I saw It On The News (aka: Dinner Date at Dairy Queen) by Holden Wennekers

CW: Physical violence, gore or abuse, Sexual violence

I saw it on the news.

Mortified me to my core. I think the last time I saw her was just three weeks prior.

My God, if I’d had known.

We met at the Dairy Queen we used to lunch at back in middle school. I must have waited in the parking lot in the cold about an hour past the time she said she’d show. She arrived in a taxi cab. She didn’t look good. I’d heard she’d had her license taken away months prior, and got around in cabs. She gave me a big hug, a desperate hug, like she hadn’t been hugged in a while. She smelled of cigarettes. She had her same smile. That same smile I remember from back then, back in middle school. I smelled the alcohol on her smile.

We ordered vanilla ice cream sundaes with hazel nut, chocolate syrup, M&Ms and red cherries, like we used to back in middle school. We sat at a booth in the back. She asked me how things were.

“Great. Can’t complain.”

She smiled. Her smile was the same but everything else had changed. Withered, the burdens of life weighing down her face. She wasn’t the same and never would be again. But still had that same smile. She’d been laughing a lot, at first, all drunk and child like. Like a happy little girl without a care in this world.

I asked about her, how she was doing, what she’d been up to. I’d taken a few bites of my sundae. She hadn’t touched hers. She sat there staring at her ice cream bowl in a sad state of confusion, stupefied, as though I’d brought up some great tragedy she’d been doing her best to bury in her mind. “Nothing,” she said.

“Oh..”

“I haven’t been up to anything.” She laughed a short painful titter. “The past month has been hell.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She let her ice cream melt.

“It’s been just awful. I—“ she laughed. “I can’t even believe I’m still standing.”

“What happened?”

She went on for a long while, rambling, ranting, venting each and every one of her problems. All she’d encountered and been demoralized by. She went on and on for nearly 30 minutes. I felt like telling her to arrive to some sort of point, but I kept my mouth shut. I felt so embarrassed. She went on and on about her work, her boss, his predation, her recent firing, and her eviction. She’d been homeless several weeks, sleeping on park benches in the cold of the winter, but she wasn’t homeless anymore.

She’d begun crying about half way through her tirade, and wouldn’t stop for nearly ten minutes. I hate to admit it but I’d never been more embarrassed in my life. I’d taken her hand, and I could feel all the eyes in the bright cream shaded restaurant—an old woman, her grand kids, a young couple, and that girl behind the counter—all watching Madeline ramble on and on babbling and blubbering sobbing like a baby who’d bottled up the sadness for decades.

“It’s just been so awful.”

“Aw… Madeline…” I held her hand across the table, sundaes cast aside. She wiped her tears and took a couple deep breaths, got her grip and apologized.

“You don’t have to apologize,” I said.

She was all red in the face, wiping her tears with the brown napkins from the tin tissue box on the table, and she laughed, looked at me and smiled a desperate smile that knew no joy.

“Oh, Susie. I think it’s so wonderful that we’ve remained friends all this time.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Do you remember when we first became friends?”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do, but I want to see if you remember.”

“Sixth grade, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Mr. Rockwell’s class,” she said smiling, nodding her head. I let go of her hand.

“Yeah, I remember.” I hadn’t thought about that man in many years, for good reason. He was a rotten old man and I didn’t like him at all. Maddy smiled.

“I remember he let us pick partners, and I don’t think either of us knew anybody in that class.”

“Nope,” I smiled.

“So I came up to you and asked you if you wanted to be my painting partner.” I smiled and took a bite of what was left of my ice cream. Maddy still hadn’t touched hers. She shook her head. “That Goddamn rotten Mr. Rockwell.”

“Rotten? I thought you liked Mr. Rockwell.”

“He was a scumbag.”

“You used to spend a lot of time alone with him, I remember.” She didn’t say anything. I remembered the egregious amounts of time she’d spend with that man, at lunch, after school, at night at his home to review class materials. None of the teachers seemed to care. Neither did her parents.

“You remember the time he took us both out for lunch?” she asked. Indeed I had.

“Didn’t he take us here? to this Dairy Queen?”

“Yes he did. This was the place.” She shook her head, her jaw was tight. “That goddamn bastard. Somebody oughta run him over with a semi truck, or throw his ass in a wood-chipper.”

“No one deserves that,” I said.

“A bullet to the back of the head, at the very least.”

“I don’t think he ever did anything that bad,” I said. Her face contorted in such a strange manner that it gave me an instant sensation of melancholic empathy that made me feel so utterly bad for her and I wanted to hug her and cry with her.

It was all such a strange night.

“I remember the ice cream I ate that day,” Maddy said.

On my way to the school’s cafeteria, lunch money in hand, Maddy had stopped me and said “Hey! Come with me to Dairy Queen.”

“What?” I asked.

“Dairy Queen. Mr. Rockwell’s gonna take us to Dairy Queen.”

He stood there impatiently behind her, a hard man to look at. She turned to him.

“Oh, Mr. Rockwell. Please, can Suzie come with us. Please, please, please.”

“Okay fine,” he said, all annoyed, glaring at me. Maddy smiled.

I sat in the back and she sat in the passenger seat of his Oldsmobile, and he took us to Dairy Queen a mile up the road.

I ate my ice cream in silence. I could feel Mr. Rockwell’s scowl. I didn’t want to look up at him but I could feel him staring, bitter, like I’d done something wrong or deeply offensive. Maddy babbled on, the only one talking. We were the only ones in the restaurant except the counter girl. Maddy rambled on and on, I can’t remember what about. But the way he was glaring at me I can still picture now. That crabby old man looked like he could kill me right then and there for reasons I could not and did not want to understand.

There was something rather peculiar about the man I couldn’t pin point.

We were leaving. Maddy skipped out the door to the car. Mr. Rockwell said “Hey,” and took me aside. Got in my face. “The next time Maddy asks you to come along, you tell her you can’t. Do you understand me?!”

“What?” I said. He repeated himself. I trembled.

“You tell Maddy you don’t feel like coming next time. You got it?”

I nodded. I was so scared I couldn’t speak.

“Your ice cream cost me ¢75, and I want that money on my desk tomorrow. You got it?”

I nodded.

“If you don’t pay me back, you’ll be in very big trouble. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

He got out of my face. I wasn’t sure if I should follow him to the car.

I’d really never been more scared of an adult in my life. Adults were scary back then, but there was something particularly scary about Mr. Rockwell that lingered a long time in the darkest recesses of my mind. Something in his eyes.

I’d thought Mr. Rockwell was gonna do something bad to me. And back then, I didn’t think any of the other adults would care, if Mr. Rockwell had done something bad to me.

Adults were scary.

Maddy had come to my house during the summer, about three weeks before seventh grade would begin. We were sitting in my living room, it was night,. Maddy didn’t want to go back home, wouldn’t specify why.

We went outside and sat out on the porch in the dark cool of the evening, and we talked about different stuff, all sorts of different stuff—she would talk about anything once you got her going. But about five minutes after we sat down to talk, this speeding Cadillac came barreling at me up the driveway, and the hulking monster: Maddy’s father, lept out and rushed over and grabbed Maddy and dragged her along like a doll as she put up a struggle and cried as he threw her in the back seat of the car. Her father hadn’t acknowledged I was there. Maddy was so embarrassed, she cried like an infant. Then her father sped away, and I sat there mortified.

I stayed up all night scared her father would come back.

He didn’t.

I drove her home that night, after the “date”, she insisted we stop at a bar for a drink. I didn’t want a drink, but I took her to Eddie’s down on Monroe & Main street, in a part of town I hadn’t been in many years. She knocked back a couple of shots and many beers. Then we left. She was drunk. She laughed all frivolous staggering to the car like a happy little girl without a care in this world. Then she slipped on the ice on the sidewalk in the snow and I tried to catch her but she fell fast and hard, and really hurt her back.

I helped her up and into the car. She cried but tried not to show it, and all along the way there she was moaning and writhing to the point where I figured she needed to go to the hospital. She refused. Said “I don’t have the money for a hospital visit.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“No, thank you, Suzie. You know you’re an angel? Right?”

I nearly cried.

I took her home. She lived in a rooming house down in the ghetto. Groups of men drinking paper bags, smoking woods, stood out on the front stoop. She sat in my car a long while. We were parked on the street. I was nervous.

“I’m so glad that we’re still friends after all this time.”

“Me too, Maddy.”

“You’re such a good friend.”

“You as well.”

“And we’ll always be friends. No matter what happens.”

“I know, Maddy. I know.”

Then she left. I drove home.

I didn’t hear from her for several days after. I thought about her, a lot, though I was weary over starting a friendship over again with her. I wasn’t sure. When she’d first called me, I was surprised to hear from her. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. I hadn’t seen her since maybe tenth grade. She drank a lot back then. 15 years ago. She used to bring bourbon bottles in her book bag to class.

I had a dream about her last night. She’d been in a gloomy meadow at night after the rain and she was wet and shivering and her clothes were all viciously ripped up and she was looking at me but I wasn’t there. She cried like she had that day on the front porch in her father’s car, and she shrieked at me, and told me that I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand.

I woke up terrified and lay there a moment. Didn’t know why I was scared. Thought about her. Thought of calling. Left my room. Turned the TV on. Sat in the living room while the coffee brewed. Filled a mug and put some milk in it with sugar. Went back to the living room. Watched the news.

Dropped the mug on the carpet spilling coffee on my slippers and backed away from the TV with my mouth gaped, weeping.

I must have wept in horror for several hours, maybe more. I didn’t know what to do. I was shaking all over like a nightmare had kidnapped me. I left the TV on and the broadcaster went on about what happened and what was happening and what the police were gonna do.

I sat crying.

“Oh, Maddy.”

She was dead. She’d shot her self, in Rockwell’s home, in his living room, many days after I’d seen her. She’d bought the gun about a year ago. Took a cab to Rockwell’s home. He wasn’t teaching anymore. He’d been very sick. Cared for by his wife, in his home, secluded, in a modest suburb on the edge of town, an unkempt lawn and no home security.

Mrs. Rockwell answered the door. Maddy shot her. She kept Rockwell alive in his chair for several minutes, and did things to the bastard that didn’t make sense. Then she shot him in the head, shot herself and there they lay, and less than 90 seconds later a swarm of police stormed the scene, along with forensics, paramedics and news reporters with their cameras.

One of the camera men entered the home after the bodies had been taken to the coroners office. Captured scenes of the blood splattered bright cherry on the carpet, the welcome mat, and Rockwell’s rocking chair in the living room.

I saw it on the news.