Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Armitage appeared to be an outdoorsman. Sitting on our back steps, eating our Pop-Tarts or granola bars, Patty and I often observed him heading up the mountain, carrying a walking stick, with his little dog trotting alongside and a pair of binoculars around his neck. Mrs. Armitage was never part of these expeditions, we noted.
“Maybe he’s meeting a girlfriend up there,” I said. “Maybe he’s a spy.”
“He doesn’t look like the type,” Patty offered. As much as I would have liked to think otherwise, I had to agree, this was so. And anyway, Mr. Armitage’s hikes seldom lasted more than half an hour: a quick jaunt up the trail, then down again. My sister and I decided this was probably his fitness routine, though if so, it did not appear to be having much effect, so far. Like his wife, Mr. Armitage remained on the chubby side.
One noteworthy fact about our new neighbors had to do with their landscaping efforts. Early on in their time on Morning Glory Court, Mr. Armitage had hired a man with a small tractorlike machine to come in and tear up the lawn, and we briefly imagined that the Armitages might be doing something exciting like putting in a pool or constructing an elaborate garden at least. But when the job was finished, it turned out all the Armitages had elected to do was rip out the grass of the lawn and replace it with concrete blocks. Karl Pollack, who’d spoken to Mr. Armitage around this time, as none of the rest of us on the street seemed to have done, reported that our neighbor had done this as a way of avoiding the inconvenience of yard maintenance and reducing his water bill.
The other big disappointment where the Armitages were concerned had to do with their television set. At this point, our neighbor Helen’s husband, Tubby, was still alive, and he had taken to watching the shopping channel during the very time slot when we liked to catch our episodes of The Brady Bunch through their window. Viewing our show through the Pollacks’ window had also become an iffy proposition. (Their newborn son evidently suffered from colic, and they had recently acquired a VCR—a new invention—on which they tended, maddeningly, to play episodes of Mr. Rogers they’d taped for the purpose of getting Karl Jr. to sleep.) This had left Patty and me searching for a new viewing location for Drive-In Movie. Briefly, we’d thought of the Armitages.
But unlike every other house on our side of the street that backed up against the mountain—whose TV sets we could see, glowing blue through their picture windows—it appeared the Armitages didn’t own a TV. Not one they kept in the living room anyway—the spot necessary for us to look in through the picture windows at night to catch our shows. This left us wondering how they spent their time.
There was the dog, of course. Maybe they liked doing jigsaw puzzles, Patty suggested. Or Scrabble.
But suppose the Armitages were living a secret life, as international jewel thieves, or spies? Maybe Mr. Armitage was one of those people who provide information about the mob to the FBI, and he and his wife had to go into hiding with a whole new identity. Maybe Mrs. Armitage had suffered a terrible accident that left her face horribly scarred, which accounted for her staying inside all the time, except for those rare walks in the night. As the Charlie’s Angels of Morning Glory Court, we would get to the bottom of their story.
We started a scrapbook, devoted to Mr. Armitage. More accurately, I started the scrapbook. Patty just went along with it, as she did with most things I suggested.
Years before, our mother had begun a scrapbook documenting my babyhood, but she’d stopped keeping it up after a couple of months, which had left many blank pages. I saw no harm in ripping out the pictures devoted to me: my newborn footprint, a photograph showing our mother, with an expression I barely recognized, of eagerness and hope, and our young and lanky father—skinnier than we’d ever known him, with a cowlick—wrapping his arms around the two of us in a gesture that would have made you think no harm could ever befall this family. The entries—daily at first—had slacked off dramatically around the point of my six-month birthday. Mention was made of my first tooth, and a time when—hearing Andy Williams singing “Moon River” on the radio—I’d reputedly run to get our copy of Goodnight Moon and started dancing. My mother had stopped writing in the book not long after this.
I made a new title page now: “The Mysterious Life of Albert Armitage,” and wrote the date, along with our stated mission—to learn everything we could about our inscrutable neighbor (inscrutable: a word from my fifth-grade extra-credit vocab list), though what the purpose might be for our project we never said.
For Christmas that year, our father had given me a Polaroid camera and five rolls of film that I’d been saving ever since. I decided to dedicate these to the project of documenting the life and habits of Albert Armitage.
We wanted to include Mrs. Armitage in our project too, but sightings of her were so rare, we would have nothing to put in our scrapbook if we relied on documenting her brief forays into the neighborhood. The hope was that once we understood more of the husband’s story, we’d get an idea of what was going on with his wife.
We began our scrapbook with the more mundane aspects of our neighbor’s existence: Mr. Armitage carrying out his daily routines of heading up the mountain for his morning hike with his dog, walking to the bus stop, and picking up the Sunday paper on the curb. With no lawn to mow, he spent little time on yard work, though we had spotted him once or twice standing on the edge of his cement-covered plot of ground, pulling up the occasional dandelion that made its way through the cracks. Another time we saw him lining up the rocks that edged the cement blocks. Patty and I exchanged a meaningful look when we saw him doing this—both of us concluding that it would be a poor idea to try stealing rocks from this house anytime in the future. He kept close tabs, evidently.
Recognizing what Mr. Armitage’s attitude was likely to be concerning the idea of our taking pictures of him, we had cooked up a method for concealing our actions. This called for Patty to stand in front of whatever location it was where we spotted our subject, but slightly off to one side or the other. She’d strike an elaborate pose (hand on hip, waving to the camera) while I aimed the camera in such a way as to capture an image not of my sister at all, but of Mr. Armitage and, on occasion, the dog. To complete the ruse, I’d announce in a loud voice, “Great shot, Patty,” or “You really looked cute in that one.”
On our way up the street toward home we’d peel back the paper on our latest Polaroid and watch the image develop before our eyes: Mr. Armitage checking his watch. Mr. Armitage hosing down his rocks. Mr. Armitage getting his mail. The most exciting page of our scrapbook featured photographs we’d taken (while pretending to be fixing my bicycle chain) of Mr. Armitage giving his dog a bath.
Patty participated in our investigation, but unenthusiastically. From the first time we encountered Mr. Armitage, my sister maintained a protective attitude where he was concerned. He was a dog lover. That’s all she cared about.
“He’s just a person,” she said. “He isn’t hurting anybody. I bet he’s just sad because of his wife’s accident.”
My sister was referring here to an idea I’d proposed as an explanation for why we only laid eyes on Mrs. Armitage at night, and hardly ever, even then. “Someone threw acid on her face,” I had suggested. “She used to be incredibly beautiful, but now she doesn’t want anyone to see her.” Of all the scenarios I’d suggested to explain the Armitages’ odd behavior, my sister chose to subscribe to the theory that Mrs. Armitage was a tragically disfigured burn victim, and she felt sorry for them.
But for me, there remained something troubling about the activities of the couple at the end of the street. Keeping our scrapbook was, for me, a way of addressing, in a tangible way, an intangible feeling of uneasiness about our neighbors.
Or maybe it was this: so many questions remained unanswered in our lives at the time. We were looking for hard data to explain the inexplicable. Maybe I hoped that if we assembled enough simple data concerning an individual whose behavior confused us—investigating the contents of his tra
sh can, tracking the times of his departure for work and subsequent arrival home, and whatever else we might record through the viewfinder of my camera—we might come to understand the things that struck us as odd. We were too young then to recognize that the discovery of hard facts seldom yields true enlightenment.
After a few weeks of working on our scrapbook—and finding no additional data of significance—our interest in documenting the comings and goings of Mr. Armitage tapered off, to the point where one day, finding the scrapbook, I realized that nearly a whole year had gone by since we’d made any entries.
I put the scrapbook on our shelf. Now, except for his walks with the dog, and his regular morning hike up the mountain, we hardly ever saw our neighbor, and we thought about him even less. Him or his wife.
Sometime later it occurred to us that months had passed since either my sister or I had laid eyes on Mrs. Armitage, which led to our conclusion that they might be getting a divorce. That was one story we felt no need to investigate further.
Chapter Five
Once, when she was seven or eight, Patty was walking home—just wandering around the neighborhood, looking for dogs probably. It was one of those rare afternoons when, for some reason, I wasn’t around. For Patty, spending an afternoon without me was like the sky doing without the sun.
As she told me later, she noticed a basketball lying on the ground near the playground. It had rolled into some bushes, but she could still make out the faded orange surface and the last few letters of the word Wilson. She walked over to investigate.
The ball was a little flat, but usable. She picked it up. Checked to see if the ball could still bounce. It did.
That was the beginning for my sister. I doubt Patty had ever even held a basketball before that day. Now, for the first time, she had, and once she did, she liked the feeling.
There was a patch of blacktop nearby. At one end was a pole with a hoop attached. No net, and the backboard was a little off-kilter. Patty started dribbling and aimed the ball at the hoop. It didn’t go in on the first try, she told me. But after that, yes. Many times. Later, she dribbled the ball all the way home.
The next day we went over to Helen and Tubby’s. Tubby had been a school custodian before he retired—meaning he owned every tool known to man, including an air pump and the needle you need for inflating a basketball. Once the ball was filled with air, Patty’s dribbling got even better.
Later she mastered dribbling behind her back and through her legs. She mastered crossovers and balls-against-the-wall. Other kids noticed and asked her to play with them. On the court my sister was nimble and fearless, and surprisingly aggressive for a girl who, off the court, seldom spoke up or made waves. When she was shoved to the ground, which sometimes happened, she never betrayed any sign that it hurt, though it must have.
But Patty’s greatest gift with a basketball was her shooting. Right before she made a shot she would freeze dead in her tracks. Just seconds earlier, her body had been tearing up and down the court so fast it was hard to keep track of her; now, about to take a shot, she stood stock-still, spring-loaded. Then she would look up, lock her eyes on the back of the rim, and with a brief glance to the right or left, she would release the ball, keeping her gaze on that rim until the moment the ball swished through the hoop and scored her points. Then she was off again.
Kids wanted my sister on their team when they saw her. Even boys did, if they were smart. And one more thing about Patty: Even though she was such a star on the court, she never hogged the ball. She appeared to feel no requirement that the points her team scored be hers. She was a true team player. But she was probably never happier than when she was alone on a court, as she was that first day, when it was just her and the ball, dribbling and shooting. That was the sound that let me know my sister was coming—the sound of a basketball hitting the pavement. Steady as a heartbeat.
I SPENT ALL OF SEVENTH grade waiting for the blood to come. Other things must have been going on that year, but that’s how I remember it. Waking up and sliding my hand under my pajama bottoms to check if anything had happened in the night, moving it over my belly, my two new breasts—hard little mounds—and the soft place where a small tuft of pubic hair had sprouted, but there was nothing more.
As far as I knew I was the only girl in my class who hadn’t gotten her period yet. Nobody said this. I’d figured it out by process of elimination, based on all the girls who talked about their cramps, or stood around the Tampax dispenser, exchanging stories about accidents or pool parties they had to navigate, wearing a cover-up. I alone had none to tell.
The fact that I, alone of the girls I knew, had not begun to menstruate obliterated all else as summer approached and I passed my thirteenth birthday. Ever since school started the fall before, I’d been carrying a sanitary napkin in my book bag. I lived in fear of being one of those girls we’d all known, who stands up to go to the blackboard to write out a theorem, and they’ve got this red spot on the back of their skirt. Maybe, if she’s got a good friend, someone says something to her later. More likely people just whisper and stare.
My sister said she hoped it wouldn’t ever happen to her—meaning getting her period, not the accident part. Good luck with that, I told her. But I had started to worry that it never would happen to me. I’d be the one girl in the history of our school who got all the way to graduation without ever seeing that gash of red in her underpants.
It was an odd thing to hope for. Who would want blood dripping out of them? Gushing out possibly, I wasn’t even clear.
Only I did want it. Because everyone else had that happen to them, and it gave you something to share with the other girls. I was different enough as it was, without this. I figured if I could stand around the Tampax dispenser holding my stomach, complaining about cramps, I might fit in with the rest of them. Instead, all I did was carry around that same unopened sanitary napkin that had been lying in the bottom of my book bag so long now it had sandwich crumbs and bits of melted chocolate bar stuck to the wrapper, ballpoint pen marks, and lint. Checking my underpants every time I went to the bathroom. Finding nothing. Feeling like a freak, though hardly for the first time.
Our mother was not the sort of person you discussed these things with, but she had to know. She did our laundry.
Our father, when he touched down to see us, had started treating me differently, as if I was breakable. With Patty, he’d roughhouse—pat her on the butt, toss her a basketball, never mind if it hit her in the stomach, because she’d just laugh if it did, pick her up (tall as she was) and twirl her. With me he displayed a new and unfamiliar distance that sometimes made me feel as if he didn’t even know me anymore.
It must have unnerved my father to think of me entering into the territory of sex. He knew how to act with little girls, and I knew—Patty and I both did, from all those times at Marin Joe’s, and every other place we ever went with him—that he definitely knew how to act with a woman. How to be with a daughter who was no longer a child might have left him at a loss—a rare state for our father to find himself in, but it seemed this was so.
The only person I talked with about this was my sister. She was the only one I talked with about anything real, same as I was the only one for her.
Nights in bed (Patty top bunk, me bottom) we listened to music on our transistor radio and our tinny portable record player (Peter Frampton, Cat Stevens, Linda Ronstadt; the wilder stuff like Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd reserved for daytime).
We whispered to each other for hours, and it seemed there was no topic we couldn’t discuss: What would Patty choose if our mother suddenly allowed us to have a dog: an adorable puppy or an old rescue dog that really needed a home? What happened to your body when you died? And—after seeing Jaws—whether we’d want to go on living if a shark bit off our legs and arms. (Or where we’d draw the line. Two legs, one arm? Both legs? One arm, one leg? We considered every possible variation.)
We discussed God (I didn’t believe in him; Patty
did) and our parents’ divorce—though that was long ago now. Knowing he wasn’t with us, and he lived alone, we speculated about what our father did those times he wasn’t at the Civic Center working on one of his cases. Though he never talked about this, even when we asked, he definitely seemed like the type to have a girlfriend, and if he did, we knew she must be beautiful. One name stuck in my head, but I didn’t ask about her. If our father wanted to say something, he would, and meanwhile it felt disloyal to our mother to speak it out loud.
Our mother’s story contained little mystery. Since the divorce she had inhabited a deep, irretrievable place of cold, gray sadness, as if our father’s departure from her life had banished all that remained of sunlight. We never questioned that she loved us, but her behavior suggested that of a person suffering from some contagious disease, who knows she might contaminate the people she loves if she gets too close to them. She brought home groceries after work from her job as a typist (the term secretary implying more status than she afforded herself) and took us shopping for school clothes when she could, but more than any children we knew, we were left to our own devices much of the time, with a mostly empty refrigerator and too-tight sneakers, saltines and cheese slices or canned soup for dinner, and a faint smell of smoke coming from the crack under her door to let us know she was in there with one of her library books.
But our father’s story was more complicated. There was the mysterious Margaret Ann (whose name our mother cried out on the last night our father ever lived at our house; then never again).
Then there were all the others. Patty and I would be out with him, and some woman we’d never met would call out to him or come over to us, and there’d be this look between them that made us feel she knew all kinds of things we didn’t.
After, I might ask who that was, and he’d say, “Someone I met one time.” He might mention that she worked at a flower shop he stopped at (buying flowers for someone else, more than likely), or at the dealership where he got the Alfa serviced, or she sold him a pair of boots a few months back. One time it was the judge in a case in which he’d testified. But the way she’d looked at him in the parking lot outside the gas station where we’d seen her—rearranging her hair, or that thing they all seemed to do, touching their neck—made her seem like a woman more than a judge.
After Her: A Novel Page 4