Wicked

          There were four of us girls, unless we counted Laura, Ritz’s sister, which we didn’t because she was mean. Ritz was my best friend. We were tails and heads of the same coin. I was skinny with black hair down to my rear, which my father would not allow my mother to cut. Ritz’s hair was short and blonde and curled around her tanned face, light as dandelion fluff. In Ritz’s house, nobody talked normally, they yelled, which was one of the reasons I loved it. At home, I usually had to be quiet because my mother was either thinking or writing or sleeping. At Ritz’s house, I didn’t have to worry about what I said because nobody cared. Insults were expected. When I spent the night, Ritz and I were left to fend for ourselves, often eating cereal for dinner and raw hotdogs for breakfast. Her father, a mechanic, went to work around six every morning and her mother slept until noon, evidence of her nightly indulgences strewn about the living room: overflowing ashtrays, empty glasses with sips of liquor left in the bottom which Ritz or I would finish off, and romance novels splayed open, spines pointed up.

          Ritz called me Alexandria, instead of my nickname, Lexie; she liked being different that way.

          Orlando was nine, two years younger than Ritz and me, and mostly, an after-thought. She was quiet and shy and cute and Ritz and I would often cheat in Monopoly or Crazy Eights or whatever game we were into at the time because we knew she’d let us.

          Jill didn’t share, she grabbed. Once she got her mitts on something, you could kiss it goodbye. None of us really wanted to play with Jill. One time she locked Ritz on her front porch and refused to let her leave. Jill made Ritz be the Ken doll while she drove Camping Barbie around the slanted porch floor in a flower-power camper. It wasn’t until Jill’s father stumbled past them on his way into the house, leaving the door wide open, that Ritz was able to make a run for it. She also had an annoying habit of saying “Wic-ked.”

          None of us was surprised that Jill would be the first to ruin a man’s life.

#

          The scandal of Howard Mills opened up wide when I was twelve, three years after I moved into the neighborhood, one year after my father had begun to take me on day trips, for hikes in the woods, to the Alpine Slide, or on bug-catching treks. He did this while my mother stayed home, to give her time. He even took me fishing on Lake Champlain with Howard Mills one Saturday. This was before Howard was accused of messing around. According to Jill, while Ritz, Orlando, and I were moving the arrow across the Ouija Board, or stealing Boardwalk and Park Place from each other, or outside, slamming each other in the face and chest with a tethered ball, Jill was down in Howard Mills’ basement.

          Before all that, before the alleged visits in his basement, we used to ride by Howard’s house on our bikes and wave at his wife, Sofia, whom we knew was hiding behind her curtains, aiming her binoculars in our direction. We knew because her curtains were too sheer to hide her plump shape. Despite our teasing acknowledgments, she’d stubbornly remain where she was and spy on us. Once in a while she’d call up Ritz’s mother and offer a report: “Did you know your daughter was riding her bike in the middle of the road? Did you know that friend of hers was wearing shorts that were practically up to her rear-end?” To that last I heard Ritz’s mother say over the phone, “What are you, the fashion police?”

          On the morning my father took me fishing with Howard, my mother was in the bathroom throwing up. I was in the kitchen adding a swirl of marshmallow fluff to our peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. My mother had come out of her room that morning to fix a bowl of oatmeal. It was a sunny June morning, a Saturday, so my father was home from the law office. There were no cartoons left to watch other than a Scooby-do rerun, so I’d walked into the kitchen to ask my mother some weird question, maybe something like, “What will we look like in the afterlife if we don’t have our bodies? How will you recognize me?” My mother said so little back then in what I’ve since labeled her Dark Period, I thought the only way to communicate with her was to think of something profound. She was a writer who wasn’t writing, and she didn’t appreciate talk for talk’s sake.

          I remember she looked at me strangely, and then she walked over to where I’d posted myself at the breakfast counter, took my hands in hers and said, “Promise me you’ll never prostitute yourself for art.”

          I knew what a prostitute was because I watched Police Woman and Miami Vice, but I didn’t understand what she meant. I nodded anyway.

          “And promise me you’ll never allow yourself to be stuck into a dull life just for the fleeting, too damn fleeting, pleasure of flattery and sex.” Her gaze was intense. Her hands squeezed mine tighter.

          “I promise,” I said. I asked her for the stuff to make our sandwiches. She seemed to consider my request for a minute and then her eyes turned kind of glassy and her skin drained of color.

          “You’ll have to get it yourself,” she said, before making her way to the bathroom, her hand over her mouth.

#

          My father was outside loading up the car with the coolers, fishing rods, the tackle box, and other various things we might need. I was in the front seat, the door open, reading Jane Eyre. I enjoyed how the book made me feel, how outrage swelled and blanketed itself over my body, how it almost hurt to breathe. The idea of a man hiding his wife in an attic thrilled me.

          Howard Mills made his way across our lawn from his house. He had a fishing pole, some kind of book in his hand, and a steel lunchbox. His legs bowed out and his head hung low in front of him, making him look like a turtle from the side. He was thin, so thin; his shirts draped off his shoulders, and his pants bunched around his waist from the pull of his belt.

          “Hey there, Howard,” my father called. “Ready to catch some trout?”

          Howard mumbled something before handing my father his pole. My father clapped him on the back and told him he had to go in the house for a minute. Howard slid into the backseat, still clutching his lunchbox and book.

          I watched my father jog up the front steps in his plaid shirt and jeans. I was used to seeing him in a suit and tie, and he always looked funny to me on the weekends. It was like he was trying too hard to be casual.

          Howard said something small-talkish, but I didn’t hear him because my parents were in the house fighting. They’d probably forgotten the windows were open in the kitchen and dining room and that anyone sitting in the driveway would be able to hear them talking, never mind yelling.

          “You think I wanted this?” my mother yelled.

          “It wouldn’t surprise me. Now you won’t have to do anything but sit around. Oh, wait. You already do.”

          “I’m thinking.” My mother’s voice had soared up to the danger zone: angry vibrato tinged with a little crazy. “I’m not just sitting there, I’m making something, goddamn it!”

          “All you’ve made lately is a black hole, a large gaping hole of nothing walking around in Capri pants and an old gray tee shirt.” My father was also pissed. He only used precise enunciation when he was really, really mad.

          “What do you call this…which by the way, was entirely your fault. I told you to put something on.”

          “And where were you? Were you not there or something? As I recall, you said it once. Then you grabbed my ass and told me to fuck you.”

          The sound of glass breaking floated through the screened window. I snuck a glance back at Howard Mills, but he seemed to be concentrating on the book of puzzles he’d brought and didn’t look up.

          “I’ll never get published. I’ll never be able to write. Nine horrible months ahead of me, then two years of bottles, diapers and no sleep. Slit my wrists now.” This last bit was said in a mournful sob. My mother had probably sunk down to the floor; she did that a lot when she was upset. Once when I asked her why, she said something about her legs being too enervated to support her.

          A few minutes of silence and then my father came out of the house carrying a six-pack of Heineken with splayed fingers. He grinned and lifted the beer as if to show me. “Little extra for good luck,” he said, his voice cheery in a forced way. I watched him walk around to the back of the car. He set the beer inside then slammed the trunk; the car shook. After giving Howard Mills’ door a playful tap, my father climbed in behind the wheel.

#

          A couple of hours later, my father pulled the Ford into the dirt lot of a silver diner. Dust flew up around the car as we parked. “I packed our lunches,” I said. My father smiled at me from the driver’s seat and winked. “We’ll have that later.” He twisted round to look back at Howard. “Okay with you, sir?” Howard Mills nodded and said sure, sure, anything was fine by him.

          Inside the restaurant, there was a long orange counter. My father led us to the stools at the end, in the corner. One other family sat at a booth. I could smell their onion rings. Two kids poked each other in the side while a baby lay in a basket at the edge of the table. The whole time they were there I worried the baby would get knocked onto the floor.

          A blonde woman pushed her way through swinging doors to take our order. She wore a white dress with lace at the collar. There wasn’t a speck of catsup on her.

          “Hi, there,” she said. Her face was wide and pretty, and her smile made her look like a sunflower. “What can I get you folks?”

          “You the waitress?” my father asked. I could tell he was flirting with her by the way he softened his voice and acted like he was shocked.

          “Ha. I sent my girl home.” She gestured with a lifted chin at the nearly empty place. “Slow today.”

          My father reached over the counter, took her hand and kissed it. Howard handed me a menu and asked if I wanted a burger. I told him no, I wasn’t really hungry. But then reason won out, and I told him I wanted a tuna-fish sandwich and onion rings. Howard didn’t order anything.

          When the food came, the owner strolled out from the kitchen and leaned on the counter to talk to us, or, rather, to talk to my father. She told us how no one seemed to be fishing lately on account of colder-than-normal weather. “A little cold won’t bother us,” my father said. He patted his belly. “Especially with all this good food inside.”

          After we finished, Howard and I followed the noisy family out to the parking lot while my father paid the bill.

          For the first time that day, I noticed how the cool breeze brought out the goose bumps on my arms and I worried about not bringing a sweatshirt. Howard and I climbed into the car and eventually my father came out grinning.

          “All right. Let’s catch some fish!” he said as he slid in.

          Not long after, my father drove us down a long, dirt road that ended in front of Howard Mills’ camp. The camp was a rustic cabin with a deck that hung over the water. Inside, everything was in place: kitchen, bathroom, living room, sleeping area, just like in a house, only smaller. The living room was like our screened-in porch at home and looked out over the lake. The waves slapped against the wooden dock below us. Howard told my father and me to sit while he grabbed a couple of things. The sofa smelled sharply of must. I traced the edges of its cartoon-like pink flowers with my index finger.

          “Hey, kid,” my father said, sitting down next to me. He sighed and stared at the view. “Sorry. You probably heard your mom and me.”

          I shrugged.

          “She’s not as unhappy as she sounds.”

          I didn’t say anything.

          “You see…she’s an artist, a writer…and sometimes she has delusions of grandeur.”

          His words sounded mean to me. As usual, his being so frank felt uncomfortable. “I want to read her book,” I said.

          He made a pfff sound. “I’ve read a version of it and believe me when I say it needs a miracle. We need a miracle.”

          My father was a handsome man: black curly hair, cut close to his head, startling blue eyes, and a smile that lifted up on one side more than the other. And my mother was just as good-looking though she gave the impression of being not quite there. Her skin was pale, almost see-through, from never going outside, and her hair was shoulder-length and coppery. Tiny, delicate freckles covered her body and her face, but these were so pale they were nearly invisible. When she was in a writing period, her cheeks had color and she danced around the house, humming and smiling. Everything was a delight to her then, and if I went to her with an issue, a less-than-perfect grade, she’d fling the problem away with a sweep of her hand and say it was no big deal.

          She’d not been in one of those periods for a long time.

          My father looked at me then, in the same moment a motorboat rode by on the lake, making the waves slosh higher up onto the pilings. “Lexie.”

          Though I didn’t want to look at him, I drew my gaze up to his eyes. When his voice got low like that it usually meant he was going to say something that would make me squirm, something about how much like a stone my mother was in bed, how he couldn’t bear to be teased or shut out by her and how lonely it made him feel. One time he made me promise I would never be frigid and self-absorbed. “If your husband comes and tells me you’re a cold fish, I’m going to give him my permission to give you a good spanking.” Usually he’d been drinking before saying these weird things. This time, though, he hadn’t even broken the tab off the first can of beer.

          “Promise me you’ll get out into the world and make yourself useful. No one needs another narcissistic artist taking up space.” He laid his hand on my knee, squeezing a little; his knuckles were pink on an otherwise tan and smooth hand. Turning his head toward the view of the lake, he blew air out his mouth. “Damn, I wish I didn’t love her so much.”

          Howard Mills came into the room carrying a tackle box of his own. “I was looking for these special flies I had, but I can’t find ’em.”

          My father stood. “You know what? I’m sorry, Howard, but I think I left my wallet back at the diner.” He patted the pockets of his pants, both front and back. “Won’t take me long to go back and get it.”

          Howard looked out over the lake. “Supposed to have a storm this afternoon. Better to get out there sooner than later.”

          “Why don’t you and Lexie go out first and see what you can catch. I should be back in an hour or so.”

          An hour? I knew the diner was only a few minutes back down the road. He bent down and picked up the metal tackle box. “Here, I’ll help you pack the boat.”

          I followed the two men out the side screen door, down the rock steps toward the dock. My father carried the tackle box, the lifejackets, and peanut-butter sandwiches; Howard carried his own lunch and three rods. The sharp, fishy scent of the water blew over me with the breeze. Patches of algae floated along the edge of a bank and tall cattails poked through the scrim on the water. My father handed Howard and me our life vests.

          “Make sure she wears hers,” he said to Howard. “She’s not a good swimmer.”

          And then he was climbing back up the rock steps and there was just Howard and me in our bright life vests on the boat, rocking gently on the waves.

#

          The seeds for the accusation that would take down Howard Mills were sown in Ritz’s bedroom. Ritz, Orlando, Jill, and I had cleared all the clutter from her floor in order to sit Indian style and play Monopoly. Laura stood in the doorway and announced their mother was headed to the grocery store.

          “I’m bored with this game,” Jill said.

          “That’s because you’re losing,” Ritz said.

          “Ritz, you always win this game,” Orlando said.

          “That’s because I’m smarter than all of you guys put together.”

          Laura entered the bedroom then and kicked the game board on the way to her bed. All the hotels and the game pieces scattered onto the floor. We all yelled at her at once. She mumbled under her breath while she looked for something under her pillow, then under her bed, then she checked under her pillow again. Laura’s eyes narrowed.

          “Where is it?”

          “What?” Ritz used her fake innocent voice which was a giveaway to the rest of us she was guilty.

          “You know what. My magazine, fuckface.”

          Ritz shrugged. I noticed she was letting Orlando, Jill, and me do most of the work putting the game pieces away.

          Laura flew off the bed and grabbed a fistful of Ritz’s fluffy hair. She jerked her sister’s head back. “Tell me where it is, you little liar.”

          Ritz yelled for their mother. Jill and Orlando ran out of the room promising to get help. I was too stunned to move. Laura grabbed the Monopoly box with the paper money and hit Ritz over the head with it. The play bills fluttered down like leaves around us. The sisters started slapping each other. I snapped out of it and moved away to safety near the closet door.

          The sisters’ mother appeared in the doorway. “What’s all this?” she yelled. “Laura!”

          The girls stopped their hitting and, chests heaving, both looked at their mother.

          “Laura, come downstairs.” Their mother’s voice was a growl.

          Laura got up awkwardly off the floor. Her skirt was twisted and the pink band of her underwear was showing.

          Her mother followed her out, saying, “Can’t you leave your sister and her friends alone for one minute? Go sit in the chair on the porch so I can check your back.”

          Ritz brushed herself off and laughed. “Serves her right. Now she gets to have mom pop her zits.”

          “What was she looking for?” Orlando asked. She and Jill sat on Ritz’s bed.

          Ritz motioned for me to move then opened the closet door. She rummaged under a pile of clothes and pulled out a magazine. “This,” she said, holding it up. On the cover there was a picture of a man in a cowboy hat with large muscles, a thick dark mustache, and a reddish penis nestled in a dark nest of hair, and hanging behind it, two purple-skinned sacs.

          We dove into the closet and gathered around the magazine. Orlando squealed and Ritz held her hand over Orlando’s mouth. “Be quiet, squirt, or Laura will hear us.”

          Jill snatched the magazine and started flipping through it. “I’ve seen these before. It’s no big deal,” she said.

          “You’ve seen dirty magazines?” I asked.

          “No. I’m talking about ding dongs.” And, when I still didn’t get it, she pointed to a man’s penis.

          “I once walked in on my father when he was peeing,” I said.

          “I’ve seen Howard Mills’ thing,” Jill said. She lowered her voice. “But it doesn’t look like this one.” The one she was pointing to belonged to a young blonde man and was erect and pink.

          “Liar,” Ritz said.

          Jill shook her head. “I’m not lying. I did. In his basement. We were watching TV one time when you were all swimming at the pond, and he showed it to me then.”

          “Oh, my God,” Orlando said. “What did you do?”

          Jill shrugged. “I touched it… then I told him I had to go home.”

          “What did it feel like?” Ritz asked.

          Jill shrugged again. “Kind of hairy and… I don’t know…weird.”

          We were quiet then, a reverential kind of quiet. Ritz had long stopped turning the pages of the magazine. I said I had to go home for lunch. Orlando said she’d walk home with me because she had to go, too.

          “You should tell,” Ritz said.

          I stopped in the doorway to see what Jill would say.

          She shrugged again, picked up a Barbie lying on the floor and started winding the doll’s long brown hair around her index finger. “Maybe.”

          “If you don’t, I will.” Ritz pulled the doll out of her hands and tapped on Jill’s head. “Hello? Anybody home?”

          “Okay, okay. I’ll tell.”

          I held Orlando’s hand on our walk down the street to our houses. As we walked by Howard Mills’ house, we both glanced at it, then quickly looked away. Neither of us waved at Sofia, though she was probably there behind the curtain like always.

#

          Later that night when I was in bed, I thought about what Jill had revealed and something about it didn’t make sense. I’d spent an afternoon on the lake with Howard Mills and he didn’t ever come across as a creep. We fished for three hours and he told me all he knew about the lake. As we floated by a large cliff, he told me it was at least thirty feet high.

          “Imagine this place millions of years ago,” he said. He’d turned off the motor and there was no sound but an occasional bird. Once in a while, a fish would fling itself out of the lake and splash back into the water. “There were mastodons and woolly mammoths around these parts.”

          I told him we’d learned about the French and Native Americans the previous year in fourth grade.

          “There are still boats from the Revolutionary War at the bottom of the lake,” he said, grabbing a can of root beer out of the cooler. He popped the tab off and handed it to me. My parents never had soda in the house.

          It was in the middle of a long gulp of root beer I felt a tug on my line. I set the can down on the bench behind me and grabbed the rod with both hands, the end of which was bent and strained.

          “Whoa, looks like you got one,” Howard Mills said, standing up to come over and help me. The boat rocked and then settled. He talked me through when to reel in and when to tug. After a couple minutes of struggle I had the fish up on the deck of the boat.

          “Sure is a big one,” he said with admiration. “Too bad we’ll have to let it go.”

          “Why?”

          “It’s a sunfish. No good for eating.”

          I was disappointed, and he must have seen it on my face. “We still have a bit of time. At least you caught something.”

          We never did catch any trout, but, for the rest of the time, we ate sandwiches and drank root beer, and he told me about his childhood growing up in Canada, about meeting his wife, Sofia, over in England during World War II, and about working for the post office. There was nothing odd or perverse about him; he was just an old man who liked to fish and do word puzzles.

          When we were headed in, he told me not to worry about my parents. “They’ll work things out,” he said. “Sometimes when people love each other so much they forget not to take that love for granted.”

          “My father complains about her all the time,” I said. We were pulling up to the dock. I could see my father’s Ford was back in the driveway.

          “That so?” Howard Mills shook his head. “Do your best to ignore it,” he said. “It’s not for you to hear.”

          My father came down to help us unload. He was being extra cheery and he looked the same way he did when he came home late from being out with friends on weekends. We carried the coolers and the tackle boxes and the rods back up the rock steps.

          “Good thing I went back when I did,” my father said, in the kitchen when we were through. “She was about to close up.”

          Howard Mills just nodded and grunted in agreement. Neither of us mentioned the stain of pink lipstick on the side of my father’s neck.

#

          That summer, I didn’t see the police car drive up to the Mills’ house. I didn’t see the Mills packing up the moving van. I didn’t see the van drive away. I was at camp learning how to ride horses. What I heard from Ritz was this: Jill’s parents pressed charges, and the charges were eventually dropped because there was no way to prove them. She also told me that both she and Laura were taken down to the basement, separately, and he did the same thing to them that he did to Jill. She told me all this the week after my parents sat me down on our living room sofa and explained I’d be living mostly with my mom, but staying some weekends with my dad. I was having a difficult time sorting things out. But even with my family cracking apart, this thing with Howard Mills was the hardest to understand. I wondered if what Jill and Ritz said was true, and if it was, then why hadn’t Howard Mills ever invited me down to his basement? Did it mean that I was special, or not special enough? And later, I wondered why, when the policeman came to talk to me about Howard Mills I hadn’t been able to say a word in his defense, other than he hadn’t done anything to me. I’d had a chance to say how nice Howard Mills was, how he’d told me stories about Lake Champlain, how he acted like a friend, but the truth of what I knew about my neighbor had sunk to the depths of my mind like a leaking ship.

          Eventually my mother found her way back to writing again, and two years later her book was published. My father alternated between two girlfriends, both of whom were pretty much interchangeable. Then one winter he decided he wouldn’t be with anyone other than my mother and pestered her nearly every night by phone and sometimes just showed up at our door. A young couple with a baby moved into the Mills’ house and that same spring, I fell in love. It wasn’t long before we all stopped talking about basements and police and, after a time, I forgot to think about that whole mess at all.

          I thought I saw Howard Mills in a Target checkout line last week, two people ahead of me, buying a pack of grey-and-orange socks. Looked just like him: head stuck out from his neck like a turtle’s, thin-bodied, wispy hair. It couldn’t have been him, though. Howard Mills must have been long gone.









Katrina Denza’s stories have been published in issues of REAL: Regarding Arts and Literature, Passages North, The Jabberwock Review, The MacGuffin, Confrontation, Pank, and Gargoyle, among others. Two of her stories have been translated into Farsi by Jalil Jafari and published in Golestaneh Magazine. She volunteers as a mentor for Dzanc's Creative Writing Sessions and keeps a literary blog, www.katdenza.blogspot.com.