In The End, Only Darkness

by O'Rourke, Monica

  Arm around her shoulders. So comforting, so paternal. “Come inside,” he’d said. “We’ll think of a penance that will wash away your horrible sin. Let me tell you about how people dealt with adultery in the days of the Crusades … let me tell you about punishment.”

  He folded her arms over her chest and prayed over her.

  Mass was to begin at 6:00 p.m. Father Dominic left the rectory to greet his flock.

  Five Adjectives about My Dad, by Nadine Specter

  Assignment: Using five adjectives, write a 350-word essay describing your father. [Eds. Note: Miss Maginty verified that of nineteen second-grade students, thirteen had a surviving father. The other six children were asked to write about their favorite pet.] Give examples.

  My dad’s name is Ken. He is kind, smart, funny, fair, and happy. Those are my five adjectives. An adjective is a word that describes a noun.

  My dad is kind. He is good to me and my brother, Aaron. Aaron is five years old. I am two years older than Aaron. I am seven. He can be a pest. My dad is kind because he knows privacy is important to me.

  The grass outside Nadine’s bedroom window sprouts patches of brown. The blades bow respectful of the wind, reaching in unison toward the ground as if a single blade. Nadine is hypnotized by their rhythm and tries to count them. She loses track after fifty-seven.

  Nadine pokes her head out the bedroom door a short time later. Being punished. Nadine was bad. Again.

  “Dad?” she whines, knowing it annoys him but does it anyway. Doing so seems silly, but it attracts his attention. Which is what she craves.

  He responds to her plea for clemency with a shout from the sofa downstairs.

  She whines louder. He threatens a spanking.

  Nadine pouts. “Can I come out of my room now?”

  When he doesn’t respond she creeps down the stairs and stalks into the living room. Shakes his shoulder. “Can I come out now?” she whispers, not realizing the irony.

  His eyes gleam open, blinking back crocodile tears that had formed during his nap. Cold dark pupils glare at her under the dim lighting. “Dammit, you woke me up.”

  She steps back, but she has no reason to fear him. He has never struck her, no matter how many times he’s threatened.

  She leans forward and clings to his arm. Smiles charmingly. Disarmingly. Hugs his arms, the hairs tickling her cheek.

  “Go back to your room.”

  “But can’t I—”

  “Back to your room.” More slowly. Teeth clenched.

  She doesn’t relent, wants to spend time with him. Even time fashioned in anger.

  “I’m hungry. Can I just get a snack?”

  “I won’t tell you again.”

  Nadine stares at him, willing him to change his mind, trying to control his thoughts. It isn’t working. But she practices and waits and stares and hopes he will suddenly say the opposite of what he had moments ago, but he gets angrier for some reason, some stupid reason, and she sees tiny red dots on his cheeks.

  After a minute that feels like an hour, Nadine’s father slithers around in his seat and shifts one eye toward her. Finally. Not directly at her but it’s close.

  She smiles and wonders if she has succeeded in changing his mind.

  “Get to bed.”

  “But I—”

  “Now! Move! Bed! And don’t leave that goddamned room!”

  Somehow the words comfort. She feels a connection.

  She runs away, crying, wishing Mom had stayed home that weekend, or wishing she’d gone too.

  She wishes she could travel back in time and reverse the events from breakfast, the reason for the exile: a glass slipped through her soapy fingers and shattered in the sink. She yelled sorry as she tried to clean up the shards, placing them inside the shattered bottom. She should have been more careful—it was his favorite glass.

  He snatched the glass corpse from her hands and examined it. He didn’t check her hands for signs of damage, but the glass he cradled. “My crystal scotch glass.”

  “Sorry,” she muttered again, eyes downcast, dismayed by her clumsiness. She often broke glasses and dishes. He accused her of breaking it intentionally and told her to go to her room, to stay there until he says she can come out.

  And there she has been ever since, realizing of course that the punishment fit the crime, knowing it could have been worse. She sits in her room, waiting since breakfast for a parole than never seems to be granted, knowing her stay of execution might expire before Mom returns from Aunt Kathleen’s.

  She sits cross-legged on her bed and scoops out a handful of cereal from the box of Cheerios she’s stashed.

  Mom and Aaron come home around two the following afternoon, and Nadine is allowed out of her room.)

  My dad is smart. He tells me I should go to college one day because I’m almost as smart as him. He knows all the capitals of all the states but won’t tell me any answers and says I should look them up.

  (Nadine’s class participated in a spelling bee and Nadine came in third. Mrs. Fisher gave her a Third Place Award Certificate and a ribbon. Nadine spelled rabbit, maintain, battery, and justice correctly. She misspelled tomorrow because she forgets if there are two Ms or two Rs. Sometimes she spells it tommorrow, but that never looks right.

  Everyone congratulated her, even Jeffrey, the boy who had the abominable habit of flicking spitballs at her.

  Nadine races home, flushed from the heat, sweaty from running. The corners of her Award are damp and wrinkled from her moist fingers.

  She bursts into the house.

  Her dad’s already home because he’d had a client that he’d taken to lunch and finished work early. Mom won’t be home for another two hours.

  Out of breath, grinning like a Cheshire cat, Nadine waves her paper in front of her chest, dangles it beneath his nose, rocks excitedly on her heels.

  He reaches out and accepts the paper.

  “Third place?”

  She nods, her smile faltering the tiniest bit, still hopeful that—

  “What word did you miss?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He grunts, and she doesn’t know why this noise disturbs her so profoundly.

  He hands the paper back without saying a word and returns to his newspaper.

  She stares, again trying to read his mind … trying to change it, make him attentive, make him like her … make him love her. But still, she hasn’t figured out how to do this. So she waits for a response, waits for him to say something. Waits for his congratulations. Waits for a hug that just will never happen.

  She swings her arms, and he finally responds. “That was a stupid word to miss. You should’ve won.”)

  My dad is funny. He tells good jokes. He makes me laugh when he tells me jokes. He tickles me and makes me laugh. Sometimes I laugh so hard I pee my pants. That only happened one time. That one time he stopped tickling me after I peed, and after tears started to come out of my eyes. I don’t even remember crying, I just remember my eyes being wet. He laughs and laughs and finally stops tickling me when I think I’m going to throw up. He tickles me sometimes when he tucks me in at night.

  (And he smiles, wrapped around his daughter’s still form, tears drying on her cheeks, her hair a tousled bird’s nest piled on top of her head.

  Nadine pretends to have fallen asleep, but he knows she hasn’t. Nadine knows this because she sneaks a peek and can see the expression on his face. He can tell by her breathing that she is still awake, can tell by the darting movements beneath her eyelids. She realizes she has to learn to pretend better.

  Nadine’s mom tiptoes into the room, wanting to not disturb her sleeping child. Nadine peeps at her mother through slits, still trying to pretend sleep, believing she has fooled her parents but knowing her dad probably knows the truth.

  Dad plays along with it for some reason. “Shhh,” he whispers, nodding his head toward the door. “Don’t come in. I’ll follow you out.”

  Mom smiles at the sight, the beautiful and
perfect sight, daughter entwined with daddy, Giotto’s Madonna and Child fashioned in masculine arms and Barbie pajamas.

  Mom leaves. Dad pulls his arms away from Nadine so he can rise from the bed. Nadine’s mother has left and has not seen where Nadine’s father’s hands had been. Her mother probably wouldn’t have liked it.

  Nadine drifts off to sleep for real after her dad leaves the room. She buries this memory along with every other she doesn’t want to acknowledge.)

  My dad is fair. My brother Aaron and I fight sometimes, and Dad makes us stop. He yells at us both and says we shouldn’t fight. I think my dad is fair because even when he punishes us, he does it fair. Some dads are very strict. My friends say their dads are strict, but my dad says he’s not strict, not at all. My dad punishes me, and Aaron too, but I think he’s fair when he does it.

  Nadine’s friends have come over for a pajama party. Three girls from her class: Rachael, Emily and Sarah. They’ve decided to camp in the living room because Nadine’s mom said they could. Nadine’s room is too small to comfortably fit four girls. Besides, Nadine wants to use her sleeping bag like her friends do.

  The girls giggle about the boys they like, and they gossip about their classmates. Nothing out of the ordinary for a pajama party, and Nadine is excited that she’s making new friends, something that doesn’t come easy for her.

  Dad trudges into the living room with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Shut your mouths and go to sleep,” he says. There is no other warning, just a final decree. He disappears down the hall and closes his bedroom door behind him.

  Nadine snuggles into her sleeping bag and closes her eyes, prepared to sleep, expecting the other girls to do the same.

  Emily turns on the flashlight and shines it down the hall. “Grump,” she says with a giggle. Rachael and Sarah titter into their fingers. Nadine pulls the blanket up to her nose. Her heart beats a little faster.

  “Grump,” Rachael echoes, which cracks up the visiting girls and terrifies Nadine.

  “Shhh,” Nadine says, but the girls giggle even more.

  Her parent’s bedroom door is flung open. A chunk of light fills a black section of hallway.

  Again draped only in a towel, her dad storms the room. “Goddammit,” he says. A shocked Emily gasps at the curse word.

  “I told you girls to shut up. I mean it!”

  Nadine’s mom calls him from the bedroom. “Everything okay?”

  He stands in the center of a circle of girls. “Not another sound,” he warns, and disappears down the hall.

  The girls remain quiet for several minutes. Nadine is relieved that they have fallen asleep, and the tension in her body, which begins in her toes and works its way up her legs and torso and fingers and arms and neck relinquishes its stranglehold.

  But a sudden flashlight beam pierces the darkness like a laser. Emily aims it at Nadine’s face. “What’s wrong with your dad?” Her voice is twangy, nasal. She says the word as “dah-aaaad.” “He’s creepy.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah adds. “He scared me.”

  “Please,” Nadine begs. “Be quiet.” She squeezes her eyes shut and wills the girls asleep. Tries to control their thoughts, to tell them that her father isn’t kidding. But they don’t get her psychic message. Nadine has failed once again.

  “Big dopeyhead,” Emily says, her voice deepening, her girlish impression of Nadine’s father: “Goddammit.” Her cheeks puff out and her head drops against her chest. For some reason she believes this makes her look something like Nadine’s father.

  Rachael and Sarah think that this is one of the funniest things they have ever seen and burst out laughing, holding their noses to quiet the laughs, burying their faces in their pillows.

  Nadine flips over on her side and pulls the blanket up to her ears. She pretends she is asleep.

  This time, when she hears the bedroom door open, and sees the light once again fill the dark corridor, she can pretend to sleep through it all.

  The other girls realize he’s coming. They drop in supine positions and try to burrow into their sleeping bags, but it’s too late.

  He sees them.

  He stands in the center of the circle of girls.

  Emily starts to cry and buries her face in the crook of her arm.

  He stands over Nadine. “Let’s go.”

  She looks up at him. “Why?” she says. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Now.”

  “But I was sleeping.”

  The three other girls stare in silence.

  “I said let’s go.”

  Nadine jumps up. She scoops the sleeping bag in her arms and follows him to her bedroom. He stands in the doorframe and waits for her to pass.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” she cries, her voice hitching, tears pouring down her cheeks. He doesn’t seem to notice her tears. Or if he does, he doesn’t seem to care.

  “Stay in your room. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  “Can my friends—”

  “No.” He pulls her door shut and leaves her standing in the dark.

  Sobbing, Nadine climbs into bed. She cries until she’s weak and exhausted and a short time later she is asleep.

  Nadine wakes to the sound of laughter and the smell of coffee. She climbs out of bed and bounds down the stairs. Dad is cooking breakfast, which Nadine’s friends appear to be enjoying.

  Dad looks up from the waffle iron. He’s laughing, probably telling them jokes. She catches his eye and his face hardens. “Why are you out of your room?”

  This question barely registers. How could he ask her that? How can she still be punished? Especially when her friends were still here.

  “Get back to your room.”

  She waits for the inevitable laughter, certain this is a joke. A cruel joke, but a joke nonetheless. Any second now he’s going to laugh—might even flick waffle batter at her.

  “But—” She doesn’t finish the sentence because she can tell by the expression on his face that this isn’t a joke at all.

  She backs away from the table, from the girls staring with dewy doe eyes, forks suspended in mid air. Nadine’s cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  Nadine runs up the stairs and sits in the doorway of her bedroom, listening to the sounds of breakfast. The clinks of forks and knives against plates, the giggles and laughter from the girls, who have no choice but to pretend everything is fine, to continue as if nothing has happened. Girls who have no clue what injustice is but feel strangely grateful for their own parents, who aren’t as strict as they had once imagined. Girls who only want to finish eating and hope this pajama party ends sometime soon.

  By lunchtime, Nadine is allowed out of her room.

  By then, her friends have already gone home.

  My dad is happy. He smiles a lot. He’s always in a good mood. I’m sad when Dad doesn’t smile. I wonder if he’s upset with me, if I’ve done something else wrong. I do a lot of dumb things. I try to be good, so he stays happy.

  It’s Saturday, mid-August. Nadine and Aaron get dressed early because Dad says to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

  The heat is sweltering, oppressive, the humidity almost a life form. The children play outside for a while but it’s just too hot for any real enjoyment. The water in the kiddy pool is hotter than bath water. Splashing around in it isn’t fun, it’s painful.

  The rubber bicycle tires ooze into the tar melting on the 101 degree street. The metal seats on the swing set are untouchable.

  The children return to the house and go into the kitchen in search of a cold drink.

  Mom has gone shopping. Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper.

  Cheeks are red from heat and from the beginnings of sunburn. Nadine and Aaron collapse onto the cool linoleum kitchen floor.

  “Why are you back already?”

  “It’s so hot,” Nadine says, waving her hand in front of her face like a fan, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth like she’d spent a week traversing the Saha
ra. Her halter-top slides on her slick skin, refusing to stay in place.

  “Go back outside,” he says, although he allows them a drink of water before they go.

  Outside again, and somehow it’s hotter. The trees droop, succumbing to the weight of the onerous air, branches sagging with the burden of humidity.

  They find the garden hose and turn on the tap. Icy water gushes out, and she runs it on their faces and arms. She wets her brother’s head and thinks she sees steam rising from it.

  They relax in the shade beneath a birch tree and peel the bark off in strips. She thinks she’s pulling off the tree’s skin and feels sad yet excited. She wonders if she is hurting it but continues to strip away its bark anyway.

  The wind evaporates the moisture on their skin but stops cooling when their flesh is dry, a strange and inconvenient magic.

  Mosquitoes buzzing about their ears are not a problem, something tolerable if somewhat annoying. But then the black flies come, and black flies tend to swarm, often in the hundreds, biting and stinging in unrelenting attacks.

  They run to the house and manage for the moment to outrun the black flies. Their small porch is screen enclosed and offers asylum from the attack, but there is no room to maneuver.

  Nadine grabs the doorknob. It refuses to turn; the door is locked. Perplexed, she knocks. After an interminable wait, their father opens the door but blocks them from entering.

  “Stay outside,” he tells them.

  “But—” Nadine licks her parched lips. Aaron is crying. His cheeks are the color of brick.

  “I want a quiet and peaceful house for once. You and your brother stay outside.”

  “But the bugs—”

  “Swat them.”

  He shuts the door.

  And right before he does—she notices he’s smiling.

  My dad is a great man. He’s kind, smart, funny, fair, and happy. The end.

  [Eds. Note: Nadine’s grade for this paper was a B-. Miss Maginty thought the adjectives used were weak. She later pointed out that adjectives used by other students in the same class included compassionate, jocular, intelligent, and equitable. She conceded that these students might have had parental guidance when writing their papers. Miss Maginty later confessed that another reason for the B- was that Nadine’s life didn’t seem to have the hardship or stress that the other children seemed to be experiencing. Miss Maginty thought Nadine was experiencing a rather simple and mundane childhood. She said that that might not have been a fair way to grade, but that after forty years of teaching, she knew a thing or two about human nature, and graded accordingly.