Calf Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Andrea Kleine

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” song lyrics by George M. Cohan, 1906

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, book by L. Frank Baum, 1899, George M. Hill Company

  “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” song lyrics by Samuel Francis Smith, 1831

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kleine, Andrea, 1970-

  Calf: A Novel / Andrea Kleine.

  pages cm

  1. Hinckley, John W.—Fiction. 2. Socialites—Fiction. 3. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 4. Biographical fiction. I. Title.

  PS3611.L454C35 2015

  813›.6—dc23

  2015009332

  Cover design by Faceout Studios

  Interior design by Elyse Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

  Soft Skull Press

  An imprint of COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.softskull.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-677-3

  FOR MY SISTER AND MY BROTHER

  Contents

  Part One

  Hail to the Redskins

  This is Reagan Country

  The Game of Life

  Away to the West

  The Road Through the Forest

  The Council with the Doctor

  Part Two

  Friendship Heights

  The Ordinary Day

  The Movie

  Calf

  Stalker

  Land of the Lost

  On the Road

  Part Three

  The National

  To See the Wizard

  The Visit

  The Garden

  America (The Frontier)

  Although a work of fiction, this novel is inspired by two converging events: John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, and Leslie deVeau’s murder of her ten-year-old daughter. Both events took place in Washington, DC, between 1981–1982. Hinckley and deVeau, both found not guilty by reason of insanity, later became lovers while patients at St. Elizabeths Hospital. DeVeau’s daughter was my friend. She was killed on the eve of my twelfth birthday party.

  “Well, boys, your troubles are over now; mine have just begun.”

  —ABRAHAM LINCOLN, leaving for the White House in 1860

  PART ONE

  HAIL TO THE REDSKINS

  Tammy’s mother liked to tell people that her daughter was conceived the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and was born nine months later when word got out that the Beatles had officially broken up. Tammy didn’t exactly understand that story, nor the part about “It’s a good thing I didn’t go to Woodstock.” Tammy was born in 1970 so it was easy for her to keep track of how old she was. She would be eleven in 1981. She would be twelve in 1982. In 1988 she would be eighteen, and in the year 2000 she would be thirty. On December 7, 1980, one month after Reagan appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the caption, “A fresh start,” Tammy was ten and a half years old and the contents of her life were packed into boxes filling a U-Haul truck and her mother’s station wagon with the faded green-and-white “Re-Elect Carter/Mondale” bumper sticker on its rear end.

  Tammy used to live outside Washington, DC, on the Virginia side. Now she was going to live inside the city, inside the Beltway, on the edge of a nice neighborhood called Friendship Heights. Tammy could tell the new house was on the edge because it was so close to the big street, Wisconsin Avenue, where a Sears department store took up the entire block, and a department store clearly marked the border of something.

  The new house had flat green carpeting on the first floor like a miniature golf course. Tammy’s mother didn’t like carpeting because Steffi had asthma and carpets attract dust and dust causes asthma. Steffi had to sleep with rubber sheets under her regular sheets because of dust, although Tammy liked to tell people it was really because Steffi wet the bed. Tammy’s mother and Nick pulled up the mossy carpet and rolled it across the floor until it was just a dusty gray tube. They carried it on their shoulders, out the back door, and dumped it in the alley.

  The new house was old. Tammy and Steffi had new bedrooms connected by a separator door. The separator door had windows and looked like a door that led to the outside. The smaller room used to be a terrace and the previous owner had converted it. Tammy was two years older than Steffi so she got first choice of the new rooms. Tammy’s bed and dresser were already moved into the bigger room when she realized that Steffi would have to walk through her room in order to get in or out of the smaller room and that it was going to be annoying. Tammy knew it was too late to switch and she wished she had figured that out beforehand.

  The new house was full of roaches. Tammy killed three in her bedroom while unpacking boxes of books.

  Now that their mother had a job again, Tammy and Steffi were each given a key to wear on a string around their necks. Their mother decided they didn’t need a baby-sitter anymore; the girls could take care of themselves. No one would be home when they got out of school, so their mother and Nick made lots of rules. They were not allowed to watch TV during the day. They were never allowed to watch TV in the living room, which was reserved for adults only. They had another TV in a separate kids’ room in the back of the house. Tammy’s and Steffi’s keys were to the back door; the front door lock was too complicated for them. Tammy and Steffi would have to walk Hugh to his preschool in the mornings and baby-sit him in the afternoons. They would switch turns every other day and whose turn it was would be written down on the dry-marker board in the kitchen.

  The next morning Steffi was sick. She was always sick. Sometimes she faked it and sometimes she really was sick. She always had a lot of missed days marked off on her report card. Steffi was lying on the sofa in the living room watching I Love Lucy reruns. If someone was sick, they were allowed to watch TV during the day, and in the living room.

  At the new school Tammy waited on a plastic turquoise-colored chair in the office while her mother filled out forms and corrected the confused secretary about her last name, which was different from Tammy’s last name. Her mother had first changed it when she married Tammy’s dad. Then they got divorced in 1975, when Tammy was five and Steffi was three, and her mother changed it back to her maiden name. Then she married Nick about a year later in 1976, when Tammy was six and Steffi was four, and changed it to Nick’s last name. This confused everybody and she got mail with all sorts of names on it.

  Tammy thought December was a really dumb time to start a new school. She thought it was a better idea to take the rest of the year off and start fresh in January. Her mother said, “It doesn’t work that way,” but she didn’t give a real answer. So Tammy sat in the school office, like a kid who had gotten in trouble, while her mother registered her for the fifth grade and Steffi for the third grade. Hugh was only four years old. His feet didn’t reach the floor. He swung them back and forth between the silver chair legs as he chewed on the brown string that was supposed to tie the hood of his coat under his chin. Hugh was named after someone in Nick’s family whom Tammy had never met. His last name was also different from Tammy’s.

  Tammy put it together that they had to sell the old house because of the divorce. Before they moved, Tammy had accidentally picked up the phone while her mother was talking to her dad. She knew she wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop, but she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and listened anyway. Her dad said something like, “L
ook, hon, I let it slide for a long time because of the girls. But it’s been almost four years. You married the guy. Enough’s enough.”

  When they were done in the office, the school secretary walked Tammy down the hall to her new classroom. The fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. William, was old, maybe not as old as a grandmother, but definitely older than a mother. She had short, curly hair, the kind that had been set in curlers overnight. Yellow cutout construction-paper ribbons were taped to the windowpanes and on a sectioned-off corner of the blackboard were written the words “The Hostages – Day 400.” Mrs. William rummaged around in her desk drawer and handed Tammy a questionnaire. Tammy looked down at the purple mimeographed handwriting and realized everyone in the class was staring at her. She got that shaky feeling she usually got right before she had to throw up.

  My name is _________________________

  Please call me _______________________

  Things I like: ________________________

  Things I hate: ________________________

  This year in school ____________________

  For a moment, Tammy felt a sense of comfort because she recognized the questionnaire from the book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which she had read over the summer. She had read almost all of the Judy Blume books, except Forever, the sex book. She wondered for a second if this was a pop quiz to see if she had read the book. Maybe she was supposed to fill in the same answers as Margaret and say she hated religious holidays. Or maybe it was just the teacher’s way of proving she knew what kids read.

  Tammy forgot to write in cursive the way you were supposed to on all official school papers once you were past the third grade. She couldn’t think of anything to write for “This year in school,” so she wrote what Margaret wrote in the book: “I want to have fun.” It wasn’t exactly copying because Tammy wanted to have fun too. Besides, she wasn’t 100 percent sure if she was supposed to write her own answers or what was in the book, and she didn’t want to start off in the new school with a bunch of wrong answers. She added “the smell of rain” to her likes, just to cover her bases. She handed her completed questionnaire back to Mrs. William who motioned for Tammy to take an empty desk. Before Tammy got her butt in the chair, the teacher started reading her answers out loud to everyone in class.

  My name is Tammy

  Please call me Tammy

  Things I like: to read, draw, salami, the smell of rain

  Things I hate: my sister, my brother, cleaning my room

  This year in school I want to have fun

  “She likes salami,” one boy said, wiggling his eyebrows at her. “Big, fat salami.” Another one said, “Rain smells like cat piss.” And a boy wearing a T-shirt that said, I’m not a tourist, I live here! Washington, DC, started cracking up. Mrs. William didn’t hear them. She wrote the date, December 8, 1980, on the blackboard and changed the chalked 400 to 401 in the hostage square. Then everyone stood up and faced the flag perched in the corner and began to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. After “with liberty and justice for all” a skinny boy sat down at the piano and the class launched into a rowdy round of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” with a few extra beats added on.

  You’re a grand old flag,

  You’re a high-flying flag,

  And forever in peace may you wave.

  Rah! Rah! Rah!

  It was the row of all boys who started the Rah! Rah! add-ons with their fists raised, punching the air. When the song was over, Tammy was about to sit back down, but Mrs. William said that since the Redskins had won their game on Sunday against the San Diego Chargers, they would sing “Hail to the Redskins.” Tammy didn’t know the words so she just stood there while everyone else sang the song, which sounded a lot like “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Mrs. William explained that they sang that song whenever the Redskins won, and sometimes they sang it even if they lost, if the class thought they had played a good game.

  There was no cafeteria like there had been in Tammy’s old school. Here all the kids ate at their desks during lunchtime without teacher supervision. The boy wearing the I’m not a tourist shirt and another boy wearing a Solidarność T-shirt stuffed lunchmeat into Tammy’s thermos mug.

  “Ignore him, he’s gross,” said the girl sitting next to Tammy. She picked out the lunchmeat, now soaked with red Kool-Aid, and flung it back across the aisle. The boys ducked out of the way of the flying bologna and it landed on the floor with a wet smack.

  “I’m Gretchen,” the girl said. She was wearing jeans and a striped sweater and her long hair was clipped back with ribbon barrettes. Tammy thought she was the prettiest girl in class even though she had braces. Gretchen scooted her chair up to Tammy’s desk and gave her the dirt on everyone in class. Gretchen said she was the smartest girl in the fifth grade. Tammy was about to ask her how she knew that when Gretchen cut in and said that she always scores way above grade level on standardized tests. “And besides that,” Gretchen said, “it’s just known.”

  Gretchen gestured around the room with her sandwich. Monique was the tallest girl in class. She was half Korean and half something else and almost as smart as Gretchen, and also lived on the same block as Gretchen. Heather was the second tallest girl. She had curly hair and big bones. It was rumored that she had gotten her period in the fourth grade. Someone said she brought maxi pads to school in a brown paper bag so it looked like part of her lunch, and that one time she didn’t have any pads so she wadded up toilet paper and stuck it in her underwear. She lived practically next door to school and her backyard ran up against the schoolyard fence. Olga was Russian. She wore panty hose and spoke with an accent. Gretchen thought she was held back a grade because she was Russian. Nobody in class liked her.

  During the recess period after lunch Tammy’s class had to play Circle Dodge. They started out with half of the kids inside the circle and half on the outside. Once someone on the inside got hit, they had to move to the outside. It was better in the beginning when there were lots of people in the middle of the circle and everyone bonded together and there was a chance you could hide behind someone. If you were one of only a few people left, it became personal. They were going to get you.

  Olga was terrorized during the game. Gretchen started off a chant of “Down-with Russ-sha, down-with Russ-sha” until Olga left the circle in tears. Once she was gone the chant changed to “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.” The teachers smoked cigarettes a safe distance away and did nothing about it.

  After the bell rang at three o’clock, Tammy picked Hugh up from his day care, which was right next door to her school and used the same playground. When she got there Hugh was wearing a blue shower cap on his head. The woman at the day care gave Tammy a note in an envelope and said to give it to her parents. Tammy knew what it meant. It meant Hugh had lice. He had come home from day care this way several times before. Tammy’s mother would make all three kids go through the delousing treatment of sitting with insecticide on their heads while a kitchen timer ticked away twenty minutes of metallic clicks. Meanwhile, everything was thrown into the laundry and washed with insecticide detergent. What couldn’t be thrown in the wash was sprayed. The whole house would smell of gross chemicals. Tammy’s mother would be forced to call the other mothers and tell them her kids had lice and that they should check their kids because they played together. The other mothers would react with “Oh no, not my child” and not check. Then everyone would get reinfected.

  The day-care woman looked at Tammy like she didn’t think Tammy was old enough to be in charge of her own brother. People were always giving Tammy looks like that. It wasn’t that Tammy looked young for her age, but she always found herself getting those kind of looks, usually when her mother or Nick asked her to do something like return meat to the grocery store without a receipt, or explain to a teacher that they tore up some school form because what they did for a living and how much money they made wasn’t any of the school’s business. But today Tammy knew the look meant she was gross. It wasn’t a good thing for Hugh
to get lice on his first day of day care. The woman probably thought he had it beforehand. She probably thought Tammy had it too.

  “Let’s go,” Tammy said and tugged on Hugh’s sleeve to get them out of there.

  When they got outside Tammy tried to put Hugh’s hood over the shower cap so no one from her school would see it, but Hugh squirmed away from her and wouldn’t let her tie the string under his chin and Tammy didn’t want to touch Hugh’s head and get his lice. She led Hugh around the long way, behind the Sears department store and away from the kids in her class hanging out in front of the school.

  It was drizzling when they got to the first intersection. A minute later it was raining. Tammy and Hugh didn’t have any umbrellas or raincoats because they hadn’t been unpacked yet.

  “Why did we move?” Hugh asked. He hadn’t said anything since Tammy picked him up. Now he pulled his hood over his head because of the rain.

  “I think because of the divorce,” Tammy said.

  “What was the divorce?”

  “When Mom was married to my dad.”

  “Do you think we’ll move back?” Hugh asked. Tammy had to stop every ten steps or so and let him catch up because his legs were so short. She also had to wait for him at every intersection and hold his hand.

  “Probably not,” she said. “We have to live here now.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We just have to.”

  They found their way back to their new house, which was on the corner of Bemis and 43rd Streets according to the map Tammy’s mother had made for her showing the way home from school. When they got to their corner, Nick was coming out of the front door. He and her mother had taken the day off from work to unpack and run errands. Tammy told Hugh to play in the yard. Nick heard her and yelled, “Why are you telling him to play outside? It’s raining! Are you crazy?” Tammy didn’t want to say anything because she was afraid it would make Nick yell more. But Nick was glaring at her and waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the mud squishing around her sneakers. Nick said, “Go inside before you both get sick,” and walked over to the car.