The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo - Excerpt

8/6/2019 The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo - Excerpt

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

either are the product of the authors imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Roland Merullo

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,

an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

crownand the Crown colophon are registered trademarks

of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Merullo, Roland.

Talk funny girl : a novel / Roland Merullo.1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Self-realization in womenFiction. I. Title

PS3563.E748T35 2011

813'.54dc22 2011003328

ISBN 978-0-307-45292-4

eISBN 978-0-307-45294-8

printed in the united states of america

Book design by Donna Sinisgalli

Title page photography by Emily Lahteine

Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon

Jacket photography Ocean/Corbis

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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P r o l o g u e

Iam a grown woman now, married and rais-ing children, and happy enough most of thetime. Underneath that happiness, though, showing its face every now

and again, is a part of me still connected to a time when I was a girl

living with her parents in the New Hampshire hills. That girl was not

treated well, and when anyone is hurt like thatespecially a child

the hurt burrows down inside and makes a kind of museum there, with

images of the bad times displayed on every wall. Some people try to

forget the museum exists and keep their mind occupied with drink or

drugs or food, or by staying busy with work, or they chase one kind of

excitement after another, while the memories fester there in the dark.

I understand all that, and I dont lay a judgment, as we used to say,

over any of it. Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting

others, or for soaking in self-pity, or for a sharp anger that knifes up

through the surface whenever something reminds them of what hap-

pened long ago. Some people spend their lives trying never to do what

was done to them.

I have all those impulses in meanger and self-pity, the urge to

hide, and, sometimes, the urge to hurt. But there is a stronger, warmer

part of me and some courage and kindness too and a stubbornness


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2 Roland Meru l lo

a loving husband and to have children with him, but even when the

people close to you are caring and good, there are going to be times

when they say or do something that throws open the museum doors,pushes you in there, forces you to look.

My children are eleven and eight now, their lives different in so

many ways from the life I knew at that age. I had fear instead of dreams.

I was so much tougher than they are, and paid such a high price for that

toughness. Enormous as it was, I couldnt have found the anger inside

me with a flashlight and magnifying glass, but their anger is right there

on the surface and they knowsometimes too wellhow to express

it. There have been times when things theyve done or said, or forgot-

ten to do or say, have flung me back into the pastit happens to every

parent, I thinkand I reacted in ways they were confused or hurt by,

ways Im not proud of. Sometimes this has happened with my husband,

too, a man who wrestles with his own demons. If I could close down

the museum for good, or rip the pictures off the walls and burn them

in some kind of healing ceremony, I would do that. But something my

husband showed me a long time ago has given me a method of wearing

away at the foundations of the trouble, little by little, year after year, the

way water erodes stone. As part of my own healing, I decided, not long

ago, to open the doors and windows of the museum and let the light in.

I returned to the place I was raised, only twenty miles from where we

live now, and I walked the roads and went into the buildings, and talked

to some of the people I recognized and who remembered me. Moms

own private history project, the kids called it, but, of course, they

had no idea what I was really doing. It was more than a history project

and had nothing to do with nostalgia. It was my way of trying to stand

up to the worst memories, eye to eye, so that they wouldnt send their

poisons, through me, into my children.

The events Im going to describe here happened more than twenty

years ago. I was a different person then, the demons so much larger in

ld Whil I d t t d t b ti tl I


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The Talk -Funny G i r l 3

the main stream of society, I really did talk that way, and the people

around me really did behave that way. Though the pain of my upbring-

ing made me stronger, I cant say Im grateful, and I would never wishanything like it for any other child on this earth. At the same time I

dont let myself feel much self-pity. Hard things happen to people

thats the nature of the worldand, horrible as that can be, I believe

there has to be some purpose behind it all. The question isnt Why did

this happen to me? but What do I do with it? The past shouts at you,

the ugly words or actions echo down across the years. Youre walk-

ing through the museum with headphones on, listening to all that, your

children and husband nearby, the world asking you to grow up, clean

up, straighten out, pass on something good. What do you do?


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O n e

There are a lot of places I could begin thestory, and a lot of ways I could change afew details and make it easier to read. But Im after the truth herethe

truth is what heals youso Ill just begin where it seems right, on my

seventeenth birthday, and tell the story as it sits in my memory.

On the day I turned seventeen I went looking for a job. I was close

to finishing tenth grade then, a year behind where I should have been.

Classes let out just before lunch that day. I remember pretending to

myself it was in honor of my birthday, but it must have been for a

teachers meeting or a conference or something like that. I remember it

was warm for April in middle-north New Hampshire and that I stepped

out the schools front door into sunlight and saw the buses lined up in

the driveway, engines grumbling, yellow fenders marked with mud. I

should have just walked into town, but I needed time to get ready for

what I had to do, and so I stepped onto my bus with the other kids, sat

with my friend Cindy, and rode all the way back to the corner of Wal-

drup Road, near where my parents and I lived. Because I didnt want

to go home first, I hid my backpack in the trees there, tried to gather up

some courage, and then set off on foot back toward town along high-

way 112


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6 Roland Meru l lo

country highway was swollen with snowmelt, and the leaves from the

previous fall were matted and damp on the road shoulder. I went along

in my hand-me-down pants and sweater and tied-back chestnut-brownhair and made a promise to myself that I wouldnt go home without

having found a job. The night beforeit was their way of acknowl-

edging my birthdaymy parents told me I had to get what they re-

ferred to as full-pay work. Id worked part-pay for as long as I

could remember: mothers helper and babysitter for other families that

belonged to Pastor Schects church, and then cleaning the grease racks

and sweeping the floor at Emilys Dough Nuts until the chain doughnut

shop came to the town and sent Emilys out of business. All the money

from those jobs went to my parents, who did not work for either full

or part pay. My mother bought the food and cooked. My father cut our

stove wood, fished the stream behind our house, and sometimes was

able to sell the skins of animals he trapped in the woods in late winter.

Every month he received a disability check for back troubles he didnt

suffer from. But all that together wasnt really enough for us to live on,

even the way we lived, so they told me it was time to find real work. If

I had to quit school in order to help support the family, my mother said,

I wouldnt be the first person in the world to put up a sacrifice.

The blackflies hadnt come out yetstill too cold for themand

the trees hadnt gone into bud or blossom. Set along the north side

of the road stood two small wood-frame houses. When I returned to

make that walk again, on the same date in April, those houses were still

there and had worn-out American flags flying from their front porches,

snowmobiles in the yards, one rusted car, one pickup, a bow target left

over from hunting season. Just as they had years before, lumber trucks

rumbled down out of the hills loaded with ash, pine, hemlock, and oak,

and the sound echoed in the valley where the river ran. You could still

feel the hard fist of northern New England winter in the hills to either

side. I liked being outdoors, though, Ive always liked it. And, as a girl,

I j d th t lk i ll b i th h l did it


9/19


made me feel connected to the world of people, the more-or-less sane,

more-or-less normal world.

On that birthday walk into town the first place that offered anychance of work was C&P Welding. It has long been out of business

now, but in those days it was housed in a low, cement-block building

close beside the road, with a gravel lot out front. I knew I shouldnt

have, but I stopped in thereout of spite, I think, to upset my parents

and to show I wasnt afraid of the owner, Cary Patanauk, a snake of

a man. There had always been some unexplained trouble between Mr.

Patanauk and my father. Though I hadnt really met Mr. Patanauk be-

fore that day, Id seen him a few years earlier in the church we attended,

and Id heard about him often enough. I knew his nephew at school.

The Patanauk name was a kind of curse word in our house, and its

probably a mark of how foolish I was then, how nave in certain ways,

even at seventeen, how angry deep down inside, that I set foot in that

building at all.

There was an old-fashioned metal knocker on the door. In my

mind I can still see the coppery shine where peoples fingers had rubbed

away the blue-green tarnish. I lifted the knocker and let it fall. No one

answered. I waited, knocked again, thought I heard a voice, and pushed

the door open. Inside, there was a mess of gas cylinders, metal parts,

and tools, and Cary Patanauk stood at a wooden table mending what

looked like a tractor axle. The room smelled of oil and acetylene. Mr.

Patanauk closed down the blowtorch, lifted the welding mask, and

looked at me.

I come for a try for paying work, I said into the sudden silence,

because that was the way I spoke then, with a private, mixed-up gram-

mar that belonged to my father, and to his father, and to me. Even my

mother started to talk that way after shed been married to my father

for a while. My kids think Im joking when I reproduce that speech

now. No matter what I say, no matter what their father tells them, they

thi k th t t th l t I t b gg ti g


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8 Roland Meru l lo

Mr. Patanauks eyes went from my face to my chest and back to my

face again. You come for a try for paying work? he mimicked.

Yes. I could.You could what?

I looked away from him. Beside me hung a calendar, notes scrib-

bled on some of the days and, on the top half, a mostly naked woman

holding a welding torch across her middle.

You could what? Mr. Patanauk said a second time. I looked at

him and noticed that he hadnt shaved in several days. His pants were

held up with suspenders.

Any of a thing for pay.

He watched me. Your father and granddad talks of a that of a

way, too, he said in a voice as mean as smoke. There was a kind of

vapor surrounding him, a nastiness, a vulgar stink; the words seemed

to slide out of that.

I have a good liking for work.

I could give you lots of jobs, he told me after thinking about it

for a few seconds. Across the skin of his face crawled a kind of purplish

hope, or need, and it was mixed in with the sense that the world owed

him a debt. You could feel the anger in him, too, a quarter inch below the

surface. The way he used the torch seemed angry, the way he shut down

the flame, the way he stood with his arms drooping. Theres a lot of

things you could do for me, he said, out of that anger. But youd have

to not say a word about it to your crazy old man or your mother.

I couldnt not say on them.

Good money for it, you know, and you might have some fun.

I shook my head.

You wouldnt even have to talk right. You wouldnt even have to

talk at all.

I had, then, the nervous habit of bending my lips in between my

teeth and biting down on them. I did that. I shook my head. We were

t di g b bl fift f t f h th


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Mr. Patanauk let his eyes run over me one more time, top to middle

and back again, then with a jerk of his head he nodded the mask down

over his face and fired up the torch, and after a few seconds I realizedthe conversation was finished and I turned and went out the door.

A quarter mile beyond the welding shop stood a brown shingledhouse with a sagging roof and a sign out front: 112 store. Its still

there, though its been fixed up now, and painted a lighter color, and

they sell, along with a few groceries, toiletries, and lottery tickets, used

CDs and movies from a table at the back. It was the place my mother

shopped when my father wouldnt drive her into town. She complained

that prices were unfair at the 112, and she made up for that by steal-

ing things in small amountsa can of baked beans, a box of tampons,

one of what she called the fold-papers she liked to read. The young

owner of the store then, Mrs. Jensen, never caught her in any of those

thefts, or maybe only pretended never to catch her, and always treated

me with a reserved country kindness. No doubt she had some idea what

went on in our family, but probably she feltas most people felt in

those parts and still dothat what happened in our house wasnt any

of her business, that it was part of life, that Id survive it the way so

many other children did. On that day she greeted me with a pleasant

voice and when I asked about work she told me things were slow just

then, money was tight all around. But I could stop back in a few months

if things seemed to have turned a little for the better. She looked at my

sweater and pants and sneakers. Are you hungry, Margie? she asked.

I have some muffins I made this morning and theyre not going to sell.

I could give you one, and some milk if you wanted.

Im for thanking you, but no today.

You sure?

I nodded, stomach empty. Todays a day for to finding work.

W ll g d l k th


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10 Roland Meru l lo

Next along the route was Warner and Sons Gravel and Stone,where Zeke Warner took my name and said they had nothing there for

seventeen-year-old girls unless they happened to know how to drive a

dump truck, but if something came up hed be sure to get in touch. Did

I have a phone number I could leave?

We arent to have one, I told him. Pastor Schect isnt liking for

us to have on a phone or the TV or to curse.

Well, the not-cursings probably a good idea. I know your aunt

Elaine. Ill contact you through her if something comes, or Ill mention

it to your father if I see him at Weedons. Okay?

I thanked him and went along.

On that afternoon I walked all the way into town and back, just

under eight miles. Fourteen or fifteen places of business I made myself

step intoArt and Pats Diner, the Sewing Shop, the chain doughnut

placeand the answer was the same in all of them. It was a bad time

for the country, especially bad where we lived. Along the Honey River,

which ran through town and fed the Connecticut, the concrete of the

bridge abutments had broken away in places, showing rusting reinforcing

rod. There were men in old clothes and dirty hats fishing from the span.

On the street corners there were knots of kids my own agesome of

them turned and looked at me as I passedsmoking cigarettes and spit-

ting, dressed dark and shabby, slanting their eyes around as if any min-

ute somebody in a car with out-of-state plates would drive up and hand

them a small package of delight. The paper mills and machine shops

industries that town had been built onwere closing, one after the next.

People were losing their houses, and a sucking quicksand of debt was

forming along the banks of the river where the factories had been. Who

was going to have extra money to pay a seventeen-year-old girl?

Even used to walking as I was, that trip exhausted me. In the cold

d sk I fo nd m b kp k b hind th b h t nd s t off on th l st


13/19


were black and the stream was loud and I had to stay near the edge

of the road where the mud wasnt deep. I saw our mailbox, tilted at a

crooked angle on its post, and then, beyond my fathers stacks of stovewood, a square of yellow light that was our kitchen window.

My mother was sitting on the counter with a bottle of cheap wine

beside her and a mug of it between her legs. The ceiling light made

shadows near her eyes. Damn better say you found something, you

Majie, she said. She and my father were the only ones who called me

by that name, MAY-gee. No one calls me that now.

My mother took a drink from the mug. I watched the muscles work

in her thin neck and her legs jiggle as if small animals inside the jeans

were trying to break free. Her hair, dark as used motor oil, had fallen

loose and hung down along the sides of her jaw. She had full lips like I

do and a straight small nose and pretty green eyes buried in the shad-

ows and in webs of wrinkles. If we had a little money and she fell into a

certain mood shed buy herself a bottle of Hammonds Ros and sit for

half a day on the counter or the couch, her shoulders hunched and her

eyes cast down, and shed drink her way through most of the bottle.

There was something methodical about the way she did it, something

brutally efficient, as if she was feeling her way back, decision by de-

cision, across an unlit landscape mined with regret. There was some-

thing quietly terrifying about her when she drank; her regret had a

murderous quality. People told me then, and have told me since then,

that my mother was very attractive as a girl and grew up in a family

that wasnt desperately poor. She had a stepsistermy aunt Elaine

seven years older, and a stepfather who worked in a hardware store

and had one wife and then another who died young. After the second

of those deathsmy grandmothersa kind of wildness broke loose

from inside my mother. Against the advice of every relative and friend,

she started riding around with the man who would become my father,

Curtis John Richards. Curtis John was known for swan-diving from

th t l dg i t fi f t i t th d li bi g i t


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12 Roland Meru l lo

bridge at night to mark his initials there in gold paint. C j R,you can

still see them. He struggled in school, and had a father who taught him

how to fight and drink and chew tobacco and not much beyond that. Hepronounced his last name as if it were French Canadianit wasnt

and that probably seemed exotic to my mother. He had a motorcycle,

which she loved, and a future painted in the bleakest of northern New

England colors, which she couldnt see. He was twenty-six. My mother

married him a day after she turned sixteen and no longer needed her

stepfathers consent. She didnt speak about it very much, but from the

one-or-two-line comments she passed down to me over the years, I un-

derstood that she liked being married, at least in the early going. In that

part of America, in those years, among the girls she called her friends,

it counted for something to be able to say the words my husband and

to show off a real gold ring. In the warm weather, she and Curtis John

liked to go riding in the hills. When it was cold, she told me, We drunk

and screwed.

Having a child had not been part of their plans, if they had any

plans, and once I was born, what little chance they had for a prosper-

ous, peaceful life seemed to evaporate like river splash on hot stone.

My mother was nineteen and a half when I came into the world. She

didnt like to get out of bed in the night to mix formula. She didnt

like people telling her to give up cigarettes. She didnt like changing

diapers, or making regular appointments with the pediatrician, or tak-

ing the stroller to a place where there were sidewalks and meandering

around with other young mothers, discussing the joys and troubles of

parenthood. She hated having to give up the motorcycle rides, and she

didnt appreciate the change in her sex life that having a baby in the

house brought on.

At the time I was born, my father had work in a small plant that

made hand tools. His parents had never lived together; his mother

died when he was ten. After that, his father, Dad Paul, raised him in

th t t b th g t ti t ght hi b t t


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The Talk -FunnyG i r l 13

the start Dad Paul liked my motherhe had a big side of him, my

father used to sayso as a grand present to mark the birth of a grand-

child he gave his son and daughter-in-law his four-room camp ontwelve acres in the woods. The camp had been used for hunting and

was not much more than a cabin, poorly insulated, cold in winter, but

out of sight of any neighbors, and the privacy suited my father. His

own fathers gift was something he mentioned, with great pride, dozens

of times over the years, even long after Dad Paul had been sent away.

We moved into the camp just before I turned one. When I was two,

my fathers place of work closed down. After a few weeks, he found,

at a lower salary, a job in another small plant where they made plas-

tic picture frames and TV remotes. And then something happened

what, exactly, Ive never been able to find out. There was some kind of

trouble, an accident or a fight. My father told me once that he d taken a

fall and hurt his back, but I dont think that was the true story. After a

long stretch of legal squabbling and a series of consultations with doc-

tors, the company let him retire on what he referred to with some pride

as part but permanent disable. In order to keep the checks coming,

he had to pretend to be physically unable to do any kind of work, so

he stayed in bed for a few weeks, carved himself a cane to use when he

went out in public, and parked in the handicapped spaces whenever he

thought he could get away with it. After the accident, though, if thats

what it was, trips to town became rare for him; except for a couple of

friends hed had enough of people by that point in his life, and he pre-

ferred to spend his time alone in the woods, coming home only to eat

dinner and sleep. Once every few weeks wed all go into town, or wed

go to the quarry for a swim on very hot days, but for the most part my

father kept himself away from other people.

Mister Warner told he might have a work to give, I said to my

mother. I set the backpack down at my feet.

She squeezed the mug between her thighs and made a drunken,

i h d f Id b f h d d f ti It


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14 Roland Meru l lo

I nodded and looked away.

Look on me in my eyes, you Majie you. . . . Might?

Probly will. Next week he could of.You lie maker. Probly dint even go.

I went.

Your dad int gonna like that mightyou said.

Where is he?

Fishin the bridge. Mightint gonna work for him today, give at

his mood, Ill lay cash money.

Hell to know I went.

Light in a ciggo for me, Majie.

I dont like to light in, Ma. Im tired. I

Light in or Ill go douse ya, no matter how big you think you are

now. I can still take you, too, Ill show you some time on that.

I dont want being doused. I dont want fighting.

She made a witchs laugh, a sound with little sparklers in it, alcohol

and smoke, a ribbon of meanness winding it up in a bow. God douses

the bad, she said. Light in one then, girl.

I went to the cupboard where she kept the carton of Primes, took

down and opened a fresh pack, tapped out a cigarette, and lit it for her,

pulling the smoke into my mouth and blowing it out as quickly as I

could. Cigarettes tasted like dirt to meI hate the smell of them even

nowlike the dust raised from cars passing on Waldrup Road at the

end of summer. My mother watched me smoke, one puff . . . two . . .

three . . . then reached out a hand that was thin and shaking and let me

pass the cigarette over to her. She kept her eyes on me while she drew

a deep drag. She held the smoke as long as she could, shot it out her

nostrils, and smiled. Pa might douse ya, though.

I dont want to being doused. Call on Mr. Warner if you cant

believe me. Call on Mr. Patanauk.

Hah. Your father would cut me on up if I even spoken the mans

F i k h i A d d t t gi th gi l


17/19

The Talk -FunnyG i r l 15

room and lay facedown on my sagging bed. I closed my eyes and

thought, for the millionth time, about finding a way to leave. But, be-

yond a few coins in my pants pocket, I had no money. How would I runaway? Hitchhike? After what had been happening in those hills then?

I thought of Aunt Elaine, and the one time Id tried to run away, and

what happened afterward. I thought of the birthday gift shed just sent,

and was surprised and happy that my parents had let me keep it. I fell

asleep thinking about that and was awakened by my fathers knocking.

The door was open. He knocked on the casing, as he always did,

in bursts of three. Rap. Rap. Rap.Again. Again. Again. He stood there

staring and knocking until I sat up, rubbed my face, and walked over

to him. Without saying anything, he took hold of my ponytail and

marched me through the main room of the house, where the table had

been set for supper, and out the door. Full darkness had fallen by then,

but my father went across the yard without a misstep. Three douses,

three douses, he chanted quietly as he went. And then: For be the

lazy girl not to finding the job, three douses, she say.

You dont to have to, Pa. I did and tried hard.

Have to is not wanting to. God say. Your mother say. Pastor say

penance for keeping children on to the good.

When I started to speak again he tugged once, hard, on my hair.

My father was small but very strong. It made no sense to try to get

away. When we reached the stream he turned me with his hands on

my shoulders and made me stand facing the house, arms at my sides.

He took a metal bucket he kept there for that purpose, filled it three

times, and three times poured the watercold as ice at that time of

yearover my head. I forced myself not to make a sound. When it

was finished, he tapped me on the shoulder and I hurried across the

dark yard and back into the house. I shut the bathroom door, wrung

out my clothes, and took a hot showerfive minutes on the small plas-

tic timer my mother had found at the dump and my parents kept on the

b k f th t il t th I d d i th i f fl l j


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16 Roland Meru l lo

socks. I said a prayer for forgiveness, wiped up the water on the floor,

hung my wet clothes over the shower curtain rod, and went and sat

with my mother and father for the blessing.My father hadnt had any luck fishing, so that night we had the last

of his venison sausage, canned beans, two slices each of white bread,

and lemonade made from powder. My parents talked a littleabout

money, about how high the stream might get with the melted snow. I

listened. When they told me to, I stood up and cleared the table, then

went into my room and closed the door almost all the way and did my

schoolwork. I liked the work. I remember, at that point, we were study-

ing how people in Africa lived, and I liked reading about the types of

food they ate, and the way the families would sit around a fire at night

telling stories. Mr. Anders said some of them lived in tribes, the way

the Indians had lived in America, and although they didnt have cars

and television, they spent a lot of time with their families and out in

nature and some of them had happy lives.

When Id stayed in my room as long as I thought my parents would

allow, I walked back out into the main room. I could sense they were

in a different moodwhich usually happened after theyd given me

a penance. It was the way they sat at opposite ends of the couch, my

mother, half-sober by then, reading a fold-paper, my father staring at

the floor, as if lost in a pleasant memory. They raised their eyes to me

and had nothing bad to say. I went to tell them good night. My mother

kissed me on the mouth with her smoky, winey breath. My father didnt

touch me, but he looked into my eyes and seemed to be wondering if

there was any lasting hurt from the dousing. In the lamplight I could

see a few short bristles of gray mixed into the brick-colored hairs of

his beard. He said, Tell a prayer for us and for Pastor Schect on your

knees in there now, girl.

So I went into my room and did that, ran my hands over the soft

cloth of the birthday pajamas, and in a few minutes I was asleep.


19/19
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The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo - Excerpt