Outside Valentine: A Novel

CHAPTER ONE

1991

In my dream, the snow was falling all across my old Nebraska. The minister had come to tell me about my parents. A spot of blood appeared on his collar, and then another, and through the sheet I felt the coldness of his hand.

In the moment before opening my eyes, I was a boy in my bed again with the duck painting hanging over it, my mother calling up the stairs. Her voice brought a moment of incredible relief, but coming back to my life as it is, the emptiness almost made me cry out. Everything was just as I’d left it the night before: the empty cocktail glass, the book about the Roman shipwreck, the thick curtains gathered on either side of the window like two ball skirts trapped in a stiff-armed dance.

I wandered down the hall through the pale dawn light, a grown man in his pajamas searching for his mother’s voice. But the apartment was quiet with all its doors shut against me, Susan and the children tucked securely behind them. I put my hand on the brass knob of the bedroom door, tempted to turn it and push it open just to see how my wife looked, fast asleep with her hair fanned out over the pillow, her eye mask in place. In the past, it had comforted me to wake up in our bed and put my palm where her body had been, knowing she hadn’t gone far. But we no longer lived that way. Tom Osborne, our orange cat, eyed me suspiciously from the top of the bookshelf.

As the sun came up over the East River, I was on my way, and all that morning I hid in my office, staring at the walls, knowing I was supposed to be doing things. But I couldn’t quite remember what they were, and when my assistant, Francesca, came in, I’d smile, quickly open a book, or wrinkle my brow at a stack of papers I barely recognized. No appointments were marked on the calendar, though one could never be completely sure what that meant. Francesca and I both tended to write things down on envelopes or stick-ums, which we always managed to lose. We could often be found wearing pink rubber gloves, fishing through trash cans for elusive telephone numbers or dates.

Ah, here we go! she’d cry at the start of one of our crazed goose chases, as if she were dragging me onto the dance floor. Actually, I loved our wild searches; in fact, these days they seemed to be all that was keeping the office alive. Calls were few, appointments rare. Nobody wanted to buy, and most of the time it would have been easy to disappear, to walk over to the Met or just pay a visit to Jon Mondratti, who, like clockwork, would uncork the libations. Unfortunately, there was always the danger of falling in love with something at Mondratti’s, where it is easy to lose oneself in the red rooms at the top of that dark stairwell. I liked to run my fingers across the antique Tabriz carpets, carried across oceans in enormous sheaves, or drift among the scroll-backed Dutch Rococo chairs and nineteenth-century paintings from distant and altogether more beautiful times.

Mondratti’s oil sketch of a tiger, a Delacroix, has always been an obsession of mine. The animal seems to luxuriate in the shade of a rock shelf, the light playing over those sensuous stripes. There is something so human in its eyes. Sometimes I’d sit there for an hour or so, just fantasizing, trying to come up with a way to afford it. It didn’t matter what else was falling down around me, what other responsibilities I hadn’t met. At certain moments, my need for that painting was all that seemed important, and I would have sacrificed anything to have it. You see, I could no longer be trusted around beautiful things and my weakness was apparent. Suddenly everyone had realized I was missing something.

*   *   *

After Francesca left the gallery, I crept into the silent showroom and lay down in the center of the floor. Through my sport coat, I could feel the cool marble on my back. The humidifier hummed and the buses screeched down Fifth Avenue. I could smell the past on all my works of art, as if it were drifting through the large glass cases. Some pieces had been buried in the ground for centuries; others had lined forgotten tombs. I would have to part with all these objects someday. That was the heartbreaking nature of my work. I held history in my hand for one brief moment and tried to give it a price no one would ever pay. I didn’t ever want to let go.

When the phone rang, it was Susan.

You’re still there, Lowell, she said. When are you coming home?

In a minute, I said, holding a groan in my throat and fighting the urge to disappear. I’m making a sale.

*   *   *

The whole apartment was in shadows. Susan stood at the end of the hall by her bedroom in her bathrobe, though it was just early evening. My wife has a talent for going to sleep every time she is upset—a rare gift. In deep sleep she dreams incredible stories; when we were younger, and living year round in Port Saugus, she would tell them to me if I brought her tea and rubbed her feet. The house Susan had inherited from her uncle was a quiet place. Fog from the river softened everything.

What did you sell? Susan asked, putting her hands on her hips.

I didn’t answer, just shrugged my shoulders as she came into the foyer, unfolded a piece of paper, and held it out for me. The insignia at the top of the page looked familiar. It was addressed to you, she said, but I opened it anyway because I could tell it was a bill, and if you haven’t noticed that’s what I take care of around here. Somebody’s got to maintain some sort of normal order.

Ignoring her, I walked straight into the living room to pour myself a drink. When I turned around I could see her still standing by the front door, looking wounded.

You can’t brush this off, she said, as if it were some sort of cancer scare. It’s a statement about a safe-deposit box at a bank near Port Saugus. We owe them three thousand dollars. That’s years of unpaid rent. She sat down on the couch and leaned her elbows on her knees, holding the bill by her fingertips. What’s in it, Lowell?

I just shook my head. I couldn’t remember what I’d put in that box all those years ago. For so long, I’d been wanting the whole business, the past really, to just go away.

My wife pretended to study the bill further, as if she could pry some truth from it. Then, gathering her courage, she finally spoke. I’m the one who keeps everything running around here. And I’m tired of it. Sitting in her white robe among the dark velvet cushions, Susan looked less sturdy than usual; it was as if she were drowning in all that softness, an object in need of fundamental restoration.

My wife melting away in her nightgown was something I didn’t like to see. I drained my drink and put it down on the table. We were both, suddenly, getting older, and lately I had noticed something different about her shoulders. They were curving like the old ladies I used to see at church in Lincoln. Life was hurrying past us now. Our son, Hank, was about to leave for college, and Mary, it seemed, already had one foot out the door to follow. Susan and I had been together for some twenty-odd years, and I’d never been completely sure about marrying her, or risking love, which at times felt so uncomfortable. But she had a way of stepping in and I had a way of going along.

I grabbed at the bill.

"This is unbelievable. I don’t even know if we can pay it," said my wife, resting her forehead in her hand.

Not that there’s any point.

Well, I’ll never sell Port Saugus no matter how bad things get, Susan countered. She tried to meet my eyes but I didn’t look up. It could be something of value, you know, she said. Something you wouldn’t want to lose.

Why does it matter so much to you?

Because, Lowe, she said softly, "it seems to matter so much to you."

I made myself another drink, eyeing my wife’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar as the bourbon snaked over the rocks. Listen here, I said to her. There isn’t a goddamn thing in that box.

CHAPTER TWO

1957

When I am half asleep and everything is dark, ghosts rise out of the prairie and swim across my eyes. The girl crawls up from the storm cellar with glass in her knee. She peers at me and her fists are clenched. She cries, Caril Ann, where is my math book? There is no sense telling that girl in my mind where those schoolbooks got to, pages blowing, by the side of a road in Bennet, Nebraska. And of course Roe Street is always standing in the door of the outhouse with his belt in his hand and a hole in his head, blaming me for all that Charlie did.

I do not call these dreams because dreams are something you wish to have happened. Everyone knows how I never wished any of it. It was not my fault. From the very beginning it was never my fault, not even the skipping of school. People act a certain way when they are treated wrong, and I had already done the eighth grade. It was wrong of Roe to try and send me back.

The first day I saw Charlie behind our new house with his .22 in his hand, there was a whisper of the way things would go. I was not supposed to be hiding in the trees, crying for everything gone wrong. I was supposed to be in school, my legs tucked up under the same old desk, my face turning red for not knowing the answers Mrs. Kramer asked because she knew I could not get them right. I was crying because Roe had chased me away from the house for not minding him. He knew I was hiding out, but he could not do a thing about it and still get to work. I was making my own laws; Roe had drove me to it. I showed him this. I threw Roe’s rules back in his face.

*   *   *

Before she married Roe and gave birth to Betty Sue, mother would let me spend all day on the couch eating Sugar Daddies, if I wanted. Now I was to clean my room, go to school, and mind Roe in whatever I did. This was not hardly fair. Life is a give-and-take and I had nothing to show for it. We were living in a new house and I had a bigger room, that’s true, but it was still a run-down place with a latrine out back, mounds of dirt in front, and weeds that grew up over the porch and about strangled it.

When Roe came in my room without knocking to see was I ready for school, I was wearing nothing but my pink kimono with a red sketch of Chinese women dancing over it and panties underneath. I was brushing my hair with good strong strokes. The kimono was a gift my true father had sent Mother from Kansas City after the Korean wars were done. It made her sick to wear so she had given it to me. She wished he was lying shot in a ditch. She said this when she opened the box. For thinking these nasty thoughts, she did not deserve his gifts and I had told her so. She looked at me then, with her eyes all pinched, and shook her head. She said, "What do you care, Caril Ann? I don’t see nothing in this box for you."

I was brushing my hair in the mirror, biding my own time, when the door smacked open. Roe was standing with his Watson Brothers shirt tucked in his pants and ready to go.

My robe was opened a bit. His brown eyes were mad and hard. He stared me up-down like he couldn’t believe a girl wouldn’t want to repeat the damn eighth grade. I hadn’t even turned around, but I could see it all, beyond my own face in the mirror, and Betty Sue past the doorjamb, skidding over the floor in a sagging diaper, chewing on the corner of a box under the kitchen table. I didn’t so much as put my hairbrush down. I did not show I cared about him standing there. I just brushed, like I learned to in a magazine. To me, he was just some old man who had married my mother a second time.

You’re not ready, Roe said, as if he needed to.

Oh, I said. I smoothed my hair behind my ears like everything was simple. I’m not going. My heart beat hard. I could feel it in my chest, and a warm wind stirring up from the opened window behind my bed kind of kissed my ears.

Roe slapped the wall, and the plaster and yellow paint chips flaked all over the floor. I turned around and faced him straight on.

Goddamn it, he said. Get in the car right now, Caril Ann.

I knew better than to step an inch closer or to get in his car. It was a beat-up old Ford with split seams inside that smelled of dog. I stayed right where I was by the mirror.

Mother appeared behind him, her face in the space between his shoulder and head. I pleaded my eyes at her, as if Roe wasn’t there, as if this room was a place where only me and her existed, as if everything was back to how it was before Roe came stomping into our house and rattling his cage. I said to her, I don’t want to go with him. But it was no good. Her eyes were all torn up and tired. She put one hand on Roe’s shoulder, the other on her hip. She shaked her head. Lord, what did I do? she said.

Nothing, I said. I slit my eyes in Roe’s direction. It’s him who’s made all the problems for us.

Mother’s face went mean. She wagged her finger at me. Wise up, Caril Ann, she said. Don’t be kicking the gift horse.

I’ll deal with her, Roe went on, shutting the door on Mother’s face.

Betty Sue was crying in the kitchen, which was nothing new; I mean, she cried by the hour and that was just what we needed out in this place on the edge of town. She cried when she got left alone too long. She cried when she messed something up no one could fix, like my poster of Frankie Avalon, which she scribbled red pen over and nobody said a word. I mean, I was the one who should have been crying, with all this pushiness.

Roe stood in front of me, stealing all the air. It was hot. The sun made squares on the floor. They shifted and danced with the shapes of leaves. The boards were sticky under my toes from some pop I had spilled and just let dry. Roe Street unbuckled his belt like he was making to whip me, though he had never done it before and I wasn’t scared.

Roe came closer and the belt looped from his hand like a crazy eight. Caril Ann, he said, looking ape as I’d ever seen him, no matter how bad I’d been. The purple was crawling up under the bristles of his hair.

I’m not going anywhere dressed like this, I said, putting my hands on my hips and sticking my bare knee a ways out from between the folds of silk. There I was, a lady in the middle of his ugly mess.

Do as I say, Caril Ann; mind me and do as I say.

Yes, Roe, I said. I flipped my hair behind my shoulder for him to tell just how much I did not mean it, so then he lunged at me, pulling my arm for sassing him and yanking me around the room. He held my one shoulder in the palm of his hand with his fingers digging in my skin and shook. He held me like this but did not use the belt. He smelled of sweat and the soap Mother used to wash his shirts. There were red spots on his cheeks. I did not know what I should do to win this and not get whipped.

I pulled away, back to the wall, but it was no good. Roe tugged the collar of my kimono, scrunching up the silk in his fist. I could not move for fearing the cloth would rip. Another robe like this was not an easy thing to find, so I hooked my thumb under the sash and pulled a little. I felt the silk slide away from my skin with a tickle and goose bumps rise on my white skin. The kimono fell around my sides. I stood there with my panties loose around my middle for being so worn. I could not believe it. I stared up in his face a moment. Look what you did, Roe, I said.

Roe let go my arm and left off the whipping. The belt dropped like a snake that was shot in the head. Cover yourself and get ready for school, he said. You’re going. But he did not sound so sure. He closed the door softly, like everything was suddenly fine.

I stood there a moment, still as salt. It was so hot in the room I could not breathe. The tree outside my window went calm, like somebody took the air away. All night its branches had scratched at the screen and I laid in bed straight as a pin, wondering what was up.

I started to cry, hugging my daddy’s kimono around me. I do not know why I cried when I had basically won this thing. I still don’t know, but sometimes I don’t understand why I do the things I do. It is the great mystery of my independent self. Maybe it was for not wanting to go to school ever. Maybe it was because I did not want a part of this world where people like Roe tell me to do things and I am to mind them unconditioned of how I feel about it. Everyone in the world is behind bars.

So I picked up my sketchbook and my pencils, scattered over the floor and in the cracks between the boards, and placed each one in the box. Then I pulled up on the screen, threw my legs over the sill, and thrust myself out the window, landing my bare feet in the dirt.

I sprinted quick as a whip across the yard and behind the outhouse that smelled heavy and sick in the late-summer heat. My heart never raced so hard for being bad. The sun beat down on the brown yard like there never would be another drop of rain. Beyond it, a sprinkle of trees fringed the cornfield.

As I ran, I could hear Nig whipping around on the chain, smelling me near. I could hear Mother on the porch, realizing I had gone. It was skinning her alive. Caril Ann! she screamed. But I did not stop.

CHAPTER THREE

1959

I was ten years old in Chicago when I first heard of the Starkweather killings. Upstairs in the study, I sat by the radio with a candy bar in my hand and listened. The reports reminded me of Gunsmoke or The Inner Sanctum. Authorities combed the state of Nebraska. Reckless lovers were on the run. Was the Fugate girl a victim or an accomplice? What had Starkweather been like as a child? Can you remember who he was before this tragedy unfolded? the radio asked. He got picked on in kindergarten, one of his brothers said. They called him Little Red. I had a certain affection for him because of that. For a while it was Charlie who had my sympathy in this story.

Then we moved to Lincoln. My mother became more agitated. Things started to change. And when I heard about the boy just a few blocks away who’d been orphaned because of Starkweather, I lost any feeling I had for Little Red. It was that boy left alone I couldn’t seem to get off my mind. I always imagined him wandering on his own. Don’t all children worry about finding themselves left alone? I always did, even before my mother got restless. I always knew somehow I would wind up without her.

*   *   *

It was late June of 1959, the day before Starkweather was to be electrocuted, when my mother went out and bought the Studebaker Golden Hawk. Teenagers gathered around the Nebraska State Penitentiary, waiting for the lights to dim and 2200 blue volts to go slamming through the murderer’s body. I’d been watching those kids strut up and down across the television screen from the safety of our parlor. They were defiantly hanging off the hoods of cars, slugging beer, their eyes fixed on the prison windows for some sign of Starkweather’s passing.

When Lucille, our housekeeper, cried my name, I catapulted off the love seat and charged through the foyer, worried that the execution had already happened. Lucille was standing at the window in the bright green kitchen, wiping her dark hands on her apron as she watched a gold car pull up the drive. My mother was behind the wheel, honking and waving, her scarf billowing out behind her. Lucille placed her warm palms on my shoulder. Lord, what your momma got herself into this time? Daddy gonna have himself a fit. I pictured my father with a red face, pounding the desk that had once been his father’s or yanking at his tie. It was the only sort of fit I could imagine him having, in the safety of his study, far from my mother’s gaze.

Mother charged into the kitchen through the garage door, swinging the car keys around the tip of her finger. Her nails were fire-engine red. I hadn’t ever seen them with polish. The kitchen was filled with the scent of mint brownies, her favorite, but she did not seem to notice. She was flying, and we were just a few things left adrift in her wake.

Girls, she said, come on. She tugged us through the kitchen and into the cool garage. The brand new car sat ticking in the empty spot beside the dusty Chevrolet we’d driven from Chicago to Lincoln the summer before, when my grandfather had died suddenly, leaving Capital Steel and the house to my father.

My mother opened the driver-side door. Meet the Studebaker Limited-Production Nineteen Fifty-seven Golden Hawk Four Hundred, she said. Without even a scratch. The car was solid gold with cream-colored tail fins and a white leather interior. My mother put her hand on the hot hood and stared at Lucille. So what do you think?

Lucille shook her head. You don’t wanna know what I think, Mrs. Hurst.

I do so, said my mother. I always want to know what you think, Lucille. It’s very important to me. My mother was always saying these sorts of things. I think she got them from plays. Whenever my mother bought new clothes from Miller and Paine on my father’s credit, she pulled Lucille up the pink-carpeted staircase. I’d watch as Mother held dresses with tags still attached up against Lucille, parading her proudly in front of the mirror. Don’t you look lovely! she would cry. Or That color complements your dark complexion so well. I don’t want it, after all. You keep it!

Lucille never seemed to object, but afterward she would sit in my room and brush my hair while I cracked bubble gum and listened to Gunsmoke and we would laugh. Nothing my mother did ever seemed quite real.

Now here we were, the three of us, standing around the gold car as if it were some sort of fiery comet dropped from the sky. Folks gonna talk, Lucille said cautiously, circling the Studebaker. You don’t do anything halfway, do you?

Of course I don’t. My mother clenched her fists. I saw it in the sun off the Cornhusker Highway. I had to have it right then. I’ve never felt this crazy before about anything.

"I love it, Mother, I offered. I think it’s beautiful."

My mother turned to me but never really looked. Well, get in then Puggy, she said. We’re going for a ride.

Trotting around the front of the car, I opened the passenger door. My mother climbed slowly inside, watching me, and then suddenly stuck her palm out, freezing me where I stood, my hand wrapped around the chrome door handle.

Take off your shoes, please, she said. God knows where you’ve been.

Like a good girl, I shed my saddle shoes and climbed in beside her. The white leather was warm with the late June sun and smooth as the inside of a shell. My mother fixed her scarf in the rearview mirror. When she turned the key in the ignition, the car rumbled to life, and my mother inched it out of the garage. A ray of sun caught the face of her watch and splashed over the dash. My mother was small and neat, with black hair and smooth tan skin. The turned-up nose so unfortunate on my own face lent hers a sprightly charm.

I hugged my arm around the flesh hanging over the waist of my skirt and tried to suck in as my mother jammed her foot on the accelerator and the car launched backward. I saw Lucille lift her hands to her face. I heard a honking horn. I turned around. My father was just then coming in the drive, but my mother failed to see him, and the back of the Golden Hawk Studebaker rammed right into the front fender of my father’s Packard.

My father got out, slamming the car door, silently inspecting his broken headlight. He approached my mother’s window slowly, as if he were trapping a wild beast, and then bent down and peered inside the car. What’s this about, pet? He was trying to seem calm and open-minded. His blue eyes were wide and his brow was raised. It made me want to giggle. Beads of moisture clung to his temples.

What does it look like? I bought a car, my mother said, staring straight ahead. I needed one.

My father shook his head in disbelief. He was leaning his elbows on the door. Why would you do that?

I’m tired of being surrounded by your father’s things. My mother sighed. "Dead this, dead that. I want my own things."

My father’s face turned red. I don’t understand why you would do this without talking it over. He paused. It’s like you’re sneaking around, Ann. Why would you do that?

This whole town’s ready to pop. My mother shrugged her shoulders. I got the itch.

I can’t believe it, said my father, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. This whole thing would be amusing if you weren’t my wife. He smacked the side of the car. Do you think money grows on trees, Ann? Is that what you think? My father leaned his head through the window. Tell me how much this boat cost.

My mother was boiling up. Her knuckles were white and her eyes were hot and wicked.

Tell me how much. My father was exasperated. It’s not even a family car, for Christ’s sake. His tie had dropped over the edge of the window.

My mother grabbed the tie in her fist and tugged hard. My father’s head lurched forward. You ruin everything, she snapped. You’re so ungrateful!

A storm of shock passed over my father’s face. Then his features went blank. He pulled back his head, straightened his tie, and went inside to pour himself a drink.

*   *   *

Before dinner, I heard my father speaking on the telephone to someone about the execution: And how is that poor boy who lost his parents? I wanted to ask my father what he’d heard about the boy when he hung up the phone, but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t in the mood to waste time with me.

My mother lay on the living room floor, her bare feet propped on the arm of the couch, a glass of wine in her hand, her hair spread out over the Oriental rug. Even at dinner, after Lucille had gone home, my parents didn’t really speak to each other. They just raced through the motions of sitting down, and before I’d even started eating they were back on the patio, getting drunk in the uncomfortable silence that all Lincoln shared that night. Each household held its breath and waited for the lights to dim—which would never actually happen, my father assured us, though everyone else said the electrocution would have this effect. I wanted to know what was happening, but my father wouldn’t let me turn on the newscasts.

It’s nothing to get excited about, he said, coming through the French doors from the darkened living room with another drink in his hand. I want you to understand that, Puggy. It’s not some holiday. My father patted me on the head. It was my favorite thing he did, though I hated their nickname for me. It made me feel like the fat aunt visiting the glamorous couple. I never quite understood how I had come to be their child.

He sat back down heavily in his chair. The candles were burning low on the slate table, and the fireflies winked at me in little sparks from the dark bed of the rhododendrons. It’s a time to mourn the lives that were lost, my father said, swirling the ice around in his glass. He peered into the bottom of his drink and took a long sip. It’s time to applaud the efficiency of American justice. I pictured blue electricity coursing through wires in the basement of the penitentiary, while the boy sat in his living room waiting for someone to come home.

My mother snorted and poured herself more wine. You didn’t even know the dead people, she said to my father. Don’t pretend to be involved. The bottle of wine was almost empty. Her eyes were wet and flashy, burning with life. Outside, the leaves rustled excitedly in the ancient trees along Van Dorn Street.

My father would not let it rest. We’re all involved. These were people our friends knew, people my father knew, he said. It was a senseless killing. He looked down at his hands, folded tightly around his glass. My mother’s hair was glistening over her shoulders. She shook it dangerously close to the flame and looked at my father. He pulled the candle to him, out of her reach. It left a splatter of wax that I started to pick