Concrete Angel Read Free Page A

divorced.” A grandfatherly sort of man might suit us both.
    “Fat chance,” she said with a shrug.
    Mother went on to let me in on the entire divorce proceedings. The drama of the hearing came across much like one of the boxing matches Daddy liked to watch on Saturday nights.
    Pow! “I’m not picking up your wardrobe expenses. You have enough clothing to get you into the nineteen eighties. Scratch that—your eighties.”
    Wham! “You can’t see Christine on school nights, and I’m keeping the Thunderbird.”
    Zing! “That T-Bird was a birthday gift from my parents. You can take the Dart Swinger.”
    “Swell, you want me carting your kid around in that heap. I can dent it with my elbow.”
    If there were to be no more boxing matches, perhaps we could watch Carol Burnett in peace. But calm, with or without Daddy, didn’t last long.
     
    B ack to the crime scene: two hours after the soda salesman’s death, I told two police officers I’d found Jerry Santini strangling my mother in the living room and pulled the gun Daddy bought for us from the drawer.
    “I only meant to scare him,” I said, caught in the excitement of the scene and more than half-believing it, “but confusion ensued and the gun went off.”
    Mature words for a child of twelve, but nobody flinched. I was the sort of child who might say such a thing. “I was barely aware of pulling the trigger,” I finished, borrowing Mother’s idea, which had left an impression. The notion of the murder being dreamlike felt like a good way to go. “I think I was in a fug state.”
    “Fugue,” Cy corrected me, nodding in the background. I told them what he’d instructed me to say, telling the police officers as little as possible. I was a bit shrill in my delivery, but shrillness established my immaturity—I couldn’t seem too well-prepared, too precocious. Reticence was Cy’s advice for any situation allowing it. And ladylike tears, if needed.
    I didn’t mind lying for Mother—I was already dedicated to an existence of small fibs and truth-shading with neighbors, teachers, grandmothers, Daddy. And it turned out I was pretty good at lying and would grow more skilled over time. When Mother lied, she prattled on. I was the essence of brevity, my tears restrained.
    I looked to her for approval, but she kept her eyes pinned on the wall behind me where a chartreuse and aqua ceramic señorita and señor she’d bought at Gimbel’s danced the tango. Surreal hues enveloped us, but I was on my own in her neon setting. Neither its brilliance nor hers would fade for years.
    Our apartment had a hushed air despite the crowd of men examining the carpet, looking for the bullets’ casings, powdering the place for fingerprints, talking to Mother and me, snapping cameras and, finally, carrying Jerry Santini away. A child murderess merits solemnity. Nobody pushed me beyond my practiced confession that day or on any other day over the following weeks. Ordinary men, like cops in 1976, didn’t anticipate a mother asking her child to lie—even after the Johnny Stompanato case.
    To be honest, I can’t remember either Mother or Cy Granholm openly asking it of me—either the lying or taking the rap. It somehow evolved in the hour after Cy arrived and before he called the police. His attempts to cobble a convincing story from Mother’s words went awry every time.
    “You are amazingly cavalier about what’s taken place here tonight, Eve,” he said, wiping his forehead. “You did kill the guy. Right? Unloaded the entire gun into his gut? I’m not misunderstanding?” He paced the floor like the bulldog he was.
    I could sympathize with Cy. It was hard to remember the fatal events had occurred only an hour earlier given Mother’s body language. And as Mother swayed back and forth between anger, helplessness, and a sort of superhuman strength, I tried hard to match it. Were we to play the victims, were we to be hysterical? Sorrowful? Temporarily insane? It was so hard to