Chapter 4
For the Harvest Bash dance of my junior year, Leonard and I went as Phyllis and Walter from Double Indemnity.
He had an old suit jacket so worn out that his mother said he could cut a bullet hole in the shoulder, and she remembered from her theater days how to mix red poster paint, corn syrup, and cocoa powder to make a bloodstain.
Bobby let him borrow his old cap gun. I was just going to wear a white dress I already had, but Mrs. Lifton showed me an old gown of hers that looked remarkably like Phyllis’s jumpsuit, and she said she’d be happy to take up the hem so I could dance in it.
To me, the dress looked and felt like silk, but Leonard’s mother said it was just rayon from during the war, and she’d never wear it again.
So I only had to spend money on the wig, and that didn’t cost much.
In the movie, Phyllis’s wig looked like she bought it at a drugstore, so that’s where I bought mine.
I didn’t tell my father or Mae who we were trying to be until the night of the dance; I wanted to see if they could guess.
When Leonard picked me up, my father was the one who got it right away, and he laughed so hard he had to sit down.
Mae got out her little Brownie camera and took pictures—some of just me and Leonard, and some with Bobby and Janet and even my father, all of us clowning with the cap gun.
Even with the cheap wig, I felt so glamorous, wearing that silky dress. I couldn’t wait to get to the dance.
We never made it inside. At the school parking lot, as soon as we got out of the car, somebody turned on bright headlights and started throwing eggs.
I got hit in the eyes straightaway and saw nothing, just felt the sting of the shells on my bare arms. Leonard steered me back into the car right away, but there was yolk in my wig, yolk on the dress, yolk even in my mouth.
I still couldn’t see, but I locked my door, and Leonard got in on his side and locked his.
He started the engine but said he’d been hit in the eyes as well, and he needed a minute before he could drive.
I heard the yipping and laughter of our assailants, though that was soon drowned out by a revving engine.
Leonard reached over and felt for my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I told him yes, meaning I was still alive. But my eyes burned, as did the skin of my arms. Our costumes were ruined. Our whole evening was ruined.
“I didn’t see who it was,” he said. “Did you?”
I told him no. I couldn’t think of anyone who had it in for either one of us, and I knew the attack might have been random. It was almost Halloween. For some people, that meant it was time to throw eggs.
“I’ll take you home,” Leonard said.
It was the only thing to do. But I knew that when I showed up at our door, covered in egg and bleeding, my father would be angry. Not at me, though that wouldn’t matter. I’d be in for the night.
“Let me at least help you wash the car,” I said. “I’m already all gunky. It doesn’t matter.”
We went to a service station where an attendant who felt sorry for us gave us rags and a bucket of soapy water.
We both worked fast, with Leonard scrubbing one side of the car and me scrubbing the other.
When we finished, we stood together, looking at it, and I felt a little better.
No permanent damage. And there would be other dances. But Leonard seemed preoccupied.
“What is it?” I reached up and pulled some yolk from his hair.
“My parents are at the Liebermans’ Halloween party. They always stay late.” He checked his watch. “It’s not even seven thirty.”
I knew what he was suggesting. But I waited, needing time to think. I’d never once been to the Liftons’ when his mother wasn’t home. Leonard and I both understood that neither his parents nor mine would allow it. All the times I’d been there, I’d never even seen his room.
“Yo-kay!” I said. And he laughed.
His parents had left the front light on. Inside, the house was dark, quiet. We left our wet shoes in the entry. Leonard said we should both use the hallway shower, as his parents might notice if either of us used the shower off their room.
“You can go first,” he said. He told me he’d put his robe outside the bathroom door, and I could put it on and then go back and find something from his mother’s closet, something from way in the back that she wouldn’t miss.
We’d be gone before they got home, and he could return whatever I’d borrowed later.
It was a good plan. We should have followed it. But on the way to his house, I’d been thinking, and I’d hatched a plan of my own.
“We could shower together,” I said. “I’ll keep my underwear on.”
He looked at the floor as if he were searching for something. He looked at the ceiling and rubbed his jaw. He knew he could trust me. And I trusted him completely. As far as I was concerned, there would be no consequence. This gift of an evening would be our secret, ours, and ours alone.
—
I don’t think I ever learned the reason his parents came home from the party early.
Because of the running water, we didn’t hear the car in the drive, or their entrance into the house.
I remember the sudden knock on the bathroom door, my heart stilling in my chest. Leonard put his finger to his lips, but I knew, even in that moment, it was too late for caution. My wet shoes were still by the door.
Leonard turned off the water.
“Leonard.” His father’s tone was as sharp as the knock. “Is Nora in there with you?”
I put my hands in front of my eyes like a fool, like a child. Leonard started to explain about the eggs, but his father interrupted.
“I’m not interested in any of that. Both of you get dressed and come out.”
Leonard handed me a towel. I stepped onto the cold tile and started to dry off. “It’ll be okay,” Leonard whispered, but I knew that it would not be. His father knocked again, impatient, and I lifted the lid of the toilet because I felt sure I would throw up.
Leonard told him we didn’t have dry clothes. There was a pause, and then his father said Leonard should put on a towel and go directly to his room. I should put on a towel, too, he said. Mrs. Lifton—I remember, he called her “Mrs. Lifton”—would be waiting for me in the hall.
—
She’d dressed as a witch for the party. When I opened the bathroom door, she was wearing a sleeveless black dress with a translucent cape, and she had green makeup on her face and neck.
“Mrs. Lifton,” I said. “I’m so so—”
Her hand made a blade, slicing between us. “Don’t,” she said. She didn’t sound like herself. I’d never seen her angry. “I don’t want to hear it.”
She led me to her bedroom. She’d already laid out a white blouse and a purple skirt I’d never seen her wear.
While I dressed, she went into her bathroom but left the door open, and I could hear her rustling about.
She said nothing to me from the bathroom, and because of that, more than anything, I started to cry.
The curtains over the sliding glass door were closed, and I thought of the little patio, and how I would never see it again.
I would be banished from their beautiful home, like a dog who’d peed on the rug.
The purple skirt almost reached my ankles.
When she saw I was dressed, she said she would drive me home, and she led me out the door and down the hall, past Leonard’s closed bedroom door.
I didn’t see or hear him, and I didn’t see or hear his father.
In the entry, I found my shoes where I’d slid them off.
A witch’s hat sat on the floor beside them. A broom leaned against the wall.
In the car, I was sobbing, wretched, my wet hair dampening the shoulders of the borrowed blouse.
She asked me for directions, and I told her we lived in Kenwood, not far from the school.
At a stoplight, I again tried to apologize, but she only shook her head, staring ahead at the light.
I continued crying, not as a plea for pity, but because I could not stop.
At the next stoplight, she reached over and gave me a consoling pat, though still, she did not speak.
When she turned in to our street, it was already quiet, with most porch lights out.
An unlit jack-o’-lantern grinned from our picture window.
“It’s that one,” I whispered, and Mrs. Lifton parked.
I turned to look at her. I could see, from the glow of a streetlight, that she’d missed a spot of green makeup by her ear.
“Are your parents home?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. My hope was to hurry in and get to the bathroom without anyone seeing my wet hair or the too-long skirt.
“Mrs. Lifton. Before I go in, I really want to tell you how sorry I am.” Here, my voice did not falter. My sorrow was sincere.
She put her palm to her chest and took a deep breath in through her nose, exhaling quickly. Then she did it again.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
She glanced at me, breathing in again through her nose. “It’s an exercise I used to do before going onstage, when I was anxious.” She nodded up at my house. “This won’t be pleasant for either of us.”
I followed her gaze to the house. Until that moment, it really did not occur to me that she would interact with my parents at all.
I’d been crying only because I was so humiliated, and so full of regret.
Now terror gripped me. I didn’t fear my father’s wrath in a physical sense—he’d long stopped using his belt for punishment, and these days, he rarely even yelled.
But I was certain that if he knew what Leonard’s parents had come home to, he wouldn’t love me anymore.
He might say that he did, and that he was only disappointed.
But that disappointment would never go away.
Even now, I know I was not wrong to think this.
“Mrs. Lifton,” I said. “Please. Please just let me go in. Please don’t talk to my parents.”