Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels) Page 3

  “Where’d you get that money, Cassandra Jane?” he sneered. “You been stealing from your ol’ man, have you? Sneakin’ money outta my pockets when I’m not lookin’?”

  Again I mutely shook my head, trying to pull away from his iron grasp, wishing my tautly pulled shirt would simply split in two and like Peter Rabbit I would gladly flee away and run half-naked down the street until I reached my grandma’s store. But he had hold of my arm now and gave me a hard shake, and I thought I heard something in my neck pop. Then his twisted face came so close to mine that I could smell that sweet, putrid aroma of alcohol emanating from him like a poisonous vapor.

  I knew this was a very bad situation. And if I didn’t get away fast, it would likely turn worse. If only his grasp would weaken, just momentarily. I knew I could be out of there in a flash and he’d never catch up with me. I’d bang on my grandma’s apartment door and tell her everything, and of course she’d take me in. But his grip was like a vise, and the next thing I knew he was swinging his other fist at me, with the bottle still in it, just like I was his punching bag.

  I closed my eyes and held my free hand up to protect my face, but it was useless to try and duck the blows. The sound of my own skull cracking rang in my ears and I was pretty sure that it was all over with right then, although I do remember hitting the floor, too. I felt just like a limp rag doll as I collapsed onto the hard linoleum. But that was the last thing I remembered until the next day when I woke up in the hospital with my grandma at my side, holding my hand gently in hers.

  “It was your little friend Joey Divers who found you,” she explained as she stroked my hand. “Poor boy, he was fairly shook up, but somehow managed to place a call to the police.”

  “Joey called the police?” I watched her face curiously, still seeing the edges blurred with a double image, a result of the concussion.

  She nodded. “Joey told me you two had planned to meet.”

  I groaned. “The fair. We were going to make some more money for the fair. But Daddy took it—” I felt hot tears streaking down my face.

  “Hush, child,” soothed Grandma. “The fair’s the least of your worries right now.”

  Then in a quiet but firm voice she told me I’d never have to go back to live with my daddy again. “I don’t have much to give you, child, but at least you’ll be safe.”

  I remember drifting off to sleep again after that, all the while clinging to Grandma’s promise like it was my only lifeline. I suppose, at the time, it was.

  And Grandma almost managed to keep her promise. For the next few years, I enjoyed something of a normal life. Well, as normal as can be for someone whose dad was locked up for nearly killing his only daughter. But living with Grandma seemed a fitting reward for the pain and suffering I had endured over the years, and while she didn’t baby and pamper me too much, she did make sure I got decent food to eat, had presentable, if not stylish, clothes on my back, and a clean place to sleep.

  And she loved me. Although she was never given over to emotional displays of affection, I felt certain she loved me. I know I loved her. And she brought a sense of real security into my shaky little world. Even if I did sleep on a cot in the corner of her tiny living room (in the little apartment above the store) it was still my space—my corner—and no one was allowed to disturb a thing there. I kept the old photo of my mama taped to the wall, right where I could see it every night before I went to sleep with the sound of The Tonight Show playing quietly on Grandma’s television. I even used to pretend Johnny Carson was my real daddy as I felt myself slipping off into a dream world that was most often better than real life. Later on I would add a picture of the Beatles to my wall space next to my cot. And from time to time I’d tape up a picture that I’d drawn myself—usually it was a horse or a little house in the trees with smoke coming out of the chimney and a rainbow overhead. But that’s where I drew the line in decorating. I wasn’t about to slather what little space I had with lots of dumb pictures. For the most part, Mama and the Beatles were plenty for me.

  My tenth birthday came not too long after I’d moved in with my Grandma, and to my surprise, Joey’s mom dropped him by to help me celebrate. At first I thought maybe Grandma had invited him over, but as it turned out Joey had remembered my birthday all on his own.

  “The fair wasn’t all that great this year,” he told me as he casually handed me a small, neatly wrapped box (he’d used the Sunday comics as gift wrap). “You didn’t really miss much.”

  I figured he was just trying to be nice since I’d been laid up with my broken arm and a couple cracked ribs during fair time. “What’s this?” I asked, giving the box a small shake.

  “It’s for your birthday, silly.” He rolled his eyes and made a goofy face.

  I carefully unwrapped the box to discover a small transistor radio inside. “Wow, Joey, this is really cool.”

  “See that?” He pointed to a funny-looking wire wrapped in plastic. “You put that plug into your ear and you can listen to music without bugging your grandma.”

  “Thanks so much, Joey. This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten!”

  Then he looked down at his feet, and I wondered if my gushy appreciation had embarrassed him, or maybe he was just feeling uncomfortable about my unfortunate situation. And then I wondered if perhaps he hadn’t bought what seemed an expensive and slightly extravagant gift to me because he felt sorry for me. And as much as I wanted and needed his friendship, I couldn’t bear to think it was based on pity.

  “Hey, can I sign your cast?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sure.”

  Then he pulled a blue felt-tip pen out of his pocket. “I came prepared.”

  I laughed and stuck out my arm and watched as he took his time to artfully pen his name in big balloon letters: The Amazingly Awesome Joey Divers!

  For the remainder of the summer, Joey came to visit me when he could, which wasn’t often because he had to ask his mama to give him a ride. I suspected she’d been secretly relieved that my nasty incident with my daddy had landed me on the other side of town where my less-than-wholesome influence might be a little more removed from her precious son, but I did appreciate her bringing him by sometimes, and I always enjoyed his visits.

  “I’ve got this idea for how I can adapt a bicycle,” he told me one day as summer was coming to an end. Then he pulled a folded paper from his shirt pocket. It turned out to be a complete mechanical drawing of his plans.

  “Joey, that’s great.”

  “Yeah, I figure I can get around town better on this, and I won’t always have to ask my mom to drive me around.”

  I hoped that meant he could come over and visit more often.

  “Of course my mom’s not too crazy about this idea, but I think I can talk my dad into it.” He then explained how the bike would work technically, with one pedal removed and a hand-braking device and all sorts of other things. And I think that’s when I first began to realize Joey’s mental superiority, and I wondered if he might not actually be a genius like Mr. Albert Einstein.

  If not for Joey’s visits and my transistor radio, it would’ve been a bleak summer. Like Joey had said, I could insert that little earplug right into my ear and listen to my favorite popular station without disturbing Grandma with “all that noise they call music” as she liked to say. But whenever I was alone I’d crank that little radio up as loud as it would go. Still I could barely make out the words of some of the songs with all the static and crackling that was on the air in those days. As a result, I mixed up a lot of the lyrics, and I actually thought the Beatles were singing “Lucy in disguise with diamonds…” Of course it made perfect sense to me, and I still like the image it brings. I see this bag lady who’s all dressed up and dripping in diamonds, and I think, What a great disguise! And maybe my misunderstanding of those lyrics actually brought out some hidden creativity in me, because I’d just sing right along with the radio, making up my own version of the words when I couldn’t quite make them out.

>   The downside of listening to the radio so much was coming up with funds to replace those expensive little transistor batteries. Finally I finagled a deal with Grandma to mind the store for her in trade for batteries. I knew Grandma wanted to do more for me, but she was barely getting by just then with her little store barely holding its own. But at least we had peace and quiet and good food to eat, and that’s a lot more than I can say for living with my daddy.

  While I tried real hard not to think about him too much, he came to mind fairly often, and my thoughts about him were somewhat confusing. Sometimes I even felt guilty, as if it were my fault that he’d beaten on me and gotten himself locked up. I thought that if I’d maybe handled things differently he’d still be a free man. But then in the next moment, I’d have to admit that I felt much safer knowing he was behind bars. He sent me a number of letters, all eloquently written and amazingly apologetic, and each time he begged me to write back to him and tell him that I’d forgiven him. Naturally since he was locked up he was forced to remain clean and sober (I knew they weren’t supposed to drink liquor in there) but he promised over and over that he would never go back to the drink. I just wasn’t sure what to believe, and as a result, I never did answer his letters. Over a period of time, he ceased to write to me altogether. Which I suppose was for the best.

  By the time I hit fifth grade, I’d pretty much given up on ever being the kind of girl that went off to slumber parties or giggled with her friends at recess or had money in her pocket to go buy soft-swirl cones at the Dairy Maid after school. My grandma took me shopping for clothes at places like the Goodwill Store, and I would try real hard not to pick out pieces of clothing that I’d previously seen on my classmates at school (since I knew from experience what happens when someone like Sally Roberts recognizes you wearing an old green-and-red-plaid skirt that used to belong to her). And yet finding an item of clothing that no one would recognize seemed near to impossible in a town as small as ours. One time, I literally begged Grandma to drive me all the way to Lambert to do my shopping there, but she thought that would be a waste of both time and gasoline when we had a perfectly good thrift store right here in town. I never had the heart to tell her exactly why I wanted to make the trip. But as a result of wearing those pieces of cast-off clothing, often recognized by my classmates, I made giant strides in the continuation of my tough act during those wonderful preadolescent years when girls can be so snide and cruel.

  I don’t mean to make it sound as if Brookdale was such an awful town to grow up in, all full of miserable people and sadness and the like, because that really wasn’t the case. Sure, it’s true that my daddy seemed to attract trouble the way a cookout attracts yellow jackets, but there were many fine and upstanding folks in our town—or at least I thought so when I was too young to know any better. There was something good about being a kid in the sixties—something simple and laid-back, something you just don’t see nowadays.

  The truth is, I don’t think our sleepy little southern town was all that much different from the rest of the little towns spattered across the country, especially at that time. We had a number of small business and retail outfits on Main Street, several eateries that pretty much tasted all the same (no one in our town had even heard of fine cuisine or “ethnic” style foods back then). We had four grade schools, two junior highs, and one high school that could draw half the town to a football game on a Friday night. We had the right side of the tracks and then, of course, the other side (where I usually lived). And I think for the most part, people in Brookdale were having a pretty good time (or so it seemed to me since I was always on the outside looking in). Curiously enough, we didn’t have much trouble with the civil rights movement since the “town fathers” had always seen to it that very few blacks were able to comfortably locate into our town. (Fortunately that all changed during the seventies—after some sharp ACLU lawyers made some interesting discoveries—and today I’m proud to say that Brookdale boasts a much more mixed and integrated population.) But back when I was a kid, the ‘Fine citizens” of our “fair” town thought they had the world by the tail, and for the most part, I think they considered themselves pretty well off, or maybe it was simply a form of blissful ignorance.

  The sixties were like that for a lot of folks, living in their modern ranch houses, eating their TV dinners, and driving their gas-hog cars. There seemed to be a general oblivion to the suffering that happened to other people. And in some ways that oblivion might’ve sustained me too, as if I were playing right along with them, pretending that my life was no different from theirs. But in the same way I knew I was wearing dirty underwear beneath a neatly pressed dress, I knew that my life was not like theirs.

  Even as a kid I knew a hardened exterior was my best protection against the hateful remarks that people like Sally Roberts and her kind so easily tossed my way. And during these difficult times, it brought me great comfort to know I could always count on Joey Divers to listen to my woeful tales and show some honest sympathy. Plus he always had something witty and clever to say about those ignorant people who mistreated others, which made us both feel better. And together we would vow that one day we would make them all sorry that they’d ever treated us in such a fashion, for we still believed that the day would come when we’d both be rich and famous.

  I’d gotten so attached to my little radio that I took it with me almost everywhere. And I knew (or sort of knew) all the words to the top twenty pop songs. And I thought I had a fairly good voice too, and naturally Joey agreed with me, and even put up with me singing “Up, Up and Away” loudly and somewhat obnoxiously in public.

  That’s when he first started calling me Cass (like Mama Cass from the Mamas and the Papas). I hadn’t yet seen a photo of Cass Elliot and felt honored and slightly elated to share the name of the woman with the sweetest, most honey-coated voice this side of heaven. Later on, I saw her photo on a record album and felt slightly dismayed, but by then my loyalty to Mama Cass had been set like cement on a hot day, and I wouldn’t go back on her just because she had something of a weight problem. I knew that would make me no better than Sally Roberts, and if there was one thing I was determined not to ever become like, it was her! (I still remember the day Mama Cass died—I felt personally aggrieved to learn of her loss. They played her hits on the radio for a full week, and I sang along faithfully. I still get a little misty-eyed when I hear her sing “Dream a Little Dream.”)

  Somehow Joey managed to get his daddy to buy him that bicycle, and as planned, he worked it over so that he could pedal with his right foot while his left leg hung limply at his side and brake with his hands. He even had a special saddlebag to hold his crutches. Now he was able to ride over and visit me as well as to work at Grandma’s store. Even when things got so bad that she couldn’t afford to pay him, he still came.

  “It’s okay,” he told her one day after she explained her financial dilemma. “I just like being here. And besides, this will look really good listed on my resume as my work experience.”

  “What’s a resume?” I asked, pausing from restocking the candy section.

  “It’s something you write up on a piece of paper, for when you’re ready to look for a real job.”

  “What kind of job would you want to get?”

  “I don’t know. But I plan on getting a work permit as soon as I turn fifteen.”

  Then I remembered that Joey was a couple years older than me, and as strange as it seemed, for him fifteen wasn’t all that far off!

  Grandma had always trusted Joey in her store, perhaps even more than she trusted me. Not that she thought I would steal from her, but Joey was so completely trustworthy and dependable, and so smart he knew how to work the cash register when he was only twelve. So by sixth grade, it got to be a regular thing for Joey and me to have the run of the store on afternoons and weekends. It wasn’t terribly busy, because by then most people were shopping at the big supermarkets (another one had come to town) but we felt grown-up and proud to be runn
ing the store on our own just the same.

  Of course the only time customers came into our store was when they were in too big of a hurry to drive over to the larger ones, and usually they’d only purchase an item or two and then get cranky if we didn’t give them their change fast enough to suit them. And the whole while, I always figured they were looking down on us or feeling sorry for us. I’m sure they wondered how we managed to stay in business at all. But just the same, I think Grandma really appreciated our help, and I suppose that she actually needed us around more than we knew, due to the fact that her health was failing. Looking back now I’m sure she knew her “little tired spells” were a warning of some sort, and I think even then she suspected she wouldn’t be around for all that long.

  I can’t imagine what life would’ve been like without Joey to keep me company during those years. I began to appreciate more than ever how smart he was, and getting smarter every day. He was just like a sponge when it came to soaking up information and knowledge and important facts. He subscribed to all kinds of science and mechanical magazines, and sometimes I thought Joey Divers knew absolutely everything there was to know about everything.

  Sometimes he even got a little cocky and silly and acted like he did, but not very often. It just didn’t seem to be in his nature to be full of himself like that. In fact, I think he actually went out of his way sometimes not to make me feel dumb. And it’s not that I was stupid, because I got pretty decent grades in school (now that I was getting regular food and a good night’s sleep) and I was in the top classes for reading and math, but somehow I just never felt quite as brilliant as I believed Joey to be.

  To be honest, I think I envied his intelligence a little. Then I’d tell myself it was only fair that since Joey hadn’t been blessed with a healthy body, he should at least be blessed with an extra-smart brain. But I think there were times when I would’ve gladly traded my healthy body for his smarts—and maybe he would’ve agreed to the trade, for it seemed that more than anything else, Joey still wanted a pair of good, strong legs. I never quite understood why his handicap bothered him so much, because in my eyes Joey could do anything he put his mind to, and he put his mind to a lot!