The Longings of Wayward Girls (19 page)

“It’s just the
Hartford Times.
”
“what are you saying?
Just
the
Hartford Times
?”
“I’m not saying anything.” sadie’s father sighed and folded the paper and lifted the grill lid. smoke billowed up, the smell of burning fat.
“you mean it’s not the
New York Times.
you mean it’s nothing,” her mother said softly, almost petulantly.
sadie was in her bedroom above the porch, listening through her window. she heard her father shush her mother. she pressed her face to the screen and looked down and saw that her mother had climbed into her father’s lap, and he was smoothing her hair.
emma takes her time coming back with the check. she’s busy, they can see that. she brings Mrs. sidelman a bowl of chowder and then she leans over sadie and tucks the check under ray’s plate. ray doesn’t even look at it. He has the money in his hand, ready to go. sadie feels as if their time together has been spoiled by Mrs. sidelman, even though the woman hasn’t acknowledged them.
“God, I hated that woman,” ray says. “Didn’t you?”
sadie isn’t sure why ray feels this way. Mrs. sidelman would let sadie play with her old reading textbooks, with the workbooks and the dittos left over from her days as a teacher. sadie had a pretend school and taught the younger neighborhood children how to read, sitting in rows on Mrs. sidelman’s picnic table benches. sadie’s mother would catch her over there and make her come home, sometimes sending her to her room with no explanation.
“I did hate her,” sadie says quietly, remembering her mother’s irrational punishment. she is angry and sad and doesn’t understand why.
ray tells emma to keep the change, and she smiles her mysterious smile and thanks him with her jingle-jangle voice and moves away. sadie begins to slide from the booth, but ray takes her face in his hands brings his mouth to hers in a slow, luxurious kiss, as if she is some exotic food he craves. And suddenly she could stay there in the booth forever, kissing with Mrs. sidelman’s eyes on her, imagining her mother watching as well.
Look at me,
she wants to say.
Look, look, look at me.

July 2, 1979

A

fter lunch at Betty’s they composed their last letter to Francie. They went back out into the pasture to work on the Haunted woods sets—positioning

items in the various rooms, smearing more fake blood. Francie returned, smelling of the noxema her mother must have awakened long enough to spread on her sunburn.

“I’m not allowed in the sun,” she said. she stood in the shade, stubborn and somewhat forlorn. sadie tried not to feel sorry for her. late that afternoon one of ray’s dogs appeared, sniffing around the kitchen and the empty pots and pans.

“shoo,” Francie said. “shoo!”
ray himself appeared in the open field, the other dog by his side. He stood there for a moment, watching them. Francie seemed to disappear behind a pine, while the other kids
looked at him and then looked to sadie. ray came up to the
living room set. He scratched his stomach under his shirt and
glanced at the headless dummy, positioned in a folding aluminum lounge chair covered with a quilt. They’d made a television out of a square of plywood, and sadie had painted a scene
of invading aliens, their silver saucers marking a night sky. “what’s all of this? Dear old Dad’s lost his head?” ray said.
He wore his tennis shoes and a pair of seersucker shorts. His
hair had grown long, lightened from the sun. He glanced at
sadie and then pretended not to notice her.
sadie hated the way he mocked them, and she hated that

183
she was in a position to be mocked. she turned to betty. “let’s go,” she said quietly.

“Games all over for today?” he said. sadie felt her heart step up, but she said nothing. ray walked along the path to the next set and picked up the candelabra. This time he looked directly at sadie, as if he knew this was all her doing.

“you have candles out here?” ray said. “you know that’s a fire hazard.”
“we’ll be ever so careful,” Francie said, stepping out suddenly from behind her tree.
sadie wished she had never allowed her to be part of this.
“Please, don’t ruin the show,” Francie said. she had her hands together, pleading.
ray looked at her, amused. “who are you?”
Francie seemed surprised at his question. sadie held her breath, waiting for the revelation. she suspected then that she’d made Hezekiah too much like ray. Francie bit the inside of her cheek and got a sly look, as if she was going to play along with his pretense of not knowing her.
“I’m Francie,” she said. “Francie bingham.”
“bingham?” ray said. He smiled. “so, my father says that your father whittled your two little brothers in the basement.”
betty glanced at sadie and put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. sadie watched Francie’s expression flatten out to become no expression at all. “That’s not very nice,” she said.
ray ignored her and began to walk up the path, perusing the rooms.
“look at all of this,” he said, marveling.
He turned to them with what seemed like a new appreciation. but then he narrowed his eyes at them.
“you’ll need to get all of this junk off our property when you’re done,” he said. He shook his head and laughed softly.
He left the woods and went back across the open field. They could hear him singing, his voice carrying over the trees.
“Your everlasting summer / You can see it fading fast / So you grab a piece of something / That you think is gonna last, / You wouldn’t know a diamond / If you held it in your hand, / The things you think are precious / I can’t understand.”
“what’s he singing?” betty said.
“How should I know?” sadie said.
“It’s steely Dan,” Francie said. “ ‘reelin’ in the years’?”
betty exchanged a glance with sadie. “How do
you
know?”
Francie smirked. “I listen to the radio?”
she stepped past them with her noxema smell. “I have to go home now.” she stopped a little ways up the path and turned. “If you want me to help you with the crib, I will.”
“I don’t have the crib anymore,” sadie said.
“we looked this afternoon and it’s gone,” betty said.
Francie paused, as if she doubted them.
“you’ll have to find one somewhere else,” sadie said. They watched her leave the path. They knew where she was going, through the field to the dead end to find the letter they’d left.

Dear Francie,

The time has come for us to escape. I can barely contain my happiness. Can you meet me just before midnight on the 4th? Take the path through your Haunted Woods, across the pasture. Through the woods on the other side is the pond. I feel it is only appropriate we meet at the place where your character, Emely Filley, met her fate. I’m enclosing a token of our bond. I will look for your letter of confirmation.

Hezekiah

They’d enclosed a bracelet they’d made—tiny multicolored beads strung on elastic. betty was satisfied that this would be the end of the letter writing, and sadie had talked her into inviting her to spend the night on the fourth, so that the two of them could sneak out to hide in the woods and watch for Francie.

The next day they returned to the pasture midmorning to discover a battered-looking crib set up in a section of the woods along the path. Francie was there, her eyes swollen from her sunburn. she’d had the boys trample down the spot she’d chosen, and she’d decorated the area with cast-off children’s toys that betty recognized from her own garage. Francie explained that she’d gotten the crib from the battistons, that betty’s mother had given her the toys that morning. Jimmy Frobel announced that they were out of fake blood, that someone needed to go to Drug City to replenish it.

Francie came up to them in a huff. she had a bucket in her hand, and she pointed out an empty pack of Parliament cigarettes and three cans of schaefer beer. “I found these,” she said. “someone was hanging out here last night.”

sadie looked into the bucket. she knew that Francie believed ray was Hezekiah, and she wanted to separate herself from the Haunted woods, from childish things. she wanted the upper hand. “oh,” she said. she glanced at betty. “I thought you said you picked them all up.”

Francie’s eyes widened.

“sorry about that,” betty said. “Guess I didn’t see them all in the dark.”
sadie tried not to laugh. “you won’t tell on us, will you?”
Francie’s mouth tightened. sadie put her hands on her hips and turned to betty.
“let’s find a ride to the center,” she said.
They left Francie in the woods. They planned to check the dead end for her reply letter, but Mrs. Donahue was heading into shaw’s supermarket and offered to drop them off at Drug City. on the way there, past the roadside grasses, beneath the overhang of old trees, Charlene Donahue chatted about the lobster bake. “Can you believe it’s tomorrow?” she would pick up corn at Filley’s stand.
“what games would you girls like to play?” she said. “what about the ring toss? or the egg relay?”
betty looked to sadie in the backseat. sadie rolled her eyes. Mrs. Donahue must have been looking back at her in the rearview mirror. she grew quiet, and sadie felt a rush of guilt. Mrs. Donahue had provided for her numerous times—a bed and meals, sometimes even clothes, a lunch for school. From betty’s mother, sadie learned how mothers were supposed to be.
“what about the sack race?” betty said cheerfully.
Mrs. Donahue sighed. “I know you girls are older now,” she said. “but it would be fun for the others.”
sadie agreed. she tried to sound sincere, but she’d lost her enthusiasm for an event that was so clearly designed for the adults, with lobsters steamed over an open pit, the redwood tables stretched end to end, the table of beefeater and smirnoff and Chivas, the ice in the bucket—all reserved for their parents, and only a few games halfheartedly set up for the children, and hamburgers and hot dogs thrown on the grill as an afterthought, charred by a drunken cook, so that even as an adult sadie would still associated the taste of burned hamburger with the annual summer event. The parents regaled and drank around the fire, and the children were let loose in the neighborhood after dark, pedaling their bicycles up and down the street, wondering when to go to bed.
“The sack race is fun,” sadie said.
Charlene said she thought Mr. Frobel still had the burlap sacks in his shed, and sadie’s father had gone down to the shore today for the lobster. “Girls, it’s going to be so much fun this year,” she said.
And sadie chimed in to say what she was expected to say and not what she was thinking, which was easier than hurting anyone’s, especially Charlene Donahue’s, feelings.
The town center was simply a crossroads that had grown to include—along with the library, the town green, and the Congregational church—a new outdoor mall composed of a maze of sidewalks and shops. That day it was overtaken by young people, who carved their names into the benches by the large fountain and chased each other around with plastic cups of water. betty’s mother dropped them off at the drugstore and said she’d be back after she did the grocery shopping. The kids by the fountain were from their class at school, but sadie felt instantly leery. she paused in front of Drug City and watched the way the boys grabbed the girls around the waist, the way the girls laughed and slapped at the boys’ arms. It seemed as if a glass wall separated her from them. betty waved, but sadie said she didn’t like gangs of
children,
and betty agreed she didn’t want to get wet, so they steered clear of them. They went into Drug City, down the cool linoleum aisles, looking for the fake blood. sadie eyed the lip gloss, the dangling earrings on display. After, they paced the sidewalk near the parking lot, waiting for betty’s mother to pick them up. A car idled alongside them and the driver called out.
“you girls need a ride?” he said.
sadie felt betty stiffen and grab her arm. The car was an older-model Mustang in need of a paint job. The driver was fair haired and blue eyed, his pointed chin covered with a patch of blond scruff. The car’s passenger leaned over him and called out, too.
“you sure look like you need a ride,” he said.
The radio played the Guess who’s “no sugar Tonight.” sadie stopped walking and bent over at the waist to see inside the car. The boy in the passenger seat had long brown hair. He wore tinted aviator glasses.
“we have a ride,” she said. “but thank you anyway.”
The boys smiled at her, and the car stopped.
“Are you sure?” the driver said. “what’s your name, little girl?”
betty grabbed at the back of sadie’s shirt, but sadie laughed, confident that no real kidnapper would use this classic kidnapper’s line. she stepped off the curb and went up to the driver’s window. she leaned on the car door and smelled the Christmas tree air freshener hanging from the radio dial.
“I’m sadie,” she said.
“sadie Mae,” the passenger said in a singsongy voice. “I’m rob. This is Mack.”
sadie asked them what they were doing, and Mack told her they were driving around. A pack of winstons sat on the dash. sadie bummed a cigarette and asked betty if she wanted one. betty stood back on the sidewalk.
“yeah, betty, you’re welcome to a cigarette,” Mack called to her. He held the pack out the window and shook it.
“sadie, my mom will be right back,” betty said.
“we have time,” sadie said. she bent down to the boy’s match. she heard the music coming out of the old car radio, the shrieks of the kids near the fountain.
“you aren’t playing with your friends?” rob said, nodding toward the fountain where the kids still chased each other around.
“Those aren’t my friends,” sadie said. she realized as she said it that this was true. she sat beside them in class, at the same table in lunch; she traded papers to grade when the teacher demanded it, paired up with them during gym. but they knew nothing about her, and if they’d been curious to learn who she really was, she’d have had nothing she’d have been willing to tell them.
she heard rob laugh in the car. “I was kidding,” he said. And then his voice changed, seemed to deepen with genuine interest.
“why don’t you ride around with us?” he said.
The song ended, and the eight-track tape clicked and whirred. sadie smoked her cigarette and smiled. “not today,” she said. “sorry.”
“Too bad,” Mack said, and he put the car in gear and drove off. sadie watched the car’s taillights, watched the boys turn out of the parking lot, and she wondered where they might go, and she envied the girls they’d find who’d go with them. betty insisted sadie chew gum before she got into her mother’s car, so they went back into Drug City, where sadie slipped a tangerine lip gloss into her shorts pocket while betty paid for the gum at the counter.