Freaky Green Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I saw in Daddy’s eyes the truth shining, and the truth was love, and would protect me.

  “Y-yes, Daddy.”

  In Daddy’s strong arms I broke down and cried, really cried, for the first time since the news had come from Skagit Harbor.

  SEVENTEEN

  vashon island: september 3–4

  “I hate her. She went away.”

  Samantha was crying all the time. Her eyes were so red veined and swollen, it was scary to see her. She wasn’t eating and felt frail as a sparrow in my arms. Even her hair, which was usually so smooth and fine, was snarled up, and when I tried to comb it through, Samantha whimpered and pushed at me, as if I was hurting her on purpose.

  “Samantha, come on. You can’t let your hair get all snarls.”

  “Leave me alone! I hate you.”

  I wondered if Samantha was remembering how the last time we’d seen her, in the driveway beside her cabin, Mom had pushed Samantha away without thinking and cried, Go away. There isn’t room.

  In Mr. Sheehan’s house, which smelled of expensive liquor and cigars, Samantha and I were sharing a guest room. Our housekeeper, Lorita (that turned out to be her name), wasn’t with us in Mr. Sheehan’s house, so it was my responsibility to care for Samantha. I didn’t mind except Samantha was being very demanding, wanting to sleep with me instead of by herself. If we started out in our separate beds, within a few minutes I’d hear her whisper, “Franky? Can I come with you? I’m so scared.” Most of the time I said yes. Then Samantha would get too hot, or restless, or she’d kick at the covers, or start to grind her teeth, or talk in her sleep, or wake up and start crying, and I couldn’t take it—I’d sneak over into the other bed and try to sleep.

  I blamed Mom. None of this would be happening, our lives so messed up, if it hadn’t been for her.

  Krista Connor, I mean. She wasn’t “Mom” any longer.

  It won’t last long, Dad promised. This “siege” the Pierson family is under.

  She’s hiding, girls. It’s her revenge. But she can’t hide forever. The police will find her. This nightmare will end.

  Dad wanted to postpone Samantha and me starting school next week, but I refused. It made me wild to think of missing the first days of class. Like I was sick or something! People would say, Where’s Franky? Is she ashamed to show her face?

  Actually, my friends were being wonderful. Twyla called me twice a day and left messages if I didn’t feel like picking up (“Franky? Just checking in. No need to call back”); Jenn, Katy, Eleanor, Carole called or e-mailed me, and so did Meg Tyler, our swim team coach, plus other teachers from last year, and even a few guys.

  I was cautious about contradicting Dad; he was in a jumpy, edgy mood all the time now, mostly talking on the phone or waiting for it to ring, but I had to tell him, “I’m starting school at Forrester with everyone else, Daddy. I’ve got to. Please!”

  It was a Freaky-stubborn decision. I could hear the wildness in my voice. Dad and Freaky were a dangerous mixture, like gasoline and a lighted match, I had to remember the scene in the Blounts’ breakfast room when Dad had grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken, shaken, shaken me when I refused to apologize. . . . “See, people will say I’m hiding out. Like I’m ashamed or something. And I’m not. I want to go back to normal.”

  Dad was surprised by this, but impressed. “Franky, you’ve got guts.”

  “Does that mean I can start next week?”

  “I’m not going to stop you, honey.”

  I told myself I didn’t need my mother for my life. It would be weird starting school without Mom around, but last spring she’d been away half the time, and this fall she’d have been away too, in Skagit Harbor at the cabin, so there wasn’t much difference in my life practically speaking, was there? If Krista Connor was “missing” or if Krista Connor was “separated” and living in some new place.

  This was what I told myself in Mr. Sheehan’s house on Vashon Island.

  Samantha was only in sixth grade, and lots more vulnerable than I was. I believed that I was becoming more mature under stress, while Samantha was definitely regressing. She was too restless to read for more than a few minutes lately, and she’d always loved reading. Now she was more likely to flick through the TV channels, from channel one to ninety-eight, and back again to one, staring glassy-eyed and expressionless. Samantha definitely didn’t want to start school, and I agreed with Dad that she should probably stay home for a while. “At least until Mom comes back.”

  Dad looked at me strangely, with a faint, startled smile.

  I’d made a slip, calling Krista Connor “Mom.” Dad didn’t like to hear that word from either of his daughters. But sometimes, in a situation like this, I didn’t know what else to call her.

  Mr. Sheehan was all predictions and promises.

  “This will be over soon. When they realize their error.”

  Mr. Sheehan spoke in a thrilled, informed TV voice. When he and Dad were together, you’d certainly think that Michael Sheehan, not Reid Pierson, was the TV personality. (For Dad wasn’t in his “up” mood much in private. Sometimes he didn’t even shave. He had to conserve his energy and enthusiasm and his beaming Reid Pierson smile for when he left the house and was “on.”)

  Mr. Sheehan said to Samantha and me, “You’re brave girls! Damned brave.”

  Freaky figured this guy with his earnest manner for a class-A phony except he was on Dad’s side. He knew the “Byzantine” ways of the criminal justice system and would guide Reid Pierson through the ordeal safely. Freaky was thinking, Sure, for a fee. A big fee. I knew that top defense attorneys like Michael Sheehan billed at more than three hundred dollars an hour, and even more in court.

  In court?

  If there was a trial.

  But there can’t be a trial—Mom is just hiding away. Mom is not hurt. Mom is alive. Mom is “punishing” us. Isn’t she?

  Mr. Sheehan repeated we were “brave girls”: “It’s damned hard to be the daughters of a celebrity like Reid Pierson. See, the world loves celebrities, especially sports heroes, but they also love to see them messed up. Cops love them, and D.A.s, because, if they can arrest them for something, anything, they get prominent coverage in all the media. Sonsabitches!” Mr. Sheehan spoke so vehemently, with such support of Dad, I wanted to love him.

  Except he was coaching us. He never stopped coaching us.

  Already I’d been questioned by a woman from the district attorney’s office. Todd had been too. (But not Samantha, who was too young, Mr. Sheehan argued.) Because I was a minor, Dad and Mr. Sheehan had been present. I guess I’d come off sounding kind of sullen, resentful. Mostly I’d been scared. (I have to admit.) Mr. Sheehan said that I would be questioned again, and should make sure that I said what I intended to say, no more and no less. “You never give the adversary a crumb. You make them work, and give them nothing.” I tried to think of the police investigation as some kind of game, a game with rules Mr. Sheehan knew and would share with us, but it stayed with me that the object of the investigation was to locate Krista Connor, and that was a good, desired object. Wasn’t it?

  You know your mother is gone. You know she isn’t coming back.

  Freaky knows.

  In the investigation into Krista Connor’s disappearance, lots of people were being questioned. Not just our family but relatives of my mother’s, friends and neighbors and acquaintances in Seattle as well as Skagit Harbor, and probably many others. (Mero Okawa’s disappearance was being investigated, too, but exclusively by Skagit County police, and with far less publicity.) I was aware from TV coverage, which was intense, that woods and marshes and abandoned buildings in the Skagit County area were being searched, as well as stretches of the river and other waterways. Expert forensics detectives were working on the crime scene.

  I knew that the investigation was primarily a homicide investigation, not a missing-persons investigation. But I tried not to think of it in those terms.

  No! Mom isn’t gone. I don’t
believe it.

  She can’t be gone. It’s like Dad says, some kind of game.

  We, Francesca and Samantha, must help in the game.

  “Your father never left home on that night, August twenty-sixth. We’ve all agreed on that point, girls, yes?”

  Samantha, picking at a scab on her knee, nodded yes.

  Glassy-eyed Samantha, sickish pale. When Samantha wasn’t crying and whining, she switched to zombie mode.

  “Your father arrived home directly from the studio, we’ve ascertained from numerous witnesses, he was ‘exhausted’—‘showing the effect of the codeine medication’—when he sat down to dinner with you at about seven thirty P.M., yes? He went then to bed between eight thirty and nine P.M., he was heavily medicated to sleep for at least twelve hours. Which he did.” Mr. Sheehan paused for effect, smiling. He might have been addressing a vast, attentive audience. “To the extent of your knowledge, Francesca, Samantha, your father did sleep through the night, and you would have heard him if he’d left the house, yes? Todd has sworn to this, and you will swear to this—Francesca, Samantha?”

  Samantha’s head jerked in a zombie-nod. When I hesitated, Mr. Sheehan stared at me, smiling harder.

  “Francesca? Eh?”

  I nodded too. Yes. I would swear.

  “And so, girls: when you’re asked, as you will be, where you believe your father was that night, if he left the house for even five minutes, you will say . . . ?”

  Samantha shivered, jamming her thumb against her mouth. In a tiny voice she said, “D-Daddy was home all night. I know he was.”

  Mr. Sheehan turned to me. His gaze was steely, shrewd. “Francesca? Be sure—they will try to trip you up if they can.”

  I mumbled, “I said. I told you. A hundred times.”

  “So one more time won’t hurt, dear.”

  Still I hesitated. My head felt as if shattered glass was shifting about inside, and it hurt. Freaky had been awake, Freaky had heard.

  Heard what?

  Something.

  But that was a dream. A dream can’t be proven.

  I was staring at a pattern of stains on my jogging shoe. Thinking how it happens, you buy a new pair of shoes and they’re terrific-looking and yet one day, and with me it’s pretty soon, they get stained and start to look just like the old shoes you’ve stashed away in your closet with two or three other old pairs you haven’t gotten around to tossing away yet. Thinking how fast it can happen, and the shoes are definitely not-new any longer.

  A car in the driveway, headlights turned off. A door at the far end of the hall opening. Footsteps?

  Definitely can’t be proven.

  The glowing-green numerals on the digital clock floating in the darkness beside the bed. Freaky’s wide-awake eyes seeing 4:38 A.M.

  Can’t! Can’t be proven.

  When Mr. Sheehan sweated, his cologne scent turned just slightly rancid, as it was now. He was staring at me, and smiling hard. Samantha, who’d been too listless to glance at me for most of the day, now stared at me too, her thumb jammed against her mouth. I wondered for a nervous moment if I’d uttered some sound, if I’d whimpered or whispered to myself.

  “Yes. Sure. I’ve told you. I can swear: Daddy was home all that night, Daddy never left the house for five minutes, I would’ve heard Daddy if he had. I swear.”

  EIGHTEEN

  freaky-logic: september 4

  Freaky reasoned it out. It was simple as figuring the sides of an equilateral triangle are all equal. If Mom is gone and isn’t coming back ever, there is Dad. There is Daddy who loves you. There is only Daddy who loves you.

  NINETEEN

  freaky green eyes: first day of school, september 8

  There she is. . . .

  Which one? The redhead?

  That’s Franky.

  Franky who?

  Don’t stare for God’s sake! You know, Franky Pierson. Reid Pierson’s daughter.

  Oh my God. Her?

  Her.

  How’s Franky taking it?

  It’s weird. But you know Franky, pretending nothing is wrong.

  I think it’s shitty. Franky’s dad didn’t do it. I’d never believe anything like that about Reid Pierson.

  I wouldn’t either! Reid Pierson is terrific.

  He is so, so handsome. And sweet. My mom has a crush on him.

  My mom too!

  So, if he didn’t do it, who did?

  Do what? Nobody’s found any body. Yet.

  My homeroom assignment was a good one, with a teacher everybody liked, and three of my friends including Twyla were assigned to her room, too. And my classes looked promising, at least biology and art and junior honors English, which was a seminar with only seven students taught by a teacher who was also a poet. And Twyla asked if I’d like to have lunch just with her and Jenn, or with a larger table (as we usually did in the cafeteria), and I thanked her and said I wasn’t hungry and was going to the library instead. (Which was true, though I ate in about five minutes out of vending machines in the common room.) Everybody was nice, mostly. At least to my face.

  Except: our headmaster, Mr. Whitney, who’d been trying to get my father to visit Forrester for years (“Just to say hello, and perhaps share a glass of sherry in my office”) was definitely avoiding me. Where always he’d call out, “Francesca! Hello,” now when I happened to pass him in the hall, where he was standing talking with several seniors, he saw me, seemed to freeze for an instant, then turned away just slightly, but unmistakably, as if he’d seen something deformed. In my Freaky-somber voice, I called out, “H’lo, Mr. Whitney,” just to let the hypocrite know I was aware of him.

  Suddenly after that it seemed pretty obvious that everybody was watching me, out of the corners of their eyes. Peeking around the edges of their lockers. On the stairs, glancing back over their shoulders. In my afternoon classes my teachers seemed embarrassed at reading my name off the roll—“Francesca Pierson?”—and when I raised my hand and said, “Here,” there was silence in the room, and I knew that everybody behind me was staring at me, and everybody in front of me was deliberately not turning to look.

  My teachers knew who I was, of course. A new student in their classes but they knew. I saw their eyes swimming in sympathy like I was a leper they could pity but not get too close to, for maybe my condition was contagious. Poor girl! Her mother is missing. Her father is being questioned by police. And you know who the father is, don’t you? Almost, I could hear these words like gnats buzzing in my ears. I was maintaining Freaky-control, however, till the middle of fifth-period social studies, when something hit me like a wave, a cold, sick sensation in my stomach, and I knew I couldn’t make it through the rest of the class. In a feeble gesture I raised my hand to signal the teacher that I was feeling desperately lousy, and with my head down and eyes lowered and my backpack gripped against my chest, I half ran out of the room.

  In the rest room I was sick with a sudden attack of diarrhea. It was like my guts were on fire. I was shivering, too. I was so weak, I had to stagger down to the infirmary, where the nurse took one look at my face, made me lie down, took my temperature (it was 100°F, what the nurse called a mild fever), gave me two Advils, and told me I might be coming down with flu.

  I lay shivering beneath a cover wondering: did the nurse know me? Did she know whose daughter I was? Would she be telling everyone she met afterward in a thrilled voice, Guess who was in the infirmary this afternoon with the flu?

  TWENTY

  aunt vicky and the giant atlas moth: september 9

  I’d steeled myself with Freaky-resolve not to give in, but as soon as my aunt Vicky saw me, and rushed to hug me, I couldn’t help hugging her back. She caught me in her arms like I’d been falling, and she was saving me, and I felt her trembling against me, and it was so completely weird, the thought came to me, This isn’t Aunt Vicky, it’s somebody else. Because she was so changed, even her voice.

  “We have to hope, Franky. We have to pray. She might be—must be—a
ll right.”

  Aunt Vicky was my mother’s older sister by three or four years. A tall woman, usually strong looking, in excellent condition from hiking, backpacking, running. In her family, Aunt Vicky was criticized—and admired—for never having married, for being independent—“doing her own thing.” Now she was nervous, emotional. It was a shock to see her looking so drawn and haggard. Her hair, which was a faded red, grayer than my mother’s, was brushed back flat from her face so that she looked exposed, sort of blunt and raw, weatherworn. Dad hadn’t wanted me to see Aunt Vicky—they’d never gotten along very well—but he’d seemed to admire her, to a degree, in the past. Dad used to say that Krista was the beautiful Connor sister and Vicky was the one with the brains. He’d meant this to be praise, I guess, but it came off sounding like both Krista and Vicky were missing something crucial.

  Now Aunt Vicky’s eyes were raw and reddened like Samantha’s, and her voice was shaky. I hated to see her like this!

  She was saying, almost begging, “Franky, are you all right? How are you and Samantha?”

  I shrugged. I hated being asked this question every time an adult saw me.

  And I wasn’t going to tell the truth anyway, like I’d been having the most disgusting repulsive stomach trouble and my period had come eleven days early this month and the cramps just about knocked me out and I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time and my dreams were psychotic and I was confused, angry. Like hell I was going to tell anyone, even Aunt Vicky who I knew loved me, what was in my heart.