The Secrets on Chicory Lane: A Novel(21)

We took it day by day. Although we went to church every Sunday, my own faith was shattered, for I couldn’t understand how God could let something like that happen to my brother. My mother and I had a terrible fight sometime during the fall of that year. The conversation had begun badly, with the two of us arguing about something—a typical teenage girl/mother drama, except that it was heightened by Mom’s condition. When she said something about Michael’s abduction being “God’s will,” it made me very angry. I challenged her, saying that I didn’t believe God would do things like that. The crime wasn’t part of a divine plan; it had just happened. Brave words for a twelve-year-old girl to say, and I almost can’t believe I had the strength to say them. She grew furious. Then I poured salt onto the wound by proclaiming, “It certainly wasn’t God who came calling at our house that night, it was Evil!” My mother slapped me. Yelling, she ordered me to my room. I was stunned, stinging from the slap. She shouted at me again, and that time I turned and ran from her. I’m afraid I don’t recall how things cooled down, but I know I was in my room for a long time. From then on, any mention of Michael was accomplished only by walking on eggshells.

We got through the school year and the first anniversary of my brother’s abduction. That fourth of July was particularly difficult. Mom stayed in her bedroom, wore earplugs to block out the sound of fireworks, and covered her eyes with a face mask. She was quite medicated. Dad and I watched the spectacle from our backyard, as usual, in an almost meditative silence. I kept thinking that Michael would have wanted us to continue to enjoy the holiday. That sounds silly, since he was a two-month-old baby, but I liked to imagine he was growing up in Heaven, with a mind of his own.

Eddie returned to the house across the street at the end of August 1967. Right before school started, I saw him outside the house with his father, walking from the car to their front door. He turned, and we locked eyes. He seemed thinner, but otherwise, from that distance, he looked basically the same. Taller, perhaps. Yes, definitely taller.

I waved.

He didn’t, but continued to stare at me until his father said something to him. Eddie then jerked his head away and went into the house. Despite the distance between our houses, I could usually intuit Eddie’s mood whenever I saw him across the road. This time, I was unable to read his gaze. A hateful one? An unhappy one? Was he glad to see me?

And then nothing happened. I hardly saw him. He didn’t contact me. I didn’t dare call him. That was the extent of our communication for the next six years. I believe the correct term is that we “grew apart.” Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my mother hadn’t banned me from seeing him when she did. Would we have stayed close, even through the ordeal of the previous summer? I don’t know.

I didn’t find out where he had been during the past year until much later. Eddie’s life had gone in a different direction from mine as we worked and played and studied our way through junior high and high school. He was truly existing in a very different universe from mine. Eddie was still one grade behind me; he must have kept up with his education wherever he had been when he was away. I’d see him in the school hallway and we’d maybe nod or say, “Hi,” but I don’t believe we ever stopped to talk to each other. It was a case of awkward avoidance but also of maintaining politeness.

My junior high school experience was perhaps atypical from my peers in that everyone knew I had lost my brother. I had a mystique attached to me, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It must have changed my personality, for I soon found myself with a completely new set of friends—kids I’d never associated with before, including new students from other elementary schools who funneled into my junior high. Not much else stands out in my filing cabinet of memories from that period. Junior high was something to get through. Oh, right, and I had braces, too, which didn’t help my self-image as an oddball.

At least by the time I reached high school, the events of 1966 seemed to be in the distant past. The braces were gone. I “blossomed,” as they say, and moved on by becoming involved in extracurricular activities. I took drama and acted in plays, read a lot, and for the very first time started writing short stories. Though my English teachers encouraged me, at the time my goal was to become an actress. I didn’t consider becoming an author until much later.

The only things to do outside of school in Limite were attending the varsity football games, going to movies, maybe bowling or miniature golfing, or simply cruising the town. Most kids had their own cars. My dad bought me my first junker when I turned sixteen and had obtained a license. A popular place to hang out in those days was the Oil Derrick, a nightclub that was divided into two sections—an eighteen-and-over side and another half that accommodated younger teens. Since the drinking age then was eighteen, it was fairly easy to cross the boundary. With the cruising came the dating and the experimentation in the front or back seats of someone’s automobile. There was nothing else in town to distract us.

I still frequented the public library, too. My interest in reading—even outside of school work, which few students attempted—never lessened. Whenever I went there, I always thought about Mr. Alpine. I’d look at the information desk where he used to work and ponder how great it was that a monster like that was no longer alive. A man who murdered one, probably two, innocent and defenseless infants. A man who had everyone fooled with his church work, his volunteer activities, and his I’m-good-with-kids act. Rot in hell, I’d think.