It was the summer of 1977. Son of Sam was stalking young couples. Mare’s parents were killing our relationship. After my senior prom, they sat us down and told us the relationship was off. It didn’t really surprise me. They’d been off for weeks—little things: no handshakes, no “have a good time,” just tandem stares of dread rehearsed for hours. They did everything in tandem: walking, bike rides, blue plate specials. Mare and I sat on the couch, her dad standing over us, her mom stationed ninety degrees away at the piano bench.
I don’t remember everything said, but it was about impressionable young girls too young to date and how it leads to unintended consequences. Mare started to cry. Mare’s mom looked strained. I sat there, silent, looking from my sneakers to the garish tapestry on the wall to the bulging vein in Mare’s father’s head. Then I left.
We saw each other the next day. She was waiting by the Fotomat at the Parkway Shopping Plaza.
She looked like she hadn’t slept.
It didn’t take them long to catch on. Mare’s sister was feeding them information. The first time we were caught was at Cross County Shopping Center. We’d just left Gimbel’s and were greeted by Mare’s mom—arms hanging at her sides above a plain brown skirt. One of her scuffed loafers snarled at me. She led us to the Ford Pinto and back to the scratchy couch.
Another sit-down. Another bulging vein. This time I assured them there wouldn’t be a next time.
Radio silence for about a week. Notes passed from her friends. No sign of her sister.
Son of Sam shot another couple in Bayside, Queens. Both survived. The police posted a description of a dark-haired middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a paunch—every other man in the five boroughs.
My mom picked up the phone. It was Mare. She was downstairs at the payphone in front of the A&P.
“You’re going to get me arrested.”
I couldn’t make out what she was saying—her words smothered by her own crying. I ran down to the payphone. Her face was red, her eyes swollen, her Kleenex not quite doing the job. She rushed toward me and trembled in my arms. People stopped and stared.
And that’s how it went for the next few weeks—the pay phone acting as an accomplice.
July 13th. We’d just left the 8 pm showing of Network at the Parkway Theater. We walked out into the Mount Vernon air and the streetlights went dark. Everything went dark—traffic lights, storefronts, everything. A blackout. There were fewer cars parked at scenic lookouts.
We walked home by headlights. Mare and I had just crossed the Broad Street bridge when I could make out a car waiting in the shopping plaza.
“Mare, where did you tell your parents you were going tonight?”
“Out with Pet.” Pet was her sister. Short for Petunia.
Mare saw the brown Pinto and her parents leaning against it like two federal agents. Pet peeped out the rear window. Her father opened the door and Mare climbed in without a word. His angular profile was lit by the glow of the dashboard.
I could be wrong, but I thought I saw Pet smiling as they pulled away. Too dark to tell.
It was eerily quiet—the kind of silence that a snowfall brings. I’d never noticed before the noise power lines make. I headed down to Mare’s block to see if any of my friends were enjoying the spectacle. A group of them was huddled by the stop sign at Georgia Avenue and Vincent Road. They were drinking from paper bags except for Byron Stanley, who was enjoying his Boone’s Farm from its green bottle. I sat down on the short brick wall that bordered the landscaping. They were peppering the cars that passed in dark anonymity with lewd propositions. A car approached slowly, like a parade, immediately showered with chants of “Oral sex! Oral sex! Oral sex!” The brown Pinto turned, hitting me squarely with its headlights. Her father’s eyes met mine. A twitch. The Sicilian curse. I’d seen it before.
The power eventually came back, and the rumor that Son of Sam was spotted in Yonkers by Untermeyer Park spread throughout the city.
“We’re moving to Israel to live on a kibbutz,” Mare said, heaving.
The kibbutz never happened. I kept imagining Mare with a babushka on her head, sowing artichokes in the Jaffa sun.
They kept finding us. We kept moving.
There was a place we parked—a dead end, two empty lots past the last house. Mare was facing me. My Mustang had bucket seats. She had narrow eyes which sometimes made her look like her father. I tried not to think about that.
Her face froze—eyes widening, looking past me. I laughed, then realized she wasn’t joking. I turned and looked out the window. Someone was standing there.
I could only see a midsection—a partially opened, short-sleeved shirt, its buttons strained by a doughy paunch.
“I heard you kids are having some problems with the parents,” he said, in a pre-Latin Bronx accent.
There were stains on the shirt I couldn’t quite describe.
“It kills me to see people standing in the way of true love.”
A round face. Thick lips.
It matched the artist’s rendering.
I could hear Mare breathing in short bursts.
“You remind me of me.”
I looked down and saw something heavy in his hand. Metal.
“Want me to take care of them?”
Mare stopped breathing.
“No,” I said. “That won’t be necessary.”
A pause.
“See? I knew you were nice kids. I never had a real girlfriend. I’ll see what I can do.”
He reached in and pinched my cheek.
Then he was gone.
He was never there—until I saw the smiley face in the driver’s side mirror.
Mare was delivered home that night, undetected.
The building was dark. The kitchen light in her apartment stayed on.
They went to Mexico for two weeks. Her sister got food poisoning.
Mare told me from the twenty-five cent confessional that they met with their minister. He advised them to leave it alone, as if reverse psychology would fix it.
It didn’t.
Son of Sam, aka David Berkowitz, was captured by the cops. He told them that demons and a black Labrador retriever owned by a neighbor named Sam had ordered him to commit the killings.
The city breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Her dad still wanted to kill me.
