Ford looked down at his ashtray, snubbed out his cigarette, grinned a little. He said, “I was going to let him out. I just had to teach him a lesson.”
“And what did your mother do?”
“Nothing. What could she do? She mumbled something about him being rotten, and he laughed a little, and then she told me to get into the shower, but that was about it. If she ever spoke up, really spoke up, he beat the crap out of her. So when I didn’t move right away she just yelled at me a little for being fresh, and then she marched me into the shower herself. I could tell she was trying not to cry, but all she said was, ‘For godsakes, you’re stinking up the whole house.’” Ford looked down at his hands. “And she was right. I was. For months after, that’s all I could smell. I can still smell it. I swear it soaked into my skin, into my pores, and every time I went to school I was embarrassed as hell. And then the next day, he told me we—we, he said—had to finish, and you know what I said?”
“What?”
“I said no. I said no, and then the guy just looked at me, his mouth curling up on one side the way it used to, and his eyes staring down at me, like he was trying to remember who I was, and then he pulled off his belt, real slow like he was trying to think things over, and he folded it in two and whacked me across the side of the head. I wouldn’t go down—I didn’t want to give him the victory—so then he whacked me again, and again, and again. And once I finally did go down, I curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor, and I could hear him above me, all out of breath. And then he got down on his knees—he couldn’t crouch, he was too fat—and he lifted my head off the floor by the hair, and said, ‘Don’t you ever say no to me again,’ and then he knocked it back against the floor.” Ford was quiet a minute.
“You see,” he said. “I don’t understand why I do some of the things I do sometimes—why I act like an asshole—but I know he has a lot to do with it. It’s because of him. Flashbacks. All that PTSD shit. After the septic tank I swore I would kill him someday. I was always swearing that I’d kill him, but I never did.” Ford’s chest heaved again. “I still fantasize about it. And now the fat bastard is almost sixty years old, and just sitting there getting older and fatter, and I still haven’t said boo to him.”
Diana felt on the verge of crying herself now. “Instead you’ve become just like him.”
“No,” Ford said.
“Yes, you are, Ford.”
“No. I’m not. I’ve slipped up, but I’m not like him.”
“Maybe you don’t see it. Not fully. But you are.”
Ford got up, approached her slowly again, and got down on one knee, took her hand in his. Diana looked down at his hand. Didn’t move.
“I’ll stop,” he said. “I swear to it. Just please don’t leave me. If you leave me, I don’t know what I’ll do—I’ll probably kill myself.”
“Don’t pull that, Ford.”
“Pull what?” he sobbed.
“The suicide card. It’s a load of crap, and you know it is.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.”
“I’ve tried before. When I was younger. And if you guys leave now, I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably drink myself to death.”
“What else is new?”
“I love you too much. And I love Samantha. I don’t want to live if you guys aren’t here.”
“But why do you want us here, Ford? It makes no sense. You’re never happy when we’re around—you can tell we just irritate you. And you’re miserable.”
“I am happy, Diana. I just don’t show it. You’ve made me happy, you and Sam. I love that little kid so much. Please don’t go.”
Diana ran through the last year in her head. All the days since they moved to the island. The summer, the blue skies and salt water. People all about. Souls abundant. Despite the crowds, the traffic, she liked the island better when the summer people arrived. Everything came to life then.
And Ford was better then. Wasn’t he? Before the fall?
And who was she kidding? Leaving? Where would she go after Cybil’s? She had no money, none that was her own, and at least here they had a house. A house of their own. And if she left? She had no job. Not right now. She could get one, she was sure, but it would take a little while. And she had a five-year-old little girl she had to take care of. Food, clothes, shelter. And most importantly, love.
“You need to stop drinking,” she said at last.
“I will,” he said, nodding. “I will. I’ll start going to meetings again—I used to go back when I was with Tara. She wanted me to go. And they have meetings here on the island—a guy I work with goes. I’ll start. Right after the holidays.”
Diana stood. “No,” she said. “Now. Or me and Sam are out of here, Ford. I swear it.”
Ford took a breath. Looked up into her eyes. He never looked into her eyes anymore. “Okay. I will. I promise I will.”
“And I am not your property. I can do what I want.”
Ford was silent, blank-eyed.
“You understand that, Ford? Because if you don’t, we are leaving.”
“I do,” he said at last. “You deserve that.”
“And,” she said. “You hit me again, or worse, you ever lay a finger on Sam, and I’ll have your ass in jail, I swear it.”
“Diana—”
“You got that, Ford?”
“I would never hurt Sam, Diana, you know that.”
“I need to know that you understand that, Ford. That part of our lives is over.”
“I do. And it is. You’re right. It’s over. I swear.” He paused. “I love you.”
24
He took them to the antique carousel down by the wharf, the Flying Horses, the following Sunday. The carousel had been around for well over a century, boasting to be the oldest in the country. Built in the 1870s, moved to the Vineyard from Coney Island. The horses were all hand carved, and their tails were made of authentic horse hair. Hair from long-forgotten beasts that had moved through a wholly different time, and now in a sense still moved. At least part of them. The carousel was closed for the season, but Ford knew the man who ran it, and he had lent him the key. It was going to be a special ride, he said to Samantha. The horses all to herself. She could ride any one she wanted. Diana had been hesitant, thinking the whole idea a little unnerving, riding it alone, but she had bit her tongue; he had been doting on Samantha, maybe a bit too openly, awkwardly, she thought, but he was trying, at least making an attempt to connect with them again, and that was the important thing. If he tried, and she road-blocked him, then what would that say about her?
It hadn’t gone well with Cybil when Diana had returned from the church, but Diana had expected that. Cybil had started to cry a little. Told Diana she was nuts. She couldn’t go back to him, couldn’t bring Samantha back near him.
“But he’s never laid a hand on her,” Diana said. And it was true, he never had. And if he had that in him, wouldn’t he have done that by now? “If he did, I would never go back,” she said to Cybil. “Never. He knows that, so he wouldn’t dare.”
“He will though,” Cybil said. “Believe me. He will. I’ve seen this, Diana. I’ve lived it.”
“And he has, too, that’s why I think he’s willing to change,” Diana said, and even as she did, the words felt stagnant in her throat, false, leaving her wondering what she now believed herself.
Cybil just shook her head. “They don’t change. Not for good.”
She had given her some phone numbers. Support groups. Names of therapists. And then Diana and Samantha had left before Cybil and Norman got back on the ferry. Diana went over the entire scenario in her head, over and over, on their way back to the house. History. Options. Lies, love, and forgiveness. She had told herself it would be wrong to uproot Samantha yet another time. She wanted to believe that. If nothing else, Samantha needed stability. She had never had stability. One more incident, and they definitely would go. Would have to. That would be it. She promised herself. Promised Samantha. An
d if push came to shove, she could protect her—she would die before she let anyone hurt her. And he promised things would get better. They would give him one more chance, and that was all.
Now, Ford flicked on the lights, the horses suddenly bright, alive and surreal. Everything inside was surreal, the night surrounding the building, dark and cold and void of all life. There was no heat in the building, and their breath fogged before them. Ford was going out of his way with all this, doing it to try and make up for things, maybe to be more of a father, more of a husband, but something about it felt all wrong. Carousels were meant to be cluttered with children—waving, squealing, and smiling wide at their parents each time they came around—and ridden in the summer. Warm air, stuffy air. High humidity. The spinning of the machine bringing a cool, welcome breeze.
But it was far from summer.
Ford told Samantha to step back as he opened the gate, the enormous key ring the manager lent him dangling from his fingers. He liked holding the key ring, and he liked Diana seeing him hold it. He wanted to send her a message. Wanted her to know. People liked him. People trusted him.
He had crouched down before Samantha when they returned from the bed-and-breakfast, looked into her eyes, and had told her that what Daddy had done was very, very bad, but sometimes good people make bad mistakes. Samantha just looked at him with a blank stare in her eye and nodded. And then Ford swallowed his breath and hugged her.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said, “both Mummy and Daddy, and it is important to remember that. And maybe,” he said, “if Mummy and Daddy didn’t fight so much, didn’t get each other so angry, things like what had happened the other night, never would have to happen at all.”
Diana had just looked at him with that, a cool anger rising. She tried to trace her footsteps. Her part. But most of it was a blur. And maybe she had said some things. Maybe. Things she didn’t realize she was saying, things he misinterpreted. Maybe in the heat of the moment, things she didn’t remember. She had talked to Samantha after they left Norman and Cybil, asked her how she felt about going back to the house, going back to live with Daddy, and the little girl had barely flinched.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Diana asked, hugging her tight.
“I knew we were going back anyway,” Samantha said.
Diana hesitated a moment, wondering if Cybil had guessed, had said something. “How did you know that?” she asked.
Samantha brushed her doll’s hair back over her head. The knotted dreadlocks. Louie. “Cassie told me,” she said.
Now she ran inside the gated circle, around the perimeter, trying to pick the perfect horse. A white one with a purple mane. Tiny little animals embedded in his glass eyes. They all had the glass eyes. Ford helped her up.
“How is it going to move if it’s not summer, Dad?” Samantha asked.
“Daddy’s going to make it move,” Ford said. “Daddy has the key to the controls. Daddy’s the boss. I just put in the key and then I pull the lever. Then the music starts and everything. It will be just like summer, but instead, you’ll have it all to yourself.”
“Do you want me to ride with you?” Diana called out to her.
Ford was busy buckling Samantha onto the horse. “I need you to take pictures, while I work the controls. Besides Sam wants to ride herself. She’s a big girl—she wants to be the queen of the carousel, don’t you, Sam?”
“Mummy can ride if she wants,” Samantha said.
“Mummy can’t ride,” Ford said. “She has to take pictures. Just think, in all the years this merry-go-round has been running, over a hundred years, and thousands and thousands of kids, I bet no little girl has ever had it all to herself, and now you do because you’re the best, and that’s what I told the owner, and there’s no way he could say no. Not to your dad.” He leaned forward, and kissed her on top of the head before stepping off the platform, heading to the gate. He looked at Diana, smirked a little, and tossed her the camera he pulled out of his pocket. “Think quick!” he said.
Diana jumped, grabbing the camera just before it thumped against her chest.
At least he was being playful, she thought. Even Ford, as bad as his temper could be, had trouble switching gears when feeling playful, so that much was good. She tried to smile at him. She had told herself that she would withhold sex from him, at least for a while, something to hold over his head, but he asked her to talk to him for a moment upstairs after dinner tonight. He put his back to the door and pulled her close, and then he was caressing, then pawing, slipping a finger down the side of her jeans, her hip, beneath the elastic band of her panties, and then that was it. They were on the bed, and he was crying again, apologizing, and then pushing inside as he did. And she didn’t bother to fight. She was back here with him, and he was trying, so what was the point of fighting? If they were going to live together, she told herself, they had to get along.
Now he climbed up into the booth with the high stool at the far side of the room. Called out and asked Samantha if she were ready. Samantha nodded. Diana waved to her. How many times had she been inside this building? How many times and paid little attention to everything around her? The wooden beams above the horses, the rainbow-colored chariots. Painted pictures of island steamships. Horses and buggies and old hotels. And the rings.
“Remember to try and get the gold ring,” Ford said.
The rings, mostly brass during the summer, came out of a dispenser just within arm’s reach of the children each time they came full circle. One hand holding onto the horse, they would reach out with the other to grab for the rings, placing them on the horn atop of their horse’s head after they did, and the child who caught the gold ring automatically received a free ride.
Ford flicked a switch and the music started. Time bending and surreal. And then the machine began to move. Slow at first, then picking up speed. Samantha was clinging to the post. She freed a hand for the flash of a second to wave to Diana, but she didn’t reach for the rings. Ford was sitting on the stool, inside the booth, his hand on the ring distributor, silently watching. Two turns, then three.
Snap. Diana took a picture.
“If you don’t reach for the rings, Sam,” he called out over the music, “you can’t win.”
The little girl didn’t flinch. Didn’t hear him, or didn’t care. Or maybe she was scared. Waving still but not smiling. The building suddenly felt colder, a draft seeping inside. It wasn’t designed for winter, especially so close to the sea. Diana huddled her arms about her chest, and shivered a little. She wondered how long Ford would let the ride go.
Samantha passed again, and Diana took another. Snap.
Diana remembered the carousel at Paragon Park when she was small. Nantasket Beach. That one almost as old as this. Certainly more elaborate—the lights and sounds and hand-carved horses. Painted murals of Victorians playing in the surf. Diana’s father would take them to the beach, Diana and Phillip. The other children were too small to go then, or at least too small for her father to juggle them all at once, and her mother never went to the beach. Diana loved the water, she loved her father, and she loved the water more when her father would come in with her. And then sometimes after they would stop on the boardwalk for fried clams, and her father would get a beer. He would only have one, but they always had to promise not to tell their mother about the fried clams, and they couldn’t tell her about the beer; it was their special treat. And then always after, they would head to the carousel, the sun beginning its descent in the breaking reds of the summer night sky, and from the park the noise of the barkers and the music, the rides, the crashing of the roller coaster, the haunted laughter from Kooky Kastle—a ride with a wax-like green Frankenstein chasing a screaming woman in a white dress, around and around, revolving in and out of the castle, forever through eternity—was loud all around them.
It was important to have a father. Have someone. And she had to believe that. Ford could change. She just needed maybe to love him
more, be more compassionate. Understanding. Her own mother was difficult, but her father had loved her, and at least she had had that. What had Ford had? Nothing except a nightmare of a childhood. She had to be more understanding, empathetic, and then he would change. Anyone could change. And somewhere deep inside, she thought, she didn’t want to be alone. Not again. It was worse to be alone, wasn’t it? It would have to be.
Diana lifted the camera. Snap.
She looked up at him now, the lights shining into the booth. He was watching Samantha, growing impatient. She could tell he was trying—he didn’t want to lose his patience—but Samantha just didn’t want to reach for the rings, and she was no longer waving as she came around. She was staring at the horse just ahead and to the right of her, staring at something, but she wasn’t waving. Just clinging to the horse. She had had enough, and Diana called out to Ford, told him he thought she had had enough. It was cold. But Ford ignored her.
“Come on, Sam,” he said. “Don’t be a party pooper, just reach for the ring. You won’t fall. I promise.”
The music seemed suddenly louder, deafening, and Ford called out something again, but Diana couldn’t hear him. She stepped back, and snapped a picture, taking in the whole carousel. Ford’s lips were moving, and his face was slipping, just a little more angry, but Diana couldn’t make out anything he was saying. Then Samantha came around again, and Diana saw it through the viewfinder as she snapped another picture.
Saw what Samantha was seeing.
Another little girl, in a long blue dress and blue ribbons in her hair, white stockings, was riding up and down on the horse just ahead of her, just to the right. Riding, but turned sideways in the saddle, turned so she could look back at Samantha, and waving to her, beckoning. Calling her on to join her. Diana went to scream, to yell at Ford to make it stop, and then they came around again, and this time, the little girl wasn’t alone. There was a man standing beside her. Shirt vest and boating hat, a scar running the length of his cheek. Diana felt her heart rising in her throat. She screamed again, and then the man and the little girl turned and looked at her. There for a moment, and the horse passed by again, and then they were gone.
In the Midst of the Sea Page 17