Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
Zoe was glamorous, not merely pretty. Your eye moved onto Zoe with startled interest as your eye might be drawn to a billboard face posed above the highway, you would never imagine might have the slightest consciousness of you.
If you were a child, that is. A girl-child intensely aware of adult women: their faces, their bodies.
Zoe was an adult woman, a wife and a mother. Yet you would not have guessed that Zoe was much older than the high school girls who worked behind the counter at Honeystone’s. Her face was a girl’s face, just this side of beauty: her eager smile revealed a band of pink gum and her long hungry-looking teeth overlapped just perceptibly in front. Her skin was pale, warmly freckled. Her hair was “strawberry blond”—crimped, flyaway, shoulder-length. Her eyebrows had been carefully plucked and filled in with eyebrow pencil, her pale lashes were inky with mascara. Her nose was a little too long, with a waxy tip, and wide nostrils. Her chin was a little too narrow. Yet her eyes were beautiful, exotic: shades of amber like sherry at the bottom of a glass, or a certain kind of children’s marble, amber-glazed, changing its colors as you turned it in your fingers.
Zoe was a small woman, her figure was what’s called petite. She could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds nor was she more than five feet two. Yet she exuded an air of sexy funny-girl swagger that made her appear taller, like one accustomed to the spotlight. Behind the counter at Honeystone’s Zoe had a way of rising up on her toes when she locked eyes with a customer, smiling that glistening bared-gum smile and a light seemed truly to come into her face.
“Well, say! Thought it was you.”
Most remarkable was Zoe’s throaty purring voice. It was a voice so low and shivery it didn’t seem as if it was issuing from Zoe Kruller’s wide-lipped crimson mouth but from a radio. Here was a distinctive voice amid a clamor of voices of no distinction, that made you stop and stare at Zoe even more than her lit-up face might have warranted. Here is someone special you were made to think.
That red-embroidered ZOE on a tiny pocket above Zoe’s left breast.
‘“Zooh-ey.’ Not ‘Zoo-ey.’ Please!”
In Chautauqua Park on summer nights local musicians and singers performed at the bandstand and Zoe Kruller belonged to the most popular group, that called itself Black River Breakdown. Zoe was the only woman among several men—guitarist, banjo player, fiddler and piano-player.
Except for the Elvis-looking guitarist, a kid in his early twenties with dyed-black hair and cowboy boots with a prominent heel, they were all in their thirties, ardent, excitable, yearning for applause. Their music ranged from country-and-western classics (“Little Maggie,” “Down from Dover,” “I’ll Walk the Line”) to bluegrass (“Little Bird of Heaven,” “Her Little Footprints in the Snow”) and disco (“I Will Survive,” “Saturday Night Fever”).
Especially on stage at the bandstand, sexy-seductive in a spangled dress that left most of her thighs exposed and her strawberry-blond hair frizzed and crimped in a wild halo around her head so it looked like an electric bolt had shot through her, Zoe Kruller did not resemble any other wife/mother in Sparta.
Yet she was Mrs. Kruller, the mother of a boy in Ben’s class at school. This boy was named Aaron and he looked older than Ben by a year or more and had a stiff glaring face nothing like Zoe’s.
“Zoe married young”—this was said of Mrs. Kruller, by our mother and our mother’s friends.
“Zoe married ‘way too young’”—this was said with satisfaction.
And, sometimes: “Zoe married ‘way too young and the wrong man.’”
None of this meant anything to Ben and me. Being taken for a drive out to Honeystone’s which was an actual dairy farm on the outskirts of Sparta, locally famous for its homemade ice cream and desserts, was a Sunday reward for having been good through the week, or one of Daddy’s capricious treats. Anybody interested in a ride? Honeystone’s?
Say I returned to Sparta. Say I looked up my few remaining “friends”—classmates from school—and asked what they remembered most vividly from our childhood, each would say—“Honeystone’s!” Clutching at one another’s hands, eyes misting with tears of sentiment, the sweetest sort of tears, recalling Honeystone’s Dairy as you’d recall a lost paradise.
Recalling even the drive to Honeystone’s, fraught with the happiest sort of anticipation.
Out East Huron Pike Road, past the water treatment tower. Past the railroad yard. Across the Black River Bridge and beyond East Sparta Memorial Park and a short mile or so to the Sparta town limits and there was the sparkling-white stucco building set back from the road in a neatly tended graveled parking lot bounded, in summer, by bright red geraniums in clay pots, and in the autumn by chrysanthemums of all hues; there was the smiling-cow sign thirty feet high, on a pole illuminated at night like a stage set—HONEYSTONE’S DAIRY. Inside Honeystone’s the air was immediately distinctive: milky-cool, marble-cool, like the foyer of the Midland Sparta Bank, except here there was an odor of bakery, so sweet your mouth watered like a baby’s. On the floor of Honeystone’s was what appeared to be actual marble, black-and-white checked, worn but still elegant; there were ornately designed white wrought-iron tables and chairs and there were vinyl booths that resembled leather, sleek and black. Descending from the ceiling were a half-dozen slow-moving fans with blades like the propellers of small planes, both languorous and vaguely threatening. If you were to dream of Honeystone’s interior, the slow-moving fans would take on an ominous note.
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 t
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.”
Earnestly Ben and I debated: the strawberry whipped-cream pie, banana cream pie, cherry pie with strips of golden crust like a pinwheel instead of the usual boring solid upper crust….
An entire display case of birthday cakes!
This debate could occupy minutes. While Eddy Diehl glanced at Zoe Kruller in the mirror behind the display case, took in his own reflection with a critical frown and slicked back his tufted rust-red hair like a rooster’s comb with a quick movement of both his hands.
Eddy Diehl’s big carpenter’s hands. Eddy Diehl’s big thumbs. Eddy Diehl’s heavy-lidded eyes behind flat sea-green “aviator” sunglasses with the metallic rims. Eddy Diehl’s wordless appeal to the pert petite strawberry-blond woman with the glamorous made-up face like a Dolly Parton doll, white sleeves pushed back to bare her pale freckled forearms.
After some Sundays of this, Ben began to object: “You always ask us what we want, Dad, but you never buy anything. So why ask us?”
I didn’t want to hear this. I’d made my choices to tell Daddy: banana cream pie, caramel custard pie, triple-layer chocolate cake with HAPPY BIRTHDAY scrolled in pink frosting on the top. Once I’d watched Zoe Kruller squirting a coil of pink frosting like toothpaste over a duplicate of this very cake, completing the message HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBIN!
At the time, I’d thought how lucky Robin was.
Whoever Robin was: girl, boy.
Daddy said, just this side of annoyed: “Might be I’m making a mental note, Ben. Your Daddy has a mind like a steel trap. Filing facts, that will one day come in handy.”
Mental note? I was curious about this. Asked Daddy what was a mental note but Daddy was casting a sidelong look over at Zoe Kruller who was casting a sidelong smile at him past a customer’s frizz-permed head.
“Daddy? What’s a ‘mental note’—”
“You tell her, Zoe.” Affably Daddy raised his voice, to draw Zoe into the conversation. A few feet away Zoe was preparing sundaes for a family of fretting young children. “What’s a ‘mental note.’”
This presumed that Zoe had been listening to us from a distance of ten, twelve feet. That, since Eddy Diehl had first entered Honeystone’s, Zoe Kruller had been keenly aware of him and his two young children who took after the mother’s side of the family, it seemed—A gosh-darn pity since Eddy Diehl is the good-looking one and not chubby moon-faced Lucy Bauer.
Zoe tilted her head to indicate that she was thinking hard.
“Mental note’ is—a memory. You make a special memory inside your head, to remind yourself of something at a later date. ‘Mental note’ is for the future, to refer back to now.”
Zoe spoke in a low mysterious throaty murmur. I had no idea what she and my father were talking about but any succession of words Zoe Kruller spoke no matter how ordinary or banal were freighted with significance like words blazoned on a billboard or in a bright-lit TV commercial.
Eddy Diehl wore work caps, baseball caps. Always outdoors and o
At work—at Sparta Construction, Inc.—Daddy wore white shirts: short-sleeved in summer, long-sleeved in winter. These shirts my mother ironed, for Daddy insisted upon white cotton shirts, not wash-and-wear. Daddy wore neatly pressed trousers on the job, sport coats or jackets in cold weather, never an overcoat. You would never see a carpenter—any man who works with his hands—wearing an overcoat on the job. Summers, away from work Daddy wore T-shirts and khaki pants likely to be rumpled and stained, running shoes on his size-twelve feet.
It never ceased to amaze me, Daddy was so big. Daddy loomed above me, a tall muscled man with broad shoulders, long arms and powerful wrists. In spite of his bad knee (as my mother called it, though not in Daddy’s presence) Daddy walked without wincing, or at least visibly wincing; never did he wish to allude to his bad knee, his injury; he flushed with indignation if anyone—usually female relatives of my mother’s—questioned him too pointedly about his health. (So too my father coolly disdained questions from relatives both male and female about how the construction business was going, smiling and shrugging Can’t complain. Holding our own. You?)
There was something loose and impulsive in my father’s movements, a quicksilver excitement hinting almost of threat except he was teasing, smiling—wasn’t he? Don’t come too close! Don’t mistake my seeming friendly for my being your friend.
On my father’s tanned arms thick hairs grew in bristling swirls and eddies, dark-rust-red shading to black, springy and intransigent as wires to the touch. As a little girl I’d been intimidated by Daddy’s muscled arms covered in hair and the hint of a dark wiry animal pelt covering his chest, parts of his back, beneath his white T-shirt, springing into view at his throat. Seeing the look in my face Daddy laughed: “Don’t worry, Puss. Turning into a mean hairy ape won’t happen to you.”