“You been drinking?” he asked as he pulled out of the gas station parking lot onto the street.
I nodded.
“Dammit, Valerie,” he said. “This is why you called me? Because you’re drunk?”
“No,” I said, leaning my head back against the seat. “I’m not drunk.”
“I can smell it on you.”
“I just had a couple beers. Please don’t tell Mom. Please. It’ll kill her.”
He gave me a look that clearly said, And what about me?, but thought better of it. Maybe he realized it wasn’t only me that was killing Mom. He had something to do with the death of her dreams, too.
“I can’t believe your mother is letting you go to parties,” he muttered under his breath.
“Maybe she’s trying to trust me,” I said.
“She shouldn’t,” he answered, glancing at me as he pulled onto the highway.
We drove on in silence, Dad shaking his head every few seconds disgustedly. I stared at him, wondering how it was that we got to this place. How the same man who held his infant daughter and kissed her tiny face could one day be so determined to shut her out of his life, out of his heart. How, even when she reached out to him in distress—Please, Dad, come get me, come save me—all he could do was accuse her. How that same daughter could look at him and feel nothing but contempt and blame and anger and resentment, because that’s all that had radiated off of him for so many years and it had become contagious.
Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the rawness I felt after Troy’s threat, or maybe it was both, but for some reason I couldn’t shut out the outrage I felt coursing through me. He was my dad. He was supposed to protect me, to at least be concerned when I called him from a gas station out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, asking him to pick me up.
“Why not?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
He glanced at me again. “Why not what?”
“Why shouldn’t Mom trust me, Dad? Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?” I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn’t. “I’ve been doing really good lately and you don’t even care.”
“Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight,” he said.
“You have no idea what happened tonight,” I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. “All you know is that, because I was involved, I’m somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand.”
Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. “I’ll tell you what I understand,” he said, his voice getting a courtroom causticity to it. “I understand that when you’re left to your own devices you get into trouble, that’s what I understand. I understand that I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up.”
I sat back against the seat and snorted laughter. “Sorry to bother your perfect little life with perfect little Briley,” I said. “Sorry you had to be bothered by your real family. But in case you—”
But Dad cut me off, his voice booming in the car. “I understand that your mother lets you run wild. If I’d been there, you wouldn’t have been going to any damn party tonight.”
My eyes widened. “But you weren’t there, Dad. That’s the whole point. You’re never there. Even when you’re around, you’re not there. Briley’s not your family. I’m your family. I am. Briley’s just a… stupid affair.”
Dad yanked the steering wheel and the Lexus swerved to the shoulder of the road. The car behind us screeched to a stop and honked. Then slowly it started to pull around us, the driver glaring at Dad. But Dad didn’t notice. He slammed the car into park and got out. He took several long strides to my side of the car and jerked my door open, reached in and grabbed my shoulder with incredible force, and yanked me out. I yelped and stumbled in the gravel.
He pulled me close to his face, his fingers still digging into my shoulder.
“Listen here, young lady,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s time you understood something. You’ve had a good goddamn life, you spoiled goddamn brat, and I’m sick—” he shook when he said the word “sick” and spittle flew out from between his teeth and cheeks and landed on my chin. “Sick of you ruining everyone else’s life. You either pull your shit together and start acting right or I’ll have your ass out on the street before you can say ‘unappreciative brat,’ do you hear me?”
My eyes were wide and I was breathing in short gasps. My shoulder ached where he clasped it and I could feel my legs shaking. My anger had vanished; I was too scared to be mad. I nodded numbly.
He relaxed a little, but didn’t let go, and still spoke in angry staccato little reports through his teeth. “Good. Now I’m about to take you to my home with Briley who, like it or not, is my family, too, and you better not fuck with her while you’re there. And if you feel like you just can’t handle acting normal for one goddamn night then I’ll take you home right now, but you’ll have five minutes to gather your shit and move the fuck out. Out of this family. Period. And don’t test me.”
A silver car came up beside us and slowed, the passenger window rolling down. A woman’s face appeared in the open space, curious and worried. “Is everything okay here?” she called out. Neither of us moved at first, our eyes locked, our bodies still in the shadow of the car.
Finally, Dad, breathing hard through flared nostrils, let go of my shoulders and looked up. “Fine. We’re fine,” he said, walking around the front of the car.
“Miss?” she called out. “You okay? You need us to call someone?”
Slowly, as if through water, I turned and looked at her. She had a cell phone in her hand and waved it at me slightly, her eyes flicking to Dad, as he opened the driver’s door and got back inside the car. Part of me wanted to run to her, duck into the back seat of her car and beg her to take me away from here. Take me anywhere else.
But instead I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.” I reached up dazedly and smoothed the sleeve of my shirt, which was bunched and wrinkled where Dad’s fingers had wound in it.
“You’re sure?” she asked. Her car started rolling slowly forward.
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
“Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Have a good night.” She kept her eyes on me as her window rolled up again and the car began to move away, disappearing into the night.
I leaned up against Dad’s car, shaking. My heart was pounding and I felt nauseated. I gulped in a few deep breaths and tried to calm myself before ducking back in and shutting my door. We drove the rest of the way home in silence.
When we got to Dad’s apartment, Briley, wrapped tidily in a thick pink robe, was waiting at the door. She eyed me as we came through the door and then gave Dad a startled glance.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Dad tossed his keys on a side table and kept walking. I followed him in sheepishly and looked around. The place looked like Dad, although I recognized nothing in it as being Dad’s stuff. That stuff was all at my house. Yet this stuff could just as easily have been his stuff, too. There was a flat-screen TV in the corner of the living room, a lot of leather furniture—black—and two giant bookcases crammed with books. On the coffee table were two wine glasses with a quarter of an inch of red wine splashed in the bottom of each one. I imagined the two of them, hanging out in their pajamas and robes, watching Letterman, holding hands, having a drink before bed, when the phone rang. Had Briley rolled her eyes when he left? Had she tried to get him not to go?
I heard a refrigerator door open and close around the corner. I stood rooted in the hallway, under Briley’s gaze.
“Come on,” she said. She touched my shoulder lightly, not unlike the touch Dad had given her in the office the other day. The touch that had outed them. “I’ll get you some pajamas.”
I followed her into a cool and boxy bedroom. She motioned for me to sit on the bed and I sat while she rum
maged through a bureau for a pair of pajamas.
“Here,” she said, handing them to me. She stood back and studied me, her hands resting on her hips. “He’s your father,” she said. “He deserves to know what went on.”
I blinked and looked down into my lap.
“Will it be easier to tell me, then?” she asked. She didn’t say it in some overly nice voice and she didn’t try to get all gentle or reach out to me, which I appreciated. Had she reached over to tuck my hair behind my ear or rub the small of my back or something I might have lost it. She just sat next to me on the bed and rested her palms neatly on the mattress beside her and said, “Tell me and I’ll tell him. Either way he’s got to know. You can’t stay here if you’re not going to tell him. I’ll call your mother myself.”
I told her everything. She never said a word while I talked, and she didn’t try to hug me when I finished. Just stood up and smoothed the robe down the sides of her legs with her palms and said, “You can change in the bathroom right there on your left,” and walked out of the room.
Next thing I knew I was sitting cross-legged on the leather couch, drinking the glass of milk she’d given me, and listening to them fight in the kitchen.
“She can’t let him get away with it,” Briley’s voice hissed from the kitchen. “You know that.”
“She’s afraid. Surely you can understand that.” Dad’s voice, not bothering to hiss. “Besides, she’s not going to listen to a damn thing I say tonight anyway. That much is perfectly clear.”
A part of me wanted to feel smug about causing their fight. About causing a rift between the happy couple. Like I’d had the last laugh, despite Dad’s threat. But I couldn’t. All I could feel was tired and numb. And stupid. Incredibly stupid.
“She has a hard enough time in school as it is. He didn’t hurt her. He doesn’t even go to that school anymore. He graduated,” Dad was saying.
“That’s not the point, Ted. He threatened her. He scared the hell out of her. And he had a gun.”
“But it wasn’t loaded. We don’t even know if it was a real gun. Besides… this isn’t up to us. Let her mother deal with it, if she decides to tell her mother. Jenny let her go out; she can handle the problem.”
“She needs a parent right now, Ted.”
“But you’re not her parent!” Dad roared.
My mouth dropped open when he said that and I actually found myself feeling sorry for Briley. She must have reacted because suddenly his voice got lower—controlled angry.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry. I know you want us to be a family, but right now it’s still too soon. You’re not her parent yet. I am.”
“Then act like one,” came the garbled response, and then footsteps, the sound of slippers slapping the wooden floor of the hallway, and a door shutting softly in the bedroom.
I heard Dad sigh in the kitchen. Then more footsteps. Dad coming into the living room.
“I’ll take you home in the morning,” he said in a measured voice. “What about the girl who you were supposed to be spending the night with tonight? Don’t you think she’s going to call your mother when she realizes you’re missing?”
“I called her cell and told her I was feeling sick and had you pick me up. She won’t be looking for me.”
He nodded.
“Listen,” he said, sighing, rubbing his forehead. “As a lawyer, I’m telling you, you really should just tell the police that the guy threatened you. See what they say. That way at least they have it on record.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Think hard,” he said, and then paused. “And you have to tell your mother.”
“I know,” I said, but in the back of my mind I promised myself I wouldn’t do it. This party was her South Dakota. And besides, he was right. It’s not like I’m some big gun expert or something. It could have been a fake. How would I know the difference?
He turned as if to leave the room. “Better get to bed soon,” he said, gesturing at the pillow and blanket next to me on the couch. “I’m taking you home first thing in the morning. I have things to do tomorrow.”
He switched off the floor lamp and the living room was bathed in darkness. I stretched back on the couch and stared at the ceiling until my eyes ached, afraid to close them for fear of what images of the night might replay in my head. My brain had so many frightening ones to choose from now. One thing was for sure: I was sick and tired of feeling scared. But from where I lay, every path I could take from here was scary as hell.
And something else was clear as well. Dad would never come around. It wasn’t worth my time to keep trying. He’d already made his decision about me.
In the morning, Dad loaded me into the Lexus and drove me home. Neither of us spoke until he pulled up against the curb outside the house. It was still so early the sky was gray and the house looked asleep.
“Tell Frankie I’ll pick you guys up on Saturday morning,” he said. “We’ll go out to eat or something.”
I nodded. “I’ll tell him, but I think I’ll stay home.”
He considered this, searching my face with his eyes. After a while he gave a curt little nod. “I guess I’m not surprised by that.”
33
After Dad dropped me off, I traipsed upstairs to my bedroom and fell asleep facedown on my bed. Mom came in after a while to tell me it was time for therapy and I waved her away, promising I’d call Dr. Hieler that evening instead. I lied, telling her I’d stayed up too late with Jessica and needed to sleep in a little.
But after Mom left I’d rolled onto my back and found myself staring at the ceiling once again, unable to go back to sleep. After a while I’d gotten up and asked her to take me to Bea’s.
“Oh my,” Bea said, taking in the look on my face when I walked into the art studio an hour later. “Oh goodness.” But she didn’t say any more. Just went back to her jewelry-making, shaking her head piteously every so often and clucking her tongue.
I didn’t say anything to Bea, either. I just wanted to be left alone. Wanted to paint, to get away from it all.
I pulled a blank canvas off the shelf and brought it to my easel. I stared at it for so long I was sure Mom would be back to pick me up and I’d have nothing to show for my sitting here, other than a blank canvas that held a thousand images for me only.
Finally I picked up a paintbrush and poised it over the palette, unsure what color to choose.
“Did you know,” Bea murmured, plucking a shiny green bead out of a box with her fingernails and threading it onto a bracelet, “that some people mistakenly think that all paintbrushes do is paint? How closed-minded some people can be.”
I stared at my brush. My hands suddenly went to work without me, as they’d done so many times before, turning the brush so that the bristles were curled into my palm. I made a tight fist around them. I felt the bristles crush and roll in my fist.
I brought the tip of the paintbrush handle to the canvas and put pressure behind it. A little, and then a lot. And then I felt a pop and heard a small tear as the brush poked through the canvas, gouging a hole in the center. I pulled the brush out and looked at it, then did it again, about an inch away from the first gouge.
To say I was creating anything in particular would be a lie. I had no thought running through my mind as I worked. I only knew that my hands were moving and that with each punch through the canvas I felt an unidentifiable relief pour from me. It wasn’t a feeling I was seeking, but something that was being drawn from me.
Soon I had ten slashes in my canvas. I painted them red. I surrounded them with a lot of black, dotted with watery droplets that looked like tear stains.
I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster’s face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn’t quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?
“Both,” Bea muttered, as if I’d spoken my question aloud. “Of course it’s both. But it shouldn’t be. Goodness, no.”
Still, I knew then what I had to do. In a way, Troy was right. I didn’t belong. Not with Jessica, not with Meghan, definitely not with Josh. I didn’t belong at those parties. I didn’t belong in Student Council. I didn’t belong with Stacey and Duce. With my parents who’d suffered so much. With Frankie who made friends so easily.
Who was I kidding? I never even really belonged with Nick. Because I totally betrayed him, made him think I believed what he believed, made him think I would be on his side no matter what, even if he killed people.
Bea was wrong. I was both the monster and the sad girl. I couldn’t separate the two.
And as I dropped the paintbrush, which clattered to the floor, flicking dots of paint all over the bottoms of my jeans, and slunk out of there, I pretended not to hear the encouragement Bea was shouting to my back.
34
“You can’t drop out now,” Jessica said. An annoyed little line drew itself across her forehead. “We only have a couple months left to get this together. We need your help. You committed.”
“Well, now I’m un-committing,” I answered. “I’m out.”
I shut my locker and walked toward the bank of glass doors.
“What is your problem?” Jessica hissed, rushing behind me. For a moment I could almost see the old Jessica shining through—could almost hear her voice echoing What are you looking at, Sister Death? Somehow it made what I had to do easier.
“This school is my problem!” I said through clenched teeth. “Your asshole friends are my problem. I just want to be left alone. I just want to finish and get out of here. Why can’t you understand that? Why are you always pushing me to be someone I’m not?” I didn’t slow down.
“God, when are you going to get past that ‘I’m not one of you’ thing, Valerie? How many times do I have to tell you that you are? I thought we were friends.”
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