And that I was going to WinterFest after all.
I is for Ivy
Who Lives on the Cape
FIRST CAME THE seals, then came the sharks.
Little Ivy Fraga’s father said it was inevitable. Way back when her great-grandfather was still alive, people were allowed to hunt the seals. Eventually, the population was culled to such an extent that there was no longer enough food to support the bigger fish, so the sharks left.
A few decades later, after the radicals, the vegetarians, and the lonely people who needed to fight for a cause were through, seal hunting was outlawed to the point of fanaticism and the soulful-eyed blubber bags began to thrive again.
So the big fish came back.
Ivy was eight when her mother was taken. The two of them, as thick as thieves, had been on the ocean side of the Cape, not too far from the artist shacks that pretentious New Yorker types rented for a week at a time so they could pretend to be profound and inspired on canvas.
Her mother had baked clam cakes and sweet cornbread. They had spread their picnic on a beach towel and planned a day of slowly roasting in the late May sun. The weather was unseasonably warm. How could they not take advantage of the rays before all the tourists came and ruined Cape Cod for the rest of the summer?
After an hour of browning, they both decided to take a dip in the ocean. The waves were small and calm. The day was perfect.
Her mother died twenty feet out. Ivy was holding hands with her while letting her legs dangle into the depths, when all of a sudden her mother was yanked beneath the surface.
It wasn’t until Ivy realized that she was only holding on to an arm, severed at the elbow, that her mother had been taken by a shark.
Ivy made it back to shore although she would never remember how, nor would she remember the group of bird watchers who saw the entire event unfold from on top of one of the dunes. Several in the group wrapped the little girl in towels and rushed her to the closest medical facility—the woefully inadequate Provincetown Health Center.
Three days and a boatload of tranquilizers later, she was sent home.
Three months and a boatload of alcohol later, her tanned and muscled father remarried a woman he had been screwing on the side for years, and moved the red-headed monster into his bed.
As with most of the Portuguese men on Cape Cod, Ivy’s father made his living from the sea. Sometimes he dug clams. If he wasn’t doing that, he was fishing for tuna, and if he wasn’t doing that he was casting his net wide for rich tourists who wanted to charter his boat for a day. They all wanted to hear the morbid tale of how he lost his first wife, and maybe catch a glimpse of a great white.
Although Ivy was now petrified of the ocean, her father would have none of it. Every day that his boat went out and school wasn’t in session, she was forced to come along as his chum girl. Chum was the soupy mix of blood and fish guts that attracted sharks. Three miles out, her job was to pry open the wooden barrels where the ghoulish mixture fermented, and ladle the chunky broth into the sea.
Sometimes shark fins followed the oily slick of blood, and tourists clapped their hands with glee. On those days, Ivy went below deck and threw up in the head out of abject fear.
Still, being on her father’s fishing boat was better than being at home.
Her step-monster made Cinderella’s seem positively demure. She often told little Ivy that the shark should have taken both of them instead of only the whore who bore her, and just like Cinderella, Ivy was made to cook and clean and do the laundry. She was also forced to move her bedroom to her mother’s old sewing room so her father’s new wife would have room for a nursery.
Oh, yes. There was a new Fraga coming. Ivy’s cowbird of a stepmother needed to push her husband’s original chick out of the nest. Needless to say, Ivy hated her for it. It turns out the feeling was mutual.
For his part, Ivy’s father knew he married the first time too young, and Ivy’s mother had turned plain too fast. Some part of him was thankful that the shark cut his first wife’s life short. To make matters worse, somewhere lurking just beneath the surface, he wished Ivy had been shark bait too. That way, he could have had a complete and unencumbered do-over with his infinitely hotter, red-headed second wife and the child she carried in her womb.
Ivy wasn’t a stupid girl. She knew how her father and his wife felt. In her new and much smaller bedroom, she kept a diary and daily checked off the three thousand, six hundred and fifty some-odd days she had left under their roof until she could leave and never come back.
Every sunrise she made a check. Every evening she checked to make sure she didn’t forget.
The new baby came on a rainy day in November right before the snows began. Ivy hid in her tiny bedroom when her father and his wife left for the hospital down in Hyannis without even saying goodbye. That night she cooked Kraft macaroni and cheese for herself and defrosted a crab cake that she had made from her mother’s secret recipe.
Her father didn’t come home until the next morning, wrung out and weary. When he saw her sitting at the kitchen table he told her to get herself to the school bus or she would receive the beating of her life.
“It’s Saturday,” she murmured.
“Whatever,” he grumbled and went off to bed.
Two days later, which was a school day, Ivy was told to stay home and help her stepmother settle in.
“For how long?” she asked.
The ringing in her ears caused by the fallout from the back of her father’s hand was all the answer she needed. He, on the other hand, drove down to Provincetown and parked himself on a rustic stool in The Governor Bradford. There, he drank for hours until a young and dumb blond who worked as a Pink Jeep tour guide in the summers brought him back to her dingy apartment and consoled the rugged fisherman who had lost his wife to a shark, never knowing he had remarried and had Ivy and a newborn at home.
That next summer, after Ivy all but disappeared into the corners of the house while her red-headed stepmother doted on her half-brother and her father balanced him on his knee whenever his balance wasn’t shaken by alcohol, there was a knock on the door.
Ivy answered.
“Does Carlos Fraga live here?” snapped the young and dumb blond who had a newborn in her arms.
Uh huh,” she murmured, not able to take her eyes off the soft, pink treasure.
“Then get him,” ordered the young and dumb blond. “Now.”
Much of lower Cape Cod heard the screaming that night and for most of the following day. In the end, the baby, sans her mother, was put into Ivy’s tiny bedroom along with her. The red-headed monster with her one-year-old progeny took up the rest of the house.
That Christmas, Ivy’s father had a vasectomy that got infected for a time.
“Serves him right,” said her stepmother one day in a rare turn at civility. It didn’t last. Her very next words were about how he should have been snipped before Ivy was born so the world could have been saved from the likes of her.
Check, check, check, Ivy ticked off in her diary while she took care of her baby half-sister who looked almost like her. Check, check, check.
That following spring, when Ivy turned ten without a party and without a cake, her father gave her a new chore along with being his chum girl. She was now in charge of cutting up the junk fish that went into the chum.
The concoction that rotted in wooden barrels on the back of his boat was sometimes so noxious that her eyes burned from it. Her little half-sister didn’t care in the least. While Ivy chopped away, the infant girl slapped at the blood that splattered on the ground, all the while giggling and googling like all babies should. Her half-brother, on the other hand, was coddled by her red-headed step-monster and kept far away from fish, guts, and anything that would give him a taste for a fisherman’s life.
She wanted more than that for her son and with good reason.
His father was a drunk.
When Ivy turned twelve, with the hollowed and haunted look th
at third-world children sometimes have, her red-headed step-monster announced that she was having another child. Ivy’s father, unlike Ivy, was exceedingly stupid, and for a time bought beers for his friends at the Governor Bradford, and boasted that a vasectomy was no match for his virility.
Ivy, however, knew better. Along with her daily check marks, she kept a list in her diary of potential paternal candidates. Ultimately, she narrowed it down to an eighteen-year-old delivery boy from Shaw’s Market who had the mental acuity of a flea but the blond hair and blue eyes of everything that was opposite of her father.
It made sense. She was right. The baby was stillborn anyway and her father went on a bender to end all benders. That was a dark time in Ivy’s life. At thirteen, she was a surrogate mother to her three-year-old half-sister, a slave to her step-monster, a chum girl for her father and a punching bag to her four-year-old half-brother who could do no wrong.
Check, check, check, she marked off in her diary day after day. Check, check, check. Still, she never made it to eighteen.
Three days shy of her sixteenth birthday, Ivy hugged her six-year-old half-sister fiercely, promised that she would be back for her when she could, packed a duffle bag, and left home.
As luck would have it, she was taken in almost immediately by a kindly, older woman in Barnstable. The woman owned a guest house that Ivy cleaned for her in exchange for room and board and a small pay check. Over time they became good friends, and even discovered through shared stories of their lives that the woman was one of the bird watchers that saved a little girl on the beach eight years before, whose mother had been taken by a shark.
It was a serendipitous coincidence that Ivy ended up with her, and only served to deepen their bond. By the time Ivy was seventeen, she had emancipated herself from the Fraga family and was all but adopted by the kindly woman who had saved her twice over the course of her lifetime.
Three years later, on her half-sister’s tenth birthday, twenty-year-old Ivy Fraga decided to charter a fishing boat. By then, she had an associate’s degree under her belt. She also had a nice young man from Hyannisport on her arm, with a famous last name and a presidential pedigree.
The boat she wished to charter wasn’t just any boat. She wanted to bury her demons on her father’s rig, and in the very waters where her mother was taken by a shark and her world had turned dark and bleak.
At first, Old Man Fraga refused. That was until Ivy’s very wealthy boyfriend, with his chiseled jaw and dimpled chin, flashed more green than the man saw in a month. Ivy demanded her young half-sister be part of the trip, as well. She wanted to give her the birthday cake she, herself, never had.
Her father, however, had other plans for the girl. Dressed in dirty clothing and with the same sallow look that Ivy had as a child, her poor half-sister was forced to chop up fish in the backyard, fill the chum buckets, and go out to sea as her father’s chum girl.
Needless to say, bitterness barely covered the feelings that swirled around the ten-year-old’s mind that day.
The sky was a perfect blue. The ocean was calm. Her father’s boat left port, chugged around Race Point and out to sea. Three miles off shore, he gave a foul order and Ivy’s ten-year old half-sister started spreading a slick of chum into the water. She stayed at her task for the better part of an hour. During that time, Ivy sat with her handsome boyfriend, her hand in his, as he told her how much he loved her and how he would stay with her forever if she would have him.
“Let’s have some birthday cake,” Ivy said, eyeing her little half-sister. The girl didn’t smile. She only stirred the bloody soup and spilled more of it overboard.
“She doesn’t have time for cake,” snapped Old Man Fraga. Ivy marveled at how much a few short years had changed him. Whether it was the wind, or the salt air, or a miserable life, he had grown old before his time. His skin was rough and leathery and his hands were veiny and dry.
“Surely the child can have cake,” said Ivy’s boyfriend.
“You want she should stuff her face with cake?” Old Man Fraga grumbled. “It’ll cost ya.”
Meanwhile, Ivy stopped listening to their conversation. Behind the boat was a huge fin, bigger than any she had seen before. She stood and put one hand over her eyes to blot out the sun. It had to be a twenty-footer if it was an inch. To accent the eerie appearance, a flock of seagulls hovered above the fin, no doubt waiting for whatever scraps might be left behind.
Old Man Fraga tracked Ivy’s gaze. “Will ya look at that,” he said and pushed past Ivy and her boyfriend to the back of the boat. Her little half-sister, sullen and morose, kept dipping her ladle into the chum bucket and dumping it over the side. “Will ya just look at that,” he said again and scrambled up on the stern, leaning out and pointing. “That’s what took your mother,” he laughed and pointed. “That’s what got her good.”
Ivy’s eyes flared with hatred. She took one step forward, but her boyfriend put his hand gently on her arm and said, “It’s not worth it.”
Ivy sighed, but her little half-sister did not. She stared at the chum bucket, wishing more than ever that amongst the rotted guts was a head of red hair, but there wasn’t. She wanted there to be, but all the wishing in the world wouldn’t make it true. Instead, she stood, turned, and pushed her father as hard as she could.
His knees buckled and he toppled into the sea right in the middle of the slick of chum.
“Help,” he cried when his head broke the surface of the water. “Help me, for Chrissake.”
Ivy, her boyfriend and her half-sister watched as the fin came closer and closer and her father’s screams came more desperate and insane.
Finally, her half-sister turned to Ivy. “Can I have that cake now?” she asked. “It’s my birthday, you know.”
Ivy smiled. “Yes,” she said, not even bothering to worry that her boyfriend was turning all shades of white. With her father screaming in the background until his voice was snapped in two along with the rest of him, Ivy sang Happy Birthday to her ten-year-old half-sister.
Then they all ate cake.
J is for
Jan on a Fire Escape
NINE-YEAR-OLD Jan sits three floors up surrounded by wilted potted plants. She is on the fire escape outside the tiny rental she shares with her father and her four-year-old brother who is fast asleep in the back room. He’s not her real brother. He came to live with Jan and her father last year. He’s a good match for them, not like Luke or Christopher or the others that came before.
Jan often sits high up on the metal grate after her chores are done for the day. She likes the crisp, October air. Her father won’t be back home for hours and she’s done everything he’s asked. In truth, she’s supposed to stay indoors and babysit her little brother, but he’s napping so she doesn’t see any harm in soaking up the last bits of autumn. Besides, the fire escape landing is secret and safe. No one can see her behind the browning leaves.
Jan doesn’t go to school. Her father has moved their little family so many times that the act of matriculating and withdrawing from institution after institution seems too much trouble. Also, questions always pop up, and Jan’s father doesn’t like to answer questions.
She has books and her brother likes to color. Her father thinks that’s enough. Jan doesn’t know any different and doesn’t ask.
Jan, her father, and her brother currently live in Greenfield Center, a few towns west of the Quabbin Reservoir. Before that was Boston and before that was Worcester near Clark University. Jan’s father has very little money. He usually takes odd jobs that he finds advertised on Craigslist, like gardening or raking leaves. For the time being, he is picking apples at Apple’s Apples, the vast orchard in Apple, Massachusetts.
A rash of strange deaths has occurred in Greenfield Center since the three of them arrived in town. The deaths don’t appear to be murders. They seem more like unfortunate accidents.
Four weeks ago, the burly owner of Rico’s Pizza, with a tattoo of a busty belly dancer on his forea
rm, froze to death in the walk-in freezer at the back of his shop. Three weeks ago, a woman on a fire escape just one block away somehow got her neck tangled in her clothesline and was found hanging between her apartment and her neighbors across the way. Last week, a seventh grade boy who was playing hooky from school fell off the bridge over the Deerfield River, less than a mile from where Jan now sits on her fire escape. The boy was washed over the dam and found lifeless on the smooth rocks below. His bicycle was left rider-less.
Now, as she sits and enjoys the afternoon air, Jan catches a glimpse of something moving in the gray light of the alley. She cranes her neck over the dying potted plants to see. Presently, a man slips out of the shadows. Jan crinkles her nose and puts one hand to her mouth to keep from giggling. The man is wiry thin. He is wearing thick glasses and his pants seem just a tad too short.
To Jan, he looks a little . . . pervy.
Of course, Jan isn’t afraid. The pervy man hasn’t noticed her yet so she watches him with mild curiosity.
He hangs in the shadows next to a dumpster that belongs to a burrito restaurant. What festers in that dumpster makes the whole neighborhood smell. Sometimes, from high above, Jan sees huge, black rats sniffing around the giant box of metal.
The pervy man hunkers down on his thin legs, his unfortunately short pants riding even higher to reveal whites socks, and smokes a cigarette. After a while, he pulls out a ski cap and gloves from his back pocket and slips them on. Jan finds that a little odd because it’s chilly outside but not that chilly.
At the end of the alley a gaggle of school children from the prestigious Drake School pass by. It must be close to three in the afternoon. Jan’s thankful that she’s not dressed like them in their plaids, skirts, and blazers. She finds it stupid that they must wear uniforms to learn.
As their chattering echoes in the narrow space between buildings, the pervy man next to the dumpster stands and backs up against the brick wall. His cigarette is still in his hand. He watches as a few last stragglers pass by the mouth of the alley. Then it’s quiet again. He takes one more drag, tilts his head up, and blows smoke in the air. It curls as it rises and disappears.
Little Killer A to Z Page 7