Stony River (43 page)

He'd gotten a promotion but it had come with a transfer to the Stony River store, which Buddy said had an “unbalancing energy,” whatever that meant. One night he came home in a state because he'd accidentally touched a woman's hand while at the cash register and she'd pulled back as though he burned her. He said she'd looked into his eyes and seen Satan in him.

The devil thing was getting to be a bit much. When Buddy learned that Satan could appear as a frog, he smashed every one of Dearie's miniatures. Tereza had insisted Buddy clean them up and apologize, but Dearie took to her bed for a full day anyway, refusing to eat anything. Tereza regretted having snuck back the frogs she'd pinched. If she'd left them in Alfie's box of old receipts Dearie still would have had them, at least.

The cast and crew were standing in a clump in the middle of the floor that served as the stage, the audience seats rising on three sides around it. She didn't see Marilyn Shore. Tereza understudied for Marilyn's role as Stella and Stanley Kowalski's upstairs neighbor, Eunice.

The script called for the relaxing woman to be a Negro. Tereza was the darkest in the company. Her other character was supposed to croon “Flowers, flowers for the dead” in Spanish, but since the director didn't expect any Mexicans in the audience, Tereza would say it in English. She'd wear a serape and wide-brimmed straw hat so the audience wouldn't recognize her as the relaxing woman from the first act, although anybody reading the program would find Ladonna Lange listed as both.

Tereza hadn't realized how lonely she'd been for her kind of people, hadn't even known what her kind of people were. The day she showed up for auditions and somebody said “Your hair is just like Dana Wynter's in
The Body Snatchers
,” she knew she belonged there.

When she wasn't on stage she helped out with sound effects and props. The sound effects were cool, especially the trains, Stella getting smacked and the jungle sounds. Some props were heavy; she'd have to be more careful from now on when moving Blanche's trunk. She lightly pressed her flat belly. Hard to believe someone was growing in there and would burst out in December. “Don't gain much weight,” the doctor had said. “You've got a small pelvis.”

She'd gone to see him because a popcorn kernel had scratched her throat and she thought that was why she couldn't stop barfing. His office was close to the theater where she'd gotten a job selling matinee tickets after Herman sold the restaurant. She could eat all the popcorn she wanted for free. “Didn't you wonder when you didn't get your period?” the doctor had asked.

Yeah, she had, but she didn't think you could get knocked up if the sex wasn't fun.

“Hey!” she called out to her fellow actors. Blanche DuBois waved her over. Wouldn't it be something to understudy for that drunken nympho part? Adele Baruch, the director, said Blanche's problem— one, anyway—was that she was “over-civilized.” Adele wasn't, with her long, wild-looking gray hair and tight black leather slacks. She was cool.

“Ladonna, you're Eunice tonight,” Adele said. “Marilyn's kid sister, Evvy, has been missing all week and Marilyn says her brain's not worth shit right now. Her family is beside themselves. They're all out searching for her.”

Tereza felt a sudden stab for her kid brother. “When'd she go missing?” How old would Allen be now? Thirteen? He wouldn't even know when he became an uncle.

“Two, three days ago,” said the guy who played Eunice's husband. “Marilyn told me some boys spotted Evvy getting in a car with a man on Monday night. The police are involved finally. At first they thought she might be a runaway.”

“I hope they find her,” Tereza said. If she wanted to be found.

“Okay, people,” Adele said, “let's evict this sad news from our minds for the next two hours. We'll rehearse the first half tonight, special emphasis on Eunice's part for Ladonna's sake. Places all, please, scene one.”

Adele was tough: twice a week from eight to ten, no matter what, twenty-one rehearsals in all. If you missed more than a third, you could lose your part. Although Tereza hoped nothing bad had happened to Marilyn's sister, wouldn't it be something if she got to do Eunice after all?

She opened her script and took her place on the prop stairs, kicking herself for not having memorized Eunice's lines. What Buddy had said in New York about not doing anything to prepare herself to be discovered had gotten her off her ass and into the dramatic club. But she still didn't think enough ahead, wasn't ready for opportunity's
thump, thump, thump
.

Luckily she'd heard Marilyn do Eunice many times and could read without having to trace the script with her finger. She stumbled over only a few words.

Eunice wasn't in the second scene. Tereza liked watching the guy who played Stanley rehearse; he could really turn himself into the creep. He was built like Buddy but a few years older with a smoky voice. At the first rehearsal Adele had explained the plot and what the actors were supposed to project. Stanley was a jerk, like Jimmy, but Tereza wouldn't have figured out that he rapes Blanche when he carries her off to the bedroom in scene ten if Adele hadn't said. Some things so obvious to others were thick as paste to Tereza.

Buddy wasn't a drinker or gambler like Stanley and she couldn't imagine him hitting her. But just once she would have liked to have great sex like the Kowalskis—“implied” in the script, Adele said, like the rape. Tereza's mouth was so hungry for a kiss she often pressed Buddy's hand to her lips as he slept. She wouldn't stick around if he ever hit her, but something about him had a hold on her, like something about Stanley did on Stella.

Tereza had to be alert in scene three because, after Stanley hits her, Stella hides in Eunice's apartment, which the audience never sees because it only exists in their minds, like the devil in Buddy's. Eunice tells him to stop yelling “STELL-LAHHHHH!” and tries to keep him away from her friend. But love-stupid Stella comes out and Stanley gets down on his knees and kisses her pregnant stomach. She couldn't picture Buddy doing that, but she hoped he'd be okay with the news once he got over his surprise. A&P liked their managers to be family men.

She tried to imagine their baby's face. Like trying to see a picture before it was painted.

TEREZA WAS HOME
before Buddy the next day, so she took a shower and changed into white shorts and a pink-for-girls blouse. Lisa was a nice name. She cleared cobwebs from the chipped white glider in the backyard and waited in it for Buddy. She called out to him as he padlocked the garage door like it was Fort Knox. When he wasn't driving or washing his precious car he kept it locked up. He jumped. Obviously he hadn't noticed her there.

“You look nice. What's up?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“Out here?”

“Yeah, Dearie's making us a special meal and the oven is steaming up the house. It got up to eighty today. I felt like a boiled egg in that ticket booth.” Tereza had given Dearie the news earlier, Dearie
fake-clutching her heart and saying, “I'm too young to be a greatgranny.” But she'd smiled and cried and squeezed the bejesus out of Tereza.

Buddy ducked his head and climbed into the glider, making it creak and swing. He took a seat across from her. “What's the occasion?”

“Sit beside me, okay? I want us to hold hands.”

“If I do, we'll tip over. I need to put weights on the glider.”

She sighed. “Okay, stay there but you gotta look at me.”

He laughed. “I've never seen you like this. You get the bigger part for certain?”

“No. Marilyn will probably be back. Her sister will turn up.”

He laced his fingers behind his neck. “Then what's the word, Thunderbird?”

She grinned at him. “You're gonna be a daddy.”

“Is that a line from the play?”

She laughed. “No. I saw a doctor. Santa's bringing us a baby for Christmas.”

He dropped his arms. “You're pregnant.”

“Yeah.”

“What were you thinking?”

“What do you mean, me?”

He got out of the glider and walked around it, cracking his knuckles. He stuck his head in, his face close to hers. “You know there's something wrong with me, don't you?”

“You get moody, if that's what you mean.”

“I don't get moody, Ladonna. I'm fucking crazy. The devil lives in me. I've been trying to tell you that for how long. I'm a monster. What kind of life would a kid have with me?”

“You're not a monster.” Jimmy was a monster.

He climbed back into the glider, sat and held his head in his hands. “We never talked about a baby. I would've said no.”

“We never talked about birth control either.”

“That's the wife's job.”

“Good time to let me know.”

He looked up. “I can see it in your eyes. Why me, you're saying, right? Why'd I get stuck with this maniac?”

She shook her head.

“Pastor Scott says we spend our whole lives trying to get back inside our mothers and Satan spends eternity trying to get inside us. He finds those who don't find God. Some days I can feel God inside me. Other times the devil's winning. I wish I could describe it so you'd understand. I've done terrible things, Ladonna.”

“Who hasn't?” She thought about the guys in the cars and about taking Miranda's money.

The porch door squealed open and Dearie yelled, “Supper!”

Buddy covered his face with his hands. “I don't deserve supper.”

Tereza wanted to feel sorry for him, but she was tired of his devil talk. Seemed like he was only looking for attention like Stanley Kowalski. She was going to have a baby. She didn't need a whiny husband. She stepped out of the glider and said, “Tough gazzobbies. Dearie went to a lot of trouble, so you're going to eat. And you're going to be a father whether you want to or not. Get used to the idea.”

TWENTY - SIX

OCTOBER 20, 1959
. Shrouded in a forest-green caftan her mother had stitched, Linda came down to miserly breakfast rations: grapefruit, cottage cheese, toast, orange marmalade and tea with saccharine. She lived for the marmalade. “Where's Daddy?”

“An early meeting.” Mom tapped the newspaper with one finger and looked up with a grim smile. “These mothers got lucky, letting their daughters walk home in the dark. Thank heavens one girl had the presence of mind to get the license plate number so the police could arrest this menace.” She folded the paper, reached across and set it beside Linda's plate.

Scooping marmalade onto her toast, Linda looked down and sucked in a breath.

“What?” Mom said.

“Nothing.” Linda bit into the toast. She'd seen the same police sketch in the newspaper a few months ago: a man spotted giving a ride to a girl the night she disappeared. Mom had flipped over it. Linda hadn't wanted to say anything and risk her parents finding out she'd gotten into a car with a stranger. The sketch could've been of anyone. But here it was again, alongside a mug shot of a man they'd arrested for attempted kidnapping. It had to be him. Those vacant eyes, that simpleton smile. The article said the police were looking for anyone who might have witnessed the attempted kidnapping or
had any information about Evelyn Shore's disappearance. It gave a detective's name and a phone number.

Suddenly lightheaded, Linda clutched the seat of her chair.

“What's the matter?” Mom asked. “You've lost your color.” She came around and pressed Linda's forehead with cool fingers. “You feel clammy.”

“I think I might faint.”

“Golly. Here, put your arm around my shoulders. Careful. Slide off the chair onto the floor. Okay. Good. Lie back. I'll get you a pillow and blanket. You'd better stay home today.”

Linda was the ambulance Mom had not gotten to drive in the war. It had been six months since she resigned her position with Doc Pierce to take her daughter's fate in hand. She expected Linda to be grateful for her efforts to help her lose weight. But Linda loved her fat. Standing naked before the full-length mirror in her bedroom, she'd caress herself. Knead her stomach rolls like bread dough. Press her jiggly thighs between her hands, admiring the way the skin rippled like a lake's surface. Wasn't skin miraculous, the way it stretched and remolded the body as if it were Silly Putty? In her opinion, she'd become even more
zaftig
than when Richie drew her as Gilda Daring. The kids who called her pig, cow, hippo and whale were ignoramuses who didn't realize that the female was genetically designed with layers of fat for the rigors of child bearing. A round belly symbolized fertility. Linda had no intention of bearing a child if it meant coupling with a man. But the idea of her body swelling with life thrilled her.
Her
life.
Her
flesh. When she could no longer jam herself into her clothes, she took money from her father's wallet and bought a maternity blouse and a black skirt with a panel of stretchy material.