Joyce Oates - Little Bird of Heaven

A dream of Honeystone’s might be edgy as well because you would not clearly see who’d brought you. For invariably in these dreams you are a young child in the company of an adult and you are essentially helpless.

“What can I do you for, sweetie?”

This was Zoe’s snappy way of greeting. Glamorous Zoe Kruller leaning forward onto the high counter, on her elbows, on her toes, smiling that crimson long-lipped hungry smile, baring her gums. Her eyes so exotic in black mascara, silvery-blue eye shadow and eyeliner, you gaped not knowing how to respond.

And there were other fascinating things about Aaron Kruller’s mother: the way she wore the sleeves of her white Honeystone’s smock pushed up past her elbows so that her slender arms were exposed, covered in dark little moles and freckles like tiny ants! Oh there was something ticklish—shivery—about Zoe Kruller! This giggly throaty-voiced woman about the size of a thirteen-year-old girl who made you want to sink your teeth into ice cream, bite down hard so your teeth ached, and your jaws, and you shuddered at the cold.

Honeystone’s help had to wear white smocks over white cord trousers and both smock and trousers had to be kept spotless. Honeystone’s help had to wear hairnets which made them—except for Zoe Kruller—look silly, dowdy. But on Zoe, her thick strawberry-blond hair just barely contained by the gossamer net, the effect was strangely alluring.

Zoe’s pert question—“What can I do you for, sweetie?”—was like a riddle for there was something wrong with it, words were scrambled, you had to think—and blink—and think hard to figure out what was wrong.

Do you for. Not Do for you. This was so funny!

Even Ben, who disliked being teased, especially by people he didn’t know well, laughed when Zoe Kruller leaned on her elbows to peer down at him over the counter asking what could she Do him for and calling him Daddy’s big boy.

Well, if Mommy had brought us, Zoe would call Ben Mommy’s big boy. But it wasn’t so thrilling somehow, then: Zoe wouldn’t pay much attention to us, then.

Our mother knew Zoe Kruller when she’d had a different last name. When she’d been a high school girl, the younger sister of a classmate of Lucille Bauer’s at Sparta High.

In a small city like Sparta, everyone knows everyone else. It’s a matter of age, generation. Everyone knows everyone’s family background, to a degree. There are commingled histories, intense friendships and intense feuds that, having gone underground decades before, continue to smolder and pollute the air.

You can smell the pollution, but you can’t see it. You could not ever guess its history.

Tangled roots, beneath the surface of the earth. How astonishing to discover these roots, so hidden. How my mother began working obsessively outdoors that spring, digging in the clayey soil beside the driveway determined to plant what she called snow-on-the-mountains —a hardy fast-growing perennial—and the shovel struck a tangle of roots like something ugly knotted in the brain.

When the trouble began in my parents’ lives—except Ben and I had not known that there was anything like the trouble , at the start—our mother became strange to us, spending time outdoors as she’d never done in the past, sweaty and her forearms ropey-veined in a way frightening to see, and the set of her mouth grim like something zipped-up seen from the wrong side. And Mom would try to sink the shovel into the ground, using her weight as leverage, and the sole of her sneakered foot struck hard against the rim of the shovel and she cried out in pain Oh God! God-damn.

Beneath, those tangled roots. Severed, their insides glared a terrible white like bone marrow.

However our mother knew Zoe Kruller who was so glamorous at Honeystone’s, our father knew Zoe Kruller some other way.

Say I was on comfortable speaking terms with my brother Ben—from whom I am not estranged, exactly—and I called him impulsively and asked Do you remember us going to Honeystone’s? When Daddy took us? How different was that, from when Mom took us?

And say Ben didn’t hang up the phone. But in a mood of not-bitter reminiscence he would speak sincerely to me, thoughtfully. He would say:

Sure, you could tell. For sure.

At the time?

No. Not at the time.

But later?

Right. Later.

That quickness in Daddy. Playing the car radio loud, humming loudly with it. Driving just a little too fast on Huron Pike Road and the careful way he parked in Honeystone’s graveled lot, very likely it was one of Eddy Diehl’s showy cars he was driving, that very morning washing, waxing, polishing in our driveway and here in Honeystone’s graveled parking lot Eddy Diehl was positioning the car in such a way that, if anyone inside cared to glance out—Honeystone’s front window was horizontal, long, plate-glass spanning nearly the width of the building—she would see the stately 1973 Lincoln Continental with two-tone beige-and-black finish, or maybe it was the cream-colored 1977 Oldsmobile Deluxe with its glittering chrome grille—possibly the cherry-red vintage Thunderbird like the sleekest of rockets yearning to be launched—and she would stop dead in her tracks, and stare. And smile.

Eddy Diehl’s specialty-autos were to make observers smile.

Certain observers, that is. Others, the intention was to intimidate, provoke envy.

Jesus! Who owns that?

Seeing this vehicle in the lot, guessing the driver was probably Eddy Diehl, quickly she would turn away to check her reflection in the mirror at her back, or in the mirror of the little plastic compact she kept in a pocket of her white cord smock for just such semi-emergency occasions; there was just time for her to dab some scented ivory powder on her nose, check her eye makeup, shape a pouting smile to see if the crimson lipstick was still fresh. And adjust her hair in the damned hairnet they made you wear in this damned prissy place.

“Well say, Eddy Diehl! Thought it was you. ”

Zoe Kruller’s sexy-throaty voice that was like sandpaper rubbed against sandpaper to make you shiver. Zoe Kruller’s voice that was close and warm and teasing like a voice murmured in your ear as you lay in bed, head on your pillow and bedclothes clutched to your chin.

With what eagerness Daddy entered Honeystone’s—pushing the door open with such force that the little bell attached overhead tinkled loudly, ushering his young children—what were their names—Ben? Krissie?—into the milky-cool, marble-cool air of Honeystone’s Dairy which was so wonderful.

And there in that instant was Zoe Kruller catching sight of Eddy Diehl, and Eddy Diehl catching sight of Zoe Kruller. Almost, you could feel the rush of blood that ran through them, like an electric current.

“How’re you doing, Zoe-y. Looking good.”

In a casual voice my father called out a greeting. Sunday afternoons, Honeystone’s was likely to be busy.

Zoe Kruller was such a favorite at the dairy, as she was a favorite at Chautauqua Park on summer-music nights, there were customers who waited in line to be waited on by her: though heavyset Audrey and white-haired Mrs. Honeystone might both be available behind the counter, scowling.

Not wanting to meet Mrs. Honeystone’s eye—the white-haired older woman was Marv Honeystone’s wife, and Eddy knew Marv Honeystone from having worked for him—Eddy lingered before one of the refrigerated dessert cases, hands on his hips, brooding. As if he’d come to Honeystone’s with the intention of buying a strawberry whipped-cream pie, a chocolate mousse , a three-tiered birthday cake, a luscious glazed fruit tart or a platter of fudge, chocolate-chip cookies, macaroons. “O.K. Ben, Krissie—say what looks good to you. What’d you like best.”