“Tell me I’m a good father,” he pleaded.
He’d degraded himself way lower than mean, and I hated myself almost as much as I loved him right then, recognizing yet again that Daddy and I were alike, encouraging neediness to the same extent we pushed it away. I closed my eyes and Daddy and I rocked back and forth, hugging, as if slow dancing.
“You’re a good daddy,” I reassured him, focusing on all those times he had singled me out to be his special girl. Because, right then, reassuring him is what was needed for peace. Daddy sighed, obviously relieved, but when I gently extricated myself from him and turned to go inside the house, I saw Mother standing in the doorway watching us, looking as if she wanted to throw up.
I knew exactly how she felt.
I leaned over and kissed Papa’s cheek. I imagined his red-rimmed eyes to be pinpoints of knowing, and I was ashamed. Nothing I’d said to Daddy had been completely untrue, but it was sickening how I blew with the wind, two-faced like a Santa Ana, hot when I was supposed to be cold, like a normal wind knew to be. How could I explain my lack of constancy? Not that Papa was asking, or even accusing. In fact, it was as if Daddy’s vitriol had jump-started Papa back to life: he seemed very much with it, knowing and ever-compassionate. Still, it seemed as if I should have explanations for how I behaved with Daddy. I couldn’t explain, though. I couldn’t explain even to myself why I yelled at Daddy one minute and comforted him the next.
Suddenly I wanted Michael. Beautiful, uncomplicated Michael, with whom I was beautiful, and with whom I always blew straight and clear and consistent. I phoned him. Twenty minutes later I was back at the fields, under a tree and under Michael, feeling beautiful.
Night after night I snuck from the house and met Michael in the fields—but it was unfathomable the way Daddy’s face swam behind my closed eyes whenever I kissed Michael.
One night, lying on oak leaves, a canopy of branches overhead, Michael asked for the umpteenth time, “But why won’t you let me come over? Why won’t you invite me to your house?”
I propped myself up on an elbow. “It’s not you, Michael. It’s them. I … can’t explain.”
“Can you try?”
But it sounded even more stupid when I said the words aloud:
My dad was mean. But he could be kind. He’d killed my dog. But he loved me. He had a nerve problem. So he’d punched me and pulled my hair. He’d dragged me around the house and broken my finger. Right now he was just off his medicines and I couldn’t feel sure of him. He shook like he had a palsy. He’d said I could trust him. He’d said he would do anything in the world to protect me. But I didn’t trust him. I’d never trusted him. I didn’t even trust myself. And my sister had never trusted any adult until Stella … and then there was my mother. She was distant; she didn’t protect me. But she was also loving. I admired her. I never wanted to be anything like her. She was helpless. She was strong. She had the eerie ability to shape whole new realities out of nothing but thin air.
She terrified me almost as much as my dad terrified me. The two of them together were beyond terrifying.
“Don’t you see?” I cried. “When it’s just you and me, I know who I am, Michael! But if I were to bring you home, I’d lose that. I’d lose me! What there is of me, that is. If I were to bring you home—well, I might just as well invite my dad to take pot shots at you, because, trust me, he would if he felt like it, and my mother, she’d let him! Then what always happens next is my mother gets mad at my dad for making a scene, for upsetting her made-up world, whichever one she’s inhabiting at the time, and then my dad gets down in the mouth, then mean, then meaner …
“Later, my mother makes my dad grovel until she decides to forgive him, but by that point they’re both so mad at me for making them mad at each other, only of course they’ve no clue how or why they’ve concluded that I’m the one who’s ruining their lives!”
I could see Michael was confused. And why not? I was confused, too.
“But … what about your sister? Your parents get mad at you and not Bean?”
“Because!” I almost shouted my frustration. “They don’t see Bean! They used to see Bean, but they haven’t seen her for ages now. Nobody sees Bean! Bean doesn’t talk! Or didn’t use to, anyway!” Like that, the truth rammed into me like a car I hadn’t seen coming, and, whoooosh, I fell back on our bed of leaves. But quickly as it hit, the truth hurtled past, its wake like dandelions in the wind.
“Bean can make herself invisible, Michael. Most of the time she exists only on paper: she draws pictures of herself.” I held myself perfectly still, gazing at the tree above, half expecting any movement on my part to blow those wisps of truth completely out of reach, to the very tops of the branches.
“My dad used to be a musician. A good one. A big name. A really big star—I’m serious. He gave up his career for us. For our family.” I stopped, considering what I’d always been told, what I’d taken as gospel.
“No, that’s not the real truth,” I said. “Daddy gave up music because styles changed and he didn’t. Daddy didn’t know how to change. He never learned how to bend.”
I looked at Michael then. But he’d stopped listening. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking above me. Sudden needles of fear poked my flesh and I jumped to my feet, instinctively raising my arms.
I never actually felt it happen. I heard it instead. Whack! And something snapped in my neck. I stumbled backward, blinded by sudden blood. It was my fuel. I pawed the earth.
“Get down!” Michael shouted from a million miles away.
But I charged, and my forehead connected again—and I heard Daddy grunt. The pain was excruciating, and Daddy’s hands, shaky when off his medications, but now so sure, went around my throat. I stepped back. He took a step forward. I took another step back, and he followed, a macabre tango that lessened the hold he had on me—until my back came up against the tree under which I’d just been so beautiful.
I was trapped. I was Daddy’s, not Michael’s. Always Daddy’s.
Daddy lowered his head to mine, and the pain in my neck crescendoed. He sniffed my hair, my ears, my throat.
“Okay,” he even managed to somehow slur just that one word.
“Daddy, stop. I’m … hurt.”
“Not okay,” he muttered. “I was walking, looking for you. I was—”
“We weren’t doing anything!” I defended myself, but talking made the pain unbearable. So I began to cry instead, but that hurt too, hating Daddy for fooling me, for hurting me, for not being the kindest man in the world, the bastion of Morningstar Street.
He sniffed me again. “Lilacs. You smell like lilacs.” He sounded incredulous.
The gall rose in my throat. He was incomprehensible. But I didn’t have to take it any longer. I could get off the seesaw. I didn’t have to ride if I didn’t want to.
I said from between clenched teeth, “No, I don’t. It’s blood, you idiot! From where you hit me, you idiot!” And then Daddy began coaxing me to be a good girl, to calm down, talking to me as if I were two years old. He said he’d take care of me, but first I had to shush. I had to stop talking nonsense. He had never hit me. Never ever ever. But now, right now, I had to stop yakking his ear off, or he didn’t know what he’d do.
“Elyse!” Someone called my name—and Daddy heard it too, because his hands dropped to his sides—and that’s when I saw my opening: a fast sidestep, and I’d be free of him, free to run. I gathered my strength, talking myself through the agony in my neck.
“I hate your stupid game,” I hurled at Daddy. “And I hate you.”
And that was it, just time enough for the moon to crest the hill beyond the field, illuminating Daddy’s panicked expression.
The words he threw back at me were a flash flood of sideswiping debris, attempting to pull me under, to bury me with guilt because of what he needed—which I knew because I knew his game. I’d studied it nearly my whole life.
“I saw you hurt yourself!” Daddy protested. “
I wanted to help you, to save you. I’ve always wanted to save you, Elyse! To fix things so life could be better for you and Bean! But you’ve fought me since the day I met you. You’ve fought me every inch of the way, never believing in me. I don’t know why you treat me the way you do. And now lilacs.” Daddy’s shoulders shook with wrenching sobs. “You smell like … Lothian.” He threw his head back.
“Why?” he howled. “Why can’t I do anything right?”
And then a hand shot out of the darkness. It grabbed Daddy by the shoulder and spun him around. “Shut up now, Francis,” Uncle Buster said gently. “Just shut the fuck up.”
And I fell into Aidan’s arms.
I withdrew. Big-time withdrew. I didn’t even want to see Michael, and I didn’t ask after Daddy or Mother. I allowed just six people into my hospital room: Bean, Papa, Aunt Rose, and Aidan and Magdalene and Stella. And I got whatever I wanted. Suddenly everybody wanted to make me happy.
The first story I heard was that Michael had run up Morningstar Street shouting at the top of his lungs, and everyone had stepped outside and followed him back down to the fields. Everyone had watched me carried out of the fields, and everyone had watched me vomit. “Told you,” I overheard a neighbor say while the paramedics were stabilizing my neck. “Told you that one would be trouble one day. Lying with a boy under a tree and hitting her head on a branch coming up for air. Oh please.”
Michael’s story, so I heard, was that I’d lost my bearings after running interference with the tree branch, going a little nuts right after, blood streaming down my face, blinding me—not to mention, scaring him half to death.
Oh please, I thought. Was he blind—hadn’t he seen Daddy wallop me?
The doctor’s story was that I had a concussion and a cracked vertebrae. The levator muscle over my eye had been nearly severed.
All the neighbors watched me transferred onto a gurney, into the ambulance. They watched Papa and Aunt Rose and Mother huddle together, and they saw Aidan’s arm go around Magdalene. They saw Bean cling to Stella.
But no one saw Daddy or Uncle Buster leave the fields that night.
In fact, nobody on Morningstar Street ever saw Daddy or Uncle Buster again.
Mother’s story, so I heard, became that Daddy had been taken back to a cancer hospital. For more treatment. Aunt Rose’s story was that of course she believed me. If I said Daddy socked me, then Daddy had socked me. She knew from experience that Daddy could go off half-cocked. And she pitied my mother. Yes, she did. That girl had been looking for somebody to rescue her after Stephen Eric died, and had found herself shit for brains instead.
Aunt Rose put a cool hand on my forehead. She suggested I file a complaint against “Francis” for socking me—and I was sure Aidan heard her say that because suddenly Aidan’s story became that Daddy wasn’t in the same hospital as before, in San Bernardino. And Aidan also volunteered another tidbit (and Aunt Rose didn’t make a face when he said it, because she thought Aidan walked on water, even if he couldn’t see the truth of Francis):
“Your daddy,” Aidan said, “… well, it’s true he’s not too well. But he’s getting the help he needs. Keep that in mind, will you? Like all fathers, your daddy wanted to be the only man in your life, Elyse. That’s all.”
When Aidan stepped out of the room, Aunt Rose said, “Well, wherever Francis is, and I’m not saying I know, because I don’t, though for sure Aidan does … but what I am saying is, when Francis gets back home, I’ll still help you square things however you need to, Elyse.”
Bean, sad and silent again, stroked a dollar-sized area of skin on my arm over and over, and Stella rocked back and forth on her heels, chanting, “Let’s go home, let’s go home.” This sounded like, “Es go hoe, es go hoe.”
Only Papa didn’t seem stricken. In fact, Papa seemed more like his old self, seeing through things right and left. He caught me alone, a rare thing in a hospital room.
“The center, Elyse,” Papa urged. “Stay with it, Liebling. Do you understand? The game’s far from over. You can’t quit now. You can’t let him win.”
My heart fluttered recognizing Papa was fully back. He bent nearer.
“If you quit, then they don’t have to face what happened. That’s what they want, Elyse. That’s all anyone wants. Not to have to face the truth of his or her life. But that wouldn’t be fair to you, pretending what happened was your fault. Now here’s what I see: Francis’ mother is less threatened than anyone else.”
It hadn’t gotten by me that my stepfather was now Francis to me and my family, not “Daddy” anymore.
“Magdalene?”
“Yes—Magdalene. She’s the center. Has she said—?” Papa looked over his shoulder again, as if expecting an interruption.
“No. Wait—before, she gave me a book. It’s Aidan’s journal. But I haven’t read it.”
Papa’s breath quickened, as if the world turned on this piece of information.
A nurse poked her head into the room. Papa nodded—and I’d have sworn something passed between him and that nurse. Papa fixed me with a stern eye.
“Remember what I said. You must play from the center only.”
It seemed Magdalene was the only one without a story. She said just one thing: that she was taking me and Bean home with her to Grayson House for the summer.
Aunt Rose packed our suitcases, and she and Papa came to the hospital to see us off, walking beside the nurse pushing my wheelchair to the curb where Bean, Aidan, Stella and Magdalene waited at the car, the Airstream hitched behind it. I looked around. No Mother, and no Michael. I kept my expression neutral. After all, no surprise concerning Mother. And I hadn’t even told Michael I was going to Pennsylvania, because I was feeling unsure of him, too. Just like I was unsure of the name of the game that everyone in the whole world now seemed to be playing.
***
It was a relief to exert less effort. While the others rode up front in the car, I stretched out inside the Airstream and buried myself in Aidan’s journal, transported to older fights for independence. The country’s, and Aidan’s.
The Grayson family story also drew me in. With the exception of Magdalene, they had treated Stella shamefully—and only Magdalene had been able to see through her parents, Lear and Elizabeth. Once the gift is bestowed, you have it for life, it seems. Only one flaw in the narrative: I couldn’t reconcile how Frederick’s true nature had gotten past Magdalene to begin with. But then I recalled how Papa had changed when my grandmother died, and that’s when I understood that even people who have the gift have to pull away from it now and then because it can be just too painful.
I assumed Magdalene had told Aidan she’d given me the journal, but Aidan said nothing other than, “Would you mind turning that down?” when I joined them for our first meal on the road, a picnic at a road stop, transistor radio held to my ear. And then, “What is that god-awful racket, anyway?”
“Rolling Stones. And they’re not awful. They’re neat.”
“Subjective assessment, thank you very much.”
I finished reading the journal and stared out the window of the Airstream for two days, oblivious to Texas (which took those two days to cross), thinking about what had happened to Stella, and wondering about Lear Grayson, how such a person is made. And I thought about the war between the Waterstons, and considered the fire that had killed them. By the time we’d crossed the border into Louisiana, my fingers had inched back to the journal, and I’d begun writing down my questions.
It was slow going. There was the problem of my youth. I hadn’t yet accepted the messiness of love, and I’d no personal frame of reference for how complicated marriage is, so I was limited in my understanding of the Waterstons’ marriage.
But, basically, I just needed to remember that each of us keeps plenty of blinders handy for those things that scare the shit out of us.
I looked over my notes. I had eight questions. They were bait, rhetoric, because I already knew who’d killed the Waterstons. What I re
ally wanted was more background, more information, about my daddy, the killer’s grandson, so I could have a fuller picture, so I could make sense of the insensible; so I could understand my life.
“Where’s Jamie?” I asked, stepping out of the Airstream. “Is he dead?” We’d parked at a campsite, and I’d waited until Magdalene and Stella left for supplies, taking Bean with them. Aidan looked up from his newspaper. It was clear he hadn’t expected the question so soon.
“And which angry woman did it, Aidan? Not Magdalene, or she’d never have given me your journal. So was it Lothian who killed the Waterstons? Was Lothian trying to punish Sahar for threatening to cut Jamie out of her will if he’d anything more to do with her?
“Or—was it Sahar herself, as Jamie seemed to think? Or could it have been Elizabeth Grayson? Elizabeth who was ticked at the world in general, and Matthew Waterston in particular, for even painting those pictures of Magdalene?
“Or was it “crazy” Stella, after all? Which angry woman did it, Aidan? Which angry woman was so out in left field that she killed Matthew and Sahar Waterston, and then continued taking her craziness out on the rest of the Graysons and ruined my daddy for me in the process?”
There, I’d said it pretty much the way I’d written it down.
But then Aidan said the craziest thing back, and believe you me, I’d learned a thing or two about crazy from Daddy.
He replied, “I’m not an isolationist. And it wasn’t a woman.” Aidan ran his hands through his thick hair. He looked tired.
“It was Lear Grayson, wasn’t it? That’s who you mean, isn’t it, Aidan?”
But Aidan rambled. “I was once, and in every sense of the word—an isolationist, that is. Like you’ve been lately. Avoiding getting close, like everyone’s … hot. Did you know isolationism used to be a very American attitude, in the political sense?” He ran his hands over his head again. “But what happened with me is that some people came along and showed me how to be … more. Lear Grayson was one of those, though in the beginning he actually wasn’t all that friendly. Didn’t matter. He still pulled me out of myself. Matthew did that, too, and so did Jamie. And Magdalene, naturally.”
The Angry Woman Suite Page 31