Lara Reznik - The Girl From Long Guyland

by Lara Reznik

  “Actually, he owns a chain of shoe stores,” Katie said. “You ever hear of Chandlers?”

  Ma looked skeptical. “When do you start working?”

  I swallowed. “Well, you see, this is the thing. They need us both to start working right away. Like tomorrow. It’s a golden opportunity, Ma.” Lie number six.

  “I’d like to talk with the Birnbaums.”

  Katie jumped in. “I have no way to call them. They’re in Europe.” At least that was the truth.

  Ma scratched her head. “None of this makes sense. They offered you a job, but they’re in Europe, and you have to start tomorrow?”

  Katie placed her hand on my mother’s arm. “Mrs. Levin, it’s quite simple. My father had asked me if I had any friends to work for him this summer before they left. He’s opening Candies, a new line of stores aimed at youth, you know, with a cool, hip vibe. He wants college girls to sell the shoes there. With all the schools closing suddenly his manager called me and said they could use help immediately. So I asked Laila and well, here we are.” Lie number seven.

  Katie had an uncanny talent for weaving a web of deception. Ben grinned at her, clearly impressed by these abilities.

  “We really have to leave right away,” I said.

  “You’re not going to wait to see your father? Amby should be home from school in an hour. She’ll be very upset to have missed you.”

  “I have to go the bathroom. Be right back.” Leaving Katie to spin more magic, I tiptoed into my mother’s bedroom. I opened the top drawer of her dresser where she kept her sewing box. At the bottom of the many spools of threads and needles, were savings passbooks with each of my family’s names typed on the inside of the jacket. I snatched the one that had LAILA LEVIN printed on it.

  Veins bulged from my mother’s neck when Ben, Chris, Katie and I filed out of the split-level a few minutes later. Her head bobbed up-and-down like a Cupie doll as she watched us pile into the Saab. As we drove off, I felt terrible knowing my mother would worry herself sick about my future.

  When we arrived at West Meadow Bank, I insisted on going inside myself.

  Chris argued. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Things would have been much easier with my mother if you’d not insisted on meeting her,” I said.

  “Waddaya talking about? Things went fine with your mommy,” Chris said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Ya think?”

  He leaned over the seat. “Betcha your mommy has the hots for me and Ben.”

  My eyes flared. “You’re disgusting!”

  “Now you two lovebirds calm down,” Ben said in a gruff voice.

  Chris moved closer to me. His breath moistened my neck. “I’m going inside the bank with you.”

  “You don’t exactly look like a typical West Meadow customer,” Katie said.

  Ben blinked. “She’s got a point, man.”

  I entered the bank alone and filled out the withdrawal slip leaving fifty-two dollars in the account. The teller counted the money as she handed me twelve hundred dollar bills to me. That was three hundred more than I’d told Ben and Chris about.

  I stuck three of the bills in my Levis’ pocket. The rest I left in the bank envelope that I’d hand over to Ben. I might have been stupid, but I wasn’t brain dead.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The Burial

  USA, 1970

  I came down with some hideous flu bug on the drive cross-country. My throat burned and my head ached with fever.

  “Are you okay?” Katie said as I sat bleary-eyed in a suspended state of delirium. No one else noticed. She bought me Bayer aspirin at a truck stop and a bag of ice, which I gratefully placed on the back of my neck.

  Ben and Chris sat together in the front seat in silence for most of the ride. It was futile getting a decent radio station. As soon as we’d find one, it would turn to static. “How come you didn’t get this thing outfitted with an 8-track?” Chris asked.

  “Shut up,” Ben said. “We’re lucky to have the car.”

  We continued to drive with the windows down. The sound of the wind sifting through the car made talking difficult. Miles and miles of highway in silence. Miles and miles of doom and gloom. I felt numb. Void of sensation. The glands in my neck swelled like two golf balls.

  One state looked like the next. New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri. We rarely stopped and when we did, it was for gas, restroom breaks, and snacks of powdered donuts, candy bars and Coca Colas. At one point in Missouri we stopped at a K-Mart and Ben purchased a shovel and a pick.

  A couple of times we pulled into a truck stop to eat a real meal. Ben would order all the food, generally consisting of the cheapest stuff on the menu like corn beef hash or split-pea soup. “I’m trying to make this money last,” he said one night, when Katie complained about her dinner.

  Katie was not used to living like this. I certainly wasn’t, but I imagined it must have been harder for her. Afterwards, Ben would say something to her like “I’ll make it up to you, little plum,” and he’d kiss her neck and playfully feel her up.

  I would look away but my emotions were still raw. Did Ben even notice my pain and suffering? Was I nothing to him but a meal ticket out of Connecticut? “Are you in love with him?” I asked Katie in a Shell gas station restroom.

  She was fluffing up her hair and applying lip-gloss. “He’s certainly sexy as shit. But… what is love anyway? Ben says it’s something invented by the bourgeois world to rationalize marriage and monogamy.”

  “Sounds like something Ben would say. It justifies his inability to commit to anyone.”

  “Hmmmm. What about you, Lai? I thought you and Chris had something special before this trip. But you’re barely speaking to each other.”

  It was true that I no longer had any illusions about Chris. “Between what happened to Joey and Kent State, I have no emotions,” I said. That wasn’t quite true. The jury was still out on my feelings for Ben.

  Chris and Ben switched off driving every four hours. They refused to let Katie or me take the wheel. After two days, we finally checked into a cheap motel. The room had two double beds with saggy mattresses. Ben and Katie took one. Chris and I had the other. We watched The Dick Cavett Show on a small portable TV.

  Later, Katie tried to stifle her moans. Ben didn’t bother. The bed springs hummed on.

  Chris reached for me.

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t,” I said.

  “You’re not worried about them?”

  “I-I just got my period.” I said. Lie number God knows how many.

  “Bummer.” He rolled back to his side of the bed.

  By Thursday afternoon, we’d driven through Oklahoma and crossed the New Mexico border. A sign said, “Welcome to the Land of Enchantment.” The landscape became more interesting with a rocky mountain range in front of us. Cactus and yucca littered the terrain. There were vast empty spaces as we passed through towns like Tucumcari and Santa Rosa.

  As the darkness of night engulfed us, we turned off the highway onto a dirt road and parked in a deserted area. We ate Snickers bars and a bag of potato chips for dinner that night and slept sitting up in the car. No one talked much.

  At sunrise, the desert glistened with pink-grapefruit, lemon-yellows, and berry-red colors in the distance. A family of lizards catapulted down the road. We drove to an area where there was a unique formation of red rocks. Chris and Ben took out the shovel and pick and started digging. Katie and I sat on the front of the car. No one said a word.

  I silently sang, “Schma Yisrael, Adoni, Elohenu, Adoni, Echud.” It was the only prayer I could recall from Hebrew School. I remembered how sweet Joey had been. An innocent Queens boy over his head in a crazy business. I thought about the four dead Kent State students, too. How they’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time. How it could have been me.

  When the guys were done burying Joey, we zoomed off in the Saab leaving spirals of grey smoke behind us. I felt comforted by the beauty
of the desert. Joey would like it here. I prayed that he would rest in peace.

  By noon we were back on I-40 and took another detour to the top of the pine-speckled Sandia Mountains and stopped at a scenic outlook. A local in a red baseball cap offered us information about the view below. “That’s Albuquerque spread over that valley. Those are streets and green patches of parks. Over there’s the Rio Grande.”

  This was where we’d be living. The beauty of the land of enchantment made me feel a tad better about the circumstances that brought us here. As we drove toward Albuquerque, we saw a sign that said:

  BELLA VISTA RESTAURANT — All the Chicken and Fish You Can Eat — $3.99

  “Let’s go,” said Chris. “I’m starving, man.”

  People stood in long lines down the pathway of rock steps built into the mountainside. We waited there with ranchers in cowboy hats, dark-skinned Mexicans speaking Spanish, and even a couple of Indians with long braids. When we reached the entrance, there was a cute dude that could have passed for John Lennon’s brother. He smiled at Katie and me as he held out chairs for us at a table.

  The restaurant was enormous. Hot battered fried-chicken and fish, fresh coleslaw, and crispy French fries arrived on giant platters minutes after we were seated. It was the best meal we’d had in days. Chris joked about how the all-you-can-eat restaurant wasn’t gonna make money on us.

  We all smiled. Chris watched me wolf down three drumsticks and a breast. He pinched my waist and joked, “Don’t get chubby on me now.”

  I pointed at his plate filled with numerous chicken bones. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks,” I kidded. The silly banter felt good. Like everything was normal between us.

  “You mean stones,” Ben said laughing. “Gotta hit the john.” He stood up and poked Chris’s shoulder.

  Chris half-smiled. “Guess I’ll join you.”

  While we waited for the guys to return, Katie and I sipped our cokes and talked about getting an apartment. “Think your mother’s gonna make you live in the dorm?” she asked.

  “Who knows? Where do you think we’ll sleep tonight?”

  “I’m sure Ben’s got it all figured out,” she said.

  We sat waiting for them for a quite a while. Then the waitress told us we needed to leave so she could bus the table for other customers. It seemed like a long time since Ben and Chris had gone to the restroom.

  “Maybe they’re out in the parking lot scoring weed,” Katie said. We hadn’t taken anything on the trip. The cargo we had was already too dangerous. We marched down the steps and walked around the parking lot. “Wasn’t the Saab parked over there?” Katie said pointing at some conifer trees.

  “I think so.” But I hadn’t paid all that much attention when we’d gotten out of the car. We spent the next hour parading up-and-down the parking lot. Finally, we decided to go back inside and look for the guys in there.

  The John Lennon look-alike greeted us with menus. “How many in your party?”

  “We’ve eaten already,” I said.

  Katie stepped in front of me. “We’re looking for a couple of guys. One’s blond, the other has a long-brown ponytail. They may have asked you about us.”

  “Yeah, I remember those dudes. Thought they were lucky to have two beautiful chicks like you. Can’t say I’ve seen them again.” He tilted his head up. “Hey, Fred, you see a couple of hippies looking for their girlfriends?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is there anyone else who may have been working here earlier?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  At 4:00 the restaurant closed down to prepare for the dinner crowd. Katie gave me a hooded look. “Maybe they were arrested.”

  “We’ve been dumped.” I said. “And they took the Saab.”

  SIX MONTHS LATER, Katie received a phone call at Hakona Hall, the dorm at UNM where we shared a room together. I happened to be standing by the pay phone when it rang and picked up the receiver.

  The voice on the other end said, “I’m an officer with the Arizona state police department. I’m calling for a Miss Katie Birnbaum.”

  I handed Katie the phone. “It’s for you. Sounds kind of official.”

  The blood rushed into my ears. Katie squeezed my hand as she held the phone where we both could hear what the officer had to say.

  He cleared his throat. “Is this Miss Katherine Birnbaum?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Miss, it appears there’s a 1969 Saab abandoned in a McDonalds parking lot in Bisbee that’s registered in your name. I’ll warn you though. You may not be able to drive it.”

  Katie asked him if the car had been wrecked. It would figure that’s why Ben and Chris would abandon it.

  “No, Miss, the car seems to be in good shape. But there’s a dreadful stink coming from the trunk.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Gotcha One More Time

  Austin, Texas, 2012

  Eduardo, Steve, and Sutherland extricate Danny’s hands from my neck and hold him down on the ground. Eduardo clenches his fists.

  “Don’t do it,” Steve yells.

  Three armed security guards are on the scene in seconds and handcuff him.

  Danny’s voice trails off as they march him down the hall. “You’re responsible, bitch. Denise was my life.”

  Sutherland calls Steve into another conference room. The rest of us sit in silence until they emerge a few minutes later. Steve tells Ed and me to follow him into the reception area. He says that Sutherland no longer thinks there’s enough evidence to summon a grand jury. He believes that Ben and Chris are guilty of a lot of sick behavior but not murder. After forty years, the nightmare is over.

  As we ride the elevator down to the lobby, I tell Eduardo and Steve that Denise hated her brother. “I believe he abused her. He tried to attack me one night in the dorm.”

  “You’ve never told me about that,” Ed says.

  I look Ed in the eye. “I plan to fill you in on everything that happened that year.”

  Steve refuses to take any money for his legal services. Ed and I head back to the casa on the lake. I sit on a lounge chair on the deck drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with Willow at my feet. Ed opens the French door and joins me with a bottle of beer. “You must be so relieved now that this whole ordeal is over.”

  “I still feel bad for Mrs. Costello,” I say.

  “Poor woman.”

  I touch his hand. “Maybe we could go to New Mexico and find Joey’s remains.”

  I CALL VICTOR and tell him I need a week before starting back to work. Eduardo and I drive to New Mexico the next morning. We spend a day with his mother at the ranch. She is still grieving the death of Juanita’s mother. Does my mother-in-law wish her son was married to Juanita instead of me? Perhaps. Life is never perfect.

  Ed and I drive through the mountains east of Albuquerque where we meet up with the some federal officers as well as two state policemen at a local restaurant. We caravan in three vehicles for the next few hours retracing the route from that fateful trip forty-two years ago. No shopping mall, no office complex. The isolated dirt road is still there. Other than a few adobe homes, the desert wilderness remains as pristine as I remember it.

  About a mile down the road I recognize the unusual red rock formation where we had stopped. Miraculously, it is still there. They’d buried Joey right in front of it. The troopers spend the next hour digging up his remains.

  I can’t look at them.

  Ed hands the officers a slip of paper with Mrs. Costello’s address in Queens. When we get back to Austin, I send her a personal note summarizing everything that has transpired.

  A week later, Ed brings in the mail and hands me a letter with a postmark from Far Rockaway, New York. It smells of lilacs. I tear open the envelope and find a note handwritten on crisp white stationary lined with flower borders. It says:

  “I finally feel my Joey is resting in peace. I like to think he’s together with poor Denise. Thank
you, Laila, and God bless.

  Sylvie Costello”

  “It’s really over now,” Ed says, as my iPhone rings.

  I see the 520 area code but not the name AMBY.

  “I thought you should know the truth,” says the voice on the other end. “I’ve held on to it for over forty years.”

  I mouth the words, “It’s Ben,” to Eduardo.

  He rolls his eyes.

  “Why don’t you talk with your friend Chris, the therapist?” I say.

  “I’m here in Austin. I need to speak to you, Laila. Can you meet me somewhere? Margaritaville, perhaps?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. No way.”

  “Don’t you want to know what really happened?”

  “For crissakes. Does it have to be in person?” I say.

  There’s a long pause. “Yes.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I tell Eduardo what Ben has proposed.

  “You want to meet with that jerk?”

  “I need closure,” I say. “I have to see him.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I’m waiting for Ben at the same table at Starbucks where I sat with Darlene. Poor, crazy Darlene. He’s wearing hip aviator sunglasses and a genuine smile. He removes the glasses then hugs me. Handsome as ever with those big brown eyes with gold flecks. “You’re still so beautiful, Laila. How do you stay that way?”

  I don’t want to sound flirtatious and give him the wrong impression. “Let’s not mince words. What do you have to confess to me?”

  “Where do I start?” he says.

  “You’re the one who called the meeting.”

  He bites his lip. “Okay, here’s what I came to say. Chris was the one who’d suggested we climb in bed with Denise to get Joey’s goat. It was supposed to be a joke.”

  “Hilarious,” I say.

  “Things got outta control like Doc said. Joey smashed the beer bottle and came after us. We pushed him in self-defense. At least I did.”