Dear Bill, Remember Me?

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “BD, here comes my boss,” I said, sort of fast. “You better leave.” I put his bill on the counter. “Eighty-one cents.” My voice was froggy. I felt kind of sick. Because BD and I hadn’t said anything real.

  BD reached in one pocket, then in another pocket, then into both back pockets. His forehead got red. He reached into his shirt pockets. “I don’t have any money,” he said.

  Mrs. Richmondi was opening the trunk of her car and taking out packages.

  “I don’t have any money!” he said again. “I must have come out without my wallet.” He turned out his pockets, piling a bunch of stuff on the counter. Movie ticket stubs, keys, his map, a pair of sunglasses.

  I pushed his stuff toward him. “Put it away,” I said. “My boss hates bare feet. BD, you better just go. I’ll pay for you.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes!” I took eighty-one cents out of my apron pocket and put it in the cash register.

  “I’ll bring you back the money,” he said. “I’ll go right home and get it and bring it back.”

  Mrs. Richmondi was coming to the door now.

  “BD, you don’t have to do that.”

  “But, Jessie—”

  “BD, she’s coming!”

  Mrs. Richmondi pushed open the door with her shoulder. And the first thing she saw was BD’s feet. “Young man! You have bare feet. You shouldn’t have let him in, Jessie. I’ve told you, no bare feet!” She dropped her packages on the counter with a thud.

  “I didn’t come in with bare feet,” BD said.

  Mrs. Richmondi glared at him. “Out!” She pointed to the door.

  “I’m going,” BD said, “but don’t blame—”

  “Out!”

  BD left. I watched him through the window, cutting across the parking lot. Mrs. Richmondi was talking to me.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Richmondi,” I said. “Excuse me, please.” I bolted through the door, snatched up BD’s sneakers and hat, and ran after him. “BD! BD!” I thrust the sneakers into his hand and clapped the hat on his head. “Perfectly good sneakers, BD,” I said, which wasn’t what I wanted to say, at all.

  “If you don’t like ’em, Jessie, I don’t want ’em.”

  Oh, BD, I thought. Oh, BD! I knew I had to go back in the shop. Mrs. Richmondi was watching us through the window. But we still hadn’t said anything. Neither of us. And we were just standing there, looking at each other.

  “BD,” I said. “BD, do you want to be friends?”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said. And then he gave me a smile, that terrific smile which I’d missed all this time. “That’s what I really mean, Jessie.”

  Friday, June 20

  Today I hand in my journal.

  When I started writing it way back in February, I didn’t even know BD. It’s funny. Odd, I mean. So much has happened. And now, this is the last time I’m writing here. I’m not going to do it anymore. I don’t care about the past that much. Not when there’s tomorrow to think about and look forward to! So, Miss Durmacher, this is it. Please remember your promise not to read this journal. I trust you, Miss Durmacher.

  Peter in the Park

  On a clear Monday afternoon in June, Zoe, wearing her blue nylon knapsack, is walking home from school through Walton Park. Which she is not supposed to be doing. Walton Park is forbidden territory. For years she’s been told, Walton Park? Alone? Not on your life! Dangerous! Terrible! You don’t go there without Marcia, or Mama, or Weezy.

  Adjusting her glasses, Zoe looks quickly to either side. Walton Park is notorious. At least twice a year, there’s a mugging, a rape, an assault. Zoe shifts her knapsack more comfortably on her shoulders, whistles bravely.

  She enters the forbidden land between the two stone gates, follows the narrow winding path through the little pine woods, and past the ragtag rose garden. Now she climbs the hill toward the water tower. So far, she hasn’t met one single soul, not one mugger, rapist, or robber. Then she sees a little battered green station wagon parked by the lightning-struck pine. And sitting on the opened tailgate is a skinny, red-bearded guy, his feet extended, his hands behind his head.

  He looks dangerous. His face is narrow. Criminal cast, Zoe thinks, trying to collect her startled senses. She tenses, ready to run for her life, back the way she’s come. But she’ll never make it. He’ll overtake her. She’s underweight, subject to colds, allergies, and asthmatic attacks. Right now, she can feel a thickening in her lungs as Redbeard looks up, sees her.

  “Hey!”

  Zoe’s heart races like a rabbit. Perspiration breaks out all over her face.

  “What’s the poop on park regulations? They going to let me stay here?”

  “I don’t know,” Zoe gasps, then hurries on, a tightness beneath her ribs. Is he coming after her? Lord! Should she run, or will that just excite him more? She walks as fast as she dares. At the bend in the path she glances over her shoulder. He’s still sitting on the tailgate, slumped, indifferent, not even looking at her.

  Well, he might have been a mugger. Or a rapist. Lord knows what! Zoe walks past the neglected tennis courts, then the empty blue swimming pool, and finally—safely—out onto Court Place. She continues home in a fine, fine mood. She has walked alone through Walton Park. And here she is, still in one piece. Even after being accosted in the park. I was accosted in the park by a bearded man. Lord, it was terrifying! Even if it wasn’t totally true, even if she couldn’t tell anyone about it, it was something different, anyway. Something unexpected, for a change! She was just an open book to everyone. It was disgusting.

  She’d heard Marcia say it before, and hears her say it again that very night, thinking Zoe is asleep. “I tell you,” Marcia says, her voice rich with satisfaction, “I know that child like an open book.” And Mama and Weezy murmuring in counterpoint. Agreeing. We know that child like an open book.

  No, Marcia, you don’t! And you, Weezy, and you, Mama, you don’t, either. You haven’t read every one of my pages. Damn it, no!

  The next day Zoe turns off on Walton Avenue, enters the dangerous territory again. She feels wicked, uneasy. Yesterday she was lucky. She got away with it. But today? You did it once, she argues with herself. Okay? But, no, it’s not okay. Once is not enough. Once is just a beginning. Here she is, nearly fourteen, in full possession of her senses, ready to enter high school in the fall, and still forbidden to go where she pleases. How can she live with that and respect herself? She can’t.

  She passes through the little pine woods. Somebody else is in the park today. Two somebody elses. A pair of lovers, only their feet to be seen, sticking out from beneath a bush. She’s wearing red sandals, he’s wearing blue sneakers. Zoe stares, curious, then tells herself, That’s rude, looks away, hums under her breath. “Lover, come back to me.” One of the songs Mama sings. Mama knows only the first line of dozens of songs. Mama sings, Lover, come back to meee, Lover come back to meeee, in her light fine voice. And while she’s singing, there’s an expression on her face Zoe has never fathomed.

  She approaches the water tower, then falters. The little green station wagon is in the same place. So is Redbeard. He raises a hand in greeting as if they’re old friends. “Hiya!”

  “Hi, yourself,” Zoe says bravely.

  Slight, narrow-faced, Redbeard wears a little gold cross on a chain around his neck, a green tee shirt and baggy khaki pants held up by a piece of twine. “Well, they’re letting me stay,” he says, “or anyway, nobody’s bothered me so far.”

  “That’s good.” Zoe walks slowly by him.

  “I really dig this old tree,” he says. “Must have been hit by lightning, huh?”

  “I guess so,” she says, stopping. And then, braver still, keeps the conversation going. “We have some fierce lightning storms around here.”

  “They don’t bother me. I just climb into the Fallen Arch and settle down, snug as a bug.” He pats the open tailgate.

  “The Fallen Arch?” Zoe repeats. “That’s cute!”

  He lau
ghs. “So are you. Hey, don’t run away. I’m Peter Denham. What’s your name?”

  “Zoe Eberhardt.”

  “Hey, Zoe—” He reaches over, twitches one of her long blond braids. “I’m going to call you Goldie, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says softly. She hitches up her knapsack, not sure about all this, talking to this strange fellow. If Marcia knew, oh wow, she’d go up in smoke for sure. Well, she’ll only stay for another minute. Then she has to go home like the wind.

  “This is the first time I’ve been in Syracuse,” Peter says. “The salt city. I read up on these things. I’ve got a master plan to travel all over the United States, see all our cities, learn about them, sniff their air, try out their parks, meet their citizens.”

  Zoe listens, fascinated. The thing about Peter, she learns, is that he’s nineteen and independent. He’s making it in the world all by himself. He lives in the Fallen Arch. There’s a mattress and sleeping bag in there, a tin box for his clothes, a tiny one-burner propane stove (in case he doesn’t have a fireplace where he parks), a small red Coca-Cola cooler, and another box for his books and notebooks and sketchbooks.

  Zoe tries to imagine traveling alone through the world, sleeping in a different place every night, no one around in the morning when you wake up. “What about your family?”

  He tells her about his mother who’s an RN and works nights. “She’s okay,” he says emphatically. And his two redheaded sisters, Pam and Heather. And then about his father, a Latin teacher. “Sometimes he thinks he’s Caesar. You know? I came, I saw, I conquered. Only not me,” Peter says, poking himself in the chest. “I go my own way.”

  “I go my own way,” Zoe repeats to herself a little later as she runs home. If she’s lucky, Marcia won’t notice that she’s just a little bit late. She is lucky. Marcia is outside, working in the garden. Their house has a long narrow yard which, over the years, Marcia has transformed into a miracle of flowers, shrubs, vines, and vegetables. She’s squatting among her plants, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip.

  “We’re going to be swimming in squash and tomatoes this summer, Ducky,” she says proudly to Zoe. “Aren’t these little tomatoes gorgeous?” Marcia has raised the tomatoes from seed in an aquarium in her bedroom window. She stands up, brushes her knees, hugs Zoe. “How was your day? Give me a kiss, Ducky.”

  Zoe nuzzles Marcia’s cheek. This year Zoe has grown three inches, so they’re both the same height, but Zoe is still growing. “Marcia, I think I’m getting taller than you. I think I’m just a little bit taller now,” she says, straightening.

  “Oooh, it’s happened! I knew it was going to happen and now it has. You’re right, you little devil, you’ve grown past me. Well, your mama did it, and Weezy did it, and now you. First my daughters, and now my granddaughter. You’re all leaving Marcia behind. You’re all going to look down on Marcia.” She laughs delightedly, a brisk barking laugh that says she knows darn well no one could ever look down on her or leave her behind, nohow.

  No one Zoe knows has a grandmother like Marcia. No one has an aunt like Weezy, with her silk scarves, gold and silver hoops in her ears and on her arms, and little wool berets perched rakishly on her head. No one lives the way she does with mother, grandmother, aunt, and not a father, uncle, or brother in sight. Way back in kindergarten, the kids said, “You ain’t got a daddy? Why don’t you have a daddy?”

  “I got Weezy, I got Mama, I got Marcia,” Zoe used to chant. She never missed a daddy, although, off and on, she had been curious about him. Mama always answered her questions. And now and then, her father, Richie Eberhardt, youthful, smiling, mustached, buzzed through her mind on his Harley Davidson with the silver handles, calling Hiya Zoe honey, sorry about that, I never did like kids very much.

  Richie Eberhardt, she sometimes says to herself, trying to make him real, but he is no more real than Franklyn Birk, who had been her grandfather. Or Bernie Goodmill, Weezy’s ex-husband whom she’d married when she was seventeen and left when she was nineteen.

  Over the years Zoe has shared a bedroom with first one, then another of the three women. And in each bedroom she has soaked in their stories. Mama’s calm statements of fact about Richie Eberhardt. Weezy’s tales of misery about Bernie Goodmill. And Marcia’s long anecdotes about Franklyn, Zoe’s crazy grandfather, who conducted concerts in the middle of the night on Bailey Road wearing only a pair of ski socks.

  A little later Mama and Weezy both come home from work. Through the window, Zoe watches Mama getting out of her car. Mama, so tall and straight, fine gold hair held at one side with a tortoiseshell barrette, and those fantastic violet eyes.

  The house fills with the delicious smells of Marcia’s cooking, Mama’s perfume, and with the sound of Weezy’s hoarse laugh. She turns on the radio for music, Mama runs her shower.

  “Soup’s on,” Marcia calls, and they all gather at the round oak dining-room table. “I’ve been thinking,” Zoe says, about the time dessert is being served, “what’s wrong with Walton Park? It’s pretty, a nice place to walk, and a shortcut for me—”

  Mama’s violet eyes open wider. “Oh, no, we’ve talked about that—”

  “That’s a stupid idea, Ducky,” Marcia says with finality.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Of course you’re not stoo-pid,” Weezy agrees. “Mama didn’t mean that, Zoey. Anyway, I’m the one who’s stoo-pid, not you!” Weezy’s talked Zoe out of plenty of things with a laugh and a joke. But still …

  “Why can’t I walk through the park if I feel like it? That’s a simple question. Can I please have a simple answer.”

  “Oooh, oh! Rebellion in the ranks,” Weezy teases.

  “I’m almost fourteen,” Zoe persists. “I am fourteen. This Saturday is my birthday.”

  “Almost forgot,” Weezy says with an elaborate wink.

  “Just the point,” Marcia says, blowing smoke through her nose like a gray-haired dragon. “Just the point, Ducky. That’s your simple answer—you’re only fourteen years old.”

  And on that, all three of them—Mama, Weezy, Marcia—agree. Being fourteen is just as dangerous as being four.

  “Fourteen and fifteen are the ages,” Mama says.

  “Sixteen,” Weezy puts in. “Defi-nttfely, sixteen.”

  “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” Marcia says. “We’ve got our eyes on you, Ducky.” And they all laugh. Zoe laughs, also. How can she not laugh with those three pairs of friendly, loving eyes on her?

  But Wednesday she goes into Walton Park again. Peter Denham is still there, perched on the opened tailgate of the Fallen Arch, cracked boots up against one side. “Hello,” Zoe says. She takes off her glasses. The world blurs.

  “Hello,” Peter says.

  Zoe puts her glasses back on. “Peter, that’s three days you’ve been sitting in the same place. That’s long enough!”

  She makes Peter laugh. Lord! Has she ever made any man laugh before?

  He jumps up, rubbing his behind. “If you hadn’t come along, I would have turned to stone. I was waiting for you.”

  “You were!”

  “Sure.”

  Zoe feels herself reddening with pleasure. “Peter,” she blurts, “the first day I saw you, Monday, I thought you were a mugger, or a rapist.”

  “Come on, Goldie, stop pulling my leg. You didn’t think any such thing!”

  “Yes! I did, I really did.”

  “You’re a crazy kid!” He produces half a string of tough dried figs from inside the cooler. “Fig, Goldie?”

  “I should really be going. My grandmother expects me home.” She wants to bite her tongue off. Why did she have to say that?

  “Figs are good,” Peter says, nibbling away. “A little hard on the teeth, maybe. Sure you won’t have one?” His red beard is wiry, a bit skimpy.

  “Oh, well—okay. Thank you.” Zoe nibbles at the dried fruit.

  “Sit down,” Peter says, moving to make room for her. “Take that sack off your shoulders and stay awhile.�
� He smiles, giving off an odor of mint and sweat. He tells her he’s just brewed his own tea from wild mint he picks in the fields. “So, what’s new?”

  Because she’s been thinking about it, she says, “My birthday’s coming.” At once she looks away, embarrassed at sounding so childish.

  “Your birthday? When?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Terrific. Which one?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Peter shakes his head, smiling. “Wow, Goldie, you make me feel like an old man. Nineteen—the Ancient Mariner.” He shakes his head again, and Zoe bursts out laughing, a free, happy laugh. Peter puts his arm around Zoe’s shoulder and gives her a little hug. “You got any brothers or sisters?”

  “Just me.”

  “No kidding!” She nods. “Listen, let me be your brother, and you can be my sister away from home.” He says it sweetly. Zoe’s face fills up with emotion.

  After a moment she tells Peter about Ron and Don, the twin brothers she made up when she was nine. Ron and Don were in the navy. Ron and Don sent Zoe a box of candy on Valentine’s Day. Ron and Don made a special trip home to see her on Thanksgiving, and wrote her letters constantly.

  “What happened to old Ron and Don?”

  Zoe shakes her head. “Oh, the kids I knew, they just didn’t believe me—”

  “Aw, you should have let Ron and Don die a heroic death at sea, Goldie. You missed your chance.”

  Some kids on bikes pass, yelling. Peter talks about British Columbia in western Canada. “BC,” Peter says, “like they say in the ads, a true unspoiled paradise. Oh, you have to see it!”

  “I’ve never been anywhere in my life,” Zoe bursts out.

  “Oh, come on, sure you have, everyone’s gone someplace.”

  “Nowhere. Never anywhere.”

  “Well, you must have made a trip sometime.”

  “We go to Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks every summer for two weeks. Okay?”

  “That’ll do for a beginning,” he says, smiling his grayish, touching smile. “And where else?”