and ‘scraped by’ on his ‘ma’s meager charity.’ I had an inkling he was smarter than he let on. During the war he did his bit patrolling the neighborhood. After that, he kept to himself.” He slowly shook his head. “How long ago that was. To think a little girl was in there all that time.”
He’d never spoken to Linda so confidentially. The regret in his voice emboldened her to confess in a quiet voice, “I used to call him Crazy Haggerty.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“You said he had strange stuff in his pockets when he died on the train.”
“Did I? Why are you so interested in Mr. Haggerty?”
“I want to know, that’s all.”
“Well, kiddo, there are some things we’re just not meant to know.”
• • •
Linda’s twelfth birthday and Mother was still in the hospital. Daddy said he’d take care of dinner and the three of them would celebrate later that night at the hospital, wouldn’t that be fun? But Daddy didn’t know how to make Baked Alaska. Linda considered trying it on her own but the effort it took on Mother’s part was what she liked best.
“Forget housework,” Daddy said at breakfast. “Spend the day with your little friend.”
Tereza showed up at The Island wearing dungarees that didn’t fit. “Somebody gave ’em to Allen but they ain’t his size.”
“They’re too big in the waist for you.”
“Yeah, and they cut into my crotch. I feel sorry for guys. Ever seen a dick?”
“A what?”
“A penis. A guy’s pee-pee.”
Linda’s face got hot. “I don’t think so.”
“Some are stubby like punks. Others are kinda worm-like.”
“How many have you seen?”
“Well, my brother’s, natch, but that don’t count. Let’s see. . . .” She added on her fingers: “Richie, Vinnie, Paul, Vlad”—the greasy-haired boys who blocked the sidewalk and said “all that meat and no potatoes” whenever Linda tried to walk by.
“They smoke cigs,” Tereza said, “and let me take drags if I kiss ’em.”
Linda was horrified. “Kiss their penises?”
“No, genius, their mouths.”
“Can you taste what they’ve been eating?”
“Natch.”
“How nauseating.” Nauseating was Linda’s favorite new word but Daddy wouldn’t allow her to say it at the dinner table. “Don’t your folks mind you going with them?”
“They don’t ask and I don’t tell.”
Linda didn’t want to hear any more about the greasy-haired boys. She suggested they play Swiss Family Robinson. Tereza said she wasn’t going to pretend anymore until she became a Broadway or Hollywood star. Linda didn’t mention it was her birthday. She didn’t want Tereza to play with her out of pity. She went home and looked up penis in Webster’s Unabridged and then the words in the definition she didn’t understand. Eventually she got to “intercourse” and “impregnate” and began to think about Miranda and Crazy Haggerty.
It made her stomach hurt.
She paged through medical books in the house she’d had no interest in before, searching for the rules of intercourse—reassurance that what happened to Miranda was out of the ordinary, something she didn’t have to fear. From Mother’s bottom bureau drawer she retrieved a booklet called Growing Up and Liking It. Each girl in her class had gone home with it earlier that year along with a sanitary napkin, a belt and instructions from the school nurse to discuss it with their mothers. Mother had said, “We won’t need this for at least another year.” The booklet was silent on intercourse. Maybe the child wasn’t Crazy Haggerty’s. Maybe he’d kept Miranda inside because she was like Tereza, wandering off whenever she wanted, kissing boys and looking at their penises.
Daddy brought home a pizza and let Linda have as much as she wanted. At the hospital, Mother held out her arms and said, “Here’s my birthday girl” but she didn’t look in a party mood. Leaning over to hug her, Linda caught a hint of talcum.
“We were together twelve years ago in this very hospital,” Mother said in a way that made Linda sad. “The windows were blacked out because of the war.”
Daddy patted Mother’s hand. “I remember.” Then to Linda, “Here you go, kiddo, open your present.” He’d brought it in a shopping bag. “Madge wrapped it.” Madge Bryson was Daddy’s secretary. She had heavily rouged cheeks and a smile that made you feel special. She’d used pink paper sprinkled with black polka dots for Linda’s present. Underneath the paper: a Brownie Hawkeye camera with flash attachment and bulbs.
Linda had asked for a portable radio.
“It’s all loaded up, ready to go,” Daddy said.
Linda made a show of looking through the instruction manual. “It’s swell.”
Mother said, “Don’t take my picture, I look a fright.” Linda hadn’t intended to.
Madge had sent along three cupcakes with chocolate icing, paper plates, napkins, plastic forks and three candles. Daddy set the plates and cupcakes on Mother’s dinner tray, placed the tray on the bed and lit the candles. He and Mother sang Happy Birthday in a whisper so they wouldn’t disturb the other sick people. Linda forced herself to think about all the orphans in the world with nobody to sing to them. She thought about Miranda.
“My cupcake is dry,” Mother said.
Daddy laughed and said, “It would be, wouldn’t it?” He pulled up the only chair beside Mother’s bed, sat and patted his knee for Linda. She pictured his boxer shorts holding something worm-like and said, “I think I’ll go down to the maternity ward and look at the babies.”
Summer 1955
October 28, 1955
The moon was out by the time Chevy Man dumped Tereza back at Tony’s Garage on Route 1 and Grove, a block from her apartment building. She hustled down the sidewalk, pimply cold in tight white shorts and a pink sweater. She was too busy cooking up the story she’d give Ma and Jimmy to notice Linda on her stoop across the street. Linda called out to her but Tereza didn’t slow down.
Linda stumbled after her. “Hey, Wait up!”
“Beat it!” Tereza hurled the words over her shoulder. Miss Goody Two-Shoes probably wanted to brag about having her weekend homework done already. Tereza should’ve been in eighth grade, not seventh with Linda, but she’d missed too much. Whenever a school snooped into her injuries, Jimmy would find different work and they’d move.
“What
