I go digging into the food stock in the backyard snow pile and produce a frozen chicken, which I pull out for tomorrow, and frozen vegetables for both evenings. I also find stuffed clams I think I might be able to slow-thaw for dinner, as well as some French-fried potatoes. I pull these out, scheming how I can rig the frying pan over the fire to cook them.
Shivering from the cold, I go back inside and sit by the fire to warm up. Howard built a huge fire, using more wood than necessary. With the fireplace tongs I pull the unburned pieces away from the others and set them on the hearth for later.
I flatten the pile, pull one of the racks from the oven, and place it over the logs … and I have an instant grill! I set the stuffed clams in a metal pan on the front of the rack to start them thawing and put the waxed green beans I pulled out into a small iron saucepan. I set it aside to wait for my father’s return.
Howard is back, and I finish preparing my fireplace dinner, as he calls it, as he watches.
When I think everything’s ready, I load up our plates and we begin eating. The clams, are, however, still slightly frozen in the middle.
“Cook ’em again!” Howard’s eyes blink separately at me. He had quite a bit of the whiskey as he hiked back up the hill. I can smell his drunken breath and the stale sweat from his clothing wafting across the coffee table as we sit in front of the fireplace.
I pull our plates away and slide the clams back on the metal tray on the fireplace rack. After a while I spoon them all back onto his plate.
“I don’t want yours. I didn’t ask for yours.”
“I know. I don’t want them anymore. Have them,” I say.
“I don’t want ’em,” he says insistently and forks them back onto my plate. “You’ve taken bites out of ’em already. I’m not gonna eat your food.”
This time, I guess, his clams are cooked enough for him, and he eats them noisily, as though he’s starving. I wait for him to finish his meal, and then I take the dishes to the sink, where I wash and dry them. Our dishwasher has been broken for months.
When I go back out, I see he’s crawled into my sleeping bag. I grab the flashlight and go downstairs to the basement, which creeps me out, and find David’s old camp sleeping bag. I bring it upstairs and unroll it under the piano.
Howard snores.
I wish I’d thought of grabbing the sleeping bag earlier in the daytime. I could have checked it for spiders and bugs. I’m too tired now. I crawl inside, dreading what the next day might bring with Howard.
I wake up in the middle of the night to a crashing sound by the fireplace. Howard swears profusely as he tries to rekindle the fire. He’s trying to do it the same way he did earlier, by laying the logs upon each other and trying to light the ends. It’s funny to me that he’s somehow managed to live this long without learning how to build a proper fire.
“I can help you with it if you like?” I offer as gently as I can.
“What the fuck do you think you can do that I can’t?”
I pull the sleeping bag back over my head and lie down again. If he isn’t going to be nice, screw him.
His swearing and stumbling goes on for a while. I pretend to sleep. Eventually he gives up and settles back into a fitful sleep.
“It’s fucking cold!” he calls out occasionally.
At sunrise, I rise and walk around his body, which lays perpendicular to the hearth. I build a fire, which takes me about two minutes, and warm up a bit.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Howard startles me, and I jump away from the fireplace.
“Th … the heating goes o … off about two or three times a year. I learned a long time ago.” I want to ask him how he doesn’t know. Instead, I head toward the kitchen.
The phone rings. At first I can’t tell where the ringing is coming from. It’s been days since the lines went down and the surprising sound adds to my heightened sense of anxiety. Once I register that it’s the phone, I walk over to the piano, where it sits, and pick it up from its cradle.
“Hello?”
“Oh my God! Why weren’t you picking up the phone for three days? What’s going on?” Wendy’s strident voice rings out from the phone. “The phones have been down. We’ve had a blizzard.”
“I know, for Chrissakes, it’s why I’m calling. It’s all over the news down here. Are you all right? How’s the house?”
“Yeah, the house and I are all right. We don’t have heat yet, and I’m sure the phone lines have been back up only recently.”
“Are you using the fireplace? You’ve got plenty of wood, you’ll be fine. You’ve got food. How are the pipes?”
“The pipes are fine. I’ve got water running. I put the food out in the snow. It should keep until the temperature starts to rise again. Hopefully by that time the power will be back on. I can go over to the Zands’ if things get hairy.”
“Tell her I’m here,” Howard demands.
Silence echoes on Wendy’s end of the phone. I didn’t want to test her reaction to this news, but since he’s been the one to offer it …
“Is that bastard there?” her voice rings out, filling the room.
“Yeah, I’m here. Whaddya gonna do about it from the Virgin Islands? Who’s gonna take care of your kid you left by herself?” He jumps up and grabs the phone from me and begins a rant.
“It’s a fucking nightmare here. There’s no fucking power, there were no fucking phone lines until now, and the streets aren’t even passable. I had to leave my car down by the yacht club and walk in the middle of a blizzard to make it here.”
“If there were no phones how did you know Jules was on her own?”
Wendy knows I’d never call him, and I think she smells a rat.
“You were at Doreen’s and ran out of wood, didn’t you? Probably ran out of food and had nowhere to go. You thought you’d sponge off us for a while?”
Twenty-five
Jules, 16 years | February, 1978
LITTLE PIECES
“SHUT YOUR FUCKING mouth, you bitch. If you were here I’d tear your head off and shove it up your ass! Don’t you give a shit about your daughter here alone in the middle of a blizzard? What kind of a mother leaves a kid alone and goes off on a vacation? I should report you!”
“Go right ahead, asshole, and I’ll be sure to slap a lawsuit right on you for back pay on alimony and child support that’ll leave you so broke you’ll be paying me until the day you fucking die!” Wendy screams.
I back up to the edge of the couch, about ten feet away from where Howard now holds the phone receiver away from his ear, hanging from his hand. He drops the phone on the floor.
“Say good-bye to your mother.”
I walk over and pick up the phone off the floor. We can hear Wendy,
“Hello? Hello? Are you still there? Hello?”
I’m experiencing a myriad of emotions—shock, fright, spiking anxiety at a flood of parental fight memories, bitterness, disgust at my parents’ hypocrisy and behavior. There’s also a righteous anger and vindictive glee at Howard’s parental neglect allegations toward Wendy.
This emotion drives the next thing I say.
“You know, I was fine before he got here, and I’ll be fine when he leaves. So, don’t think you have to rush back here on my account. I’ve got everything I need.”
Wendy is silent. After a while, she speaks in a calm voice. I can tell she’s trying to gain her composure. “Good. I will stay. Maybe your father should stay with you for a while. I’ll feel better you’re not alone there. Make sure he doesn’t go in my room. I don’t want him nosing around. Where is he sleeping?’
“We’re sleeping in front of the living room fireplace. It’s the only warm spot. There’s no heat.”
“Fine. Let him sleep in the living room. I’ll call you in a few days and check in. Stay warm.”
I’m breathing slowly to calm my voice but now a rushed plea escapes. “Wait. I don’t need anyone here. He doesn’t have to stay here. I’m fine.”
; “Yes, you do! You’re not staying here by yourself. You’re sixteen years old. You’re not an adult,” Howard shouts over me.
“Let him stay!” Wendy says. “I don’t need to rush back.”
“What about your classes?” I ask. I’m panicky now.
“I’ll drop my classes and start again next semester.”
She raises her voice again. “He’s gonna make a big scene about how I left you alone after abandoning his children for the last ten years. Big man. Let him show what a great father he is and let him stay there. I’ll be here in the sunshine while he steps up for a change. Be a man, Howard.”
“Go fuck yourself, Wendy.” Howards walks over, grabs the phone out of my hands, and slams it into the receiver.
“Make me coffee.”
I go into the kitchen to fill the teakettle for a fireplace boil. The rest of the day is tedious, but relatively uneventful. I spend the day cleaning and cooking while Howard grabs an ax from our shed and chops up tree branches from the fallen willow in our back yard. He plans to haul the logs down to his stranded car and load the car up with firewood to take back to Doreen’s when he leaves.
He’s at least made an exit plan, and I’m ecstatic he isn’t going to take a part of the cord we have stacked in the backyard. I think about how lucky it turns out to be that the willow fell.
About midway through the day I receive calls from Leigh and Timothy, who want to see if I can come out for a bit. I tell them what I’m doing, and that I’ll check back with them the next day.
But the next day there’s another long list of things on Howard’s agenda. My first task: polishing the goldware, an old wedding present relic from Wendy’s parents, which stays stored in an antique wooden case. I wonder if Howard plans to take it with him when he leaves.
He makes one trip to his car with the wood while I set to work on the utensils, and on his return pronounces his decision that I should help him carry the wood to the car. So I load a backpack with as much wood as I can carry, and stack a few more pieces in my arms. He carries a few under his arm, and we hike down the snow-filled avenue to where his car is abandoned.
The sun reflects blindingly off the mountains of snow. I have to squint my eyes nearly shut to see anything. I wish I’d brought sunglasses. Howard wears the pair of Wayfarers from the stuffed deer in the den.
When we reach the parking lot at the yacht club, there are cars strewn everywhere. Snow stacks nearly thigh high on me in the lot, and except for the places that have already been packed down a bit by snowshoes and skis, my legs sink into the snowdrifts. I’m soaked. We can hear snowplows working their way across the land bridges, but the parking lot and all the cars, still stuck frozen like huge popsicles, sit draped in icy snow. It will probably be at least another day before the cars are cleared to move. Nothing can melt in the cold that remains.
“We should wait until the ice melts, and then you can drive the car up to the house and load it there,” I say.
I really don’t want him to stay at the house any longer, but it makes no sense to carry all this wood down here if the car can’t move anyway.
“This part of the road will be cleared long before the others, and I wanna leave as soon as I can.”
This response is thrilling.
We pile the wood in the trunk of Howard’s car and trudge back up Withensea Avenue. Back at the house, soaked and freezing, I build another fire and warm up in front of it. Howard goes out back to continue chopping wood.
Timothy calls while he’s gone and we speak for a while, until I hear Howard come in. “I gotta go,” I tell him, and hang up.
“Who was that?” Howard asks.
Lying would be easy, but I’ve decided to be straightforward. “Timothy. He’s just checking in.”
Howard informs me I will be making the next round of trips to load the firewood into the car while he continues to chop wood. I don’t argue. I put on my ski suit and bundle up against the cold. It’s much better this time.
I spend the rest of the day hauling wood down to Howard’s car. After the last load it’s so full I have to lean against the doors to close them. By the end of the day a snowplow finishes the last clearing of Withensea Avenue. Because there’s been flooding with the blizzard, the plow pushes seawater off the avenue as well. Several city workers and residents line the seawall with sandbags to try and keep the roads clear. My last walk back becomes a slushy trek. The water sloshes through my boots to my socks, and my feet are frozen.
Howard gives me about ten minutes in front of the fire before he demands his dinner. I make the chicken and vegetables I’ve defrosted and kept chilled in an ice bucket in the refrigerator. I split the chicken breasts and season them before I grill them on the fire.
As I’m bending over the grill, Howard says, “You’ve got your mother’s figure, I see.”
His tone is not complimentary. I decide to ignore the comment. Somewhere in there is his acknowledgment of my physical maturity. Somewhere in there is my dread at the belief that he hates women and now counts me as “one of them.”
“This is good,” Howard says between large bites a bit later. “I know you didn’t learn to cook from your mother. She’s a lousy cook. Who taught you?”
“No one. I read cookbooks and follow recipes. It’s not rocket science.”
He laughs. “You would think a genius could figure it out, but everything your mother made ended up burnt or not fit for humans.”
“She never gave us salad with grub garnishes.” I’m instantly sorry for the crack, but fortunately Howard takes it lightly.
“Christ! I forgot about her cooking. The woman was such an idiot. At least your mother could hold a conversation.”
I decide to change the subject and see if his happiness with my cooking might buy me a bit of freedom. “So, do you think it would be all right if I went over to Leigh’s tomorrow? We have a project we’re working on.”
He considers it.
“I’ll tell you what? If you clean out all the shit in the cabinets and wipe them down, you can go when you finish.”
It’s pointless busywork, since we rarely have food in the cabinets and our glassware, dish, and pan collections are measly, but I know it won’t take me long to finish the chore. I agree.
In the morning he sleeps in while I work in the kitchen. By eleven o’clock I’ve fed him breakfast and finished the dishes. I start to bundle up to go out. “Be back by four. I don’t want you walking around in the dark.”
It didn’t bother him the day before when I hauled wood for him, but I’m glad to be getting away from him and I don’t argue. I practically run out. It’s already been too many days of Howard Hell, and I’m stir-crazy.
I stop at Timothy’s, stepping inside for lunch with his family, before we leave for Leigh’s. I haven’t mentioned that Timothy will join us or that Ms. Westerfield will be leaving for work later. We will be, gasp, un-chaperoned, but I don’t think I owe Howard an explanation. His demands are ridiculous. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl with a social life.
After lunch, Timothy and I walk down the hill to Leigh’s. When we arrive we’re invited to go into Boston with Ms. Westerfield while she works for a bit in her travel agency office. She says she’ll drop us at the Boston Commons—one of our favorite places to hang out. I think it will be fun to make snowmen on the Commons. It also sounds great to bust out of Withensea.
I try calling Howard to let him know I’m going, but he isn’t there. By the time we make it into Boston, an hour later, it’s starting to snow again.
Two hours after we’ve been hanging out in the Commons in the light snow, it starts to snow harder. Ms. Westerfield picks us up and tells us she’s booked a room for us in a hotel. Her treat. We’ll have to spend the night because it isn’t safe to drive in the weather.
When we check in at about four o’clock and Ms. Westerfield goes to her room, I call Howard to let him know where I am and what our plans are. He answers on the first ring.
“Hello,”
he growls into the phone.
“Hi. It’s Jules.”
“Where the hell are you? Come home. There’s gonna be another blizzard!”
“I know. I heard it on the radio. Hey, I’m in Boston.”
I keep my voice light and try to ignore the menace I hear in his.
“Get your ass back here. What the hell are you doing in Boston?”
“I tried to call you earlier to let you know that Leigh’s mom had to come in for work. She works here. She … she’s a travel agent.” I start to ramble with nervousness.
“I don’t care what the fuck she is. Haul your ass back home.”
“I-I can’t … the snow … she can’t drive us back in this. We … we’re going to stay at a hotel. Leigh … Leigh’s mom, Ms. Westerfield, can …”
Howard interrupts, “I don’t give a shit. You’d better find a way to take yourself back here right now. You’re not staying at a hotel. Are you there with your boyfriend?”
Leigh and Timothy sit on the two beds and can hear every word of what Howard screams into the phone. The heat in my face and body makes me start to sweat. I hesitate for a moment, thinking how easily I can lie and deny that Timothy, my “boyfriend,” is there with us, but I decide to be honest and hope that somewhere in Howard’s pebble heart he can hear the truth and trust me.
“Yes. He’s here with Leigh and me, but he’s not my boyfriend. I’m telling you the truth, and we’re going to spend the night here and drive back tomorrow.”
Big mistake.
“What? Listen to me, you whore! You’re nothing but a slut! You’re going to stay in a hotel with him? Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I’m an idiot?”
He’s had a lot to drink. Howard can handle his liquor to a point, but beyond that, his fury, which typically remains somewhat tempered, becomes a slurry hurricane of screaming swears.
Timothy walks over to me. I’m trembling.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
I shake my head at him. I know I’ve made an awful mistake and I don’t want him to suffer for it.
The Belief in Angels Page 27