Read Online The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers - Free Book Online Page B

complained they were making the place into a beatnik building. Hippies were old hat to everyone in the world except Grandma, who hated them. When I turned thirteen in July, she’d given me her only real jewelry, a pair of pearl earrings and a pearl necklace, scolding me all the while that a young lady wore something like this, not those crazy fruit seeds the hippie girls had hanging around their necks, and reminding me to give Merry the earrings when she got older.
    Naturally, two days later someone at Duffy stole the earrings and the necklace.
    Grandma buzzed us in. Merry raced up to the third floor while I forced myself up the scuffed stairs one by one. Odor of cabbage and onions fried in chicken fat mingled with the smells of patchouli and pot. Irecognized the pot because girls at Duffy-Parkman snuck into the bathroom at night and smoked it. Then they’d drench everything with White Rain hair spray to cover the odor. I totally expected the bathroom to blow up one day when some girl blasted White Rain while another lit a match.
    The patchouli I’d sniffed on the college girls who volunteered to be so-called special friends to the older girls at Duffy-Parkman. Hillary Sachs was my special friend. I didn’t know if they’d assigned me a Jewish special friend on purpose or if it had been a coincidence. Hillary gave me cow-eyed, meaningful looks while we played Scrabble or went on little trips. I hadn’t yet deciphered what she offered in those looks. Last week she’d told me to get ready for something great the next time we met, which would be tomorrow.
    When I got all the way upstairs, Grandma stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her bony chest. I still remembered Grandma as soft and round, and my heart folded in on itself when I noticed her clothes hanging so loose they looked like I could stuff in another Grandma.
    “So, where were you? I was worried sick.”
    “It’s only ten minutes after twelve.” I pointed to the cheap Timex that Grandma wore.
    “I worry after two minutes.” As Grandma gave me a rough hug, Merry stuck her tongue out at me.
    “For lunch I made hot borscht. Of course, I forgot the sour cream. Your grandmother is now officially an idiot. Proven this week, by the way.”
    “By who?” Merry grabbed a hard candy from the bowl Grandma kept filled for us.
    “By who? By everyone. Mrs. Edelstein downstairs asked me to take in her mail while she visited her son in New Jersey, and guess who forgot?”
    “That’s not a big deal,” I said.
    “Believe me, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.” Grandma took her purse from the secretary filling most of the postage stamp hall. “Here, Merry. Go down the street and get Grandma some sour cream. Also, I need a quart of milk and three apples, but not the mealy ones they stick in front. Make sure you take the sour cream and milk from the back also.”
    “Lulu should have to go. She doesn’t even come every week, so I end up doing everything,” Merry said. “I want to stay here with you.”
    “I’ll go.” I’d happily go. Grandma’s three-room apartment suffocated me. I couldn’t believe my father lived here when he was a teenager. He would have filled the place up. The tiny kitchen had a miniature table covered with an overscrubbed piece of red oilcloth, an ancient fridge, and a stove that looked like it should be in the Brooklyn Museum. A maroon velvet sofa and chair overfilled the living room, but even so, Grandma crammed in wobbly little tables smothered with tea-colored doilies. Grandma cleaned the apartment every hour, but everything still had a thick old-lady smell.
    “No. You’ll stay.” Grandma handed the money to Merry. “Remember, take from the back.”
    Merry left, and I curled up on the old sofa, trying not to let my face touch the scratchy fabric, picking up the only available reading material, a large-print
Reader’s Digest.
    “Stop with the bookworm routine. I need to talk to you.” Grandma sat next to me on the couch