Rust & Stardust Read online

  “My name. I lied.”

  The boy’s hair was tousled, his face and chest red with sun. “Ah, come on, stop yanking my chain.”

  Sally felt herself ascending, rising from the ocean floor. She was dizzy as she surfaced, as the air above filled her lungs. She took a deep breath.

  “My real name’s Sally,” she said.

  He laughed and moved toward her, stealing a kiss on her neck. “Okay, Sally. Or whoever you are.”

  She pushed him away, sat up taller. It mattered who she was. It mattered.

  “Sally Horner.”

  “Sally Horner,” he said, as if he were searching for something he’d lost in the sand.

  Her heart was an anchor again, tugging her under. She shook her head.

  “Wait,” he said. “You said you’re from Camden? Do you know Elizabeth Knightley? She’s my cousin.”

  Bess. Bess Knightley. Tears ran hot down her cheeks. She could taste the salt.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, recognition creeping into his voice.

  He sat up, pulling away from her as if he’d been burned. It was too dark to see his features, but she didn’t have to see his face to know the way recognition sets in. When he realized who she was.

  “I do know you,” he said. “I read all about you in the papers.”

  The world tipped and tilted. The raft she was on began to sink. Her mouth was full of salt water, of sand.

  “Holy cow,” he said, flinging the covers off her, staring at her half-naked body awash in pink light. He scrambled out of bed and ran to the bathroom. The fan clicked on, but she could still hear his body heaving, and so she curled her knees to her chest. Sally had been here before, in a motel room with a man who both loved and despised her all at once. Neon dreams and the distant hum of the highway.

  He came out a moment later as she was getting dressed, gathering her things. She wondered if she’d be able to find Gloria at the bus station.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I drank too much.”

  She nodded, though she knew he was lying to spare her feelings. Mr. Warner was with her; perhaps he would always be with her. She’d carry the memory of him in her skin. He had, somehow, become a part of her.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “If I did, I never would have…”

  She shook her head. The bus was probably long gone, she realized.

  “It’s okay. Can you just take me home?”

  * * *

  She had been here before. Racing along an unknown highway in a car with a man she barely knew. She absently played with the necklace as he shifted into higher gears at the insistence of the revving engine.

  “Sally Horner,” he kept saying again and again.

  Sally stared at the road ahead of her, illuminated by the two weak beams of Eddie’s headlights. Her body hummed and buzzed as the car accelerated.

  “What was it like?” he asked. “I mean, you must have been so scared. You were just a kid.”

  She looked at him, felt herself soften.

  “I’m sorry. I just mean, a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to survive that. You must have been really brave.”

  She was transported back into Ruth’s trailer. You are brave, she’d said. Just like the girl in that novel.

  “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to talk about it. Especially with somebody you hardly know.”

  As Eddie drove, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She could almost smell the shampoo-and-citrus smell of Ruth’s trailer. Feel Ruth’s fingers playing with her curls.

  “What was that?” Eddie said, leaning forward and peering up through the windshield.

  Sally opened her eyes and saw something shooting across the sky. And then it happened again.

  “A shooting star?” he said, looking at her, grinning like a little boy. “Are we supposed to make a wish or something?”

  She touched the brass ring. Suddenly, the sky was streaked with light.

  “I think it’s a meteor shower,” she said. “Perseids.”

  “Wow!” Eddie said again.

  “Pull over,” she said, touching the dash. She wanted nothing more now than to be out of the car. To stand beneath that sky. To hold her arms out. To embrace the night.

  “Here?” he said.

  “Yes! Pull over, so we can watch.”

  Eddie shrugged, then turned the steering wheel sharply, directing the car toward the shoulder. They were going fast, and the tires spit gravel behind them. Hurtling like a locomotive down the shoulder, Eddie stepped on the brakes and the tires squealed.

  Sally kept peering at the heavens, thrilling as three more meteors shot across the sky. It looked like fireworks. Like the Fourth of July.

  “Shit!” Eddie said, jerking the wheel again, but Sally was spellbound.

  “Sally,” he said, and she finally looked away.

  The truck was parked on the side of the road, barely illuminated by the low beams of their headlights. Her heart stilled at the understanding, but she was no longer afraid. You are brave. And she looked back up. Because she knew now that all of the answers to all of her questions resided in that luminous sky.

  Camden, New Jersey

  August 1952

  VIVI

  After the funeral, inside the Horners’ musty living room, the girls stood in a huddled circle around the platters of deli meats and whispered. Only Vivi stood outside the circle. Had she once been one of them? One of these gossiping girls, these vicious little magpies? She felt sick as she watched their heads bent together, heard their cackling chatter.

  “They’d been drinking, I heard,” one said. “At some cheap motel in Wildwood. She didn’t even know him. Can you imagine?”

  “Was he really your cousin, Bess?” another said. “I heard they took him off to jail but they set him loose after he sobered up. Think they’ll press charges?”

  “I heard her sister’s husband had to go identify her, but the accident was so bad, the only way he knew it was her was from a scar she had on her leg.”

  Vivi thought then of the scar fading in her own flesh, the slivered line from those blades. They didn’t know, of course. There was no way for them to understand what they were about to set into motion that day they took Sally to the Woolworth’s: the inevitable and irrevocable consequences of their quiet cruelty. They were just kids, just girls then. They didn’t understand that a single act of careless unkindness would have repercussions long after poor Sally tagged behind them as they giggled and whispered secrets they would later be unable to remember. Though for all these years, Vivi could still recall the sound of her loafers scuffing along the pavement behind them: Wait! Wait up! They were too young to know that they were somehow, in that moment, both powerful and powerless. That this is the blessing and the curse of being a girl in the world. The girls. What had become of them while Sally was away? Irene, of course, was buried next to her father now. Bess and Vivi barely spoke to one another anymore. In the years that had passed, whatever bond they’d all forged with blades and blood had weakened. The certainty they’d once had that their friendships would prevail seemed silly now. Childish. Sally herself was proof, wasn’t she? And Irene, too. That the world would always conspire against girls? Wasn’t all of this evidence that no matter what sort of allegiances were promised, what sort of pledges made, in the end they were all on their own? Alone?

  Vivi went to find Sally’s mother. Mrs. Horner was now sitting in a chair by the front window in the parlor, a blanket spread across her lap, a paper plate loaded with tiny sandwiches and baby gherkin pickles balancing on her knees. A teacup filled with red punch sat on the table next to her.

  “Mrs. Horner?”

  Ella didn’t turn from the window. She seemed to be studying the garden growing out there, the fleshy dahlias and bloodred poppies.

  “It was a lovely service,” Vivi said, and watched her hand as it reached out and touched the woman’s arm.

  Purple asters and sunny daylilies.

  “
He sent flowers,” Ella said.

  “Excuse me?” Vivi said, and sat down in the chair across from her. She continued to hold on to Mrs. Horner’s thin arm.

  “That man. He sent a spray of flowers for Sally.”

  “The boy from Wildwood? The one who was driving?” Vivi asked.

  Ella shook her head.

  “Red roses,” she said. “Can you imagine? Like it was Valentine’s Day.”

  Vivi realized that she must have meant Frank La Salle.

  “I told Al to throw them away,” Mrs. Horner said, and Vivi nodded, her mouth twitching. Ella looked at her then for the first time, and it was as though she were looking for something. Someone in Vivi’s face. Was she looking for Sally, for her lost daughter?

  “There were almost three hundred people,” Vivi said. “That called at the funeral home last night. Someone counted.”

  “Three hundred people?” Ella’s voice was so filled with want, with longing, that Vivi had to bite her cheek so she wouldn’t cry.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vivi said, offering the only thing she had left to give. “She was truly loved.”

  SUSAN AND AL

  That night, after the funeral, Susan put Dee to bed and crawled in next to Al. She laid her head against his shoulder, that solid wonderful shoulder, and cried. She cried until her chest ached and she felt empty. He stroked her hair and knew somehow not to offer her any words.

  “Thank you, Al,” she said. “For bringing her home to us.”

  Al nodded, though he couldn’t help but feel the same way he’d felt after he delivered those empty boots to Bobby Lee Langston’s mother. When he walked away, leaving her with the last effects of her child.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  But Susan shook her head.

  “I love you, Al. And she loved you, too. Sally did.”

  “Mama?” Dee stood at the foot of their bed, rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists. The sight of her there, the moon glow from outside illuminating her, was almost too much to bear. She was luminous. Like an angel. And for a single moment, Al and Susan both felt an odd calm wash over them.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Susan asked, her voice breaking.

  “I had a bad dream,” Dee said.

  “Well, we can’t be having that now, can we?” Al said, sitting up and motioning for Dee to come to them. He hoisted her up and she crawled under the covers between them. Her body was warm, as if she carried the moonlight in her flesh.

  “Shh,” Susan said as she stroked Dee’s hair out of her eyes. “You’re safe here. Go to sleep. Both of you, get some sleep.”

  Only Al knew that he wouldn’t sleep right away. His heart was broken, but it was also unbearably full of gratitude and love.

  ELLA

  She’s in a better place. She’s with the angels now. She’s at peace. All these offerings were meant to comfort her, to ease her mind. Ella didn’t begrudge her neighbors these meager, empty platitudes. But what did they know of heaven? What did anyone know of where her child had gone? Her husband?

  For months after Russell’s suicide, Ella had agonized over where his soul had flown to when it rose from those tracks. She conjured the stories from her own childhood religious education: of the odd in-between of purgatory, a listless limbo. She hadn’t dared seek counsel from Reverend Bailey, who would have her believe that Russell now resided in some fiery corner of hell.

  Reverend Bailey hadn’t known (couldn’t know) about the sweet notes, that lovely melody that accompanied most of their days together. He hadn’t felt the bristly scruff of Russell’s cheek as he pressed it to hers, hadn’t heard the sweet soft crooning of “Summertime” in her ear. He hadn’t watched Russell as he hoisted Sally up onto his shoulders and took Susan by the hand as if they were his own children at the waterfront park when the Fourth of July fireworks burst above them and the crackling speakers played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He hadn’t seen the way Russell held on to Sally’s fat little ankle at the side of his head while he pointed to that sky with his other hand. He hadn’t seen the way the explosion of colors reflected in all of their eyes. Her children, her husband sharing in this small miracle.

  “It’s so pretty!” Sally had squealed, delighted. “It looks like colored stars!”

  There would be no way to explain to Reverend Bailey that Russell was not a reprobate but a saint. That, if only for a brief period of time, he had brought her joy. That he might have been troubled, but that he loved her. Loved her girls. That sometimes, life was simply too much to bear. Both its pain and its beauty.

  And so that night after everyone had left, she was certain, as certain as she had been of anything in her life, that Sally and he were together now—perhaps if not in heaven, then in the heavens. Among those luminous stars.

  LENA

  “Look, Lena! Look, a goddamned shooting star!” Oscar hollered, jumping and gesturing to the wide Texas sky.

  Lena, sitting in a lawn chair outside the trailer, unhitched again at the Good Luck that August night, studied the constellations, and thought about that girl, Florence. Sally. Was it just three summers ago they’d sat here together under this same sky?

  She’d read the papers, heard the rumors confirming all those terrible things she’d once suspected. Her heart had broken at least a half-dozen times thinking that she should have taken her with them when they fled to Texarkana that night.

  Sally’s dog still lived here, at the park. Taken in by one of the migrant workers’ wives who fed him a steady diet of black beans and rice like he was one of her babies instead of a dog. Her husband wouldn’t let him sleep in the trailer, though, so Tex roamed about the park now, looking for affection wherever he could find it. Tonight he sat in Lena’s lap and she stroked the soft fur behind his ears.

  Maisy, in torn fishnet stockings, was crab-walking across the dirt lot. She peered through her legs at Lena and winked.

  Oscar put his hand across his chest as if in reverence to all that beauty above them.

  “It’s luminous,” Lena said, smiling. “Make a wish.”

  SISTER MARY KATHERINE

  In Baltimore, the news of Florence’s death brought Sister Mary Katherine to her knees: first in grief and then in prayer.

  Of course, by then it had become her mission to save girls like Florence, like Sally, the ones with secrets written in their crumpled clothes and sad eyes. She became an expert in the art of detecting sorrow. She also learned that the way to protect those poor lambs was not by whispering her suspicions to whatever priest sat on the other side of the latticed confessional wall.

  At first she made her anonymous calls to the parents themselves, and finally, she’d go straight to the social workers and police officers herself. Her life was threatened more than once, by angry fathers usually waving fists and once, a pistol, but she never ever felt again the profound sense of failure she felt about Florence Fogg, the brume of shame and fear lifted.

  Her true calling, if not God, was this.

  And Sally Horner was that bright shining star who led her there.

  RUTH

  The letter had arrived that afternoon. It bore the tragic news, of course, but it also offered this:

  Dearest Mrs. Janish, Thank you, Ella Horner wrote. For taking care of my daughter all that time. You were like a mother to her.

  The new baby was coming soon, only two years after her daughter was born. It was August, too hot to sleep; she hadn’t slept well in nearly a week. Most nights lately she tossed and turned as Hank snored softly and the baby moved quietly inside her. But tonight, heart aching, she rose. She pulled out the black-and-white composition book she’d salvaged from Frank’s trailer and stroked the cover, as soft as a child’s curls. She took the notebook, the one she hadn’t touched since the police took Florence away, Sally away, and forced herself to read her story, the pages marked with a tattered red ribbon.

  When she was done, she quietly made her way outside. Funny thing. California, Washington, Idaho. It didn’t
matter where they went, the stars followed. A map of the universe spread out before her.

  Tonight, as she studied the constellations, she thought of Sally, and wondered what happens after a star dies. Does the light just fade away? She hoped not. What she wished for, under that reliable sky, was that it was a brilliant explosion.

  A detonation first, and then all that beautiful brightness would shatter and scatter across the heavens into so much luminous stardust.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the summer of 1948, when Sally Horner’s name was in the headlines of newspapers all across the country, Vladimir Nabokov was struggling to write Lolita, the book he called his “little time bomb.” Ticking, ticking. Something about it must have troubled him, though he had never been afraid of detonation before. Of the spark and its consequences. Still, on three separate occasions he purportedly tried to burn his notes, stopped by his wife and collaborator, Vera.

  I imagine them on that early August morning in Ithaca, Nabokov feeding his notes into the garden incinerator in the backyard while Vera, oblivious, worked inside the cavernous and drafty rental house. I picture her sitting at the desk, where he dictated and she transcribed his dreams. Perhaps next to her was a stack of newspapers—the ones they’d gathered for research, filled with stories that served as fodder for the debauched Humbert Humbert. Was it the girl that troubled him? Was it Lolita, as elusive as the winged nymphs he hunted?

  And then, one of life’s little serendipities:

  Florence “Sally” Horner. Eleven years old.

  I wonder, when she read the headline and studied the photo beneath it, if her heart had fluttered restless in her chest, like the tiger swallowtails that darted about in their garden. That flittering girl in her white dress, alight on a swing. Perhaps she studied the girl’s face, the bright wonder of her eyes, the way her hair caught the sunlight. I envision Vera running outside to Vladimir feeding that dangerous little book to the flames, waving the newspaper at him. I found her. Volodya, stop! I found Lo.