Shout Down the Moon

by Lisa Tucker

  I always forgave Rick; I didn’t even have to try. Even when I was standing on the railing of the Lewisville River Bridge, the night I almost killed myself, I forgave him.

  I haven’t thought about that night in years. But this week is different. This week, it’s just one of the memories I’ve had. It’s as if Mama’s phone call, and what Rick did, have broken down all my defenses, erased all the distance I’ve tried so hard to put between my life now and my life then.

  I don’t want to think about the schoolhouse. I don’t want to think about that afternoon outside Zeb’s. And most of all, I don’t want to think about what I felt, who I was, that night on the bridge.

  It was the worst night of my life. Even thinking about it now makes me feel like I’m becoming nothing again.

  I was up on the railing. Rick was below me, holding out his hand. “Goddammit, Patty, cut this out! You know I didn’t mean all that shit!”

  The night was so quiet. I could hear the water rushing below me. All I wanted was to let myself fall and be surrounded by that water. I thought it would feel soft, like the blanket one of the neighbors quilted for me after Daddy died. I thought it would cover me up, let me hide in it forever. I didn’t want to hide from Rick; I wanted to hide from my own mind. My mind was screaming at me. My mind was calling me names: slut, whore, nothing.

  We’d just come from a party. It was all older people, his friends. Until after midnight, he talked to guys and flirted with other women while I sat in a chair in the corner, next to the blasting stereo, and pretended I didn’t care. But then he came over and knelt down beside me and mouthed the words, “Are you all right?”

  His eyes looked so tender. I nodded, and he put his hand on my face. I turned my lips to his palm and kissed it. He reached up and traced the outline of my eyes with his other hand. Then he smiled and kissed me.

  We were shielded by the music. Neither one of us knew the CD was about to end. Neither one of us knew that when it did, the room would grow silent and everybody would glance in the direction of the stereo. Everybody would see him on his knees in front of his little teenage girlfriend.

  Rick usually didn’t bring me to these parties. He said they were bullshit; he said I’d be bored. Maybe he meant it, but I knew there was another reason. He didn’t want them to see how he was with me. He thought it would make him look weak.

  When he realized everyone was looking at him, his face grew confused, but only for a second or two. He stood up and laughed. “What is it?” His voice was loud. “Are you horny?” He grabbed his crotch. “Do you need some of this?”

  I felt tears spring to my eyes.

  I know Rick saw those tears. But he’d been speeding for hours. And he was with his friends. He couldn’t deal with a blubbering girl.

  Three guys were leaning against the wall not five feet away. They laughed too, and the whole room laughed after one of them said, “If she needs it, man, better give it to her.”

  He jerked me to a standing position. My arms and legs felt weak and floppy, like I’d turned into a rag doll. And then he pulled my body against his, and started feeling me up right in front of everybody.

  I was more embarrassed than I’d ever been in my life. I could feel their stares, hear their snickers. “Go for it.” “She wants it, man.”

  After a while, I closed my eyes. I had to stop the tears and I couldn’t bear to look at him. I was too stunned to object when he lifted up my blouse. He turned me around so no one could see my breasts as he put his mouth on them, but everyone knew what he was doing. He was smacking his lips.

  When he let me go suddenly, I stumbled and fell against him. He threw his arm around my shoulders. “You want me to take you in the bedroom now?”

  I had to get away from all those eyes. I mumbled yes, and everybody laughed.

  “She loves it,” he said, grinning, as he led me to the hall. “Jesus, she wears me out.”

  As soon as he shut the door behind us, he slumped down on the bed and let out a curse. He was sorry, I knew he was. But it was too late; he’d cut my heart to pieces.

  I yanked off my blouse and pulled my pants down to my knees.

  “Patty, what are you—”

  “Let’s go.” I fell backwards on the bed next to him. My voice was a spit. “This is what you want, right?”

  “Baby, come on.”

  “You told all those people I was horny. You told all those people I need this.” I put my hand on his crotch. “What’s the matter, Rick? Don’t you want to give me what I need?”

  His objections grew weaker and weaker as I pressed my breasts against his cheeks, stroked him with my fingers.

  “This is what you want,” I said, no longer a question. His breathing had become punctuated by groans. As I climbed on top of him, I felt a cold emptiness that seemed like power. I could be this girl. It wasn’t that bad.

  But when it was over, I wanted to die. And on the drive home, when Rick paused at the stop sign right before the bridge, I jumped out of the Lincoln and climbed up the metal rail. I couldn’t stand the screaming anymore. The words were the same ones Mama yelled at me. Slut. Whore. Won’t amount to nothing.

  “Patty, for chrissakes, come here! This is dangerous!”

  He was still holding out his hand, inching towards me. I climbed up higher, onto a flat concrete post, and looked down. It was so dark I couldn’t see the water, but I could see shapes of rocks protruding along the banks.

  I lifted my arms and told myself it would be like diving off the high dive but better. It was probably three hundred feet down. I would go so fast it would be like flying. And then the water would hold me in its arms, make me clean. The water wouldn’t let go, ever.

  Rick was moving to climb up too. I warned him not to come near or I’d have to do it now. I was almost ready, but I wanted to stay up here for another moment, listen to the music of the water moving below me.

  He fell down on his knees and started punching his chest with his fists. And screaming. Over and over, the same words. “Oh God, please help me. Patty, please, please, forgive me.”

  After a while, I realized his screams were drowning out the ones in my mind. I could feel the wind blowing against my face, opening my eyes. I looked around, wondering why I couldn’t find the moon. It had been there earlier. I remembered seeing it, full and brighter than I’d ever remembered, when Rick and I were on the way to the party.

  I lost track of where I was. I took a step, still looking up, trying to find the moon, and I slipped off the concrete post. I felt a sharp pain as my leg hit the railing below but I was too stunned to cry out. I was dangling over the water; my hands were grasping for something to hold on to but there was nothing but air. My leg was twisted in the railing but it was slipping; the skin on my kneecap was ripping across the metal inch by inch.

  I was seconds away from plunging into the river, but then Rick’s hands were on my legs, dragging me back. My knee was gushing blood; I could feel the warm wetness running down my leg and into my shoe. But I didn’t feel the pain. He had me in his lap; he was crying and rocking me. He was kissing my hair, murmuring, “I could have lost you. Christ, Patty. You could have died.”

  I had to have fifteen stitches. Rick told the emergency room doctor he was my brother so he could sign the consent form. They told me not to put weight on the leg for twenty-four hours. I clung to Rick’s neck as he carried me to the car. He promised he wouldn’t leave me alone until I was better.

  For the past few months, Rick had been gone more than he was home—and I was so lonely. I’d left high school years ago, I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t even know anybody my own age. I called Mama every few days, trying to catch her sober. Sometimes I tried to talk to her about curtains and rugs and recipes, but she knew next to nothing about any of this, nor did she seem to care. One time she said it was laughable for me to act like I was making a normal house when I was living with a drug dealer. I stopped calling for a while then. I could feel stupid and ridiculous all by m
yself; I didn’t need her for that.

  Rick did stay with me the entire week after that night I fell. He fed me and rented me movies and gave me pain pills—not the ones the doctor prescribed but other ones, better ones, he said. The wound on my knee got infected though. Neither Rick nor I remembered to put on the antibiotic cream and change the bandage every day. I went by myself to the emergency room the next time. The doctor who treated me seemed annoyed. He said the price of my carelessness would be a nasty scar.

  The scar is as long as my kneecap, but it isn’t that bad. It looks like a half-moon, that’s what Irene said. I remember Willie used to pat it with his chubby hand when he was a baby. When he could say Mama (his second word; his first was choo-choo), he would pat the scar and babble Mama, Mama, Mama. It cracked me up. I wondered if he thought the scar was Mama.

  I was lucky. I came so close to falling in the river. So close to dying and never having Willie.

  Of course it wasn’t Rick’s fault that I climbed up on the bridge or that I fell. It wasn’t his fault that I needed him so much. He loved me, I was sure of it. I needed that love. And it wasn’t all bad. The good parts more than made up for the bad.

  Even this week, most of the memories I’ve had have been good. When I was getting dressed for the gig on Wednesday night, I flashed to the afternoon when Rick gave me my first present: eighteen pairs of socks, all in different, bright colors, some crew, some knee-high. It was only a few days after we met, but he’d already noticed how often I was stooped over, tugging on the worn-out elastic of my old ones. He said that if my mother wouldn’t give me money for clothes, he would. And last night between sets, when a table of customers insisted on buying me a beer and telling me how talented I was, I found myself thinking about when Rick first said the same thing. I was singing in the shower at our apartment; I thought he was watching television. When I turned the water off and pulled back the curtain, I saw him leaning against the sink. I felt stupid, until he said, “You know what? You have a beautiful voice.” He handed me a towel and smiled. “You sound like an angel.”

  And just now, listening to the storm, I’ve remembered something else. I can’t believe I’d forgotten this. I used to think it was the nicest thing anybody ever did for me.

  We’d only been living together for a few weeks. We were still in the crummy apartment, the one with no dishwasher and no air-conditioning, but I loved it there. I knew he was dealing, but there was no bag of guns in the closet yet, no weird phone calls at all hours, no constant visits from his scary friends. We woke up every morning holding each other. We got to eat whenever we wanted, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, mostly at Denny’s. We went there so often I had their menu memorized.

  One Friday night, we were lying in bed, talking about our families. Rick told me that when his dad left, he was nine and so angry he smashed the mirror in his bedroom with his bare hands. Then he said I must have been really torn up when my dad died. At first, I told him I didn’t remember, but finally I admitted the truth. It was my big secret then. I hadn’t cried at all—not right after the accident, not at the funeral, not a month later or a year later, or seven years later. Never.

  I told him I felt guilty, but I also figured it made sense. It really wasn’t my loss, I said, it was Mama’s. And I reminded him of what Mama said about Daddy not really wanting me. Maybe Daddy and I didn’t have much of a relationship anyway.

  Rick insisted on driving out to the cemetery, even though it was after midnight.

  “He was your dad.” Rick was shaking my shoulders. “You have a right to miss him.”

  We were kneeling on the grass by the grave. After a while, he stuck my hand on the cold stone, forced my fingers over the engraved letters. “Feel it. It says Beloved Father of Patty. That’s you. You were his daughter. This isn’t about your mom.”

  I’d been to this cemetery countless times before, but I’d always just stood there while Mama wailed and prayed and begged God to bring him back. I’d never felt anything except embarrassment. And I didn’t want to feel anything—then or now. I jerked my hand away and yelled that he shouldn’t have brought me here, it was heartless. But then he grabbed me in his arms and kept saying, “Your dad is dead,” until finally I broke down.

  For what seemed like an hour, we sat in the damp grass of the cemetery while I sobbed until my throat ached and my eyes felt as raw and sore as if I’d rubbed them in salt. I remembered Daddy, and even though he was away from home a lot, I remembered us doing things together. I helped him plant that garden of daffodils in the photo Mama loved so much. He was the one who used to call me his princess. He taught me how to ride a bike and took me fishing and even built me a beautiful dollhouse. We painted the dollhouse together. Pink with white shutters. A little wooden couch and little wooden chairs. Three little wooden beds: one for the mom doll, one for the dad, and one for the girl.

  I was crying because I missed Daddy, but that wasn’t all. For the first time, I understood that my childhood had died with him. I’d lost the normal kid I had been, the girl who didn’t have guilty secrets, who wasn’t afraid to cry because she had nothing to cry about.

  When Daddy fell off the roof that day, I was talking to him. I was jumping rope and talking about nothing. And he was listening to me. I remembered him smiling at something I said only a few minutes before it happened.

  I was never sure I was innocent. I wanted to be innocent so badly. I tried to be quieter. Sometimes I’d wish I’d wake up and find my lips grown together, become a perfect plum, no seams.

  I wasn’t innocent. Daddy was gone and he was never coming back. If I didn’t have Rick, I’d have nothing.

  “Promise you won’t die,” I stammered, when I could catch my breath. “Please promise me, Rick.”

  “I promise,” he whispered into my hair. He leaned back and grinned. “You know me, I’m invincible.”

  He loved me. He said so all the time, and the whole time we were together, I was sure it was true. I was still sure when he came to my hotel room in Kentucky. I absolutely believed that he loved me—until Sunday night in the field, when he chased me like a dog. Held me down. Bruised my wrists, my face, my pelvic bone. Scared me.

  I couldn’t use the word Irene did. I was afraid of that word; it’s so ugly. But I don’t have another word for what happened. I can’t understand how Rick could do this.

  As soon as Mama told me he ran into that wall, I was sure it wasn’t an accident. What I didn’t know—and still don’t—is whether he was punishing himself or trying to tell me he was sorry. More than anything, I wish I didn’t care. I wish I wasn’t remembering all this. I wish Willie would wake up, so I could stop thinking about Rick.

  I stand up and go to the window. The storm is still going strong. On the other side of the street, there’s a kids’ plastic swimming pool, overturned and snagged on the wheel of a car. The lightning is reflecting off all the standing water: in the depressions in the yards, in the potholes, in the curbs. The gutters are doing what they can, but they can’t keep up.

  I can’t wait until tomorrow, when we leave for Topeka. I hate this trailer park. I hate the swimming pool. I hate that field and that ugly farmhouse. I hate all of Omaha.

  But I don’t hate Rick. I can’t hate him, even though I want to so bad. He held me down and put his hand over my mouth and I wasn’t even screaming. I just wanted to tell him about the rock, about my hair. I just wanted to tell him he was hurting me.

  He slammed into a brick wall at over seventy miles an hour. He could have died. He’s Willie’s father. But he raped me—I know Irene is right. And now I feel insane because I can’t cry or scream or even get mad. I can’t do anything other than walk around in a daze, remembering all this.

  After a while, I stumble back to the bed, take the sheets off Willie. It’s already getting hot in here. If the power doesn’t come back soon, it’s going to be unbearable.

  Willie’s still snoring, still fast asleep, even though the rain is even louder on the roof, and sta
ccato; it sounds like it’s mixed with hail. Only his eyes are moving. They’re darting back and forth behind his eyelids. He’s dreaming. He’s too young to talk about his dreams, but I know some of them are bad. I hear him cry out in his sleep.

  I worry about him so much, especially this week. I wonder what he made of everything he saw last Sunday. I wonder what he made of Rick.

  He only asked about Rick once. It was Thursday afternoon, and out of the blue, he said he wanted the new guy to come back so he could sit in that brand-new truck agaWhen I didn’t respond, he asked if I’d told the new guy not to come back here. I said no, but he stomped his foot and said I did. Then he started crying and whining that I shouldn’t have done that. “I wike trucks, Mama! I want to sit in the truck!”

  He’d just gotten up from his nap, and he was grouchy. Normally, I distract him, but I couldn’t. Luckily, Irene was there; she picked him up and took him out of the room; then she and Harry played with him in the backyard. Fifteen minutes later, he seemed to have forgotten all about it.

  But maybe he’s dreaming about it now. Dreaming about the brand-new truck that was destroyed by his crazy father.

  “Poor buddy,” I say, as I brush a lock of hair off his forehead. All he has is me. Even if I’m screwed up, there’s no way around it. I’m his family.

  I have to get some rest, or at least try. When he wakes up, he’ll need hugs and breakfast, talk and happiness.

  I lie down and close my eyes. I remind myself that he’s only two. Soon enough, he’ll forget about the new guy, the truck, this trailer. Soon enough, I’ll get my mind right and we’ll move forward.

  At least we only have two weeks in Topeka. And after that, the summer will be over. We’ll go back to Kansas City, where we’re booked for September. I’ll stay with Mama, because she wants me to and because it’s good for Willie to have her in his life, and yeah, because I’ve never stopped hoping that she and I will find a way to be together that will make it feel like being home.