Taking Terri Mueller (7 page)

EIGHT

“Okay, class,” Mr. Higgens said, “settle down.” Tall, gaunt, with strings of wispy hair plastered to his skull, he was Terri's favorite teacher. “I hope you have all come prepared to write an article for our newspaper. Remember, the paper we're going to put together in the next couple weeks will include everything covered by a regular newspaper. Features, sports stories, cartoons, plenty of columns. Who's going to be our Ann Landers? Volunteers? No? Lizbet?” He grinned fiercely at a big blonde girl sitting near the window. “We'll call it Dear Lizbet.”

“Not me,” Lizbet said, reddening.

“We're going to put out a newspaper,” Mr. Higgens went on, unperturbed, “and it's going to be
interesting.
Nothing boring for us. Our articles are going to be written with verve, style, and wit. Everybody ready to be witty and stylish? Not to speak of vervish?”

Terri laughed along with everyone else, enjoying Mr. Higgens' performance. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, to sell this paper, what we really need is a nice juicy murder story on page one to grab our readers.”

Terri's enjoyment vanished abruptly. For a few moments
she had managed to forget about her father. Now it all came back. A feeling of frustration and nothingness swept over her. She sat up rigidly. She had to think, not drown in a sea of self-pity. This morning, Shaundra had said, “Grown-ups want you to turn off your mind. Thirteen? So what? They think thirteen is still sucking your thumb.”

At home, Terri's father acted as he always did . . . but, perhaps, not exactly. She'd caught him looking at her a bit more keenly than usual, almost measuring her. Was he wondering if she had followed orders?
Forget it, Terri
, he'd said.

She doodled on notepaper, wrote “Daddy,” and next to it, “Terri,” then cartooned a little tyke clutching at her father's knee with an amiable grin. “I am your typical good little girl,” she wrote in a balloon over the little tyke's head. Then, a few strokes of the pencil and the little tyke's grin turned a shade evil. The little tyke was up to no good—Daddy better watch out!

“All right,” Mr. Higgens was saying, “we can democratically elect an editor”—applause from the class—“or I can in typical, tyrannical fashion appoint myself. I appoint myself. Call me Ace. And remember, all you Woodwards and Bernsteins, we need feature stories. Terri, are you with us today?”

She looked up, nodded. “I'm here.”

“I have a feeling you were mulling over an idea for a feature story?”

She shook her head. But a headline leaped into her mind.
How My Father Avenged My Mother's Death.

“Well, put your quiet little mind to it, please.” He turned his gaze on another victim. “You there, Robert Olesky, what does your fertile brain think would make a good feature story? Remember, features should have heart, soul, and body.”

“And bloo-ood,” Kenny Collins said from the back of the room.

Everyone was laughing. Terri's thoughts ran in a jum-bled rush, from news stories, to blood, to the metal box, to the manila envelopes. What was in the box? An Army discharge. An insurance policy. What else? What if there were newspaper clippings?
Oakland Woman Dies in Car Crash. Death Car Driver Dies in Mysterious Accident. Husband of Dead Woman Sought
.

She bent over her paper. She was so slow! Why had it taken her all this time to realize answers to her questions were in the locked box? If only she had a key.

At the end of the day Shaundra met her at her locker.

“Hi. What's happening?” They walked out through the big front doors.

“Let's do something. What should we do?”

“I don't know, what do you want to do?” Terri said. Could she have a key made? In stories people were always making wax impressions of keys.

“Let's go to the drugstore and look at magazines.”

“Okay.” Or else they had sensitive fingers that knew how to make locks open with a touch.

In the drugstore they bought a bag of jelly beans and looked at
Seventeen
and
Teen Miss.

“What now?” Shaundra said as they walked out together, eating jelly beans. A plan formed in Terri's mind.

“I better go home,” she said.

“I'll come with you.”

“Shaundra—maybe you don't want to. I'm going to do something—” She stopped. Imagining breaking into her father's locked box was one thing. Saying it out loud, though, would be almost like doing it. And doing it? Her stomach jumped, and she wished she hadn't eaten so many jelly beans.

“What're you going to do? I'll help you. I hope it's not cleaning the bathroom.”

She said it quickly. “I'm going to break into my father's locked box.”

“
Why?
”

“I think maybe he has newspaper stories in there about my mother, and about—about the other thing—”

“The
driver
?” Shaundra said. “But, Terri, if he really did that, why would he want to keep articles about it?”

Terri walked faster. “I don't know, Shaundra. I only know I've just got to try and find out if it's true. I don't want to do this, but I can't go on not knowing.”

Leaves were falling from the trees, a yellow rain of leaves. Terri felt impatient, stretched her legs. In a moment she was ahead of Shaundra. Go home, open the box, look through the envelopes. Find out, get it over with. And then she would say to her father,
You see, I know, and it's better, because now, whatever happens, it's the two of us.

“Terri. Terri, wait!”

“Sorry.” Terri slowed down. “Sorry, Shaundra. Maybe you ought to go home, because when my father finds out, you could be in trouble with your mother.”

“
When
your father finds out?” Shaundra said. “How do you know he's going to find out?”

“He'll find out. Because I'll tell him.”

Shaundra's eyes got big. “You're going to break into the box, and then
tell
him? What kind of
sense
is that?”

“Shaundra—what's the point of me doing this, trying to find out the truth, if I'm going to keep secrets, too?”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I didn't think of
that
.”

The apartment was still, had that closed-off feeling. Terri opened a window in the kitchen, then tried another in the living room. It was stuck tight. She tugged, trying to push it up.

“What are you doing, you crazy girl? I thought you were going to open the box, not the dumb window.”

Terri tugged. “I want some air. Fresh air. Don't you think this apartment smells moldy?”

“What time does your father come home? If we're going to do the box, let's do it!”

“Once more—” This time Terri got the window open. “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?”

“
No. Where
is the stupid box?”

In Mr. Higgens' class, thinking of this moment, she had felt herself balanced as if on a sliver of glass, but now, as she took the grey box down from the closet and set it on the floor, she seemed to feel nothing, to be utterly nerveless.

They knelt down on either side of the box. It was an
ordinary gunmetal-grey box with a small metal handle. Beneath the lock were the words Safety Lock Company in silver letters.

“Is that it?” Shaundra whispered.

“Yes.” Terri's voice sounded loud. “That's it.”

Suddenly Shaundra took one of the pillows off Terri's father's bed and threw it at her. Terri caught it and slung it at Shaundra. “Touch you last!”

Shaundra yelped and picked up the other pillow. They slammed each other, laughing hysterically, and finally falling on the floor.

“Maybe your father's coming home early,” Shaundra said.

“He usually tells me.” Terri got up and looked out the window. “He's not here yet.” Then they both looked at the box again.

“Well . . . so . . . are you going to do it?” Shaundra said.

“Okay. I'm going to do it.” Terri went to her room and got her jackknife. In her father's room again she went to work on the lock. Shaundra kept making bad jokes. “Real criminal stuff, Terri. I wonder how many years they'll give us.”

“Shaundra, shut up,” Terri said, at last. Her tongue between her teeth, she bent the lock. A little more pressure, and it snapped.

“You did it!” Shaundra said. “Open it now. Go
on
.”

Terri's hand was on the closed box. Her calm had vanished. “Shaundra—I'm afraid of what I'll find—”

“Terri! All this, and—Oh, well, if you don't want to go
through with it, you shouldn't.” She got up and checked out the window. “So put it back and forget it.”

“
No
. I have to see what's inside.” Without allowing herself any more time to think, she opened the box and began to go through the manila envelopes. She hardly paused to look at most things. Her father's high school diploma, an old driver's license, some letters, a pink slip indicating she'd been inoculated against polio, diphtheria, and whooping cough, report cards, but no newspaper clippings. No stories of accidents and police proceedings.

She squatted back on her heels and rested her head on her folded arms. “I am a fool.”

“Terri? I thought you said you didn't have any family pictures.” Shaundra pointed to one of the envelopes. It was half-filled with snapshots. She spilled the prints onto the floor. “Who are all those people?”

“I don't know.” A young girl on a horse . . . three boys slouching in front of a ramshackle porch . . . an older woman with glasses . . . “Here, this one, this looks like Aunt Vivian when she was young—But I don't know who that is with her.”

Shaundra looked over her shoulder. “Why'd he keep the pictures locked up?”

Terri shook her head silently. No mysteries revealed. New mysteries added to old ones. She went through the box again, slowly this time. She found a silver ring, several old coins, and a watch inscribed on the back, Richard Valenti. More papers. An outdated membership in the Automobile Club. A notice to report theft of credit cards to a toll-free
number. A legal-looking document that announced the dissolution by divorce of the marriage of Kathryn Susso Mueller and Philip James Mueller.

She read this again. She saw the date, and she almost laughed. What was this? Some kind of weird Halloween joke? On the date of this so-called divorce, her mother hadn't even been alive.

“What is it?” Shaundra said. “What've you got there?” Terri handed her the paper without speaking. “I didn't know your parents were divorced.”

“They weren't.”

“But it says here—”

“It says wrong.” Terri pointed to the date. “My mother had been dead for a year.”

“That's freaky,” Shaundra said. “Are you sure you know when your mother died?”

Terri jammed the envelope back into the box. How could Shaundra ask something so stupid with such a serious expression?

“I was four years old when she died. The year of this—this
divorce
, I was five.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Do you think I'm retarded?”

“Well, maybe you got mixed up.”

“I didn't get mixed up,” Terri said coldly.

She closed the box and put it back on the closet shelf.

“Terri?” Shaundra said.

“
What?
” Something was choking her. She went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. She had never felt so
thirsty.

“Terri.” Shaundra leaned against the kitchen door. “Hey, listen, I've figured it out.” Her voice was very quiet. “You know what I think?”

Terri stared at the calendar hanging over the phone. It had been hanging right there when they moved into the apartment way back in August, and they'd never taken it down. She had forgotten about it, actually stopped seeing it. Now, she noticed that it was turned to the month of March, and that someone had circled the sixteenth in blue crayon. March. That was the month in which Philip and Kathryn Mueller had legally dissolved their marriage. March. That was fine. The only problem was that the year was wrong. Another little problem was that there hadn't
been
a divorce. Her father had been a widower in March of that year; her mother, if anything, a ghost. Could a ghost get a divorce?

“Terri, what I think is—I think your father lied to you.”

“What are you talking about?” Terri turned on her. “He doesn't lie.”

Shaundra chewed on her hair. “Well, that paper's got to be right. So your mom was living when they got the divorce—”

“They didn't get a divorce! Can't you get that through your head? She was killed in a car crash.”

“Yeah, well—the thing is, it's pretty much like my mom's divorce paper. You see what I mean?” Shaundra peered at Terri. “It's not so awful—divorce. I mean, it
is.
It's
terrible.
But . . . it's okay that your mom and dad got a divorce. You know?”

“They didn't,” Terri said. “They didn't! How could they? She was killed in a car crash one whole year before that.” She bent down and petted Barkley rapidly. “I keep telling you—!”

“Well, maybe the car crash happened after the divorce. It's funny that your father didn't tell you. I mean, he did lie to you, Terri. Whatever it is about your mother, he must have lied to you,” Shaundra said.

NINE

“Terr, come on, you're not even dressed.” Her father glanced into her bedroom. He was wearing a plaid shirt, cords, sneakers. “We told Nancy we'd pick her up around eleven.”

Terri didn't move. She was sitting on her bed, still in pajamas, chewing on a twist of red licorice.

“What did Nancy say we should bring besides hardboiled eggs?”

She didn't answer.
You lied to me
.
Why?
She gave him a bright flat glance. Why had he and her mother gotten divorced? Was there something about her mother he hadn't told her? Something bad?

Other, worse thoughts entered her mind. That he had lied about other things. Had he been the driver of the car that killed her mother?

“Daddy, you—” A chunk of licorice caught in her throat.

Looking down, she saw that she had twisted the licorice so much the palms of her hands were red.

“You better go wash,” her father said, “and then move along and get dressed.”

She kept looking down at her red palms and thinking
of the red ink the judge had used to sign his name on the divorce paper. But maybe it was just a stamp, not a real signature. “Why didn't you tell me you and my mother got a divorce?”
There.
She had said it. She felt as if the breath had been slammed out of her.

Her father rolled up the window shades. One of them flapped loosely. He turned his head cautiously toward her. “Divorce? Where did you get that idea?”

“It's true,” she said. “I know it's true.”

He got a fork from the kitchen and began tightening the spring on the window shade roller. “Vivian,” he said. “She told you something?”

“No,” Terri said.

“She must have told you—”

“
No
. She wouldn't tell me anything. Neither of you would.”

He checked the other window shade and began to tighten that spring, slotting it between the fork tines. Next to his mouth a muscle tightened as he tightened the spring.

“How could you get a divorce? She was dead when you got the divorce.”

“How'd you get this idea? ‘A' for imagination, Terri.”

She hated his false hearty laugh. She hated him. Then, seeing his hands tremble as he put up the shade, she loved him and wished she had never gone into the box. The alarm clock suddenly buzzed. It was a crazy clock, always going off at the wrong time.

Phil pushed in the button. “We'll be late,” he said, as if the alarm had been meant to remind them that they were
going on a picnic. But neither of them moved.

“I saw the divorce paper,” Terri said.

“You saw—what do you mean?” His hand went to his pocket for his key ring.

“I saw it in the box.”

“The box?”

“I opened the metal box.”

“You opened it?” he repeated. And again his hand went to his pocket.

“I opened it,” she confirmed.

He stared at her, just stared—surprised, she felt, and hurt, as if she had betrayed him. Then she saw something else move across his face like a shadow. Fear? She wanted to shout,
Don't you be afraid!

He walked out. She sat there, feeling stunned, numb. She had told him. Now what? Where was he going? What was he doing? She heard him in his room. Then he was back, carrying the metal box. “You opened it,” he said, as if he hadn't really believed it until he saw for himself. “How?”

“I pried it open with a knife. My jackknife.”

The phone rang. It rang three times, then stopped.

“You wouldn't tell me anything,” she said. “I asked you to tell me. I wanted to know . . . I thought I would find out . . . find something in the box—”

“That's private,” he said. “I don't see how you just did that. It's private,” he repeated, as if that was the really important thing.

How could her father talk that way? Yes, she had gone into the private box, but
he
had
lied
to her. It was as if they
were in a bombed-out building, but all her father would talk about was a broken window.

“If I'd wanted you to see what was in there, I would have showed you.” His face looked chalky. “Couldn't you trust me?”

She felt a painful tightening under her ribs. She didn't know how to fight with her father. They never had fights. They had always seemed to naturally agree about most things. “You could have told me . . . and those pictures—why didn't you show them to me . . .
why?
” She began to cry, but when he tried to put his arm around her, she jerked away. “Don't! Leave me alone!”

They hardly spoke on the way to Nancy's house. She and Leif were waiting on the steps with a Styrofoam picnic box next to them. Nancy was wearing a boy's baseball cap perched backward on her blonde hair, and a green nylon jacket with SLUGGER written on it. As soon as he saw the truck, Leif ran to the curb.

“Hi, Phil! Hi, Terri! Open up! Can I do the steering wheel?”

In the truck, Nancy leaned across Terri to kiss Phil. “Isn't it a super day for a picnic? Might be the last one of the year. I'm so glad we decided . . .” She glanced at Terri, then Phil, then Terri. “Hey, am I interrupting something?”

“Oh, Terri and I are having a small disagreement,” her father said.

Terri, squeezed between her father, and Nancy and Leif, moved so no part of her touched her father. A small disagreement? He made it sound as if they were bickering
over her allowance, or watching a TV show.

In the park the air was smoky and the smell of cooking meat hung over everything. It was a perfect, clear, crisp fall day. The park was filled with people. Nancy and Phil set out the food while Terri played with Leif. “Chow time,” Nancy called. Everything looked good, but Terri didn't feel hungry. Not even for the German potato salad Nancy had made and which was one of her favorite foods.

“You're eating like a bird, hon,” Nancy said. Her own plate was heaped with food.

Terri's father glanced at her. She looked away. She didn't look at him. She didn't want to, and she just couldn't. A red maple leaf drifted through the air and landed on the dish of hard-boiled eggs. “If that doesn't remind me of pressing leaves between waxed paper.” Nancy was doing all the talking, trying hard to keep things cheerful. “Terri, you remember pressing leaves?”

“Second grade.” Terri forced a smile. She had gone to school with her three big yellow tulip tree leaves and her roll of waxed paper in its long narrow blue box.

“What's this for?” her teacher had said, looking at the waxed paper.

“For the leaves. You said waxed paper.”

“But, dear, I wanted you to iron them at home. Everyone did it at home. We don't have an ironing board in school.”

“I know,” Terri said. She and Phil didn't have an ironing board, or an iron either. Kids were laughing. Terri told herself, Guess what! You did a funny thing! She laughed as loud as everyone else, covering the shame. She still hated to
use waxed paper, even to wrap up a sandwich.

They finished eating, threw the paper plates into a trash basket, and sat around the table, talking. At any rate, Nancy talked. But in the middle of a story about one of her courses, she broke off to say, “You two are still mad at each other! Why don't you use me as mediator? Each tell me your side of the problem. I promise not to be prejudiced.”

“Terri and I will settle it,” her father said. He put his hand over Terri's. “What
are
we fighting about?” he said, not as if he didn't remember, but only as if all the heat had been over a little nothing. And for a moment, confused by the familiar warmth of his hand, Terri thought the same thing. What
are
we fighting over? Terri and Phil fighting? Unreal!

She pushed her toe deep into leaves. Her father's hand stayed on hers. Leif left the table and picked up a stick. “This is a road,” he sang, dragging the stick, “this is a house, this is me. This is a truck. I'm gonna drive, gonna drive Phil's truck. Vrooom . . . vrooom . . .”

Her father's hand pressed on hers and the warmth of it crept through her. All she had to say was, We're not fighting about
anything.
Forget it . . . I was wrong . . . All she had to do was forget what she had seen . . . go back to being Daddy's good little girl . . .

She yanked her hand free. “Why did you lie to me?” she whispered tightly.