Use Me

by Elissa Schappell

  “Heaven.” Dee laughed derisively. “Ha! Heaven is supposed to make all this horrible stuff people endure on earth worthwhile.” She was tan, and had recently acquired wrinkles around her eyes. “What a ridiculous argument,” she said. My sister had become absolutely beautiful.

  I poured myself some wine and congratulated myself on not mentioning Mom’s own conversion.

  Since Daddy had been diagnosed the last time, my mother had been steeping herself in the Buddhist religion of golden happy reincarnation. Mom wasn’t going to heaven, she was going out to pasture in her next life as a Zen Holstein.

  Every time we visited the house, it seemed another stone Buddha had taken up residence in the backyard, plopped down in some wavy ornamental grass or lurking at the edges of the woods. When the morning mist hung low over the trees and you unfocused your eyes, the Buddhas looked like tombstones.

  Yesterday, I’d made some lame joke about how she could spray for that Buddha infestation—“They’re like raccoons, or crabgrass”—but she’d just let it go, playing with her bracelet of carved jade prayer beads.

  “For your information,” Dee said, flashing me a snarky look, “the Jews know suffering, they understand grief. Judaism makes sense. It’s much more humanistic. I’d think it would appeal to you, Ev.”

  “No, thanks, I’m hip deep in green bean casserole and sidecars, sis. Oops, got to go pop a Percocet.” I was teasing; in truth I was devoted to Xanax. Was. No longer, nope, I was moving on!

  Dee sighed.

  I yanked open the top of the box, yanked out the bag, and shot a stream into Mom’s empty glass; it looked as though I were dumping a catheter bag. My father would have appreciated the humor in that, but nobody here would, so I kept quiet. There was a whole realm of things I’d never say, jokes I’d never make because he wasn’t here to hear them. To egg me on.

  My sister frowned as wine splashed on the table. She checked her watch. It pained me that it seemed she was just counting the hours until she could return home and say, “I survived it.”

  I wish I’d thought to have a T-shirt made, I MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF MY FATHER’S DEATH, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. He’d have smiled at that one too, even though it was a cliché.

  “Well, religion is the opium of the people, that’s what Dad would say.” I thought I heard the phone ringing inside the house.

  “Your father would never say that,” my mother said in horror. “Your father was a Presbyterian.”

  “Dad didn’t say that, Karl Marx said that,” Dee said.

  “Yeah, right,” I said, settling back in my chair. “Whatever.”

  I did that a lot, attributing things to my father that he hadn’t said, but that felt like things he might have said. Could have said. Things I wanted him to have said, if only because I remembered them. Half the time I made him sound like Noël Coward, the other half, John Wayne. Superman or Superdick. Sometimes I feared I’d never listened to him at all. Sometimes I couldn’t hear his voice, or remember one thing he’d said. As if I’d been parented by Casper the Friendly Dad, all his words had infinitesimal half-lives, they’d just burned off.

  On the first anniversary of my father’s death, I realized that it was possible that because I’d been building him up in my mind for so long, preparing for the day when I’d lose him, I’d missed the man altogether, and now he was irretrievable.

  If I could forget him, he who was everything to me, what hope was there that anyone would remember me when I was gone?

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dee said.

  I couldn’t let anybody have one piece of him. It was like it came out of my pie.

  “I know what I know,” I said. “You don’t even know what religion you are.”

  “Dad wouldn’t want us fighting,” Dee said, narrowing her eyes.

  “You don’t know what Dad would want,” I said. “Unless, along with becoming a Jew, you’ve also acquired ESP.”

  The phone rang. It really rang. I hoped it would ring just once, this would mean it wasn’t the boy, but one of the shepherds from the outreach program from church calling just to let us know they were thinking about us. That would show Dee. Years ago, when Mom and Dad went on a marriage encounter weekend, the same thing happened. Your shepherd would call and hang up just to let you know they were praying for you. It gave my father the creeps. Me too. The thought of another couple praying for my parents seemed just one step away from wife-swapping.

  “Anyway, we’re not fighting,” I said. My mother just stared blankly. No doubt, in her mind, she was twisted up in one of her yoga positions, hands over ears, legs over head, knees clamped on hands, to ensure nothing seeped into her ears, the Denier pose.

  “Girls,” my mother said, and made like she was keeping us apart. “Think of your father.” And of course we had to shut right up.

  “So,” Dee said, “Mom says you’ve been getting some good work as a stylist for photo shoots, that’s nice. The fall Vogue, right? That’s an American institution, is it not?” When did it happen that she became the big sister, and I became the little one?

  “Yeah, whatever, no big deal,” I said. I didn’t tell her that this sweet gig was basically thanks to Mary Beth, who was an editor in the fashion department and who probably held the photo editor at stiletto-heel-point, forcing her to give me work. I hadn’t wanted to go, Billy made me go.

  “And some gallery downtown is interested in showing some work?”

  “Yes, and they don’t even serve food or have bar service.” Up till now my few pieces had hung in cafés, or dark bars who took pity on artists. They weren’t exactly discerning. She frowned, she was really trying to be nice. I wanted to be nice. I didn’t know if she would understand that none of these good things meant anything to me. That when the curator called I’d burst into tears. That without my father here, success and happiness meant nothing.

  “We’ll see,” I said. Really, who gives a damn.

  I’m inside using the bathroom when the phone rings. Maybe Annabelle is in the emergency room, maybe Billy got a flat. Maybe, maybe.

  “Hello?” I said, trying to sound breathy and slightly annoyed like this call was interrupting a grand party. I was just about to grab ahold of the crystal chandelier and swing out over the heads of my guests, when ring ring ring…

  “Hello? Evie, how are you, dear?” It was one of my mother’s friends. “How are all of you?” she asked, holding her breath for a moment, as if she expected the room to fill up with my tears.

  “We’re good, really, hanging in there, you know,” I said, then the other line beeped, so I said, “Sorry, hold on.” I hadn’t imagined that all those earlier calls could have been thoughtful friends.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey,” a voice said, “it’s Dean.” It’s Dean. My heart started pounding like mad, my palms got wet. It was amazing.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to muster up a husky, devil-may-care voice. I dragged the phone into the closet and shut the door. “Hey you,” I said, surrounded by coats. I stuck my hand in a coat pocket, it felt like my dad’s old jean jacket. I felt a wadded-up Kleenex, some change, a piece of paper, perhaps an old shopping list. How many pieces of paper with his writing on them were left?

  It was wrong, I knew that. I was out of control. I couldn’t stop, I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to help myself. Why couldn’t I have this one thing? This one good thing?

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I said. There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I could hear him smoking, maybe doing bong hits. Bong hits would be nice.

  “So,” he said. “What are you up to?”

  “Not much,” I said. God, why couldn’t I think of anything to say!

  “So, do you want to get together or something?”

  “Yeah,” I heard myself say.

  After that we both loosened up. He told me he lived with his mom, that he just read On the Road and had been taking a lot
of acid.

  He asked if I lived in North Star, because a guy on his water polo team had the same exchange. That kid lived up the block. I described our house, and he swore he knew which one it was. I told him I couldn’t meet him until after eleven. He didn’t mind. “That’s cool,” he said. “Good.”

  He suggested a bar in Newark, the Deer Park, near the university. I was heartened to find he could meet me in a bar, that must have meant he was twenty-one. Maybe Dean and I could be friends, I thought.

  When Billy came home, tired, Annabelle in one arm, his hands holding bags of CDs and penny candy, a daisy chain on his head like a crown and, under his arm, a bouquet of goldenrod, I couldn’t even look at him. When he handed my mother a bag full of corn and tomatoes he bought at a roadside stand, and the bouquet, I went to him and kissed him on the mouth. It surprised him. Of course I wasn’t going to meet Dean, and by tomorrow we would be gone and this would all be over. Still.

  I picked up Annabelle and savored her weight in my arms. I loved the smell of her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and yawned hugely, like a cat. I wondered if she would remember my father. Remember how he held her and kissed her behind the knee. How he adored her.

  Since my father died, Billy had become the de facto man of the house. A role he’d seemed to slip into with surprisingly little resistance, the same way he’d become a father. Therefore the responsibility and privilege of charring the clan’s meat fell to him. Billy set up the barbecue outside and started grilling the steak my mother had been marinating all day, although she was now a vegetarian. He cut up red and green peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms and made brochettes while Dee and I shucked the corn.

  “Vitamins,” Billy sang, raising a cold Corona with lime, “You girls need vitamins.”

  “You should have brought your guitar,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. Ever since my father’s death, Billy seemed to think I wanted him to get a real job instead of taking the random studio-musician gig and fact-checking for Rolling Stone. It was true. His need to succeed and the uncertainty of the music world made me too anxious. I needed him stable. At least for a little while.

  I knew he heard me, but he just kept painting olive oil on the brochettes, and finished his beer.

  It was so lovely out, we all agreed, it would be a shame not to eat outside on the deck. In truth, since my father died we only ever spent time in two parts of the house, the kitchen and the bedrooms. Any room where my father had held court—the living room, family room, or dining room—we avoided. The deck was like an anteroom, a place to hide from the body of the house.

  When no one was looking, I slipped into the dining room and kissed my father’s chair.

  Billy put Annabelle down for the night. Then he joined us out on the deck, with five nice wineglasses and a bottle of the good stuff. A bottle of my father’s Chateau Margaux we had been saving for A Special Occasion. I guessed one was happening. Billy turned on the outside lights so we were no longer pleasantly resting in gloom. Now it felt like we were on a stage, surrounded by darkness, waiting for something to happen.

  “Annabelle walked today, again.” Billy yanked the cork out in one swift pull. “In the grass, at the playground. She’s got incredible balance.”

  “Really?”

  “Good.”

  “How nice…”

  This was how it went. The day before, Annabelle had taken her first steps in the front yard. She walked from Billy to the weeping maple. Mom and I were sitting on the front porch watching. When it happened, I caught my breath for a moment. I looked at my mother; she looked back at me, her mouth tightening. I checked the skies. Did you see that? I thought. Then and only then did I go to my daughter, hug her. What a shit I was for not jumping up straightaway.

  On the first anniversary of my father’s death, I didn’t think it unreasonable to expect a miracle.

  Billy poured for all of us, and we raised our glasses. My father had always made the toasts. Then Billy poured some in a glass and set it in front of the empty chair and framed photograph of Daddy in Kathmandu we’d set up on the table in front of us, just as we had done at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and as I had then, I kept waiting, glass after glass, fool that I am, for the wine to disappear, like that statue of Ganesh in India that drinks milk.

  I pretended I wasn’t watching, but I was. I lit a match, and another. I surprised myself by realizing that I’d forgotten about meeting Dean. I checked Dee’s Rolex, it was nine-thirty.

  Just one drop. Hell, I was willing to can any skepticism about evaporation.

  The brown bats did acrobatics over our heads, feasting on the insects drawn to the porch lights, a regular smorgasbord of moths and mosquitoes.

  “Girls, do either of you remember that night in London when we first had Indian food?” my mother asked. “It was London, right, not Edinburgh?”

  “It was London,” I said.

  “Edinburgh,” Dee said.

  My mother frowned.

  “You know what I remember?” Dee said. “Dancing with Daddy. He was an incredible dancer.”

  My mother nodded. For the first time all day, I thought she might cry.

  “I know,” I said. “Remember how people would sort of make way for him at weddings? It was amazing. My God, I’d be ready to keel over and he’d be like, Come on, it’s the Stones!”

  “I will never forget dancing with Daddy,” Dee sighed. For the first time all day I thought she might cry.

  Then it occurred to me, hearing that sigh, seeing those tears well up, that all girls with dead fathers must remember dancing with them. That intimacy of being in his arms, the public spectacle of it, the feeling of your father’s hand on your back, owning you. Being allowed to love him a little in that way. It bothered me. I couldn’t remember my father making me a sandwich. I’m sure he did, hundreds of times, but I couldn’t remember it, and I wanted that memory. I wanted to remember that, some keen or poignant personal thing, not this stock footage of a girl, any girl, and her father dancing—even if it was to “Brown Sugar” and he was doing a Chuck Berry duckwalk—I was scared it could be somebody else’s memory.

  Heaven was filled with dead fathers dancing away like wind-up toys.

  I excused myself. I could feel myself about to say something mean, or stupid, so I got up. I went into the dining room and sat in my chair, the one to the left of my father’s chair. Then, out the front window, I saw Dean standing at the edge of our yard staring at the house, his foot resting on a skateboard, like he was waiting for me, like some idiotic kid. He flipped the skateboard into his hands, then held it behind his head, stretching. His T-shirt rode up so I could see his flat stomach, the hair leading down to his groin. I wondered what he smelled like. I remembered the boy Billy was when I met him in Amsterdam; he was just twenty-one, his stomach concave; I remember the smell of kissing him there, feeling his breath quicken. How I’d look at him naked when he slept, just amazed by how pretty he was. How lucky I was. I thought I’d never get tired of touching him, or hearing his voice. We were so young then.

  I just stared at Dean. I didn’t know whether to run, or hide. Instead, I panicked. I went straight out the front door, I tried to look casual. I wondered if the neighbors were watching. As soon as I got close enough to see him, really see him, looking at me sideways and sort of shy, I was undone.

  “Hi, what are you doing here?” I asked. I didn’t look over my shoulder to see if anybody was watching me, because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “I was in the neighborhood.” He shrugged, then picked up a piece of grass, stuck it in his mouth, and gave me this lopsided grin. I wondered if he was checking out my wrinkles.

  “Yeah?” I said. One-word answers. I was regressing quickly. Soon I’d be sneaking out my bedroom window in my nightgown to drink Löwenbräu and kiss up against the trees down in the woods, as I’d done with Scott Richmond.

  “So talk to me, what’s your story?” he asked, and made like he was going to sit down on the grass.

&
nbsp; “Don’t,” I said. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back up. I felt the tight biceps, that smooth skin.

  “Hey,” he said, reclaiming his arm.

  “Listen, I have to go back in.” I bit my lip. “We’ve got this big family dinner thing going on out back, and my dad will kill me if he sees me out here talking to you—I’m supposed to be getting ice. Lots of thirsty people down there,” I said, staring at his mouth. I was as hormonal as a horny teenager.

  “Your dad, huh?” He smiled like he might want to kiss me.

  “He can be a real bastard,” I said. I was standing really close to him. I slipped my fingers through his belt loops and then stopped. “He’d kill us both,” I said. “That man loves his ice.”

  Dean laughed. I liked Dean.

  “Eleven,” he said, like he didn’t believe I’d come.

  “Elevenish,” I said, then headed off in a run, a bounding Audrey Hepburn–esque romp across the grass toward the house. Inside, I slammed the front door and locked it. I was shaking and sweating. I peered out the front window the way I used to do when dates dropped me off. I’d watch them walk away and wonder what they were thinking. Wonder if I’d see them again. If I wanted to.

  When I went back to the deck, nothing had changed. It was as if nothing I did changed anything. My father smiled back at me from the photograph. He hadn’t had one drop.

  It was almost eleven when I checked Dee’s watch again. When my father was alive, this was the time when my mother and sister and Billy would start making noises about bed, and my father would look at me and say, “Nightcap?” And I’d say, “Sure.”

  Now when we visited I went to bed early, and my mother and sister and Billy all stayed up. Maybe for my father’s sake. Me, I saw no reason to stay up.

  If I was going to go and meet Dean, I should leave now.