  "Right. Right. You're, ah, not what I expected."

  "Nor you," Miriam responds.

  The woman laughs. "Here people always tell me I look like a teacher."

  "It's not that. It's just… you know.
Katey
."

  "Katey." The teacher doesn't understand.

  "Right. Katey is – see, I have a thing for names, names that don't match, and yours is – okay, it's like this. Katey? Total pixie girl name. Katey is a tiny sorority girl who only drinks vodka because she doesn't want to put on weight. Katey dresses up like a slutty witch every Halloween.
Katey
has a bob-cut, wears size zero jeans, marries a banker who was once a quarterback. You look like a…" She gives the woman another good look over. "Kathy. There you go. See how easy that was?"

  "Well. My name's Katey." The woman laughs, but it's cagey, nervous. For a moment the only sound between them is the river behind them. The forced smile wilts like a spinach leaf in a hot pan. "Maybe this was a bad idea."

  "What?" Miriam asks. "No. No!
No
. It's fine. It's all good. Sit."

  They sit. Hesitantly. Miriam drums her fingers. Beneath her hands, the table is carved with girl's names:
Becky Vicki Rhonda Bee Georgia Toni Tavena Jewelia
and on and on. Nothing profane. Just names.

  "Oh, here," Katey finally says, pulling out a plastic JC Penney bag. She slides it over to Miriam.

  "This my stuff?" she asks.

  "Everything you asked for on your list."

  "A rider," Miriam says. "It's called a rider. Like a band might ask for, a bowl of all blue M&Ms, or a Longaberger basket filled with heroin and clean needles, or maybe a dwarven sex gimp swaddled in Saran Wrap."

  "Yes. Well." Another spike of nervousness. This time punctuated by a pursed frown, a grit of irritation forming a pearl of disgust. "It's all there."

  Miriam upends the bag.

  Out tumbles: A bag of Utz pretzels. A carton of Native Spirit cigarettes. A jar of Tallarico's hot hoagie spread. Two mini-bottles of booze (one a bottle of Glenfarclas Scotch, the other Patron Silver tequila). A travel-size bleach. And finally, a single box of hair-dye.
Fuchsia Flamingo.
The kind of nuclear pink you might see in the heart of a mushroom cloud. Just before the blast turns your eyes to aspic.

  Nice. A good choice.

  Miriam says so. Holds up the box. Winks.

  Then she starts setting up shop. Opens the hoagie spread. Tears into the bag of pretzels. Uncaps the Scotch.

  Pretzel into the spread, then into the mouth.
Crunch crunch crunch
. Mouthful of Scotch. Everything is salt and spice and smooth caramel burn.

  As she does this, Katey slides out a stack of money onto the table. Starts to move the money toward Miriam but pulls it back to her chest.

  "Whuh's wrong?" Miriam asks, licking boozesoaked pretzel bits out of her teeth.

  "This is all… strange. You're very strange, a very strange girl. You're the real deal? You can tell me about…"

  Miriam swallows. "Yeah, yes. How you suck the pipe, feed the worms, find yourself on the Holy Shit I'm Dead Express."

  Blink. Blink. "How do I know you're telling me the truth?"

  "You don't, I guess. Louis knows. He can vouch for me. So if you trust him, then you know I'm on the upand-up. If you don't trust him, then I guess we don't have much more to talk about."

  Katey slides the money across. "Five hundred, you said."

  "I did." As Miriam takes the money, Katey quick pulls her own hand away.

  "Not going to count it?"

  "I trust you. Besides, the count's wrong, I'll cast a hex on you. A pox. A pox-hex on your home and school." She swirls another pretzel into the jar of pepper relish. "I'm just fucking around. I can't curse anybody. I'm the cursed one."
Crunch crunch crunch.

  "You been this way since you were a little girl?" Katey asks.

  "This way? What way? A crazy bee-yotch? Or a psychic bee-yotch?"

  She's interrupted. A young girl yelling. She turns, sees one of the girls in the art class – a little red-headed freckle-machine, maybe twelve or thirteen years old – standing up and holding her sketchbook like a mighty Viking weapon.

  The girl whacks another girl across the face with it. The other girl – a little blonde thing, probably named Katey – shrieks and goes down, flailing.

  After that it's all just a pile of limbs and whipping hair. A sensible brown shoe goes pirouetting up in the air.

  "Boy, she nailed that other girl good. Pow. Right in the kisser."

  "Par for the course here at Caldecott. These are good girls… for the most part. But many of them are troubled. Or just unwanted. It leaves… well, it leaves a mark. Inside. Sometimes outside, too."

  "I hear that."

  "My break is almost over," Katey says. Suddenly her eyes narrow. "You know, I don't want to do this anymore." She stands. "You can keep the items but I'd like the money back."

  "Whoa, whoa, what? No, hell with that, we're doing this. Louis said you're some kind of raging hypochondriac and so I came all this way and we are jolly well fucking doing this. Give me your damn hand."

  Katey's face sags. Her eyes go sad. "Is that what he said? Hypochondriac? Is that what people think of me? I suppose I knew that."

  "No, it's not what he said, it's what
I
said. Now shut up and let me do this."

  The woman reaches in. Goes to grab the money.

  Her hand knocks the Scotch bottle over.

  Whisky spills between the wooden boards of the table top.

  Her fingers touch the stack of cash.

  Miriam grabs her arm, quick twists the sleeve to expose the skin.

  Fingers encircle, skin on skin–

  
Katey Wiznewski looks the same as she does now, with her broad shoulders and motherly moon face, but she's in a blue raspberry bathrobe so fuzzy it looks like she killed some imaginary beast and now wears its pelt for warmth. She sits on the edge of a loveseat and the cancer is all through her. It's like the roots of a tree piercing dark earth and those roots drink and drink and drink, and they come from a gnarled tumor nestled tight against her pancreas. In her hand is a tall thin glass of iced tea with a crooked lemon wedge sticking up over the rim, and she goes to hand the glass to a large jowly man with a warm smile and she says to him, "It's not sweet enough, Steve. Nothing's really sweet enough anymore. Please take – " But then the electrical current that goes through her, that keeps her moving, that keeps us all moving, is gone – bzzt, power down, plug pulled, darkness waits – and the glass drops and shatters against a coffee table and–

  –and Miss Wiz gives her a quick shove and Miriam topples backward, her head thudding dully against the earth.

  The grass catches most of the lost twenties. Some of the bills ride a quick breeze and tumble end-over-end toward the river. Then they're gone.

  Miriam sits up with a groan. Begins collecting the money.

  Katey just stands there. Hands kneading hands. Eyes wet.