Tangled Vines

by Janet Dailey

  “Don’t you smart-mouth me, little girl.” He hit her again. Harder.

  Staggered by the force of the last blow, she fell against the car, her hipbone colliding with its front fender, a numbing pain shooting up her back. She saw him coming at her again and threw the damp chamois in his face, a purely reflexive act of defense with the only weapon she had.

  It slowed him for an instant as he swore and snatched the heavy cloth from his face. But it was just enough time for her to roll away and get beyond the reach of his punishing hands. But not from the whiskey glass in his hand. He hurled it at her. She ducked, but not quickly enough as the glass struck her forehead in a glancing blow.

  Terror was stronger than the pain, and she started running, heading straight for the concealment of the vine rows, ignoring his shouts and the burning throb in her hip and face. Conscious of his feet pounding the ground in pursuit, she dived into the cover of the vineyard and scrambled along the ground, tiny sobs of panic escaping her throat with each breath. She didn’t slow down until she reached the fence line.

  Beyond lay a thicket of scarlet-stalked manzanita. She ducked under the wires and crawled into the brush. At last safe from him, she stopped, panting for air, sweat streaming down her face, her frantically beating heart clogging her throat. Her hip ached and her head throbbed. Gingerly she touched her face. The area around her cheekbone had already begun to swell and there was a hard knot on her forehead, the beginnings of a goose egg. But the skin hadn’t been broken. She was lucky. Lucky. At that thought she began to weep softly and bitterly.

  “Come out of there – do you hear me?” he shouted suddenly and she froze in fresh fear, brushing quickly at the tears sliding down her face. “Get your ass back down here and finish cleaning my car!”

  The seconds ticked by, but she didn’t budge from her hiding place. “Worthless, that’s what you are,” he shouted again. “You’re nothing but a fat, lazy slut. No wonder your mother died. It killed her when she looked at you and realized this useless, fat thing was her daughter. She died because she couldn’t stand to look at you anymore, you slut.”

  She clamped her hands over her ears to shut out his hateful words. Words that hurt more than his fists.

  The sound of them still rang in her mind as Kelly stepped slowly out of the car, looking around and wondering what she was doing here. She should be finding a place to stay tonight before the tourists booked all the rooms. But she knew why she’d come – to face the rest of her ghosts. It was something she had to do. She’d run from them, denied them too long.

  The rough, rock-strewn ground wasn’t exactly meant for crossing in heels, but she picked her way carefully to the front stoop. With equal care, she avoided the rotted boards and tried the front door. The lock was still broken. It swung inward at a push of her hand.

  Kelly walked in and stood for a minute in the airless living room, assaulted by the familiar smells – the sickly sweet odor of spilt whiskey, the lingering stench of dried vomit and old cigarette butts. Bright rays from the afternoon sun made a vain attempt to penetrate the grimy windows and throw light into-the room, but they managed little more than the injection of a dull glow.

  The end table next to her father’s chair was half buried under dirty drink glasses, an overflowing ashtray, and a framed picture of her mother. An empty whiskey bottle lay on the floor beside his chair. More were probably under it.

  She stared at the sofa where her mother had died. It was still covered with the same old Indian blanket, its once bright stripes now dingy and dull. By chance, Kelly happened to glance at the braided rag rug on the floor. She had an instant image of herself rolling on the rug with her father, giggling uncontrollably under his tickling fingers while he laughed just as loudly.

  She was stunned by the memory. Laughter wasn’t something she associated with this house, her childhood, or her father, until now.

  Still frowning, she walked into the kitchen. The sink was piled with dirty dishes, and more spilled onto the counter. The linoleum on the floor, cracked and yellowed with age, peeled away from the scarred baseboard. But there stood the stove, and its oven that had once filled the house with delicious smells. Cakes, cookies, and her mother’s specialty, rich chocolate brownies.

  One more stop. Her bedroom, then she’d leave.

  Nothing had been touched since she’d left. A thick layer of dust coated every surface, the cheap pine dresser she’d painted white, the flowered coverlet on her iron bed, and the old radio on her nightstand. Kelly flipped the knob. A mixture of music and static sputtered from it. She smiled, surprised it still worked, and turned it off.

  Her old doll Babs lay propped against the pillow on her bed. Waa waa, it cried when Kelly picked it up. She blew the top film of dust from its plastic face and tipped it so its eyes would open, then touched the hem of the blue dress her mother had made for it, stitching it all by hand.

  Babs had been a special gift from Santa Claus when Kelly was seven. They’d had a Christmas tree that year. Her father had brought it home the day before Christmas, and they’d spent the entire evening, all three of them, her father, mother, and Kelly, stringing popcorn, gluing paper chains together with flour paste, and making cutouts of stars, candy canes, and snowflakes to decorate the tree, topping it with a giant star made out of aluminum foil. When her father had stolen some popcorn to eat, her mother had laughed and slapped at his hand. He’d winked at Kelly and slipped her a few kernels. The next morning there sat Babs under the tree.

  Kelly rested her cheek atop the doll’s dusty blond hair and closed her eyes tightly, confused by these unexpected memories. She was swinging her shoulders from side to side, absently rocking the doll, when she heard a vehicle drive into the yard.

  The police, she thought, probably armed with a search warrant to look for more evidence against her father. She walked quickly back to the living room and lifted aside the sun-rotted curtains in time to see Sam Rutledge climb out of his Jeep. She froze for an instant, afraid of how much more he’d learn about her roots, what he’d think of her.

  But it was a little late to worry about that. He was already walking to the door. She reached it first and swung it open, still clutching the doll in her arms. He swept off his weather-softened hat and paused on the front stoop.

  “I had a feeling I’d find you here.” His brown eyes gently examined her.

  “I wanted to look around.” Self-consciously she gripped the doll a little tighter, unnerved at having him there, and trying not to show it.

  He nodded, accepting her explanation. “I talked to Oliver Zelinski a short while ago. He told me you’d been to see your father.”

  For an instant she was back in that cramped interviewing room sitting across from her father. “He hates Katherine. I don’t think I realized how much until today.”

  “I know.” He came closer and touched the nylon strands of the doll’s hair with his fingertips. “This must have been your doll.”

  “I couldn’t take it with me when I left. There wasn’t room in my suitcase.” She moved aside, letting her action serve as permission to come inside. The living room immediately seemed crowded with Sam in it. She forced herself to face him, to confront him. “You haven’t asked why I lied about who I was.”

  His gaze made a brief circle of the room before it centered on her again. “I think I guessed the reason.”

  “It didn’t always look like this. When my mother was alive, she was always cleaning and dusting, painting and sewing scraps of fabric together to make slipcovers or curtains. After she died, I tried but...

  “How old were you when she died?”

  “Eight. I didn’t lie about that,” she said and turned away. “She liked to bake, too. The house always smelled good then.” Unconsciously Kelly shifted the doll in her arms, wrapping both arms around it and letting her glance roam the room, touching on the old sofa, the windows, the lamp, seeing it in
her mind not as it was but as she remembered. “I remember Momma used to go from window to window, watching and waiting for him to come home. Sometimes she’d let me wait up with her and I’d bring my blanket and pillow and lie on the sofa. When he drove in, she’d hurry me off to bed telling me I had to stay there, ‘cause my daddy wasn’t feeling good.’”

  Sam listened more to her voice than her words. It reminded him of a quiet-running river, smooth on top with strong undercurrents hidden beneath. It washed over a man, pulling him into her. Just as it was now pulling her into the past. She looked small and alone, standing there, hugging her doll.

  “He drank then, too,” she told him. “Not as much, maybe, and not as often, but he drank. When I was little, I didn’t understand what Momma meant when she said he wasn’t feeling good. I just know I didn’t like it when he came home with that funny smell on his breath, his face all flushed, his voice slurred, all mushy and loving one minute and angry the next. Momma tried to get him to quit drinking. She’d plead and beg, and he’d promise to stop. For a while everything would be all right, then he’d go off on a binge.”

  No response was expected from him and Sam offered none, watching as she wandered aimlessly over to the sofa and trailed her fingers along the back of it. Part of him wanted to get her out of this dirty, suffocating room, but he sensed she needed this.

  Kelly lifted her head, staring into space. “Sometimes Momma and I would go and wait for him to get off work, especially on paydays. I think she did it because it made it harder for him to stop at a bar and have a drink with the guys at the end of the day. With him, one drink always led to another. He got mad at her a few times for waiting for him, accusing her of not trusting him, of spying and checking up on him.” Pausing, she pulled her gaze from its study of nothing and fastened it on him. “He was working at Rutledge Estate then.”

  Sam knew what she wanted him to say, so he said it. “Which explains how you knew the layout of the winery.”

  “Yes.”

  Her gaze stayed on him. He loved the dark, black-green of her eyes, shadowed and deep like a lush forest of pines. But he didn’t know what to do with what was behind them. In that moment, he was angry with his parents and Katherine for not letting him be close to them, for holding themselves away from him. If they hadn’t been so distant, maybe he’d be able to see inside Kelly better, understand what was going on.

  “Later, when I was older, she sent me to make sure he came straight home,” she recalled idly. “I suppose she thought he was less likely to take a little girl into a bar. It was fun meeting him by myself, riding piggyback to the car, talking to him on the way home.” She paused, a frown briefly pleating her forehead in vague puzzlement. “But sometimes I didn’t do my job and we’d wind up at a smoky, noisy bar and I’d watch him change into a stranger.”

  He saw the darkening of her thoughts. Then she seemed to catch herself and lifted her head, throwing him a quick smile.

  “I liked going to Rutledge Estate. I was fascinated by the winery and the cool cellars. When no one was looking, I used to sneak inside and wander around.” Her gaze traveled softly over his face. “I saw you a few times.”

  “Did you?” He knew Dougherty had once worked at the winery, but he hadn’t known much about him then. Or his family. “I’m not sure I even knew he had a daughter.”

  “Good.” She set the doll on the sofa, not carelessly but without any real awareness of her action. “I’m glad you don’t remember me. I was ugly. A tall, chubby girl with long stringy hair and glasses.” She stopped and looked at him, then shook her head and softly laughed, at herself, Sam suspected. “Why on earth am I telling you all this?”

  “Maybe because it’s time you talked about it.” He stood with one hand on his hip and the thumb of the other hooked in the back pocket of his khakis, his eyes quietly watching her. There was nothing challenging in his stance, just masculinity and a kind of easy strength.

  “Maybe I don’t think I should be telling you.”

  “I do.”

  He meant it. It wasn’t pity in his eyes, but a desire to listen, to share in the past with her. No one had ever wanted to share anything, definitely not anything that might be unpleasant. She was off balance, her emotions ricocheting all over the place. She had to get control of them. She felt too vulnerable.

  “Talk to me, Kelly,” Sam urged, surprising himself with his gentleness.

  “There isn’t much more to tell.” She moved briskly over to the end table and gathered up the dirty glasses, something automatic in the action that suggested to Sam she had cleaned up after her father endless times before, that this was a release for the restless energy crackling from her. “After my mother died, his drinking became worse. She wasn’t there to stop him anymore. I tried. If he was working, I met him when he got off. I waited up for him, pacing from window to window, afraid every time the phone rang. I threw away any bottles I found. I did everything she did. But it wasn’t the same.”

  When she carried the glasses into the kitchen, Sam followed, trying to keep his eyes off the easy sway of her hips. He only partially succeeded. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes. She stopped and stared at them for a helpless second, still holding the glasses with no place to put them. In the end, she shoved them onto the counter, clinking them against the rest.

  Keeping her back to him, she walked over to the window and looked out. “He always found a reason to drink,” she murmured and Sam noticed that she never called him Daddy or Father, always referring to Dougherty as he. “He drank because Momma died. He drank because he felt bad; he drank because he felt good. When it was hot, he drank to cool off; when it was cold, he drank to warm up. We never had any money because he was always pouring it down his throat. And when he was really feeling good, he liked to hit things.”

  “He beat you.” His eyes sharpened on her.

  “A few times.” Her shoulders lifted in a deliberately vague shrug. “He was always sorry when he sobered up afterwards.

  “He’d plead with me to forgive him, beg me not to hate him. He’d promise it would never happen again, that he’d stop drinking. Alcoholics are like that, contrite and caring one time, mean and abusive the next. An when he was drunk, it usually wasn’t safe to be around him, unless he brought a woman home with him.” Then I didn’t want to be around.” Kelly looked up to the ceiling, suppressing a shudder of revulsion. “The walls of this house are so thin.... .”

  She didn’t want to talk about the sounds she’d heard, the heavy breathing and the moans, the bedsprings squeaking and the obscenities they whispered to each other. For a long time, the sex act had been something ugly and revolting to her.

  “Once he actually quit drinking for six whole months.” Kelly strived for lightness, but there was a catch in her voice. “‘This time it will be different, you’ll see,’ he used to say. He’d promise and I’d believe him. I wanted to believe him. I wanted it to be different.” She heard her voice getting thicker, but for once she couldn’t control it; she couldn’t make it project the calm tones she wanted it to have. “I kept thinking if he really loved me, he’d quit drinking. But he kept drinking. He kept hitting me. And I hated him. I hated him.”

  Her voice vibrated with pain and anger. She had loved her father but he hadn’t loved her back. That was something Sam understood. Kelly wasn’t the only one with unmet emotional needs. He knew what it was like to feel unwanted and unloved, to call out in the night and not have the person you wanted answer your cries.

  Kelly was only half aware Sam was still in the kitchen until the tips of his fingers brushed her hair, a soft and soothing caress. Why did he have to touch her now? Now, when she was weak and vulnerable.

  She wheeled around to face him. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, a strange hoarseness in her voice. “Why did you come?”

  Lightly, very lightly, he trailed the backs of his fingers over her cheek, t
racing its curve. “Because I didn’t want you to be here alone.” She wanted to believe what she saw in his eyes, but that old protective instinct flared and she turned her head away from his fingers. His hands simply drifted to her arms, settling warmly on them. “You didn’t want to be alone, did you?”

  “No one wants to be alone,” she said. “Although he might, providing he was alone with a bottle.”

  “Don’t think about him, Kelly.” The pressure of his hands increased, drawing her to him, his arms sliding around to enfold her. “Think about me.” His mouth brushed her forehead, the corner of her eye, and onto her cheek. “Right here.” His breath was warm against her lips. “Right now.” He rubbed his mouth over them once. “Just me.”

  Compassion. Kelly hadn’t known a man’s kiss could hold it. It was more than gentleness, more than tenderness; his mouth soothed and warmed even as his hands stroked away the tension, the stress, the pain. There was no demand as his lips roamed over her face, only understanding.

  It became easy, incredibly easy to think of him and nothing else. He surrounded her, his warmth and his strength becoming one and the same. She had needed this, desperately, for a long time. Kelly relaxed against him and murmured his name, turning her head to stop his wandering mouth.

  When he felt the sudden, soft give of her body, Sam struggled to check his own answering response. He reminded himself she needed comfort, not passion, but that didn’t stop his hands from molding her against his chest and hips, letting her know what true sharing could be. And it didn’t stop his mouth from enjoying the rich taste of hers.

  But all his good intentions vanished at the reaction of her body to his, her hands drawing his head down, her lips boldly demanding more and more from the kiss and from him. He had to touch her. It-was a pressure, a heat.

  He ran his fingers down her neck, discovered the pulse hammering inside her throat, bent his head to explore it more fully. He felt the slickness of her blouse and the fabric-covered buttons that held it closed. He freed them and slipped his hands inside, pushing the blouse aside and encountering more silk. Sam almost smiled when he glimpsed the peach silk camisole edged with lace.