When I next open my eyes, John is carefully setting down his briefcase at the table. Tiptoeing in his socks, he comes over to me on the couch.
“Where’s Sharon?” I ask, remembering I am not home.
“Shhh. She’s in bed. Go back to sleep, baby.” Kissing me on the cheek, he pulls the sofa blanket over me and turns out the light. “Good night,” he says, quietly walking toward his bedroom and leaving the door open.
“Good night,” I call back. Instantly I miss his embrace. The house is large and full of shadows in the dark, yet strangely I feel secure in these new surroundings. I stretch out on the couch, and comforted that I’m not alone, I fall into a restful sleep.
“Dawn! Your mom’s on the phone,” David hollers through the courtyard into my apartment. It startles me; I spook easily these days.
“Coming,” I yell back, taking a minute to calm down and grab my keys. Mom calls on Sundays whenever she can, and the only number she has since Dad left is David and Karen’s. It doesn’t cost them anything, so they don’t mind.
“Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“Yah. Goot. How are you?”
“I’m fine. No, they haven’t found the strangler yet. Yeah, I’m still working, and I’m helping with work at the cottages when they need something. Oh, John and Sharon let me do filing for the owner and collect tenants’ rents now in exchange for a lower rent.” Mom is asking all the right questions trying to make sure I am all right. “Yes, the emancipation papers are finalized. Yeah, things are good. Yes, he is still my boyfriend. She doesn’t care. They just live together.” I answer her casually, especially questions about John and Sharon, until her list of inquiries dies down and it is my turn to find out about everyone. “How’s Terry? Wayne? Good. Oregon? When are you moving there? Well, let me know, okay? Thank you for the bath mats and towels. Yeah, they match my bathroom. I love you and miss you, Mom. Talk to you next week. Good-bye.”
Our conversations are only surface. My mother does her best to be a part of my life even from so far away but her world, I know, is hard. I can’t bring myself to talk about my love for John. Mom is always suspicious at best, and I’m not sure what Terry has told her. John is right: It is best not to tell her much. And Sharon? Well, Sharon’s a whole other story in itself. Sharon is turning out to be a friend. A good friend. How am I supposed to explain that? I can’t even explain it to myself.
CHAPTER NINE
It Takes Three to Tango
The rain falls steadily in the winter of 1978. Hillsides crumble and old graveyards wash down onto neighborhood streets. Rumors of contracting typhoid run rampant, and people stop drinking the water.
“The Hillside Strangler struck again,” Sharon reports to me on a gray morning in February. “It’s another girl who lived on Garfield. She was on her way to work at Glendale Community College. Somebody took her in broad daylight!”
“Oh my God!” That particular address on Garfield Avenue is only two blocks away from us on Acacia, and Glendale Community College is just past Royal Oaks on the same road. “I go that way to work every day!” I am scared. After the first killing last Halloween, seven more bodies have been discovered on the local hillsides, five of them during Thanksgiving week alone.
All of Glendale is up in arms, frightened at every turn. Nobody walks alone. John is tense and furious. Every time the dogs bark, he is outside with his .357 in hand, walking the courtyard and ready to take aim at a moment’s notice.
The sense of fear triggers my Carol City survival demeanor like an old, familiar coat. “Touch me and you die,” my body language says to anyone I pass on the street, but inside I am a frightened seventeen-year-old who really knows no one in this place. I imagine that if anything happens to me, no one will know. No one except John and Sharon.
We spent that strained Thanksgiving together. Sharon baked a turkey, teaching me the proper way to sew the stuffing in and describing how John liked his gravy with the giblets. “Hillbilly upbringing,” she said snobbishly, flipping her head. She was referring to his Ohio roots.
“I heard that,” John called from the other room, teasing.
David and Karen were invited, although Sharon confided in me that she hoped they wouldn’t come. “Maybe one of them will be sick, as usual.” She turned her head in disgust.
John stayed quiet but had a smirk on his face.
“The only reason you even ask them over is because your mother makes you feel guilty if you don’t watch out for poor David,” she told John, trying to embarrass him into standing up for his true feelings and retracting the invitation.
Having been through this same argument with Sharon before, John didn’t answer. He stomped off to his back office and dug out some clay for sculpting, ignoring Sharon’s ploy.
Later, like clockwork, David called. Karen was sick, and they couldn’t make it. “I’m so sorry,” Sharon lied in her best nurse’s voice, then winked at me with relief.
The Hillside Strangler didn’t know it, but the widespread fear he had caused naturally brought us closer than we normally would have been. Besides, I think we liked each other’s company.
Christmas was the three of us again. Sharon loved to decorate, and all things Christmas came out in droves. She invited me to help with the festivities, and we mulled cider and put ornaments on the tree. John came home in the evenings after being gone for short afternoons and helped with putting up décor. We had fun hiding a few gifts for each other and loved finding just the right one for each of us.
The holiday spirit was broken suddenly when another young body was found nearby about a week before Christmas. The lightheartedness disappeared and, sobered up, we again focused on staying safe.
Four days after Christmas was my seventeenth birthday. John brought over a dozen beautiful sterling silver roses, a gold necklace, and a .22 automatic handgun.
“You remember how to use this, right?” he asked me as he filled the small clip.
“I remember.”
“Keep it with you at all times,” he stressed harshly. Satisfied that I took him and the gun seriously, he softened and kissed me warmly. “Happy birthday, baby. Now come on. Sharon and I want to take you to dinner.”
At Clancy’s, my favorite restaurant on Brand Boulevard, Sharon had a small stash of gifts wrapped and waiting for me. I tore into them wholeheartedly, feeling comfortable now with the exchange of presents between us. There were whimsical porcelain figures of my favorite style of fairies, feathers, and penguins. We stuffed ourselves with egg-dipped abalone, and a flaming cupcake topped it all off. Back home, we said good night and headed our separate ways.
At home I sat alone on my sofa, frightened, holding the .22 and reflecting on the small celebration. I didn’t want to be by myself on my birthday, but I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere felt safe anymore. Twenty minutes later, a light tapping at my door scared me out of my thoughts. Heart pounding and gun in hand, I tentatively pulled back the curtain of the door’s window.
“Hey, watch where you point that thing!” John joked, quickly slipping inside.
“John! I’m so glad it’s you.”
“I know, baby. I know. I miss you too. Happy birthday.” He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, making love to me until we fell asleep in each other’s arms. In the morning, he was gone. I was seventeen now. Only one more year till I would be eighteen. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to hide anymore.
February, the news of the killing of a local girl causes a new level of paranoia. The air is thick with foreboding; people stare suspiciously at each other in the neighborhood. Soon after hearing the news of the death of the girl who lived on Garfield, I ride my bike past her street on my usual route to work. Something pulls me in. A morbid curiosity draws me to take a closer look at the place she last called home. The children playing on the street eye me cautiously as I pedal slowly by the house. In just two seconds, I have seen enough. The strong sinister aura of this place is overwhelming; I pedal double time and race to work.
&
nbsp; Directly after I get back home, I knock on Sharon’s door and barge in as soon as she turns the key. “I passed the murdered girl’s apartment on Garfield today.” I pant, breathless.
“You what? Are you crazy? The cops think there’s two of them and they are dragging girls out of their cars in the middle of the day! And don’t forget about the Trash Bag Murderer they caught last summer. There could be copycat killers around. You’re too smart for that, Dawn. Be careful!”
“I know, but for some reason I wanted to see what her place looked like. It was real creepy, Sharon. There was a cop car outside. They may have been searching her apartment.”
“Those dirty rotten bastards!” Sharon’s voice rises. I know she’s thinking about the brutal murderers. “Let them try to take me! I’ll pop their eyes out of their heads before they know what hit them!”
“Yeah, me too!” I puff myself up. Then I think about it for a minute. “I’m scared back in my apartment, Sharon,” I confide. “I dread going home to my place with the Hillside Stranglers out there. I’ve got two windows facing the alley and another butted up against a courtyard off of Chevy Chase. I hear noises all night!”
“Well, you can get a pit bull.” I can’t really tell if she is joking.
Hey… I think for a second. “No. I don’t really like pit bulls, and my place is too small for one anyway.”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be a pit bull,” she says, a bit of sarcasm in her voice apparently defending the breed. “You can always get one of those little yappy things you love so much like the one at the house on the corner.”
“Ewww! Chihuahuas? I hate those dogs. They aren’t even dogs. They’re pests, making all that noise. It’s so annoying. Ahhh, any dog is better than that!” I say dramatically.
Sharon laughs hysterically at my reaction, and it is contagious. Soon we are both giggling and making bad jokes about the tiny dogs. Our moods lift. “Let’s play some rummy.” She heads for the kitchen drawer. “But let’s eat first.”
“Sounds good to me.” I jump up and open the refrigerator door. “What shall we whip up tonight?” I make myself at home.
John brings the newspaper over on Saturday morning. The weather forecast is still dreary and rainy. I don’t mind today, though; I finally have a weekend off after working split shifts for the past three weeks, and that means John and I will be able to spend time together.
“Here. Circle the garage sales you want to check out today.” He hands me the Los Angeles Times. “And be ready in ten minutes.” He leaves without waiting for an answer.
Oh, okay, I think. That’s a little strange, but garage sales are fine with me.
A few minutes later, I walk over to meet him at the van. He and Sharon are waiting; the engine is running, exhaust billowing.
“Hi. Oh, good, you’re coming too?” I try to hide my surprise and climb into the van.
“Seems like a good enough day to do garage sales,” she says cheerfully.
John drives farther than he has to any other garage sale before. This is a little out of the ordinary, I think. Maybe they have somewhere else to go first. Deep in the Valley, we pull up to a Spanish-style house in a quiet residential neighborhood.
“Come on,” John says to Sharon, and they climb out as if they know someone here.
“And you…wait here a minute,” he instructs in his best fatherly voice. He and Sharon walk to the door and knock as I sit staving off an uneasy feeling.
This is too weird. What are they up to?
Disappearing inside, they leave the front door ajar, and a moment later John steps outside and waves me in.
As I approach, the door swings open. “Come in. Right here. Take a look.” A gray-haired woman standing near the entrance points her cane.
In the middle of the floor, a child’s safety railing forms a circle lined with soft blankets, water bowls, and the teeniest of elf-eared faces. Four tiny puppies hop up and down on their twiggy back legs, beckoning for someone to pick them up.
I stand in the middle of the room confused. “What are they?” I ask, not recognizing the ratlike creatures.
“Don’t you recognize a Chihuahua when you see one?” Sharon teases. She and John have their eyes glued on me. I feel as if I am on display.
“Those are Chihuahuas? They’re so cute!” I bend to pet their wrinkled foreheads. “Are you getting one of these?”
“Pick one.” John beams.
“Huh?” I reply blankly.
“Well, pick one!”
Speechless and thrilled, I stoop down to take a better look. A lone pale brown and pink face stretches up above the others. It has more wrinkles than body, a tiny pulled-back mouth, and desperation in its eyes that grips my attention like an iron clasp. “This one,” I immediately decide, attracted to the struggling puppy.
“Lucky choice. That’s the only boy in the bunch.”
“Sold!” John eagerly reaches into his pocket for the cash, reminding me of the night we picked out Pokie for Sharon.
The tiny creature nestles under my poncho shakily, sticking his wrinkled head out of the V shape of my collar as if to see where we are going. The sky grows darker and heavier as the day progresses, escalating into a full-blown thunderstorm by the time we get home. In John and Sharon’s kitchen we set up a basket with towels and John’s old T-shirts.
“So. Have you decided what you’re gonna name him?” Sharon asks. “Make it a good one. He’s your protector now.”
A loud clap of thunder rolls through the darkened sky, shaking the china in the cabinet.
“Thor!” I shout. “I’m gonna name him Thor. God of Thunder.”
“Good one!” Sharon agrees enthusiastically. John cuts the ends out of one of his old socks to make a sweater for my little guy and beams proudly at both of us.
My mind soon quiets. A dog. He’s really mine.
Thor’s Aquarian Prince is his AKC registered name. He is the sweetest little chocolate-brown cutie pie with a pink nose and white patches on his toes and chest. Immediately, Chihuahuas are the best breed of dog in the world to me, causing bouts of heated banter among Sharon, John, and me. Thor is never yappy and never annoying. My shadow, he goes everywhere with me, except to work. He is my own little life to nurture and care for, returning only playful, loving companionship. John takes a fast shine to him too, playing tug-of-war and warming him tenderly when he shivers…and Thor both adores and fears John.
Little Thor brings me so much joy. His puppy kisses and playful snuggles are warm and soft, and he loves John L, Buttons, and Pokie. John, Sharon, and I get a great kick out of watching the older dogs train little Thor in alpha etiquette.
Sharon, in her constant housecoats, relishes digging out her doggie meat loaf recipes laced with gobs of vitamins or boiled beef kidneys, livers, or hearts. I try to cook all of it at my apartment, and I do really well, but the kidneys smell horrible and I can’t stomach their greasy steam. I don’t tell Sharon, though. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m a wimp, and I want her to be proud of me.
Sharon, I can tell, loves to teach me things that she has mastered. “I bet you can’t guess why John doesn’t mess with me. My IQ is 160!”
“Is that high?” My ignorance shows. I figure she wants me to know she is smarter than John.
“Let’s put it this way. My high school career counselor wanted me to go into nuclear physics.”
“Wow. What did you say?”
“I told him no way. I like helping people too much. I’m going into nursing. And that was that.”
I want my IQ to be 160 too. I’m ashamed of myself because I dropped out of high school. Still, we begin to spend most of our time together as a threesome now. Whatever Sharon shows me I learn with earnest: how to cook John’s favorite meals, the way he likes his clothes folded, and how to set up his chair at the television with cigarettes and wooden matches set next to an ice-cold glass of milk when he gets home.
John gets used to me taking care of his personal things under Sharon’s
supervision. His days and evenings are mostly spent at home, being the man of the house, guarding the courtyard, and maintaining the cottages. When he is at work, he is only gone for a few hours in the afternoon, returning around five o’clock as if he has a normal job. I am expected for dinner in the evenings, having helped Sharon to plan them around John’s tastes and to grocery shop for them on weekend mornings. After dinner we watch a movie, settle into a good game of Scrabble or penny rummy, listen to Beethoven or Ravel, and teasingly accuse the winner of cheating as he or she rakes in the coins.
John has a temper, I notice, and sometimes gets too angry when he loses a game. In a childish fit, he’ll flip the entire game table over, scattering the pieces and pennies to the corners of the room.
“John! Quit it!” Sharon scolds him.
“What, Sharon?” he hollers back.
Sharon doesn’t answer but calmly stubs out her cigarette.
Knowing the night is ruined, I help Sharon pick up the pieces—the game tiles, cards, or pennies. After the mess is cleaned up, Sharon wordlessly storms off to bed. John L and Buttons dutifully follow.
Embarrassed and uncomfortable by his outburst, I sit very still in a corner of the couch. Pokie and Thor shiver, frightened, on my lap as if there’s a thunderstorm. Arms crossed, John glares at the television, sulking, and I try not to look at him until a short while later when he calms down.
But these moments are rare compared to the good times, and I easily dismiss John’s behavior as an occasional bad mood. We all have one sometimes, right?
John and Sharon love old movies and test each other’s memory of who won which Academy Award for what picture in what year. Sharon wins a lot, and sometimes it worries me that John will get mad about losing the game. He also likes to keep us on our toes and feign anger, stomp out of the room, and laugh from behind the walls.
I declare Wizards, Fantasia, and Harold and Maude my alltime favorite movies in the world.
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes Page 20