Twilight Girl. Della Martin

one was waiting beside the beat-up Plymouth. No one waited for the gangling odd-ball with the hazel eyes, as no one had ever waited. Only the questions waited, as if in some seldom-dusted cobwebbed corner of her consciousness. And who would answer the questions? Who now? There were answers that some sphynx-like mother creature might know. Yet someone who, unmotherlike, would not advise, saying only, “This is why you ran to the bathroom and were sick when Bud Schaeffer touched your breast and kissed you; this is why you ache inside, running to the refuge of the Island, the secret you would have shared with the woman in English III; and this is why you trembled in tears and a violent gladness the afternoon her hand touched yours and she smiled—smiling, you were certain, for no one else.”

      Lon pulled open the car door. Far down the street the bawling voices receded:

      And it’s guzzle, guzzle, guzzle,

      As it trickles down your muzzle,

       And you hear them shout, “More beer!”

       MORE BEER!

      Lon turned the ignition key unsteadily, rammed an angry thumb against the starter button. Mother-creature, lover-creature, someone, someone! There had been someone, yet now no one was near. Now there was only the raging heat, the stinging pain of humiliation. That, and the thin minor wail, keen-edged. Transparent, quavering like her mother’s edgy voice, yet dimly reminiscent, too, of space movies; the weird humming tone that sets the scene for some remote planet, horribly beautiful, breathlessly strange. No one near, and the only other occupants of the old tan car were familiar traveling companions—grown monstrously huge on this eighteenth day in June—confusion, hunger, and the shameful anger born of their union.

      Lon parked the Plymouth, stepped out of it, and walked into the house.

      It might be that the elementary school PTA was hosting a farewell tea for the teachers. Or maybe, even, the Brotherhood Week Committee was meeting at the church. Maybe, even, the Civic Betterment unit of the Women’s Club was in session. Whatever the reason, Lon rejoiced. Her mother was not at home!

      Wild, way out, crazy. No comments about the jeans Lon pulled on being belted too low. No shaking pronouncements about what people thought of a girl who tugged a red cotton T-shirt over her boyish chest and let it go at that. No queries about why Lon whacked a clod of half-frozen hamburger from a package in the refrigerator.

      She took the ground meat to the open garage, laying it on the cement in a square of sunlight. Waiting for it to defrost, she knocked the neck off a 7-Up bottle with a hammer. Enjoying the process, she demolished the painted green bottle completely, pushing a few of the smaller pieces into an old leather glove. Then, breathing the short breaths of perverse excitement, the quick snatches of air that denote elation, she pounded the glove viciously with the hammer. When the glass was reduced to rough powder, she stuffed the hamburger inside the glove. She pounded meat and glass together under the leather binding. When the ingredients were one, she scooped the lethal mixture into a brown manila envelope, tossed the glove carelessly into a trash barrel, and returned, trembling with anticipated revenge, to the car.

      It was not a long drive to her destination. She parked inconspicuously, sneaked even more inconspicuously to a point of vantage.

      Watching Miss Chamberlin’s dog race the length of the redwood fence, Lon wondered if it were true. That business Mr. Beckwith had told her about Dalmatians. “Most other breeds can’t stand them. Other dogs just have it in ‘em to hate Dalmatians,” Saying it as though owning a stinking pet shop made him an authority. “It’s the color of their eyes,” he had explained sagely. And had added in an awesome voice, as though speaking the Great Hidden Wisdom, “And the spots!”

      It was, Lon decided, a crock of the well-known article, hating herself immediately for borrowing her father’s army phrase.

      “Here, boy!” she called.

      The dog, falling all over his paws, hurling his black-flecked body in a convulsion of joy at being noticed, ran to the corner of the fence.

      I’ll bet she’s crazy about this dog. Maybe she hasn’t got a friend in the world except this dog….

      Forepaws on the inside wall of the board fence, the dog stretched his head upward for human contact. Lon patted the sleek, sun-warm head. Her other hand dangled the brown envelope against her knee.

       It’ll crack her up to lose this beautiful dog. She won’t have anybody …

      “Here, boy. Got something for you.”

      The Dalmatian ducked his head, twisting it then into position to gnaw cautiously at her hand.

      “You’re sure you like dogs?” Mr. Beckwith had asked before hiring her. “No use taking on somebody that don’t like dogs.”

      “I love ‘em,” Lon had said.

      “What kind you got?”

      “Oh. Well, I don’t actually have one.”

      “That’s a fine kettle of fish.” Peering at her suspiciously.

      “No, y’see, my mother’s president of the Garden Club and we have all these begonias and junk around the yard. That’s the only reason.”

      “Begonias!” He had spat the word across the counter. But hired her anyway. And taught her enough about dogs so that now she shuddered, knowing what would come—the twitching of flesh and agonized whine, the stomach walls grinding red and merciless in the cutting green dust, the eyes pleading silently …

      Lon muzzled the dog’s face and roughed it back and forth. “Quit slobbering over me, stupid.” His tail whipped the air. “Big overgrown pup!” The Dalmatian shifted paws, scrambling against the fence. “Think you’re a lap dog, I’ll bet. Hey, you lonesome, pooch? All by yourself all day long? How come other dogs don’t like you?” Pushing his face and grinning at the fake growls. “You different? Is that why? That why the other dogs don’t like you?”

      She grasped his paws firmly in one hand, then shoved him away from the fence and turned before he could resume the game.

      A minute later she was back in the Plymouth.

      Circling the neighboring blocks, as she had done so often before in the hope of catching a glimpse of Miss Chamberlin, Lon pondered the problem of what to do with the brown, grease-stained envelope. Throw it out the window and some other dog might get it.

      At the corner of San Leandro Drive and Los Altos, she stopped the car. Climbing out, looking up and down the deodar-lined street, she dropped her package into the corner mailbox. When she heard the envelope hit the metal floor with a hollow thud, she leaped back into the Plymouth and drove home.

      Lon said no more than was necessary during dinner, having learned that the shrill nasal whine of her mother’s voice would eventually wither from lack of response.

      Mrs. Harris held a trembling fork in her hand, recounting the day’s events. “I told the girls, not one more committee! I’m swamped now, I told them. Supervising the Sunday School is a full-time job and don’t you think I’m not going to hold my ground.”

      “And stick to your guns,” Lon’s father placated. “They expect too much of you.”

      Long ago, Lon had concluded that Edwin Harris had been born for no ostensible purpose except to be agreeable. She had inherited her slim, angular body from him, but had been spared the myopic eyes that blinked at accounting sheets through thick horn-rimmed glasses by day and were the scourge of the Little League in the evenings. It was rare in the years since Eddie Junior had been born that she could bear to look at her father.

      “When they find a good organizer, they work her to death,” Mrs. Harris said. “I told them that right to their faces.”

      “Good for you,” encouraged the man behind the glasses.

      “Verna had the gall to tell me I’ll have more time with the kids out of school. Came right