Rust & Stardust Read online

  Ruth listened as the girl prattled on about the tightrope walker and the trapeze girls who weren’t much older than she was.

  “She told me they swing a hundred feet above the ground!” Florence exclaimed. “I’m just dying to go see them.”

  Ruth had seen the acrobats, twins, cartwheeling across the brown grass behind the circus caravan of trailers, with their thin legs and fishnet stockings. The contortionist who twisted her body into a pretzel, ankles touching her ears. Since the circus folks arrived, the whole trailer park was littered with sequins, reflecting the sun like stars.

  “Have you never been to the circus before?” Ruth asked, stunned.

  Florence shook her head. “My daddy was gonna take me once, but then he…” Her shoulders stiffened again, and she shook her head.

  Ruth had never heard her refer to Frank LaPlante as “Daddy” before. It was always “My father says” or “Father says…”

  “I’m just gonna trim off the dead ends here,” Ruth said.

  “No,” Florence said. “I want you to cut it short. Like Elizabeth Taylor.”

  “Really? You have such gorgeous curls. Just a trim to get the dead ends off?”

  Florence shook her head again, and Ruth shrugged. She knew that sometimes a girl needed to reinvent herself. Every time she and Hank moved, she considered changing her name, starting over. Illinois, Florida, Texas. She could have been anyone she wanted to be. But inevitably, she lost her gumption and went back to being plain old Ruth.

  She had to admit, when all those curls lay on the linoleum, like so many parentheses, Florence looked like a new girl. The cut took the weight from her hair and her curls bounced lightly around her face. Her eyes were bright as she looked in the handheld mirror that Ruth held up.

  “Just like Elizabeth Taylor.” Ruth winked. “You look all grown up.”

  SALLY

  “Goddamn it.”

  Sally woke up at the sound of Mr. Warner just outside the trailer. Like most Friday nights since they got to Dallas, he’d been down the street at the Sky-Vu for a few hours and a few more highballs. She knew that was where he was because she was always finding the Sky-Vu matchbooks in his pockets when she did the laundry. On Friday nights, he came home stinking of liquor, the smell of it coming off him like vapors. Usually, she just pretended she was asleep and he’d just tumble into bed, where he’d promptly fall asleep.

  But tonight when he got home, he crawled into bed next to Sally.

  “Hey, pretty girl,” he slurred in her ear. But when he stroked her hair in the darkness, his hand stopped short where her hair ended. He reached for the lamp and clumsily clicked it on. Sally blinked against the glare, her hand automatically shading her eyes.

  “What’d you do to yourself?” he asked.

  She cried as he pulled at her arm, dragging her out of bed. She struggled to stay upright as he pushed her through the narrow entrance to their bedroom and out into the tiny bathroom, where a mirror hung crooked over the sink.

  “Who did this to you?” he hissed, peering at both of their reflections in the mirror.

  Sally shook her head. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Was it that circus freak?” he asked. “What’s the matter with you? You gotta ask me before you go and do something like this.”

  She shook her head, bracing herself for what was coming. Still, it stunned her. He hit her, like a man would hit another grown man, and her skull clanged like a gong. She fell backward with the force of it, striking the kitchenette counter with her hip and then crumbling into a shuddering heap on the floor. Her vision was a night sky, swirling constellations.

  “Sally,” he said. “Sally, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  Still on the floor, she scooted backward, afraid of him. “Don’t touch me,” she said, shielding her face. “Please.”

  He put his hands at his sides and shook his head. “No, course not. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s just that, it’s just that you look so much older now. I’m not ready for my little girl to grow up just yet.”

  * * *

  The next day, Sally stayed in bed. She refused to speak to Mr. Warner when he brought her a plate with eggs and toast. A cup of milky coffee, even though he usually forbade her from drinking his Chase & Sanborn, said little girls shouldn’t drink coffee.

  “No, thank you,” she said, and turned to face the wall.

  “Can I get you some ice?” he’d asked, and reached to touch her face, but she flinched at his touch, and he moved his hand away.

  “They need me at the garage today. Scully’s out sick. But I’ll be home right after work tonight,” he said. “I’ll bring home some of those burgers you like. Extra pickles?”

  She could feel her heart beating dully in her temple where he’d hit her. Her head pounded, and later when he finally left for work, she looked in the mirror and barely recognized herself. Between the new haircut and the shiner that swallowed her right eye in a bloom of purple and blue, she could have been someone else. Florence Fogg. Florence LaPlante. Sally Horner, where had she gone? She wondered if she were to see her mother right now, if Ella would even know Sally anymore.

  She thought of going to Ruth, of pleading with her to take her in, to keep her safe. If Ruth had any idea of what really happened inside the walls of this trailer, surely she would help her escape. Or would she? Those awful dirty things Mr. Warner made her do. What kind of father would do this to his own daughter? She couldn’t ever tell anyone the things he had done and said to her. The secrets her skin kept now, the horror that flowed in her veins. Her marrow poisoned. Maybe Lena, who lived in a world that embraced the strange and sinful and vulgar, wouldn’t judge her.

  She returned to the bedroom, thinking she’d put on her swimsuit and go to the pool. Find Lena, maybe swim in that cool blue. The water might ease the aching at her temple, might soothe her. Sometimes she just floated for hours on her back in the pool, staring up at that wide blue sky. But her suit wasn’t in the drawer where she kept her clothes. She searched the laundry basket, then crouched down to see if maybe it had gotten pushed under the bed.

  As she peered underneath the mattress, the blood flowed to her temple, and the pain pounded hard and loud, nearly blinding her. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she realized she was looking at his valise. Shoved far under the bed. She’d nearly forgotten about it.

  She reached under the bed, her fingers spider-walking across the filthy floor, trying to grasp onto the handle. When she finally had it, she stood up, setting it on the bed carefully. It was covered in dust. The leather battered and worn. She tried the rusted clasp, but it was still locked. She wondered where Mr. Warner might keep the key, and then figured it was probably on the ring he kept in his pocket.

  Sally found Mr. Warner’s toolbox under the sink. He’d had it out just the other day when he was fixing a drip in the kitchen faucet. She searched through the tools for anything that would help her break the lock. Hammers, needle-nose pliers, a rusty wrench. Finally, she found a pair of bolt cutters buried under a box of screws.

  Back in the bedroom, she positioned the little padlock between the blades and, using all of her strength, squeezed them. She was startled when the blades closed together and the lock snapped, and she felt sick as she thought about what might be inside.

  Knock, knock.

  “Florence?” Ruth was at the door. She must be wondering why Sally hadn’t come out yet. It was already almost noon.

  “Hold on,” Sally hollered.

  She carefully lifted the lid. Inside the valise was a manila envelope, with a delicate clasp. When she bent the tines back, they snapped off, and she caught her breath.

  She shook the envelope’s contents onto the bed.

  Sally trembled as she shuffled through the photos. There must have been a hundred snapshots. All the pictures were of girls, girls who didn’t seem to know they were being photographed. The photos appeared to have been taken from a distance: girls sunning th
emselves on the beach, girls huddled together at a street corner. One of them bent over scratching her ankle. They made her feel strange.

  There was also a stack of photos, these banded together with a crumbling rubber band that disintegrated in Sally’s fingers, the photos tumbling onto the bed like a loose deck of cards.

  Knock, knock. Sally glanced at the door and quickly shuffled through the photos.

  Captured inside the scalloped borders: a blond girl, with pouty lips, wearing only a slip. Bare feet and painted nails. There must have been twenty photos of this same girl. In some of them, she wasn’t wearing anything at all, and Sally’s face burned with shame. Who was she? What did any of this mean?

  “Sally, honey? Everything okay in there?”

  She turned one of the photos over, and read in handwriting she recognized as Mr. Warner’s: Dot, Atlantic City, ’39. Then, underneath the photo, was a small yellowed newspaper clipping. Sally picked it up and studied the faded newsprint:

  WANTED: FRANK LA SALLE IN KIDNAPPING OF MERCHANTVILLE MINOR, DOROTHY DARE.

  AL

  When Al rang the doorbell at the address in Philadelphia he’d located in the phone book under D. Dare, he wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this.

  A child. Maybe ten or eleven years old with curly blond hair and bare feet. She had small, close-set eyes and a severe expression.

  “Mama’s not here,” she said behind the screen door.

  “Oh,” he said. “Are you all alone?”

  “She just went to the market,” she said. “She’ll be right back. She’s gettin’ groceries.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  The porch was littered with toys, a rusty pair of roller skates, a dozen scattered jacks.

  “You mind if I wait here?” he asked, motioning to a mint-green metal patio chair. It was exactly like the one Ella had on her front porch. It felt like a sign of good luck.

  The girl shrugged.

  He brushed some dirt from the seat and sat down. The door opened slowly. The girl emerged, and she sat cross-legged on the porch floor and scooped up the handful of jacks.

  “And your daddy? He at work?” Al asked.

  “My daddy’s an old son of a bitch,” the girl said, and Al had to stifle a laugh.

  When he saw the woman walking down the sidewalk toward the house, he stood up and took off his hat.

  “What’re you doing outside?” the young woman said to the girl, grabbing her arm, the girl scrambling to her feet. “I told you to keep the door locked.” She turned to him and glared. “I don’t wanna buy nothin’. I got a working vacuum, and I don’t need no encyclopedias or Bibles neither.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I ain’t sellin’ nothing. I’m actually here because I was hoping to speak to Dorothy Dare?”

  The woman’s thin, plucked left eyebrow lifted skeptically.

  “You see, I was hoping to talk to you about your husband?”

  “I ain’t married,” she said. “Not anymore.”

  He nodded. “I know that, ma’am. I read it in the papers. Have you seen the papers?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the article, the one with the photos of Frank La Salle and Sally.

  “Get inside and get washed up,” she said to the child, who grudgingly obliged. The woman reached out her hand, and Al handed her the clipping.

  “I ain’t seen Frank since they hauled him off to jail the last time,” she said, not looking up from the article. “Thought he was rotting in prison.”

  “This here’s my wife’s sister,” he said, pointing the photo of Sally. “She’s only twelve years old.”

  The woman’s face softened then, and he wondered if she was thinking of her own daughter, the one he could hear singing softly to herself on the other side of the screened door now.

  “They think he’s in Baltimore,” Al said. “You know if he knows anybody in Baltimore?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, shrugging, handing the paper back to Al.

  “Oh,” Al said, feeling hope seeping out of him like air out of a tire.

  “Wait. There is one buddy of his I met once. He came and stayed with us in Atlantic City not long after the baby was born. Sammy something. Something Italian. Frankie knew him from Chicago, he said. But I remember he said he was, from Baltimore. I remember ’cause he brought a big bag of soft-shell crabs with him, made a real mess of my kitchen. DePaulo. That’s it.”

  “Sammy DePaulo?” Al repeated. He could barely contain his excitement. “In Baltimore.”

  She nodded. Smiled even.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  The woman cocked her head. “I went to the market, but I didn’t have enough money when I got to the register,” she said. She stuck her palm out and tapped her foot. “Came back to dig around in my piggy bank.”

  “Oh,” Al said, understanding, and reached into his wallet. He pulled out a crisp dollar bill and held it out to her. She leaned forward and made as if to see how many more bills were hiding there. He plucked another one out, and she stuffed them both down into her blouse. He noted that her sternum was sharp, her collarbones like a hanger. When she smiled, he noticed that she was missing one of her eyeteeth. Just a black hole where bone used to be.

  * * *

  Back at home, while Sue stood wringing her hands, Al called the Baltimore police and told them about his conversation with Dorothy.

  “You gotta go back to that house, the one where Sammy DePaulo lives,” he said. “Please. Sally’s been there.”

  SALLY

  “That pup’s too young to be away from his mama,” Lena said to Sally. “They need their mamas to teach them how to be in the world.”

  She and Lena were sitting at the pool, drinking bottles of Pepsi that Lena had bought from the machine at the canteen. The new puppy was curled up on the pavement, asleep in the sun, a rope tied around his neck hardly necessary. He hadn’t left her side since Mr. Warner gave him to her.

  Mr. Warner had come home that Saturday, long after she’d returned the photos to his valise, after she’d shoved it back under the bed, hoping he wouldn’t retrieve it and find the lock smashed to smithereens. After she’d racked her brain trying to figure out what it all meant, why he’d lie about being her daddy, and wondered about that girl Dorothy. Sally had been pretending to read the book that Ruth had given her, but the words swam across the page. The only words she could see were the ones burned into her brain: WANTED. Kidnapping. Frank La Salle.

  She’d slammed the book shut when he came into the bedroom. She wanted to ask him what those photos meant, who Dorothy Dare was. She wanted to know if he really took that girl. If he was Frank La Salle, not Frank Warner, not her real daddy like he claimed.

  “Listen here,” he said. “I got something for you. A couple of things, actually. First off, I’m taking you to the circus next week. See what all the hullabaloo’s about. Also…,” he said, reaching for something inside his shirt.

  Mr. Warner had tucked the tiny pup there and offered it to her, a gift. An apology. He said that another mechanic had come across the mama on his way to work a few weeks ago, and that she whelped her litter in the backseat of his car.

  “He don’t have a name yet,” he said, setting him down on the bed.

  She was startled. She hadn’t expected this, this little puppy whose ribs she could see through his dull brown fur. He rolled over onto his back at her touch, licked her hand when she reached for him.

  “I never had a dog before,” she said softly.

  “You gotta feed him with a bottle,” he said. “He ain’t been weaned yet.”

  Sally looked up, blinked hard, and looked back down at the puppy again. She picked him up and held him to her chest. His heart pulsed beneath her fingers, small but steady.

  “I’m gonna love you like your mama would,” she whispered, cradling the pup in her arms. “I promise I’ll take care of you forever.”

  She named him Tex.

&n
bsp; * * *

  “I had a dog once, got separated from his mama before his eyes were even open yet. He was afraid of everything. You couldn’t hardly take a step without him pissing himself in fear. Felt bad for the little guy. Couldn’t take him on a walk even. Spent most of his time curled up underneath the kitchen table,” Lena said.

  Sally nodded.

  “You certainly are an unusual little girl,” Lena said, scowling.

  “Am I?”

  “Well, I never see you with any other children. Don’t you have any friends?”

  Sally shook her head, ashamed. Of so many things.

  “Your daddy do that to you?” Lena asked, gesturing with her bearded chin at Sally’s bruised cheekbone.

  Sally shook her head again. After he gave her the puppy, he’d made her promise not to tell what happened. He said that he might not have raised her, but he was her legal guardian, and he had a right to discipline her. An obligation even. Besides, he was sorry he’d hurt her. That was why he’d given her Tex. It was his way of apologizing. He said he’d make things right. Take her to the circus. Buy her popcorn, cotton candy. Anything she’d like.

  “I had a daddy like that,” Lena whispered.

  Sally didn’t often think of grown-ups as having mothers and fathers. Or their mothers and fathers having mothers and fathers. It was like trying to imagine infinity. Like holding a mirror in a mirror. It made her brain feel like it was collapsing in on itself.

  “Like what?” she asked, feeling her cheek pulse, the bruise going deeper than her skin, deeper even than her bone.

  “Mean,” Lena said. She stretched one long and elegant arm out, examining it as if it didn’t belong to her.

  Sally stared down into the shimmering blue water.

  “Drunk. Nasty,” Lena added, and the word was like a hush. Like a secret inside a secret. She studied Sally’s face and then dipped her hand into the water, trailed her fingers through the cool blue. “Maybe,” she said quietly, “touches you in places you aren’t s’posed to be touched until you’re married?”