Boy, Snow, Bird(64)

BW: You think it was the crying that brought her back?

FN: Without question it was the crying. She liked it. She got better after that. She got strong. The first time I saw her smile—I switched on the wireless set one evening and tried to find some music for us. A woman was being killed in a radio play on one of the stations, and the actress screamed. I thought it’d make Boy nervous, but Santa Claus himself couldn’t have gotten a wider smile out of her.

BW: That all?

FN: I could tell you tens of stories about the pain she caused other children before she learned to be scared that I’d catch her at it. Most children get into fights, but it’s a bad sign when a child fights dirty, without anyone even showing her how. One girl angered Boy in some way—she said something, I think—this girl had a sore leg; she’d had some small accident days before . . . it was the sore leg that Boy went for, quick as quick. She kicked that sore leg out from under the girl. The happy children, the ones who had friends they could rely on, those children were safe from her. She was drawn to the anxious ones. The ones who had potential for misery. I watched her. When she ran away from home, I knew she’d gone to find someone who was unhappy, and once she’d found them she’d use her gift to make it worse.

BW: What do you think Boy would say if I told her all this?

FN: Don’t know. Try it.



He suddenly became a gentleman and asked if I wanted the rest of his french fries. He said he hated waste.



—

dad knocked on the diner window; I saw him and Frank didn’t. He had my hula hoop tucked under his arm, and when he reached us, he dropped it and picked me up off my seat. He held me tight against his chest and said, “Thank God,” and “You’re grounded forever,” and I heard the hoop rolling around on the tiled floor.

I said: “I don’t get why I’m grounded forever.”

“It’s directly connected to what happens in a father’s heart when he finds a pink hula hoop just lying there in the mud. To find that and have no idea where its owner is—I mean, goddamn it, Bird.”

I thought about it. He was right.

“And then I ask around and nobody remembers having seen her. And then Agnes starts talking about enemies—”

“This is Flax Hill. I couldn’t have gone far.”

“Don’t you see that that’s what made it so scary that no one had seen you? Your mom’s been on the phone to every kid in your class. But then Susie called your grammy. And you’re grounded forever.”

It was funny—I’d kind of expected Frank to be gone when Dad finally put me down, but Frank was still there, dipping his french fries in mayonnaise. He’d probably guessed that Dad wouldn’t hit an old man.

“Arturo Whitman,” Dad said, and held out his hand.

Frank went right on eating. “I know who you are,” he said.

Dad looked at me, looked back at Frank, then suggested that Frank introduce himself. Frank said his name, said it with pride, and Dad grabbed his arm and forced him out of the booth. For a second I thought Frank was going to get beaten around the head with his own walking stick, but Dad pressed it into his hand and told him to get out. “Just go. And if I see you look back at me or my daughter—if you look back at us even once—I’ll kick you right into the middle of next week.”

Frank said: “Why would I want to look back?” And he did as he was told.

—

apparently susie conlin told Dad to come get me because of Frank’s negative energy. She told Dad I was sitting in a booth with an old man who was telling me his life story and stopped talking whenever she walked past. She said I was writing down everything the man said, that I was wincing as I wrote with my bandaged hand, and that I looked really tired. She thought the old man should find somebody else to tell his life story to.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No.”

“If he did—”

“No. It was the tree that cut me.”

“Show me what you wrote down.”

“He took it with him.”

Mom was sarcastic when we got home. “You and your Nancy Drew act. Thanks for coming home,” she said, interrupting Dad, who was telling her about Frank and how he didn’t think Frank was going to come near us again. She was red-faced and red-eyed. I put her arms around me and held them there until she hugged me.

—

also . . . i found out the worst thing that can happen when you tell someone you love them. I thought that if you love someone and they don’t love you back then they’re nice to you. Or at least, if you end up feeling terrible, the other person didn’t mean for that to happen. But Mom said “I love you” to some man on the phone, a man named Charlie, and he said: “Why?”

I got into the eavesdropping late, but I knew she was the one who’d called him, because the phone hadn’t rung. She was mad at him. She thought he’d told her dad where to find us. “You told that man about me and Bird!” she said. He said he hadn’t spoken to Frank Novak in years, and was Bird a boy or a girl, and Mom said: “She’s my daughter. My little girl.” Then this Charlie person said he had two sons, and a wife. He said he was happy. (I could almost hear Frank Novak saying “The happy ones were safe from her.”) That was when Mom told him she loved him. And he asked why.