All the Beautiful Girls

“We ’ve missed you, sweetheart,” Beverly Ann’s mother said, kissing Lily good night and promising that they’d have French toast in the morning.

When Mrs. McPherson pulled the door nearly closed so that only a thin pillar of light shone from the hallway, Lily felt a sudden moment of panic. She audibly sucked in her breath as a fleeting image of Uncle Miles’ probing hands crossed her mind. The image was there, he was there, even though she knew that at least for tonight she wouldn’t have to fear the drop of his weight on the bed like a gunnysack of river rocks.

“What’s wrong?” Beverly Ann asked, her voice sleepy.

Lily thought about telling. She could tell Beverly Ann about what happened in her bedroom, when the only noises in the house were crickets and the hum of the refrigerator. Sometimes the furnace clicking off or on. And Uncle Miles’ breath, his huh-huh-huh that got faster and faster.

But she couldn’t tell. It would make her sick to tell. Sicker to tell than not to tell. Beverly Ann would know how disgusting Lily was, and Lily would lose her best friend. And if she did tell, then what would happen? She had nowhere else to go.

“Nothing,” she said, finally, but Beverly Ann had already fallen asleep. Lily listened to her friend’s deep, regular breathing, the breathing of a girl who could trust, even in the dark. Lily felt her own eyes fluttering closed as she nestled in sheets that smelled of a sun-kissed clothesline.

The next morning, Lily came home from Beverly Ann’s begging for a pogo stick, but Aunt Tate said it was “too dear,” and Lily nearly stomped her feet. Beverly Ann got to have everything! Lily’s friend’s life was a constant reminder of all that Lily had lost, and sometimes—like this time—Lily felt her cheeks flame hot with jealousy and anger.

But a few weeks after the sleepover at Beverly Ann’s, Uncle Miles beckoned a hesitant Lily to join him in the backyard beside his workshop. In his hands, he held a pair of homemade stilts.

“I sanded the handles real good so you won’t get splinters,” he said, turning the stilts so that Lily could admire his workmanship. “And I know these aren’t the same as a pogo stick, but you can learn to do tricks on them. Here,” he said, motioning to Lily to come closer. “I’ll help you get up on them. You’ll learn fast cuz you’re real coordinated.”

He was right; it took Lily no time to learn how to walk steadily, and soon enough she could balance on one stilt and even hop on a single wooden pole while holding the other one in the air. She sang songs and made up dances she could do balanced high on the stilts.

“I still think they’re dangerous,” Aunt Tate said after one of Lily’s stunt shows, performed just before dinner.

“Lord, Tate. Let the girl have some fun,” Uncle Miles had said and then winked at Lily, which made her nervous, not a happy co-conspirator. Lily became convinced that Uncle Miles wanted something in exchange, that he was incapable of a simple kindness. Eventually, that persistent knock of fear led Lily to abandon the stilts next to the woodpile, against the back fence where the squirrels lived.

MAYBE UNCLE MILES loved Aunt Tate. Lily didn’t know. He did love his raspberries—all forty-eight bushes, lined up in rows like soldiers on parade. He inspected them for infestations, dusted them with a white powder that poisoned any bugs bold enough to alight on the sharp leaves. He fertilized. He shooed away sparrows who dared to feast on the ripe fruit. When frost was predicted, he used old pillowcases to shroud the bushes so that they stood like an eerie battalion of child-sized ghosts.

They weren’t pretty plants, not like the boldly bright dahlias that had filled Mama’s flower beds. They were thorny creatures that protected themselves by being nondescript, unwelcoming. But when the fruit came—the faceted gemstone berries with their lush lobes, the juice running down Lily’s chin—it was heavenly. Aunt Tate would ladle the berries over vanilla ice cream, and they’d sit out back, watching the soft evening descend. It was a puzzle Lily couldn’t solve—the fact that something delicious came from her uncle’s devotion.

3

Lily’s fourth-grade school portrait showed a tall, gangly ten-year-old with a long neck and indentations at her temples as if someone had pressed his palms to the sides of her skull and squeezed until the bone succumbed. The generous spread of her cheekbones gave her a clear, open gaze. Her indigo blue eyes were large, her child’s lips surprisingly luscious, and she faced the camera without flinching. If Lily had held a numbered placard in her hands, the school photo almost would have passed for a mug shot.

It had been nearly two years since the accident, and from time to time, she saw the Aviator around town. Lily liked to imagine that he was watching her, a presence like God or Jesus or Zeus or Santa Claus. Someone who knew her secrets but wouldn’t tell. He was a potent mystery—not an enemy, not quite a friend. Just there.

She discovered, finally, that it was the Aviator who was sending her the old books. When How They Carried the Mail arrived, it had the Aviator’s name in it, written elegantly in what Lily’s teacher called copperplate calligraphy. His name was Stirling Sloan, and he had once been a boy living on Magnolia Street in Dormont, Pennsylvania.

Holding the books from the Aviator’s childhood, turning the pages of his memories, Lily sent her mind to the places where his mind had been. She dogged his steps. And although she thought Stirling was a nice name, to Lily he remained always and forever the Aviator.

Mostly, it was curiosity that led her on a warm, late-April day to pedal all the way over to the Aviator’s street, put down her kickstand, and leave her bicycle tilted on the sidewalk that bordered his front lawn. She’d dressed up for him, pulling her hair back on the sides with a pair of pink butterfly barrettes, and she wore her best smocked cotton dress—the yellow one with a big sash she’d tied in back all by herself. Still, she was feeling less bold, now that she was actually at his house. Lily used the rubber toe of her Red Ball Jets tennis shoe to kick at a tuft of crabgrass that grew up through the sidewalk crack like a patch of unruly hair.

If she continued to linger out front, Lily realized, one of his nosy neighbors might come out and ask her questions she didn’t want to answer. Lily took a deep breath, marched up the front steps, and pressed the doorbell.

Nothing happened. She wasn’t sure how long she should wait. Feeling a nervous queasiness begin to slosh about in her stomach, she pushed the buzzer again. Again nothing. She saw the Aviator’s mail stuffed into his mailbox and realized he must still be at work. Maybe he was busy flying one of the jet-propelled B-47 bombers, part of the country’s Strategic Air Command they’d learned about at school.

Slowly, Lily descended the front porch. She hadn’t gotten what she wanted—an audience with the Aviator—and she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Maybe she’d just circle around back. Maybe she could wait there until he came home.

As Lily rounded the house, she could smell something overripe, on the edge of decay. Her tennis shoes slid on rotting apricots that had dropped from the neighbor’s tree. Lily picked up a piece of the fruit, brought it to her nose and grimaced. There were speckles of fruit flies all over the mushy flesh, and she dropped it quickly. She wiped her sticky fingers on some long, wet grass and then dried them on her dress.

Boldly, Lily climbed the Aviator’s back steps and sat on his porch swing. She pushed off with her feet and could hear the groan of the bolts that held it aloft.

He was taking forever to come home, and Lily wished she’d brought along Jane Eyre or A Girl of the Limberlost. She twiddled her thumbs for a while, and then she tried whistling. It came out slender, ineffectual. She wanted to learn to whistle so loudly that hordes of dogs from all over town would come running to her. She wanted to be able to whistle a tune when Dinah Shore came on the television and sang “Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.”

“Lily?”

She hadn’t heard his car. The Aviator pushed open the screen door and came out onto the porch. Lily stood guiltily.

“What are you doing here? Lily, does your aunt know you’re here?”

He’d said her name, twice. He did know her. She was so full of emotion that she was having trouble finding her voice.

“Sit down a minute,” the Aviator said, gently taking her arm and leading her back to the porch swing. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Uncle Miles showed me.”

“That’s your bike out front?”

“Yes.”

“But, Lily—do they know you’re here? They can’t possibly know you’re here.”

Lily shook her head.

“Oh, this is a bad idea,” he said. “You can’t be here. I’m so sorry. You just can’t be here.”

“But I came to ask you,” she said before he could make her leave unsatisfied. “I have to ask you something.” Lily clenched her fists in the way her mother had always said proved just how stubborn you can be, Scallywag. She was determined not to leave without asking him.

The Aviator took a deep breath. He was a handsome man with an omnipresent five-o’clock shadow, a nose so straight it looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler, and bruised-looking blue eyes. He sat with a ramrod-straight back, and he was wearing a military green flight suit that zipped up the front. On one sleeve was an embroidered patch picturing an armored fist that clasped an olive branch and three bright red lightning bolts.

“You may have three questions,” he said at last.

“Like three wishes with a genie?”

“Yes. And then you go home.” She could see he was afraid of her questions, but still he said, “Go ahead. Ask me.”

“My school is having a dance. Fathers bring their daughters.” She opened her hands, wiped her sweaty palms on the skirt of her dress. “I get to dress up and everything. And I wanted for you to take me.”

She’d been so happy when she’d concocted this plan to avoid humiliation. The other girls would be so jealous—even Beverly Ann. Lily would dance with a handsome pilot, handsomer even than the men on The Dinah Shore Show, and the fact that she had no father to take her would be completely overshadowed by the splendor of the Aviator.

The Aviator’s face went from one expression to another in an instant—as if clouds were first blotting out the sun and then letting it shine full force. She saw him pained and surprised and then frustrated. Maybe even angry, which scared her a little.

“I wish I could,” he said at last. “But I can’t.”

“Why not?” Lily stood and faced him.

The Aviator bit his lip, and for a minute Lily thought they both would cry. She felt violent and crazed disappointment thrashing about in her chest.

“Please,” she begged.

The Aviator stood quickly and pulled her into a hug. She pressed her face into the dark solidity of him, felt the zipper of his jumpsuit chafe her cheek.

“They would never let me,” he said, still holding her.

“Because they hate you,” she said, raising her face to look up at him.

“That’s right.”

“But wasn’t it an accident? Like when I spill the milk? Or when I trip and fall?”

He put his hand on the top of her head, as if blessing her. “I wish it were that simple,” he said.

“You didn’t mean to kill them, did you?”

The Aviator released her. “Come sit back down for a minute. Are you thirsty? Do you want a glass of water?”

Lily shook her head. What she wanted was answers.

“Okay. Well …” The Aviator rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. Lily thought she could hear the rasp of his beard’s stubble. “I was driving fast. Too fast. I do that sometimes—go out on the highway and fly along the asphalt, blow off steam. And I didn’t see them—you. There was a dip in the road, and I hit your car. I’d take it all back. I can’t—” His voice broke.

“If you really were a murdering bastard, you’d be in jail. That’s what I think.”

“Bastard?” She saw a fleeting smile cross the Aviator’s face. “Lily.” He shook his head.

She wouldn’t apologize for quoting Uncle Miles. “But you’re not in jail,” she repeated. “So it wasn’t on purpose.”

“I’m not in jail because it was an accident. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not sorry each and every day.”

They sat in silence until the Aviator said, “Lily, I’m so sorry I can’t take you to the dance. I would be honored, really and truly. Nothing would make me happier. But I can’t. It just won’t work, for reasons I can’t explain to your satisfaction.”

“I just wanted. I just wished.”

“I know,” he said, taking her hand in his. “But I will always do what I can. I am your friend, forever. And let me make you a promise, all right?” Lily looked up at him. “I will find a way to make it up to you. For the dance, I mean,” he said and then released her hand. He made an X across his heart with his index finger. “I promise.”

“I love the books you send me,” she said and smiled in a way she hoped would convey how much they meant to her. Then Lily took a deep, resigned breath. “Okay,” she said, grudgingly agreeing to his promise. “But don’t wait too long!”

He smiled and stood. “You’re a pretty good bargainer, you know that? But now you need to get home before it starts to get dark. Promise me you’ll be safe?”

“Umm hmm,” Lily said and instead of using the steps hopped off the side of the porch to show him how agile she was.

“You could come through the house,” he told her, but she’d already started to round the corner. The Aviator followed her out front, and Lily felt him watch her climb on her bicycle and ride away.

Lily pedaled as fast as she could—not to rush back, but just to feel the wind blow her clean. She decided she wouldn’t tell her aunt about the dance. She just wouldn’t go. Lily knew no one would have the nerve to ask why the fatherless girl had chosen not to attend.

And maybe in the Aviator’s promise she had something even better than a stupid old dance with a bunch of stupid old girls and their stupid old clumsy fathers. Lily believed the Aviator would come through for her. It felt glorious once more to believe in someone.

4

Aunt Tate said, “HOW COULD YOU?” and roughly flipped Lily over on her bed where she ’d been reading the Aviator’s latest gift, Beautiful Joe. Aunt Tate held Lily by the arm and struck her with the gut-flecked flyswatter. “That was my mother’s pitcher! My mother’s! You!”—whack—“ungrateful”—whack—“child!” Whack. “After all I’ve done for you!” Whack whack whack!

Lily had no idea what Aunt Tate was talking about. “I didn’t do anything!” Lily protested. “Aunt Tate, I didn’t do anything!”

“Don’t add the sin of lying.” Aunt Tate let go of Lily’s arm and gave Lily’s backside one more good whack. “No supper. Why I took you in is beyond me.” Aunt Tate slammed, opened, slammed the door several times. Bang!

Lily stayed still, as if she were playing freeze tag at school. She sucked in her cheeks and bit down, wondering if she could bite hard enough to tear out the sides of her mouth, chew and swallow the flesh. Her body burned in all the places where the flyswatter had landed. Lily remained there, perfectly still, breathing scant breaths. She fought back tears, ever mindful of her vow to keep control.

Later, when it was nearly dark and Lily was wondering if it might be safe to go pee, Aunt Tate came and stood beside Lily’s bed. “Uncle Miles told me.”

What? Lily panicked. What exactly had Uncle Miles said?

“He knocked the pitcher off of the mantel when he was looking for his matches. He told me you didn’t do it.”

Lily didn’t understand why Aunt Tate automatically believed such awful things about her. What was it about her that led Aunt Tate to assume the worst about Lily? Lily had never been a liar. Why didn’t Aunt Tate believe her?

Aunt Tate crossed her arms and held them against her middle as if she were suddenly cold, or maybe trying to hold something in or even protect herself; as if Lily might stand up and try to punch her in the stomach like they did sometimes on Roy Rogers when there was a fight in a saloon and cowboys smashed each other over the head with wooden chairs.

“I made a mistake,” Aunt Tate confessed. “I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

Lily thought about the Aviator’s Beautiful Joe and how Joe ’s cruel master cut off his ears and hurt him even though Joe was a kind and loyal dog. A good dog. Then Joe got rescued and lived in a good home where people loved and understood him. Beautiful Joe’s life was the opposite of Lily’s. But why? What was wrong with her? What had she done? What could she do differently so that Aunt Tate wouldn’t call her “The cross I have to bear”?

“Aunt Tate?” Lily dared.

Her aunt tightened her arms about her middle. “What is it?” she said, not unkindly.

“Why can’t you love me?”

“Honey.” Aunt Tate took a step toward Lily but stopped herself. “It’s because I love you that I’m hard on you. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t bother.”

Even though Aunt Tate had half-buried “love” in that brief statement, she had at least admitted it. Still, it didn’t feel like love to Lily. There were no soft, rounded edges to Aunt Tate’s love. It was uneasy, all spiky and fearful, like the sea urchin Tom Bradstone had brought back from his vacation in California.

“I know I’m not very patient with you.” Aunt Tate sighed. “To be honest, Lily, I don’t have much experience with children. Just watching over your mother when she was a young brat.” Aunt Tate nearly smiled. “But now come have a sandwich, and then we ’ll get you ready for bed.” She extended a conciliatory hand.

“Can I have tuna fish?”

“You may have grilled cheese.”

“Oh, with Velveeta.” Lily sighed with pleasure. Her aunt’s hand in hers was neither warm nor cold. It was like dry newspaper, and Lily almost thought she could hear her aunt’s skin crinkle when she squeezed it.

That night, Lily dreamed that she was sitting at the top of the playground slide, looking down the length of it. The polished metal chute went on for miles—down, down, and down to an abrupt end where children dropped off into some kind of a crack in the earth. Someone was behind her, prodding her to release her handhold and let gravity take her. She felt the insistent push of a hand. Tap. Tap. TAP!

Lily awoke to the deepest part of the night. Half asleep, she swatted at something wet that was touching her under her bunched-up nightie.

Uncle Miles clenched her wrist like a slave’s clevis and held it immobile until he finished. After he was gone, Lily fed her pillowcase into her mouth, bit down, and swallowed her cries so that they filled her stomach like sharp gravel.

WHEN SHE CAME home from school the next day, there was an entire box of cherry suckers on the nightstand beside her bed. The kind with the looped rope handles she liked best.

“Go ahead and have one,” Aunt Tate said from the doorway. “But just one, or you’ll spoil your supper.”

Lily stalled, looking uncertainly at her aunt. A part of her was afraid the candy was from Uncle Miles.

“Adults make mistakes, too,” Aunt Tate said. “I made a mistake yesterday, when I blamed you. I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s okay,” Lily said because she could see how badly Aunt Tate needed to hear it.

“And, I’ve made your favorite chicken and dumplings for dinner. Wash up and then come help me with the snap beans. It’s about time I taught you to cook.”

While Lily sat on the kitchen stool and broke the crisp beans into pieces in a big white mixing bowl, Aunt Tate told Lily stories from when Mama and Aunt Tate were girls. She even showed Lily a little sickle-shaped scar on the back of her left hand where Mama had used a willow whip to attack her big sister. “We didn’t always get along,” Aunt Tate said. “But I always loved your mama. I just want for you to remember that she was a real person, with real faults. We always put the dead on a pedestal, but they were real humans, just like us. They made mistakes, just like us.”

Lily had just finished setting the table when Uncle Miles came through the kitchen door carrying a teeny-tiny guitar under his arm. Lily couldn’t help but hope it was a gift for her, a reward for keeping their secret.

“Oh no! You didn’t!” Aunt Tate said, laughing. “Oh, this is just plain funny!”

Lily had never before seen her aunt get the giggles. Aunt Tate used the hem of her apron to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes. “You don’t have a musical bone in your body, old man. What on earth possessed you?” To Lily, she said, “Don’t forget the bread.”

Lily opened the bread box and stacked six slices of Wonder Bread on a plate. She twirled the plastic bag closed and used Aunt Tate’s wooden clothespin to reseal it. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Uncle Miles set the child-sized guitar on the chair next to the prayer shawl Aunt Tate was knitting. He rolled up his sleeves before washing his hands.

“Got it at Pawn City,” he said, lathering his hands. “Dirt cheap.” He was clearly more than a little pleased with himself.

“It shoulda been free,” Aunt Tate said, carefully ladling the chicken and dumplings into a deep white tureen. “No one in their right mind would buy that. A ukulele, Miles?”

“This is a ukulele?” Lily asked, gingerly plucking a string on the instrument.

“It’s Hawaiian.” Uncle Miles pushed Lily’s hand away. “And it’s not a plaything.”

“You can’t even read music.” Aunt Tate sat down and scooted her chair in. “Here,” she said, handing him the tureen. “And what were you doing at the pawnshop?”

“Stopped in on my way home. Just lookin’.” Uncle Miles gave himself a generous helping of chicken and dumplings.

“Talk about money down the drain.” Aunt Tate shook her head.

Lily found it strange that any part of her could feel sorry for Uncle Miles. And to realize that it was Aunt Tate who held the upper hand, not her uncle.

“You’ll see,” he said. “And you’ll be begging me to serenade you.” Uncle Miles laid aside his knife and fork, floated one hand in the air, and began singing a Patsy Cline song.

His voice was awful, and Lily couldn’t help it—she laughed into her hand and looked across the table at her aunt, who stuck her fingers in her ears, rolled her eyes, and smiled right back at Lily.

AUNT TATE HAD been wrong about Lily being able to leave her sorrow behind in the house that used to be home. Sorrow was not so easily fooled; it stuck to the soles of Lily’s feet and dogged her every step. It was an undercurrent to every breath.

Lily stood on the sidewalk in front of Aunt Tate ’s American Beauty rosebush. Making sure that the coast was clear, she dropped down on all fours and began dragging her right knee along the rough pavement, shredding the skin. It burned, but she kept going, checked the raw skin often, and only stopped when she was certain that the wound was serious enough to merit Aunt Tate’s attention. The blood ran down Lily’s leg, into the top of her knee sock. Straightening her cotton twill dress, Lily picked up her schoolbooks and went inside.

Aunt Tate said, “You need to be more careful,” as she painted Lily’s knee with the bright red Mercurochrome that Dawn had called monkey’s blood. When Aunt Tate softly placed a square of gauze over the skinned knee, when she used the fingernail scissors to cut strips of white adhesive tape and was careful not to hurt Lily as she pressed the tape to Lily’s leg, Lily felt cared for, reassured. As if she mattered.