Family Night

by Maria Flook

  “I don’t have to meet him. It’s just a matter of genes, lineage.”

  “What have genes got to do with it? You can’t see genes, you can’t feel the difference,” she said.

  “It’s a matter of knowing. Just knowing what you’re made of,” he said.

  “How can you know?”

  “I know what I’m not. I’m not half Richard. Half of me is a kind of mystery, but I’m not going to let just anyone claim it. I thought you, Margaret, would get it. You aren’t too tight with Elizabeth, are you?”

  “Of course I am. I love Elizabeth—” Just because Cam had turned against her father, she wasn’t going to dump Elizabeth, her stepmother. Elizabeth was all she knew. Margaret couldn’t really remember her own mother, Sandra, whom she saw only a few times at the Granville Sanatorium. She could picture only a final visit there, a scene she wasn’t sure was real. Her recollection was perhaps just a story her father had told again and again. There had been so many embellishments, details were often mercurial until the story itself began to bubble with its own yeast.

  She was three years old. She wore black patent-leather shoes in which her face was reflected. Her own face, its one off-center dimple, and lips too red from always licking them in winter. The sanatorium was unattractive; everything looked down-to-business. The halls, disinfected with pine detergent, scented the cavernous rooms. It didn’t smell clean like the scrub pines on the sand dunes at Lake Michigan; it was pine cleaner masking an odor of rancid cooking oil worked into old, porous linoleum and woodwork.

  Margaret’s mother was waiting in the solarium where patients received visitors; the room was crowded, everyone coughing. Her mother held a handkerchief in her lap, a small triangle of linen, which she discreetly put against her mouth when she needed to expectorate a red smear of phlegm, then folded it carefully away from sight. Although the nurse warned her, Margaret’s mother took her daughter on her lap. Had Margaret perhaps only imagined, then put to memory, the embrace? It was clutching, but it loosened now and then, letting her fidget. Her mother’s voice was low, her words like plunks of rain on dust. The woman’s intensity made Margaret fearful, and she couldn’t sit still. Finally, she wriggled off her mother’s lap and stood just out of Sandra’s reach. How long did Sandra lean forward, her arms extended, before she sat back in her chair, dabbing her lips with the balled-up hankie?

  Her father always told her the same words, “The last time you saw your mother you wouldn’t sit still.” He followed this by saying, “And there was nothing they could do for her. It wasn’t just TB; it was lung cancer.” After all, they had expected her to live with just the tuberculosis; the physicians said it was improving. Sandra was at the Granville Sanatorium resting, taking steam, then sunning. She had been sick throughout her pregnancy. Margaret was born early, terribly scrawny. They said she looked like a beef tongue lying in the cradle. They gave her rice formula, then soy, and she responded. But Sandra never improved; she coughed until the cough itself weakened. It sounded small, closed off, then the red drifted up to her lips and she touched the hankie to her mouth.

  When Sandra was hospitalized, it was just Margaret and her father. Instead of hiring a nurse, he brought her down to the plant and she played in the cinders outside an office trailer. One of the secretaries watched Margaret from the window as she lotioned her hands to clean off the blue carbon before she started in on another one.

  “A little girl needs a mother,” her father said to her. “These tragedies shouldn’t happen.”

  “But did she have a will to live?” Margaret wanted to ask him. Whose fault was it if she didn’t have a will to live?

  “I do get it,” Margaret said to Cam. “It’s kind of a free-for-all, isn’t it? I guess it’s par for the course that you take your rightful name. Just for the record, I do feel a kind of love for Elizabeth.”

  “That’s your problem,” he said.

  “Well, I do, and you can’t do anything about it. We had good times. Elizabeth and I used to iron clothes and listen to Pegeen Fitzgerald on talk radio. You know, on WOR? She used to talk about her cats.”

  “You’re getting it mixed up, Margaret. You’re remembering your good times with Pegeen,” Cam said.

  Cam signed up to work for a contractor, and on weekends he began riding bikes again, competing. Her bond with Cam seemed strong as ever. Cam didn’t like Margaret’s clothes. Margaret wore black turtlenecks pulled up to her chin, and she carried a fringed bag that always had a little sheaf of incense sticks and an eyedropper bottle of patchouli oil. She scrawled political slogans on poster board. Her favorite hitchhiking sign said ANYWHERE, WORLD. Cam wore a dirty nail apron and his jeans were straight-legged at a time when everyone’s pants ballooned and swirled around the ankles.

  He started to win an assortment of glossy Motocross trophies, which he displayed on the back windshield of his truck until they obstructed his rear vision and a policeman gave him a warning citation. He tried to get Margaret to appreciate his bike’s conformation, the rise of the handlebars, the elongated globe of the tank, solid chrome with yellow stencils, the rich, throaty tones of the engine. He raced the same Triumph Trophy Trail for years, and she teased him, saying it was his bride. He didn’t like a Japanese bike, complaining that the engine sounded like a can of bees. His racing career left him with pipe burns and injuries; he took the reverberations through his feet, ankles, into his knees and hips. Riding the street, he lost a footpad at fifty miles an hour and he put the bike down; the skid burned through his boot and shaved his anklebone against the asphalt.

  Cam’s most interesting accident happened when he was working on a clutch in the driveway. As he was lying underneath his bike, a metal shaving chipped off from the head of a screw and implanted itself in the iris of his eye. He had to keep from blinking until he reached the hospital. Margaret was fascinated by his willpower. Cam stalked through the house, his face tilted, head angled forward, his posture frozen, rigid like Frankenstein, as he kept his eye with the metal shard, wide open.

  One day Margaret came home from the high school for lunch and Cam was there, in the kitchen, with a girl. Margaret noticed the girl’s hair was blond like hers. Margaret’s hair sifted in loose gold snarls to her shoulders, but the new girl kept hers woven beneath a tortoiseshell clasp like a sensuous puzzle. Cam was kissing her at the kitchen sink, keeping his hand flat against her buttocks. She was wearing a tight tweed skirt, which Margaret saw as secretarial garb, and Cam was squashing the fabric. He didn’t stop for Margaret. He pressed his face closer, deeper into the kiss, hiding from his sister. The girl was pinned against the stainless-steel counter, but she still could have waved hello to Margaret. Margaret left the room without any acknowledgment.

  Cam married Darcy on Kentucky Derby Day. Darcy thought she was pregnant, and when it turned out not to be so, the arrangements had already been set in motion. The TV was going at Darcy’s house during the reception. All the men gathered to look at the race. Margaret edged in to see the screen. She watched how they broke from the gate, calling out the silks for her brother, who was across the room with his new bride. Margaret kept looking over her shoulder at Cam to tell him who was moving up, who got bumped, which horses broke down and missed their opportunities. He looked back at her, frowning, as if telling her to stop acting so stupid. Darcy stared at Margaret without blinking, enforcing Cam, who, without her warnings, might have given in to his sister. Margaret felt betrayed, unhappy in her sudden estrangement. She turned back to the race but the horses were finished, the jockeys lifted in their saddles, and the men around her became officious as they divided up the kitty.

  Perhaps it was coincidence or a queer snag of fate, but Margaret was at the horse races at Delaware Park, to watch Kelso’s last race, the day Cam threatened to shoot himself. The sky was arid and glassy as if there were a great magnifying hoop held over the Earth. The sun intensified, taking clear aim at them. Elizabeth was complaining even before they parked the car. She would perish unless they cou
ld go up into the clubhouse restaurant. She quieted down once she was seated in the stands with a collapsible aluminum drinking cup as Richard poured gin from a flask. Margaret bought a Baltimore Sun from a machine and sat making hats for her parents and one for herself. She could make paper hats or paper boats.

  Elizabeth refused to try hers. “I won’t wear it,” she said. “It’s silly and it will ink my hair.”

  She was right to be cautious. Her hair was so porous from color treatments, its hollow red strands would have soaked up the print. The sun wobbled overhead, its heat radiating in parallel lines that jelled over the horizon, wavy, until it looked as if the field were tearing up in places.

  After the fifth race, before Kelso made his farewell appearance, her father’s name was announced over the loudspeaker. He was called to the offices and put on the telephone. It was Father Cullen, Elizabeth’s priest. Cam was in his apartment with a gun. Darcy had told him she was leaving and he countered this news by pointing a gun to his head and releasing the safety. For eight hours after, Richard, the priest, and several others took turns sitting beside Cam on the sofa, but he never pulled the gun away from his temple except to rotate its chamber once or twice, begging for Darcy. She wouldn’t appear. At last, when she did come forth, it was at the request of her own parents. They might have preferred to leave it up to Cam, but they told Darcy, if anything happened, it was a mark on the family. Darcy told Cam she’d stay with him a while longer and just see.

  After the suicide threat, Cam sometimes came over to the house. He must have been lonely in his own place, but he never again let on he was at a low point. He picked up a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer and tightened the metal plates over the wall switches, or he went outside and lifted the heavy whitewashed stones along the driveway and set them back straight.

  He began to take Margaret out to eat.

  “She’s not even cooking?” Margaret asked him.

  “Poison.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I can’t sit across from her. She gives me these poison looks. Besides, it’s always macaroni and cheese from the freezer.”

  “I like that stuff,” Margaret said.

  Cam told her, “Do you want to go over there and eat macaroni? Go over there right now.”

  She didn’t want to side with Darcy. “I just said, I like macaroni sometimes. I don’t want it now.”

  As his marriage deteriorated, Cam tried to get Darcy involved in some recreational activities. She never learned to balance on the scooter he bought for her, so he purchased a speedboat and rented a space at a marina in Ocean City. One time Cam invited Margaret to go out in the boat with Darcy. Margaret wanted to see exactly what was happening with the two of them and she agreed to come along. Darcy sat in the back, stretched out on the padded boat cushions at the stern. She kept looking up at the sun from under the little awning of her hand as she dotted herself with Sea and Ski, smoothing the cream over her tight belly, over the ledge of her hip, dodging the taut nylon triangle and continuing down her legs. Cam watched Darcy stroke her legs, a few brief swipes. When she noticed him watching, she slowly fingered the instep of her foot with a last drop of lotion. Darcy wasn’t talking. Margaret sat in a swivel chair next to Cam, who stood at the helm, his hand on the throttle.

  The boat was very fast; its bow rose slightly, then leveled as they accelerated over the water. The hull knocked against the troughs until they sailed too fast to feel the dips and gullies of the waves. At top speed, the surf became a solid, aggressive surface. They crisscrossed and slammed through their own wakes. The sun fell upon her shoulders; it touched her scalp where her hair was parted. Because of the heat, they anchored for a swim in the deep water, and still the sun reached them. She stayed beneath the surface and looked up. The green notches of current created a wall of glass blocks, mortared with foam. She pulled her brother underwater. She gestured toward the surface—did he see this strange roof? It was beautiful, wasn’t it? He misunderstood her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her up. He climbed back into the boat and turned to help her.

  “Can’t we stay longer?” she asked him. She swam a few feet away from the boat and started treading water.

  “Come on,” Cam said. “It’s time to go. Why do you give me this shit, Margaret? Why are you always being contrary? Always making a contrast?”

  Why was it she who was making a contrast? Wasn’t it Darcy? Cam looked back and forth between the two schemers. He wasn’t in the mood for it. Margaret climbed back into the boat; she stood there dripping. Darcy was wrapped in a terry robe; the broad brim of a straw hat fluttered under her hand. Her silence was razor-y.

  “We’re all getting too much sun,” Cam said.

  “We’re having too much fun?” Margaret said. Yet, Cam was right. Her skin had burned, and after swimming she felt exhausted, dizzy. She sat down near Darcy. The small wedge of cushion wasn’t enough.

  That night, in her bed, she could still feel the movement of the boat. She felt the waves slap the hull and send her back. It was a biological phenomenon having to do with the inner ear, common after sailing small craft in choppy water, but she couldn’t sleep upon those uneven swells. She thought of Darcy, who had not spoken all afternoon. Was she lying beside her brother, Cam, right now, in the same sickening echo of the sea?

  Margaret never advised Cam about Darcy; she never offered sympathy because sympathy infuriated Cam. She listened, letting her eyebrows rise up and down, and this alone, her face shifting through several stages of comprehension, seemed to comfort him. Then, when Margaret became serious about a man, five years her senior, who ran a marijuana trading post, Cam couldn’t keep out of it. He forced her to accompany him to the Penny Hill Police Station. She was impatient with his interference, since she was beginning to see for herself that something was funny. The drug trafficking didn’t alarm her, but she was disturbed when her boyfriend started calling his dick Winston. Her boyfriend had read a book somewhere, perhaps long before his fancy for her, which discussed how men should go about introducing the phallus to virgins. The book said that sometimes it was comforting to the young initiate if the man gave a name to the penis, a tender nickname of some kind. The names suggested in the book were Poky, Slim, Duke, and other Western cattle-punching tags. Her boyfriend named his cock Winston, sometimes reciting the cigarette slogan, “Winston tastes good like a …,” inserting the other word. Of course, she laughed. The book said laughter was good, but hysterical laughter was to be avoided; it only caused the hymen to clench. She started to realize that he must have been calling his penis Winston for years before she met him.

  She was getting the picture. Cam didn’t have to butt in. They stood at a desk in a private office at the precinct station where an officer arranged a sheaf of documents. The officer told her that these papers were preliminary reports concerning her friend.

  “Where should we begin?” The policeman smiled.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Honey, it’s going to happen soon. We don’t want you involved.”

  Cam said, “Be practical, Margaret.”

  Practical. Nothing to do with desire and longing is practical. So, her boyfriend was a selfish jerk on his way to the slammer, but what could she do about it? She tried to imagine someone else, other pet names. She couldn’t see anyone but Cam, who stood to one side, his hands in his back pockets. He was pissing her off. He stood on the wrong side of the desk, abreast of the policeman. He was letting the policeman assume his authority, but he wasn’t giving up his hold on Margaret. She looked at him; his full mouth looked unnaturally blank as he tried to remain neutral. He should know. It’s hard enough without having to deal with the cops.

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  When they left the police station, she told Cam, “It’s my business what I do. Besides, this guy’s not the last person I fuck. I’m going to fuck a thousand more, and you better keep your nose out of it.”

  �
��Just use your common sense,” Cam said. He didn’t seem to believe she was going to fuck all those people, and this made her angry.

  She shadowed him all the way to the car and waited by the passenger door. He stood across from her, smiling.

  “Oh shut up and let me in the car,” she told him. A cruiser pulled out onto the street. Its siren and light pulsed once, hesitated, and started up for real.

  “They’re probably going to get your boyfriend right now,” Cam said, as he opened the car door and she slouched down in the seat beside him.

  “I’m not destroyed,” she said. “I’ll live. I’ll be living the good life while you go around snitching. You should be on the payroll. They take good care of their own in the golden years.”

  Cam roared out of the parking lot and tagged up with the cruiser at the light. “Everyone’s going to the party,” he said.

  “I doubt it. These fellows are heading out for some doughnuts.”

  Cam smiled at her. “Are you saying you’re hungry? Do you want to get a half dozen, Margaret?”

  She wasn’t going to accept sweets from him. “Maybe Darcy wants some doughnuts,” she said.

  III

  Margaret watched Cam shake a box of chlorine crystals into the pool, tapping the bottom of the box so it wouldn’t come too fast. “This stuff will turn your hair green, but the kids are always pissing in the water.”

  “Don’t tell me you never did when you were a kid?”

  “Look, I’ve seen everything in Asia. Piss in a swimming pool is a minor infraction,” he said. He didn’t always mention his time in the service. He felt funny about his luck. He could have seen action in Vietnam at any time, but he was sent home. He was too “yellow.” Literally. They laughed about this.

  Again, he asked Margaret how she handled her divorce. Wasn’t there any question about custody of Celeste? She told him that she requested physical possession of Celeste and her request wasn’t challenged.