Little Wrecks Read online

  “That’s kinda low, flowergirl. And the little guy’ll be cool. I got a feeling. Don’t worry too much.”

  “I got a feeling too, Pavlich. It ain’t good.”

  Whatever it’s going to be, they don’t find it behind the football field. The park seems like the next logical place. All roads in Highbone lead there, if not in a physical sense. While they’re stopped at the red light by the Halfway Inn, a knock on Ruth’s window makes her jump against the seat belt. It’s Lefty. She heaves a sigh at Danny before rolling the window all the way down.

  “The little poem,” Lefty says.

  “Um, we’re kind of in a hurry, babe. Emergency today, no time for a poem. Maybe another time?”

  “Yes.” He looks excited. “Emergency day. The little poem that’s the boy. He went under . . .”

  The light goes green and the guy in the Lincoln behind them leans on his horn. Lefty jumps.

  “. . . behind you.”

  “Yep, there’s a guy behind us. We can’t sit here, Lefty. See you another time, all right?” Ruth moves Lefty’s hand so she can roll up the window. “I am so not in the mood for Lefty today.”

  “Yeah, but you know, respect him, though. Who knows what Lefty’s tapping into? His head could be like some kind of consciousness radio. We’re all wrong the way we think about crazy people. They used to be magic and sacred and stuff.”

  “Yeah, Isabel says that, too. Actually, they used to be chained up like animals, living on piles of straw in their own shit. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “My dad’s crazy,” Danny says. “Sort of, a little.”

  “Oh. Sorry, Danny. I seriously didn’t know.”

  “No, it’s cool. I’ve talked to your mom about it. He was in the war, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. When I was little I thought, you know, he was always older than me. Always a grown-up. But I’m in my twenties now and I get it, that somebody eighteen is just a kid. My dad had never been off Long Island before, and it was much more of a hick place then. Farms and stuff. None of these developments full of commuter executives. My dad had never been to another state, let alone another country.”

  “Old people always say that, about LI before it turned into suburban hell. Old Mr. Lipsky said Wisteria Avenue used to be a dirt road. Weird, huh?”

  “Anyway, my dad saw some serious things. Starving Jewish people getting shot in the head on the side of the road for no reason at all. Guys right next to him blown into pieces flying through the air when a shell fell in a foxhole.”

  “Jesus, he told you that?”

  “Nah, my mom did mostly.” Danny stops to stretch his arm along the back of the seat and twist his head around, backing into one of the angled spaces on Main Street. His voice is thin coming through his twisted throat, but he keeps talking. “A couple times he didn’t come in off the water all night, even though the tide was in, and she’d be freaking out. It came out then, how sometimes he just couldn’t deal. That stuff just broke him. He hardly showed it, though.”

  “What’s he like now?”

  “He just repeats himself a lot. He’s got, like, two stories he tells, and he just repeats them over and over.”

  It’s so hot they stop for iced teas in the deli. Danny is buying, so Ruth gets a large. In the Highbone deli they make lemonade into ice cubes and drop them into the iced tea. Two lemonade ice cubes in a large; when you get to the bottom you can pull them out and suck on them. They walk down the sidewalk towards the harbor, side by side with straws in their mouths.

  “Um, Danny, can I tell you something and you won’t tell anyone?”

  “Yes you can, flowergirl. Scout’s honor.”

  “If you were a Scout, big guy, I’m gonna be president. Seriously, by everyone, I mean my mom and all.”

  “Seriously. By yes, I mean yes.”

  “Right. Something’s been wrong with Magda. Wait, so Magda’s dad, he’s a real bastard. And I don’t just mean I think he’s a bastard ’cause he’s a stuck-up grown-up with a house on Sycamore Avenue. I mean sometimes Magda gets slapped around and stuff.”

  “Right.”

  “‘Right,’ Danny? That’s your response to that?”

  “Well, right is what it isn’t, Ruthie. But those are just words. I mean right as in, right, keep talking.”

  “Right, so when I say something’s been wrong with Magda lately, I mean something more than the usual wrong. She’s, like, all quiet and she’s not bossing us around so much. Which I kind of miss, actually.”

  “Don’t hit me or anything, but people your age go through a lot of changes. I used to get all quiet and my mom used to freak out about it. I think she was scared whatever my dad has got passed on to me. I got through it.”

  “Please don’t make me feel like it’s pointless talking to you. This isn’t some boring teenage life change. This is for real. She actually seems sad, wounded, kind of. You don’t know how weird that is unless you know Magda. Saint Magdalene of Sarcasm does not do sad. She does eye rolls. She does biting commentary. She does bossy. She doesn’t do meek and feeble. Not ever. Did you see her standing in the front yard with streaks on her face, looking like her legs were gonna give out?”

  “So Magda’s worried about something, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying something’s made her change, and I have no idea what it is. Stuff freaks me out, yeah. I woulda thought that was obvious. But Magda is the queen of keep-it-together. And that’s mostly because of the little Hank-man. She never lets go, because of looking out for him. If he’s not around, that girl will fall a-fuckin’-part, I’m telling you.”

  “He’s around, Ruth. It’s gonna be okay. Have you thought about getting her to tell you what’s wrong?”

  “Are you kidding!? Man, get to know Magdalene Warren for a minute, then come back to me and say that again. I asked, but I didn’t push it. You wouldn’t either, trust me. Anyway, what I’m thinking is, let’s do the math here. She goes all weird a week or so ago. Two nights ago at Fiddler’s Cove I see these big-ass bruises on her. I mean bad, Danny. Scrapes all down the side of her and finger marks on her arms, like. Now Henry’s missing, and she’s in a puddle on my bed with no one to take care of her but Isabel O’Sullivan.”

  “Isabel looked like stepping up to me, babe. They’ll be cool back there, and your mom’ll check in between jobs. So are you saying you have an idea where the little guy is?”

  “I don’t know. I just think it’s all too much of a coincidence. Maybe Magda knows already, that’s why she’s freaking? It just seems like if Henry went on his own exploration mission and got his little ass lost, she’d immediately snap into commander general. She’d be directing search party traffic and putting pins in maps and shit. This person who looks at a mess and just falls over sideways is not Magda.”

  They’re standing by the floating dock looking at Danny’s boat. It bobs in the tide and the rake is piled up in sections by the side of the engine house. No place there for anybody to hide, not even someone as small as Henry.

  “When we want to do stuff without people seeing, we go behind the bandstand. So does everyone else but, you know, the cops and the tourists can’t see back there.”

  In the park, there’s a village cop making nice with a family of tourists and some water rats scurrying in and out of the rocks at the edge of the grass. There are almost no shadows anywhere with the sun straight overhead and the glare coming off the harbor. All the boats are white. The dock is white, the bandstand. Ruth feels blinded by whiteness, like she’s in the Arctic without those wooden Eskimo glasses. Fade to white, she thinks.

  four

  IT’S HOT IN the back of Ms. Carter’s Pinto and Magdalene can feel dust blowing into her eyes from the open window in front. Ms. Carter is telling Isabel and Magda about one time when she lost Ruth at the ferry in Port Jefferson. Ruth was only four, and Ms. Carter got so scared she froze up and cried, but it turned out Ruth was by the stand that sold fried clams. She just wanted some and wandered away to ask
the guy. She was too young to understand about money.

  The story is supposed to be comforting. The clam guy was nice, and he asked Ruth where her mom was, then sat Ruth up on the counter with some clams and sent somebody to find her. Ms. Carter talks with her eyes on the road, loud enough for Magdalene and Isabel to hear in the back. The story makes Magda want to throw up.

  “Can you drop us off here, Ms. Carter?” she says. “Please?”

  “I thought you and Isabel were going to look for Henry at the beach.”

  “We can walk from here.” If she doesn’t get out of the car in the next minute, Magda will definitely throw up.

  “I’m not helping, am I? Magdalene, it will be okay. I promise.” Ms. Carter gives her an earnest smile in the mirror.

  “You can’t promise that, Ms. Carter.” For a minute Ruth’s mom looks like Magda slapped her, then her eyes go soft.

  “Just tell me you’re really going to the beach,” she says. “You’re not gonna do anything crazy, right?”

  Once they’ve climbed out of the backseat, Isabel leans away from Magda into the driver’s-side window and says under her breath, “It’s okay; I’ll take care of her.”

  They act like it’s something Magda shouldn’t hear. Even in an emergency, people are still stupid. What is anybody going to say that could make things worse than this? Or better.

  “I need to go inside here.” She points at the Stella Maris Chapel.

  “What, the church? Are you serious, Magda? The church?”

  “It’s a chapel, not a church. I only thought of it while Ruth’s mom was talking. We should go in.”

  “Why?” Isabel rolls her eyes now, because everyone is playing everyone else’s part today. “You think God’s gonna help?”

  “Not remotely,” Magda says, “but it’s what my mother would do right now. Why are you even making me explain?”

  Her mom never took her to the Stella Maris Chapel. They went to Saint Ignatius on Herman Road, and only during Lent and on Christmas Eve. She went for the singing, that’s what she always said. Uncle Tony would come with them, and her mother would disappear up the stairs into the choir loft while they found a pew. When Magda was really little, her mother would put a special piece of lace over her hair before she went inside the church, black with a round pattern that fit the top of her head and sides that hung down. Later, she stopped doing that. When the singing started, Uncle Tony would lean down to her and say, “Listen, Magdalene. Can you hear your mother’s voice?” But Magdalene knew that voice coming down over the railing wasn’t really her mother’s. Mom and Uncle Tony were playing one of their tricks. That’s why her mother was hiding upstairs, just like Uncle Tony did when they played hide-and-seek at home. She knew her mother’s voice, all the ways it sounded. It was never like that.

  The Stella Maris Chapel has a painting of the Virgin hovering over a sinking boat. There is a statue of Her too, with a star over her head and a collection box at her feet. It’s empty, no priest to give them a creepy smile like they’ve decided to come back to God and he’ll personally take them into his loving arms. Magda takes a candle without making a donation and kneels down. Isabel is sighing and breathing loud, pacing back and forth in the gloom behind the pews.

  During Lent, all the statues along the aisles in Saint Ignatius were covered with purple cloths. You weren’t allowed to see them again until after Easter. When the statues were covered, her mother stayed downstairs with Magdalene and Uncle Tony.

  Whenever they went to church, her father was mad. When they came back in the front door, her mother made her go straight to her room to play while her father shouted. That was just part of the routine, part of the ritual. Voices singing and shouting and people all dressed up, going up and down stairs. Anyway, it was a lie. Nobody’s voice comes down from above. Nobody is saying anything.

  The smell of frankincense is faint. It’s been weeks since Easter Mass, since people filed in from the midnight dark holding candles and singing. When Magda was little, Monsignor Tappi used to come to their church on Melville Road just for Easter Mass. He’d swing the burning incense down the aisle to make them all feel dizzy and holy. The rest of the year the blocks of frankincense stayed under a bench in the vestry.

  Even though it’s May now, the marble floor in the Stella Maris Chapel is as cold as January. The cold goes right through her jeans and her skin and kisses the bones of her knees. Magdalene lights the candle and concentrates as hard as she can, just in case someone is listening.

  Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

  Then she stretches herself flat out, facedown, laying her cheeks against the marble, one side and then the other. Outside, the sunlight blinds her and she sinks onto the porch.

  “Come on, Magda. You’re doing good. Let’s keep going.”

  “No.” Magda reaches for Isabel’s cigarettes and then gives up. It’s too much effort.

  “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “That’s it. That’s all I got.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Magdalene Warren.” Isabel grabs hold of her hands and leans back with all her weight, pulling Magda up and over. It’s easier to just give in and follow.

  At Fiddler’s Cove people are acting like it’s already summer vacation. The beach is half-full of blankets and kids are in the water with inflatable balls. The asphalt is hot enough to burn the bottoms of their feet. It’s so different from Thursday night when they were here last, not just the people but everything. Magda tries hard to block out the burning sun and the shouting kids, to see through it all to the beach and the parking lot they were at two days ago. They just need to get back there, back to when there was a plan, and they all knew what their parts were.

  “This is pointless, Isabel.”

  “Magdalene, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but—”

  “You don’t know what’s wrong with me?! You don’t—”

  “All right! But this is not the time to stop being Saint Magdalene the Direction Giver. You are the exact person we need right now. Wherever Henry’s at, he’s lost somewhere, and I’m telling you, the only thing he’s thinking is, ‘Magda will know what to do.’ It’s what I’d be thinking if I was lost.”

  “What happens if I want a day off?”

  “A day off!? Your brother is lost, woman. Have a day off tomorrow when he’s home sleeping. Me and Ruth’ll take the watch. Right now, your job is to be you.”

  “I can’t, Isabel. I’m not me anymore. You don’t get it.”

  She can’t explain because there aren’t any words for it. Something is grinding them through some kind of fatal play, and it isn’t that empty silence in the chapel. That silence is just cruel. And pointless.

  “I don’t need to get it,” Isabel shouts at her. “Just step up, Magda. These are the great American suburbs. Soak up a dose of the ambient denial and let’s move.”

  The water in the shallows is cool, but not cold. It isn’t really a marsh, it’s an estuary, full of reeds and runnels of clear, brackish water. Crabs are scrambling over their feet, all heading in the same direction—out of the sun, maybe. It’s named Fiddler’s Cove because of the crabs. Fiddler crabs have one huge arm and they run sideways. Well, maybe they don’t, but it looks like sideways to Magda.

  “Is there quicksand in here?” Stupid questions seem to be some kind of tactic Isabel is using to try to help.

  “No, there’s no quicksand. Isabel, what if there really is karma?”

  “Woman, stop it. This is not, in any way, shape, or form, your fault. Henry has actual parents. Not to mention, they are also your fucking parents.”

  “No, stay with me. I’m just thinking about Matt. Why did we do that to him? Matt has no parents at all, basically.”

  “He has a mom, but she’s worse than mine, apparently.”

  “Whatever. He’s us, pretty much, isn’t he? Stuck in a cookie-cutter house, trying to focus on shit that matters, trying to keep an eye on the flowers and learning the names of the stars and whatever. And w
e screwed him, totally. Not just because of the weed or the money. We stole his escape plan.”

  “You said it’s a big, dirty machine, remember? There’s no way we’re not gonna get some stains on our souls, you’re the one who told me that. I believed you.”

  “I was wrong, Isabel. Isn’t that obvious at this point? Ruth says some scary guys from Nassau County are out to get Matt for the money he owes.”

  “Wow, you really aren’t you. You just said you were wrong. For real, though, this is not the time for you to suddenly develop self-doubt.”

  “It’s my fault, is what I’m saying. What if this is just instant karma?” But it isn’t even that, is it? Karma would mean there’s a point to everything.

  “You don’t have room to think like this right now.” Isabel grabs her shoulders and shakes. “We have to get out of this town, woman. Think about it. My mom hides behind the couch for days on end and my dad won’t even call her a doctor. The one road to opportunity is working for the mob in a topless bar. Every time you go to the bathroom in Dunkin’ Donuts, you get felt up by some diseased creep in a napalm jacket. You can’t spit in the park without hitting some guy who got his brain put in a blender in Vietnam. Ruth’s mom is the coolest parent we have between us, and she has to clean the toilets of a shallow bitch like Mrs. Hancock. Your little brother gets lost in the middle of the night, and you can’t even count on your dad not to take it out on you. No, no, no. We do not belong here, and this place will crush us, Magda. Has it escaped your notice that the main road in and out of here is freakin’ called the LIE? It’s a pit of untruth, you can’t climb out without getting some on you. You thought of it because it was necessary. You are the patron saint of the necessary. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I think we should put it back.” It only occurs to her as the words are coming out of her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Matt’s weed,” Magda says. “I think we need to break in there and put it back.”

  “Jesus. You are not thinking straight, hon.”