Read Online Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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a finicky child might prefer one type of ice-cream cone (lighter, less crunchy) over another (darker, grainier and chewier), and want her chocolate scoop on the bottom and her strawberry on top so that, melting, the strawberry would seep into the chocolate and not the other way around which seemed to the finicky mildly repugnant, unnatural; and on sundaes no nuts, and no maraschino cherries. But Zoe Kruller knew, Zoe Kruller always remembered.
As Zoe remembered names: “Krissie, is it? H’lo there Krissie!”
Zoe was glamorous, not merely pretty. Your eye moved onto Zoe with startled interest as your eye might be drawn to a billboard face posed above the highway, you would never imagine might have the slightest consciousness of you.
If you were a child, that is. A girl-child intensely aware of adult women: their faces, their bodies.
Zoe was an adult woman, a wife and a mother. Yet you would not have guessed that Zoe was much older than the high school girls who worked behind the counter at Honeystone’s. Her face was a girl’s face, justthis side of beauty: her eager smile revealed a band of pink gum and her long hungry-looking teeth overlapped just perceptibly in front. Her skin was pale, warmly freckled. Her hair was “strawberry blond”—crimped, flyaway, shoulder-length. Her eyebrows had been carefully plucked and filled in with eyebrow pencil, her pale lashes were inky with mascara. Her nose was a little too long, with a waxy tip, and wide nostrils. Her chin was a little too narrow. Yet her eyes were beautiful, exotic: shades of amber like sherry at the bottom of a glass, or a certain kind of children’s marble, amber-glazed, changing its colors as you turned it in your fingers.
Zoe was a small woman, her figure was what’s called petite. She could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds nor was she more than five feet two. Yet she exuded an air of sexy funny-girl swagger that made her appear taller, like one accustomed to the spotlight. Behind the counter at Honeystone’s Zoe had a way of rising up on her toes when she locked eyes with a customer, smiling that glistening bared-gum smile and a light seemed truly to come into her face.
“Well, say! Thought it was you. ”
Most remarkable was Zoe’s throaty purring voice. It was a voice so low and shivery it didn’t seem as if it was issuing from Zoe Kruller’s wide-lipped crimson mouth but from a radio. Here was a distinctive voice amid a clamor of voices of no distinction, that made you stop and stare at Zoe even more than her lit-up face might have warranted. Here is someone special you were made to think.
That red-embroidered ZOE on a tiny pocket above Zoe’s left breast.
‘“Zooh-ey.’ Not ‘Zoo-ey.’ Please!”
In Chautauqua Park on summer nights local musicians and singers performed at the bandstand and Zoe Kruller belonged to the most popular group, that called itself Black River Breakdown. Zoe was the only woman among several men—guitarist, banjo player, fiddler and piano-player.
Except for the Elvis-looking guitarist, a kid in his early twenties with dyed-black hair and cowboy boots with a prominent heel, they were all in their thirties, ardent, excitable, yearning for applause. Their musicranged from country-and-western classics (“Little Maggie,” “Down from Dover,” “I’ll Walk the Line”) to bluegrass (“Little Bird of Heaven,” “Her Little Footprints in the Snow”) and disco (“I Will Survive,” “Saturday Night Fever”).
Especially on stage at the bandstand, sexy-seductive in a spangled dress that left most of her thighs exposed and her strawberry-blond hair frizzed and crimped in a wild halo around her head so it looked like an electric bolt had shot through her, Zoe Kruller did not resemble any other wife/mother in Sparta.
Yet she was Mrs. Kruller, the mother of a boy in Ben’s class at school. This boy was named Aaron and he looked older than Ben by a year or more and had a stiff glaring face
As Zoe remembered names: “Krissie, is it? H’lo there Krissie!”
Zoe was glamorous, not merely pretty. Your eye moved onto Zoe with startled interest as your eye might be drawn to a billboard face posed above the highway, you would never imagine might have the slightest consciousness of you.
If you were a child, that is. A girl-child intensely aware of adult women: their faces, their bodies.
Zoe was an adult woman, a wife and a mother. Yet you would not have guessed that Zoe was much older than the high school girls who worked behind the counter at Honeystone’s. Her face was a girl’s face, justthis side of beauty: her eager smile revealed a band of pink gum and her long hungry-looking teeth overlapped just perceptibly in front. Her skin was pale, warmly freckled. Her hair was “strawberry blond”—crimped, flyaway, shoulder-length. Her eyebrows had been carefully plucked and filled in with eyebrow pencil, her pale lashes were inky with mascara. Her nose was a little too long, with a waxy tip, and wide nostrils. Her chin was a little too narrow. Yet her eyes were beautiful, exotic: shades of amber like sherry at the bottom of a glass, or a certain kind of children’s marble, amber-glazed, changing its colors as you turned it in your fingers.
Zoe was a small woman, her figure was what’s called petite. She could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds nor was she more than five feet two. Yet she exuded an air of sexy funny-girl swagger that made her appear taller, like one accustomed to the spotlight. Behind the counter at Honeystone’s Zoe had a way of rising up on her toes when she locked eyes with a customer, smiling that glistening bared-gum smile and a light seemed truly to come into her face.
“Well, say! Thought it was you. ”
Most remarkable was Zoe’s throaty purring voice. It was a voice so low and shivery it didn’t seem as if it was issuing from Zoe Kruller’s wide-lipped crimson mouth but from a radio. Here was a distinctive voice amid a clamor of voices of no distinction, that made you stop and stare at Zoe even more than her lit-up face might have warranted. Here is someone special you were made to think.
That red-embroidered ZOE on a tiny pocket above Zoe’s left breast.
‘“Zooh-ey.’ Not ‘Zoo-ey.’ Please!”
In Chautauqua Park on summer nights local musicians and singers performed at the bandstand and Zoe Kruller belonged to the most popular group, that called itself Black River Breakdown. Zoe was the only woman among several men—guitarist, banjo player, fiddler and piano-player.
Except for the Elvis-looking guitarist, a kid in his early twenties with dyed-black hair and cowboy boots with a prominent heel, they were all in their thirties, ardent, excitable, yearning for applause. Their musicranged from country-and-western classics (“Little Maggie,” “Down from Dover,” “I’ll Walk the Line”) to bluegrass (“Little Bird of Heaven,” “Her Little Footprints in the Snow”) and disco (“I Will Survive,” “Saturday Night Fever”).
Especially on stage at the bandstand, sexy-seductive in a spangled dress that left most of her thighs exposed and her strawberry-blond hair frizzed and crimped in a wild halo around her head so it looked like an electric bolt had shot through her, Zoe Kruller did not resemble any other wife/mother in Sparta.
Yet she was Mrs. Kruller, the mother of a boy in Ben’s class at school. This boy was named Aaron and he looked older than Ben by a year or more and had a stiff glaring face
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