“What are you talking about?” I asked in a much more demanding tone. His jumping from one thing to another had exhausted me. I knew I sounded more like my mother, but I felt I had to. “What are you saying? Doing something like what? What’s sick?”
He narrowed his eyelids and stood firmly, no shaking, no unbalance, stern.
“It’s time you stopped this pretending. Go on up there or go to wherever you have it and get that good-bye note, Scarletta. Before I go to sleep, I want to see it exactly where I accidentally left it today. And until you put it back there, you don’t leave this house, not to go to school, not to go anywhere. Understand? I don’t want you on the phone talking to any of your friends, either. I’m warning you. Don’t dare disobey me,” he said, wagging his finger.
He stepped forward. I gasped and stepped to the side to get out of his way, because he looked like he was going to walk right into me or through me. I watched him pull himself up the stairs, grasping the banister and nearly tripping on one step. For a few moments, I couldn’t move. I followed him but didn’t get too close. When he reached the top, he tottered for a moment, looking at my bedroom. Then he walked to his and my mother’s bedroom, leaving the door wide open.
As if the heavens had decided to support what was happening, there was a boom of thunder. A heavy downpour started, the wind and rain scratching at our windows. I saw a streak of lightning through my open door as I walked in a daze to my bedroom. What had just happened? What was happening to us? The thunder was so loud, the lightning so close, that it seemed like it would come stabbing at me through my windows and set my room, my bed, and me on fire.
My mother was never frightened by the weather. When I asked her how she could be so brave, she said, “There’s no point in being afraid of things you can’t control. Just be afraid of making your own mistakes.”
I tried to be as brave as possible for her, but that didn’t stop me from quivering in the wake of my father’s frightening words and threats. He was almost unrecognizable. It was as if my mother’s leaving had permitted his truer self to emerge. All these years, she had kept it under lock and key. Maybe he had been fighting that from the moment I found him crying over the note she had left, and now that battle within him was over, and the part of him I had grown to love and cherish was dying away, dwindling like a lovely song falling far behind me in the darkness.
Nevertheless, hope popped up again, fighting the attempt to drown it. Maybe in the morning, Daddy would forget everything he said while he was drinking, I thought. He’d be sorry and surely make it up to me. I’d be forgiving. We did need each other. Think of all this as his suffering, too. Help him, Scarletta, I told myself. Help him.
I sucked in my breath, squeezed my hands into fists to get myself to be determined and crush the memory of what had just occurred, and then I went to the bathroom to prepare for bed. There was another boom, shaking the house. Lightning flashed brighter than before. The rain sounded like hundreds of whips snapping over the roof, the sides, and the windows. Trying to ignore it, I concentrated on washing up, brushing my teeth, and putting on a nightgown, this time deliberately avoiding my mother’s.
After I had put out the light, I slipped into bed but lay there staring up at the ceiling and listening to the rain until it slowed and the lightning was gone. I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid that I would see my father’s grotesque expressions and anger displayed on the inside of my eyelids, streaming like film images projected from the deepest dark places in my memory to keep me soaking in a pool of cold fear. Eventually, my emotional exhaustion took control, and I closed my eyes. Sleep came with the finality of a coffin lid.
I had no doubt that I would have slept through the night, slept even past my time to get up to go to school, something he had forbidden me to do until I produced my mother’s good-bye note, but I was suddenly awoken with the feeling of lips on my neck. For an instant, I thought it was a dream, and then the scent of whiskey swirled under my nostrils, and I shuddered and turned to see my father beside me, his eyes closed.
His hand moved up my stomach to my breast. It resembled an independent creature cupping and gently massaging, the fingers slipping over my nipple. I was too shocked and frightened to move or speak, especially when I realized he was naked.
“I’m sorry, Doreen,” he whispered. “Forgive me. Come back to us.”
His lips were on my neck again, and his hand slipped off my breast and down to my thigh.
“DADDY!” I screamed.
He stopped. I remained still, frozen and frightened. He did not speak. He turned, and then, rising like someone about to begin sleepwalking, he started out of my bedroom, the weak illumination of the hallway making it look like I was witnessing everything through a sheet of gauze, his naked body ghostlike as he appeared to float through the door and disappear.
For a few seconds, I lay there questioning whether he had been here beside me, touching me, or if I had dreamed it. There was a lingering scent of the whiskey to convince me it had really happened. I sat up and listened. I didn’t hear any footsteps or any door closing, so I rose and went out to the hallway. He wasn’t there. I walked to his bedroom and looked in. Because the sky had not yet cleared, there was almost no illumination. I stepped in to get a better view of the bed and saw he was not in it. For a long moment, I stood there in the dim light borrowed from the low-wattage hall chandelier and listened. The bathroom door was open, but I didn’t hear him in there.
And then my eyes drifted to the far left corner near my mother’s closet, and I saw him sitting on the floor, his arms around his knees, his eyes open.
“Daddy?” I said, stepping toward him.
“Get away!” he cried. “Away!”
I stopped, terrified. “What is it? What’s the matter? Why did you come to my room? Why were you in my bed again? What are you doing?”
“Away,” he said. “Just stay away.”
He lowered his head.
He’s still drunk, I thought. He’s just drunk. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t want to disturb him any more, so I turned and left. When I crawled back into my bed and thought about what had happened and what I had just seen, my body felt like it was made of fine crystal that had been so shaken it had hairline cracks up and down and across it. If I moved too quickly, I would shatter into pieces.
I didn’t move, and I didn’t fall back to sleep. I lay there with my eyes open, anticipating my father realizing what he had done and what had happened. He would come to my room to apologize. He might even be crying like a baby when he asked me to forgive him. I would, of course. I wanted that to happen so much that I was afraid if I fell asleep, he would see I wasn’t awake and return to his room. He, too, would then lie awake, full of regret.
But he never came. The light of morning came instead. It was then that my exhaustion took control, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them and looked at the clock, I saw it was nearly noon. Groaning, I sat up, ground the sleepiness out of my eyes, and rose, putting on my slippers. Daddy must have overslept, too, I thought, and I went to his bedroom. The door was closed, but I opened it and stepped in. He wasn’t in his bed, and he wasn’t in the bathroom.
I hurried back to my room, got into my robe, and started down the stairs, listening hard for any sounds coming from the kitchen. The house was silent. Nevertheless, skeptical of his leaving without speaking to me, I hurried to the kitchen and saw he wasn’t there. There were no signs of his having had breakfast, either. I had started to turn away to look in the living room when my eyes caught sight of the paper on the kitchenette. Slowly, I approached and then picked it up and read. There were only five words.
Return your mother’s good-bye note.
My fingers stung as if the paper was electrified. I dropped it on the table and went to the door to the garage. His car was gone. He had left for work.
Still quite dazed, I started to return to my room but paused to look in the living room. It was as if I had to check every place in this house every
day forever to be sure my mother had not returned. I saw no one there, but my gaze drifted, and then I lifted my head and looked up at where my mother’s beautiful portrait had hung.
It was gone.
And in its place was the old picture of my grandparents, my father’s parents. He had said he would do that, but I didn’t think he would. It was as if someone had thrown a pail of snow and ice over me. Why had my father done this now, this morning? Was it because of the missing good-bye note, to drive home my mother’s desertion? Was it because he couldn’t stand the sight of her looking down at him anymore? Was it to convince himself it was over? Where had he put her beautiful picture?
I went from room to room downstairs searching for it, wondering if he at least had decided to hang it somewhere less conspicuous, but it wasn’t anywhere, on any wall. I rushed to the garage, thinking he had put it against one of the walls, but it wasn’t there, either. I ran up the stairs. He hadn’t put it in what had been my grandparents’ room and, of course, not in his. I thought of the attic.
Our house had a retractable stairway to the attic. There was a hanging strap that you pulled to lower the ladder steps. I hadn’t done it by myself ever. My mother wasn’t fond of going up there but occasionally did, and often she did with my father. It was then that I would go up, more for the excitement of doing it than interest in the attic. It was far more than a crawl space. The roof was high enough for my father to walk without having to bend over, and it ran almost the length and width of the house. Twice that I could remember, handymen had to go up there to repair some areas of the roof that had leaked after a heavy rain.
Most of what was stored up there had belonged to my grandparents. If it wasn’t such an effort to bring it all down and throw it away, my mother would have done so. She said she didn’t consider one thing up there to be a valuable family heirloom. “It’s all junk, the sort of stuff a serial hoarder keeps to gather dust. Your grandfather wouldn’t give anything away. He was so stingy he wouldn’t give someone his cold.”
She went off on how petty my grandmother was and how she lived in a world of illusion, believing that just because it had belonged to her or her mother, it was valuable.
When I pulled the strap and began to climb the ladder, I realized how hard it would be for my father to carry up the large portrait of my mother by himself. It had a thick ivory scrolled frame. It was too heavy and wide. After the night he’d had, I couldn’t imagine him navigating with it in his hands. And I couldn’t imagine my sleeping through his having one or two of his workers come here to carry it up, either.
When I rose through the opening and gazed around, I saw nothing new. Still there were the old trunks my grandmother and grandfather had used for their many cruises, as well as other luggage and some dark wood cabinets. There was a mirror on a wooden stand, the glass caked with dust, black metal file cabinets, old standing lamps, and piles of fashion magazines. There were books scattered about as well. I remember my father insisting some of that was really worth money.
But as I panned the whole attic, I did not see the portrait. I saw no point in walking around to look further, so I carefully backed down the ladder and then sent it up to lock in place. For a moment, I stood there, thinking. The portrait really was too big to fit in my father’s car, backseat or trunk. It struck me that he could have put it outside, perhaps in the rear of the house. I hurried down the stairs and to the rear entrance.
The moment I stepped out, the bright sunshine blinded me. I covered my eyes and gazed around. There was no sign of the picture leaning against a wall or lying off somewhere. What a horrible thing to do with it anyway, I thought. If it rained on it, it would be ruined. I thought how nasty and vengeful it would be to leave it in the sunshine, too, recalling how strict Mother had been about those UV rays. She was always on my father about it, almost as much as she was with me.
I’d have to wait until he came home or called, I thought. Surely he would call to see how I was or if I had disobeyed him and left the house. But it was too late to go to school anyway. Vaguely, I wondered what everyone was thinking. In a little while, when lunchtime would start, I had no doubt Jackie or maybe even Chet would call to see where I was. Jackie had probably been worrying all morning. Tonight was her party, and if I was indeed sick, what would happen to her plans for her great night? That would be more important than my being sick, of course. Would Chet simply choose another girl?
Considering what was happening here, I felt stupid for even thinking about it. Maybe my father was right in his drunken lecture last night. Maybe I should act more upset about my mother’s leaving us and stop smiling for a while. Perhaps he was accurate to say I was refusing to face reality.
As if my thoughts organized the way things happened in the world, the phone rang as soon as I reentered the house. I debated answering it. I really didn’t want to talk to Jackie or Chet right now, but of course, if it was my father, my not answering it would convince him I had disobeyed his orders.
“Hello,” I said even before I had brought the receiver to my ear.
“Where the hell are you? What are you doing?” It was Jackie. “Don’t tell me you’re sick. There wasn’t anything wrong with you yesterday. Well?” she demanded when I didn’t respond instantly.
“I am sick, sick from our personal family problems,” I replied. I thought that would just end it, but Jackie wasn’t buying it, and sympathy wasn’t her strong point.
“That’s crap, Scarletta. Everyone knows you and your father are not devastated. And you certainly didn’t seem very sad when you were with us, especially when you were with Chet.”
“I’m not the sort of person who likes sympathy, especially from people who are phony about it. I had a very bad night.”
“Well, are you still coming to the party?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“What? You don’t think so? I did a lot to convince Chet you’d be fun anyway. Even if we didn’t consider what your mother did, it would still be hard to get him to believe me. I set you up. It was a lot of work. This is some gratitude.”
“Set me up for what, Jackie?”
“A good time, stupid.”
“I guess our definition of a good time is quite different after all,” I said.
“You are nuts. You know that? Boy, did I make a mistake.”
“Well, don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll make plenty more.”
“Fuck you, Scarletta,” she said, and hung up.
I held the receiver for a moment and smiled. It was the first time in almost a day that I did. But I wasn’t really feeling as good about it as I pretended. Why wouldn’t I want to have a good time, too? I felt like I had been dragged underwater and given a chance to rise to the surface to take a breath, only to have my head pushed down before I could.
I stood there in the rear of the kitchen, staring down at the floor. I was exhausted again. Suddenly, my eyes went to the basement door just inside the rear entrance of the house. Nothing personal was kept there. It was damp and very poorly lit. If he had brought the portrait down there, he might as well have broken it up, torn up the picture, and shoved it in the garbage can. Maybe he couldn’t get himself to do that, so the next best thing in his mind was the basement.
A part of me fought going down there to look. He’d be so angry again, and he’d accuse me again of not facing reality. He might be devastated if I dared to suggest that I keep it in my room. But what was I supposed to do, throw out every picture of my mother? If I could keep any, why not keep this one, the best one? Every time I had looked at it, I had dreamed of being as beautiful. Maybe she was different now, but she was my mother. The great picture was as important to me as it had been to my father and to my mother. It was as much a part of who I was as anything in this house ever could be. I wouldn’t let it rot away in our damp, dark basement.
To my surprise, the door was locked. I went to the drawer where keys and batteries were kept, but I couldn’t find the key. Why did he lock the doo
r to our basement? I grabbed a screwdriver and returned to pry at the tooth of the lock. It took me a while, but after pushing and pulling, I managed to get the door opened. Because there were no windows below, I looked down into pitch darkness. Fumbling on the side, I found the switch that would light up the stairs. I hesitated, thinking I would surely surprise rats or something. Carefully, I started down.
When I reached the bottom, I looked for the chain that had to be pulled to turn on the basement ceiling light. Nothing happened. I looked up at the fixture and saw there was no bulb in it. Why take out the bulb? Did it blow and my father forgot to replace it or knew we didn’t have any? I hurried up the stairs to the kitchen pantry, where I knew we kept light bulbs. There were at least a dozen. I grabbed one and went back down the stairs. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the fixture, but there was a small ladder. I unfolded it and climbed up to screw in the new bulb. Instantly, the basement was lit enough for me to look at the length and width of it.
I didn’t see the picture anywhere, but I stepped off the ladder and walked slowly over the gravel floor. The damp, rancid smell turned my stomach. As I looked around, there was at first nothing in the basement I didn’t recall. Then I saw the shovel against the wall on my left. When I looked at the floor in front of it, I saw there was less gravel. The area looked like the width and length of my mother’s portrait. How bizarre, I thought. Daddy had buried it? How could he do such a thing?
I seized the shovel and began clearing away the gravel that looked swept over the area. Then I began to dig carefully, not wanting the shovel to go through the picture if it was really there. After a few minutes, I saw the ivory frame. My stomach churned. This was crazy. How could he do this? I dug carefully all around the picture until it was no longer covered. He had buried it facedown. My hands were trembling. I’ll clean it up, I thought, and I’ll put it in my room. He’d be upset, but I would not give in. I could hate what my mother had done and not hate her. Even he had said often that we had the same face. I was cloned, right? So don’t make me forget her as well as hate her. I would do neither.
The Silhouette Girl Page 21