Daddy paused. “I don’t want that for you,” he panted. “I don’t want you being like the women who raised me. And I don’t want you being like Rose, either. I want you to be a good girl, Elyse.”
What felt massively queasy back then has since, decades later, hardened into a painful reality, and it’s this: Daddy and I rode a see-saw together. One side seeking the other for momentum. Up, down, up, down. One day I was the cross he had to bear; the next day I was a good girl, “the best girl in the whole world,” bringing home excellent marks, making him proud. And I’d bask in that approval, all the while holding it at arm’s length, mindful it was like Mother’s wedding crystal, predisposed to shattering. But what Daddy so often saw in my understandable hesitance was cool indifference instead. No one but Papa had ever come close to reading me right, so I knew by the way Daddy gnawed his lower lip, looking at me, that he was believing me to be indifferent. But always, after one of our go-arounds, I’d turn the idea of love over in my mind, trying to figure out how to make Daddy feel better, so my life could be better, examining love until my head ached from trying to understand why I even cared about love, when loving was so much work.
Yet at other times, even when Daddy was sober and being kind, I could be devious. I’d set him up to get hurt, tapping into his insecurities, reminding him I had roots that were not his, feigning innocence, asking if he thought Mother still loved Stephen Eric, always rewarded by moist eyes and assurances that in all likelihood Mother did still love my real father.
“But ask me anything you want,” Daddy would always say after. “You can always come to me with what’s bothering you, Elyse.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated now, making my voice smaller. Making myself small seemed to placate Daddy.
“You make me sick,” Daddy said thickly. “You waste the priest’s time, and you make me sick. You’ll send me over the edge someday.”
Daddy said I was to ask real forgiveness for wasting his time. I knew what to do. Do it!
I tapped my chest with my fist three times. “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”
“Go!” Daddy commanded.
I grabbed Bean by the hand and ran, taking solace in the fact that I’d escaped with only slaps and superficial cuts from Daddy’s saw-edge eyes. I looked back and saw Daddy go to Mother, standing at the sink doing dishes, nose stuck up in the air, which meant Daddy was in for a hard night of penance, ruining her dinner. Why did he ask for it? And then the real nagging question. Was I like Daddy in that respect too, always asking for it? Was that why, on my awakening, I’d felt this forever hungering? Was that what shot nerves felt like? Feeling starved to death?
So it was just a sliver of time, those near-idyllic days on Morningstar Street. Just long enough for the saplings in the parkways to spread their sparse wings over Pacific Garden’s sidewalks, for new shrubs and gardens to take root and flourish, and for my grandparents to drive down from Sacramento and share a few Christmases with us. Time enough for Bean and me to take our first plane rides to Sacramento, and time enough to finesse my propensity for keeping secrets, even keeping my fear of Daddy and his tirades about murders and the “whores” who’d raised him from Papa—unbelievable feats, considering Papa could generally see straight through cement. It was time enough for Aidan to make his first trip to California, and time enough for my fat grandmother’s smoking and obesity to catch up with her.
When Mother told me Grandma would be fine, she wouldn’t look at me, signaling she’d waltzed off to fairytale land and wasn’t to be disturbed. So I went to the fields behind our house where I’d always felt Papa’s comfort, and I obsessed to the nth degree about illness and dying. But the day I finally accepted my grandmother was going to die soon, I got little comfort from the fields because I knew Papa, loving my grandmother as he did, would slip away with her when she passed. And so day after day I went back to the fields, and I begged the sky, the trees and the meadow grasses to at least save Papa—but instead the place where I’d lodged Stephen Eric for safekeeping reopened. I looked inside that place and began again the story about my real father, talking to him in my head and making believe he was my stability, and not Papa and not Daddy and Mother, because Stephen Eric was already dead.
And being dead made a person as perennial as the sky.
Judging by the drawn-out sighs, cupboard doors getting slammed and dirty looks thrown my way, Mother was working herself into a whopper of a snit. I treaded carefully, lurking in doorways, trying to gauge the length and breadth of those sighs, on the alert for clues to what was setting her off. Best guess was it was Daddy, some stupid thing he’d said—but I had to be sure, because if it was something about me or Bean, Daddy would be looking to skin us alive. My stomach churned and my skin prickled with fear. Of what, I couldn’t say. Getting hit? I’d been hit a thousand times. I could handle getting hit. I was an expert at high-diving deep into my head when the belt came out, into that hazy place where the wicked snaps of leather on my shoulders, my legs, were echoes, nothing more. So if I felt no pain, what then, exactly, made me so afraid? Because it was out there? And it was something even more awful? And what was it, anyway?
Daddy wasn’t even all the way in the door from work before Mother started hurling things at him: a platter, a dishtowel, stupid things. Things that couldn’t really hurt. Daddy’s eyes went soft. And the softer his eyes went, the more things Mother found to throw. I wisely stayed in the background, and Bean stayed farther back. I’m not even sure Mother and Daddy realized we were watching them.
“We’re not going!” Mother cried. “And that’s my final word!” She threw a cup at Daddy, who caught it neatly.
“Now, calm down,” Daddy crooned. “Diana, just calm down …”
“Calm down, my foot! You promised!”
Daddy moved in closer. He offered his hand. A smile lifted the corners of his lips. He showed his teeth. Mother hesitated.
“None of your tricks, Francis.”
Daddy’s smile widened. He looked excited. “No tricks, Diana.”
Mother put a trembling hand out, meeting Daddy’s halfway. Tears glistened in her eyes. “You … sure?” She practically fell into his arms.
“I’m sure,” Daddy said.
“You told me we could always live in California,” Mother wept. “That we’d never have to move to Pennsylvania … I could never move the girls, Francis. Why, their grandparents are here, their aunt. I could never do that to Elyse or Bean. I could never take them to the ends of the earth.” Mother hiccoughed. “You promised, Francis.”
I saw Daddy wince. But he soothed Mother, patting her hair and saying, “I know, I know …”
And that’s when I understood that Daddy was homesick and yearning for something more, and he’d expected his family to want to look for that more with him in Pennsylvania. But Mother was resisting, using me and Bean as the reasons why Daddy couldn’t have more. Which was silly. Mother had allowed Daddy to move Bean and me to Mississippi, another end of the earth, hardly even looking back over her shoulder when she did that, so it made little sense to be using Bean and me as excuses now—something Daddy was also realizing. His eyes, like black, shiny pebbles, flew open then and landed on mine, spiking fear back up into my throat. His arms dropped away from Mother.
“Get your coats,” he barked at Bean and me. “Now!”
Mother whirled, and seeing my sister and me standing frozen in the hallway, cried out, “Francis, no!”
But Daddy was all over the place, in the coat closet, rummaging furiously, throwing things out on the floor behind him. “There and there!” he yelled. “Put it on. Put it on! Put it on, I tell you!”
Bean and I dove for our coats, and as Mother stumbled trying to grab us away from Daddy, he shoved me and Bean out the front door. The click the door made was solid, final, and Mother didn’t even try opening it to look at us one last time.
“Get in,” Daddy ordered. Bean and I climbed into the back seat of the c
ar. We held hands—Bean’s shook in mine. In fact, Bean shook all over, and it was that very trembling that made my nerves move back into that safe, flat place in my head where I could watch Daddy unseen. I took note of the way he twitched and gnawed on his lower lip; the things he always did when Mother tried outplaying him.
Daddy drove carefully down Morningstar Street, taking a left at the corner, and then two blocks farther, turning right, driving us deep into the country, away from Pacific Gardens, away from civilization, away from reason.
Once we’d passed the last streetlight, and the night was so black that I could only see the ghostly-lit speedometer and twin yellow fingers of headlights, we picked up speed. Not all at once. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly—but then faster, then faster still. We whizzed down the two-lane road, not even a good road, a road littered with pot holes. It was a country road, for God’s sake, with a black river on one side and rocky ravines on the other. At high speed, a death trap.
Was Daddy out of his mind?
“Daddy!” Bean suddenly shrieked. “Daddy … please, Daddy, don’t fall me in!”
But Daddy didn’t slow down. He picked up speed. I squeezed Bean’s hand and looked over the front seat at the speedometer—70 miles per hour!—and Daddy hunched over the wheel. His shoulders shook. I couldn’t see his face.
“Daddy!” I cried. And then Bean let out a scream so horrible it took all my attention.
“Make him stop! Oh Elyse, make Daddy stop!”
80 miles per hour! 85! 90!
I pounded the back of Daddy’s seat, and Bean clung to me.
“Daddy,” I yelled. “Stop! Stop this very second!”
100 miles per hour!
Of course there was no doubt he meant to kill us. Us and him, too. And make Mother sorry she wouldn’t let him move us to Pennsylvania. She didn’t even know the meaning of sorry yet … she would learn. Daddy would teach her.
And then the stop was so abrupt it wrenched Bean from my arms and pitched me head first against the back of the front seat. The overhead light came on. Daddy’s eerie wail pierced the night:
“Not myyyyyyyyyyyy fault! Stuck! The accelerator … stuck! Stuck!” He twisted around in his seat and looked down at us, the whites of his eyes huge, the pupils dilated. “You girls all right?”
“Stop it, Daddy,” I sobbed. “Don’t … talk.”
“Elyse, it wasn’t my fault! It’s never my fault!”
I wanted to believe him. He was my daddy after all, and he loved us.
His shoulders stopped twitching then. And did I imagine it, or did Daddy’s eyes darken further … was that triumph I saw? Who knew, the way my realities were tripping all over the place? But I did not imagine that drama was Daddy’s drug, or that more rapidly than even Papa could’ve predicted, Daddy’s sickness was sucking Mother in, making drama her drug as well—and what I was I really afraid of? It wasn’t of what was out there. I was afraid of me. Of what was inside me. I was afraid drama would become my drug, too. That I would catch Daddy and Mother’s sickness. That I would become like them.
I reached for Bean lying on the other side of the hump on the floor. And how could the drama not sicken Bean, too?
I was almost fourteen when Bean was diagnosed with elective mutism, and when Daddy, drunk and mean, broke my finger as I rode his back to keep him from trying to shame Bean into talking. Poor Bean! So small, so scared.
Later, when Daddy was sober and everyone subdued (although Mother still looked like she wanted to wring my neck), Daddy tried explaining.
“God did not make Bean silent,” he said, fixing me with bloodshot eyes. “And, Elyse, He did not make you like your aunt Rose, or my aunt Lothian. Bean could talk if she wanted, and, Elyse, you could interact with family and behave properly, not like the murdering bitches who raised me. Your rudeness is hurtful. Do you realize how hurtful you are to your mother, acting like you don’t have two minutes of time for her, always reading or down at those goddamn fields? Now, if you and Bean could just be more loving …”
I didn’t know squat about Daddy’s Lothian, but I knew he was pathetic—yet somehow he still got to me. He always got to me, because I could tell he was ashamed, and so was Mother; I could tell by the way they kept looking at my hugely bandaged finger. And so while I was telling everyone who asked about my finger that I’d walked into a door, I quietly examined all sides of the situation, even calling up Papa’s play book in my head, eventually suspecting I might’ve been impetuous, jumping on Daddy and startling him so that his grabbing my hand and yanking it back had been reflex, nothing more.
Daddy didn’t give up drinking right then, but he did evolve into a quieter drunk, and I in turn began loosening my grip on sanctimony, resolving to be more loving. I also resolved to be on the lookout for anything having to do with those murdering women Daddy was always talking about, especially his Lothian. If I knew just one thing, it was this: Daddy had been putting out a call for a new game for some time now. And he wanted me to play. Mother would no longer play with him. Mother was sick of him.
I called the game “Murder Mystery” because I was pretty sure Daddy’s bitches were somewhere in its mix—maybe even the point of his game. Another thing I was almost as sure of? A centered person could win the game—and whoever won would be considered the undisputed winner of all time.
That summer, at about the same time Daddy said he’d put his trumpet away for good and that church would no longer be a part of our lives because horn and church had both tried taking his family away from him, Daddy gave me Jack, a skinny gray mutt he’d found wandering the neighborhood. Jack was a few months old, and had wet baby seal-eyes.
Immersed in my love for Jack, the game with Daddy was put on indefinite hold.
“Jack is a responsibility,” Daddy said, smiling. “But he has to stay outside, Elyse. Your mother would have a coronary, a dog in her house.”
I thanked Daddy profusely, loving him again, assuring him I understood about responsibility, and then I went looking for Bean. I found her sitting at the side of the house, looking pained. “This is the only place I can get any privacy,” she said.
I knelt, spilling Jack in her lap. “Should I leave?”
Bean gave me a sharp look. “Daddy hates dogs. Remember the story about the dog that tried to kill him when he was little, and he killed it instead?”
“No,” I scoffed, but I scoffed nicely because I’d become a nicer person since I’d gotten Jack. “It’s women Daddy doesn’t care for, not dogs. Daddy found Jack for us, Bean.”
We went to the fields and collected pollywogs from the stream, in pimento jars, laughing at Jack splashing in the shallow water, and I repeated for the umpteenth time that Jack was the best thing that had ever happened to us, and all because of Daddy.
Mother got the flu, and Daddy said I could stay home from school and run the house for Mother. I did the washing and ironing, then fixed dinner, getting everything tidy by the time Daddy arrived home from work. I even changed into nicer clothes, like Mother always did for Daddy. Sitting down to dinner, I expected Daddy to say how good everything was, like he usually did with Mother, but he filled his wine glass, saying nothing. He refilled his glass many times, and then his lower lip began to quiver. Things were definitely not right, and I could tell Bean felt the tension too: her cheeks had gone pale. I quickly cleared the dishes, anxious to leave the kitchen, sensing the see-saw Daddy and I rode was about to flip Daddy sky-high.
He said almost casually, “Jack was in the house today.”
There was no defense, but I answered, “Daddy, I thought the one time wouldn’t matter—”
“Shut up!”
I cringed. Daddy’s stony eyes bore into me.
“You’re always working against me! Always, always, always!”
His tantrum was mind-blowing. What had he done to deserve a daughter like me? he ranted. What?
Work, work, work, that’s all he’d ever done. And all I’d ever done was throw everything back in
his face. Well, he wouldn’t have it. No, he was done with it! Done with being the world’s doormat!
Hideously aware of what was at stake—Jack and his trusting eyes—I begged. I cajoled. I screamed. I made promises. Daddy’s hands shook horribly.
“Piss!” he spat at me before leaving the room.
***
I’d meant to sleep only a few minutes, so I could be out as soon as the house was dark, hitching a ride to Sacramento, taking Jack with me. But it was already daybreak when I woke. I shook Bean awake. Still in our nightgowns we ran to the backyard, to the dog house Daddy had made for Jack.
Empty!
I tore around to the front of the house. Mother was standing on the porch, her face white, obviously still sick. Our car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant Daddy had gone, taking Jack with him. I shook with fear.
“I hate him!” I screeched. “I hate his guts!”
“Just stop it,” Mother said tiredly. I thought she’d say next that I wasn’t to talk about Daddy that way. That I was to show respect. I was sick of that. I was sick of her.
“Just stop it,” she said. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
Daddy said he’d gone fishing at the river. Jack liked water. Everybody knows dogs like water. He hadn’t meant for anything to happen to Jack. One minute Jack was there, the next he wasn’t. Daddy didn’t see it happen. Most likely Jack hit his head on a rock when he fell, going immediately under. Daddy was so sorry, just so sorry. And incredulous. What was to happen next? Everywhere he looked, every time he turned around, there was something or someone plotting against him. He just couldn’t win.
He’d killed Jack, of course—I knew it just like I knew how much I hated him and would always hate him—and I promised myself that this time I’d never stop hating him. Updating the list of things I hated about him became a daily undertaking, a safeguard against the rage pressing against me. I hated his wine, his nerves, and his grotesque blaming everybody in the entire world but himself when something bad happened. I hated having to share meals with him. I hated the way his long fingers trembled. It was unnerving, like static. I hated the way he chewed his lower lip, and that he hated females, always pulling that stupid murdering bitches story out of his back pocket, as if any of us cared. I hated his asinine justification and unjustifiable bias. I hated the way he looked at me, and the way he said things so illogically opposed to logic. I hated that no one had asked me if it was okay for him to take over my life. I hated that I felt guilty if my life intruded upon his. I hated that he’d taken me away from Papa. I hated that he wasn’t dead like my real father. But more than anything, I hated that he’d set me up, giving me love in the form of Jack, then snatching Jack back and destroying him, just because he could, just to show me up, just to win the game, which was about as cruel a thing as one person could do to another.
The Angry Woman Suite Page 28