Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels) Page 5

  The funny thing is, I didn’t fully realize this at the time. It’s only in retrospect that I have truly begun to understand such things. To be honest, at the time I mostly saw myself as a social reject who wore secondhand clothes and had a nose that was overly large for her face (of course by then I had started to idolize the likes of Cher, Joan Baez, and rocker Janis Joplin—for whom I also grieved deeply a couple years later when she overdosed on drugs). Suffice it to say that, at the time, in 1968, a lot of these things went right over my head.

  When Pete’s friend Kurt Laurence asked me out I flippantly agreed, but at the same time I felt completely terrified. Why, I was only fourteen. I knew that good girls didn’t date at that tender age (especially not boys who were going to be seniors in high school!). But I had that tough exterior so polished by then that I’m sure Kurt never suspected what was truly going on inside me. In fact, I doubt he even knew that I was only fourteen.

  As I recall, we went to a drive-in movie, although I can’t remember what was playing. My memory is somewhat blurred due to the fact that Kurt smoked a joint, or maybe two, in his ’64 Ford Mustang. He offered me a drag, but for some reason I still can’t quite put my finger on, I declined. Nonetheless I believe his secondhand smoke most assuredly affected me, at least somewhat. Unfortunately for Kurt, it didn’t affect me enough to get him what he wanted. And when he dropped me off at home (we were living in a little rental house on Oak Street by then) he seemed a little put out. Needless to say, Kurt didn’t ask me out again. But that certainly didn’t mean that he told any of his buddies that our date was a failure. No, of course not. What seventeen-year-old boy would admit such a thing?

  My daddy wasn’t overly thrilled that I had gone out with a high-school boy, and it was about this time that I began to fear my guilt trips were wearing a little thin on him. So in an effort to preserve what was actually turning into a somewhat tolerable lifestyle, I decided to lighten up on him a bit and, in essence, clean up my act.

  As it turned out my behavior (whether good or bad) had little effect on his, because he eventually fell off of the wagon anyway. His first plunge occurred late that fall. I was in ninth grade and acting somewhat mature and responsible at the time. But as a result of his drinking, I soon returned to my old ways of creeping around, sneaking in late after he’d passed out on the couch, and trying to remain invisible to avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness. But I knew I was living on borrowed time. I needed a better survival solution, or at least a friend I could turn to in a time of need.

  By then Joey Divers was little more than a far-off childhood memory for me, and besides he was already in high school—another world, it seemed. I longed to be in high school too. I felt I was too mature for the shallow superficiality of junior high, where girls like Sally Roberts and Cindy Shelton lived for “game days” when they got to wear their blue-and-yellow cheerleading uniforms and bounce down the halls like celebrities who owned the school (which, in most ways, they did).

  I felt there must be something more to life than popularity and cliques, and certainly I wanted something more. Or so I tried to make myself believe. I suppose in all honesty this might’ve simply been my way of protecting my constantly wounded ego. Because if the truth had been known (and believe me, I would rather have been tortured and died a thousand deaths than to admit this back then) I secretly longed to be one of them. And I knew I could’ve pulled it off, too, if only they’d have given me the chance—which would never have happened in a billion years.

  Sometimes, when I was alone and safe from prying eyes, I would imagine myself actually dressed like them, talking like them, going home to a ranch-style house like the ones they lived in, with a patio and barbecue in the backyard, and where two parents lived—and maybe they even fought from time to time (I mean I wasn’t completely delusional) but in my fantasy my parents would always make up and then take us all out for ice cream afterwards. Sometimes I’d get really carried away with my fantasy and pick out furniture for the living room, the kind of clothes my make-believe mama would wear, and even my bedroom, which was sometimes pink with a canopy bed but more often pale blue with an eyelet bedspread and matching curtains. But like I said I would’ve rather had my eyes plucked out than to admit this to anyone.

  It was just after Halloween when my daddy fell off the wagon.

  And surprisingly, it didn’t seem all that bad—at least not at first. The next day he kind of apologized, then told me that it was no big deal. “I can control myself with alcohol,” he explained from where he sat on the sofa, bent over, holding his throbbing head between his still trembling hands. “It’s not like it used to be, Cassandra, I promise you. I’m in control now and I’ll only drink socially.”

  I think I almost believed him, and I suppose in some ways this made me feel less guilty for the way I’d been manipulating him so much. Still, I worried what would happen if he went back to his old ways and drunken rages. Because you just never can tell with a drunk. It’s best to just stay on your guard.

  So I was back to tiptoeing around so as not to upset him in any way, and I got and installed a lock on my bedroom door. Still, I never felt completely safe in my house.

  I even briefly considered the possibility of going back to Aunt Myrtle and begging her to take me in, although I suspected that she was involved with “some man” just then, since I’d noticed a large blue Buick parked out behind her house where not too many could see it, and on something of a regular basis, too. Naturally, I was well aware of her “philandering ways,” as my grandma used to say to Aunt Myrtle when she thought I was well out of earshot. (I had to look up the word but discovered it had to do with illicit love affairs.) Now why anyone would want an illicit or any other sort of love affair with my old Aunt Myrtle was one of the great mysteries of life, but having seen a number of cars parked in the back of her house over the years, I suspected my grandma had her pegged just about right.

  So, anyway, it didn’t seem that Aunt Myrtle could offer much of a haven if my daddy suddenly decided to go off the deep end and become violent again. I grew greatly troubled trying to think what I might do if this were to happen, and as a result it became somewhat difficult to concentrate at school, but I tried just the same.

  I’d heard about kids going into foster homes, and in some ways that almost seemed preferable to being beaten, but what if the foster parents were square and conservative and made me start wearing my skirts down to my knees? I’d seen girls like that in school. They walked around clutching their notebooks tightly to their chests with their shoulders slumped over, eyes cast downwards. Why, they looked downright miserable to me. And at this stage of my life I felt fairly certain they had it even worse than me. (Of course time would prove me wrong on this, as well as many other things.)

  The bottom line for me was, at that stage of life, I felt too old and too grown-up to be treated like a child again. I’d seen too much of the seamy side of life. And I was used to my own independence and didn’t particularly want anyone telling me what to do or how to do it well, that was, unless I might possibly find that perfect suburban family (the one from my fantasy) but I was smart enough to know that wasn’t a reality-based dream. Not for me, anyway.

  Finally, I came up with a plan. I decided I should try very hard to make a friend (and I knew I couldn’t be picky) who might be willing to take me in, at least temporarily, should a crisis arise.

  As fate would have it, Brenda Tuttle moved to Brookdale in mid-November. I noticed her right off because of her distinct style of clothing. For starters, her skirts were even shorter than mine. And she wore long, hoop earrings that reached almost to her shoulders. Her lips were painted a pale shade of whitish-blue, and she wore thick, black eyeliner all the way around her eyes (not just on the upper lids, but on the lower ones, too). I’d never seen anyone or anything like her, and quite frankly, I was fascinated. Just the same, I decided to play my cards carefully—I’d been rejected enough times to know how to protect myself. At the end of her
second day, I hung out by the entrance that I’d seen her use the previous day and offered her a Camel.

  “Thank God,” she gasped as she took the cigarette from me. “I was worried sick that no one in this moronic junior high school smoked. What a moronic bunch of Goody Two-shoes!”

  “That pretty much describes it,” I said as I let out a long, slow puff.

  “I’m Brenda,” she said, glancing over her shoulder back toward the school. “You s’pose we should go ‘cross the street? My mom’ll kill me if I get into trouble on my second day here.”

  I nodded. “Sure. I’m Cass.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She smiled. “And I like your name. I’ve been trying to think of a cool nickname for Brenda, but haven’t gotten too far.”

  “How about just Bren?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, maybe so. Maybe with a y, though. Bryn…” She said it slowly. “Yeah, that sounds kindacool.”

  By now we’d reached the other side of the street and were standing in the Baptist church parking lot—where my grandma used to go to church (when she did, which was rarely). I knew there were people inside who might recognize me, but I didn’t really care if they observed me smoking. In fact, I rather liked the idea that it would bother them.

  “Groovy top, Cass,” said Bryn. “You get that here in town?”

  I laughed. “Not hardly. I made it myself from an old tablecloth. You can’t find anything worth wearing in this stupid backwater town.”

  She laughed too. “I figured as much. I still can’t believe my mom made us move here.”

  “Your mom?” I thought this was curious, since it was usually the dads that seemed to run things back in those days—at least in our town.

  She flicked her ashes onto the ground and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, my mom’s a divorcee, and she got this job at the chemical plant that pays her almost as good as a man.”

  By now our cigarettes were both burned down to almost nothing. “What do you like to do after school, Bryn?” I asked, suddenly wondering how it was that one made a friend—especially a girlfriend. I’d never had a real friend other than Joey, and the things we used to do to fill the time seemed pretty juvenile and silly now.

  She frowned. “I don’t know. I just kinda hang out. My mom works graveyard, so she doesn’t like me making any noise while she sleeps during the day.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense. Well, do you want to go get a Coke or something?”

  “Sounds cool.”

  And that was pretty much how my friendship with Bryn began. It didn’t take long to learn that she wasn’t the brightest porch light on the block—at least not when it came to academics. But she was clever in some ways—like boys and smoking and drinking, stuff like that. I guess you’d say she had street smarts.

  I’m sure she was what my grandma would have called a “bad influence,” but I figured I’d already started to go bad all on my own by then. It just turned out that Bryn was already going in the same direction. I remember when I first met her mom. It was about a week after they moved to Brookdale. Mrs. Tuttle was a large, buxom, peroxide blonde, but not the kind men are necessarily attracted to. Oh, maybe some, but she was more that loudmouthed, tough, bossy type—the kind who could easily hold her own in a bar full of men or down at the chemical plant. But I liked her. In some ways I trusted her more than I trusted Bryn. And I think she actually liked me, too. Ironically, I think she even thought I was a good influence on her daughter. And maybe, in some ways, I was. You just never quite know about these things.

  Six

  I remember my grandma saying, “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip,” and since that sounded fairly obvious, I had to ask her what she meant. “Well,” she’d said, “it means that you can’t expect something from somebody when they just plain don’t have it to give to you.” And I suppose that pretty much describes my friend Bryn.

  By Christmas vacation of ninth grade, we’d become fairly good friends, relatively speaking, that is. It bothered me that she wasn’t a bit like my old friend Joey Divers. Of course who was I to be picky? Still, the truth is, I never felt completely close to or even very comfortable with her. I’m sure this was partially due to her habitually deceitful ways and partially because she was so hopelessly boy-crazy. Her obsession over boys made it hard to really know who she was—or what worried me even more was that maybe that was simply who she was, that that was all there was to her. And I suppose it didn’t help that I knew she used me some. But then, of course my original plan had been to use her, too. And since that’s how I’d started this odd friendship in the first place, who was I to point fingers at anyone? Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, as my grandma used to say, which is just another way of saying, “Don’t judge.” She’d explained that to me one day when I told her how Aunt Myrtle had been gossiping and putting down one of her coworkers at the bank.

  Anyway, my goal with Bryn had been to find a place where I might crash in the event my daddy’s drinking habits got out of hand, which they were rapidly starting to do. And it came in real handy that Mrs. Tuttle worked graveyard, too. I always knew I could sneak out of my house whenever I needed, and then just wait until eleven to go knocking on Bryn’s door. I had a system all worked out where I’d bolt my bedroom door, then grab my bag and slip out the window. Naturally I only did this when my daddy came home yelling and cussing and knocking stuff around.

  Bryn always welcomed my unexpected visits, for they afforded her the opportunity to sneak out too, and then she could stay out as late as she liked, knowing that I was there to cover the phone for those unexpected nights (mostly on Fridays or Saturdays) when her mom might call after midnight to check up on her. I usually made up an excuse like she was in the bathroom or already asleep. And Bryn didn’t hesitate to tell her mother she was spending the night at my house when she was really out partying with her latest wild and crazy boyfriend.

  I suppose if the truth were told, it was Bryn who really managed to nail down my reputation as a “fast girl,” even if it was mostly a case of guilt by association. It didn’t matter much to me, though, since I was quickly reaching the place where I no longer cared much about what anyone thought of me. Other than my grades, that is. I still cared about my education.

  Sometimes Bryn would tease me for taking my classes too seriously. Maybe it was Joey’s early influence on me, or just my own personal pride, but I still wanted to get good grades. I suspect the reason it irked her so was because even if she’d really tried I don’t believe she had the brains to cut it. Her memory was appalling. So she put her energies into other things—primarily her appearance, which grew increasingly colorful, and then boys, of course.

  And when it came to boys, Bryn just took for granted that I was doing the same as her. It never even occurred to her that I was still a virgin, and I certainly didn’t make any effort to straighten her out on this account. In fact, I preferred her to think I was sleeping with guys—even if my head count would never appear anywhere nearly equal to hers. Whose was? And sometimes I even concocted wild stories (based loosely on the trashy magazines I’d discovered lying around the Tuttle’s house) just to convince Bryn that I was really “doing it” when she grew suspicious that I might’ve been holding out on her.

  Oddly enough I was still getting asked out by boys—mostly ones in high school and never any that I cared much for, and mostly, I think, because they’d heard overblown rumors about me and Bryn and how we had these “reputations” for being wild and easy and all. I have to laugh now when I think how these things get started. For instance, I can just imagine Kurt Laurence (the first guy I went out with) lying to some other guy about how willing I was. I mean, what was he going to say? That I wasn’t? That he, a senior who played in Pete Jackson’s rock band, couldn’t even get anywhere with Little Miss Nobody? Of course not. Guys love to brag about these kinds of conquests, even if their conquests are only a mere figment of their hormone-driven imagination and ability to spin a le
wd and outlandish tale.

  I would go out with these older guys, and while I’d make out and stuff, I never, ever went all the way—and, oh, did that tick some of these guys off. And occasionally it would give me a real, scare, too. Like the time Rick Stone simply would not take no for an answer. He started getting really rough with me, and I swear if I hadn’t been the daughter of an abusive drunk I might not have been able to defend myself in the manner in which I did. Oh, the things that Daddy never realized he taught me in the ways of self-defense. All the same, it was a long and chilly walk home for me that night. (And as a result I slowed down that whole dating business after that.)

  I must give my daddy some credit, though. He completely avoided alcohol for several months right after the New Year. I think he could’ve almost died after a serious binge on New Year’s Eve. He’d gone to some party with an open bar, and I suspect he’d taken full advantage of all the free booze. Someone brought him home in the early morning hours, just dumping him on the couch like a big, old sack of potatoes. I remember standing there and staring at him, white-faced and limp like he was half dead. And I suppose he almost was. I even considered calling for an ambulance when he didn’t regain consciousness for the better part of the day. But I was afraid if I did, he might get mad. I knew that we didn’t have any health insurance coverage and ambulances were fairly costly, even back then. And so I just hung around and waited. Finally, I saw him move, and I made him a pot of coffee and encouraged him to take a shower.

  It was after that when he really did try to give up drinking. Every single week he tried, always on a Monday. And sometimes he’d actually make it until Saturday before he’d go out drinking again. Fortunately for me, he somehow managed to preserve his job at Masterson Motors, but he wasted so much money on liquor that we just barely managed to pay the rent and keep a little bit of food in the fridge. And most of the time it was pretty slim pickings at my house.