Rust & Stardust Page 6

  Ella picked up each postcard again, looking for something, anything to hold on to, to make sense of why this Peterson family had taken Sally on like she was some sort of orphan. When the phone rang, she felt the stone in her throat become dislodged, plummeting to her stomach like that diving bell Sally wrote about.

  “I got it, Mama,” Susan said, and went to the front hall where the phone was.

  She could hear Susan talking softly in the foyer. It must be Al, Ella figured. Calling to find out when he should come pick her up. He had some business in Camden to attend to, said he’d come by afterward and join them for lunch. Ella had made deviled ham. Susan and Sally both liked deviled ham sandwiches on white bread, a little bit of yellow mustard and some pickles.

  “Mama?” Susan said, leaning into the doorway, eyes wide. “It’s Sally on the phone.”

  Sally. Thank God. See? All of this had been silly. Sally was fine, fine. Probably calling to say exactly when she was coming home.

  Forgetting her hips, her shoulders, her hands, she lurched out of her seat and, wincing, made her way to the hall where she grabbed the heavy black receiver out of Susan’s hands.

  “Sally?”

  “Yes, Mama,” she said. “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Still at the shore, Mama.”

  “Listen up, Sally,” Ella said, her voice trembling even as she willed it still. “I want you to come home now. You need to tell that Mr. Peterson your mama needs you back home. He can put you on a bus if he insists on staying. What kind of man can be out of work for near to a month anyway?”

  Sally was quiet on the other end of the line.

  “You still there, Sally?”

  “I’ll tell him, Mama, but I think he said something about maybe staying another week?”

  “Sally Horner, listen here. I don’t know who this man is and why he thinks I would ever agree to this. You have obligations at home. Your sister’s havin’ her baby soon, and I don’t like the idea of that man spending his money on you for all this time. You’re not some charity case.” Ella felt like the dam had broken, the river of all of her worries rushing forth.

  “He’s very nice, Mama. And I’ll be home real soon.”

  “Is he there? Can I speak to him? How would he like if somebody was keepin’ his own daughter?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line, and Ella worried they’d been disconnected. But then she heard Sally sob.

  “I miss you so much, Mama,” she cried.

  “Well, I miss you, too, Sally,” she said, forgetting her anger and frustration for a moment. “What hotel are you staying at? Al called the place you told me, but they said you weren’t there. Tell me where you are, and I can ask Al to drive me there. We can come get you and bring you home.”

  “It’s not a hotel, Mama,” she said. “It’s a rooming house.”

  All of a sudden, there was the sound of rustling at the end of the line, and she could hear Sally crying and the gruff sound of a man’s voice. Ella pressed the phone hard to her ear, as if this might help her decipher whatever was going on at the other end of the line. But soon there was nothing but the raspy sound of someone breathing.

  “Mr. Peterson?” she said. “This is Mrs. Ella Horner, Sally’s mother…”

  There was a loud clank and a buzzing dial tone.

  Ella looked to Susan, who cradled her belly with one hand and clutched the door frame with the other.

  “What’s the matter, Mama?” she said, and Ella felt her knees go soft, the rigid cage of bone turning liquid.

  “Something’s not right,” she said.

  SALLY

  “You’re in some trouble now,” Mr. Warner said, and yanked Sally’s arm harder than he had at the Woolworth’s. He’d been standing next to her at the pay phone at the corner, hovering over her just as he had the other time she’d called her mother. She hadn’t meant to tell her they weren’t staying at that hotel, but her mother had sounded so worried, so upset.

  “I thought you were a good girl, Sally,” he said as he marched her back to the rooming house around the corner.

  “I am,” she cried. “I just miss my mama. My sister.”

  “I imagine your daddy’s to blame. Maybe if you’d had some proper discipline at home you wouldn’t be so damned disobedient. Didn’t your daddy ever give you the belt?”

  Sally flashed on her stepfather. He could never stay angry long. One time when she was little, she’d broken his reading glasses when she was playing with them. She’d been pretending to be him: reading the newspaper, wearing his slippers, one of his unlit cigars sticking out of the corner of her mouth. He’d yelled at her, of course, told her those glasses cost nearly a whole week’s pay. But when she’d started to cry, the anger had slipped out of his eyes, and he’d motioned for her to come to him. He’d scooped her up into his arms, kissed the top of her head, said it wasn’t anything a paper clip or a piece of tape couldn’t fix.

  “I don’t know my real daddy. He left when I was a baby. And my other daddy’s dead. Killed by a train,” she said angrily, as if it were his fault.

  He shook his head, huffed. “Here I was all ready to stand up and plead your case to the judge. Court date was set for tomorrow, and then you gone and done this.”

  “Tomorrow?” She was going to see the judge tomorrow? Weeping, she pleaded, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to say nothin’.”

  Inside the rooming house, the sour smells of cabbage and vinegar still coming from the kitchen at the back of the house made her eyes sting. Mrs. Krauss was in the kitchen, occupied with cleaning up after dinner. Mr. Warner practically pushed Sally up the stairs. Could she run to Mrs. Krauss? Cling to her faded housedress, lean into her voluminous waist? What would Mrs. Krauss do if she told her that upstairs, inside that small and dusty room, Mr. Warner kept her tied like a dog? Would she call the police? But Mr. Warner was the law. He’d told her again and again that either she did what he said or she was going to jail. She’d broken the law, and now she was his prisoner, this room her makeshift cell.

  Inside the room, Mr. Warner shut the door and locked it.

  “Sir?” she said.

  In the darkness, she could practically hear her heart beating, and then he disappeared behind the curtain. She heard him open the dresser drawer, the metallic rattle of something inside.

  “You and me had an agreement,” he said, and she could see his dim outline on the other side of the sheet. “You were to play along. I gone out on a limb for you and this is how you repay me? You were not to tell your mother where we were.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to say anything. It was an accident.”

  “I’ve been like a father to you, and this is what you go and do.”

  “No, no, no,” she whispered, and then startled as he yanked the curtain separating the beds down, a thumbtack glancing off her arm, and she realized what the sound in the drawer had been.

  Click, click. Her body stiffened as she felt the cold metal muzzle of the gun at her neck.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she said, trembling.

  “Shut up. Don’t you see? You’ve ruined everything. What am I supposed to do now?”

  She shook her head. What was he talking about?

  He backed away from her and paced back and forth, looking out the window at the street below.

  “Well, we can’t stay here anymore,” he muttered.

  A tiny flicker of hope sparked in her chest. Maybe he’d take her back to Camden. There must be a judge in Camden that she could talk to.

  “Can I go home?” she asked, but he charged at her, still holding the gun, and used his free hand to cover her mouth. She could taste the salt of his skin.

  “I said, shut up. I need to think.”

  She stifled a cry, and he backed away.

  He coughed, and it sounded like a crackling fire in his chest. He looked out the window. “You ever been to Baltimore, Sally?”

  She shook her head,
which still pounded and ached. She tried to sit up but felt dizzy.

  “I’m going to call my people in Baltimore,” he said. He coughed again as he ran his hand over and over his head.

  “Baltimore?”

  He nodded, distracted. Then he turned to her. “Yeah. FBI’s got offices there, too. I’ll see if we can go to the courts there.”

  “Sir?” she asked. “Where’s Baltimore?”

  “Baltimore’s in Maryland,” he said. “Don’t they teach you nothing in school?”

  “Only the capitals,” she said. Annapolis was the capital of Maryland. She didn’t know where Baltimore was.

  “I gotta go make a call. If you so much as move an inch, I’ll use this gun for what it was intended to do,” he said. He moved toward the valise where he kept the rope. “Understand?”

  Tears slipped down either side of her face and she nodded.

  There was a knock at their door.

  “Not a word,” he said to her. He shoved the gun in his pants and went to the door. He stepped into the hall, leaving the door open just a crack.

  “Everything okay in here?” Mrs. Krauss’s voice said.

  “Everything’s fine,” Mr. Warner said.

  “Someone said they heard your girl crying.”

  “Florence is a little under the weather. She gets headaches,” he said. “I’m just headed out to get her some aspirin. I told her to try to get some sleep.”

  He closed the door behind him, and their voices were muffled in the hallway. Then she heard the stairs creaking beneath their feet.

  Mr. Warner never left her alone in the room without tying her up; she was free! As soon as she heard the sound of the front door slamming shut, she scrambled out of the bed, ran to the door, and grabbed the doorknob. And, miraculously, it turned in her hand. He hadn’t locked the door from the outside, either!

  She ran to the window and could see him walking down the street below. She sat on the bed and tried to think. Her head was pounding in time with her heart. He’d told her before that if she tried to escape, she’d be a fugitive. The law would find her. But maybe then, at least, she’d finally get to see a judge. She just knew if she could explain, about the girls, about how sorry she was, the judge would have to listen. She was a good girl. She’d never been in trouble before, and she would never do anything like this again.

  She tried the door one more time to make sure she hadn’t imagined it, then ran back to the window. She could see Mr. Warner huddled in the pay phone booth at the corner. She hurried to the bureau and found a notepad, quickly tore off a sheet, and scrawled a note to her mother. She reached for an envelope and stuffed it inside, pilfering a stamp from the roll Mr. Warner kept and licking it, then addressed the envelope. Mrs. Krauss had a basket for outgoing mail in the foyer. She just needed to get the letter downstairs without Mr. Warner seeing her. She looked out the window again. He was still at the pay phone.

  Quickly, she opened the door and slipped into the hallway. She took the stairs two at a time, clutching the bannister so she wouldn’t fall. She could hear Mrs. Krauss in the kitchen. She quickly dropped the letter in the basket by the door, facedown, so he wouldn’t see, and then she turned and ran all the way back up the stairs. She opened the door to their room and shut it quickly behind her, her heart beating in her ears. Deafening. Then she heard the front door open and the stairs complaining under Mr. Warner’s feet.

  She leapt into the bed, trying hard to slow her breath. Would he know she’d escaped? Would he get out the gun again?

  When the door swung open, her blood pounded in her temples.

  He came straight to where she lay in the bed. She imagined herself turning to stone, and she wondered if that was where the word “petrified” came from. When she felt his hand touch her back, she stiffened and had to will herself not to cry.

  He stopped. But she felt his body coming close to hers. She closed her eyes so tightly they burned. And his breath was hot in her ear. “I’m sorry, Sally. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “My mama’s gonna worry,” she whispered, “if you take me away.”

  He touched her face, and her body stiffened. “Don’t worry about your mama, Sally. They’ll forget about you soon. It’ll be like you never was.”

  VIVI

  It might have been true, for those other girls at least, Vivi thought. Bess and Irene and the others. After that last school bell rang, Sally probably slipped from their memories like smoke from the end of a stolen cigarette. Vivi, however, did not forget Sally or what they had done to her that afternoon. The way they’d left her at the Woolworth’s, clutching that stupid notebook beneath her sweater. How they’d abandoned her weighed on her conscience, her guilt like a sliver, burrowing deep in the tender skin of her palm. It was always there, just under the surface of things, failing to work itself out. She became inflamed by it, flesh reddened and hot with a sort of infection.

  One Sunday in July, she knelt in the dusty confessional at St. Luke’s and told Father McFarland about that afternoon at the five-and-dime. But instead of counsel, he simply dealt her penance (three Hail Marys and a Lord’s Prayer), as if she’d only confessed to disrespecting her mother. Though, as she recited her prayers, kneeling on the cold hard pew kneeler, she didn’t feel exonerated. She only felt like she’d just gotten away with something terrible. She knew she needed not just God’s forgiveness but Sally’s as well.

  And so on Monday morning, she walked all the way to Sally’s house on Linden Street. She thought to apologize and offer to buy Sally an ice cream, maybe even go back to the Woolworth’s to sit at the counter where they’d ignored her when she needed them the most. She had three weeks’ allowance in her pocket, plus a quarter she’d gotten for her birthday.

  When she knocked on Sally’s door, she hoped it would be Sally who’d answer. If Sally had told Mrs. Horner what the girls had done, what they had made Sally do, Vivi had no idea what wrath she might face. Her own mother might answer the door to a girl like her with a wooden spoon in hand. She was frightened when Sally’s mother opened the door.

  “Mrs. Horner?” she said. “I was wondering if Sally was home.”

  The woman’s face looked pinched, as though she’d just bitten into a lemon.

  “Sally ain’t home yet,” Mrs. Horner said. “She’s gone to the shore with a friend.”

  “Oh,” Vivi said, relief as hot as molten wax in her veins. “When’s she coming home?”

  The woman seemed to catch her breath, and Vivi watched as her hands clutched at her skirt.

  “Who should I say came callin’?” she asked.

  “My name’s Vivian, ma’am. But I go by Vivi. Vivi Peterson.”

  The woman, whose face was already the color of paper, grew even paler. Nearly blue. And she clutched her hand to her chest.

  “She’s with you?” she asked, stepping out onto the porch and peering over Vivi’s shoulder. She breathed a series of quick shallow breaths as she grabbed onto Vivi’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry?” Vivi asked.

  Mrs. Horner came out all the way onto the porch, wincing as she made her way down the steps, taking each one like a much older woman.

  “Where’s Sally?” she asked, staring down the street.

  Vivi thought of her grandmother, the way she sometimes got confused, asked for her even as she was standing right there.

  Vivi shook her head. “Mrs. Horner? I don’t know where Sally is. I just came to see if she might like to go to the Woolworth’s and get an ice cream.”

  Mrs. Horner was standing on the sidewalk now.

  “She ain’t with you? You and your daddy?”

  Vivi shook her head now, terrified, as she watched the woman’s legs buckle. It was like watching a house of cards fall over. Right there in the middle of the sidewalk. What should she do?

  Mrs. Horner was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, legs splayed out in front of her, and Vivi felt even sadder and more frightened than she had ever been.

  Tha
nkfully, the mailman had just turned the corner and was headed up Linden Street. When he saw the woman, collapsed on the ground like a broken toy, he dropped his mailbag to go help her up as Vivi stood paralyzed.

  “I gotta go home,” Vivi said, rushing past them both. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  At home later, she would take the rosary beads she’d gotten for her first communion, and clutch them in her hands, reciting the prayers again and again, until her tongue felt numb with them, until her fingers ached, the sharp crucifix digging into the soft skin of her palm.

  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  ELLA

  “Mrs. Horner? Are you okay? Here, let me help you up,” Fred Hummer, the mailman said, offering Ella his hand. He helped pull her to her feet and walked her slowly back to her house. “Are you okay? Maybe I should call a doctor for you?”

  Ella shook her head, disoriented and dizzy. Vivi Peterson?

  “Here,” he said. “Lean on me.” He helped her up the stairs and held the screen door open as she made her way to the kitchen. Inside, the lights were too bright. Everything smelled of bleach; the scent of it made her think of Russell. Dear God, Russell. How could he leave her alone? Raising two girls all by herself? If he were here, he’d know what to do. He’d have gone and brought Sally home weeks ago.

  “Thank you,” she managed, before going to the sink and turning the faucet on.

  “You sure I can’t get somebody on the phone for you? You look like you seen a ghost.”

  Ella threw her aching shoulders back and turned to him, felt the corners of her mouth rise involuntarily. Like the hinged jaw of Charlie McCarthy. Her voice, too, seemed to come from outside herself, a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  “I’m fine, Fred. Just a little light-headed. It’s this heat, you know.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” he said, and hoisted his mailbag up over his shoulder, making to go, but then stopped. “Oh applesauce, I almost forgot. I got a letter here for you. From your little girl.”

  Ella felt her world upending again. Somehow she made her way through a sea of stars to the kitchen chair while Fred riffled through his sack.