Little Bird of Heaven (13 page)

“Well, say—my name is
Jacky.
What’s yours?”

Again, the uncanny echo of Zoe Kruller.
Well, say!

In an article in the Sparta paper about Zoe Kruller it had been noted that at the time of her death Zoe had been staying with a “woman friend” on West Ferry Street; and that this friend had been away, overnight, when Zoe was killed; yet police had reason to believe that the woman was one of the last people to have seen Zoe alive. Her name was Jacqueline DeLucca—I had memorized that name—and she’d been identified as a “cocktail waitress, unemployed.”

Somehow it happened, I told “Jacky” DeLucca my name.

“Krista’—what a pretty name. An unusual name, isn’t it!”

How to answer this? I laughed, embarrassed.

“You’re the first ‘Krista’ I ever met. That’s good!”

Jacky’s speech was, like her appearance, exuberant, over-animated. Spilling out of her black-lace nightgown and her flannel shirt, her frizzed dyed-beet hair stirring in the wind like a mad halo about her head, this woman-friend of Zoe Kruller looked as if she were about to clap her hands in childish delight. Though I wanted very badly not to come inside Jacky DeLucca’s house with her somehow I had no way of politely saying
no.

No warning came to me, of the countless warnings of my mother regarding the danger of being spoken-to, beguiled-by, strangers.

Inside the cluttered kitchen that smelled of something sweetish like wine, whiskey, cooking odors and scorched food Jacky was saying in her drawling-Zoe voice that I was a “pretty girl” but would have to “smile more” so that people felt good in my company, and not “heavy-hearted”: “What life is, is people want to be happy, not unhappy. Men, most of all. All-age-men. It’s a man’s world and if you make a man unhappy, he will sure as hell unvoid you. Don’t matter if you are beautiful as—what’s-her-name—now she’s fat and old, but—‘Liz Taylor’—don’t matter if you look like her, if you cause a man to be heavy-hearted, guilty and ponderous like some weight hanging around his neck, you will be left
alone.”

Jacky gripped her fleshy arms with her hands and shuddered at the prospect, or the memory, of being
alone.

Unvoid
was a word new to me. I guessed that Jacky meant to say
avoid.

How horrified my mother would have been at the condition of this kitchen: so small, so cramped, with ugly discolored walls, cupboards lacking doors so you could see stacked plates, cups, cereal boxes, cans on shelves, a torn and sticky linoleum floor. Food-encrusted dishes not even soaking in the sink—which my mother abhorred as a lazy habit—but strewn about on every available surface. Though it wasn’t yet warm weather flies were buzzing lazily about as if this was their breeding ground. Chattering happily and nervously Jacky cleared a space for us to sit at a table, she reheated hot chocolate in a pan on the stove, and served it to us in heavy chipped mugs with red valentine hearts on them. The rim of my cup was just visibly stained with lipstick, I tried inconspicuously to rub off. It seemed important not to insult or upset this friendly woman, whose mood might abruptly turn to its opposite. “Damn! Guess it was boiling.” There was a scummy film on the surface of the hot chocolate, but the hot chocolate was delicious. And stale chocolate chip cookies, eagerly dumped out of a package and onto the chipped-pebbles Formica tabletop, delicious too.

“See, Krista—‘Krissie’—is that what people call you, who love you?—‘Krissie’—I saw you out there in the alley, and I thought
That little girl is a friend of Zoe’s. I just know it.”

A kind of pinching sensation came into my face. My eyes shifted down, I could not meet Jacky’s shining eyes.

“Am I right? Am I? I am! From when Zoe worked at the dairy, was it? I thought so.”

Jacky asked me how old I was, what grade I was at school, and where I lived. Her voice rattled on like a runaway locomotive while her eyes fixed on me in that eager hungry-Zoe way that was disconcerting. Her manner was furtive, flirtatious. On her neck and right forearm—what I could see of her forearm—there were faint purplish bruises like fading clouds, which, unconsciously, Jacky stroked tenderly. I was made to remember how Zoe had stroked her freckled arms, at the dairy. Zoe’s arms that were slender and milky-pale and stippled with freckles and moles like tiny ants….

“D’you miss her, Krissie? D’you miss Zoe? I guess she wasn’t a friend of your mom’s, was she. But she was a damn good friend to her friends.”

Jacky spoke vehemently. I could think of no reply. I had not told Jacky my last name—had I?—but this question seemed to suggest that she knew who I was. After a moment Jacky lurched from her chair and groped about in a cupboard and retrieved a bottle of Jamaican rum and poured an inch or two of dark liquid into her mug and drank thirstily. She smiled, with relief. She smiled and winked at me. Close up I saw now that her crimson lipstick was chipped. Her nails were broken and uneven and nothing like Zoe Kruller’s perfect nails.

Out on West Ferry a dump truck lumbered past. The house vibrated like something alive, shivering. Somewhere up the street boys were shouting. It was a neighborhood of continuous noise, noises: a
mixed neighborhood
as my mother would say carefully. Not a
safe neighborhood.

Jacky was glancing past my head now, distracted. It seemed urgent to her to keep speaking: “—eleven, you said? Or—twelve? And you live out—by the river? Huron Road?”

I was hurt to realize that Jacky DeLucca wasn’t really so interested in me, only in my presence. As if she wanted badly not to be alone.

“‘Mrs. Kruller’—the lady who lived here, who died—she was a friend of my mother’s.” I spoke suddenly, defiantly. Why these words came to me I have no idea. “Yes. She was.”

“Oh—she was? Well—good.”

“My mother’s name is Lucille. Lucille Diehl.”

“Diehl.’ Oh.”

Jacky regarded me with widened eyes. Startled and distrustful eyes. As you would look at someone who has just surprised you by saying something wholly unexpected, and unlikely.

“You’re their daughter, are you. ‘Diehl.’”

“My father’s name is Eddy Diehl.”

“Yes. ‘Eddy.’ I knew—I know—‘Eddy,’ too.”

Clumsily Jacky poured more rum into her mug, and drank. I was waiting for her to offer rum to me, but she did not. Her face was so amazing in
its smeared smudged clownish glamour, her eyes so glassy-bright, it was painful to look at her, as at a picture too close to your eyes, but impossible to look away. She reminded me of one of my mother’s older, widowed aunts—a woman made permanently bereaved by the loss of her husband, whom I scarcely knew; a woman in continuous need of attention, affection. It was not enough to be hugged by Aunt Marlene once, you must be hugged by her twice, three times. You must be kissed numerous times. There was no way to fill the hole in Aunt Marlene’s heart, you wanted finally to push away from her, run away from her, call back to her
Leave me alone, I hate you
except you were not so cruel, and you did not hate Aunt Marlene only just Aunt Marlene’s terrible need. And here was Jacky DeLucca breathing heavily, pressing the edge of her hand against her bosom like an aggrieved woman in a late-night TV film. Despite the kitchen odors I could smell the perfumy-sweaty odor of Jacky’s flesh, her clothes that needed laundering; I could smell the rum. A sweet cloying delicious smell it seemed to me. I thought
She is a friend of Daddy’s, too. Daddy has been here where I am now
.

All this while I was drinking the scummy hot chocolate Jacky had prepared from a mix on the stove. Afterward for hours my mouth would throb with a pleasurable hurt.

“Zoe was my closest friend, see. Zoe was my sister, like. Zoe and I had known each other from—oh Christ years ago. Before she was married, even. Ohhh that Delray Kruller! The way Delray is now, you’d never know how Delray was then, him and Zoe, she was just a kid fifteen-sixteen years old when they met, and crazy for him, and Delray was crazy for her except—you know—these ‘mixed-blood’ guys—it’s said they get the worst of the Seneca blood, that can be blind crazy scary as hell, and the worst of the Caucasians—the ‘whites’—that’s
us
—the white race is pretty damn crazy too, y’know—like—Nazis? Germans? Vikings—is it? They’d as soon hang you upside-down and light a ‘pire’—fire—in the name of religion, or whatever”—Jacky floundered, uncertain what she was talking about; then recalled—“that Delray! He was damn good-looking, that Indian-hatchet face, and that Indian-black hair that’s so sexy, you’d
be surprised to learn that he was—he is—only one-fourth Indian—that’s what Zoe said—Delray’s actual father was some kind of—Aust-ian?—like, German?—‘Kruller’ is some kind of—I forget what it is, but that side of Delray is not Seneca Indian, for sure. And Zoe, she was always so beautiful, at least she was to me, some fat pig like me, Jesus!—there’s Zoe like some kind of—what’s it—fairy—with wings—just kind of flitting around—you wouldn’t be able to catch anything like that in your hands—I mean, you’d have to grab it, and squeeze hard, or it would get away. There were people—still are—who never thought that Zoe was anything special, with those freckles. The two of them, on Delray’s Harley-Davidson. Zoe is a little younger than me. She was real young when they hooked up, could be Delray ‘violated’ some statute—some law—like it is called ‘statue-tory rape’—meaning under-age girl—‘jail bait’—but Zoe was sure willing, and Zoe was hot to get married, she got pregnant with Delray’s baby that was like, for her, finding Christ in your heart—y’know? Like for other people finding their savior in their heart, that’s how it was for Zoe. Why she got married so young, dropped out of school, and had her baby—Aaron—so young—you’d see the two of them, like a few years ago, you’d think for sure they were a sister and kid brother, not mother and son. I mean, you’d never think that Zoe had a kid that old, and that size, as Aaron!” Jacky paused, smiling. Jacky poured more rum into her mug and drank slowly.

Another time there was a sound of shouts in the street, but Jacky didn’t seem to hear. “Hell it’s true, Zoe and I were not always friends. Zoe and Jacky were not always ‘sisters.’ Men will come between you, in certain circumstances. Once Zoe left Delray, and it didn’t work out with—y’know—Eddy Diehl—once that did not work out as she’d thought—there was tension between us having to do with men. Because there was always a man—there was always men—interested in Zoe. She had a wild streak, nobody can blame
me.
Once she got onstage and singing and the audiences loved her, it got too hard to say
no.
Ask who turned Zoe onto drugs, it wasn’t
me.
Nor heavy drinking, either. I mean, we were drinking back in high school, guys supplied us. Guys supplied us with pot, speed,
‘coke.’ Not ‘crack cocaine’—that came later. Now, high school kids are into that shit, but not us. We’d drink beer, and pass out. We’d smoke pot, and pass out. We were like—‘flower children’! We were kind of innocent, back then. I grew up a half-mile from Zoe, on North Fork Road. We’d walk to the school bus stop together. Later, we got rides with guys together. Zoe could be the sweetest thing, but kind of devious. She’d never s a y what she wanted but she’d get her way. A kind of corkscrew way. Her family was the Hawksons. They could’ve taken her in—when she kind of collapsed, and came here to live with me—but they wouldn’t. ‘Washed their hands’ of Zoe was the word. The fuckers! Call themselves Christians—‘Presbatyrians’—the worst kind of prigs. Well, things I would not have done, ever—guys I wouldn’t have broken promises to, ever—Zoe did. She had a dangerous way of thinking that, sexy as she was, good-looking and a girl country-and-western singer with a band, she’d be forgiven for doing things that others of us, not so good-looking, with maybe not so sexy a figure and not so great a voice, would not.” Jacky paused, shaking her jowly face with a look of bulldog satisfaction. Then she continued, in a higher-pitched voice as if confronting her accusers: “There’s people blame me, Zoe’s God-damn family blames me, that I was the one turned her onto hard drugs—heroin—Jesus!—that’s a joke. God damn hypercrites—hypocrites?—saying such things about me to the police, quoted in the damn newspaper, coming right out and saying—this ‘woman friend’ of Zoe Kruller—this ‘Jacqueline DeLucca’—she is to be held responsible for Zoe ‘going bad.’ Bullshit! That is such crude, cruel bullshit! Between her and Del, whatever it was, how’d I have anything to do with that?—or Zoe quitting her dairy job ’cause she was God-damned bored there she said, the smell of milk was making her puke, not to mention you never get tips in a job like that having to wait half the time on God-damn fucking
kids.
And if there’s no liquor license in a place, forget it. ’Cause you are not going to get fucking tips. You are not. Especially around here, in the Adirondacks where there’s a scarcity of jobs. So, out on the strip, Zoe could make serious money. At the Tip Top, at Chet’s
Keyboard, Zoe was real popular, made more tips than any of the cocktail waitresses, but she was hoping to get a gig there singing, and there was the hope that her band—Black River Breakdown—would get a recording contract, one of these days. That never happened, but it could have. And on the Strip, guys were tripping over one another’s feet to get to Zoe to buy her a drink, or dinner, or take her to Montreal, or Atlantic City, or Vegas—which was where she was going, to Vegas, with some new man friend she’d only just met. At least that was Zoe’s belief, when”—Jacky paused as if a bad taste had come into her mouth, she had no choice but to swallow it down—“it happened. But see, Zoe never needed
me.
Sure I introduced her to a few guys, guys I knew like Csaba, who owns Chet’s Keyboard Lounge, and some other guys out on the Strip, ’cause I know them, and they know me, and they wanted to meet Zoe. And these guys, out on the Strip, that frequent the clubs, and have money, they’re not guys from Sparta, weren’t born here and didn’t know Delray Kruller, never heard of him. ‘Kruller Cycle Shop’—‘Kruller Auto Repair’—nothing they ever heard of, or gave a damn about. Things that are such a big deal in Sparta—in some circles in Sparta—people don’t know anything about nor give a damn about elsewhere. Sure some of the guys must’ve known that Zoe was married, or used to be married, but—so what? She’d tell them she was ‘separated,’ she was filing for ‘divorce.’ No way anybody could guess her husband was a kind of dangerous hothead—part-Seneca Indian, and a drinker—or if they knew, they didn’t take it seriously or give a damn, like I said none of them would’ve known
Delray Kruller
, who he was. Zoe was hoping this trip she was going on—to Vegas—might lead to something more permanent, not that Zoe wanted to get married again—she did not—but, say, if a man wanted to invest in Zoe’s singing career, and kind of take care of her—that, she’d have liked. There was a way of Zoe being so hopeful, like a young girl sometimes. Could’ve been your age! ‘I need a change of scene, Jacky,’ Zoe told me, ‘I feel like there is another world somewhere else, waiting for me. Ohhh I feel like I will suffocate here.’ In mimicry of her friend Jacky spoke in a low throaty girlish voice. A look of slow-delayed horror came into her face. “I just can’t
believe that Zoe is—gone. There was nobody more alive than Zoe, of anybody I knew. And now—to think—that”—Tears came into Jacky’s eyes, compulsively she caressed her bruised, soft-raddled throat. “It was my belief that Delray was making trouble for Zoe again. ’Cause he was still in love with her—he’d always been crazy for her, and Zoe was crazy for him—except, you know, how things get in the way—‘intervene’—he’d go through a spell he was agreed they could get divorced, then he’d change his mind, and stall, and Delray, or one of Delray’s friends, would turn up where Zoe was, like ‘stalking’ her. Zoe told me, ‘Anything bad happens to me, Jacky, it will be Delray.’ I told the police this but so far as I know they have not arrested him, or anybody, only just questioned him and let him go—took him into ‘custody’ then let him go—it’s been how long now, since February? How many weeks? My God! Poor Zoe! You can know a thing like your friend is gone but—you can’t believe it, somehow. I keep thinking that Zoe will come down the stairs there—right through there, see?—the stairs—sleepy and yawning or maybe all dressed up, in her high heels, looking good, and some guy is coming in a few minutes to pick her up, and I’m asking when is she going to be back, does she have any idea, and Zoe laughs and says, ‘When I’m good and ready to be back, Jacky. Just like you.’ That night, Krista, it was my fault maybe, I was away. That night and half the next day. This guy, this friend of mine from Watertown, just showed up and wanted to see me, wanted to party, I was with him when Zoe was killed here, at that very hour I was miles away. I have given the police my statement about this. I didn’t get back to Sparta until around noon and by that time this place was all opened up like there’d been a fire and police were here and poor Zoe—her body—had been taken away to—I guess—the county morgue. Just like that! I come up the walk here and there’s this big barrel-chested guy looking at me—‘Jacqueline DeLucca, is that your name?’ with a look in his face like he’s smelling something bad. Because they’d been looking through this house, in all the rooms, that wasn’t so clean, I guess, and talking to neighbors. Because they judge you, sons of bitches just looking at you, thinking they know you. Thinking they can put a name to you—‘hooker,’ ‘whore.’