The Dark Side of Innocence

by Terri Cheney

  But the Black Beast would do something strange to my sense of smell, so that my father’s beloved aroma of unfiltered Camels and aftershave suddenly seemed noxious to me. It was easier just to plead sickness and go straight off to bed than to risk insulting him with my upturned nose. Plus I couldn’t seem to muster the exuberance required to scramble into his chair and bombard him with pertinent questions. Sustained interest in anything beside myself was practically impossible.

  I slipped past my mother and sidled up next to her bureau. My timing was perfect—she was just about to take her pill. I watched as she uncapped the bottle, shook the tiny blue pill out onto her hand, then swallowed it with a sip of water. I imagined it traveling down the swan’s length of her throat, and I wondered if I’d look anywhere near as graceful when I downed the entire bottle.

  She placed the bottle back in the drawer, then bent down to lace up her shiny white shoes. As soon as her back was turned, I rummaged around in her lingerie until, at last, I found it. I stuffed the bottle deep into my pocket and swung back around to face her, innocence engraved across my face. She was still tugging on her laces. So far as I could tell, she hadn’t seen a thing.

  Now that I had the pills in my possession, I was eager to leave. Faking a couple more sneezes, I told my mother I felt dizzy and needed to go back to bed. She looked at me suspiciously. “What do you do there all day in bed?”

  I blinked. What did she mean? What did she know? I never really thought that she’d noticed how much time I spent in bed—she was so busy working and making dinner and arguing with Daddy. I felt strangely violated somehow, as if I were being spied on in my undies. I decided to bluff, to play it cool.

  “I read,” I said. “I rest. Sometimes I say the rosary.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know why we pay all that fancy tuition if you’re never going to be in school.”

  I’d heard this argument before, and a whine crept into my voice. “But Mom, I’m really sick.”

  She ignored me. “Tonight, no matter what, we’re going to fix that hem. I won’t have you parading around in public looking like a ragamuffin.”

  I suddenly felt genuinely ill. She was referring to my First Communion dress, the lovely white froth in my closet, the hem of which had come partially undone. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, except of course for my mother. The big Mass was scheduled for this coming Sunday, five days away. And because I was the class president, I was certain that I would lead the procession up to the altar. Every eye in the church would be on me, which was surely how God intended things, except—

  Except that if all went well, I would be dead by then.

  It wasn’t fair. I’d tried on that dress so many times I knew every seam by heart. I had a makeshift altar in the corner of my room, and I’d practiced in front of it dozens of times: the graceful walk up the center aisle, eyes demurely downcast, face aglow with anticipation. Then I’d sink to my knees and tilt my head back, my mouth slightly open, eager for God to enter me through His sacred host. Somewhere I had picked up the notion that a girl at her First Communion was like the bride of Christ. True or not, I felt as tingly as if I were waiting for my very first kiss.

  The biggest moment of my life, and I was going to miss it.

  I walked back slowly to my room and sank down on my bed. The blank white construction paper taunted me from across the room. Maybe, just maybe, my writing skills were good enough. Maybe if I used a ruler, the lines would be sufficiently straight, and no one would notice it was the wrong kind of paper . . .

  But what to write? I’d been so worried about my printing that I’d never even thought of the bigger problem: I was supposed to tell a story about myself. It would have to be so deeply engrossing that Sister Mary Bernadette would ignore the less than perfect lettering and feel compelled to give it a rousing A-plus. But look at my life: nothing ever happened to me. I got up, made my bed, had breakfast, went to school, came home, watched TV, ate dinner, went to bed. Fish on Friday, church on Sunday, dance class on Tuesday afternoons. Day after day, week after week, the same routine over and over again. The only thing of any interest in my life was the Black Beast, and of course, I couldn’t write about that. I’d be kicked out of St. Madeleine’s for good.

  I curled up into a little ball, drawing my knees so tight against my chest that I could feel the outline of the pill bottle against my thigh. Just then I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hall. “I’m leaving!” she yelled.

  “I’m asleep!” I yelled back, not realizing until I said it how silly that was. But the only answer I received was the sound of the front door slamming shut.

  In spite of all the noise, my father still slept soundly in the guest room. He’d been sleeping in the guest room for as long as I could remember. My mother claimed he snored; he vehemently denied it. It was my job to wake him up so he could fix breakfast and take Zach and me to school. It wasn’t easy: my father could sleep through an earthquake (and had, several times). He told me once that World War II had taught him how to sleep through anything.

  It wasn’t quite time to wake him yet, so I decided to take a few minutes and figure out what to wear for the big event. I surveyed my closet: black seemed like the obvious choice. Then they wouldn’t even have to change me for the funeral. But my mother didn’t like how I looked in black, so the only thing I owned in that color was my witch’s costume from last Halloween. I worried how that might look to God—as if I were courting the devil. There was my Pop Warner cheerleading outfit, but the skirt had grown rather short this past year, and that didn’t seem very dignified. In fact, it seemed like I’d outgrown almost all my good outfits. Except—of course!—my First Communion dress.

  I took it off the hanger and laid it out on the bed, taking care not to snag the loose hem. It was just the right white, like a freshly washed soul. Real lace covered the entire bodice, and there was a scratchy petticoat underneath that made the skirt stand out stiffly from my body. I loved the slight discomfort against my skin. It was my very own version of a hair shirt—it made me feel as if I were doing penance.

  And then there was the veil. I spread it out carefully next to the dress; a long length of gossamer fabric. I’d wheedled my mother into buying me the biggest one the store had in stock, even though she kept insisting it was too dramatic. I knew it wasn’t. Somehow, at seven, I already knew the effect that exaggeration could have on an audience. I’d had to use it often enough, so that the Black Beast could get his own way.

  But of course, no one was going to see it on me now. My exhilaration began to deflate, until I realized that the veil would make a perfect shroud. I’d wrap it around and around my body, just like Mary Magdalene had wrapped Jesus’s body when she’d taken him down from the Cross. I’d die in white, like a true bride of Christ.

  That settled, I went to wake Daddy. His room, unlike my mother’s, was never locked. I went in and out as much as I liked, played with his cuff links, pawed through his dresser drawers. A few of my stuffed animals even lived on his pillow, next to his sleeping head. One of his arms lay outside the covers, and I gave it a gentle shake.

  “Daddy, it’s time,” I said. Nothing. I tried again. Not a flicker. I jumped on the bed and gave his arm a serious yank, just like in tug-of-war. His eyes popped open. “What the hell?” he said.

  Daddy was allowed to swear because he wasn’t Catholic. He wasn’t quite sure what he was, and he didn’t seem to care. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world because it meant he didn’t have to follow the rules. He didn’t have to eat smelly fish on Fridays, he didn’t have to go to confession, he didn’t even have to kneel during Mass. While the rest of us bruised our tender knees, he sat back with impunity. Once or twice, I looked over my shoulder at him, and I could swear I caught him grinning.

  “It’s morning!” I said, tickling him in the ribs.

  “Obviously,” he grunted, and rolled on his side. “Go away, you miserable child.”

  I knew my father well eno
ugh to ignore his moment of pique. I could count on one hand the number of times he’d been seriously angry with me. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a temper. It was terrifying, like a lightning storm in summer: just as sudden and just as short-lived. He’d flare up at my mother with a big, booming voice, his face bright red, the veins bulging out of his forehead. Then the next minute, his eyes would grow quiet again, soft and brown, like my bedtime cocoa.

  I tickled him again. This time his hand shot up and grabbed me by the wrist, then he pulled me down next to him and tickled me until I collapsed with laughter. “Who’s the lazybones now?” he said. “Come on, last one up’s a soggy pancake.”

  I ran to the kitchen, but his legs were longer than mine, and he beat me. Ours was a well-oiled machine by now: I would gather up all the pancake ingredients while he coaxed the old griddle to life. By the time it was hot, I’d have everything waiting: Bisquick mix, eggs, milk, maple syrup. There was an annoying interruption every morning while my father fixed himself a cup of coffee. That morning, I didn’t want to delay even a minute before we played the pancake game—especially since it would be the last time I ever played it on this earth.

  The game was simple and dated back to the time when I was first learning how to read. Daddy would drizzle the batter into letters, and I wasn’t allowed to eat until I knew which letter was represented. My favorite was T for “Terri,” of course, but I also liked J for “Jack.” Now that I had learned my alphabet, the game had progressed so that I had to spell ten words that began with the letter before I could dive into my pancakes. Not little words, like go or get, but big words, like geranium and geography. “Next week,” my father informed me, pouring out the batter, “we’re going to do proper names from history.” That was okay, I thought, drowning my new batch with maple syrup. I didn’t mind cold pancakes.

  “Where is your brother this morning?” my father asked, sitting down with his coffee. It was as much a part of our routine as the recalcitrant griddle.

  “Don’t know,” I said, which wasn’t the truth. I knew. My father knew. My mother knew. We all knew. Zach was in his room. Zach was always in his room. What he did there, with his towering stacks of National Geographics and his enormous collection of cap guns, we had no clue. We were never invited in. I, particularly, was forbidden to enter. I think I must have offended Zach deeply just by virtue of my entry into his world. It couldn’t have been easy for him, as firstborn and sole possessor of the stage, to have the spotlight yanked away by a red-faced, squalling infant. In his defense, I must admit I really can’t blame him: from the day that I came into this world, I did everything in my power to keep that spotlight trained on me.

  My mother often argued with my father about this disparity of attention. “Jack, you’re spoiling her rotten,” she’d say. “And it’s completely unfair to Zach.” No doubt she was right. It wasn’t fair. But I wasn’t in the business of fairness, I was in the business of staking my territory. The world did not feel safe to me, and between my father and mother, my father seemed the more likely refuge from harm. Not that I didn’t love my mother, but I knew those pink geraniums in front of our house bloomed only so long as she was happy, and her happiness seemed a precarious thing, entirely dependent on mysterious words like mortgage and Rebecca.

  But except for his occasional outbursts of temper, my father was uniformly easygoing, charming, and relaxed. He seemed to me to have things in hand. Best of all, he thought I was adorable: the smartest, the cleverest, the most competent child ever invented. And he told me so constantly. The most effusive my mother ever got was, “Button your sweater, it’s chilly outside.”

  I never meant my bond with my father to get in the way of his relationship with Zach. But a child’s soul is inherently selfish, and in truth, I was pleased to have so much of my father’s time to myself. The way I saw it, Daddy’s love was the ultimate A-plus, and Zach was doing nothing to earn it by hiding away in his room all day. Whereas my campaign never ceased.

  I’d set up my station by his big brown chair a half hour before he got home. In one pile was all my schoolwork, including any excellent grades or comments or honors I’d won that day. In another, the Daily Report, folded just the way he liked it. In a third, the amenities: cigarettes, lighter, the ashtray I made for him in kindergarten, his bedroom slippers, and his favorite heavy-bottomed scotch glass. The one thing my mother refused to let me do was fill up the glass ahead of time. “He can fix his own damned drink,” she’d say. She, as a Catholic, was not permitted profanity, so her use of it impressed me. Alcohol quickly became associated in my mind with a flagrant disregard for the rules.

  Then I would wait by the door. I hated that door. No, I loved it. It was the door my father would enter from, and that, of course, made it perfect. But it was also the door that he would slam on his way out of the house after one of their endless latenight arguments. I’d be lying in bed, just waiting for it, but nothing ever prepared me for the awful sound of that slam. The whole house would reverberate with it, but I would continue to shake long after the house settled down.

  I knew that he would leave one day. It was a fact of my existence, as glaring as my strawberry hair. It was the central mission of my life to make sure that when he left, he took me with him. Which was why I simply couldn’t risk coming home with a C on this latest homework assignment. Things had been tenser than usual lately. A week ago, Daddy had slammed the door and hadn’t come home for two days.

  “He’s working,” my mother had said when I’d begged to know where he was. But I knew that couldn’t be true. He was working on a nearby tract of homes, and he’d never had to leave before. Besides, he would have told me if he was going anywhere. We would have looked it up together on the map, he would have given me ten proper names to spell, there would have been a quiz on it later. So she must have been lying, and I could feel the earth begin to shift ever so slightly but treacherously beneath my feet. Now was clearly not the time to loosen my hold.

  There was a flaw to my logic, of course. If I killed myself to avoid losing my father, I’d be dead, and I’d lose him forever. “Forever” wasn’t quite clear to me. Forever could be an afternoon if the Black Beast was impatient that day, or it could be a lifetime. At six, I didn’t have much of a grasp of finality. I just knew that forever sounded like a long, long time to be without my daddy.

  The only way out of this conundrum was faith. I simply had to believe with all my heart and soul in what Sister Mary Bernadette had taught us about the nature of Heaven: that the moment you reach the Pearly Gates, everyone you ever loved, dead or alive, is gathered around to meet you. She assured us that this included dead pets and lost stuffed animals, so it had to apply to beloved fathers too. Please, sweet Jesus, make it so.

  “Why are your eyes closed?” my father asked. I was startled—prayer had just snuck up on me; I hadn’t meant for him to see it.

  “I’m sleepy,” I started to answer, and then I remembered that I needed him to call the school for me, to get me excused for the day. “No, you know what? I’m sick. I woke up this morning with a terrible cold. You should have heard me sneezing. Mom was really worried.”

  “Did she say that I should call the school?”

  I hesitated, not wanting to burden my soul with another lie so close to my death. “I’m sure she just assumed you would. She was in an awful hurry.” That much, at least, was true.

  My mother’s opinion as to matters of physical health was absolute and final. Anyone seeing her in her shining white uniform would have followed her instructions to the letter. “Hand me the phone,” my father said.

  While he dialed, I studied his face: the high curving forehead, the broad Cheney nose, the endearing gap between his two front teeth, the wayward lock of sandy brown hair. I wanted to commit every detail to memory. I’d never gone anywhere without my daddy before, and death was the longest journey of all. Sure, I believed he’d be there to greet me in Heaven, but who knew how long it would take me to arrive? Eve
n Disneyland had lines; maybe Heaven did too.

  A flutter of emotions kicked up inside me: fear, doubt, loneliness, regret. For all his years of single-minded devotion, I felt I owed my father something. An explanation, perhaps. At the very least, a good-bye. Trembling, I opened my mouth to speak—and Zach walked into the kitchen.

  “Where’s breakfast?” he asked, slinging his book bag onto the counter and pulling up a chair as best he could with his bandaged hand. I avoided looking at it.

  “We already ate. Get it yourself.” I didn’t mean to snap, but his timing was lousy.

  “What’s with you? And why aren’t you dressed?” He got up and clumsily poured himself a heaping bowl of raisin bran.

  “I’m sick,” I said.

  He snorted. “Again? What is it this time? Lung cancer?”

  My father hung up the phone. “Okay, you’re all set. But Anna Marie can’t come for an hour. Will you be all right until then?”

  I nodded. Since they both worked, my parents were sometimes forced to leave us alone for short periods of time. It was no big deal. We lived on a quiet cul-de-sac, and the neighbors all kept an eye out for one another. It seemed unlikely that anything bad could ever happen in our peaceful, middle-class neighborhood, with its neatly trimmed hedges and meticulous flower beds.

  Anna Marie was the girl down the street who came and sat with Zach and me after school until my mother got home. Sat was literally all she did. She parked her hefty carcass on the sofa and watched TV while simultaneously eating potato chips and flipping through the latest teen magazine. Zach was in his room, of course, so she had nothing to do with him. Once or twice, I’d tried to befriend her, but short of discovering that we both liked extra salt on our potato chips, I couldn’t find much in common. So Anna Marie wouldn’t hinder my plans. She barely even noticed that I was alive; I doubt that she’d know I was dead.

  “I’m halfway through Misty of Chincoteague,” I reassured my father. “Plus I’ve got an overdue homework assignment.” I regretted the words as soon as I spoke them.