Of
course, everything that happened around that time is now burned into my memory.
It was a dry, hot summer, not humid like we usually get around here. The sun
burnt everything brown, and inside the house the heat pounded you till you
wanted to cry or yell at somebody. So I offered him a beer, and we sat on the
porch while Amy played, kicking the gravel on what we call our street.
He was from the paper (not the same guy who came later for Amy). He came to
take pictures and write a story about our “community,” which is called Dew Drop
Court and which is really just three old cabins hidden behind a big block
HomeMart store.
He was way older than me—well into his twenties—but still kind of good looking,
and I found him easy enough to listen to. He sat a long time with me, since I
was the only one home except for Mr. Johnson, and I suggested he’d do best not
to bother him because he was a crotchety old man who didn’t care to have his TV
shows interrupted.
He said our place used to be a motor court named the Dew Drop Inn. “Motor
Court” apparently is what they called motels in the old days, when people
stayed in cabins instead of just rooms with bathrooms and beds. He said the
road we live on, Route 30, which is also called Lincoln Highway, once linked up
across the whole United States, from here all the way out west. He said they
had places like this all along the highway for people to stop along the way.
I told him I never took the road farther east than Philadelphia, and that was
just once to take my mom to a doctor, and west I’d never passed Lancaster. My
Dad used to drive us out there on summer Sundays to see the Amish driving their
buggies to meeting, and now I go there to shop the outlet malls.
This guy kept switching lenses on his camera and taking pictures from different
angles. He said ours had been a particularly nice motor court, more of a
resort, and I saw what he meant when he told me where bits of the other ones
stood. There are still quite a few around here, but the one or two tiny cabins
left look about to topple over and ours seem to be the only ones that anybody
lives in.
He said that was because ours were not just sleeping cabins but
“bungalows”—that’s what he called them—with a kitchen, which he pointed out,
might be small for a house but is large for a vacation cabin, and a living room
and a bedroom and a loft. He said mostly rich people stayed here since the
countryside was so peaceful, which is funny because now the countryside is
filled with houses and stores, and the people living on the court are anything
but rich.
He pointed out things about the cabins we lived in that I never took much
notice of until then.
“These are great old Victorian style porches,” he said, hanging off one of the
posts to show how sturdy it was. “Look at those gingerbread designs.”
Then he said what a shame it was that somebody covered the original clapboard
with aluminum siding, and I nodded, though it made no sense. The only place
without aluminum siding is Mr. Johnson’s house, the one we call “the big
house,” though it’s puny compared to those new houses in Church Hill, and Mr.
Johnson’s house always looks like shit with the paint peeling and the wood
rotting.
The newspaper guy stayed into late afternoon talking, until I had to interrupt
so I could take Amy to my Dad’s and get to work. Back then I worked for a
company cleaning offices at night, which was one of the good things about all
the building that had already started around here. I hinted he should leave
too, because except for James and Teresa, the couple next door, people on the
Court tended not to trust strangers. Before he left, though, I leaned in his
car window and said how I was here alone most days if he ever needed to stop
again and didn’t mention what Sean might think about that. I saw no reason to.
It took a few days, but he did come back and without his camera this time. I
offered him another beer and he asked more questions but didn’t write anything
down like before. He questioned me about when the siding went on and when they
knocked down the other bungalows that used to sit here, none of which I
remembered, though I should have, given how I lived next door on the Church
School property practically all my life, but it’s funny how you can’t remember
what was in a place once it’s replaced with something else.
This was how it looked two years ago when I started renting, and all I could
tell him was when they built the Homemart store—around five years before—in
1985. I remembered because it was the first bit of property the Church School
sold off, and it included the piece my Dad used to farm.
After a couple more beers he stopped asking questions. We lolled on the porch,
waiting for a breeze and talking of this and that till he went in to use the
bathroom and I followed, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon, before
work, fucking in the burning-hot bedroom while Amy watched Sesame Street.
He never came by or called again, and I don’t read the paper, so I don’t know
if the story of our little court ever did run.
That same summer they started
digging the foundations for Church Hill, which is not just “executive mansions”
but office buildings, too. The only good part about it was I hoped to get a job
cleaning there so I could walk to work, which I do now, but it no longer
matters. I don’t clean there. I work in the kitchen at Church Hill Assisted
Living, and it’s day work, which I had always wanted for when Amy started
school.
Back when I worked nights, I took Amy to my Dad and his girlfriend’s every day
at five o’clock. She ate dinner there and went to bed while I worked. I’d get
home at two, long after the headlights from the HomeMart lot stopped flooding
our living room, and grab something to eat and watch some TV and then sleep,
sometimes in bed and sometimes on the couch, until seven in the morning, when
I’d go to my Dad’s to pick Amy up. Back then, I felt lucky if she napped during
the day, so I could nap too. But now I feel like it wasted what little time we
had together.
Even then, though, I felt a little shitty after I left her alone all that time
while I fucked that newspaper guy, and I felt worse when I got home at two
o’clock and found Sean waiting on my porch. I can’t figure how he knew what I’d
done, but I sensed that he did, not because he ever said anything, but because
when he fucked me that night, which I had to let him, he did it kind of rough
and mean.
Of course, Sean didn’t really have any claim on me. I mean I never promised him
anything. I was barely nineteen and spent most of the week home alone with just
Amy. The only one around was Mr. Johnson and all he did was watch TV. Sean kept
me company on the weekends. He just lived across from me, so I didn’t have to
leave Amy with my Dad and he didn’t have to know what I was doing—even though
he was doing the same thing but with a girlfriend he lived with all the
time—and even though it wasn’t anything I hadn’t done loads of times before,
only now I used birth control.
I liked Sean okay, I guess. He had a strong chest and arms because he worked
construction, and an all right face. He was nice to Amy and bought her candy
and toys. He did nice things for me, too. He’d buy take-out on a Saturday night
or grill for us in the summer. He had a way with mechanical things, so he took
care of my car and kept it running over a hundred thousand miles, and in winter
he shoveled me out plenty of times so I could get to work.
But Sean could get mean too—a quiet kind of mean. Like the night after the
newspaper guy, when he practically ripped my insides out with his dick, but
said he wasn’t mad. Most of the time, though, he did small things—so small if I
said anything, I was the one who sounded crazy. He got that way mostly when
another guy talked to me, like James, the married guy next door, or Mr.
Johnson’s son. Or sometimes all he had to see was some guy eyeing me, even if I
didn’t look back or anything.
Like one time when I was sunbathing outside our bungalow, and these two guys
got out of this SUV at the HomeMart and kind of looked me over. They came from
one of those new neighborhoods, you could tell, with the big houses and the
green lawns and the wives who garden and the kids who play on big wooden swing
sets. Those kinds of guys don’t whistle or say dirty things or even elbow each
other. They just snatch looks as they walk by. I don’t think I did anything and
Sean didn’t act like he even noticed, but then he burnt my hamburger to a
crisp. He apologized and said it got away from him, but he’d been standing
there watching it the whole time, and his and Amy’s hot dogs were fine. Just my
burger got burnt. I didn’t dare accuse him though, because I knew he’d just
deny it and make me feel like I was crazy and then maybe do something even
meaner. So I just let it go.
Sometimes when I’m working at
Church Hill Assisted Living, or when I sit in my house alone in the winter and
think how pretty it was when there was nothing but field out there and woods on
the hill that rises beyond it, sometimes I wonder how rich I would be if my Dad
had bought even a little of that property when he had the chance.
That field where my Dad grew corn now grows houses and buildings, and our white
house with the big porch and the red trim is long gone. Well, it never really
was our house. I mean we didn’t own it, but we could have. I remember the day
Father Ryan came and told us the Church School couldn’t support itself raising
pigs and corn anymore, and people weren’t donating money the way they used to.
They planned to sell off pieces of land, bit by bit, and turn it into just a
school without the farm for the boys to work. But because my Dad was such a
good caretaker, they gave him a certain time to buy the house for what it cost
them and even raised his pay to make up for the free housing we lost.
First Mom and Dad talked about it. Then they argued about it till Mom cried,
but she never could convince him to take a mortgage. Dad didn’t like debt, and
he remained certain Father Ryan would never let the new owner sell our house
from under us while he worked to save the money. He also believed he could talk
the new owner into letting him raise some corn on his property, if they split
the profit. But my father couldn’t find out who exactly the new owner was or
where to write to him, and six months later they started digging a foundation
for the HomeMart, and six months after that, when they replaced Father Ryan at
the school, they kicked us out of the house. The next year Mom died of stomach
cancer and the Church School bought an old seminary closer to Philadelphia,
making the school for poor kids into a prep school for rich kids and putting
the entire property on the Lincoln Highway up for sale.
They didn’t start Church Hill right away because the same folks who had moved
into fancy developments just before that and complained about the smell of the
pigs and manure, now complained the place would be overrun with houses and
traffic, so they fought it in court, but eventually the developers won, and
they have ever since.
Me and the guy who moved into
Sean’s bungalow are the only ones left here now and that won’t last long. Sean
just disappeared one day after about the fifth time the police detective came
to ask questions about Amy and around the same time some stuff disappeared from
the construction site at Church Hill. I guess they assumed it was all connected
because they pretty much stopped coming after that, but I doubt that it was. I
really do.
Sean’s place stayed empty about a month and then this guy rented it. He has no
interest in me. In fact, he seems to have no interest in women at all, if you
know what I mean. Which is okay by me. In fact, these days, it’s better than
okay because I want to be left alone.
James and Teresa moved out a little over a year ago, not long after Sean. I
never knew if it had to do with Amy, but it might have. They probably planned
to have kids and were scared to raise them here after what happened. But then I
never could figure why they lived in a place like this anyway. Teresa’s parents
drove a big Cadillac when they came to visit, and James’s parents drove a
Mercedes. Maybe they needed to wait for their parents to die so they could get
the money.
Even though we hardly ever spoke, I hated to see them go, only because they
kept their place so nice, and it kind of made our places look better too.
Teresa always planted flowers and had baskets with ivy and such hanging from
the porch. After the last court battle, when they started digging for Church
Hill and our windows got caked with dust and rivers of mud separated our
bungalows when it rained, James and Teresa went to a bunch of township meetings
to complain, saying that our places “represented part of the county’s history.”
They tried to get us all to go, but we knew better than to think anybody would
care about a few shacks, even if it had been a motor court in the old days,
especially since just before that they’d knocked down a barn that went back to
the Revolution . . . or was it the Civil War?
James and Teresa put on a friendly act to everyone when they lived here, but
mostly it just consisted of waves and smiles. As I recall, mine was the only
house they ever stepped inside of. I had to invite them to Amy’s birthday party
because the cars and people took up the whole court. The entire time, though,
they only talked to Amy, pushing her to play with the expensive computer toy
they bought her and eying the rest of us like we belonged on another planet.
Nobody ever rented James and Teresa’s place. It just stayed empty, which is a
waste because it was the nicest place here, but after sitting empty awhile, it
now looks pretty bad.
The first of every month since I
moved here I’ve walked over to the real estate office down the street and paid
my rent, so it wasn’t until a few months back, when Mr. Johnson died, that I
learned he owned the whole court and some other properties along the Lincoln
Highway, too. Now you would have thought he’d have used some of that rent money
to get a new coat of paint on his house, or at least just buy the paint and let
his son, who sometimes lived in the apartment over his garage, do the work. But
then, his son was always a little strange—gone for months at a time, then
constantly yelling at the old man when he got back.
They found Mr. Johnson dead in his house, in front of the TV, of course. If
that oil delivery man hadn’t backed into the mailbox just that morning, his
body might have sat there for weeks, but the guy knocked on the door and then
peeked in the window and noticed Mr. Johnson looked funny, and so he called the
cops.
I was at work. I only found out when the cop came to my house asking if I knew
where to find Mr. Johnson's son. It was the same cop who came about Amy, but if
he remembered me, he didn’t say. I told him I hadn’t seen Mr. Johnson’s son in
a couple of months and had no idea where to find him, and the cop told me Mr.
Johnson had died of a heart attack, “no foul play,” which I didn’t really care
much about one way or the other. That’s when I found out that Mr. Johnson owned
our places. So I guess his son is rich now, if they ever found him.
It was last week we got the
eviction notice, me and the guy who lives in Sean’s place. Somebody’s building
a multiplex theater on the property, and the folks at Church Hill are going
nuts. They say it will attract rowdy kids and bring the property values down,
just like in the neighborhoods where their kids go to the movies now. Of course
it didn’t bother them living all those years behind the HomeMart. That’s one
ugly building, no matter how many trees they plant around it.
It’s funny, though, with everything that happened you’d think I’d be glad to
leave here. You’d think I’d have wanted to leave right away instead of hanging
on a couple of years, but I didn’t and I don’t, and it’s not just because I
don’t know where I’m going to live. I just can’t help but think, if Amy does
come home, now she won’t know where to find me.
Ever since that day she disappeared two years back, I leave the porch light on
every night. I know it doesn’t make much sense. How can a five-year-old just
come wandering home on her own? But still, I always believed that someday,
maybe not this year or the next, maybe not until she was all grown up, but
someday, she’d knock on the door, and I would know her right away, and we would
hug and cry, and she would tell me where she had been, though I wouldn’t care,
just so long as I had her back.
The weeks after she disappeared the cops went to every house on the Court and
asked questions, and they went back to Sean’s over and over again, until he
disappeared. Except for Sean and James and my dad, only the cops helped us
look—nobody else from around here. The cops said they checked all the open
holes at Church Hill. My Dad said they should also check all the fresh-poured
foundations, but I suspect the developer put up a fuss—or maybe a bunch of
money—because they never did. The story ran in the paper about a week, and then
it stopped, just like that, and except for questioning Sean so many times, I
don’t know they did much else. In time they stopped returning my messages or
left me on hold so long, I finally quit trying.
But I guess they had to stop somewhere. Any number of people could have seen
Amy that day, the ones going into the Homemart or stopped at the light on the
highway or wandering through the sample houses at Church Hill. For all I know,
Amy could be under one of those houses right now, part of the foundation of
some rich family’s home.
A couple weeks ago there was a little girl
missing for two days from some farming community in the Midwest. I heard it on
CNN. I listen to those stories closely now, of course. All the neighbors turned
out to search, night and day, using flashlights and headlights when it got too
dark. Then a neighbor found her wandering on the edge of a big cornfield. She
said she got lost in it.
The women at work say the guy kidnapped her, then got scared and brought her
back. Maybe he threatened her to lie. They don’t see how anybody can get lost
in a cornfield for two days. But I told them it can happen.
I got lost in my Dad’s cornfield at the Church School once. Not for two days
but maybe for two hours. You can get really turned around in a cornfield. All
the corn stalks look the same, row after row after row. So you can’t tell one
from the next.
Of course that didn’t happen to Amy. The cornfields disappeared long before she
did. Now we have rows and rows of houses and holes that more houses grow out
of, and soon a multiplex will crop up on this spot where Amy’s home used to be,
but there aren’t any cornfields to get lost in—not around here anyway—not
anymore.
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