The Missing Girl Page 3

  “You’re the best,” he tells them. “Chow down. Enjoy yourselves.” He pets them briefly.

  Now it’s his turn. He toasts bread, boils an egg, makes coffee. Harold is grooming himself, licking his paws. Violet has stretched out in a small patch of sunlight on the floor. “You know how to live,” he tells her, although secretly he approves more of Harold, who is so particular about his personal hygiene.

  Both these cats are good, though, unlike the others. They don’t jump up in his lap without an invitation. They don’t claw the furniture or yowl at night. He had to go through a great deal of effort, a lot of cats, to get these two excellent ones. A lot of Violets and Harolds, some buried in the previous backyard, some in this backyard.

  “How many do you think?” he asks Harold. Violet is sleeping. “Eight? Ten?” He’s forgotten the exact number. Fortunately, there are always more cats in the world. And nobody could deny that it’s satisfying to bury something and thus enrich the soil. The proof of it is the stand of tall, golden Jerusalem artichokes, which grow so wonderfully over the Violets and Harolds. The flowers are beautiful and, should he so desire, he could dig up the roots and eat them. Nature is a wonderful thing.

  CABBAGE HEAD

  WHEN BEAUTY ENTERED seventh grade, everything changed for her. She had newly grown breasts, new classmates from all over the city, and all new teachers and classes, but the teacher who captivated her was Mr. Giametti. Paul Giametti, fresh out of college and passionate about teaching these bored Mallory kids. Almost the first thing he said to Beauty’s language arts class on the first Friday of the first week was this: “You people, listen up. If I do nothing else this term, I’m going to teach you all to love poetry and dig metaphors.”

  He was tall and skinny and blond and funny looking, and Beauty fell in love with him at once. Therefore, she fell in love with poetry and metaphors, even before she loved them for themselves. She straightened out of her C-shouldered slump, wowed that Mr. Giametti didn’t seem the least bit put off by the groans, the shuffling feet, the loud yawns from the back-of-the-room boys. He stood in front of his desk and, with a little smile, slowly—so they’d get every word—recited, and then wrote on the blackboard, the first poem of the semester.

  music

  is a naked lady

  running mad

  through the pure night

  No capital letter on the first word. No period at the end. And those words, naked lady. Those words, spoken out loud, written for them to stare at, as if they were ordinary, everyday Mallory words. Naked lady. The boys hooted and snorted, the girls giggled nervously. A small subset tried to look uplifted and thoughtful, Beauty among them. Almost no one paid attention as Mr. Giametti explained why this sentence was both a poem and a metaphor.

  Later Beauty pulled the words back up into her mind. She replayed them and took them in like a secret invitation to a strange land. The land of poetry, a place not many people wanted to go, certainly not at first. Friday after Friday, Mr. Giametti stubbornly trolled for the class’s attention with funny poems and easy poems and more poems with naked lady kind of words. Some parents objected, and by the end of that school year, Mr. Giametti was gone. Beauty mourned his leaving, because all that year, that awful, hideous, painful year, Fridays were what she lived for, waited for, longed for. She was in love with Mr. Giametti, of course, but it was also the shock and surprise and delight of the poems he stubbornly continued to recite to her class. To her, she thought, and let herself get lost in the words he brought to them.

  Four years later Beauty still remembers some of those poems, especially one called “postcard from cape cod,” made up by a woman named Linda Pastan, someone who wrote a lot of poems. Beauty had Googled her on the computer in the library, and she dreamed that someday she’d meet Linda Pastan—not in Mallory, that was for sure—maybe in Chicago, or New York City, which she planned to visit. She imagined her as very kind with long, beautiful gray hair. They would be at some sort of party, and they’d be holding glasses of, yes, wine, and they’d talk.

  Beauty: I love your postcard poem, and I know it by heart.

  Linda Pastan: Really?

  Beauty: Yes. I think it’s beautiful. It always makes me happy to think about it.

  Linda Pastan: Would you like to say it for me?

  Beauty: “just now I saw

  one yellow

  butterfly

  migrating

  across buzzard’s bay

  how brave I thought

  or foolish

  like sending

  a poem

  across months

  of silence

  and on such

  delicate

  wings.”

  That’s the good fantasy and the good memory. The bad memory, unfortunately not a fantasy, is the note she found in her locker later that Friday, after Mr. Giametti read them the naked lady poem.

  beauty h

  is an old cabbage

  boiling mad

  on the pure stove

  No capital letters. No periods. And funny. Wasn’t it funny? She had wanted to be amused by this, wanted to believe that the heat in her face was only suppressed laughter. Wanted to believe the boiling mad part really pleased her. After all, her reputation—as she knew only too well—was not just homely and wrong named, but prissy. Wussy. But, look, here was someone who saw her as feisty enough to be boiling mad.

  “Great!” she heard herself say, and turned over the paper to see a drawing of a girl with a huge head that closely resembled a cabbage. The letters B. H. were encased in a balloon floating nearby and, in the unlikely event that she didn’t get it, an arrow from the letters pointed to the drawing.

  Kids tramped by. Someone said, “Hi, Beauty.” She answered automatically, fixed a smile on her face. Cabbage head, that’s me.

  The misery of that year had simmered down, but Beauty believed the sting of the memories, the humiliation, would never truly leave her until she left Mallory and changed her life, changed every bit of it, starting with her name. No more Beauty. She would become a Karen or possibly Heather or Kristy.

  If she had a regular name like that now, she would be the kind of girl who wore baggy jeans and plain white shirts, who was an average student and sat anonymously in the middle of every classroom, and no one would notice her or her face or her name, ever, for any reason.

  In fact, though, she was a better-than-average student and, like most of the girls in Mallory Central School, she wore her shirts colorful and her jeans tight. Her family and other people looked at her as a regular Mallory girl, maybe homelier than most, but ordinary and careful and dependable, not one to make waves or take chances or do anything the least bit unusual. Oh, really? Well, someday, they’ll be surprised. I’ll show them! That was what she’d been thinking for a long time. Was that why last year, secretly and alone, she had taken herself to the tattoo parlor on Locust Street, in a crummy part of town, and why now, on her right thigh, a giant green butterfly (really a moth named Luna) fluttered over a brilliant blue daisy-like flower?

  “Not very biologically sound,” the tattoo artist had said, holding his needle suspended over her bare thigh. “Sure you want the flower blue?”

  “I’m sure,” she had said, and closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t have to see the needle.

  HER HAIR

  THE MAN ALWAYS looked at people’s hair. You could tell a lot about a person from the hair. Cheyenne, who worked in the next cubicle, had a short, spiky haircut. He hated it, hated her for having it. Girls should look like girls, not boys! One of his birds had long hair, and never wore a hat, no matter how chilly the weather, almost as if she were showing off her hair for him. If she only knew how much that pleased him, her bare head and the length of her hair, and the sheen, and the color, and how thick it was, thick and glossy.

  And here she came now, here they all came! His heart quickened, but he didn’t alter his pace, or the expression on his face. As he approached from the opposite direction, he studied
the one with long hair. The five of them were all there today, all clumped together now on the corner, the gaggle of them, waiting for the light to change, twittering and giggling. The one with long hair was jumping from one foot to the other. Her hair flew out behind her, healthy hair, pretty hair, but too messy.

  Yes, too messy for his taste, all that hair just flailing around her head, without even a tie holding it back. Some days it was even worse, looked as if she’d forgotten to comb it. Didn’t she know that grooming was important for a lady? If he had a chance, he would certainly tell her that. He would be nice about it, of course, point out how easy it was to stay neat, then offer to give her a trim, even to style her hair. He could do that.

  In his mind’s eye he saw her sitting meekly in a chair, and himself standing behind her, brushing her hair for her. Brushing from the top to the bottom, his other hand following the brush, smoothing her hair, playing with it a little, lifting strands to sniff, winding it around his hand, winding it tighter and tighter. She would shriek, and he would reassure her, unwind her hair, slowly unwind it.

  He thought about this, and then he didn’t think it. The girls crossed the street, and he moved toward his bus stop, banishing the image, pushing it away, although there was nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with thoughts. Nothing wrong with his thoughts. They were just thoughts, ripples of the mind. They didn’t mean anything.

  And there was nothing wrong with looking at the girl, with looking at all of them. If anyone ever asked, he’d say he enjoyed looking at them the way any man would. It was a manly thing to do. He might admit that he was partial to the one with the long hair, because she was more ladylike than the others, and he would be respected for that.

  HISSY FITS

  HERE IS WHAT you think in your heart, and here is the first thing you write in the notebook Mrs. Kalman gave you. My name is Autumn Jane Huddle, and this is my privite for me only diary journal. Mommy and Poppy are awful. That’s my true privite feeling. Well, Mommy is not so bad, but sometimes I hate her, too. Nobody read this! You are snooping if you read this. Poppy not getting work is making them both like crazy, fighting people. Poppy is sitting out in his truck and Mommy is talking to herself.

  You write that after the fight. You were all at the table, eating supper, when Poppy threw down his fork and swore. “Damn it, I’m fed up with macaroni every day. Can’t you make any other damn thing, Blossom?”

  You wanted to sink right into the stool or get away or something, but Poppy was looking all around the table, not nice like he always used to be but glaring at everybody, and you didn’t dare move. You wouldn’t dare say a thing, either, not even pass the salt please, with Poppy all mad and everybody looking down at their plates. Even Fancy shut up for a big minute, but not Stevie.

  Stevie isn’t afraid of anything. She got right into the act and made a big hissy fit. “Listen to Daddy,” she said, only she didn’t say it, she screeched it, the way she does. “Me, I’m sick of the same thing, the same old thing, macaroni, macaroni, all the time!”

  You always get that I’m-going-to-throw-up, sick-in-the-belly feeling when Stevie has a fit and yells at people, which she does about twenty-three times a day, but you can’t help thinking she’s kind of brave, too, and you wish you were more like her. Your secret about yourself is that you’re a huge scaredy cat. You’re scared of so many things, like burglars and lightning and driving across a bridge in a car and going to the dentist, which you didn’t do this year, and it’s one thing, anyway, to be glad about when your family doesn’t have money.

  Mommy is sort of like Stevie, yelling a lot, but nicer, except when she gets mad. Then she gets really, really mad and throws things, and sometimes it’s funny, like she throws a pot holder or a dish towel, and everybody ducks and tries not to let Mommy see them laughing. But this time, when Poppy said that about the food, she threw a pot right across the room, and it crashed into the wall.

  Fancy, who’s your favorite sister, sang out. “Lucky, lucky, lucky it didn’t hit any person body,” and you look at her and sort of smile, because you know nobody will scold her.

  Then Beauty said, “Hey, you all, Daddy’s back is going to get better, right, Daddy? Like your foot last year, after you fell into that woodchuck hole when you went hunting? And then you can work again, and everything will be okay.”

  You could see Daddy’s face sort of cooling off and getting nice again, and he nodded, and you let out a big breath you didn’t even know you’d been holding. After a bit everybody started talking, Mommy even sat down next to you and petted your hair, so you knew she wasn’t mad anymore. And everybody ate their supper and was happy.

  Except you. Your stomach still hurt, so you asked to be excused, and you went to your room and wrote in your notebook, and then you felt sort of better, but you still didn’t want to eat supper.

  BEAUTY AND ETHAN: THE MOVIE

  BEAUTY WAS ON her way out of school, hurrying to get to her job at the florist shop, when she almost ran into Ethan Boswell, a junior boy she sort of knew from AP World History, who was taking the steps back into school two at a time. He had long legs, and he was on the track team. “Oops, sorry,” she said, and stepped aside. So did he. “Double oops,” she said, and stepped to the other side. So did he. It was one of those stupid moments that were so stupid they were funny.

  Ethan seemed to be holding back a laugh. His nose twitched. Then he dashed around her. That little dance lasted just long enough for Beauty to look closely at Ethan—he sat way in the back of Mr. Magruder’s class and never said much—and to see that he wasn’t just another tall and skinny guy who could run, but had a bit of dash. He wore two thin silver rings in one ear and a brilliant rose-colored scarf, like a flag marking him out, tied across his forehead. Not the usual Mallory toughboy or jockboy—or any Malloryboy—getup.

  Beauty looked around for her sisters, saw none of them, and kept going, walking fast and wondering why she had never really noticed Ethan Boswell before, when he was so very cute. Her heart rose and sank at the same moment. Yes, yes, it was going to be another crush. She’d been holding out against falling again, falling for a boy, falling into the agonizing, thrilling highs and lows of passion. In some corner of her mind, she had held the thought that not to have a crush was somehow freeing, but walking west on Midler Avenue, she was talking to Ethan. Frankly, it was that scarf that captured my heart, that just slayed me!

  But what about her will slay him, knock him over, stop him in his fast run through life? She shifted her backpack, trotted a block, imagined herself running alongside him on the track behind the school. Is that how they’ll get started? Maybe. Well, not in real life. Anyway, fast-forward. Fingers linked, she and Ethan are strolling around the duck pond in Lafayette Park. She’s asking him about himself. He tells her this and that, but mostly he wants to know about her, because he’s that unusual kind of person interested in other people, not just himself.

  Maybe she’ll ask if he ever wondered about her name. I bet you did. Bizarre, huh? Cueing him in that if he had made fun of her name, her face, of her, that she understands, really she does. But no, that script is too real. This is a fantasy, a movie, and she’s actress, director, and scriptwriter, so she can have it anywhichway she pleases. All right then, on with it. Take One, the name scene.

  When they named me, my parents were out of their minds, Ethan. An amused tone—she’s going for laughs here. Berserk people! Someone shoulda called the little men in white. Or maybe a more serious approach? I have suffered with this name every day of my life. Whew! Waaay too dramatic. He fingers the silver rings in his ear, nods encouragingly. She notices his ears are large and a little floppy. Sweet. Didn’t she read somewhere that big ears are a sign of a sensitive nature? Nonsense, of course, but still. He is so sensitive, especially for a boy—but she won’t say that; it’s sort of sexist.

  As she dashed across Oak Street, still unreeling Beauty and Ethan: The Movie, Beauty almost did a repeat of the original Ethan scene, the real one,
just catching herself short of running straight into someone else.

  “Oops, sorry!” she said to the man, who was carrying a grocery bag, and she moved to step out of his way. It was funny, really. A total repeat. She stepped one way, so did he; she stepped in the other direction, so did he. “Double oops!” she said cheerily. At that point a little smile had teased Ethan’s mouth, and then there was that cute twitch of his nose, but this man was no Ethan. He looked at her for a moment, almost too long, then his eyes went blank, and he jerked the grocery bag up in his arm and brushed past her.

  “Well, and thank you, too,” Beauty said to his retreating, gray-coated back. There you have it, folks, a typical, emotionless, middle-aged Mallory type.

  Yes, she thought fervently, it would be soul saving to leave this town! Which was exactly why nothing, nothing, nothing would change her mind about getting out of Mallory. That was one promise to herself that she would not break, as she had broken other smaller, less important promises—to eat less, to stop obsessing about her name, to drop her crushes on this teacher and that boy. She’d never managed to keep any of those promises for any length of time, but this one was different.

  This promise was life or death. Stuck here forever in Mallory, she’d die. It was as simple as that. She’d be alive, but dead. She pulled open the door to the florist shop. The bells chimed. Patrick looked up from arranging a mixed bouquet and greeted her with a smile.

  “Patrick,” Beauty said. “I ran most of the way. I’m not late, am I?”

  PATTERNS

  GRADUALLY, AS THE weather warms, as the snow melts, the man’s attitude toward the girls alters. Although there are five of them, sometimes only three appear. And then other times, two, with another one lagging far behind. The lack of patterns is upsetting. Is it right that he never knows if they’ll be on time, or how many of them he will see on any day, in any week?