Rust & Stardust Read online

  Frank had called, said they were coming, though Ruth knew it could take weeks to drive from Dallas to San Jose. Their own truck had broken down in the desert, somewhere just east of Barstow, and they’d been stuck there waiting for a new clutch for over a week. Luckily, Frank was a mechanic. They likely wouldn’t find themselves stranded, not because of car troubles anyway. It was only March; the desert was hot but not deadly this time of year. They’d be here soon; she had to believe it. Because the alternative was unbearable. She just needed to get Florence here. Then she’d quietly and perfectly set her plan into motion.

  VIVI

  Vivi fell in love with a boy that spring of 1950. His name was Lawrence. He was new to Camden, in her class at school. He was tall and thin and soft-spoken. He had a bit of a stutter, just the tiniest impediment, but it made him vulnerable. This was what she was drawn to. This gentle weakness. It made her want to protect him.

  She’d felt this way about Sally once. God, had it been two years already? A sort of lifetime. She could barely remember who she was two years ago. She’d been a little girl then. Now, she was thirteen, practically grown. She’d gotten her period. She’d grown breasts. The boys who once annoyed her now stirred something inside her, made her blush with shame at these longings. But the feelings she had for Lawrence weren’t as simple as this. When he spoke to her, his shy eyes downcast, she felt like she was getting a second chance. That this boy had been put in her life for a reason. He seemed to give her purpose.

  After school instead of running with the crowd of girls she used to, she and Lawrence walked together to the Woolworth’s. What had happened to them? Those blood sisters of hers? Last fall, they’d read about Irene in the papers, went to her funeral where they could barely look at each other; whatever bond they’d forged with razors and blood seemed to disappear. Allegiances, alliances, and pacts nothing more than silly childish wishes. She had been earnest then, believed in the power of a promise.

  At the Woolworth’s, she and Lawrence sat at the counter and spooned cold ice cream from the silver malt cup they shared. Every now and then she would glance to the end of the counter where that man had sat, eating pea soup, that afternoon. He was a ghost who haunted all their lives, but Vivi’s especially.

  She thought about telling Lawrence. About sharing with him the truth of what happened that day. That the girls had tricked Sally. Had led her here to humiliate her. That the other girls had no intentions of including her in their stupid club; it wouldn’t matter what Vivi said. That she hadn’t done something to stop it. She could have whispered in Sally’s ear, told her the girls were only letting her get her hopes up. She could have saved her from that man. The fact that she hadn’t ate away at her every single day.

  “You know, Vivi…,” Lawrence said, staring into his ice cream.

  “Yes?”

  “I think you’re … swell.”

  The heat that rose to her cheeks seemed a contradiction to that cold ice cream. “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re n-n-not like all the others.”

  She shook her head. Yes, I am, she thought. I am no different at all.

  Suddenly, she knew it was time to do what she should have done nearly two years ago.

  * * *

  On the way home, she told Lawrence to walk down Linden Street rather than the direct way home.

  “Sure,” he shrugged. “Whatever you like, Vivi.”

  When they reached the house where she’d watched Mrs. Horner collapse on the pavement, she had second thoughts. The house looked run-down, abandoned. The patio furniture was overturned; the walls were shrugging off their paint. A mangy-looking black cat looked up at them with mild annoyance. Still, she climbed up the stairs, Lawrence staying behind on the sidewalk, and knocked on the door.

  A young woman answered, and Vivi wondered if perhaps she’d gone to the wrong house.

  “Is this the Horner residence?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I’m Susan. Mrs. Horner’s daughter.”

  “Oh,” Vivi said, and smiled. “My name is Vivi. Vivi Peterson.”

  Her name seemed to spark something in the woman’s eyes. “You’re the one,” she said. “The one Sally said she was with. At the shore.”

  Vivi nodded, tears filling her eyes.

  “I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am,” Vivi said.

  The woman nodded. “Everybody is,” she said almost bitterly.

  “No,” Vivi said, shaking her head. “I mean to say, I apologize. We tricked her. It was a terrible thing to do. We told her she could be in our club, blood sisters, if she passed the initiation.”

  The woman’s eyes widened.

  “That’s how he got her. He caught her stealing a notebook at the Woolworth’s.” Her chest ached. “It was because of what we told her to do.”

  She recalled Irene and Bess fleeing from the counter, saying, Come on. And how she’d lingered a few moments longer. Stood listening as he told Sally that she was in trouble, under arrest. She could still recall the smell of pea soup, the scatter of saltine cracker dust where he’d sat. She remembered ducking behind the seed packet display as he marched Sally out the front doors.

  “Ma’am?” Vivi had said to the waitress behind the lunch counter. “Who was that man?”

  The waitress shrugged. “One of those fellas who live over at the YMCA, I think. Think he said his name’s La Salle.”

  “Is he a policeman?”

  The waitress snorted. “Pretty sure he’s on the other side of the law.”

  At the time, she hadn’t known what that meant, but after Sally disappeared, when her story was in all the papers, she’d realized her error. She had failed Sally not only by not telling her what the girls were up to, but by not going to the police. Telling them right away who that man was. She’d harbored that secret for nearly two years now. It had planted in her like one of those seeds, vines slowly creeping up, circling her neck, blooming in her throat. If she’d said something right away, maybe they could have kept him from taking her.

  “He tricked her,” Vivi said, and then took a deep breath. “We all did. It was cruel. And I’m so sorry. I want you to know I pray for her every night. I hope she comes home soon.” She was flustered, felt her cheeks warming, too hot in her wool sweater. “I just wanted to say that, and to let you know that if you need anything … you or your mama—”

  “You take home economics?” the woman, Susan, said abruptly.

  “Home economics? You mean at school?”

  “Yes. Did they teach you how to sew yet?”

  “Sure,” Vivi said. “Just this year. I made an apron. With rickrack trim for my mama.”

  “Come in, then,” the woman said. “I need you to help me sew this piecework.”

  She nodded and looked to Lawrence, who stood waiting at the bottom of the steps, hands shoved into his pockets. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”

  Lawrence nodded and took off down the sidewalk, and Susan added, “And I need you to explain to my mother that Sally didn’t go with that man willingly.”

  ELLA

  Ella was restless. That girl Vivi had taken over all her sewing, leaving Ella with little to do but sit around with her misery, staring out the window waiting for the phone to ring. Vivi had told her what happened at the Woolworth’s that day. About how the girls tricked Sally, and how the man pretended he was with the FBI. And she thought about how scared Sally must have been. How terrified. It was a small consolation, but it oddly eased her mind to understand how it was that he got her to go with him. That Sally wasn’t a fool, only a scared little girl.

  Today as Vivi worked in the other room, Ella peered out at Russell’s garden and noticed the tulips were back. Those flowers were so damned insistent. Ella’s beheading of last year’s crop provided no deterrent, and with the spring another dauntless batch had emerged along with all the other flowers: the vibrant pink and red of rhododendron and azaleas. The forsythia bush like a blazing sun. Even th
e roses that Susan and Al had bought seemed somehow filled with purpose. It’s spring, they seemed to announce. Chin up!

  But Ella scoffed at the garden’s optimism. After the police came up empty-handed in Baltimore, when they started talking about Texas, she withered inside. They’d promised they were closing in on him, that he was in Dallas, somewhere, and that they would follow their leads to find him. To find Sally. Al had been hell-bent on getting down there, too. But she’d known they wouldn’t find them there; that this man, this monster La Salle, was smarter than all of them. He’d been smarter than Sally, smarter than she. For nearly two years now, he had outwitted the police and the FBI. Now they were on a wild-goose chase to California.

  And so as she sat gazing out the front window at Russell’s garden, the flowers did not cheer her. They were like flowers at a funeral, she thought, a never-ending funeral. Her grief a needle stuck in the groove of a record playing the saddest song.

  “Mrs. Horner?” Vivi said from the other room.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve finished with this week’s sewing. Is there anything else I can do for you?” She stood in the doorway to the parlor now. What a sweet girl. She’d once been friends with Sally, she said, though Ella knew that this was just kindness, just words meant to soothe that incessant ache. Ella would never admit this to anyone, but sometimes, she imagined that Vivi was her daughter. As she listened to the steady rhythm of the treadle, she allowed herself to imagine that the girl was not a stranger, but a child she’d raised herself. When she looked at that silky hair, she imagined running a brush down its length, unknotting the tangles.

  “No,” Ella said. “Go on home. Don’t forget your coat. Is that boy comin’ to get you?”

  Vivi nodded and pulled on her spring coat. She came to Ella and touched her shoulder gently. Ella reached up and put her own gnarled fingers on top of Vivi’s hand, closed her eyes, and tried to remember what Sally’s skin felt like.

  SALLY

  In the motel room somewhere in California (Needles? Barstow? Bakersfield?) Sally lay on her back and crossed her arms over her naked chest, staring at the ceiling, at a water stain shaped like a heart. Mr. Warner said they were going to California, to see Ruth, but she didn’t know if she should believe him anymore. They’d been on the road forever, it seemed. What if this, too, was a lie? He could be taking her anywhere. They might never settle down again, she worried, moving endlessly back and forth across the country. Running, running forever.

  In the bathroom, she could hear him using the toilet. A sliver of light under the door was the only light in the dark room.

  She studied the motel door, deadbolt fastened, chain secured. The walls were paneled wood, and the knots looked like eyes.

  On the nightstand next to her was a telephone. It was black. Solid.

  She heard the water turn on, and the song he sang whenever he got in the shower. “The Girl That I Will Marry,” that Frank Sinatra tune. Then the rumble of a cough.

  Sally rolled over, put her hand on the phone, felt the cold plastic in her palm. She touched the dial, put her fingers in each hole of the rotary. 1, 2, 3, 4 …

  He was singing about the girl’s painted nails and gardenias in her hair.

  Steam from the shower seeped out through the crack under the door. Everything smelled of rust. Of wet towels.

  Slowly, she lifted the handset, pressed the cold receiver to her ear. She put her finger in the 0, felt her heart quicken. She’d memorized the number Ruth sent in her letter. She only needed to give it to the operator to be connected.

  He hummed when he forgot the lyrics.

  Slowly, she dragged her finger in a circle, dialing.

  Suddenly, the water in the shower abruptly shut off, and the bathroom door flew open. Frank stood naked in the bathroom doorway. Half of his face was lathered in shaving cream. He held a straight razor in his hand.

  She threw the handset as though it were on fire, leapt from the bed, and ran to the door.

  But he was quick, and she felt her arm being yanked behind her back before she could reach for the chain.

  When the scream escaped from her mouth, he caught it. His fist, clutching the razor, pressed against her mouth. She could taste the soap, and her eyes stung. The blade, the blade.

  “Listen up,” he said. “You try that shit again, and I will slice you in two. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Promise,” he said, lowering the blade until she felt its cold press against her trembling neck.

  She nodded again.

  “I’ll kill you first, and then I’ll go back to Camden and kill your whole damned family.”

  ELLA

  Susan held Ella’s arm as they slowly made their way to church on Sunday. Something about this made Ella feel incredibly old and infirm. She jerked her elbow, signaling for Susan to release her, and immediately regretted it. It was still cold, the streets slushy from a late storm. When she hit an icy patch, she reluctantly put her arm out again, and Susan took hold.

  They didn’t speak the entire way. By the time they reached the church doors, her joints felt like rusty hinges. She wondered if she would have the energy or fortitude for the return trip home.

  A few ladies from the neighborhood stood by the front doors, chatting and smoking. They stopped when they saw her, leaned closer together, whispering as she passed. Determined, she kept walking, chin held high, clutching the folded piece of paper in her hand.

  Inside, Susan released her arm and gestured to an empty pew near the back, but Ella shook her head. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  Leaving Susan behind, she marched purposefully through the buzzing hum down the aisle to the reverend who was speaking to the ladies who occupied the front row. (They were the widows of East Camden, a group to which she technically belonged but had never been invited to join.)

  “Reverend Bailey?” she said, interrupting them.

  “Yes?” he said, taking a moment before his own recognition set in. “Mrs. Horner, how lovely to have you here…”

  “I have a prayer request,” she said, summoning every bit of courage she had and thrusting the sheet of paper at him. “When it comes time for that, during the liturgies.”

  He took the paper from her and nodded solemnly.

  The last time she’d spoken to Reverend Bailey was when he came to her home to comfort her after Russell’s death. Russell had cleaned both St. Paul’s and the rectory where the reverend lived for years. She’d asked him then if he would be willing to officiate at the funeral services, and he’d shaken his head sadly.

  “Oh dear, I’m so sorry. Suicide is a mortal sin. One who takes his own life does not respect the sanctity of life, nor the sovereignty of God. As a man of God, I cannot condone…”

  “What about his burial then?” she had asked, feeling the heat rise to her ears.

  “There are consequences to taking one’s own life, Mrs. Horner,” he said, his face reddening. “He cannot receive a Christian burial.”

  “He can’t be buried with his family?” she said, her voice loud, her disbelief and horror nearly overwhelming her.

  “Unfortunately, that is one consequence,” he said, nodding sadly. “Though of greater concern are the spiritual repercussions.”

  It was then that she realized the reverend had just condemned her husband to an eternity in hell. Russell Horner, the man who stayed up all night long with Sally when she had scarlet fever, who climbed up on their elderly neighbor’s roof to string Christmas lights after her husband passed away, who gave a bandmate the trumpet he’d had since he was a child when old Charlie Horton had to sell his own horn to pay his house note. “How else is he gonna play?” he’d said when Ella called both him and Charlie fools. Russell Horner was a drunk, and he was tortured by the world, but he was a good man. The idea of him burning in hell was ludicrous.

  Now, Reverend Bailey unfolded the paper, and his eyes scanned the request Ella had agonized
over for nearly an hour: Please pray for my daughter, Sally Horner, that she is safe and unharmed and will be returned to her loving family soon.

  He looked up at her, but before he could speak, she said, “Don’t tell me you’ve damned my twelve-year-old little girl to hell, too?”

  Then she took a seat in the front pew, right where he would have to see her face through the whole sermon.

  RUTH

  Ruth heard the truck pull up before she saw it. Florence. She was here. Hank was at work, and she’d had back-to-back appointments all morning. She hadn’t even had time to sweep up the hair that littered the floor of the kitchen in shiny black and blond curls. But when she saw Frank LaPlante’s truck pull into the park, she threw the door open and went running outside.

  Frank rolled down the window and leaned out. He looked even more weathered than usual: dusty, his hairy greasy.

  “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes, Ruthie!” he said, grinning.

  She couldn’t see Florence behind the glare of the California sun in the windshield. No, no, no. Where was she?

  Her heart stuttered as Frank pulled the truck and trailer farther in, rolling to a stop in the empty space next to Ruth and Hank’s trailer. She was holding her breath as she walked toward the passenger side where, as she blocked the sun, she could, finally, see the little girl sitting on the other side of the glass.