I could literally replace your father, Ellie Anne. I could adopt you and confidentially be your Hearten or what-have-you, if you’d still desire it. And, perhaps, when you and my son are emotionally mature enough, I can consider breaking off from my wife and starting a life with you, clandestinely clean. But not now, not yet. You must answer the question first:
Are you going to let me adopt you and drop your unworkable, childish demands? Or are you going to continue to taunt me with perfume and a question too big to fit in your mouth?
Whatever your first answer is, make it your last answer. I will not condone self-conscious tricksters, so if you hesitate, groaning your words, or if you gasp in anything other than surprise, I cannot take you as a lover. I will not be your second choice thriving on sick hope.
Remember when you were thirteen and I taught you about simple economics? I recall the tendrils of pineapple escaping through your light breath and little teeth, that you’d just gotten an unfortunate haircut; it made your tresses fizzle out like copper wire and had the texture of cotton candy. Your weight leant between the niches of my arms as you obnoxiously gnawed on a gum-ball, minutely invested in my lesson. If you haven’t learned already, this is basic marginal analysis.
The marginal cost of me giving up my job, my family, and my reputation outweighs the marginal benefit of me chasing after you in hopes you’ll never grow up, never grow so bored of me you’ll experience other lovers and trials.
So, in terms of opportunity cost, it is not best that I desert my family because I can’t be sure you’re irrevocably committed to me. Let me know. Tell me, truthfully.
I tell you this in hopes you’ll take a step back and use the logical, discriminating part of your brain; rather than entertain grandiose, gleaming spider webs: the unnatural beauty of human nature, the irrational works of the feverish like Nabokov.
Momentarily, your head is filled with very lush lucid dreams. You paint lovely pictures, Ellie Anne. But they’re not living possibilities. They’re not real-life. I can give you an extraordinary opportunity and structure; not a fast-paced fairy tale.
Be my lover and let delusions of grandeur go or be my responsibility and let your heart hemorrhage no more.
Consider reality. Consider yourself. Consider me as I am.
Affectionately,
Harold
Introducing Ellie Anne
Origin
3/9
My daddy is dead. But it’s okay. I’m getting a new one and he’d tell me to be strong … I breathe in, I breathe out. Mommy is dead. I bite my lip, clumping the clear coat of gloss. She never loved me anyway, I remind myself, twiddling Daddy’s wedding ring. At his funeral as colossal in attendance as it was heart-wrenching, one of the pallbearers gave it to me. As torture or comfort. That was six months ago, but it may as well have been this afternoon.
It must’ve been so strange to have been a part of their youth, I think, flipping the tiny memento over, trying not to look upon anything in my room that might give me more nostalgic memories. Before I ruined it, I mean.
For two puerile years before my existence, Mama and Daddy adored each other, playing in the snow and drinking all the wine Vermont had to offer. Then, Daddy was a naval man with a cloak-and-dagger drinking problem and Mama was a promising businesswoman with too many magenta pantsuits. In unison, they’d denounce Mama’s family’s “Cult of Domesticity” narrative and went out, hand-in-hand, off to the next adventure.
It took two hours to destroy all of that.
While Daddy was working overtime, fiddling with a job in factory management, Mama was getting wasted at some shoddy tavern with an ambitious nightlife. The trendy kind of shifty she’d never admit to enjoying unless it was in season. And I do mean never.
That night, she ran into Daddy’s brother, Rudy, and just couldn’t shake him. She poured down every drink he bought her and slid out of every almost-embrace on the dance floor. Bad ideas befriended both sides. Mama shouldn’t have been leading him on for free Screwdrivers, knowing how violently emotional Rudy is, and Rudy shouldn’t have been supplying them, knowing how devious the gesture could look to his older brother.
When he and Daddy were kids, Rudy was the type to burn ants or hunt songbirds for hours, sulk and hold obscene grudges when he didn’t get the girl or gadget he wanted. Not liking to work, waiting for Heaven-sent opportunities, Rudy was always jealous of Daddy. His esteemed education, lucrative jobs, or arm candy. Never mind how hard Daddy had to work for those things; he made it seem easy.
But the chief thing Daddy had, that Rudy could never grasp, was a sense of decency, of boundaries. All Rudy saw was the lust for instant gratification. Rudy simply lacks the mental and moral capacity to see otherwise.
I’ve overheard enough of Mama and Daddy’s fights, survived enough my family’s rugged personalities and enough omniscient nightmares to thread together how I think the rest of their relationship went down:
For a night, Rudy wanted to be the lucky man Daddy was, relish the sensation of a beautiful woman. And who is more beautiful than Daddy’s Swedish prize, Carol Price? Who already knew Rudy better than anybody else in the club?
So Rudy took initiative, mad and drunk enough to ignore the consequences. He thought about what his brother would do. His brother would be a man about it, of course; he’d be determined and received. And didn’t most things work out for his brother?
Of course.
Keeping only a goal in mind and no schedule for hindrances, Rudy followed Mama out of the club, his mind distorted in a heinous shade of red and gross generalities.
Dragging on a cigarette, Mama laughed at him as he stumbled closer to her, beside the lightless backdoor. “You’re a joke, you know that, right?” she taunted, extinguishing the stub.
Rudy was quiet, used to slights from pretty women. Sensing Mama’s detachment, he knew he’d have to be quick and efficient to get what he wanted. Surely, Carol would be like all the other pretty faces; if he asked for any kind of relationship, she’d toy with him, permitting no sex, and puncture his feelings in the end. Besides, she wasn’t quite drunk enough to go to bed with someone as homely as him. Nor was she very fast or coordinated in her buzzed state.
Seizing his opening when Mama turned to dispose of her cigarette, he leaped at her throat and threw her on the cold cobblestone before she could cough on the ashes.
No second thoughts, no hesitance. He’d face rejection no more; he’d be celibate by circumstance no longer. With his stocky build and boorish strength, he easily crushed her out of sound, pinned her in just the position he desired.
By 3 in the morning, a new slit up the leg of her cranberry dress and cold moisture spangling her skin, Mama walked home, murmuring comforting sayings, groggy, flummoxed, and on uneven footing.
Rudy disappeared like an ashen fog.
Despite the throb and stink marring her body, she’d not acknowledge the attack until days later; Daddy made her face it.
Daddy never cared for what family is supposed to do; he cared for doing what is right.
He was all set to turn his brother into the cops, but Mama threatened to leave him if he did. “It’s not worth all the trouble; I’d been drinking, I barely remember anyway,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to have to.”
But then, of course, there was the complication of me; I was growing inside her, a culmination of opposite hatred, missed potential, and tarnished fate. I was a fast-track to finding more faults in her and Daddy’s relationship: Daddy was a fastidious Conservative. She was a bleeding-heart Liberal. Daddy was a Southern artifact. She was a New England yuppie. Daddy wanted to raise a family with traditional values somewhere in his home state of Texas. She wanted nothing to do with that “bourgeois” kind of living.
Resentment would slowly bleed through the cracks.
She’d remember all of this every time she’d look at me.
She knew that; she opted to get rid of me before I was fully formed and she’d have to a
dmit I’m as human as her, regardless of what culture fabricates.
Twice as furious as when he’d found out she wanted to protect Rudy, Daddy stuttered: “An a— A-Abor—” He couldn’t so much as say it straight through. “You won’t even admit what that fiend did to you, convict or testify against him, but you’ll take it out on the child?! Carol, I’m sorry, but—”
“It’s too late. I’ve already scheduled it,” Mama insisted with cinched brows. “I don’t need this, this other pest, this other parasite. I can be done with it before it starts.” (Funny, how her tone never changed as I grew into a bigger “clump of cells.”)
Grimacing, Daddy wiped the sweat from his forehead and refused to hold his tongue. “You’re running away from the wrong problem, Carol. You’re going to be playing into Rudy’s hand, making more regrets, self-inflicted ones. I won’t let you do this. If the child’s Rudy’s, the child’s just as much mine. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Calm down. Let’s take a step back. Let’s take this heartbreak and let the other heart beat. This is just a progression of how we’d end up, right? Married with children. The child can still have blond hair and green eyes, be sound of mind. We’ll make this work. Don’t act on misplaced revenge.”
Daddy saved my life before I even knew him.
He never totally convinced Mama of my need or place in this world, but his trying eyes were enough to keep her home on the scheduled date.
Daddy gave up drinking and Mama gave up her job. They moved to Texas and eloped, never muttering the means of me and staying far from family to keep it a secret sore. Their history nearly eluded me, in fact, but Mama had become grossly embittered after 16 years of silence, 16 years of me. She was done with my trouble-making and attention-seeking attitude without Daddy there to placate me, off “wheeling and dealing” as a Senate leader.
She waited until he was home to reiterate my “worthless founding” with more pernicious zeal, challenging him to look me in the eye and “play Daddy” once again.
Naturally, I was shaken, but everything just reinforced my admiration for Daddy and amplified my ire for Mama. Daddy was right; her choice was always to be miserable.
Divorce was looking to be a ripe avenue, but in a mere four months they were both extinct anyway.
In his final hour, Daddy begged me to stay a wholesome child who thinks of him as my true father. He didn’t have to; nothing can pierce my gratitude.
Three months later, when I all but lived in a world parallel to her, Mama was still a self-loathing, self-imposed failure. A sickly one with bones that protruded like nails.
It was true I drank prematurely and complained of my companions often, but I never set out to act impishly towards Mama. I craved her approval like a baby requires milk. I would sew my dresses when they got torn while I was playing in the woods and keep my room clean as a soap bubble, hoping she’d notice and kiss my forehead or place her warm hand at the crease of my back. I wouldn’t take but one furtive, chaste lover named Harold, thinking Mama would at least see me as ascetic.
But none of these things totaled to tolerance. She begrudged me to her last gust of breath, decrying something of a “vile, unwanted slut.”
Even though I wasn’t told of my origin until seven months ago, at age seven, I could sense Daddy wanted me more; he’d do everything Mama wouldn’t: To lull me to Wonderland, he’d read historical tales to me. To educate me, he’d put me through the country’s finest art academies and show me, firsthand, how government works. To cheer me from the chill of Mama’s supervision, he’d take me on the campaign trail.
Whether it was sugary juice or love, he’d give me everything Mama chose not to. He reassured me that I was no curse, burden or beast when Mama alleged me to be a cause for vexed faces and lost appetites.
In Daddy’s arms, I was the epitome of a child.
As such—as I promised him—I must put these tart and morbid feelings away. In my porcelain teacup of trinkets, behind my tongue and outside the shadow my mind. It is the only way to honor Daddy and the Mama I wished to have had.
I don’t dare let any dribs of decadence dot my lashes; I let them keep my irises company, but no more. My grieving ends today; it is to be put beneath the tiles of my childhood palace, to death.
I give my bedroom one last look-around, studying the dark pink walls that have become clinical in age, the pristine vanity with the dozen unused perfumes, my collection of sentimental stuffed animals, and fear my stifled whimper will turn into suffocating sobs.
Getting up from my lavender desk chair, I was about to grab the pink-bowed sheep sitting on my bed—the last plush gift Daddy bought me before abandonment—when a slender man in a sleek, black hat barges in.
“Ready, sweetheart?” the smartly dressed chauffer asks me. “Mr. Winchester wants you in Waco well before dinner.”
I let my hands fall at my hips. “Alright,” I compose my voice like a drab, classic song. As vulnerable as it makes me feel, I decide to bring nothing with me. Not even Daddy’s wedding band. I swallow and give a minute nod in the wrong direction, checking my face in the mirror for any emotional blemishes and my white-gold curls to see if they’re inline for my new Daddy.
“I’m ready.”
Moving On
Daddy used to tell me nerves are the most pointless evil, to be conditioned and quickly cancelled. He always knew the prettiest thing to say; people threw money at him for it. (How else do you think he got to the top tiers of Congress?) He was rarely wrong, but that didn’t make practicing his philosophy any less strenuous.
As I watch stately trees scroll past my window, I realize the interior of my stomach must look as knotted as the old oaks do. Like a crazy or important person (what’s the difference, I ask you?), I keep checking the time on my charm bracelet. Assuredly, the metallic, little sheep and elephants chime no ETA. I groan quietly and put my face in the bowl of my hands, my thumbs immediately picking at the white, loose-knit gloves.
“Excited, honey?” the car man queries, peering at me from the skewed back-view mirror. “The wait got you in a ramble?”
I twitch a thin brow, the driver’s disagreeably chatty nature and effeminate dialect whetting my agitation. “Not exactly,” I return a bit sharply. “I’ve known Mr. Winchester for years; it should be fine … I just miss Daddy,” I murmur retroactively, rubbing an itch under my ivory sweater jacket.
Out of commiseration or embarrassment, the chauffeur quiets and lets me test “zen” breathing exercises.
Despite how I’ve known and encouraged this day to come since Daddy left me without a proper ally, obese sweat beads still crown my forehead and staple my ears. Six months seems like splinters of seconds when the shadow of Mr. Winchester’s estate covers me. My heart looms from a point as tall and precarious as the top of the brown brick turret he promised would be mine.
My hands as clammy and shaky as egg yolks, I wish I was home, that Harold and Daddy could live with me there, doting to me and amicable to the other. Alas, to Daddy, Harold was more of a freelance babysitter than a friend. Subsequently, I place a referendum on all Harold sacrificed to get me here, and grit my teeth, monitoring my breathing for any tell.
I cannot be meek and disparaging. I told Daddy I’d be a good girl and Harold I’d be an astute one who won’t run off from him, flinch at distress.
“This is the last stop, m’ lady,” the driver speaks again. “Hope it’s as magical as it looks. Mr. Winchester should have some time spoiling you.” He opens my door, reading my face, trying to keep that pretentious smile, and walks me to the door (about a mile trip up the peach brick steps).
In my haste, I feel poor for misjudging the driver as bothersome. Under other circumstances, I would’ve found him to be a polite, cute elderly man. He could’ve just as easily ignored me and departed before we knew the place wasn’t vacant.
“Come in; it’s unlocked” came from a pretty distance inside the McMansion.
“This is where I get off. See ya, princess,” the black-
capped dandy bid as farewell.
“Thanks,” I was sure to say louder than anything else I may’ve mumbled in the car. Once his footfalls evaporate in the smoke-scented air, I control my cagey breath and turn the crystal knob.
The inside is warm in color and temperature, lit peach and cream like an upscale Christmas even though it’s a good nine months off. The rooms are open with just a suggestion of structure, the furniture is clean and classy; the carpet is downright art. It amazes me, in our four–year friendship and eight–month romantic one, I’ve never been here, nor have I thought much on it.
Following my adoptive father’s voice leads me straight to the edge of the jutted kitchen counter space. During, my eyes helplessly water from the fragrance of reed and citrus. My long and lonely status.
His deep, dark brown eyes smile before he does. “We meet again,” he greets cordially, a smirk wrinkling his subtly tanned skin. He scratches a freckle on the edge of his handsome face, sets a few papers on the Oreo brown dining table, and steps into clear view, looking pleased but very tired. “You’re mine now,” he jokes with a degree of truth and the triumphant shake of his fist.
I nod, proffering a frivolous hum as response, wiping my clammy hands on my pale pink dress. “I suppose so. I suppose it’s better than anything else I could do.”
He’s not sure how to react to that, amity and hesitance playing tug-of-war in his eyes. “Did you have any trouble getting here?” he asks, fixing an upraised section of his nice, blond hair. He’d gotten a trim. Before, a wave of gold dusted his left brow. Now, all was uniform in length and quite military, quite boring. “It’s been unreasonably hard to reach you,” he notes. “By pen, by telephone, by slim chance in the Capitol.”
Imperative Fate Page 6