during the night. Probably mice, but it could’ve been rats or foot-long radioactive tarantulas. She peed into a pan that had been left on the stove—the inside was furry. Nauseating, Linda would’ve said. She emptied it down the sink and turned on the tap to rinse the pan. Nothing came out. What a crock. She’d suss out the backyard pump later, under cover of night. The thought of no water until then made her mouth go dry.
How long did it take to die of thirst?
Searching for something to drink, she happened upon the gassy lagoon smell: a bag of oozing potatoes. “Them! Them!” she screamed, like the stunned kid in the movie smelling the giant mutant ants. If Richie were here, he’d be splitting a gut.
She found dishes, oatmeal, crackers, powdered milk and—cowabunga!—cans of baked beans, corn, peas, stewed tomatoes, green beans and Spam. Jimmy hated Spam because that was all the Navy fed them during the war. She rooted around for a can opener and spoon. Sat at the dining-room table’s high-mucky-muck end, spooning baked beans from the can and washing them down with stewed tomatoes. Miranda and Haggerty must’ve eaten by candlelight. Two brass holders with white candles stood on the table, one candle melted down more than the other.
A candlelight meal with Tereza’s father had snookered Ma. She’d met him in a tavern on a sleety January night two days before his Army unit was to go overseas, exactly where he wasn’t allowed to say. He asked her out for supper the next night and she said yes. Not much else to the story, Ma would say whenever Tereza pestered. She didn’t know if he made it back alive. Tereza was frosted Ma hadn’t asked for a picture.
“He gave me you. Who needs a picture?” But two years ago, she brought home a poster of John Derek in Rogues of Sherwood Forest and said, “Your father looked like this except darker.”
Although Tereza couldn’t find a speck of John Derek in her face, she went to all his movies after that. Her favorite was The Adventures of Hajji Baba. He played a lowly barber who rescued a beautiful princess as mouthy as Tereza. “Complaints flow from your lips like water from a spring,” the barber told the princess, or something like that.
She wasn’t finished eating before the beans and last night’s burgers began making her guts hot. She fled up the hallway stairs, not caring who or what might be hiding there. After a false turn, she found the crapper in time but had to wipe herself with her skivvies. She tossed them into the claw-foot tub and pulled her shorts over her bare ass. Forgetting about the water, she tried to flush. Swore. Haggerty’s house was bad news.
In the small scratched mirror over the waste-of-time sink, she looked clown-faced from yesterday’s makeup. Her coarse black hair pointed every which way and she’d sprouted half a dozen new zits. She fingered the lump of bone where her jaw had healed and imagined the shellacking she’d get if she went home now, Ma standing with her back against the wall and her hand on her throat, whimpering, “Oh, Jimmy,” Allen hiding under the bed. Tereza could take the blows. Worse would be looking up at that King Tut expression on his face after he decked her. Ma said Tereza was too stubborn for her own good but sometimes stubborn was all you had.
To the left of the john was a room with nothing in it except a mattress on the floor with dark stains reaching out like bloody fingers. It gave her the shivers. Across from that room was another with a four-poster bed still made up. Against one wall stood an antique desk with a bookcase and four big drawers. The desk and bookcase were locked. She could’ve busted into them easy but Linda would’ve said whoever boarded up the place left everything inside because Miranda was coming back and deserved better than busted stuff.
A bathrobe, workpants and shirt, so worn out she could see Haggerty’s shape in them, hung in a tall, dark sour-smelling wardrobe. On shelves: underwear, snot rags and socks. Wearing a dead geezer’s clothes gave her the creeps but warmth was warmth. The green plaid shirt came below her knees and the maroon bathrobe fell to the floor, its sleeves flopping over her hands like Dopey’s. Something in the pocket bumped her leg: a silver flask etched with a harp. She unscrewed it. Sniffed. Took a swig. It burned her throat in a good way and tasted like smoke.
Lighter and bolder, she heigh-hoed down the hall and came to a room with a rumpled bed and a tall narrow dresser. Off the room was an alcove with a crib and a pail of stiff, moldy diapers. Beside Miranda’s bed—it had to be hers—was a pot of turds. Tereza took another nip from the flask. The heat the house had sucked from her slowly returned.
A door off the alcove led to narrow stairs. Up she climbed, one hand beaming the flashlight, the other on the wall, feeling the way. A long, unfinished room with a small window waited up top, the window not boarded. Bands of sun from it lit up a bunch of crap on the wooden floor—dust balls, shredded insulation, mouse turds. Tereza swiped off a spot by the window with a sleeve of Haggerty’s bathrobe and knelt. She lifted her face to the autumn sun’s stingy warmth then looked down. From this perch Miranda could have eyeballed her and Linda on their way to smoke punks.
She looked for chains. Why Miranda hadn’t escaped bamboozled her. Maybe Haggerty had worshiped the devil. It would be swell if she and Miranda could live here together someday, close to Ma but safe from Jimmy. They’d tear down the plywood and shutters, push the drapes aside and let sun, like melted butter, pour into every room.
2 pm. Had Allen gotten to the movies? Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy was supposed to be on. He loved Abbot and Costello. After Tereza brought Allen back from the movies she’d usually hook up with Richie, Vlad, Vinnie and whoever else was at the White Castle, maybe play ball with them in the empty lot beside Vinnie’s house. It was October now and ball was over. She tipped the flask back.
3:40 pm. Downstairs again, carrying a blanket from Miranda’s room for later. In a closet under the staircase, hard to see in the dim light, she found a gun nearly as tall as her, with a long, skinny nose and a polished wood butt padded in red rubber. She managed to heft its weight and rest the rubber pad against her shoulder. Pretending Jimmy was at the front door, she aimed and said, “Bang, bang, you’re dead.”
6:10 pm. Dark enough to risk stepping outside. She unblocked the door, took the bucket from the sink and dashed to the Ma and Pa Kettle pump in the sharp cold air. The handle squeaked when she lifted it. She pumped hard and fast until water gushed and splashed her feet, lugged the full bucket inside, dipped a cup into it, took a drink and waited to croak or at least double over in agony. When she didn’t, she filled every glass and cup in the house for later. Washed herself with the rest, toted the dirty water up to the bathroom and flushed away the reeking evidence of herself. Then back down the stairs to hurl the oozing potatoes toward the river and refill the bucket.
The booze had worn a hungry hole in her stomach. She opened the green beans and peas and set the cans on the coffee table in Dracula’s room. She lit the candles on the tall holders with wooden matches from a tin box on the mantle. Spectacular! A movie set, with candles as spotlights. In the dim mirror of the picture window, she watched herself eat, then cross the room in that dumbass outfit to check out the records beside the old phonograph. She cranked up the machine and put a record on the turntable. It wobbled slightly as a man sang, “Yes, we have no bananas” like he was in a tunnel. She mugged it up for the spotlights, turning her hand into a megaphone and wah-wahing to the tune through her nose. She pretended Miranda was watching, laughing and saying, “You fracture me, Tez.”
Tez sang and drank from the flask. Before long the room did a dance, her insides swayed and her ears felt full of water. She sat down heavily on the couch and stared at the drunken flickers of candlelight until her head fell onto Buddy’s jacket. She pulled Miranda’s blanket over her and drew her legs up to her chest like the babies in jars at the State Fair last year. Embryos that didn’t make it, Ma had said when Tereza got agitated, not poor little bastards nobody wanted.
• • •
She
