Little Bird of Heaven. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ Where?”

      “Here. In this house.”

      “Bullshit she was! When?”

      I tried to think. It must have been last year, last spring. At the start of warm weather. But we were still in school—it would have been May, early June. The memory returned to me like a TV scene that, at first, seems unfamiliar but gradually then reveals itself as familiar, comforting. The school bus from Harpwell Elementary had brought me home unexpectedly early—12:30 P.M. It was a half-day Wednesday for a teachers’ meeting had been called for that afternoon. Mom was away, Mom had not known about the meeting and the half-day Wednesday. Mom was away in Chautauqua Falls visiting a relative hospitalized for surgery.

      The back door was unlocked, Mom had told me—Mom had told Ben and me—just to come inside if she wasn’t home by the time we got home, she was sure to be home by 5:00 P.M., she promised.

      It was not unusual, to leave a house unlocked. On the Huron Pike Road in the countryside west of Sparta it was not unusual to leave a house unlocked all day, all night.

      Nor was it unusual that a mother—a “devoted” mother, like Lucille Diehl—might leave her children unattended for an hour or two, in such circumstances.

      And so I walked into the kitchen humming to myself, and there was Mom at the sink—no: not Mom—there was Zoe Kruller at the sink!—pretty Zoe Kruller from Honeystone’s Dairy except Zoe wasn’t wearing her white cord smock and trousers but silky purple slacks and a snug-fitting lavender sweater, no hairnet on her springy hair, Zoe was whistling as she rinsed coffee mugs at the sink and turning Zoe blinked at me with startled widened eyes and after the merest heartbeat of a pause Zoe said in a low throaty smooth voice like honey, “Why it’s—Krissie! Well, say—Krissie! Thought that was you! What brings you home at this time of day, Krissie?”

      Zoe’s voice was pitched to be heard. Not just by little Krissie but by someone else, in an adjacent room perhaps. At the time I did not quite grasp this fact. At the time I was surprised—I was very surprised—but it was a pleasant surprise, wasn’t it?—to see Zoe Kruller in our kitchen, at our sink? Zoe was smiling so hard at me, her cheeks were all dimpled. Her smile was wide and lustrous baring her pink gums. Against her milky skin freckles and tiny moles quivered. In the other room I heard a man’s voice—a muffled voice—but of course it was Daddy’s voice—I knew it was Daddy of course, I’d seen Daddy’s Jeep in the driveway. I told Zoe that it was a half-day at school, I told Zoe about the teachers’ meeting, and how my mother had driven to Chautauqua Falls to visit a relative in the hospital, and how my mother would be home in a few hours. At the mention of my mother Zoe seemed to brighten even more, Zoe said, “That’s who I dropped by to see, Krissie—your mom. Just wanted to say hello to Lucy but Lucy isn’t home—I guess? Where’d you say she went, Chautauqua Falls?”

      There came Daddy into the kitchen combing his hair—it was strange to see Daddy combing his hair, in the kitchen—Daddy’s bristly red-brown hair that looked newly wetted as if he’d just had a shower; Daddy was combing his hair back from his forehead in a single sweeping movement; Daddy was wearing one of his fresh-ironed short-sleeved white cotton shirts, and in the breast pocket was a plastic ballpoint pen, the kind given out at SPARTA CONSTRUCTION; and Daddy’s face looked ruddy and handsome and Daddy stared at me for a long moment as if he didn’t know who I was, then said, “Krissie. You’re home.”

      Quickly Zoe intervened explaining that I had just a “half-day” at school since there was a teachers’ meeting. Zoe explained that she’d told me she had dropped by to see Lucy—Lucille—“But now I guess I’ll be going, since Lucille isn’t here right now.”

      By this time Zoe had dried both coffee mugs and put them away in the maple wood cabinet in exactly the places where Mom kept them.

      “You don’t have to tell your mother that I was here to visit her,” Zoe said. Zoe stooped to smile at me even harder, and to brush her lips against my forehead. Zoe smelled perfumy and musky and nothing at all like Honeystone’s Dairy. In the hollow of her neck there was a faint glisten of moisture, I’d have liked to touch with my tongue. Around her neck Zoe was wearing a small golden bird—a dove?—on a thin golden chain. “It can be a surprise, Krissie. I’ll come back tomorrow and surprise your mom so don’t spoil the surprise, Krissie, all right? We’ll keep it a secret between you and me, that I was here today.”

      Yes, I said. I liked it that there might be a secret between Zoe Kruller and me; and that Daddy was part of it, too.

      “Well, Puss!—your dad has to leave, too.” Awkwardly Daddy leaned over me and kissed me on the forehead, a wet embarrassed swipe of a kiss at my hairline. “See, I’m going out to a construction site—I just dropped back here to change my shirt. Well—O.K.! See you later, Krissie.”

      If it seemed strange that Zoe Kruller and my father scarcely acknowledged each other—scarcely glanced at each other—somehow it didn’t register on me, at the time. Strange too that Zoe left the kitchen carrying her shoulder bag slung over her shoulder by a strap, with an airy growl “G’bye, you two”—and almost immediately afterward Daddy left the kitchen by the same door; within seconds there came the sound of the Willys Jeep pulling out of the driveway, and surely Zoe Kruller had to be riding with Daddy, in the passenger’s seat—but already by that time I was distracted peering into the refrigerator for a snack, leftover tapioca pudding from the previous evening’s dessert neatly covered in Saran Wrap.

      Never did it occur to me to think at that time Mrs. Kruller was here with Daddy! Mrs. Kruller came to visit Daddy.

      Still less would I have thought Daddy brought Mrs. Kruller here, to be alone with her. While Mommy was away.

      “Mrs. Kruller was here,” I told Ben. “Last year. When the teachers had their meeting, and we were let out of school at noon.”

      “We weren’t! That never happened.”

      “You weren’t. It wasn’t your school.”

      “Bullshit Mrs. Kruller was here. She wasn’t any friend of Mom’s.”

      “She dropped by to see Mom, she said. She called Mom ‘Lucy.’ But Mom wasn’t home so she went away again.”

      Ben said doubtfully, “Why’d she come here? Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.”

      There was something sad and flat in the way Ben spoke the words Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.

      “Daddy was here, too. At the same time.”

      “He was not! You’re making this up.”

      “No. I’m not.”

      “Zoe Kruller wouldn’t have come here, Krista. That is such bullshit.”

      “Will you stop saying that! She was, too. And Daddy was here, too.”

      “Krista, he was not.”

      “They went away in Daddy’s Jeep. I had a half-day at school and came home early and they were here.”

      “Bullshit.”

      “They did.”

      Ben struck me in the shoulder, hard. “That never happened, you’re a God-damned liar. You tell anyone about that, I’ll break your scrawny neck.”

      Ben СКАЧАТЬ