Holly

July 27, 2021

KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH, reads the sign over the group shots of the school children who came here to bowl in the days before Covid made an end to such outings. Holly looks around to make sure she’s not observed. Darren—the young man now doing Cary Dressler’s job—is leaning beside the beer taps, studying his phone. Althea Haverty is back in her office. Holly is afraid the picture she wants may be glued to the wall, but it’s on a hook. She worries that nothing will be written on the back, but there is, and neatly printed: 5th Street Middle School Girls, May 2015.

Holly puts the picture back on its hook, and then—because she’s Holly—carefully straightens it. A dozen girls in dark purple shorts, which Holly recognizes as the 5th Street Middle PE uniform. Three rows, four girls in each. They are sitting cross-legged in front of one of the lanes. In the middle row, smiling, is Barbara Robinson, topped by the medium-length afro she wore back then. She would have been twelve, a sixth grader if Holly’s not mistaken. Cary Dressler isn’t in the photo, he’s not in any of the KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH photos, but if he started working at eleven, when the Strike Em Out opened, he would have been on duty when the kids came in.

Holly goes out to her car, barely noticing the heat and for once not wanting a cigarette. She gets the air conditioning cranking and finds the photo she took of the Golden Oldies, the one that features team captain Hugh Clippard and Cary holding up the trophy. She sends it to Barbara with a brief message: Do you remember this guy?

With that done, the little nicotine bell begins to ring. She lights up, places her portable ashtray on the console, and gets rolling. It’s time to start knocking on doors. Starting with Hugh Clippard’s.

The Victorians on the graceful downhill curve of Ridge Road are nice, but the ones on Laurel Close deeper into Sugar Heights are nicer. If, that is, one’s definition of nice includes not just expensive but really expensive. Holly couldn’t care less. As far as she’s concerned, if the appliances in her apartment work and the windows don’t leak, all is fine; a groundskeeper (or a crew of them) would just be an annoyance. There is such a fellow outside of the Clippard residence, which is a Tudor with a big, velvety lawn. The groundskeeper is mowing the grass as she pulls in at the curb.

Holly thinks, A new millionaire parks and watches a man on a riding mower clip the Clippards’ grass.

She calls Hugh Clippard’s number. She’s prepared to leave a message, but he answers and listens while Holly gives a brief version of her interest in Cary Dressler.

“What a great young man!” Clippard exclaims when she finishes. He is, Holly will discover, an exclamatory sort of fellow. “Happy to talk to you about him. Come on around back. My wife and I are out by the pool.”

Holly pulls into the driveway and gives the groundskeeper a wave. He gives her a return flick and keeps on trucking. Or mowing. For the life of her Holly can’t see what there is to mow. To her the grass already looks like the surface of a freshly vacuumed billiard table. She takes her iPad—it has a bigger screen for the picture she wants to show Clippard—and walks around the house, pausing to peek into a dining room with a table that looks long enough to seat a football team (or a bowling league).

Hugh Clippard and his wife are on matching loungers in the shade of a vast blue umbrella. The pool, the same shade of blue, isn’t Olympic size, but it’s no kiddie pool, either. Clippard is wearing sandals and tight-fitting red trunks. He sees her and bounces up. His belly is flat and rippled with a modified sixpack. His hair is long and white, slicked back sleek and wet against his skull. Holly’s first impression is that he’s seventy. When he gets close enough to shake hands, she sees that he’s quite a bit older, but in awesome shape for a Golden Oldie.

He grins at her hesitation to take his hand, showing perfect white teeth that probably didn’t come cheap. “We’re both vaccinated, Ms. Gibney, and we plan to get the boosters as soon as the CDC approves them. May I assume you have also had the jab?”

“Yes.” Holly shakes his hand and lowers her mask.

“This is my wife, Midge.”

The woman under the big umbrella is at least twenty years younger than Clippard, but not in such sculpted shape. There’s a little round bulge under her one-piece bathing suit. She takes off her sunglasses, gives Holly a desultory wave with them, then returns to her paperback, which is titled, not very subtly, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

“Come on in the kitchen,” Clippard says. “It’s sweltering out here. You okay, Midge?”

The only answer is another desultory wave. This time without looking up. She clearly doesn’t give a f*ck.

The kitchen—reached through glass sliders—is about what Holly expected. The fridge is a Sub-Zero. The clock over the granite counter is a Perigold. Clippard pours them each a glass of iced tea and invites her to tell him in more detail about why she’s here. She does, touching on Bonnie—the Jet Mart connection—but focusing on Cary.

“Did he say anything to you about his plans? Confide in any way? I’m asking because Ms. Haverty said you guys were his favorite league to bowl with.”

Holly doesn’t expect any help from his answer. There might be something, never say never and all that, but one look at Midge Clippard has told her that she’s not the old woman Imani McGuire saw cleaning out Ellen Craslow’s trailer.

“Cary!” Clippard exclaims, shaking his head. “He was a hell of a good guy, I can tell you that much, and he could roll a ball, too!” He raises a finger. “But he never took advantage. He always matched his skills to those of the teams we bowled against.”

“How often did he substitute in?”

“Pretty often!” Clippard adds a chuckle that is in its own way exclamatory. “They don’t call us the Golden Oldies for nothing! Someone was usually out with a strained back, pulled hammy, stiff neck, some darn old thing. Then we’d yell for Cary and give him a round of applause if he could roll in with us. He wasn’t always able to, but he usually managed. We liked him and he liked us. Want to hear a secret?”

“I love secrets.” This is true.

Hugh Clippard lowers his voice to a near-whisper that is exclamatory in its own way. “Some of us used to buy weed from him! He didn’t always have great stuff, but it was usually good stuff. Small Ball wouldn’t touch it, but most of us weren’t averse to a joint or a bowl. Back then it wasn’t legal, you know.”

“Who’s Small Ball?”

“Roddy Harris. We called him that because he rolled with a ten-pounder. Most of us used twelves or fourteens.”

“Was Mr. Harris allergic to marijuana?”

“No, just crazy!” Clippard shouts, and bursts out laughing. “A good guy and a decent bowler, but nutty as a fruitcake! We also called him Mr. Meat! Roddy makes that Atkins guy look like a vegetarian! Claims meat restores brain cells and certain vegetable products, cannabis included, destroys them.”

Clippard stretches and the sixpack ripples, but she sees wrinkles encroaching on the insides of his arms. Time, she thinks, really is the avenger.

“Gosh, this takes me back! Most of these guys are gone! When I started with the Oldies, I was teaching at Bell College, living downtown and day-trading on the side. Now I’m in the investment business full-time, and as you can see, business has been good!” He sweeps his arm around, presumably indicating the kitchen with its high-priced appliances, the backyard pool, perhaps even the younger wife. Who’s not quite young enough to be called a trophy wife, Holly gives him credit for that.

“Trump is an idiot and I’m glad he’s gone, dee-lighted, the guy couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight, but he was good for the markets. More iced tea?”

“No, thank you. This is fine. Very refreshing.”

“As to your question, Ms. Gibney, I can’t remember Cary ever talking to me about plans to leave town or change jobs. I may have forgotten something he said about those things, this goes back six, seven, even nine years I guess, but that young man seemed perfectly happy to me. Crazy about the movies and always riding that noisy little moped of his. You say someone found it in Deerfield Park?”

“Yes.”

“Crazy! Hard to believe he’d leave it behind! That was his trademark!”

“May I show you a picture? You’ll have seen it before—it’s hanging in the Bowlaroo.” She calls it up on her iPad. Clippard bends over it.

“Winter Championship, right,” he says. “Those were the days! Haven’t won it since, but last year we came close.”

“Can you identify the men in the picture? And do you by any chance have their addresses? And phone numbers?”

“Memory challenge!” Clippard cries. “Let’s see if I’m up to it!”

“May I record on my phone?”

“Knock yourself out! This is me, of course, and this is Roddy Harris, also known as Small Ball and Mr. Meat. He and his wife live on Victorian Row. Ridge Road, you know. Roddy was Life Sciences, and his wife, don’t recall her name, was in the English Department.” He moves his finger to the next man. “Ben Richardson is dead, heart attack two years ago.”

“Was he married? Wife still in town?”

He gives her an odd look. “Ben was divorced when he started rolling with us. Long divorced. Ms. Gibney, do you think one of our guys had anything to do with Cary’s disappearance?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Holly assures him. “I’m just hoping one of them might be able to tell me where Cary went.”

“Got it, got it! Moving right along! This baldy with the big shoulders is Avram Welch. He’s in one of those Lakeside condos. Wife died some years back, if you’re wondering. Still bowls.” He moves to another baldy. “Jim Hicks. We called him Hot Licks! Ha! He and his wife moved to Racine. How’m I doing?”

“Terrific!” Holly exclaims. It seems to be catching.

Midge wanders in. “Having fun, kids?”

“You betchum bobcats!” Clippard cries, either not catching the faint note of sarcasm in his wife’s voice or choosing to ignore it. She pours herself a glass of iced tea, then stands on tiptoe to get a bottle of brown liquor from a cabinet where other bottles stand shoulder to shoulder. She pours a dollop into her glass, then holds the bottle out to them, one eyebrow raised.

“Why not?” Clippard nearly shouts. “God hates a coward!”

She pours a shot into his glass. It goes swirling down.

“What about you, Ms. Gibley? A little Wild Turkey will get that iced tea right up on its feet.”

“No thank you,” Holly says. “I’m driving.”

“Very law-abiding of you,” Midge says. “Ta-ta, kids.”

Out she goes. Clippard gives her a look that might or might not be mild distaste, then returns his attention to Holly. “Do you bowl yourself, Ms. Gibney?” He gives her name a slight emphasis, as if to correct his wife in absentia.

“I don’t,” Holly admits.

“Well, league teams are usually just four players, and that’s how we play it in the tourney finals, but during the regular season we sometimes bowled with five or even six guys, assuming the other team rolled with the same number. Because in the Over Sixty-Fives, someone is almost always on the DL. Sometimes two or three. By DL I mean—”

“The Disabled List,” Holly says, and doesn’t bother telling him it’s now called the Injured List. She’s all at once wanting to get out of here. There’s something almost frantic about Hugh Clippard. She doesn’t think he’s coked up, but it’s like that. The sixpack… the tight little buns in the red swimsuit… the tan… and the encroaching wrinkles…

“Who’s this one?”

“Ernie Coggins. Lives in Upriver with his wife. He still bowls with us on Monday nights, if her caregiver can come in. Advanced degenerative disc disease, poor woman. Wheelchair-bound. But Ernie’s in great shape. Takes care of himself.”

Now Holly understands what’s bothering her, because it’s bothering him. Most of the men in the photo are falling apart, and if eighty is their median age, why would they not be? The equipment wears out, which seems to be something Hugh Clippard doesn’t want to admit. He is, as they say, sitting in the denial aisle.

“Desmond Clark isn’t in the picture—guess he wasn’t there when it was taken. Des and his wife are dead, too. They were in a light plane crash down in Florida. Boca Raton. Des was piloting. Damn fool tried to land in heavy fog. Missed the runway.” Nothing exclamatory about this; Clippard speaks in what’s almost a monotone. He takes a big slug of his spiked iced tea and says, “I’m thinking of quitting.”

For a moment she believes he’s talking about booze, then decides that’s not it. “Quitting the Golden Oldies?”

“Yes. I used to like that name, but these days it kind of grates on me. The only ones in this picture I still roll with are Avram and Ernie Cog. Small Ball comes, but just to watch. It’s not like it used to be.”

“Nothing is,” Holly says gently.

“No? No. But it should be. And could be, if people would only take care of themselves.” He’s staring at the picture. Holly is looking at him and realizes that even the sixpack is starting to show wrinkles.

“Who is this last one?”

“That’s Vic Anderson. Slick Vic, we used to call him. He had a stroke. He’s in some care home upstate.”

“Not Rolling Hills, by any chance?”

“Yes, that’s the name.”

The fact that one of the old bowlers is in the same care home as Uncle Henry feels like a coincidence. Holly finds that a relief, because seeing a picture of Barbara Robinson in the Strike Em Out foyer felt more like… well… fate.

“His wife moved up there so she could visit him more often. Sure you don’t want a little pick-me-up, Ms. Gibney? I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“I’m fine. Really.” Holly stops recording. “Thank you so much, Mr. Clippard.”

He’s still looking at her iPad. He seems almost hypnotized. “I really didn’t realize how few of us are left.”

She swipes away the picture and he looks up, as if not entirely sure where he is.

“Thank you for your time.”

“Very welcome. If you locate Cary, ask him to drop by sometime, will you? At least give him my email address. I’ll write it down for you.”

“And the numbers of the ones that are still around?”

“You bet.”

He tears a sheet from a pad that’s headed JUST A NOTE FROM MIDGE’S KITCHEN, grabs a pen from a cup full of them, and jots, consulting the contacts on his phone as he does. Holly notes that the numbers and the e-address show the slightest tremble of the hand writing them. She folds the sheet and puts it in her pocket. She thinks again, time the avenger. Holly doesn’t mind old people; it’s something about the way Clippard is handling his old age that makes her uneasy.

She basically can’t wait to get the frack out.

There’s only one (and oh-so-tony) shopping center in Sugar Heights. Holly parks there, lights a cigarette, and smokes with the door open, elbows on her thighs and feet on the pavement. Her car is starting to stink of cigarettes, and not even the can of air freshener she keeps in the center console completely kills the odor. What a nasty habit it is, and yet how necessary.

Just for now, she thinks, and then thinks again of Saint Augustine praying that God should make him chaste… but not yet.

Holly checks her phone to see if Barbara has answered her message with the attached photo of Cary Dressler and the Golden Oldies. She hasn’t. Holly looks at her watch and sees it’s only quarter past two. There’s plenty of day left in the day, and she has no intention of wasting it, so what next?

Get off her ass and knock on doors, of course.

There were eight bowling Oldies in 2015, including Desmond Clark, the one not in the picture. Three of them don’t need to be checked out. Four, if she counts Hugh Clippard. He looks capable of overpowering Bonnie and the skateboard kid—about Ellen, Holly’s less sure—but for the time being she puts him aside with the two who are dead and Jim Hicks (living in Wisconsin… although that should be checked out). That leaves Roddy Harris, Avram Welch, and Ernie Coggins. There’s also Victor Anderson, but Holly doubts if a stroke victim is sneaking out of Rolling Hills to abduct people.

She knows it’s very unlikely that any of the Golden Oldies is the Red Bank Predator, but she’s more and more convinced that the presumed abductions of Dressler, Craslow, Steinman, and Bonnie Rae Dahl were planned rather than random. The Predator knew their routines, all of which seem to have Deerfield Park as their epicenter.

The bowlers knew Cary. She doesn’t need to mention the other desaparecidos, unless she gets a feeling—what Bill Hodges would have called a vibe—that questions about Cary are making someone nervous. Or defensive. Maybe even guilty. She knows the tells to look for; Bill taught her well. Better to keep Ellen, Pete, and Bonnie as hole cards. At least for the time being.

It never once crosses her mind that Penny Dahl has outed her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

While Holly is smoking in the parking lot of the Sugar Heights Boutique Shopping Mart, Barbara Robinson is staring uselessly into space. She’s shut off all notifications on her computer and phone, allowing only calls from her parents and Jerome to ring through. Those little red check-me-out circles by the text and mail icons are too tempting. The Penley Prize Essay—a requirement for the five finalists—has to be in the mail by the end of the month, and that’s only four days away. Make it three, actually; she wants to take her essay to the post office on Friday and make absolutely sure of that postmark. Being eliminated because of a technicality after all this would be crazy-making. So she bends to the work.

Poetry is important to me because

Horrible. Like the first line of a middle school book report. Delete.

Poetry matters because

Worse. Delete.

My reason for

Delete, delete, delete!

Barbara shuts off her computer, spends some more time staring into space, then gets up from her desk and shucks off her jeans. She pulls on a pair of shorts, adds a sleeveless tee, ties back her hair in a sloppy ponytail, and goes running.

It’s too hot to run, the temperature’s got to be topping ninety, but it’s all she can think of to do. She circles the block… and it’s a long one. By the time she gets back to the house where she will live with her parents only until she starts college and begins another life, she’s sweating and gasping for breath. Nevertheless, she goes around the block again. Mrs. Caltrop, who is watering her flowers under an enormous sunhat, looks at her like she’s crazy. Probably she is.

In front of her computer, looking at the blank screen and the flashing cursor that seemed to mock her, she felt frustrated and—face it—scared. Because Olivia refuses to help. Because her mind was as blank as the screen. But now, running full out with sweat darkening her shirt and trickling down the sides of her face like extravagant tears, she realizes what was beneath the fright and frustration. She’s angry. She feels fucking toyed with. Made to jump through hoops like a circus dog.

Back in the house—for the time being all hers, with her mother and father at their respective jobs—she takes the stairs two at a time, leaves a path of her clothes in the hallway on her way to the bathroom, then gets in the shower with the handle turned all the way to C. She lets out a scream and clutches herself. She sticks her throbbing face in the cold spray and screams again. It feels good to scream, as she learned on that day two months ago when she did it with Marie Duchamp, so she does it a third time.

She gets out of the shower shivering and covered with goosebumps but feeling better. Clearer. She towels up and down until her skin is glowing, then goes back to her room, picking up her clothes on the way. She tosses them on the bed, goes naked to her computer, reaches for the button that turns it on, then thinks No. Wrong.

She grabs one of her school notebooks from the shelf beside her desk, flips past scribbled notes on Henry VII and the War of the Roses, and comes to a blank page. She tears it out almost carelessly, not ignoring the frayed edge but glad of it. She’s thinking of something Olivia said in one of their morning meetings. She told Barbara it came from a Spanish writer named Juan Ramón Jiménez, but she, Olivia, first heard it from Jorge Castro. She said Jorge claimed it was the cornerstone of everything he ever wrote or hoped to write: If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

Barbara does that now, writing her essay quickly across the blue ruled lines. According to the Penley requirements, it is not to exceed 500 words. Barbara’s is much shorter than that. And it turns out Olivia is here to help her after all, with something else she said on one of those morning meetings that have changed her life. Maybe more than college ever will.

I write poetry because without it I am a dead engine. She pauses only for a moment, then adds: That I should be asked to write an essay about my poetry after sending so much of it to you is idiotic. My poetry is my essay.

She folds the ragged-edged sheet twice and stuffs it in an envelope that’s already stamped and addressed. She throws on some clothes, runs back down the stairs, and goes out the door, leaving it open. She sprints down the block, probably ruining her cold shower with fresh sweat. She doesn’t care. She needs to do this before she can change her mind. Doing that would be wrong, because what she’s written is right.

There’s a mailbox on the corner. She drops the envelope inside, then bends over, grasping her knees and breathing hard.

I don’t care if I win or lose. I don’t care, I don’t care.

She may regret what she wrote later, but not now. Standing at the mailbox, bent over with her wet hair hanging in her face, she knows it’s the truth.

The work matters.

Nothing else. Not prizes. Not being published. Not being rich, famous, or both.

Only the work.