Little Bird of Heaven Page 7

  This was Daddy joking. I like to remember Daddy joking. It is important to remember that men like my father—so very American, small-city-coming-of-age-in-the-Vietnam War-era—were given to joking, teasing, what they called kidding around, there was nothing more wonderful than a man like Eddy Diehl in this mood, maybe he’s had a few beers, maybe he’s with his buddies, guys like himself who are the only people he can trust since he can’t trust any woman even his wife, not even his mother—If you have to ask why, forget it.

  If you have to ask, go to hell.

  Go fuck yourself, see? If you have to ask.

  Nothing more wonderful than the smiles of these American daddies causing their hard faces to soften like boys’ faces and the edges of their wary eyes to crease and yet—nothing more frightening than when these daddies cease to smile.

  Suddenly, and without warning.

  As in Honeystone’s that day, when my father snapped at Ben: “Hey. Get the hell over here.”

  What had Ben been doing? Poking at a platter of fresh-baked brownies covered in cellophane, displayed on one of the glass-topped cases.

  Ben at the age of ten, a lanky sweet-faced boy with fair-coppery-red-brown hair in a silky swirl that made him look like a girl, startled fair-brown eyes, a rabbity unease. Daddy’s voice came much too harsh, furious for the occasion.

  “God damn you what’re you doing. Keep your hands off what doesn’t belong to you.”

  Daddy was getting pissed, as he’d say. Waiting for Zoe Kruller to pay attention to him. Waiting, and Eddy Diehl isn’t accustomed to waiting for women to pay attention to him.

  I felt a shivery little frisson of satisfaction, that my older brother was being publicly scolded by our father. So funny—the way Ben jerked back from the display case as if he’d touched a snake. Yet it scared me, that Daddy might suddenly lapse into one of his moods, and little Krista would be scolded harshly, too.

  But there came Zoe’s sweet-honeyed voice directed toward us at last.

  “Eddy? That’s some swanky car out there.”

  Daddy laughed, pleased. Daddy assented, yes that was his car, he’d acquired just a few days ago.

  “Soon as you pulled into the lot, I knew it had to be you.”

  Now words flew between our father and Zoe Kruller swift as Ping-Pong balls. Whatever these words meant—talk of Daddy’s newly acquired car, or Black River Breakdown’s next “gig” in a week or two—talk of respective spouses, families—on their surface these words were innocuous and banal like the smiles of adults as they gaze at you thinking their own faraway private thoughts.

  Zoe was teasing but beneath you could see that Zoe was dead-serious.

  Fixing Eddy Diehl with her crazed-amber eyes, calculating and ardent; stroking her bared forearm that was freckled and stippled with tiny moles.

  I saw how Zoe Kruller’s fingernails flashed crimson. I saw how Daddy would see, and felt my blood quicken.

  After what seemed like a long time—though it must have been no more than two or three minutes—Zoe turned her wide-eyed gaze upon Ben and me: “So—Ben? And—Krissie? Daddy’s little guy, and Daddy’s little gal—what can I do you for today?”

  We laughed, this was so curious a way of speaking, like a riddle, like tickling. I wasn’t sure that I liked it, words scrambled in such a way. As a little child I’d been anxious about misspeaking, and provoking adult laughter. Saying words in the wrong sequence like wetting my panties, wetting the bed, spilling a glass of milk at supper, dropping a fork laden with mashed potatoes, what a child most dreads is the exasperated laughter of adults when you have done a wrong thing.

  Now Zoe Kruller was mouthing funny words Do you for. What can I. Ben? Krissie?

  I loved Zoe Kruller, I think. The way Zoe Kruller fixed her eyes on me, and called me by name.

  Why was I so frightened of Zoe Kruller!

  There was an interlude of teasing-Krissie—Daddy told Zoe that I wanted a coffee ice-cream cone—I protested no, I hated coffee ice cream—and Zoe laughed and said yes, she knew: what I wanted was a double-scoop cone, chocolate on the bottom and strawberry on top.

  “Your daddy’s a tease, sweetie. Don’t think I pay your damn ol’ daddy much mind.”

  Damn was one of those words adults could use. Depending on the tone and on who was saying it to whom it was soft-sounding as a caress, or it was harsh.

  Anything that passed between Zoe Kruller and Eddy Diehl, in Honeystone’s Dairy, was soft-sounding as a caress, and not harsh.

  Daddy never bought ice-cream cones or sundaes for himself. Not ever. Daddy hadn’t much taste for sweet things, preferred salty things like pretzels, peanuts, potato chips however stale, eating them by the mouthful as he drank beer, Sundays. And Daddy liked coffee, Daddy was “hooked” on black coffee, so pungent-smelling it made my nostrils shut up, tight. Especially Daddy liked coffee you could get at Honeystone’s which smelled like a different kind of coffee than at home.

  Zoe made a show of pouring the steaming liquid into a tall Styrofoam cup. “There you go, Eddy. Hope it’s what you like.”

  “Yes. It’s what I like.”

  One day, Zoe Kruller would be vanished from Honeystone’s. One day soon and it would be a shock to me, a cruel surprise—my mother was the one to drive Ben and me to the dairy and eagerly we’d run inside looking for Zoe Kruller but there was just old Mrs. Honeystone and fat scowling Audrey and another girl who was a stranger to us and we asked Mrs. Honeystone where was Zoe? Where was Zoe? and Mrs. Honeystone said only that she’d quit, Mrs. Honeystone did not utter the name Zoe but only just she. You could see how Mrs. Honeystone would not smile and did not care to say anything further about Zoe Kruller nor would our mother inquire.

  Where is she, she’s gone. Gave notice, and gone.

  THAT DAY, that Sunday I am thinking of. When I was eight years old and going into third grade in the fall. And Daddy and Zoe Kruller talked together in their swift Ping-Pong banter as Zoe scooped out ice cream for Ben and me and poured coffee for Daddy, rang up the order and made change and Daddy said in a lowered voice taking the change from Zoe’s slender fingers with the startling crimson nails that Zoe should say hello to Del for him—someone named “Del”—and Zoe laughed and said, “Sure! When I see him.” Which was an answer that possibly took Daddy by surprise, he fumbled the change, dropped a quarter that rolled across the marble-tile floor and Ben swooped to snatch it up; and Zoe said, still with that laugh in her voice like nothing could hurt her, airy and light as any little bird fluttering overhead, “And you say hi to Lucy, will you?”

  Outside in the parking lot, in muggy-hot air, oppressive after the milky cool of the dairy, as we approached Daddy’s car parked imprudently in the glaring sun, discovered that the tip of my ice-cream cone was caved in, broken—and then I discovered, horribly, that something was inside the tip of the cone: squirmy black weevils.

  I screamed. I dropped the cone onto the ground.

  Daddy heard, and came to investigate.

  “What the hell, Krissie? What’s wrong?”

  Two scoops of ice cream—strawberry, chocolate—on the hot gravel, melting. Looking so silly, there on the ground. Something that was meant to be a treat—something special, delicious—on the ground like garbage. I told Daddy that there were weevils inside the cone, I couldn’t eat it. I was gagging, close to vomiting. Daddy cursed under his breath poking at the cone with the tip of his shoe, as if he could see from his height the half-dozen black insects squirming inside the tip; his manner was skeptical, impatient; he didn’t seem very sympathetic, as if the defiled cone was my fault. Or maybe, a clumsy child, I’d simply dropped it, and was trying to pass on the blame to someone else.

  “Well. You’re not getting another one, we’re late and we’re leaving.”

  Not another cone? When this wasn’t my fault? I drew breath to protest, to cry, stricken with a child’s sense of injustice, and with the loss of something I’d so craved, but Daddy was heedless, Daddy had made up his mind he was
n’t going back inside the dairy, he wasn’t going to complain to Zoe Kruller or to anyone about his daughter’s ice-cream cone.

  When I balked at leaving Daddy took my arm roughly, my thin bare arm, at the elbow, and gave me the kind of tug you don’t resist. “Fuck it Krista, I said come on.”

  Ben, smirking, licking his ice-cream cone, showed little sympathy, too. In the front seat of the car beside Daddy where, being a boy, he insisted upon sitting. In the backseat riding home—the car was an Oldsmobile, I think—some kind of special “Deluxe” model—mauve interior—the leather seat hot from the sun, searing my bare legs—I was whimpering, crying under my breath stunned with the unfairness of what had just happened, if I’d run back inside the dairy of course Zoe Kruller would have given me another ice-cream cone, if Mommy and not Daddy had brought me that day, of course Mommy would have seen to it that I’d gotten another ice-cream cone, inside Honeystone’s the clerks would have been sympathetic, apologetic. But Daddy was driving away, and Daddy was flushed with anger. Daddy was cursing beneath his breath, you wouldn’t want to annoy him. If he’d thought of it, Daddy would have ordered Ben to share his ice-cream cone with me but Daddy wasn’t thinking about any ice-cream cone, or about his stricken daughter, his thoughts were elsewhere. I huddled in the backseat sniffing and panting thinking Not my fault. Not my fault. Why is Daddy mad at me! My eight-year-old heart was broken, it would not be for the first time.

  A week or so later when we were taken to Honeystone’s by our mother, on our way home from visiting one of Mommy’s cousins outside East Sparta, Ben was eager for an ice-cream cone but I was not. Instead, I asked for a sundae, in small plastic bowl where you could see what you were eating. Though Zoe Kruller was at the counter, and remembered exactly the kind of ice-cream cone I’d always wanted, winked and called me “Krissie” in the sweetest way, and tried to get me to smile at her, I wouldn’t smile, I was sulky-sullen and not the sweet little Daddy’s girl and I would not lift my eyes to Zoe’s shining face, I would not.

  8

  TWO YEARS, seven months later on a snow-glaring Sunday morning in February 1983 Zoe Kruller was found dead in a brownstone rental on West Ferry Street, downtown Sparta.

  On the front page of the Sparta Journal it was reported that Zoe Kruller had suffered blunt force trauma to the head as well as manual strangulation and so it was a case of foul play, homicide.

  It was revealed that the murdered woman had been separated from her husband, no longer living with her family. It was revealed that the murdered woman had been discovered in her bed, by—

  “Krista. Give that to me.”

  “No! I’m reading this.”

  “I said—”

  She snatched the pages from me. Such agitation in her face, I surrendered the pages to prevent their being torn.

  Such agitation in her face, I turned away frightened. But I’d seen—

  Discovered in her bed by her fourteen-year-old son Aaron Kruller who ran into the street to summon help.

  At this time, I was eleven years old. No longer a small child to be protected from what my mother called “ugly”—“nasty”—“disgusting” things. No longer a small child to tolerate such protection and so somehow I knew—I came to know—that the glamorous freckled friendly woman who’d waited on us at Honeystone’s was this very woman who’d been found strangled in her bed by her own son; I came to know, with a thrill of horror, and of fascination, that at the time of her death Zoe Kruller had not been living with her family, as other wives and mothers lived with their families; at the time of her death Zoe Kruller had been separated from, estranged from her husband Delray Kruller and her son Aaron who was in my brother Ben’s class at the middle school: separated from, estranged from, broken off communication with. Such delicious facts I came to know, that caused a sensation of numbness to pump through me, as if I were wading into a dream; a dream that resembled the Novocain injected into my tender gums, when I went to the dentist; a dream that left me short of breath, dazed and strangely aroused, headachey; a dream of the most intense yearning, and the most intense revulsion. For to these facts were added, in what was invariably an altered tone of voice, like the shifting of a radio station on the verge of dissolving into static, the fact that Zoe Kruller was sharing quarters with another woman, at 349 West Ferry.

  Sharing quarters with a woman! Not living with her husband and son but with a woman! And the woman’s name too seemed exotic: DeLucca.

  West Ferry Street was miles away from Huron Pike Road. West Ferry Street was not a street familiar to me. I thought it might be near the railroad yard. Off Depot Street, a block or two before the bridge. At the edge of the warehouse district, the waterfront. That part of Sparta. There were taverns there, late-night diners and restaurants. There was XXX-Rated Adult Books & Videos. There were rubble-strewn vacant lots, and there was a raw-looking windswept stretch along the river advertising itself as Sparta Renaissance Park where “high-rise condominiums” were being built.

  And somehow too I knew that men came to visit Zoe Kruller in that brownstone, male visitors.

  These male visitors were to be interviewed by Sparta police.

  Why these facts so agitated my mother, I had no idea. Why my mother slammed and locked the door against me, against both Ben and me, refusing to answer our frightened queries—Mom? Mommy? What’s wrong?—I had no idea.

  It was a very cold February. There were joke-cartoons in the local paper about the Ice Age returning. Comical drawings of glaciers, mastodons and woolly mammoths with curving ice-encrusted tusks. I was in sixth grade at Harpwell Elementary and my brother Ben was in ninth grade at Sparta Middle School which was also Aaron Kruller’s school. When my mother asked Ben if he knew Aaron Kruller quickly Ben said no: “He’s a year behind me at school.”

  Adding, with a look of disdain: “He’s part-Indian, Kruller. He doesn’t like people like us.”

  “He’s your age, isn’t he, Ben? In the paper it says ‘fourteen.’”

  Irritably Ben said, “What’s that got to do with it, Mom? I told you, he’s a year behind me. I don’t know him.”

  “But he isn’t from the reservation, is he? He isn’t a full-blooded Indian, is he? ‘Delray Kruller’—he isn’t an Indian.”

  “Jesus, Mom! What difference does it make? What are we talking about?” Ben was becoming frantic, furious. This doggedness in our mother—this persistence, in the most trivial details—had a way of upsetting Ben even more than it upset me.

  Let it go, Mom. Please let it go would be my silent plea.

  Still our mother persisted: “That poor boy. That’s who I feel sorry for, in all this. Just a child, to discover—her.” Even now, our mother could not bring herself to utter the name Zoe Kruller, only just her in a tone of disgust.

  Ben turned away with a shrug. He hadn’t looked at me at all.

  Of course, Ben knew Aaron Kruller. He’d known Aaron Kruller since grade school.

  But it was like Ben, not to talk about things that upset him. The fact that Zoe Kruller had died, that someone we’d known had died, seemed to embarrass him. My brother was of an age when, if you couldn’t shrug and make a wisecrack about something, you turned away with a pained smirk.

  To me he said, out of the corner of his mouth, “Kruller’s mom—that ‘Zoe’—know what she was? A slut.”

  Slut? I felt the word sharp and cracking like a slap across my silly-girl face.

  “A slut is a female that fucks. Aaron Kruller’s mom was a slut, and a junkie, too. That was why she left the dairy. That was why she left off singing. And Aaron didn’t go running out to ‘summon help’—they found him with her, where she was dead, and”—Ben’s voice lowered even further, creased and cracked with hilarity—“he’d shit his pants. That news you won’t find in the paper.”

  In the paper—in the succession of newspapers that would come into my hands—some of them hidden from us by our mother, in a drawer of her cedar bureau, others shared with me by my girlfriends at school—I
would see Zoe Kruller’s smiling face gazing up at me, on the verge of winking at me Krissie! What can I do you for today?

  That riddle to which there was no answer.

  As she’d turn to Daddy lifting her fevered glamour-face like a flower taunting you to pick it Mis-ter Diehl! And what can I do you for—today?

  The most commonly printed photograph of Zoe Kruller—which in time would find its way into state-wide newspapers though never into national publications nor syndicated by the Associated Press, so far as I knew—was the one in which Zoe posed with fellow musicians from Black River Breakdown, in her spangled low-cut girl-singer attire, and with her hair crimped and springy and electric-looking cascading over one semi-bare shoulder. Another more casual photo showed a younger Zoe smiling at the camera at a sly angle as if she’d been teasing the photographer, with the exuberant ease of a high school cheerleader or prom queen. How many times these and other likenesses of Zoe Kruller, Sparta murder victim would be reprinted, how many times I would stare at them in wonderment that I had ever known her—that of course I knew her, still—never in my life would Krista Diehl not-know Zoe Kruller from Honeystone’s—and each time it seemed to me a wrongful thing, a nightmare-thing, a cruel taunting joke that in these photographs Zoe had been smiling with such trust, never imagining that, one day, her picture would be printed—reprinted—in newspapers—shown on local TV news—with the identification Zoe Kruller, Sparta Murder Victim.

  Though I was young for eleven, young in the ways of the (adult, even the adolescent) world yet the admonition came to me She should not have been smiling like that.

  The early headlines were enormous banner heads running the width of the Sparta Journal.

  SPARTA WOMAN, 34, FOUND BEATEN, STRANGLED

  Death of Local Bluegrass Singer Investigated by Police