Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir Read online

  Jack’s was where we’d go when we had to grab a loaf of bread, or a quart of milk if our supply didn’t last through the weekly milk delivery. One time my father sent me there to pick up one hot dog for my dinner as I didn’t like what he was making for himself and Tyler—boiled kielbasa. Even though he tried to convince me that kielbasa was just a fancy hotdog, I didn’t agree. I hated the way the kielbasa skin burst while it was boiling forcing a disgusting lump of its stuffing to stick out. When I was living in Charter Oak Terrace I saw a little dog get run over by a truck. Its skin burst and a lump of its stuffing sprung out. And the doctor who opened up Carl Luzzi’s stomach probably released the oatmeal cancer in the same way.

  I walked to Jack’s and I asked for my one hotdog. Jack said, What’re ya havin’? A party? I was mortified.

  Next to Jack’s on Hillside was the five-and-ten where I bought my mother a beautiful pin for Mother’s Day. The pin turned out to be a curtain tieback. My mother opened her present and laughed hysterically. This was much better than the time my second grade class made candleholders for Mother’s Day out of empty Wisk bottles. My mother opened her gift and said, Dear God, what the hell are those teachers thinking? Then she threw it in the wastebasket.

  While Bob Malm had been drinking his coffee at the Lincoln Dairy, my friend Irene was having dinner with her mother and her brother, Fred, who rushed through the meal and at five forty-five went off to a nearby elementary school to watch a basketball game. Irene’s mother told him to be home by eight. After he left, she wanted to cook potatoes for a cold salad for dinner the next night. Since she worked all day, she had to get this chore taken care of right then. She worked as a cleaning woman at a warehouse that stored sheaves of tobacco, floor to ceiling. It was the same job my father first gave Freddie Ravenel at the Abbott Ball Company. Irene’s mother, like Freddie Ravenel, did not expect a promotion, but Freddie got one though he was a colored man. Irene’s mother wouldn’t because she was a woman.

  But there weren’t enough potatoes so she sent Irene to a neighbor’s to borrow a few. But the neighbor didn’t have potatoes to spare. Irene stayed at the neighbor’s for a while and watched the Camel News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze. When she returned home, her mother was going to let it go but Irene had come back from her field trip with her cookie bag empty and now she was wishing she’d saved a few.

  Irene’s mother looked out the window; several children were playing under the streetlight. One of them was Kathy Delaney. Irene was told she could run out to Jack’s to pick up a new box of cookies and also two pounds of potatoes. She told her to hurry right back because it was going to rain. Maybe some of the kids outside were going to the store, too, and she could join them.

  Irene put on the same jacket she wore on the field trip, red with a fake fur collar. Around her neck was a square silk scarf—if it rained, she could put it over her head babushka-style. The temperature was not quite cold enough for her angora hat. We all wore silk scarves in those days. My mother even had a couple by Vera, who was the marquee scarf designer—the Hermès of the fifties—but at a hundredth of the price.

  Irene left her house at D-10, Charter Oak Terrace, which was on Dart Street, the southern border of the D section of the Terrace. Her mother watched her cross the courtyard out back, and then Chandler Street, the east border of the Terrace and up Dart Street until she couldn’t see her any longer. It was six forty-five.

  The children playing under the streetlight were gone now.

  Irene walked up Dart Street to the end and took a left on Broadview Terrace, a ridge fifty feet higher than Chandler down below, a lovely street where a mayor named Nilan had built the first house in the neighborhood at the corner of what would become my street.

  One block from Dart, on the corner of Sequin Street, Irene ran into Kathy Delaney and the other children. She asked them if they were going to the store so she could walk with them. They said no, they were just out playing and had to go home soon. She joined them in a game of climbing onto the big steel mailbox on the corner of Sequin and Broadview and jumping off. Then Irene had to get going. It was seven-ten.

  Irene walked one block past the rear of St. Lawrence O’Toole’s Church and took a right on the next street, Coolidge, which ran along the side of the church. St. Lawrence O’Toole’s was having a new church built on top of the old one. The old church’s roof had been raised and replaced with a concrete slab so that, even with the new church, there would be a spare one downstairs for Midnight Mass overflow. The new St. Lawrence O’Toole’s was one of the very few big Catholic churches built in the fifties anywhere. Just like fifties furniture, the whole church was blond. It was blond inside and out; the bricks were blond and the walls inside were painted blond. The statues were carved from pale oak and blended right in.

  When the church was consecrated, the parishioners asked Father Kelly when the artist intended to paint the statues. My mother hissed, Damn fools.

  The crucified Christ, forty feet long, hanging above the altar was also carved oak. He was not looking up to God saying, Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me? which is the typical pose. This artist chose instead to show a dead Christ and so Jesus’s head was slumped down onto his chest. Mommy Welch said to me, It’s very sad but at least his suffering is over.

  After Irene passed the church, she crossed Coolidge Street before it merged with New Britain Avenue, which veered off to her right. On the other side of Coolidge was our little branch library, a dark, squat Gothic building in stark contrast to the blond church growing across the street. The library marked the spot where Coolidge Street ended at New Britain Avenue.

  On the library side of New Britain Avenue, Irene walked along the sidewalk over a tiny brook, one of the hundreds of offshoots of the Hog River, past the Brookside Tavern on her left and then into Jack’s store. In just one square mile, my neighborhood had a school, a church, a library, a five-and-ten, a drugstore, a tavern, and a grocery store. Small-town America, really. Downtown Hartford was another planet, a place where your mother took you to buy your Easter outfit.

  Jack saw Irene come in. His clerk weighed the potatoes. Irene bought her two items with a dollar bill and put the change, sixty-one cents, in her little change purse. Maybe Jack asked her, What’re ya havin’? A party?

  Across the street, Bob stood in front of the drugstore and watched a teenage couple come out of the grocery store, Brenda and Charlie, who lived in Charter Oak Terrace and were both seventeen years old. They headed west toward home. A few minutes later, a little girl came out. A little girl holding a grocery bag. A little girl who was clearly alone. Irene. It was seven twenty-five.

  Bob followed Irene from New Britain Avenue to Coolidge Street and left on Broadview Terrace until she reached Sequin Street. Normally, Irene didn’t walk home down Sequin Street, but that night she did, probably because a soldier had passed her when she crossed Coolidge—perhaps he’d made her nervous. There were houses on both sides of Sequin; safety in numbers is perhaps what Irene instinctively felt.

  Dart Street had houses only on one side; on the other, undeveloped wooded lots. Besides, Irene probably saw that the teenage couple—Brenda and Charlie—had turned down Sequin. She probably couldn’t see Kathy and the other kids in the light mist just forming. They were now playing a game of leap-off-the-wall behind the St. Lawrence O’Toole rectory down Broadview Terrace. It was a retaining wall, the property leveled off below to create a parking lot. If she had, she might have joined them again.

  From behind her, Bob Malm said, Hello.

  He approached her and she said hello back even though she knew not to speak to strangers. It is difficult to reconcile that rule with the rule to be polite. It was seven thirty-five.

  Bob grabbed both ends of her scarf, twisted them, and pulled her to him. She pulled away and he yanked her back.

  Kathy Delaney and her pals had left their jump-off-the-wall game when they’d spotted a couple turning into Sequin Street who they assumed to be Brenda and Cha
rlie. It was even darker now, drizzling, and they couldn’t see too well. They decided to have one more game before they went home; they would play a game they called Detective and follow the couple walking down Sequin Street.

  Kathy saw the girl she thought was Brenda twirl away from the boy she thought was Charlie, and then twirl back. The couple was too far away for Kathy to recognize that Brenda was actually Irene and Charlie was a stranger.

  Halfway down Sequin Street there was an empty lot. The family that lived in the house next to the lot had bought the double-size property in the thirties planning to expand the house into the spare lot. They never expanded the house and they never sold the lot either. Instead, they kept their small boat on it. As Bob dragged Irene alongside the lot on Sequin Street, he spotted the rowboat up on blocks. He pushed and pulled at her, dragged her along until he had her under the boat with him.

  He’d hidden himself and Irene under the boat because he was aware of Kathy Delaney and her friends a block away. He twisted the scarf tighter so that Irene couldn’t cry out. He would conceal himself and Irene under the boat until the children left the area.

  The “detectives” meanwhile—once they reached the corner of Sequin Street—had lost sight of the couple they thought were Brenda and Charlie. They decided to go home via Sequin Street since they were there. Halfway down the street, the overturned boat beckoned to them. Children love to throw stones. They throw them at each other, into water, at the sky, and at their greatest preference, windows. A boat up on blocks would do. Kathy and her friends picked up stones from the gravel driveway and fired them, pelting the boat. Then they heard a harsh, deep voice shout, Beat it!

  They dropped their stones and ran. When they were out of breath, they slowed down, laughed and laughed, thrilled. When children are spotted throwing stones, the most fun part is fleeing without getting caught. It was seven forty-five.

  Kathy decided it was time to get home. The drizzle had become a light rain. The children ran off.

  But Irene could not run away from Bob Malm.

  Bob saw a boy with a dog come out of the house next to the lot. He knew he was not in a good spot to do what he intended to do to Irene. The boat was barely big enough to hide them. Once the boy and the dog went back inside, he dragged Irene out from under the boat by her scarf and pulled her to the back of the empty lot, somehow got her over a chain-link fence, and then dragged her across the adjoining backyard on Coolidge Street. She was crying and struggling so he twisted the scarf more. He looked up and down the rows of backyards but didn’t see what he wanted.

  He ran Irene across Coolidge Street in the dark interval between two streetlights. He headed down a driveway separating two houses and saw a picket fence in the rear of the backyard to his right. Behind the fence he could just make out a shed. Perfect. My own yard on Nilan Street, which backed up to another Coolidge Street yard, also had a shed where my father kept the lawn mower and snow shovels. But Bob had found one to suit. The yard he chose belonged to a police officer, Michael Proccacino, and his wife. The couple had no children.

  The door in the shed was locked but Bob was, by then, so sexually aroused he’d take his chances in the darkness between the fence and the shed. He’d have to hurry; he heard a dog barking. Inside the house, Officer Proccacino and his wife argued about their dog. Mrs. Proccacino went to the kitchen window. It was pitch black outside and raining. She said, Probably a skunk. The couple gave the dog pork chop bones.

  Bob Malm threw Irene to the ground and unzipped his pants. Then he yanked down her slacks. Her panties came with them and one shoe. He kissed her face, he felt her genitals, he took out his penis, he rubbed against her, he ejaculated. He did not penetrate her. Bob Malm had never been able to keep from having an ejaculation long enough to complete intercourse.

  During the assault he let the scarf tighten and loosen so he could hear Irene gasping and choking for air.

  He stood up. He pulled Irene to her feet. He got her dressed and then he told her not to tell anyone. But she managed a courageous act. She said, I will tell. I’m going to tell my mother.

  So Bob grabbed the two ends of the scarf again and this time tied a knot as tight as he could. Then he made a square knot just to make sure the scarf wouldn’t loosen. It was the simple square knot the seamen of the U.S. Navy used to secure equipment on the deck of their ships. Irene stopped struggling to breathe and fell to the ground.

  Bob heard someone yelling at the barking dog. He took Irene’s shoe, which had come off with her slacks, and tried to put it on her foot. But he didn’t bother to untie the laces and couldn’t get it on properly. He noticed her panties lying in the grass. He stuffed the panties under the corner of the shed. Then he went down on one knee, looked at Irene one last time, her arms were thrown up over her head, a final physical effort to escape Bob Malm as she fell dying.

  Fifty minutes had gone by from the time Bob dragged Irene under the boat with him to hide from Kathy Delaney and the other children. It was eight twenty-five.

  Bob hustled back to the corner of Hillside and New Britain Avenue to grab the first bus that came along. The bus picked him up at eight forty. It was the Hillside Avenue bus, not the bus to Newington, but Bob didn’t care.

  The rain was coming down heavily.

  IRENE’S BROTHER FRED arrived home at eight to find his mother frantic. Irene hadn’t returned home from the store and she’d phoned everyone in the neighborhood. No one had seen Irene. She sent Fred out to look for her. He went out into the rain all the way to Jack’s store taking Sequin Street. When he passed 80 Sequin shouting his sister’s name, he was parallel with 80 Coolidge Street, where Bob Malm was murdering his sister. Maybe Irene heard him calling her name.

  When Fred reached Jack’s, it was closed. The store had closed at eight. Fred ran all the way back home again and never passed a soul. He just missed crossing paths with Bob Malm rushing to the bus stop.

  Fred returned home without Irene. His mother got her coat and insisted the two of them go out again. First, they went directly to their neighbors, including the Delaneys. Mr. Delaney had Kathy come into the kitchen and asked her if she’d seen Irene. Kathy said to Irene’s mother, Yes. She and some kids had seen Irene on her way to the store. No, they never saw her after that.

  Irene’s mother and Fred went up and down the streets all the way to Jack’s store and back. They had one last hope; they stopped at a home on Sequin Street two doors from the empty lot with the boat. They were friendly with the family—the people used to live in Charter Oak Terrace. Maybe Irene wanted to get out of the rain and stopped there. Once inside, she saw that one of her favorite shows, Arthur Godfrey’s Amateur Hour, was on TV and stayed awhile, meaning to call home but forgetting because of the distraction. Irene loved television. But no member of the Sequin Street family had seen Irene that night. They looked at Irene’s mother and brother oddly. Such a friendly visit from Irene was entirely out of character. Irene was just too bashful to do such a thing. Irene’s mother and her brother Fred were surviving on wishful thinking.

  When they arrived home at D-10, they were soaking wet and they called the police. It was nine twenty-five.

  Soon, the cop on cruiser patrol in the southwest corner of Hartford was crawling the streets looking for Irene. He didn’t stop though, didn’t knock on any doors, didn’t search any backyards—just cruised before returning to D-10. He made suggestions to Irene’s mother: Maybe your daughter took the bus downtown; maybe she went to a friend’s; maybe she ran away from home. Irene’s mother insisted Irene was a timid girl with no really close friends and that she would never run away from home. The police officer wondered aloud to Irene’s mother as to why the girl was allowed to be out after dark. Her mother said all the neighborhood kids walked to the store; they all knew they had to be home by eight o’clock. In fact, she’d seen several children outside playing that evening.

  But my friends and I—just one block away from the increasingly poverty-stricken residents of Charter
Oak Terrace—were not allowed outside after dark. When the streetlights came on, we came in. My parents both drove; no need to send me off to the store for potatoes. Irene’s father had deserted his family five years earlier. The trip home from the tobacco warehouse was a long one for Irene’s mother; it required a bus ride from the warehouse to Main Street and then a transfer to the New Britain Avenue bus, and then a mile walk home from the corner of Hillside. She was a single mother. She depended on her children to do things like run out to the store for her. Even after dark. After all, there was no crime in our neighborhood. It was the last days of nobody-locks-their-doors-in-Hartford.

  BOB SAW A BAR from the window of the Hillside Avenue bus. He got off at the next stop, walked back to the bar, went in, and asked the bartender if he could call a taxi. The bartender took the phone from under the counter and put it on the bar in front of Bob, who called a yellow cab and then ordered a beer. The cab was there in a couple of minutes and Bob left his half-finished beer behind.

  He was back at the sanatorium fifteen minutes later. He changed his clothes and went down to the recreation room. Everyone was talking about the contestant on Strike It Rich who had won over a thousand dollars. That show had just ended. Now Bob joined them to watch, incredibly, Dragnet, which had come on at nine thirty. A few stayed on with him for the ten o’clock fights. At eleven he went to bed but couldn’t sleep because he began to quiver and shake uncontrollably. A shaking stupor like at Pearl Harbor.

  OFFICER MICHAEL PROCCACINO left for work at 11:30 P.M. after dozing on and off through the fights on television. His wife was in bed. It had been three hours since a little girl was strangled in his backyard and her body left lying in the rain next to his toolshed.