The Longings of Wayward Girls (21 page)

sadie wrenches her hand free of his once they reach the split-rail fence. she opens the truck door and climbs in, slamming it with a violence that surprises her. she doesn’t know where her anger comes from, what he’s done to prompt it. she watches him go around to the driver’s side and open the door.

“It was that old bitch from Cherrystones,” he says, intimating that Mrs. sidelman has caused sadie’s wavering moods. The two of them sit in the dark truck in silence. From far off is the sound of the waves on the rocks, a sound that might be mistaken for passing traffic on a nearby highway, for wind through trees.

“yes,” sadie says, her voice hard. “My mother hated her, too.”
she gives ray a chance to admit an affair with her mother, but he does not. she turns in her seat to look at ray. “I never liked you, you know that? I only liked the version of you I made up.” she doesn’t say “in the letters.” she doesn’t go that far.

Part Four

E

FAMILY STILL HOPES MISSING GIRL ALIVE
Wintonbury—August 16, 1974

It’s been nine weeks since Laura Loomis was last seen by a girlfriend, heading up Hickory Road to her home. In a phone interview, Mrs. Cynthia Loomis, Laura’s mother, claims the fact that nothing has been found gives her hope her daughter is still alive. She wants to thank the state police, who have been working tirelessly to solve the case, and the many volunteers who searched the wooded area near the Loomis home for a week without discovering any evidence of the blond 9-year old. “It’s the uncertainty,” Mrs. Loomis says. She’s sought medical help and been prescribed tranquilizers, which she takes occasionally. “I’ve had trouble sleeping,” she says. Her husband, Mr. Richard Loomis, an attorney, has recently returned to work. State police told her that they have no solid leads.

July 4, 1979

T

he morning of the lobster bake Sadie heard her father up early, moving around the kitchen, and her mother’s voice, a flurry of admonishments about

the size of the lobsters he picked up at the market the day before, the brand of gin. “bittersweet chocolate?” she said. “I hope you remembered!” Her mother planned to make her famous chocolate cupcakes. sadie imagined her downstairs, perched at the kitchen table with her juice and her cigarette. she felt an almost peaceful sense of normalcy. Through her window she could hear the sounds of the children already gathering outside in the yard across the street, Charlene Donahue calling hers in for breakfast. “not until you eat something, missy,” she said. sadie could picture her framed in the doorway, drying her hands on a dish towel.

The fathers steamed the lobsters in a metal trash can over the pit, a bit of chicken wire soldered near the bottom of the can. This had been sadie’s father’s invention. The Donahues’ yard, with its level topography and minimal tree cover, was the place delegated each year for the bake. The tables, stretching across the entire backyard, bore flapping plastic cloths held down with stones. Gusts of wind filled the trees with a sound like applause. sadie met betty in the backyard by the tables. Along the side of the garage, more metal trash cans had been filled by noon with beer and ice, the sides sweating in the sun. The entire neighborhood came to the bake—although

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conspicuously absent each year were the binghams. some years they packed up their station wagon and left for the day, as if they’d been invited elsewhere. but from Francie’s letters sadie and betty knew that was not the case today, and sadie imagined them sitting in their hot house, listening to the sounds of the party going on up the street.

The girls, as promised, participated halfheartedly in the egg relay, betty standing with one line of children, urging them on, helping place the egg on the spoon, and sadie standing by another, both of them irritated with the children’s fumbling movements. Charlene Donahue smiled at them from her lawn chair, her drink balanced on the arm. sadie’s mother, in a teal and bright green lilly Pulitzer shift, entertained a group by the fire pit, tipping her head back in laughter, leaving her lipstick on her plastic cup.

sadie sat down at one of the picnic tables.
“Filleys,” betty said, sliding alongside her on the bench. sadie glanced up. Patsy and beth Filley crossed the sideyard grass from the street. Patsy held a bottle of Mateus by the neck. It swung at the end of her long arm like a dumbbell. beth kept a few paces behind her, arms folded across her chest, making it clear to everyone that she was there against her will. she had on the same boy’s oxford that sadie had seen her wear before and which she now thought must be beth’s favorite shirt. she had her hair in two braids.

“Pippi longstocking,” betty whispered.
sadie smiled and tried not to laugh. The Filleys were invited every year to the bake but were often away on vacation
and rarely made an appearance. Patsy spotted Clare watkins
immediately and held up the wine. “we’re here!” she called
across the lawn. sadie’s mother lit up and rushed to Patsy,
and beth locked eyes with sadie and approached the picnic
table. she slid onto the bench across from betty and sadie and
stared at them, chewing a piece of gum.
“This is it?” she said in her deadpan voice. “It’s got to be a
hundred degrees out here.”
sadie thought she saw a bead of sweat slide down beth’s
neck. she hoped betty wouldn’t comment on beth’s choice of
clothing, but betty sat silent and immobilized by beth’s presence. beth’s eyes darted around the yard and lit on the line of
trash cans, where one of the fathers had just pulled out a can
of black label. she smiled. “Perhaps the day is not yet lost.”
she leaned in toward sadie, ignoring betty entirely. “My brother and his friend are up in the woods. why don’t
we sneak some of that beer to them?” she widened her brown
eyes. “They would be ever so grateful. our house is dry. Dear
old Mom has taken the car keys, so no sneaking out for a trip
to the packie.”
sadie could smell beth’s mint gum. she turned and
glanced at the trash cans. Their placement on the side of the
garage kept them relatively hidden and easily accessible to the
path into the pasture. but sadie wasn’t sure she wanted to be
around ray, with his flippant comments and his disregard. “I
don’t know,” she said.
“I can’t carry enough of it by myself,” beth said, adopting a
whine. “And my brother would love us. we’d be his heroes.” sadie glanced at betty, who still seemed to be stuck in her
frozen state. “what do you think?” sadie asked her. “oh come on, betsy! Help us out here,” beth said. betty eyed beth. “My name is betty,” she said. “oh, we’re both elizabeth, aren’t we?” beth said. “but we
can’t really choose our own names, or even our nicknames,
when we’re born. I have a friend whose parents call her
bunny. Can you imagine that? when I’m an adult I’m changing mine to serena.”
betty smiled. “yeah, I’m changing mine to roselyn.” sadie said that if they all walked over to the cans and stood
in a group, one person could take out the beer, shielded by the others. They all stood up and crossed the backyard to the
garage.
“look at this,” beth said. “not a single person is paying
any attention to us.”
And she was right. The adults in their circles were transfixed by each other or occupied with children, setting out
paper plates that the wind promptly blew across the yard.
They were bent down tending the fire pit or coming in and
out of the Donahues’ porch door. They refilled their drinks at
the drink table. sadie’s small group by the line of beer-filled
cans seemed invisible.
beth lifted off one trash can lid and pulled out a six-pack of
beer, the cans held together by the plastic rings. sadie thought
they would move quickly toward the break in the barbed wire,
but beth reached in again and rummaged around until she
found another four beers attached together. betty kept up
a high-pitched, fake conversation in the kind of voice she’d
have used when they were playing house.
“so, yeah, I always liked your horse. Do you still have it?
what’s its name? really? oh, sure, I like that. when do you
go back to school?”
beth handed the four beers to sadie. “what is she saying?” “I’m pretending we’re standing here talking,” betty said. “let’s pretend that we’re going for a walk now,” sadie said. “yes, here is where we’ll begin the Haunted woods,” betty
said, again to the air.
The three of them moved away from the picnic, clutching the wet beer to their chests. behind them they could hear
sadie’s mother’s laugh, a loud whoop, and then others joining
in, and the shouts of children who had turned on the sprinkler. once they’d breached the fence and gotten under the
cover of the pines, all three of them started to laugh. beth took
one of the beers and opened it, and sadie did the same. betty
said she’d rather not, and beth simply shrugged.
“It’s not too bad,” she said. “It tastes a little like watered
down cigarette ashes.”
betty made a face and looked at sadie, and sadie took a
sip, pretending it was fine, that the taste wasn’t exactly as beth
had described. They walked along the Haunted woods path
and drank the beer, and beth talked about how clever the sets
were. This made sadie cautious. she wasn’t at all sure if beth
meant it. They stopped at the kitchen scene, and beth set the
beer on the table and pulled out one of the chairs. “why don’t you have a seat?” she said in a voice that sadie
imagined was an imitation of her own mother. “would you
like some coffee? A pastry?”
betty sat down. “no thank you,” she said.
beth laughed then. “That’s how you do it, right? Play
house?”
betty’s face turned pink with irritation. It seemed best to
not reply to beth, who in her odd way may have been serious.
sadie wondered if beth had ever played anything other than
backgammon. she watched her sit down at the table and take a
long sip of her beer. she shook the empty can and then tossed
it over her shoulder. “next,” she said.
“you should save some for your brother and his friend,”
betty said.
beth shook her head. “early bird catches the worm. First
come, first served.”
They heard a snapping of twigs and the lowered voices
of boys, and the girls turned to where ray and his friend appeared from the swamp. Their sneakers and the bottoms of
their shorts were wet. They had their T-shirts tied over their
heads, and ray’s chest was smooth and tan. The other boy was
shorter and pale white in the dim woods. He took his shirt
from his head when he saw them and put it on, out of politeness, sadie surmised. He came up and introduced himself,
holding out his hand for the girls to take. “Hans,” he said. He shook back his long, fine blond hair. ray kept his shirt tied
around his head and leaned over to grab two of the beers. “I see you were resourceful, as always, beth,” he said. “what were you two doing?” beth said.
Hans displayed his good rearing by turning to her and answering. “why, we were just swamping,” he said.
“looking for some swamp hoydens,” ray said. “backwater
hussies.”
The boys snickered. Hans smiled politely toward them.
“no offense.”
They pulled out their cigarettes. Hans sat down on a stump,
and ray leaned against a tree. The sun came through the pines
in shifting patterns on the floor of the woods, on the patches
of ferns. beyond, the meadow filled with a brightness that
hurt her eyes. The boys drank the beer quickly, as if a race was
on to finish it, and when it was gone they decided to visit the
lobster bake trash can coolers again. sadie’s beer had grown
warm in her hand. she watched the two boys saunter up the
path. she’d said very little while they’d been there. Instead,
she’d listened to beth’s chatter and the boys’ low chuckles,
their comments to each other barely audible.
now beth turned to her. “Hans thinks you’re cute,” she
said, as if in some secret way he’d passed her this information. sadie didn’t quite believe her. she’d noticed that Hans
smiled at her pointedly, but she took that to be his good manners.
“I think she’s right,” betty said. “He kept looking at your
chest.”
beth tipped her head back and hooted. “He likes swamp
hoydens.”
sadie didn’t know whether she should laugh with them
or get angry.
The boys came back up the path. ray had another six-pack
wrapped in his T-shirt. “They replenished,” he said. sadie couldn’t imagine drinking any more beer, but Hans
lifted her old one out of her hand and gave her a new cold one.
“Drink up,” he said, grinning.
They smoked Hans’s Parliaments, and listened to the
boys talk about the teachers at their boarding school and the
antics of their classmates, and sadie thought how different
it seemed from the settings in books she’d read, from her
mother’s nightmarish stories—where children slept in dormitories and died of consumption, where headmasters had
paddles and punishments involved long, laborious writings
in cursive.
“My mother went to boarding school in new york City,”
she said.
ray turned to look at her, setting his beer on his knee.
“really?”
sadie didn’t know if he was truly interested or making fun
of her.
“The nuns beat them. The food was horrible. she ran away
when she was sixteen, but they caught her and made her go
back.”
betty stared at sadie. she’d never heard any of this before,
and sadie knew she thought she was making it up. “really,”
she said to her.
Her mother had told her once about going to a friend’s
house for the weekend in weston, Connecticut—about the
neighborhood cookout, the large houses on their wide lawns,
and how she’d always dreamed of that for her own children.
sadie remembered she’d said “Children,” not “child.” sadie
thought all schools had both good and bad. At her middle
school the walls pushed away to combine classrooms, and
they did their math work independently from cards chosen
by color from a box set in the front of the room. she was
part of a high-achievement class that went on field trips, and
learned to write Japanese characters with a brush and ink. but she still had to ride a bus to and from school, breathing in the exhaust, suffering the anxiety of hills covered in ice, the crazed behavior of one boy or another that at times justified
his removal by the driver.
sadie drank her beer, and then Hans was next to her, asking about the path and where it led, for a tour of her Haunted
woods, and then she was walking with him on the rutted cow
path, the roots of the trees tripping her up, the sound of the
cicadas so lulling she thought she might lie down and sleep
on the mossy earth. They passed the living room with the
headless father, and when Hans wanted to go off the path,
toward the meadow, she relented with the intention of describing Francie’s role as the ghost of emely Filley, clutching
her baby. He smelled of soap—years later she will identify the
scent as sandalwood—and his hand was soft on her elbow. At
one point he slid it down to take her hand and lead her into
the grass, into a sitting position, the dry blades sharp on her
bare legs. And then she was aware of his hands in other places,
softly insistent, and his mouth, a gentle pressure on hers. she
heard betty calling her as if from some far-off place, and she
sat up.
Hans applied his gentle force to pull her back down, but
sadie saw he’d shifted her T-shirt up, and she yanked it down
and stood up in the grass, light-headed with sun and beer and
shame. even years later, in her memories of this afternoon,
sadie will always imagine that Hans was ray. she stumbled
across the meadow to the woods, to betty standing there with
her hands on her hips, her mouth a terse line.
“where have you been?” she said. she stared past sadie at
Hans, then took sadie’s arm and dragged her back down the
path, through the barbed wire, to the lobster bake. ray and
beth had disappeared. The activity in the Donahues’ backyard
made sadie dizzy. The parents were singing some made-up
ditty and laughing at each other’s singing voices, collapsing at the waist, the women’s hair wildly untidy, the men clutching their stomachs, the backs of their madras shirts wet. There were the bright shards of lobster left on paper plates soaked with butter, the paper towel rolls unfurling in the wind. There were charred burgers still left, so sadie and betty put two of them on rolls and took some chips, and went upstairs to betty’s bedroom, closing the door against her sister, who followed them, asking where they’d been. even after they shut the door she kept up her knocking, and threatening—“It’s my room, too,” and “I’m going to tell”—until betty shrieked for her to go away. They didn’t talk about what had happened. The room, with its chenille bedspreads and sheer curtains, its
soft carpet, felt like a haven, close and quiet.
They ate their food in an awkward silence. beth kept
glancing up at sadie, and sadie pretended not to notice. “where did beth and ray go?” sadie asked her. beth shrugged and made a face. “I don’t know.” “They just left Hans there by himself?”
“They said they were going home,” betty said. “Maybe
they figured he knew how to get there.” And then, finally,
“He was cute.”
Hans’s cuteness had nothing to do with what had gone on
in the field. sadie had been unprepared for what boys wanted,
and now she vowed she wouldn’t be caught unaware again.
she admitted none of this to betty, even though she felt it was
something she should know. Knowing it while betty didn’t
made her feel stronger somehow.
betty said they had never checked to see if Francie left
anything under the stone.
“I thought we were done with that,” sadie said. but she saw that betty felt the differences beginning to
separate them, and that this was something she and betty still
had in common now, and it seemed a little sad and pointless
to refuse to play along.
They weren’t careful about being followed. The bake was
still going on, and the kids were everywhere—riding bikes in
the street, playing in wading pools, mostly unsupervised. The
day was hot but winding down, the sun sitting just above the
line of trees. sadie could hear the parents’ singing, smell the
greasy smoke that meant another round of burgers was on
the grill as they started up toward the dead end. betty’s sister
joined them, stepping in her jaunty way alongside them, her
arms swinging.
“where are you guys going?” she asked.
betty looked at sadie, and sadie shrugged, resigned. It
didn’t matter. They didn’t expect to find anything. by the
time they reached the stone a small gang of kids, suspicious
from the beginning, had descended on them—some on bikes
towing others, some walking. sadie bent down and lifted the
stone and uncovered a small folded square of blue paper, and
a pair of girls’ underwear.
In her shock at the discovery, sadie didn’t care what happened next, only that she and betty wouldn’t be tied to what
lay there in the dirt. she took the letter quickly into her hand
and she and betty backed away. betty’s sister stepped forward