The Babysitter

by Liza Rodman

  “I only wanted—”

  “Shut up!” she screamed. “Just shut the fuck up. I can’t stand to look at you. Get into bed and don’t say another word. You disgust me.”

  I slipped between the sheets of the rollaway cot and turned to the wall, staring at the pattern of the wallpaper, my heart pounding and my shame coursing through me in a great, hot flood.

  In the morning, the six of us piled into the car to drive straight back to West Bridgewater. Mom drove and she was so eager to get going that she pushed but didn’t latch my door closed, and when she pulled out of the parking lot she took a corner hard enough that the door flew open and I fell out of the car and hit the pavement. I didn’t make a sound, but Louisa and the other kids screamed, and Mom slammed on the brakes. Everyone jumped out of the car and came over to where I lay in the driveway. I was wearing only my bathing suit, and gravel was imbedded in my stomach, arms, and legs.

  “You’re fine,” Mom said. “We just need to rinse you off somewhere.” Looking around her, she spied the swimming pool on the other side of the hedges. “Come on, we’ll put you in the pool.”

  Knowing how much the chlorine stung my eyes, I hung back.

  “Move! We have to get on the road,” she said, pulling me up and across the driveway. “Haven’t you made enough trouble for one damn trip?” she said, bending low to say it right in my ear through her clenched teeth. When we got to the pool, she said, “Good thing you already have your suit on. Now get in.”

  I walked slowly down the stairs, feeling the first burn as the water hit the raw scrapes on my legs and knees. I hesitated on the last stair but again heard “Get in,” and I did, up to my neck while holding on to the edge of the pool as the water burned through the abrasions covering my body. I bit my lip against the tears but knew if I cried it would only make her angrier.

  “Okay. That’s enough. Get in the car,” she said, lighting a cigarette while she waited.

  I made feeble swipes at my arms and stomach, but it hurt too much to rub any harder, so most of the little stones stayed right where they were, stuck in my skin. She threw me a towel, and I wrapped it around me and walked back to the car. No one said much as we all climbed back in. This time, Mom slammed my door and pushed the lock down before she got in behind the wheel and started out.

  It seemed like we drove in near silence for the entire thousand miles home. Crouched in the back seat behind Auntie, I sat awake the whole ride and watched the passing road signs all day and then the headlights all night, twirling my hair and scratching at my eczema until it bled.

  A few days later, Auntie called Mom to tell her that she didn’t want me playing with Gail or Geoff and “exposing them to things they shouldn’t be exposed to.”

  “Are you happy now?” Mom yelled at me when she got off the phone. “I’m probably gonna lose my job at the Royal Coachman because of you. She doesn’t want you around her kids! She wants to protect them, from you! Fabulous. Just fabulous.”

  She should talk, with those creepy letters from Tom under her bed, I thought. But still, I became nearly mute, feeling the hot shame wash over me, again and again, and seeing Mom’s face, twisted in revulsion. At me, her daughter. There is definitely something wrong with me, I thought. How can I be so repulsive?

  18 TONY

  Back in Provincetown, the streets were starting to fill with young people looking for summer jobs in the cafés and motels, and hippies looking for cheap, if not free, places to crash for the season. Shopkeepers were ordering tourist trinkets and beach gear, and hotels and motels were unshuttering their doors and windows, sweeping out the dust and hanging their VACANCY signs. Tony and Avis’s new baby, Nichole, was already three months old. Avis knew exactly when the girl had been conceived because except for a single coitus in August, she and Tony never had sex anymore. Nichole was their last. So, between the two small boys, a new infant, and Tony’s ongoing inability to hold a job, they now had no money and no marriage. Near the end of her rope, Avis again threw him out of the apartment. He wasn’t doing her or the kids any good with his hand-wringing angst.

  With his duffel bag over his shoulder, Tony went from one friend’s couch to another’s. His half brother, Vinnie, had returned from the army after being drafted two years before, and the two of them spent many afternoons on Cecelia’s couch, not doing much of anything.1 It was the start of the Summer of Love, and Tony took advantage of an ample number of women’s beds and the flood of drugs in the streets. Along with Callis’s prescribed antidepressants, Tony was taking heavier drugs, including LSD. When the song “White Rabbit” was released in June, it became an anthem, and everywhere Tony and his minions met, they played the song over and over.

  When the first warmth of summer hit the Cape, Tony decided to plant several marijuana plants in what he called his “garden” in the Truro woods near the lovers’ lane where he and Avis had driven to have their early, forbidden sex. As the little shoots started poking out of the soil, Tony enjoyed showing the plants, and a stash of drugs he kept buried there, to his much-younger friends who looked up to him in a way Avis no longer did. His coterie of teenagers, his stash of pills, and his marijuana helped mask his ever-increasing feelings of inferiority; by surrounding himself with idolizing acolytes who needed a hero, he could feel more in control, sophisticated, confident, and, of course, more intelligent.

  Finally, Tony ran out of couches and beds and again knocked on Joan Becker’s door at the Royal Coachman, asking for work. Unlike other employers around town, she had never been disappointed with Tony’s work and gave him a full-time job, telling him he could stay in staff housing. That afternoon, Tony moved into a tiny, pine-paneled cottage at the edge of the property’s parking lot.

  Once settled, Tony piled his bedside table with books on criminal psychology, Transcendental Meditation, and psychoneurosis as he continued to intellectualize the roots of his own dark demons. With typical grandiosity, he seemed to think he could cure himself of whatever was wrong with him. But no matter how many books he read and how many times he read them, he found no peace. He continued taking an ever-increasing number and mixture of drugs. Even though he had a job at the Royal Coachman, he spent most of his off-hours hanging out on the Benches or walking the dunes. His stomach continued to be a cauldron of acid indigestion; he lost more than ten pounds, dropping to around 165, and he continued to battle a chronic case of urethritis.

  Tony got up each morning and greeted his reflection in the cottage’s cracked bathroom mirror, saying, “Good morning, you fucked-up world.”2 In some weird variation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Tony Costa found it harder and harder to look in the mirror because he wouldn’t recognize himself in his reflection. Rather, he began to see “Him,” an ominous alter ego, staring back.3

  Joan Becker, somehow oblivious to Tony’s condition, sent her seven-year-old son, Geoff, to the cottage every morning to get him out of bed and off to work. Some days, Geoff had to knock and call his name for five or even ten minutes before Tony finally came to the door. Like Liza had the summer before, it was now young Geoff’s turn to idolize Tony, hanging on his every word and shadowing him as he fixed things at the motel and drove to the dump in the motel’s utility truck. But Tony’s mood had darkened, and instead of the entertaining handyman he had been, that summer he complained about all the people who had done him wrong and how he just couldn’t catch a fucking break. Geoff had never heard the word before, and while it made him a bit uneasy, he considered Tony a great guy. His bad language made the boy feel grown up.

  After work, Tony frequently rode his bicycle downtown and stopped in at Adams Pharmacy on Commercial Street for a hot drink. One of the few things he still enjoyed doing was dunking his Lorna Doones into a cup of tea and listening to the counter ladies’ gossip. It helped soothe his churning stomach. As he settled himself onto a stool, he looked over at a slender young woman with long, brown hair who was putting away the sample perfume bottles and closing down her station at the cos
metics counter. She looked like a prettier version of Avis, with straight white teeth and beautiful eyes that even from twenty feet Tony could see were bright green. He leaned over the counter and whispered to Ethel Ross, one of the waitresses.

  “Hey, Ethel, who’s that?” he said.

  Ethel looked over at the young woman.

  “Christine Gallant. She’s new. She’s a Fall River girl.” Ethel gave Tony a sly smile. “But you be careful, Tony. We hear she’s Raul Matta’s.”

  Tony smiled back at Ethel as she refilled his teacup with more hot water. “I can handle Raul.”

  “Yeah, sure you can, Tony.” She shook her head and walked away.

  * * *

  Christine Gallant was a pretty nineteen-year-old from a once-thriving mill town in southeastern Massachusetts that was known for its drugs, boarded-up cotton mills, and seasonal fishermen barely able to eke a living out of the sea. Christine had left Fall River and moved to Provincetown right after she graduated high school and found the summer job at the pharmacy. Her on-again, off-again relationship with Matta was stormy. Matta, a brooding, darkly handsome man, was also married and reportedly abusive toward both his wife and Christine. Dr. Callis had treated Matta for syphilis and said the man “screwed anything that moved.” According to several friends of both Tony and Christine, Matta had forced her to get an abortion when she became pregnant with his child. With abortion still illegal in the 1960s, a friend of Matta’s was rumored to have performed the procedure, which nearly killed Christine when she hemorrhaged afterward. Even if the rumors were only partly true, theirs wasn’t a storybook romance.

  Tony watched Christine put away the last of the display items on her counter and give it a wipe with a white cloth. She then disappeared into the back of the pharmacy where the employees kept their coats. Tony called her “the most beautiful girl” he’d ever seen, “with eyes that burn with an inner fire.”4

  Several days later, Tony was strolling up Commercial Street when he saw Christine duck into Molly Malone Cook’s bookstore. He quickly crossed the street and walked into the store a few moments after her. Looking around, he saw her standing in the stacks, searching the book spines for a title. Tony, pretending to also search through the books, positioned himself to gently bump into her as she inched along the shelves.

  “Oh! Sorry!” Christine said, jumping back.

  “No, it was my fault,” Tony said, putting out his hand. “I’m Tony Costa. You new here? I haven’t seen you around town before.” She took his hand.

  “Hi. I’m Christine. I just moved here to work for the summer.”

  “Groovy. I’ve lived here my whole life. Let me know if you need a tour guide,” he said, offering her his best smile. The two exchanged small talk until Christine said she’d better be getting to work.

  “I’ll see you around,” she said.

  “Definitely,” Tony said. “You’ll definitely be seeing me around.”

  * * *

  On the days that Tony didn’t have work, or when he would skip out on a job entirely, he’d walk the entire length of Commercial Street and then across the causeway out to the Long Point Light, over five miles from the Royal Coachman to the tip of Cape Cod, chin tucked to his chest and his hands shoved deep in his pockets, deaf to the raucous summer scene around him. One day as he walked through the downtown, a flyer was thrust at him.

  “Eat it, read it, and come!” a woman said, her voice loud and singsong.

  He looked up. Two people stood there, a woman and a person—Tony wasn’t sure if it was a guy or girl—who carried the pamphlets and wore some wild costume with feathers and so much makeup it was impossible to discern his or her gender. If Tony had introduced himself, he would have met John Waters and Mary Vivian Pearce promoting their newest film, Eat Your Makeup.

  Then, the woman, dressed like a Jean Harlow drag queen, handed him a candy lipstick.

  “Just come!” she repeated, and laughed, then the two characters continued on down Commercial Street.

  Tony watched them go, thinking what a lot of locals were thinking during the late 1960s: Jeez. What a pair of knuckleheads. But at least they weren’t as bad as the guy who had accosted Tony on the beach, riding a motorcycle in nothing but a G-string and handing out what looked like homosexual pornography. Tony was relieved to see that the man was handing out his “fag” literature to everyone on the beach, not singling Tony out.

  * * *

  When his marijuana plants had finally gotten large enough to harvest, Tony took Marsha, one of his “kid chicks,” out to his garden in the woods to get high. Marsha liked both Avis and Tony and on occasion would look after their children. Tony told her he always appreciated having company out to the woods because he got “creeped out” going alone. Along with his pipe and matches, he brought a bow and arrow. If Marsha thought it odd that he would bring a bow and arrow to smoke dope in the woods, she never mentioned it to police or to Cory Devereaux in the many conversations they had about the incident in the years to come.5 As Marsha was walking ahead of Tony through the trees, she suddenly felt something hit the back of her coat with a dull thud. Turning around, she saw an arrow lying on the ground. Tony ran over, profusely apologizing for “accidentally” hitting her, claiming he’d aimed at something else but that the arrow had ricocheted off a tree and hit her square in the back by mistake. He offered to take her to Dr. Hiebert, but she said she was okay and just wanted to go home. Marsha had had enough of Tony Costa for one day.

  19 LIZA

  Mom was right; Auntie did not invite us back to the Royal Coachman for the summer. Mom was plenty pissed, and embarrassed, but she didn’t wallow in it. Instead, every night after dinner she pulled out the want ads, poured herself a rum and Coke, and settled into a kitchen chair to look for summer work. No matter what or where, she knew she wanted a job that would allow her to swing on the Cape again for the summer. I had just finished second grade and was proud of my reading skills, so I would help her browse the ads. I was eager to help, especially since I’d been the one who got her fired from the RC. It didn’t take her long to find a job, and as soon as school was out and her car was packed, we headed down Route 24 with her singing along to “Ruby Tuesday” blasting on the radio. This time she’d be cocktail waitressing at the Wequassett Inn in Harwich, about thirty miles south of Provincetown.

  Our summer location may have changed, but Mom’s revolving door of admirers didn’t. I’d developed a rating system for them from one to ten. That summer’s list included a round, little Jewish man who sat at the bar all night and left her a whopping $500 tip for her “incredible service” of putting drinks in front of him (he got a five on the scale for the tip alone), and a loud, fat, tough-talking lawyer from Boston named Al. Even though I was only eight years old, I knew a creep when I met one, and Al was a creep. He drove a bright red Cadillac with a white ragtop. Even on the hottest days he wore the same gray leisure suit, white leather loafers, and a shirt with a too-tight collar that made his flushed and fleshy neck bulge over the edge. On especially hot days, it looked as though his head was going to pop right off his shoulders. And he always seemed to have his fat hands and fingers all over Mom, even while he was driving. She’d wrap her beehive in a scarf and scooch over into the middle of the front seat so that his fat arm could drape around her shoulders. Louisa and I would make faces at him from the back seat. If we made too much noise or asked too many questions, Al would open his glove compartment and throw Twizzlers over his shoulder at us. We called him the Candy Man, and gave him a boyfriend rating of two. (He would have ranked a zero, but we liked the Twizzlers.)

  I wondered why Mom couldn’t find herself a ten, like Tony.

  * * *

  That summer, Mom rented a tiny cottage in Brewster because, unlike the RC, the Wequassett didn’t provide staff housing for women with children. The cottage had two beds, and Mom and Louisa slept in one bed and I slept in the other with Maggie, a sixteen-year-old student from Mom’s home ec class at Stoughton High
School she’d brought along to look after us. There were no closets, so we all hung our clothes and towels from hooks and nails pounded into the pine paneling. The place had a little kitchenette with a fridge that fit under the counter and a propane stovetop, although I don’t remember ever cooking much of anything on it besides SpaghettiOs and hot dogs.

  Maggie reminded me of Cecelia: short, round, and fleshy, with black hair and warm blue eyes. Black Irish, Mom called her. Maggie was a step up from the ragtag collection of oddballs Mom had look after us in Provincetown, but she was a tad distracted. On a day while she was napping, I almost drowned. Louisa and I were swimming by ourselves in a pond near the Wequassett, when I got trapped under an inflatable rubber boat. No matter how hard I tried to push it off me, it wouldn’t budge. Finally, I took a gulp of air from the air pocket around my head, dove deep, and swam free of the boat. I came up gasping, swam to the shore, and crawled to the beach, where I lay on my stomach in the sand, choking and catching my breath. No one noticed because we were alone at the pond.

  I missed Provincetown. I missed swimming in the RC pool and riding my bike to the Penney Patch, the penny candy store in town. I missed Cecelia and the cozy RC laundry room and playing with Geoff and Gail. I even missed all the thick seaweed on the beach in front of the Royal Coachman. But more than anything I missed riding around town in the truck with Tony and feeling like I belonged somewhere.