This was Genie’s sophomore year. I searched through the head shots in the W’s. Christ Almighty, was that her? Could that be right? “GENIE WICKERS,” it said under the picture, of a surly, chubby, dull-eyed girl. Yes, it was her—there she was, my beloved beautiful athlete, my Tarzana, staring into the camera like a stupid pumpkin. What the hell? What happened to Genie Maychild?
I went to the D’s, and found the only boy with “D” for a first initial: Dominic Dengel. He looked even more stupid than Genie, but somehow more optimistic. In spite of his incredibly mangy haircut, there was an eagerness about his face. I looked at the picture for a few minutes.
Well, no wonder I hadn’t been able to find anyone in Genie’s family by phone. She’d changed her last name and had somehow drastically changed her appearance, her self, between her sophomore year in high school and the rest of her life. The woman I knew was Genie Maychild. So the question became, what happened to this Genie Wickers?
I consulted the directory in the library and found two Wickerses, both on the same road, and one Dengel. I noted the addresses and left.
_____
To hell and gone was where Gristmill Road was, a long lonesome rut west of town. I drove past the first of the two Wickers addresses, number 11; half a mile down the road was the other one, number 15. Both homes were the kind of places you’d go and photograph for a bleeding-heart feature on the rural poor.
I turned around and went back to number 11, the bigger of the two lots, and pulled over. Someone had thrown down a single-wide prefab about forty years ago, it looked like, then attempted to graft a board-and-tarpaper shanty onto the side of it. A variety of adhesives had been used over the years, I noticed, to keep the pieces together and seal out the weather: expanding foam, red epoxy, duct tape. I expected to see Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans bump heads between the junked cars any second.
My Weejuns slipped on the mud, which still harbored ice crystals between the clumps. There was no name on the mailbox.
Standing at the front door wearing my pea coat and my hopeful-kid-at-Christmas expression, I listened. Inside somebody had a television blaring. I knocked on the kick panel of the storm door: bam-bam-bam! Glancing up, I saw a huge satellite dish pointed skyward, attached directly into the shingles of the shack with tenpenny nails.
After a few minutes I knocked again. The inner door creaked open to reveal the most repugnant hag I have ever seen, which, I feel, is saying a lot.
The woman wasn’t terribly old, but she had that weathered, skaggy look that retired prostitutes have, whether they’ve tried to take care of themselves or not. And this one had really let herself go.
Before she opened her mouth to talk, I could tell she’d be minus all but about four teeth. Her vaguely beige hair was wispy and wild. Pouchy in the face, she stooped miserably, as if a large dead dog were strapped to her back. She pushed open the storm door a crack and looked at me with bee-stung eyes.
I smiled warmly. “Mrs. Wickers?”
She stared.
“How do you do?” I went on, “My name is Theresa Sanchez and I’m doing an article about Genie for Sports Illustrated. I wonder if—”
She let the storm door fall shut, but I quickly pulled the pint of Ballantine’s from my coat pocket. She stopped, I kept smiling, and she let out half a cackle.
“Come in!” she said. “Hah!” I was right about the teeth.
The smell of the place triggered my gag reflex, but I controlled it. I forced myself to breathe through my nose, to filter the germs and cat dander, and wondered how I could get a dab of my mentholated lip balm into my nostrils without appearing rude.
Well, we’re talking cats, we’re talking cigarette butts in hubcap-sized ashtrays, we’re talking mildew, we’re talking dirty underwear. There. I’m sorry, but that’s how it was.
The television was on absolutely full blast, tuned to a soap opera.
“But didn’t Asher tell you? He’s going to marry ME!”
“That’s what you think, Bethany. You know, if you weren’t PREGNANT, I’d shut that poisonous little trap of yours for good!”
“Who told you that, Valda?!”
“Let’s just say a little BIRDIE, dear.”
Daytime TV. Whoever said television was a wasteland?
Mrs. Wickers dropped into the couch facing the TV and indicated that I should take a seat with her there, but I stepped into the kitchen and brought out a straight chair. It was wooden and very greasy, but at least I didn’t think it’d give me VD or crabs, as I was certain the couch would.
“Sorry to interrupt your story,” I began.
“Oh! Hah! I know how they all come out!”
Sloshing the bottle, I coughed and murmured, “Maybe a glass or two.”
“Oh! Hah!” She heaved herself up and all but scurried to a cabinet. “Of course!” A scrofulous yellow cat darted from behind the cabinet and made as if to climb up the back of my chair. I made a sudden movement and it changed direction to the kitchen. I saw at least five other cats around, all old-looking. I thought that was strange; in a houseful there’s usually a few kittens in the bunch. I supposed kittens aged fast in that place.
I poured a couple of fingers into the cloudy glasses she set before me on a trash-encrusted coffee table, then said, “Mrs. Wickers, I’m wondering—”
“Hah! Cheers!”
“Cheers.”
She smacked her lips. “Ah, that’s the good stuff! Good stuff!” She had on a pink sweatshirt appliquéd with seahorses, and those stretch pants nobody over age twelve should ever wear. She kicked off a pair of filthy scuffs and eased back in the couch. Her feet looked like poached footballs.
I poured again, for her.
She said, “Genie was a—a disappointment, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“She never gave a damn about me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“She’s rich, you know.”
“I guess she is. What I’m wondering about are Genie’s formative years, you know, her school days—”
“Hah! That Bethany’s gonna drink poison, y’know!”
The audio track of the soap opera pounded along—
“Dempsey, I know you never meant to hurt me.”
“That’s right, Bethany. Up until an hour ago, you’re the only one I ever loved. But I guess you always knew that. Now that it’s too late—”
“But Dempsey—”
“No, Bethany. Not now. Not here. Asher’s waiting.”
“If only I hadn’t—”
I grabbed the remote from the coffee table, hitting the power button. “Goddamn it. Let Bethany drink poison, then. I want to talk to you.”
Mrs. Wickers, her lips wet with Ballantine’s, peered at me. “You a cop?”
“No. Listen. Did Genie have a boyfriend in high school?”
“Unh.” She began cursing softly, slurringly, something like, “Godzhdamn. Damn. Godsham-damn.”
“What was his name?”
Mrs. Wickers cursed again, and I realized she was saying the name I’d already seen. “Dom. Goddamn Dom.”
“Dom? Yes? Dominic, uh”—I flipped open my notes—”Dengel? Dominic Dengel?”
“Dang. Goddamn. Sumbitch.”
I felt like backhanding her into coherence like in the movies, but it never works in real life.
Sharply I said, “Did she have any other boyfriends? Mrs. Wickers! Hey! Work with me here! How about her father? Did her father have sex with her?”
“Unh.” She cleared up a little. “He was gone before she got periods.”
“What about—”
“Why d’you care about tzhese shings? Who cares?”
“I’m trying to help your daughter.”
“Trouble? She in trouble?”
“I don’t know.”
“She never gave a good goddamn about me.”
She reached for the bottle and sloshed a lot more into her glass. I took the bottle back and took a slug out of it. After a minute I
felt calmer. The bottle was almost empty.
“Why didn’t she care about you?” I asked her.
“Dunno.”
“Maybe because you were a drunk? Maybe because you never gave a damn about her?”
“Mm, ah, did. Did, too.”
“Listen. Mrs. Wickers. Did Genie have an abortion back then?”
She gave me an answer I wasn’t expecting.
“I hope she did. Yepsh, I sure hope she did. ’Smy daughter you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean, you hope she did?”
“You—all ya want—all ya people want—” she appeared to be gasping, struggling for air. I waited, poised to do something, I didn’t know what. Suddenly, with an effort, she got it together and screamed, “Get out! Offa my house! Get out—getoutgetout!” Her face went shiny, and she began what I can only describe as projectile sobbing. A lifetime of grief spewed out of her, fearsomely. Terribly.
“You don’t care!” she screamed. “You never gave a damn!” Her face swelled and turned yellowish, mottled with purple. “You never gave me a damn thing! Damn! You hear me? Gimme!” she slobbered, “Gimme it! Look what you made me do!”
Recoiling, I leaped up and headed for the door.
As the storm door fell shut she got the TV going again.
“Asher, if you walk out that door now, don’t you EVER expect to come back!”
20
One Wickers was enough for me, but for the sake of thoroughness I stopped at number 15, a brick cottage overgrown with yews and junipers, which closed behind me as I pushed toward the front door.
I heard a phone ringing inside. No one answered my knocks.
Dominic Dengel lived in an apartment above the Wash-n-Fold back in town; I struck out there, too.
Still, I was doing all right. It was one-thirty. I picked up a microwaved burrito at the Stop & Snack and ate it in the car while I thought about the angles I had left.
The existence of Dominic Dengel signified a big break, I felt. If Genie had had an abortion as a teenager, or more than one, this guy might’ve decided to blackmail her about it now. But I couldn’t imagine who’d really care whether Genie had had an abortion fourteen or fifteen years ago. The media? Come on. Sponsors? Well, maybe. Genie had a few big contracts for clubs and apparel; you saw her face looking out at you from Golf Digest, Golf for Women, the usual. Still, sponsors are so frightened of lesbianism you’d think they’d be glad for some proof that one of their stars had had heterosexual relations at least once in her life. Is this nasty? I don’t know anymore. The thing was, Genie didn’t want this information coming out. That had to be enough for me right now.
I remembered Genie saying sharply, when I was gossiping about that European star, “I don’t care what someone did a long time ago.”
My appointment with Coach Handy was at two o’clock.
Why had Genie changed her name? Why do people, other than giddy new brides, change their names? To reinvent themselves. To get away from the past. To gain something.
The summer I was eleven, I read True Grit twice through and immediately changed my name to Mattie Ross. I wanted to be everything Mattie was that Lillian Byrd was not: fearless, smart, driven. Driven from within to fight a good fight to the death if need be.
Carrying a sharp stick, I rode my bike through the crummy streets of Detroit’s south side, into the weeds in vacant lots, along railroad beds, looking for criminals and rattlesnakes. In those days, criminals were not so easy to stumble across. There were no rattlesnakes in any event.
During the summer that I was Mattie, I felt brave, square, and true. Confidence braced up my posture as I patrolled the neighborhood, convincing my playmates to join my posse.
Then, I suppose, school started again, and I resumed my journey to actual adulthood, with its anxieties and consequences and exhilarations. I have never felt as capable, though, never again as fearless, as when I was Mattie Ross.
Marian Handistock lived in a house with a white picket fence around it and a basketball hoop in the driveway. I had to go past it and park on the next block down, because the street on the coach’s block was torn up and men were digging a trench. I thought it would be presumptuous to park in the driveway.
She stood in the doorway watching as I came up the walk. The house and yard were tidy, notwithstanding the mounds of dirty snow still clinging to life here and there. In the summer the yard would be shady: Maples and shagbark hickory trees, their bare branches thinking about all that great sap down there starting to thrum, towered overhead. I caught sight of a goshawk perched on a high limb; it was silently watching a cluster of plump chickadees that were taking turns pulling seeds from a feeder. The chickadees kept in touch with each other with a constant chatter: chee-dee! diddy-dee! The goshawk was thinking about food, too.
“Welcome,” said the coach, who filled the doorframe gracefully, I thought. She was stocky but not fat. Not tall. I recognized her aggressive chin from the pictures. She could’ve been a utility infielder, or possibly a goalie, apart from golf. She wore the prettiest blue blouse you’ve ever seen. Silk, maybe. Such a pure cerulean. Gorgeous. Around her neck was a clever ornament: a miniature coach’s whistle made of silver, on a fine silver chain. What a nice retirement gift, I thought.
She sized me up; of course, she was accustomed to sizing up women: How strong are you? How fast? The legs? The back ? Her eyes drilled deep into mine for an instant: Fighting spirit? Team player?
“Benchwarmer,” I said, shaking her hand. It startled her, but then she gave a friendly laugh, embarrassed that she’d been caught. I smiled and thanked her for seeing me, then wiped my feet carefully on the mat.
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself,” she said pleasantly.
“Water-main break?” I asked.
“Yes. What a mess it’s been! They say they’re almost done, though.” She directed me into the kitchen and took my coat. She had a pot of coffee going, and there was a plate of windmill cookies on the table. A clean kitchen, a civilized kitchen, it was. And a civilized woman, I thought with a measure of gratitude.
“It’s great to be talking with someone from Sports Illustrated again,” she said, pouring coffee.
“You’ve been interviewed before.”
“Several times. Do you know Tommy Pursell?”
“Uh, no.”
“Jane Metz, then?”
“Actually, I’m really new. I was working for the Motor City Journal, and I’d done a few freelance things before that, and one thing led to another. You know. Crazy business.”
“Right, sure. So—”
“So what I’d really like to talk about today, Ms Handistock—”
“Please, I’m Marian.”
“Marian, thank you—and of course I go by Theresa—are Genie Maychild’s early days; I mean, before the record starts. I feel there’s a gap between obscurity and fame, a sort of magical time, and it seems important because Genie came from very humble beginnings. I think a lot of fans would be interested in how you worked with the raw material of Genie, so to speak, how you took this young person and helped her on the path to sporting greatness. Like, the Nick Bollettieri angle, the Jack Grout angle.”
Coach Handy sipped her coffee, which she’d served in nice china cups with saucers. She’d set out a ceramic sugar and creamer in the shapes of bluebirds. I glanced around for evidence of a roommate but saw nothing conclusive. I did notice, through an archway to another room, a couple of antique golf clubs on a wall, and a pair of new space-age snowshoes, the kind you can jog in. Yep, old Handy was still a jock.
An extremely serene Golden Lab walked in, sniffing, circled the table, then settled beneath it. It was a nice dog, with a smooth coat and that sort of concerned expression those dogs have.
“Some people,” I prompted, “would say you created Genie Maychild.”
“That’s not for me to say. But it is true that when she came to me she had no swing at all. We built it together.”
“You won the Illin
ois Amateur, didn’t you?”
“Yes, in college. I thought I’d turn pro—but that’s another story.”
“The point is, you knew the game as well as anybody in this state.”
She smiled. “Genie was like a lot of young golfers: all power and no balance, no real finesse. She wanted—”
“Who first put a club in her hand?”
“I did.”
“When was that, Marian? How old was she?”
“She was fifteen-and-a-half. It was toward the end of her sophomore year in school. You see, they’d made a mistake on the sports budget at Pearl Center Con, and we had more money than we thought, for once, going into June. It was the end of May. If we didn’t use the money by the end of the school year, it’d go away—you know how that works. So I pushed through a request for some golf equipment. I’d seen Genie in my gym class. I could see she was a natural athlete, in spite of being out of shape. She had a gift.”
“Yeah?” I took a cookie.
“She could move. She was coordinated. I invited anybody to come after school and try out the equipment, and she and oh, half a dozen other kids showed up. From the moment she took a grip, I knew I had something special on my hands.”
I’d gotten my reporter’s nod going as I made notes. The reporter’s nod in the seated position isn’t so much a head nod as an upper body rock, a rhythm you get going more or less in time to the speech patterns of the person you’re listening to. The purpose is to create an atmosphere of receptivity and encouragement. Every now and then you vary things, do different head movements—a head cock, an upward chin tilt. Reporters do this naturally, unconsciously. The TV ones, however, have to force themselves to sit practically immobile, at least while they’re taping the reaction shots, because the reporter’s nod on TV looks idiotic.
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 34