Franklin hoped the problem would go away. After all, Paula was kind, told funny stories, and bought Sadie nice things—Franklin couldn’t imagine that Sadie wouldn’t come to like her. But Paula’s qualities made Sadie suspicious.
“Why does she bring me presents?” Sadie asked. “She brought me a sweater on Sunday, a blue crewneck.”
“She wants you to like her,” I said.
“I don’t want to like her.”
“What did you do with the sweater?”
“I gave it to Sharon. Don’t you think Paula smiles too much?”
In an adult such behavior is neurotic, but an adolescent can combine neurosis with normalcy in the same package. I helped Sadie with her schoolwork and her grades improved, but her sudden disappearances continued and by late spring Franklin spoke of taking her to a counselor in Hamilton. Paula must have suggested that, since counseling was her field. Of course Ryan Tavich alerted the other members of the police department that Sadie was wandering off, and several times one of the officers brought her home, an event that set the neighbors to buzzing.
I would have been more worried about Sadie’s behavior if I hadn’t benefited from it. Though I don’t miss having a family, there was a sweetness to Sadie’s presence. I myself would feel foolish and adolescent and scold myself after she’d gone, although these occasions were perfectly innocent. Still, I would have hated it known at school that I had spent an evening making chocolate chip cookies with Sadie Moore. It wasn’t that we made cookies every day, perhaps only once a month, but I looked forward to it. Though I knew I should try to convince Sadie of Paula’s good intentions, I didn’t want to pester Sadie or make her distrust me. And this was my fault, that her visits were more important to me than how she got along with Paula.
Ryan Tavich also took an interest in Sadie and, I imagine, tried to get her to accept Paula. He and Sadie went skiing together in winter and trout fishing in the spring. Ryan was not much of a conversationalist but he would talk about the various trees and wildflowers, how trout live and what they do at various times of the day. He was a practical man without much imagination, and he gave Sadie information about the world.
So Sadie and I made chocolate chip cookies and looked at dead things in jars, and Ryan Tavich took her fishing—nothing had happened yet to make the sight of an older man with a young girl seem remarkable in any way. But there was another man in Sadie’s life who caused more concern: Aaron McNeal. Even Franklin worried about Sadie’s friendship with him, given his history. Sadie, I suspect, knew of her father’s ambivalence and was to some degree—quite innocently, of course—manipulating it. Franklin spent time with Paula and so Sadie spent time with Paula’s half brother. It must have struck Sadie as fair.
Paula’s own relationship with her brother was complicated. She had helped raise him and was often responsible for him when he was little. But Paula had not liked her stepmother and Aaron resembled her. They had the same slightly up-turned eyes. He even had some of her mannerisms—the way Janice shrugged one shoulder or covered her mouth when she laughed.
And what were Aaron’s feelings toward his sister? After Patrick and Janice were divorced, Paula not only took the place of Aaron’s mother but stood in Janice’s way. Paula nurtured him and isolated him. It was Paula who gave Aaron books and took him to the town library. She had even tried to protect him from Hark Powers when Hark came to the house to taunt Aaron. And perhaps she encouraged Aaron to fight back, though of course she wouldn’t have urged him to bite off Hark’s ear. Family relationships are almost impossible to sort out: like lies on top of dislike, love on top of selfishness. And envy, resentment, anger—the whole porridge can be a problem. I feel myself lucky to have had no siblings and only one parent, but there is no way I can clearly unravel my relationship with my mother, especially in those last years before her death.
When Franklin began to date Paula, Aaron hadn’t yet returned to town. Then around three months later, in December, he arrived and they had Christmas together, which must have been a nightmare. Sadie found fault with Paula’s presents: this sweater was the wrong color, that blouse too small. And Aaron was cool with Franklin, though Franklin was perfectly polite to him, even kind. One would have thought that Aaron might sympathize with Franklin because of the death of Michelle, but he was so caught up with his own story that other people’s grief wasn’t credible to him. And perhaps he resented Franklin’s ease with the world. Franklin had a stable life. He wasn’t casting about for a direction. And, of course, Paula loved him, which was a thing that Aaron might resent, if only because he wanted Paula’s attention himself.
In that way Aaron and Sadie were alike, and during that Christmas they played Monopoly and threw snowballs, mostly at Franklin. But it was after Franklin’s interview with Houari Chihani and after Aaron had joined the IIR that he and Sadie began to spend time together, which made Franklin fear that something else might be involved. Aaron would give Sadie small gifts—inexpensive jewelry and sometimes a book. Franklin didn’t trust Aaron, though he wanted to. But Paula, Aaron’s own half sister, didn’t trust him either.
“You don’t know what Aaron’s going to do next,” Franklin told me. “Mostly he’s like anybody else, then he’ll do something almost perverse, like giving Paula’s dog rum punch or hiding my keys for the fun of it. You know how with most people you’re really having two conversations? There’s the hidden one under the one you’re having? You see someone’s fear or pride or vanity, which is like a second subject matter. With Aaron I never see that hidden conversation.” Franklin laughed. “It’s too hidden. And without it I never have the sense of what he’s going to do next or why he does what he does. I can’t see how his sense of cause and effect operates. It’s like the surface of a pond. Something’s stirring underneath, but I don’t know what.”
It wasn’t that Sadie spent a great deal of time with Aaron, but sometimes she would be seen in his car or she would call her father from Aaron’s apartment and ask to be picked up, though Aaron lived only about eight blocks away. Sometimes they would be seen together in Junior’s eating an ice cream. They seemed to like each other but Aaron was twenty-three and Sadie was thirteen, and we all knew Aaron’s history.
Sadie also knew Aaron’s history, but she romanticized him. She saw him as a victim. And she knew that her friendship with Aaron distressed her father and somewhere in her adolescent soul that gave her pleasure. Once she took a red pencil and made an L-shaped mark on her left cheek just like Aaron’s scar. When Franklin saw it, he wanted to make Sadie wash it off, but he said nothing.
Eleven
It is significant that none of the ten members of Inquiries into the Right left Aurelius that spring when classes ended at the college. Most found summer jobs in town. Harriet Malcomb worked as a hostess at the Pine Cone Inn. Leon Stahl was a clerk at Ames. Jesse and Shannon Levine got jobs on the grounds crew at the college. Oscar Herbst had a job at Aurelius Lumber. I’m not sure about the others. But the group continued to meet two or three times a week. They read the books that Chihani assigned and met at Aaron’s apartment to discuss them and to define the jargon, though they never called it that. Sacred nomenclature, was more like it. On Friday nights, a few were to be found at Chihani’s house for further discussion on a more social level. Jesse and Shannon mowed Chihani’s lawn along with the college lawns. Joany Rustoff did Chihani’s housework, vacuuming and washing up, though Chihani paid her for this.
The members of the IIR had become believers, some more than others. In Barry’s case there existed the great desire to believe in something. Then Chihani came along. And that seemed true of them all except Aaron: the desire to believe preceded the object of faith. Each of the ten members of the IIR felt a lack, which was eventually filled by the IIR itself, but who is to say it couldn’t have been filled by classic ballroom dancing or joining Greenpeace or buying a dog? Had I suggested this to Barry he would have been insulted. Each mem
ber believed that his lack had a specific size and shape and only the IIR could fill it.
The exception was Aaron. I doubt that he was a believer; rather, he was a reluctant nihilist in search of alternatives to nihilism. But he had a peculiar sense of humor—one hesitates to call it humor—that showed itself in a spirit of contrariness. This made him more problematic than the others, because when there were divisions between the members of the IIR, Aaron was amused by the contrariness of that as well. Indeed, he might encourage such divisions. But I was mistaken to think that Aaron was directed by whim. He had a single passion that surely directed his actions—but I get ahead of myself.
It was too bad that Aaron often missed the Friday evenings at Chihani’s, because they became self-criticism sessions. I was touched by how Barry would tell the group his feelings about being an albino and short. He even admitted that he hated to be called Little Pink. These were fairly typical and thick-headed young people and through Chihani’s prodding they came to see a few of their flaws: their envy, their sloth. Leon Stahl was forced to confront his gluttony. Jason Irving talked about his fear of sex. Bob Jenks and Joany Rustoff admitted how they used their relationship to push away the rest of the world. I can’t believe that Jesse and Shannon Levine ever saw themselves as anything but superior, but under Chihani’s tutelage they came to see how they privileged their own point of view over that of others. And if nothing was wrong with Chihani’s creating a sense of awareness on the part of his followers, perhaps it was a mistake to replace their weaknesses with his own particular brand of Marxism.
Like Aaron, Harriet Malcomb seemed to have no interest in self-criticism. She said she had to work at the Pine Cone Inn on those nights but maybe Aaron didn’t want her to attend Chihani’s sessions. Maybe he feared they would lessen his influence over her. It was difficult to gauge how much control Aaron had over Harriet, especially after she started going out with Ryan Tavich. Ryan had seen her at the Pine Cone Inn, where he had taken Ronnie Glivens for dinner. Then Harriet had called him.
“Sure I’m going out with her,” said Ryan, when Franklin asked him one Thursday night after basketball. “A beautiful woman wants to see me, I’d be crazy not to go out with her.”
“You’re more than twenty years older,” said Franklin.
“I can count okay,” said Ryan. “If it doesn’t bother her, why should I worry about it?”
Harriet was taller than Ryan, but he was muscular from his weight-lifting regimen and not bad-looking. It seemed odd that they would go out together, but we had not yet reached the point where oddity immediately caused suspicion.
“What do you talk about?” asked Franklin.
“Cop stuff. She likes my war stories.”
—
The meetings at Chihani’s house were kept under his strict control. And when Aaron did attend, he was a different person, studious and deferential.
At a Monday meeting at Chihani’s in July the IIR members were to have read C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite. Chihani’s living room was quite spartan: two platforms with futons for couches, several straight chairs. The only decoration was a red and blue Algerian rug on the wall; on the floor was another rug of different shades of brown and tans. No books, music, or photographs. Though Chihani had many books, they were upstairs. Chihani served mint tea without sugar and sugarless wheat crackers from Canada.
He sat in a chair; the others were scattered around the room.
“And what do you call fairness?” Chihani asked. “Any of you may answer.”
“What’s good for the greatest number?” asked Leon. He sat on the floor with his legs crossed, but his legs were too fat to cross easily and he had to hold on to his shins to keep them from pushing outward.
“Then what is good?” asked Chihani. He had a dry voice and he clipped his words so that each syllable seemed exactly the same length.
“What’s good is what is equitable,” said Harriet. She sat on a futon with Aaron, who was leafing through a French magazine.
“‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to the amount of work performed,’” said Leon, quoting Marx.
“And why is that fair?” asked Chihani. “Is this idea of fairness based on a subject’s moral demand?”
“It’s based on a theory of history,” said Leon.
“Explain yourself,” said Chihani.
“History is progressive,” said Leon. “It moves toward the accomplishment of a better social order.”
“Again I ask you, what is better?” said Chihani.
“The emancipation of humanity,” said Shannon.
“Why is this better?” asked Chihani.
“The exploitation of man by man creates friction within the society,” said Harriet. “All are not working for the betterment of humankind. Any group that is left out is an exploited group, a group which will eventually turn against those in power.”
Leon raised his hand and began reading from Marx. “‘When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink nectar but from the skulls of the slain.’”
“I like that part about the skulls of the slain,” said Oscar. Set into his lower lip was a gold stud, far to the left side. When listening, he liked to play with it with his tongue, as if tasting something sweet.
“Lenin said that what is moral is anything that helps to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite the workers into creating a new communist society,” said Harriet.
“Doesn’t that argue that the ends justify the means?” asked Barry. He was proud to have spoken; he rarely spoke.
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Oscar.
“Evil when used for good is no longer evil,” said Aaron.
“That’s a questionable philosophy,” said Leon.
“Sometimes yes,” said Aaron, “and sometimes no.”
“What about the police?” asked Leon.
“Leon’s scared of the police,” said Oscar. He was the sort of heretic who desired proof and had little interest in the theoretical. He was like a garage mechanic who saw no reason to discuss a car’s problems philosophically. But that isn’t quite right. Oscar wasn’t a fixer. It was demolitions that excited him. He wanted to dismantle.
—
Although winters in Aurelius were cold, snowy, and long, the summers are like a gift, sunny and not too hot. That summer was particularly sweet. I remember a week in July when it rained for a short time every night, but the days were clear. Briefly it seemed that nature had gotten it right. Even though my lawn is large, I choose to mow it myself. I like my neighbors to see me working in the yard, as if this makes me one of them. Sadie sometimes helped me and I paid her a small sum to take care of my flowers, with the result that I had geraniums, impatiens, and day lilies. And she helped paint my garage, white with green trim. She wore shorts and T-shirts. To my disappointment it was clear that she wouldn’t be a child much longer.
As I have said, the IIR met throughout the summer, but there was a restlessness about them and there were tensions within the group. I can’t believe that Chihani encouraged this, though possibly he didn’t notice. But according to Barry, Aaron encouraged it. He despised a smooth surface. For several days in July, he spent all his time with Joany Rustoff, taking her to the movies and going swimming. Perhaps he was trying to make her his soldier as well, whatever that meant. This bothered Harriet and Bob Jenks. Then Aaron stopped seeing her, which upset Joany herself. They didn’t have sex, I don’t think, but at first he seemed to like her, then he seemed indifferent. She was blond, pretty, and wore tight jeans and halter tops. She had a little turned-up nose like movie actresses from the fifties and she took pride in it in the
way some people take pride in their brains. She rarely wore makeup but she wore it during those days when Aaron was courting her. Then it was over and Joany went back to Bob.
Tension also existed between Barry and Oscar Herbst. Oscar despised Barry. He disliked that Barry was albino and disliked that he was gay, because Barry had admitted being gay in one of Chihani’s self-criticism sessions. Oscar disliked that Aaron treated Barry as his personal pet. Perhaps Oscar wanted this position himself, but it led him to try and split Barry off from Aaron.
And Jesse and Shannon displayed a recklessness, getting drunk in bars and being loud. And how else to explain Harriet’s affair with Ryan but recklessness? When they were seen on the street or driving by in Ryan’s Escort, she was literally hanging on him. Indeed, extravagant behavior became increasingly apparent among them all as the summer wore on.
For instance, there was the party they had in early August, which Aaron arranged. It was to be a midnight party in Homeland Cemetery at the edge of town. I’m not sure that the others, except Oscar Herbst, really wanted to go. Leon Stahl, who disliked walking, especially through a cemetery, stated several times that he wasn’t “a party animal.” Barry didn’t want to go but neither did he want to be left at home. I expect Joany and Bob Jenks went in order to show that they were unaffected by Aaron’s flirtation with Joany some weeks earlier. Harriet went and broke a date with Ryan to do so. In the end, even Leon had second thoughts and said that if he taped his knees maybe it would be all right. As it turned out, he was better off having stayed at home.
The group had a small boom box. They had paper cups, a gallon of orange juice, and a half gallon of vodka. They had several six packs and I believe they had pretzels.
“No balloons?” I asked Barry later.
The Church of Dead Girls Page 9