KooKooLand

by Gloria Norris

  Moog Boy kissed me at every red light.

  We ran out of gas in the middle of Fifty-Seventh Street and a doorman helped us push the car to the curb. We jumped in a cab, got more gas, and drove out to Locust Valley.

  The sun was coming up on the big, beautiful houses with the big, frickin’ lawns that somebody like Jimmy had to mow.

  Quit thinking about goddamn Jimmy, I screamed at myself. This is your frickin’ life.

  Not really. It was Moog Boy’s life.

  We hung out in his room, smoked some more pot. We watched his home movies. There were no bleeding animals in them.

  So what?, I thought. So what?

  Moog Boy’s mother came into the room. She had white-blond hair and white-blue eyes.

  I jumped up to greet her. I smiled without showing my Dracula teeth.

  I wanted her to like me so bad.

  But right away I could tell she didn’t. It wasn’t just paranoia from the pot or me feeling like the Little Match Girl.

  Something about her reminded me of Hank. She had a nose like a hunter. She could sniff out where someone was going and where someone had been.

  I was right. She didn’t like me.

  But I can’t say that I liked her much either. Not after she snapped at the black maid.

  “Ellie! Go get me a stamp!”

  Moog Boy was as embarrassed by her as I was by Jimmy.

  We did have something in common.

  So, we fell in love.

  I didn’t tell Jimmy and Shirley. I didn’t want to hear Jimmy say Moog Boy must be as blind as Helen Keller. Or hear Shirley say invite him for a visit.

  But all summer I still called home. Called every Sunday like a religious obligation.

  One Sunday I heard from Jimmy that Susan had fallen in love too. She’d met a guy named Ed in the nuthouse and was crazy about him.

  I didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.

  I crossed my fingers for Susan. That was the best I could do.

  Soon after, I went back to Bennington for my second year.

  I studied hard and tried to figure out what the hell I wanted to be for the rest of my life. A doctor to fix Jimmy? A filmmaker to entertain him? At least I had eliminated stewardess.

  Moog Boy and I stayed in love.

  Virginia and the married guy stayed in love.

  Jimmy and Shirley stayed in love. Or so Shirley said.

  In the midst of all that, I still thought about Susan. I kept tabs on her new romance over the next several months.

  Her relationship blossomed. Susan and her sweetheart got out of the nuthouse and got married. They had a nice little apartment and a cat. They went to church. Like her brother, Susan had given up the family religion to become a Christian, although she wasn’t following a TV evangelist.

  It seemed like Susan’s second marriage was working out a whole lot better than her first. It seemed like things were finally turning around for her.

  I wanted to think so, anyway.

  But no such luck.

  As I was finishing up my second year at Bennington and planning to move back to New York with Moog Boy, I got some terrible news from Jimmy.

  Susan’s husband had slit his throat in their bathroom and bled to death in her arms.

  If there was a God, it seemed like he had it in for Susan.

  If there was a God—and I was less convinced of it every day—he was a mean so-and-so like Jimmy.

  If there was a God, he was not all-seeing like my childhood friend Tina had insisted—he was the evil eye.

  Maybe somebody needed to spit on Susan to ward him off.

  For years YaYa had spat on me, and look where it got me. My life was going pretty well. In fact, my life was soaring, while Susan’s—despite her churchgoing—was plummeting.

  After years of looking up to Susan all I could do now was look down.

  Down, down, down.

  Thinking about Susan just got me down.

  I wanted to reach out to her before I left for New York, but I decided I wouldn’t know what to say.

  I convinced myself we’d never really had that much in common. We’d always been separated—either by age, by distance, or by tragedy.

  I told myself she’d always been a bigger part of my life than I’d ever been of hers.

  I told myself she probably wouldn’t want to see me anyway.

  I told myself that my good fortune would only make her feel bad.

  And maybe all that was true.

  But I was also superstitious.

  I didn’t want her bad luck—if that’s what it was—to rub off on me.

  She had inspired me for years, but now I was on my own.

  I was free as a goddamn bird. And I didn’t want anyone holding me back.

  I moved out of miserable New England for good. I put miles between me and Jimmy and Hank and Susan.

  Moog Boy had dropped out of college, and impulsively I decided to leave Bennington too. I wanted to live where the fun was. I wanted to live in glamorous New York.

  Moog Boy’s parents had a penthouse on Sutton Place they weren’t using and we stayed there for a few months before getting an apartment with Moog Boy’s trust fund. I told Jimmy I was living with a Greek girlfriend. That lie worked fine since Jimmy never called to check up on me ’cause he didn’t want to spring for a phone call.

  I applied to Sarah Lawrence, a school just outside the city that I could commute to. I got another scholarship and transferred there.

  I said sayonara, baby, to becoming a doctor. I realized that was Susan’s dream, not mine.

  I wanted to make movies. Film was a risky racket compared to medicine, but I was from a family of gamblers, so I rolled the dice. I reminded myself I was a lucky so-and-so. I reminded myself of that a lot.

  Moog Boy bought me a Super 8 camera for my birthday.

  I spent Thanksgiving at the Locust Valley Country Club.

  I spent Christmas in Bel Air—Moog Boy’s family had another house there.

  I smoked a spliff with the actress from Last Tango in Paris. She was dating Moog Boy’s sister. We cruised around L.A. in a big black kraut car—a Mercedes-Benz. The actress stopped to give a handsome homeless man her espadrilles. The guy reminded me of Jimmy, but I tried not to think about that.

  I did everything I could to fit in. I kept hiding my Dracula teeth. Got my hair cut where Moog Boy’s sister got hers cut. Got my blackheads squeezed at Mario Badescu. Bought some espadrilles. I studied the quirks of Moog Boy’s family. I laughed at jokes about Locust Valley lockjaw. Learned how to pronounce Perrier. Pretended I knew where the hell Antigua was. I passed—just barely—living in fear most of the time. Fear of sounding like a dummkopf. Fear of looking like a rube. Fear of making one wrong move and ending up back in Rubeville.

  At night, in my dreams, I was still there.

  I guess you could say they were nightmares.

  During the day, I had a lot of stomachaches and went to a lot of doctors. I thought I might have the Big C, but nothing ever turned up.

  I quit smoking, not wanting to push my luck—and not wanting to smell like Jimmy.

  In school, I made short films and wrote scripts and watched movies till my eyes felt like glassy marbles. For my senior film project, I returned to New England to film Virginia. I was shooting a documentary about five women and how money determined their choices in life. I filmed Virginia getting ready to leave for the massage parlor. The film got shown in the city and people applauded, but it was still hard for me to watch Virginia put on that platinum-blond wig.

  When I was finally about to graduate from Sarah Lawrence, Virginia made plans to drive Shirley down for my graduation. At the last minute, Jimmy surprised everybody and tagged along.

  “The first egghead college graduate in the family. I guess I gotta see that with my own goddamn eyes,” he said on the phone.

  I was nervous about him coming, but sort of pleased, too. It still stung that he hadn’t come to my high school gradu
ation.

  Shirley bought him a seersucker suit and, amazingly, he agreed to wear it—with a bright pink shirt and a pair of shades. He looked pretty sharp.

  After I was given that hard-won piece of paper and the ceremony was over, I found my family in the crowd. Shirley and Virginia were blubbering with happiness. When I saw them, I started blubbering too. Jimmy made fun of us, three crying women. He rubbed his eyes with his hairy fists like a squalling brat.

  “Well, you’re officially an egghead,” he said. “And I could use a drink.”

  So we grabbed some refreshments and Jimmy began to mingle. I wasn’t surprised that he fit right in.

  “The Bicycle Thief is De Sica’s masterpiece,” he told my film teacher. He described growing up poor and Greek before the war with one bicycle for three brothers—his bicycle thief story—and my teacher was riveted.

  “Your life would make a great film,” my teacher said.

  “I’m writing a book about it,” he bragged, which was news to me.

  “What’s this about you writing a book?” I asked after the teacher left.

  “I’m talking it into a tape recorder. You’re not the only writer in this family. My story will blow anything you could do outta the water.”

  A stoner with dreadlocks came over to say hi. Before long Jimmy was telling him about the crazy Jamaican, Alboy, with whom he’d smoked weed in the merchant marine.

  “Gimme your number,” Jimmy said, and winked. “I can get some for you.”

  “Daddy,” I laughed. I turned to the stoner. “He’s just kidding.”

  “Too bad,” the stoner said.

  After the stoner drifted away, I chastised Jimmy.

  “You can’t peddle drugs here.”

  “Hey, I’m just foolin’ around. What’re you scared of? You already graduated. They can’t toss you out. Don’t be such a Goody Two-shoes. No wonder you don’t seem to have many friends. I guess you weren’t that popular, huh?”

  “Jim,” said Shirley.

  “Daddy,” said Virginia.

  “Your daughter’s got lots of friends. Everybody likes her,” said Moog Boy, timidly.

  “Take it easy, Sir Galahad,” Jimmy joked. “At least you’re man enough to stick up for her.”

  He lit a cancer stick and guzzled some wine right out of the bottle.

  A plump girl I was friendly with came over and bummed a Lucky off him. He lit her cigarette with the end of his. He told her she had eyes like Liz Taylor’s.

  “Your father’s so cool,” she whispered to me. “Like a character out of Mean Streets.”

  “He’s a character all right,” I said, as I watched Jimmy make a group of kids I didn’t know laugh.

  All day long, Jimmy stole my thunder at my own graduation. But I didn’t care. I was the Girl with the Outlaw Father in a school that romanticized outlaws. I knew how to work that. And I knew, when all was said and done, my life was moving ahead without him.

  As a graduation present Moog Boy had given me a trip for two to England. It almost made up for the fact that Jimmy gave me nothing at all—not even a “Congratulations, Dracula.”

  Toward the end of the summer, I took Virginia on the adventure we’d both dreamed of years before. She was still working at the massage parlor and by then really needed a break.

  The Beatles had broken up. The mods and rockers were over. And Brian Jones was dead. But Carnaby Street was still there. And Virginia still knew how to get a five-finger discount.

  Merry Olde England made New England feel like it was a million miles away. For once, I barely thought about Jimmy and Shirley. I know I didn’t think about Hank or Susan.

  But that was all about to change.

  Jimmy had told me at graduation that Susan’s life had been going from bad to worse.

  After her second husband killed himself, she spiraled down. She went back to popping pills and bouncing checks.

  Broke, desperate, her back to the wall, she begged Hank to let her move in with him until she could get on her feet.

  It was not a good move.

  From day one, Hank didn’t want her there and they fought like cats and dogs.

  Susan told people Hank had begun to call her by her mother’s name when he got drunk.

  She said she awoke one night to find him pointing a rifle at her.

  She said it was only a matter of time before she ended up dead.

  Something had to give.

  Jimmy told Hank to kick Susan the hell out.

  Susan, it seemed, had come to the same conclusion. She got the hell out.

  She decided to leave New Hampshire once and for all. She was going to escape to California just like Doris had dreamed of doing. Her aunt Irene had answered Susan’s prayers and told her to come stay with her.

  But things never seemed to work out for Susan.

  When Virginia and I returned from England, I called Jimmy and Shirley to tell them we were back in New York.

  “Hi—” I said, and that’s all I got out before Jimmy shouted into the phone.

  “Hank blew his brains out!”

  Sayonara, Hank

  It happened early on a Saturday morning, just like the murders of Doris Piasecny and John Betley fourteen years before.

  The Manchester police received a call from Susan around six a.m. She said she was concerned because she hadn’t been able to reach Hank on the phone. She said she was leaving town and needed to retrieve some of her belongings that were still in his house.

  The police sent a cruiser over to Hank’s. They found him lying facedown in a pool of blood with his head blown off and his 12-gauge shotgun by his side.

  It seemed pretty obvious what had happened.

  But what had driven Hank to do it?

  Had the guilt over killing two people—including the wife he had once been crazy about—finally caught up with him? That was my theory—or, more accurately, my hope.

  Had Hank’s disappointment with his no-account daughter pushed him over the edge? That was Jimmy’s theory.

  Had turning sixty—all alone and no longer the big shot he once was—been the last straw?

  Or had it simply been a lethal combination of booze and the blues that had triggered him to pull the trigger?

  Nobody could say for sure.

  All I hoped was, with the man who had murdered her mother now dead, Susan might finally find a little peace.

  But I should’ve known better.

  On September 5, 1977, two days after Hank’s body was found, Susan went to the funeral home for one final private viewing of her father—the grim routine of a person mourning a loved one. Or a not-so-loved one.

  But Susan’s visit didn’t turn out to be routine. Far from it.

  Susan said she saw something. Something no one else had noticed. Not the police. Not the medical examiner. Not the funeral home.

  She said she saw a small hole in Hank’s chest. She said she took a pencil, the only medical instrument she had at her disposal, and probed the hole to see what it was.

  Susan, the almost-doctor, performed her own autopsy.

  She examined her father’s body and said she found a smaller-caliber bullet hole in Hank’s chest.

  She said her father hadn’t committed suicide after all.

  He’d been murdered.

  Someone had killed him and made it look like suicide.

  She went to the cops and told them they’d made a big mistake. She told them about the little hole.

  The cops didn’t buy it. They knew Susan had been in the nuthouse plenty of times. They knew she popped pills, forged prescriptions, and had been in trouble with the law.

  The cops didn’t give Susan the time of day.

  Nobody did. Not her relatives. Not Hank’s friends. Not his enemies. Not the medical examiner. Not the funeral parlor director.

  Susan tried to convince anyone who would listen, but nobody would.

  The family went ahead and buried Hank. There were no calling hours at the funeral home.
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  But even if there had been, Jimmy wouldn’t have gone. He hated funerals and wouldn’t be caught dead at one. He mourned his old merchant marine buddy in the way he thought Hank would appreciate.

  He got good and loaded.

  He vowed to shoot a few ducks in Hank’s honor.

  And that was that.

  People needed to go on with their lives.

  I sent Susan a card telling her I was sorry about Hank. I wasn’t really, but I couldn’t say that.

  The card came back. It had an old address.

  Jimmy got ready for hunting season. He bought a new rifle.

  I landed my first job: adding sound effects to nature documentaries and soft-core porno flicks.

  And Virginia went back to not giving massages at the massage parlor.

  But Susan couldn’t go on with her life.

  She wouldn’t let it rest.

  She kept hounding the cops.

  She kept hounding her relatives.

  Finally, she filed a petition with the superior court that stated her suspicions.

  She wanted Hank’s body dug back up.

  Nearly a month after Hank had been buried, Susan obtained a warrant to do just that. She didn’t trust the medical examiner who had ruled Hank’s death a suicide. She brought in a forensic pathologist from Massachusetts to perform the autopsy.

  The news shocked everybody but Susan.

  The guy found a .22-caliber bullet in Hank Piasecny’s heart.

  He didn’t know whether it was the small-caliber bullet to the heart or the shotgun blast to the head that had actually killed Hank.

  But one thing was certain. Just as Susan had claimed, Hank had been murdered.

  Keystone Kops

  “Some no-good bastard rubbed out Hank,” Jimmy barked when I picked up the phone, surprised that he was calling me.

  I thought he must be drunk.

  He was, but he was also dead sober.

  I grilled Jimmy for the details. When I found out Susan had been the one to discover the crime, I was even more stunned. I couldn’t imagine how she was functioning, much less how she’d been sharp enough to notice something nobody else had. I couldn’t see how she could survive this latest revelation. Both of her parents had been murdered years apart? What were the odds of that? A zillion-to-one?