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Authors: Karen Brown
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the wiser. she wraps the gift the children picked out at sears—a cedar shoe-shine box, one sadie told them was exactly like the one her own father had, and a necktie she chose at random, its colors muted and conventional. she creases the striped paper, tapes the edges. Good enough, she thinks, although she feels a nagging sense that these gifts are inadequate, that she doesn’t even know what present Craig would like. she hasn’t taken the time to ask, to think it over. she is usually a good gift-giver, and she feels a brief flash of guilt that she brushes off. she knows that after lily’s death, he would accept any gift from her and the children, and knowing this, she has chosen anything.
June 15, 1979
S
adie left Mrs. Sidelman’s immediately after spotting Francie and went to betty’s house with her news, but betty had to first do the dishes and sweep the kitchen floor, and then she and sadie had to make a circuitous
route of the neighborhood to shake her younger sister, who had traipsed out the door after them. The cicadas revved up in the trees, their sound an explosion of noise that followed them up to the dead end, where they discovered Francie’s first letter. she’d written it on flowered stationery, the kind that parents give to children when they go to camp. Dear Hezekiah, it said. reading on, the letter revealed aspects of her family life—her little brothers camping out in the hall closet, her mother sleeping all afternoon on the couch, her father and his woodworking hobby. He carves puns out of wood, she wrote. Shoe tree, water gun, bookworm. He is now making a train track that one day will run through the entire house, upstairs and down. They read the note in the upstairs bathroom at sadie’s house. This was the only room with a lock. They sat on the closed toilet lid, where they often sat together to read the Playboy s her father had hidden in the vanity drawer. As little girls, they had mixed up potions in paper Dixie cups on the counter— toothpaste, shaving cream, old spice.
“The whole family is crazy,” betty said. Her eyes feigned shock beneath her bangs.
sadie told her to wait a minute, and she slipped from
55
the bathroom and returned with a sheet of her mother’s stationery—heavy, ivory-colored paper—and a pen. “what is that?” betty asked.
sadie held the paper and pen out to her. “Tell her they sound eccentric, ” sadie said. “He doesn’t care about her family, anyway. say: I find you incredibly intriguing. I want to know more about you. ”
betty stared at the pen and paper, and hesitated. but they both knew she was the best at making up handwriting. Hadn’t they spent one long winter day copying the slanted script off of old postcards and letters from betty’s grandmother?
“Come on, Hezekiah,” sadie said.
betty took the paper and pen and grinned. “so what was that again?”
It was a weekday, and sadie’s father was at the office. Her mother was downstairs talking on the phone. betty invented a handwriting that was part boy’s messy cursive, part arthritic scrawl. she wanted to write I think I love you. They laughed until they cried at this, a Partridge Family lyric. sadie finally decided it was too soon. “He has to woo her,” she said, wondering, as she said it, where she’d ever heard of such a thing. They sprinkled sadie’s father’s old spice on the envelope. They’d used one of his old Playboy s to write on, May 1974, Marsha Kay in sheer bra and panties. And then they slipped out to the dead end, past boys building a go-cart out of plywood, past girls running through a sprinkler, their legs speckled with grass. no one knew where they were headed. no one followed them. They had their cigarettes, and after they left the note they lifted the barbed wire and kept walking through the field’s tall grass, its black-eyed susans, dame’s rocket, and chicory, the kinds of flowers they used to bring back in damp fists to their mothers on their
June 15, 1979
S
adie left Mrs. Sidelman’s immediately after spotting Francie and went to betty’s house with her news, but betty had to first do the dishes and sweep the kitchen floor, and then she and sadie had to make a circuitous
route of the neighborhood to shake her younger sister, who had traipsed out the door after them. The cicadas revved up in the trees, their sound an explosion of noise that followed them up to the dead end, where they discovered Francie’s first letter. she’d written it on flowered stationery, the kind that parents give to children when they go to camp. Dear Hezekiah, it said. reading on, the letter revealed aspects of her family life—her little brothers camping out in the hall closet, her mother sleeping all afternoon on the couch, her father and his woodworking hobby. He carves puns out of wood, she wrote. Shoe tree, water gun, bookworm. He is now making a train track that one day will run through the entire house, upstairs and down. They read the note in the upstairs bathroom at sadie’s house. This was the only room with a lock. They sat on the closed toilet lid, where they often sat together to read the Playboy s her father had hidden in the vanity drawer. As little girls, they had mixed up potions in paper Dixie cups on the counter— toothpaste, shaving cream, old spice.
“The whole family is crazy,” betty said. Her eyes feigned shock beneath her bangs.
sadie told her to wait a minute, and she slipped from
55
the bathroom and returned with a sheet of her mother’s stationery—heavy, ivory-colored paper—and a pen. “what is that?” betty asked.
sadie held the paper and pen out to her. “Tell her they sound eccentric, ” sadie said. “He doesn’t care about her family, anyway. say: I find you incredibly intriguing. I want to know more about you. ”
betty stared at the pen and paper, and hesitated. but they both knew she was the best at making up handwriting. Hadn’t they spent one long winter day copying the slanted script off of old postcards and letters from betty’s grandmother?
“Come on, Hezekiah,” sadie said.
betty took the paper and pen and grinned. “so what was that again?”
It was a weekday, and sadie’s father was at the office. Her mother was downstairs talking on the phone. betty invented a handwriting that was part boy’s messy cursive, part arthritic scrawl. she wanted to write I think I love you. They laughed until they cried at this, a Partridge Family lyric. sadie finally decided it was too soon. “He has to woo her,” she said, wondering, as she said it, where she’d ever heard of such a thing. They sprinkled sadie’s father’s old spice on the envelope. They’d used one of his old Playboy s to write on, May 1974, Marsha Kay in sheer bra and panties. And then they slipped out to the dead end, past boys building a go-cart out of plywood, past girls running through a sprinkler, their legs speckled with grass. no one knew where they were headed. no one followed them. They had their cigarettes, and after they left the note they lifted the barbed wire and kept walking through the field’s tall grass, its black-eyed susans, dame’s rocket, and chicory, the kinds of flowers they used to bring back in damp fists to their mothers on their
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