Broken Wings
Mom cars spilled out of the Langs’ driveway and lined Pierates Cruze—Volvos and Mercedes and Jeep Grand Cherokees parked fender to fender in front of the neighbors’ houses. Abby spotted a space in front of Dr. Bennett’s and pulled the Bunny onto his grass. Before she even turned off her ignition, the front porch lights came on and Dr. Bennett was standing outside, shaking his finger at her. Embarrassed, Abby drove around the block and parked in the Hunts’ front yard instead.
The Cruze was dark. The air was heavy and the wind was wet. The bamboo grove next to Gretchen’s house rustled and sighed. Abby was always welcome to walk into Margaret’s and Glee’s houses, but she had to ring the doorbell at Gretchen’s. Because tonight was book club, she didn’t know whether she should ring or just slip inside, but as she came up the walkway the sound of women laughing got louder and Mr. Lang came out the door.
“Hey, Mr. Lang,” Abby said.
“Oh, Abby,” he said, closing the door and muffling the raucous lady laughter. “That’s a wild bunch.”
“Yes, sir,” Abby said.
They stood there. The wind changed direction. Another peal of laughter erupted inside.
“Can I go see Gretchen?” Abby asked.
“Is Gretchen all right?” Mr. Lang asked at the same time.
They both paused, caught off guard by their accidental jinx.
“Um, yes, sir,” Abby said.
Over the years, Abby had engaged in very few adult conversations with Gretchen’s dad, mostly because she’d learned to be wary of them. Usually they involved her being led through a series of rhetorical questions that ended with a lecture on trickle-down economics, the Evil Empire, or the real solution to the homeless problem.
“You can talk to me, Abby,” Mr. Lang said. “Right? We understand each other?”
She thought about Mr. Lang looking through Gretchen’s notebooks to see if she’d been doodling boys’ names in the margins. She thought about the doctor telling him that his daughter’s virginity was intact.
“We understand each other perfectly,” Abby said.
“If something is happening with Gretchen, I’d like to think you’d tell me.”
Behind him, heat lightning flickered on the horizon.
“Sure,” Abby said. “Can I go upstairs?”
He considered her for a minute, trying to peer through Abby’s skull with his lawyer eyes, then stepped aside. “Go on,” he said. “I have to get the cat.”
“What cat?” she asked, reaching for the door handle.
Mr. Lang started toward the back of the house.
“There’s a dead cat on the lower level,” he said.
“Whose is it?” Abby asked.
“We’ve got owls,” he said. “They’ve been carrying off cats all week. Just snatching them up. It’s a mess.”
“Abby!” Gretchen said, exploding out of house. Talking and noise and laughter poured through the open door; Gretchen grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her inside. “Stop bothering my friend,” she snapped at her dad.
The house was bright white and filled with the smell of flowers and the sound of happy women in the living room.
“Yoo-hoo!” Mrs. Lang called. “Is that Abby Rivers?”
Gretchen took the white carpeted stairs two at a time, pulling Abby behind her, turning back over her shoulder to shake her head. Abby paused at the top of the stairs and leaned over the rail.
“Hi, Mrs. Lang!” she called, and then she was in Gretchen’s room and Gretchen was closing the door. The air-conditioning
was on subzero, so Abby pulled her sleeves down over her hands.
“Did you get it?” Gretchen asked, plucking at Abby’s bookbag.
Abby opened her bag and produced the beige Trimline phone she’d bought from First Baptist Mission for eleven dollars. There was a scuff mark on one end, and it was spattered with white paint. Gretchen snatched it, bounced over her twin beds, and crouched on the carpet to plug it into the jack behind her headboard. Then she lifted the receiver and grinned.
“Dial tone!” she whispered.
She unplugged the cord, wrapped it around the phone, and opened her closet. Max stood up stiffly and crawled out from underneath Gretchen’s desk, yawning and stretching. While Gretchen buried the phone in her closet, the dog trotted over and stuck his cold nose into Abby’s hand.
When Gretchen emerged, Abby noticed the dark circles under her eyes and that her skin was cloudy. Her jaw was tight and she was jumpy, but she didn’t seem quite as exhausted as before.
“Come on,” Gretchen said, heading into her bathroom. “I’m doing my hair.”
Gretchen stood at the counter while Abby lowered herself into the empty bathtub and stretched out. She liked sitting in Gretchen’s tub. It was her thing. Max settled himself in the doorway. He never came into the bathroom because he was scared of floor tiles.
“They took away my phone privileges,” Gretchen said, focusing on her reflection, lifting a long section of hair straight up. “But I still need to call Andy.”
“You need to call Margaret,” Abby said, her feet propped against the wall.
Gretchen lifted the crimping iron. “I’m not apologizing. Everything I said was true, and Margaret knows it. That’s why she’s mad.”
“Wallace totally deserves to be barfed on,” Abby said. “But he is her boyfriend.”
Gretchen squeezed the crimping iron and held it for five seconds. The bathroom filled with the smell of hot hair.
“Margaret’s so far up his butt, she’s lost her identity,” Gretchen complained.
“What’re you doing to your hair?” Abby asked.
“Andy told me I should embrace change.”
A muffled burst of laughter rose through the floor. Abby wished she could go downstairs. She wanted to see the book club. She wanted to be around their jokes and their gossip. She wanted to see if Mrs. Lang had made those miniature quiches.
“I hope we still laugh like that when we’re their age,” Abby said.
“They’re drunk,” Gretchen said. “I’d rather die than turn into them.”
More laughter filtered through the floor. At the sound, Gretchen tightened her lips; she released the crimping iron with a clack, sniffed her warm length of hair, and then moved on to the next section.
“Wallace is lame,” Abby said. “But you need to be diplomatic if we’re all going to stay friends.”
Gretchen squeezed the crimping iron so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Maybe I don’t want to be friends,” she said.
Abby couldn’t even process this. How do you decide you don’t want to be friends anymore? How do you toss aside people you’ve known for years?
“But they’re our friends,” she said.
It was the best she could do.
“Listen to them,” Gretchen spat as more laughter shook the floor. “They’re giving me a headache. You should have heard my mom going on about her ‘problem daughter.’ How I’m ‘troubled’ and how she’s ‘crucified on the cross of my adolescence.’ They’re such hypocrites, it makes me sick.”
She put down the crimping iron and turned her head from side to side in the mirror.
“Does this look hot? Or bizarre?”
“I liked your hair the way it was,” Abby said.
She used the toe of her sneaker to raise and lower the lever that opened and closed the tub drain. Gretchen lifted another section of hair and kept crimping. Abby caught a whiff of that sour smell again.
“I’m so sick of my stupid hair,” Gretchen said. “I’m so sick of it just hanging down, making me look like Pony and Grace’s perfect daughter. ‘Hello, I am the Gretchen Robot. Would you like to have two-point-five babies and move to the suburbs?’”
“Your parents aren’t evil or anything,” Abby said. “They’r
e doing the best they can.”
“You’re so naive,” Gretchen said. “Did you know Molly Ravenel was sacrificed to Satan?”
The abrupt change in conversation left Abby confused.
“I think she went to Davidson,” she said. “Like, years ago. Isn’t her brother in student vestry?”
Gretchen ignored the question. “When we were in seventh grade, a bunch of seniors were in a cult and Molly was spying on them in the woods. They caught her and cut out her tongue and her heart.”
“That story’s been around for ages,” Abby said. “The first time I heard it was back in fourth grade. They used to say it about anyone who transferred senior year.”
“It’s not a joke,” Gretchen said. “Even Andy knew about it. The school hushed it up because they didn’t want enrollment to drop, and her parents got paid off to keep quiet. So Molly’s body is buried out there in the woods and everyone acts like it’s normal. Our parents don’t actually care what happens to us unless it makes them look bad, and then they send us to Southern Pines to get reprogrammed.”
Gretchen lifted another hank of hair and placed it in the crimping iron.
“That’s unicorns,” Abby said, moving her foot to the lever that switched from tub to shower.
“Like Glee was talking about Procter and Gamble,” Gretchen said, not even listening. “They give money to satanic churches. And there was that preschool in California that was molesting little kids in tunnels underneath the classrooms. Everyone pretended it was normal for years. No one cares about their kids. They go to church and smile, but there’s this dark evil inside of them. You really don’t like it?”
Gretchen braced her hands on the sink and struck a dramatic pose, peering at her reflection through crimped bangs. Abby didn’t like the way it looked at all. It made Gretchen look older, like she could get into clubs.
“It’s okay.” Abby shrugged, trying to mash the shower/tub
lever with her toe.
Abby liked Gretchen’s hair because it was thick and blond and full. Abby had bleached her hair so many times that it was wispy and thin, swirling around her head in a cotton candy cloud. Gretchen didn’t know what she had, and when it was gone she was going to miss it.
“You shouldn’t be obsessed with all this dark stuff,” Abby said. She repositioned the ball of her sneaker on the shower/bath switch and started pressing it to the right.
“This stuff is important,” Gretchen said, releasing the crimping iron and examining her hair from another angle. “You think all these shallow things matter? My mom’s stupid book club, and good grades, and Glee having the hots for Father Morgan, and whether Margaret should break up with Wallace Stoney? Those are all distractions.”
“From what?” Abby asked.
“From what’s really going on,” Gretchen said.
“DBNQ,” Abby said. “But you used to think unicorns were real.”
Gretchen turned around.
“Extinct,” she said. “I thought they were extinct.”
“They had to be real to become extinct,” Abby said.
A foul odor rolled through the room. It was hot and squalid, sharp and bitter, worse than anything Abby had ever smelled.
“Max!” Gretchen said, hauling him out of the doorway by his collar.
As she did, he cut another dog fart. This one squeaked.
“That’s what Max thinks!” Abby laughed, fanning a hand in front of her face.
Gretchen shut the door against Max and sprayed United Colors of Benetton perfume around the room. They were both cracking up.
“No,” Gretchen said. “That’s how he agrees with me.”
“Max?” Abby called to the door, putting her toe on the shower lever again. “Does your air biscuit signify agreement or—wah!”
The lever moved unexpectedly and the shower head dumped cold water on Abby’s crotch. Gretchen burst out laughing.
“Damn Sam!” she howled, then did Coach Greene’s voice. “You must learn to protect your . . . Most . . . Precious . . . Gift.”
Abby looked down at the wet spot on her uniform pants, then checked her Swatch.
“I should go,” she said.
Gretchen grabbed her hair dryer and started hunting through the counter clutter for the plug. “Hold on,” she said. “You’re going to run the gauntlet down there. They’ll think you wet your pants.”
It took them almost half an hour to blow-dry Abby’s crotch because they were laughing so hard, and by then it was after ten thirty and book club was breaking up. As Abby and Gretchen hugged, Abby caught another whiff of sour stink.
“Call me,” Abby said, but she had a feeling Andy would get top priority.
As Abby walked down the steps, a crowd of tiny women with big blond hair clustered in the front hall, pecking at one another’s cheeks and chirping like chickens.
“Abby Rivers!” a very tipsy and delighted Mrs. Lang said, spotting her. “You look adorable in your waitress uniform!”
Abby felt self-conscious as five pairs of eyes swiveled up to her, and widened.
“Isn’t she precious!”
“That is too cute!”
The women all giggled, and Abby descended into their midst, inhaling an eye-watering cloud of Liz Claiborne and Opium by Yves Saint Laurent.
“Let me just squeeze you,” Mrs. Lang said, wrapping her arms around Abby, who went with it.
Mrs. Lang had to be pretty drunk because she generally wasn’t a hugger. Mr. Lang came out of the TV room to say good-night to the ladies, his forefinger holding his place in The Cardinal of the Kremlin; Abby was gently bounced from one cooing southern lady to another as she made her way to the front door. Gretchen’s singing cut through everything.
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton!” Gretchen sang in a loud, clear voice, and everyone looked up.
She stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the black metal bannister, chest out, chin raised. Abby always thought Gretchen had a beautiful voice, and now she was projecting, really pushing air through her diaphragm, filling the entire stairwell with clear tones. “Old times there are not forgotten! Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!”
Everyone paused because no one knew if they should be delighted or insulted. Was this sarcasm or a serenade?
“In Dixie Land where I was born!” Gretchen continued, getting louder, beating out time with the heel of her hand. “Early on one frosty morn! Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!”
“That’s enough, Gretchen,” Mr. Lang said.
“What have you done to your hair!” Mrs. Lang gasped.
The ladies were suddenly abuzz, flustered, bumping into one another in the crowded hall, realizing they were in the middle of a family squabble.
“I wish I was in Dixie!” Gretchen shouted, swinging her arms wide. “Hooray! Hooray!”
“Don’t make me come up there,” Mr. Lang warned, his face turning purple. “Enough.”
“In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand/to live and die in Dixie!” Gretchen shouted.
Mr. Lang pushed past Abby and headed up the stairs. Abby felt someone claw her shoulder, and she turned to face Mrs. Lang’s wild eyes.
“Did you do that?” she demanded. Her lips were wet and her eyes glassy. She was loaded. “Did you ruin my daughter’s hair?”
“Away! Away!” Gretchen shouted. “Away down south in Dixie!”
“I’m not her babysitter,” Abby said, struggling out of Mrs. Lang’s grip.
“Away! Away! Away down south in DIXIEEEE!”
The sound of scuffling and a smack came from the top of the stairs. The ladies gasped. Abby looked up and saw Gretchen holding her cheek and staring at her father.
“That’s enough,” he said, then turned an apologetic smile to the hallway full of women.
Gretchen started up again. “Hooray!
Hooray! To live and die—”
Mr. Lang grabbed her arm, yanking her to one side. Gretchen straightened and somehow Mr. Lang lost his footing. He slipped off the top step, arms windmilling, and tumbled backward. It happened in an instant, but Abby was sure she’d seen Gretchen push him.
Mr. Lang thudded into the wall, his breath slapped out of his lungs in a single shout. He landed hard on his butt, then fell backward down the stairs, his legs cartwheeling over his head. He almost took out Abby when he smashed into the landing.
A moment of silence followed. Gretchen stood frozen at the top of the stairs, her eyes blazing with wild triumph. Abby was white-knuckling the bannister with both hands. Mrs. Lang was opening and closing her mouth. The book club ladies were all frozen. No one dared to move.
Mr. Lang struggled into a seated position.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I—”
BANG!
Everyone turned toward the living room. The wall at the far end was made of glass, and lying at its base was a flapping pigeon that had broken its neck. Just as Abby was about to turn away, another BANG sounded and a seagull hit the window, smearing blood on the glass. TOK! TOK! TOK! Three sparrows smacked into the glass, one after the other.
One of the ladies began to recite the Lord’s Prayer as bird after bird flew into the window; within minutes the concrete walkway was littered with stunned seagulls wandering in circles, dragging broken wings, dead sparrows on their backs, talons slowly curling, twitching pigeons, a pelican in a heap, beak open unnaturally wide, slowly turning its head from side to side.
The house vibrated as birds dove into upstairs windows, the skylight, the side windows—one after the other without pause. It sounded as though invisible hands were knocking all over the house, saying, “Let me in, let me in.” Three of the women held hands and prayed. Mrs. Lang raced to the enormous window at the end of the room and waved her arms, trying to shoo away the birds so they wouldn’t fly into the glass, but they kept coming.
Two owls swooped out of the darkness and landed among the stunned and dying birds, their talons digging into soft bodies. They strutted through this morbid buffet, dipping their beaks into feathered breasts.
My Best Friend's Exorcism Page 10