Acre Under a Green Sky

My mother and I were going into that house to get clothes for the funeral. A policeman I had never seen before was waiting for us on the porch. Not a town cop. Probably State or County. My father was meeting with the District Attorney in Lincoln.

Earlier I had begged my mother to let me come with her and she said I could if I promised not to tell my father. She said she didn't want to be alone in there with a policeman watching her every move. She held my hand tight as we crossed the street. Her hand was peaches and cream with perfectly shaped fingernails; long and red. Sometimes, they dug in and hurt me. Her wedding ring was a simple sculpted gold bow like you'd find in a girl's hair or on a small gift box. That ring fascinated me. Had my father tied that perfect little bow of gold around my mother's finger? And was she the gift all wrapped up?

The only time I let her hold my hand was crossing the street, which was stupid since I crossed this street a million times a day without her. Her beautiful pale hand with its blood red claws was now cold and clammy wet, and she was holding my hand so tight I couldn't wait to get to the curb.

I ran ahead up the porch steps to where the policeman was standing guard. I hated him on sight. He was as broad and as solid as a door, and he had a pronounced belly which he seemed to flex as if it were a muscle. Perhaps it was. He looked at my mother, and said, "The boy has to stay outside".

"Like hell," my mother said, and she took my hand again.

"Why don't you fix Luka's car!" I said, "It's crooked!"

"I don't want him running around, you understand?" the policeman said, as he unlocked a padlock that wasn't on the door before. The back door was padlocked, too.

"Let's just get this over with, okay," my mother said, as we started through the door.

"They haven't found the weapon yet," he said from behind us.

"What?!"

My mother stopped dead in her tracks. She was breaking my hand.

"The murder weapon. They haven't found it," he said.

"You mean it's here, in this house, somewhere?"

"They'll find it."

My mother wouldn't let go of my hand. I was pulling and pulling.

"I don't think we should be here, then. My husband is Mr. Luka's lawyer. You don't think he hid the knife in here, do you?"

"It's okay. We'll find it. Don't worry."

"Oh Christ!" my mother said, finally releasing my hand.

We entered the house. The stillness was jarring like an impenetrable wall. The silence was maddening. I immediately scanned the living room for the TV so I could turn it on and make some noise, but of course they had no TV. I knew that. Jeff watched Howdy Dowdy at our house with Danny, and Mrs. Luka watched Uncle Milty with my mother. They all used to watch Ed Sullivan at the Eagles' house next door to them until Mrs. Eagle and Estelle got to hating each other for some reason. Luka said he wasn't going to buy a TV until they "perfected the damn things", but we all knew they couldn't afford a TV.

I ran all the way into the kitchen just inches out of the policeman's reach while my mother was calling me back. I turned on the portable radio sitting on the window ledge over the sink, and "Bebop-a-Lula; she's my baby!" blared out at top volume. The policeman reached for the radio, and I was sure he was going to turn it off, but he lowered the volume instead. He was relieved to have some noise, too. We all were.

The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes, and there was a bad stain on the blue and white block linoleum; a big, round stain like the one under Luka's car in front of the house. Estelle would have had a fit if she saw it.

The policeman grabbed me by the back of my shirt collar and escorted me back into the living room where he flung me at my mother as if he were discarding a bag of garbage. I ducked behind my mother and put my hand in her skirt pocket. No one can touch me now. She will tear him to pieces if he takes one step towards me. I knew it, and he knew it.

My mother had not moved an inch since we entered the house. She stood there and gazed about the room as if she were making some kind of inventory. Both the policeman and I followed my mother's gaze. Something about the look on her face impelled us to see what she was seeing. It was a ghost. The ghost of a day-to-day life now dead. A sofa where small children had once trampolined now stood dormant; unmoved, unmoving. Full ashtrays with no smoke in the air. A pile of newspapers and magazines beside the easy chair with Estelle's doilies covering the cigarette holes on the arms. The floor lamp behind the chair no longer cast an amber glow over Gwen's Life Magazine pictorials. The clutter, the litter, the mess living people make living; now a horrible testament to death, to living stopped on the upbeat.

My mother picked up a dish towel lying at her feet; then let it slip out of her fingers to float down to the floor again. A half-full coffee mug with "Daddy" printed badly across it sat on top of a bookcase full of toys and no books. A cigarette butt floated inside the mug like a dead fish. We'd seen it all a hundred times, but now every stick of furniture, every object, every "thing" stood starkly mute and somehow four-dimensional without life; without the living associated with every "thing". It was people in the process of living who made these "things" live, and without people, they were dead. They were ghosts. Ghosts of reading the Saturday Evening Post after putting the kids to bed. Ghosts of crocheting fine white thread to Guy Lombardo on the radio. Ghosts of sitting on the floor making train wrecks. Ghosts of sipping hot black coffee before shoveling your car out of the snow.

My mother fixed on a pile of something on the floor at the far end of the sofa, and uprooted herself for the first time. It was a bedspread and pillow. She started to fold the bedspread, but gave up and threw it on the sofa. Everything seemed to deflate her.

"This is my brother's," I said, picking up Danny's bright red yoyo.

"Leave it," my mother said.

"But it's Danny's!"

"Just drop it! I don't want you touching anything."

"What if I find the knife?"

Yes, the knife. The cobra in the grass. The spider in the drawer. It's in here with us. Or so they say.

"Let's get on with this," the policeman said.

We climbed the stairs and entered their bedrooms one by one rifling closets and drawers. My mother selected articles of clothing and dumped them into my outstretched arms. First Estelle's room, then the room Jeff and Marilyn shared. The baton was there on the floor at the foot of the bed. I can't believe they shared one bed. Danny never told me. I wanted the baton. My eyes never left it. I was willing it to come to me, but it didn't budge. That baton was mine by right. I had suffered countless blows for it. It was a trophy. I would hang it on my wall like the stuffed head of the man-eating tiger who had stalked the neighborhood for years. It was mine.

My mother paused for a moment before entering Gwen's room; her hand frozen outstretched for the doorknob. Finally, with an escape of breath, she turned the knob and flung the door open. The bed confronted us at once. My mother stared at it with her hand at her throat. The mattress was gone. It was a harmless frame with crooked slats where the mattress had been. No big deal.

The closet was immediately to the right of the door. She opened it and stepped back. This closet was amazingly neat compared with the others. Great care had been taken here; almost reverence. She took a plastic covered man's suit from the pole and hung it on a hook inside the open closet door. Then she stepped away from the closet and out into the hallway. I thought she was going to be sick. So did the policeman who had been watching her every move just as she had predicted.

"It's all there," my mother told the policeman, "as if she had planned for this day."

It was true. With the exception of Estelle, there was one clean and pressed outfit for each of them neatly bagged and hung in this closet. At the bottom of the closet, highly shined shoes; one pair each, were stacked in their boxes. There were two shopping bags for purses. On the top shelf, five dust-free hat boxes were marked, "Chuck", "Spring", "Fall", "Summer", and "Winter".

Now my mother was rejecting clothes she had picked earlier; grabbing things from my burdened arms like a mad rag picker and tossing them into the air. Finally, she took Luka's suit off the hook and laid it over Estelle's long black dress.

"But Luka's alive!" I said.

"And he'll want this for the funeral, don't you think."

One by one, she laid the packaged outfits over my arms. Then she pulled out the one outfit that wasn't wrapped. It was a dark blue suit, and she hung it on the hook. We both recognized it at once. It was Mrs. Luka's blue suit. Her silky white blouse with two ties at the neck was under the jacket. There was even a pair of nylons draped over the skirt. My mother opened the jacket and touched the seams. Then she reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out a gold circle pin and two small cuff links with blue stones. She looked at them in the palm of her hand for a long time before replacing them. Then she just stood there looking at the blue suit hanging on the hook.

"What is it?" the policeman said.

"Nothing," my mother said.

Then she did something very strange. She looked deep into my eyes as if to say, "Do you see it, too?" I didn't. She laid the suit over the others and went about her business.

There was nothing special about that suit. Mrs. Luka wore it all the time. I can see her now. Stepping out of the house and carefully down the porch steps because her heels were so high. Opening her black bag and dropping a white hanky inside before moving on down to the sidewalk. Adjusting her little black hat with the veil over her forehead and moving on down Ledge Avenue until she was out of sight. Maybe not everyday, but often. Once a week, at least. No big deal.

When my mother was finished, she took most of the clothes herself. The policeman was carrying the shoe boxes; all the while arguing that dead people don't need shoes. Back downstairs, I ran for the kitchen.

"Hey!" the policeman called.

"The radio," I called back.

I turned the radio off all right; and one thing more.

I ran smack into his proud belly on the way back. He looked at me with such profound suspicion, I was sure he knew what I had done.

"Let's just have a look here," he said, as he started searching me. All he found was Danny's yoyo in my back pocket.

"Satisfied?" my mother said.

"Yeah, satisfied?" I said, too.

The policeman helped us carry the stuff home, then left without a word of good-bye. My mother had offered him a drink, too.

For a long time that afternoon, my mother sat in the living room with Baby Ruth asleep on the floor at her feet. She wasn't reading anything or listening to music or talking on the phone. She was just sitting there with her drink –– thinking.

I sat on the sofa across from her pretending not to watch her, but I was watching her. She fascinated me.

I guess I was trying to figure her out; to paint a picture of her that was true, but it was impossible. If it was a picture of her laughing face, and she did laugh with her whole face, it was somehow a disservice to her pain and fury; to her downcast, solitary gaze into God's eye. She would speak to herself under her breath when she was enraged and thought no one was looking. She won long and convoluted arguments alone; arguments she had no patience for with others. She loved dirty jokes, but could never remember them. She pretended to hate parties, but unwittingly jumped up and down like a little girl when guests started arriving. She despised women who jump up and down like little girls. She was fearful of people, but couldn't stand being alone. Everything about her was a contradiction. She was dangerous that way.

Baby Ruth woke up and crawled onto my mother's lap dragging her little comforter along after her. My mother made all the necessary adjustments without giving it a thought. Her mind was elsewhere. And then she caught me watching her.

"I don't like how you're treating your Dad. It's very unattractive. And you could be a lot nicer to your brother, too."

"Sorry."

"That mean-streak of yours is beginning to scare me. It's not honest. If you're angry about something just spit it out."

"Okay, I said."

"You're hurting your Dad, you know."

"He just makes me mad."

"Well, he makes me mad sometimes too, but I try not to be mean to him."

"Tell me about Hollywood again."

"I don't feel like it."

"C'mon. 'What wondrous creatures we were!'"

"I said I don't feel like it."

Our history was the best story I knew –– better than Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe. And I loved hearing her tell it, though it had been a very long time since she did. Her dad used to be a carpenter for MGM in Hollywood. He knew all the big stars like Garbo and Gable, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; the legends. He and his wife, Winnifred, had immigrated from London shortly before my mother was born. Moving to a classless society changed Winnifred. Suddenly finding herself as good as anyone else made her superior to everyone else. She took on airs, and started orchestrating teas. Her dead common accent in London was regarded with some awe in America; or so she imagined. At last, the tables had turned. She was high class. She was a bigoty snob. Everyone hated her sad little superiority; most especially, my mother.

My mother worked for MGM, too, in a variety of ways. Waitress. Typist. She even appeared in two movies; once with a line to June Allyson about a telegram. My mother was a beautiful woman, but no one ever knew what color her hair was. My father was working in radio when they met and fell in love. He was beautiful, too.

There's a snapshot of the three of us when I was a baby. We were all beautiful in Hollywood. She has dark hair in the picture. Then my mother became pregnant with my brother, and my father decided to move us all back to his hometown –– Waterstop, Pennsylvania. He would become a lawyer like his father; she, a housewife and mother like her mother. They had recast themselves in roles and in a location totally unsuited to them –– all in search of a happy ending. And so we drove across the country without a backward glance arriving at the home of my father's parents in the wee small hours of the morning. The house was dark. Everyone was asleep. My father put us all to bed in one of the bedrooms, and we fell asleep.

The next morning both my mother and I were to meet my grandparents for the first time. The story goes that my mother came down the stairs in her dressing gown. She was blonde then.

My grandmother embraced her and said, "Now what can I get you for breakfast?"

"Pork chops", my mother said.

My grandmother would hate my mother from that day until the day she died many years later. My grandmother starved herself to death in a nursing home; willfully, artfully starved herself to death. She was insane.

My grandfather and grandmother divorced soon after we arrived, and their house was converted into the Wiley & Wiley Law Building forever known as "the office". My father was the junior partner in spite of the fact that in short time he was doing the bulk of the work. It was small town law; deeds, wills, divorces, title searches, petty arbitrations. It must have been deadly dull, though I never heard my father complain. He had a wife and three children, and he was doing the right thing.

My grandfather moved into "the farm" which wasn't really a farm at all. There were gardens, of course, and an apple orchard, and a pine grove, chickens, ducks in the pond, a corn field and corn crib "for the rats", my grandfather used to say because if you put the corn in a bank vault, the rats would still get in. I never saw one, but you could hear them gnawing on the rock hard corn at any time of the day. But it wasn't a farm in the way the neighboring Harley Farm was a farm. The Harley's had to have six sons just to work their farm and they barely managed. The distinction between my grandfather's farm and a real farm is that word "work". No one "worked" my grandfather's farm. My grandfather's farm was pruned, manicured, plucked. It was a twenty-eight acre playground everyone called, "the farm".

"What wondrous creatures we were!" That's how my mother would begin the story, "What wondrous creatures we were back then in Hollywood!" I sat across from her wishing she would tell the story again when a thought occurred to me. Earlier that day in the Luka house, she had tried to communicate something to me with her eyes.

"What did you see in Luka's closet?" I asked, "Something about Mrs. Luka's blue suit."

"None of your business," she said, and I could see that she was crying. She wiped tears from her eyes, and I asked if she was sad.

"Oh God, I hate my life," she said.

It was alright. I had already learned not to listen to what she says, but to watch what she does.

Later that evening, I heard her say to my father:

"Gwen was not lying naked in that bed for Luka."

"What do you mean?"

"She wasn't sleeping with Luka anymore. She was sleeping on the couch. I found her bedspread and pillow downstairs."

"So?"

"So who was she expecting in bed?"

"Great! You just gave them a motive."

"Or another suspect."

I didn't care. I was waiting for Garry to come over. He would want to hear all about my day in the "Death House", as the Daily News called it. He would want to know if there was any guts on the walls. But I had more important news for him. I had plans. I had unlocked Luka's kitchen window.