The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [30]
The figure had black stick-like legs, a round, striped body, and a face shaped like the letter C. The inside of the C revealed row after row of sharp, pointed teeth—an open mouth, caught in an enraged, silent howl. Funny how her mother had detested the drawings back then. Now she was pulling them out from the attic and showing them off. But why had she drawn such a strange blank and fumbled for that one word? Alpine had been her home for over twenty years.
“Well, darling … what do you say?” her mother had asked, swinging her thick, chestnut-red hair, with its bold silver streaks, back from her face. “I thought you might be touched by the gesture.”
“I am. Thank you,” Charlotte replied as she tore her eyes away from the cartoon.
Disobeying her mother had never come easily to Charlotte. Her singing, for instance, had been reduced to a barely audible hum after her mother’s order to stop. But she did remember the forbidden trips to the attic that began after her sister died. The hours she’d spent idly talking to snapshots of relatives she’d never met. The one she liked best was of a pudgy, overdressed woman standing on a boardwalk by the sea. There was a giant Ferris wheel behind her. “My sister, Dottie, Orchard Beach, 1952,” it said on the back. Charlotte slipped it into her pants one afternoon and hid it in the pages of a book in her bedroom. The photo now sat in a silver frame next to her bed. It was along with these surreptitious visits to the attic after her sister’s death that Charlotte had also begun drawing the “C men.” Deliberately pushing the memory of that recurring horror with her sister out of her mind, she had dutifully thanked her mother before escorting her to a taxi. “I have a headache,” her mother announced, wearily. “I need to go to sleep.”
Her mother had suffered from migraines all her life. When she’d received the perfunctory rejection letter from Shinnecock Golf Club and the Union League in New York, she’d gone to bed for three days. “She’s in mourning,” her father had said, sarcastically. “Don’t go near her.”
The replay of her mother’s visit during her bath had left her so irritated and impatient, Charlotte decided to walk a few blocks before bed. Lacing up her Nikes and grabbing a Burberry parka, she locked the door and headed for the elevator. A fierce wind was blowing in from the river as she hit the street and walked down to Duane and Washington.
“Hey, Charlotte! Charlotte!” It was John, the homeless man. “Got a dollar? Got a dollar?” Not only was John accustomed to people looking straight through him, nobody listened to him, either. Maybe this was why he always repeated himself. Shuffling towards her with his shopping bag clutched against his chest, he was dressed in his usual uniform: khaki pants, a cloth coat, and a button-down Oxford shirt. When he put down his shopping bag, she smiled and passed him a ten. There was something positively patrician about John. Even the way he spoke, the way he said “Yah! Yah!” reminded her of George Plimpton.
Twenty-five minutes later, Charlotte snuggled in between her new Pratesi sheets and thought about John. Every day, rain or shine, he took the subway down from a shelter on 118th Street and hung around on the same corner. Why had he chosen this corner? What made it feel like home? Was he simply a creature of habit? The whole neighborhood, everyone who fed him and paid for his coffee and winter boots, wondered what had made him snap and begin living on the streets.
Just before dawn, Charlotte sat bolt upright, shivering, her body slick with sweat. She hadn’t had this nightmare in years. She was leaping over rooftops, her mouth open in a rictus-like O of fear, too scared to even scream. Her mother, dressed to kill in a twin set and pearls, was chasing after her, holding a kitchen knife.
18
The question was right there under “Just Asking” on Page Six of the Post. “Just Asking” was the IQ test of gossip. Salacious snippets of info about the behavior