“My dad,” Mike said, “he told me him and his pals came out here once.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“You know, when they were kids, teenagers, whatever. I asked him if he saw anything, and he wouldn’t answer me.”
“No shit?” asked Dorie.
“No shit,” Mike said. “And I kept asking him and asking him and finally he said, ‘If I tell you, you won’t sleep for a week.’”
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “So I asked him, you know, to tell me what he saw.”
“So?” Dorie asked.
“So, he told me. He said he and his buddies were sitting around, having drinks and everything, and then this man—this very tall man in a tall black hat, like Lincoln, you know—came out of nowhere, just like walked toward them, and my dad took off running.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Man, that’s fucking freaky.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “I know. Because you know my dad, he doesn’t bullshit. I mean, he’s not a pussy, you know.”
“Shit,” I said. “That’s intense.”
We all looked around, kind of holding our breath and listening.
“I don’t want to die,” Erin McDougal whispered, and then out of nowhere started crying, I mean really crying. It kind of freaked me out. I guess Erin’s dad had emphysema and was like bedridden, you know, at home dying, and all the talk about ghosts and death and everything had upset her, you know. But having a girl start crying in a graveyard, well, that’s weird fucking business. Mike hugged her and she folded into his lap and said, “I’m sorry, guys, I’m sorry. It’s just my dad,” and right away, I started thinking about my dad and, well, my mom, who I didn’t think about a lot because, well, she was a lot harder to get along with, I guess, and what the hell would I do if one of them was dying or worse, died? And for a second, I thought about Gretchen, and her mom and her mom’s funeral and, well, all of it and, I dunno, I felt more scared than if I had seen a ghost.
Dorie was pulling on my hand and we were running all of a sudden, just Dorie and me, and I asked, “Do you know where you’re going, Dorie?” and she just said, “Shhhhh,” and I said, “Dorie, seriously,” and she just said, “Shhhhhhh” again, and it was just the two of us running in the dark because Mike had the flashlight and was still sitting in the cemetery, and we were running through the woods, just the two of us, and I didn’t want to look behind me, I just wanted to keep running, holding Dorie’s hand.
We got back to the car somehow and I was out of breath and Dorie grabbed me and started kissing me like crazy and I asked, “What? What was it?” and she started unbuttoning my pants and we hurried into the backseat of Erin McDougal’s used Camry and it was one of the best nights of my entire life. Really.
“The Boston Strangler Timeline”—which I dug out of the book Dorie gave me because Mike was either too depressed or too busy making kissy-faces with Erin McDougal so the history final project was all on me—didn’t give me much to think about, really:
Jan. 4, 1964—Miss Mary Sullivan, aged nineteen, the last of the eleven female victims, is found dead, presumed murdered in her apartment in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston.
March 4, 1965—Albert DeSalvo, factory worker, who is serving time for armed robbery and various sex offenses, confesses to the Boston Strangler’s eleven murders and two others. However, he is never once charged for any of the murders.
Nov. 25, 1973—DeSalvo is killed in prison by another inmate.
But then I dug this up:
As a boy, Albert DeSalvo bragged about being able to ejaculate five or six times a day. As an adult, his sexually frigid wife was a complete mismatch for his perpetual sexual aggressiveness. The Boston Strangler killed between the years of 1962 and 1964. The female victims were usually found dead in their own apartments, usually sexually assaulted, and often times bound with articles of their own clothing. What characterized the Boston Strangler’s own mode of murder was that he left the naked bodies very carefully and sometimes provocatively posed with the tools of strangulation tied in decorative bows around the victims’ necks.
How did that change America? I dunno. I was thinking maybe people having to, like, confront their sexual desires and, like, people being afraid, feeling unsafe, you know, that there were like these men, these people who were like animals with these raging sex drives, you know, because, to be honest, that’s exactly how I felt sometimes. I felt fucking crazy like that, thinking about sex all the time and masturbating like crazy. I mean, sometimes it kind of scared me, really, like I was sick in the head or something, and like I was afraid maybe people could see what I was fantasizing about, see that I did not exactly fit in, because of all the filthy things I was thinking. OK, I also found this weirdo information out about serial killers, in general, from Dorie’s other book:
Serial killers are usually white, heterosexual males, usually in their twenties and thirties, who are somehow sexually dysfunctional and have low self-esteem.
That sounded exactly like Mike or me. Also, I got this:
At a young age, serial killers may enjoy hurting and torturing animals, setting fires, and may be chronic bed-wetters. As young adults, many serial killers may have some type of brain damage and be addicted to alcohol and/or drugs. There is also a strong sense of alienation, of a lack of an immediate community.
Which again could be Mike, me, or even Dorie, I dunno. I think that was the point of it all. That it was like these serial killers didn’t feel like they fit in—and maybe they didn’t—and so they felt shameful about it, which made it all worse and, like, because these serial killers did not belong and were out killing people and everything, it probably made America more distrustful, you know, like people were more alienated then and everything. Like belonging, feeling a part of something, or like being with someone who really knew you, was like a very important thing, I guess, and maybe that’s how it changed America—making everyone kind of distrustful or worried, which then just probably made people feel less connected and then the problem probably just kept getting worse until it was like our neighborhood where no one said anything to anybody. Maybe it was weird to think about those things, like serial killers and being alone and everything, I dunno. Maybe it was better not to know things like that. Maybe it was better to just go on believing everything was OK, even when really bad things were just about to happen.
By mistake, I had taken Dorie’s Iron Maiden shirt. Now when I think back on it, that’s what did it. I freaked her out because I accidentally took her shirt and maybe it made her think we were getting serious, I dunno. We were in her room after school fooling around, and I was kissing each mole on her back, one after the other, kind of naming them, when her mom came home. We heard her mom jingle her keys and unlock the door and kind of shove it open. Then somehow she must have spilled her groceries, the sounds of cans and jars hitting the tile floor, as she muttered, “Damn, damn, damn.”
I was out of that bed in like a second flat. I had my pants on, zipped, belted, my feet in my shoes, my socks stuffed in my pockets, but I couldn’t find my white T-shirt. Dorie’s mom coughed and swore again, dropping a few jars of something down the steps.
“My shirt,” I said.
“Here,” Dorie whispered, handing me her T-shirt, the gray Iron Maiden
Somewhere in Time
one, rolling her eyes at me. I pulled it over my head as Dorie opened the side window, slid open the screen, and gave me a quick shove through.
Two nights later, we were down in Mike’s basement watching a rerun of
CHiPs,
Mike and me, and Dorie came down, looking sad, her eyes small and squinty. She took a seat beside me and sighed, poked me in the side, and said, “We got to talk.”
“OK,” I said, poking her back. “Talk.”
“No, me and you.”
“OK,” I said. I grabbed my nylon jacket and followed her on up. It was cooler, even though it was like the middle of April, and kind of wet and rainy, still getting dark out.
“So,” I said.
“So. I need my T-shirt back.”
“What?” I asked. “OK, why?”
“Because you can’t have it,” she said.
“OK,” I said, defensive now.
Dorie looked down, which, as tall as she was, happened to be just about eye-level with me. Then she started crying.
“Oh god,” she said.
“Oh god, what?” I asked.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” and like that she was really fucking crying. I went to take one of her hands, but she folded them under her arms, shaking her head. “Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god, I’m sorry.”
“What for? You’re freaking me out, Dorie.”
“Oh god. OK. I have a boyfriend. I mean, I had one and I’m supposed to be getting back together with him. Oh god, I’m sorry.”
“What? Who? Who the fuck is he?”
“Ken. His name is Ken.”
“The dude with the car? From your work?”
“He doesn’t work there anymore. He’s going to trade school.”
“Holy shit! Holy shit, I cannot believe this is actually fucking happening,” I said, holding my hands over my face.
“I’m sorry, Brian. I am. I wanted to, I wanted to tell you before.”
“Like when? When we were doing it?”
Dorie looked down, blushing, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He, he doesn’t know about anything.”
“Why the fuck are you still going out with him then?” I asked.
“I dunno,” she said. Then she said the weirdest thing I ever heard a girl say: “He said he’s going to marry me.” And she just ran off, just like that. It was just that dumb and quick and random, exactly fucking like that.
Later, Mike and I were in the basement getting stoned and then Erin McDougal came over and when I saw them kiss, it actually made me a little sick. We were all sitting on the floor and I was trying to do the Ouija Board myself, asking it, “Does Dorie still like me?” and, “Will Dorie and I get back together?” but the fucking pointer kept sliding right over to “no,” every fucking time.
About two days later Mike cut all his hair off, because Erin McDougal’s dad died and we all had to go to the funeral. No one could believe he cut it all off, maybe not even Mike. When I saw him in school the day after he did it I could not stop myself from fucking laughing. I mean, I knew why he had done it, but when I saw the way he looked—his dark red hair no longer a straight wave running down to the top of his back, his hair now short and combed, parted down the middle like some prep from some suburban subdivision with a peaceful name like Park Forest or Orchard Hill or Spring Lane, some fucking pretty-boy with initials that were both the same, like John Justice or Gary Grant, when I saw the tops of his ears, which no one had seen in fucking years—I could not choke down my laugh. Without the long hair, he looked just like the rest of them. And the rest of them could suck it.
I mean, Mike cut his hair for a good reason. Like I said, he had been seeing Erin McDougal and they were doing it pretty regularly, you know, “Mike and Erin, So Sexy 1991.” I mean, they were like serious. It happened overnight, you know? One night Mike and I were down his basement talking about who you’d screw, Wonder Woman or Lita Ford, and why, and then the next night, like magic, it seemed we had both found girls who were exactly as lonely as us. I mean, I had found somebody, but, well, Dorie had dumped me and now she had her real ex/current boyfriend, some dude named Ken who had a hot car and a job and everything, so that was it for me, I guess. But Mike and Erin McDougal were still very serious—“going out” or whatever you call it. I guess she was known as the girl with invisible parents. You know, because her mom worked nights and her dad was bedridden. Like I said, her dad had emphysema and was hooked up to all kinds of oxygen tanks and heart monitors and in an emergency the poor man could have not made it down the fucking stairs.
So Mike cut his hair because Erin’s father had died, which was not a surprise to anyone, I guess. I had only seen the man once and then only for an instant, when Mike and I went over to Erin’s house a few weeks before and I looked up the front staircase and saw a grayish man in a white robe crossing, with a walker and an IV on a wheeled trolley, into the bathroom, from where his bedroom must have been. He did not see me and I always had the feeling it was like seeing a very gentle kind of animal going about its work, like watching a very delicate bird building a nest, you know, or like preening its wings. Maybe looking up the staircase at him gave me the feeling that he was a citizen of some other place, you know, somewhere else; he was part of something older, something delicate, something beyond anything I had ever known, but which I was just beginning to grasp. Dorie had broken my heart, and now I was feeling and thinking things from sad, strange new angles.
The four of us—Mike, Larry with the superbad acne, me, and a kid named Eddie, who did not know Erin or her dad but who insisted that we help spring him from school—all got excused absences to go to the funeral, which meant we were done after third period. The funny thing was, this kid Eddie went with us not so much because he wanted to, but because at the last minute he realized that since he did not have to go back to school, he didn’t have anything else to do.
The funeral service was at St. Cajetan’s church with a priest and everything. All of Erin’s big Irish family were there, and it was all very quick, very stilted, and very uncomfortable—for us anyway. At the end, as the bereaved began to leave and the pallbearers began to roll the coffin back toward the front doors of the church, Erin let out a cry. She was standing somewhere up front and Mike looked at me and he was terrified. None of us knew what to do. I gave Mike a tug and we made our way toward the front and Dorie—my Dorie—was already there, stroking Erin’s hair and saying, “You’ll get through this, you’ll get through this,” and I wondered,
How does she know?
Dorie was just a kid still, like the rest of us, tall and foul-mouthed or not. But somehow when you heard her say it and saw the way her brown eyes looked, her hand moving along Erin’s soft blond hair, you knew she was right.
You’ll get through this. You’ll get through this.