March 7, 1959
On Saturday morning, the day Daddy said would have been Olga’s birthday, I sat on the living room floor and dumped a paper cup full of coins onto the previous day’s newspaper. The money scattered on top of the front-page picture of Mrs. Duncan sitting on the witness stand, lips pressed, angry eyes shifted to the side. The headline read: GET AWAY FROM ME, MRS. DUNCAN TELLS DA above Daddy’s byline.
My friends and I had earned the coins at the Helpful Club lemonade stand over the previous few weeks. Twenty-one dimes, eighteen nickels, eight quarters, and ninety-five pennies. Five dollars and twenty-five cents. We’d sold lemonade every weekend so that we could buy a doll for Cathy, a little girl who lived at Camarillo State Hospital, where Mother worked. But sometimes when sales were slow, we got bored and drank a lot of the lemonade. I think Daddy must have slipped extra coins into the cup when I wasn’t looking.
I put the money back in the cup and turned to an inside page of the newspaper to skim through the continuation of the story on the trial.
MRS. DUNCAN ADMITS TO 11 HUSBANDS, 6 CHILDREN
After the court session was over, Sullivan consulted with his client and then gave out a list of the six children and eleven husbands to the press…. Dr. Louis Nash, a psychiatrist appointed by the court to evaluate the defendant’s sanity, was in court observing Mrs. Duncan’s demeanor….
Her de-mean-er? Wonder what that is? “She had eleven husbands, Pinky. Gosh. Eleven husbands! If that’s not proof that she’s crazy, then I don’t know what is.”
Pinky purred.
Later that afternoon, I was lying on the front lawn with Pinky Lee, watching the clouds shape-shift through the air as I thought about what Mother had told me about Beth the previous night.
“She’s safe,” Mother had said. “I’m so relieved. We can’t have mentally ill people wandering around on the streets. It’s not safe for them. Thank God, she’s living with her sister in Los Angeles now, and she has a field social worker assisting her. Checking in with her every week.”
Beth’s safe? Great. But what about Tweety?
Stretching my arms and legs as far as I could reach, I made grass angels on the lawn and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood: a barking dog, rhythmic pounding of a hammer off in the distance, the melodic chords of Marilyn practicing the piano coming from across the street….
Pinky and I turned our heads simultaneously when we heard Daddy humming and singing, “Beep-beep, beep-beep. His horn went beep-beep-beep,” as he strutted down the driveway, pushing his new bright orange gas-powered lawn mower. He wheeled the mower to a stop at the edge of the lawn near where I was making the grass angels.
“Let’s get this baby fired up.” He gave me a big grin. “I’m thinking of calling it the ‘Mrs. D.’ since I used my overtime check to buy it.”
I got up from the grass and looked at the mower, its blades hidden under the shiny orange cover. I folded my arms across my chest. Pinky Lee hid under our matching orange station wagon in the driveway.
“I’ve been thinking about your story in the paper.” I twisted the tassel on the sleeve of my blouse. “You know, about the doctor from Mother’s hospital coming to court to see if Mrs. Duncan is crazy or not.”
“Yes…” Daddy said absently as he scanned the instruction manual for the mower and tossed it onto the driveway.
“What’s de-mean-er mean, anyway?”
“Demeanor? It means how she acts and what she looks like,” Daddy said. “Dr. Nash already evaluated her sanity at the hospital, but I guess he wanted to see Mrs. Duncan in action. Experience her firsthand, so to speak.”
“But she looks normal. She’s not going to get off, is she?”
Daddy hunched over the lawn mower and reached for the pull cord. “Stand back, Debby. This is dangerous business if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Wait,” I called out. “Do you think Mrs. Duncan is crazy?”
Daddy pushed his ball cap back on his head. “Like a fox.”
“But not mentally ill crazy, like Beth? Not officially crazy.”
“I’m no psychiatrist, but I think Mrs. Duncan is sane, all right. She knew exactly what she was doing when she had Olga murdered.” Daddy shrugged. “She’s devious, unrepentant, dangerous, a very convincing liar….”
“She looks normal in the newspaper pictures. You can’t tell she’s dangerous. Nice clothes, and no long black gloves or crazy blank face like Beth. But Beth’s… de-mean-or is terrible. She looks scary. Mother says she isn’t dangerous, just very, very sick.”
“Uh-huh, your mother knows these things.”
“Even though Beth killed Tweety?” I mumbled.
“Yeah, well… we really don’t know how Tweety died. And anyway, when Mrs. Duncan opens her mouth”—Daddy bent over and grabbed the cord—“her comportment, shall we say, changes.” He gave the little rope a tentative yank. Nothing happened. “Shit’s sake!”
I took a giant step backward. Mother came out onto the front porch, wiping her hands on a dishrag. “Be careful, Bob.” She glanced in my direction. “Get up here with me, Debby. Your father doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Daddy glared at her. He pulled on the little rope again, harder. The engine made a coughing sound and fell silent.
“Maybe you should get Gene over here,” Mother said. “Get some help.”
“Goddammit, I don’t need any help… just a little elbow grease.” Daddy planted his feet on the grass and bent his knees. He grabbed the end of the rope with both hands and yanked it with all of his might, grunting like a Russian weightlifter on Wide World of Sports. The engine roared to life.
I applauded wildly. “Yay, Daddy. You did it!”
“Watch your feet!” Mother yelled over the engine noise as Daddy and the mower glided effortlessly across the lawn.
Mother and I watched while Daddy made his first pass over the grass, his face set in steely concentration, his gaze riveted on the lawn. He stopped on the other side of the yard and scowled at the path he’d covered. The mower hadn’t cut a single blade of grass.
“You’re going to have to set the blades lower, Bob,” Mother shouted over the mower noise, “if you actually want to cut any grass.”
“I know… I know that!” Daddy yelled back. “This is just a little test run to check the engine.” He looked glumly at the mower before reluctantly hitting the off switch. The engine sputtered and died. Daddy turned toward me. “Get the wrench, Debby. It’s somewhere…” He made a big sweeping motion toward the house.
Daddy was polishing a spot on the mower with his handkerchief when I came back carrying two wrenches that I’d found on the floor in a corner of the garage. Mother was gone.
I handed him the smaller wrench first. He squinted as he turned it this way and that, then shook his head and tossed it into the grass. I handed him the bigger wrench. He smacked the palm of his hand with it a couple of times, nodded at me, and then bent down on one knee next to the mower. After much fumbling with the tool, he managed to lower the blades to a level barely off the ground.
“That ought to do it,” he muttered.
It took four pulls and a lot of bad words to get the engine restarted. I clapped again. A cloud of dust sprayed in all directions as the rotating blades dug into the grass. Daddy had to push the handle really hard to move the mower across the lawn.
After he’d gone only a few feet, there was a terrible clanging, grinding noise. The little wrench he’d tossed into the grass flew from under the mower and smacked his hand before landing in the flower bed. The engine stopped with a resounding thud.
Daddy rubbed a red spot on his hand. “Goddamn… orange… BITCH!”
Mother stepped back onto the porch. “Bob, that’s enough…. The neighbors…” She gazed at the small swath of gouged lawn he’d just finished mowing. “Looks like you got the only combination mower/plow in the neighborhood…. Cuts everything off just below ground level.”
Daddy leaned over the flower bed, pushing plant stems and leaves aside in all directions as he searched for the wrench. He glanced over his shoulder at the gouged lawn. “Goddamn grass killer. That stupid machine is a menace, just like the original Mrs. D.”
“Maybe it’s a bad sign, Daddy. Because you named it ‘the Mrs. D.’ ” I took another backward step as the mower’s engine cooled. “I think I hear it ticking….”
Finally, he straightened up holding the wrench and shook it. “Lucky I wasn’t killed when she flung this wrench at me…. Goddamn orange bitch.” His demeanor looked very bad.