Daddy had hold of him before he could even drop the bat. He grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall three times, cracking a picture frame’s glass with my brother’s head before tossing him down on the floor. The baseball bat lay near him. Our father picked it up and held it in both hands over James as though he were about to batter his son to a pulp.
“Marcel!” Aunt Suzette screamed.
He glared down at my brother. “You’ve been rotten from the start. You’ve always been rotten! I should have drowned you like a rat the first time I saw you!”
“Enough!” Suzette yanked the baseball bat away from our father and ordered him out like a dog. Stone-faced, he turned and left the room.
Suzette pulled James up off the floor, took his head in her hands and looked into his eyes, feeling around for injury, asking if he was all right. He solemnly nodded. She started to cry, to beg him, “Why? Why?”
She tossed me a look. I was still cowering by the broken window.
When she turned back to James, he shouted, “Why can’t I be like Clarisse? Clarisse is a fucking saint!”
She grabbed him by the muzzle. “If you ever speak to me that way again, you’re on your own. Whoever wants you can have at you!”
If she was talking about our father, she needn’t have worried. It was the first time we’d ever seen his temper and it would be the last. So shocked was he with himself, so afraid of the reflection he saw when he looked into James’s face that day, that he went away to France, to the resort town where he’d met his vacationing bride-to-be back when he was still clowning.
It would be eight years before we saw him again.
I set a cup of tea in front of him. “Daddy, maybe I should call Mountainview. I bet they’re worried.”
He sipped from his cup. “You’re a very nice girl. Are you French?”
“French Canadian.” I smiled. “On my father’s side.” I got up to get the phone just as the front door opened and James came ploughing through.
“Goddamn pigs!” He dropped everything in the usual heap. “Pigs!”
I grabbed the cordless and ran to simmer him down. His face was painted blue with demon flames shooting red from his eyes and mouth. He raged on: “They came on horseback! I’m there, staging a funeral and—look at me!” His fingers jabbed at his face. “I’m Diablob, Bulbous’s evil twin. I sold balloon flowers at my own funeral! The Mounties came and cited me for public mischief, vending without a permit, and for uttering threats! Since when is it a crime to tell someone you’ll kick his ass? If they’re gonna ticket me anyway, I may as well kick an ass and get my money’s worth!” He stormed past me, sputtering, “And did the media show up? No one gives a—”
“James.”
“What the hell is he doing here?”
Our father watched us from the kitchen. Seeing James in full clownalia, he clapped his hands, saying, “Oh-ho!” and doffed an imaginary hat.
James glared. “Why did you let him in?”
I hauled him back into the living room. “For chrissake,” I whispered. “He hasn’t been here in three years. It’s his house!”
“What are you whispering for?” he barked. “Crazy bastard doesn’t know his own name. You’re just making it harder on him because he sure as hell ain’t stayin’. I got enough to deal with.”
“It always comes down to you, doesn’t it.”
“What did he ever do for me? Or you, for that matter? Just because he conveniently lost his mind doesn’t mean I have to take care of him now. The only time he ever really spoke to me was the time he tried to kill me. Before he abandoned us.”
“Where’d you learn to do this, then?” I waved at his face, his bags on the floor. “He left so he wouldn’t kill you. He probably thought you didn’t have a hope in hell with him around.”
“Gimme the phone. He’s gone.”
“Fuck you, James.” I went back to the kitchen, phone in hand. “How you doin’, Daddy? Want some more tea?”
James tromped behind me into the kitchen. “Gimme the phone!”
I set the kettle on the stove, and asked my father if he’d like something to eat.
James yanked the phone from under my arm, jabbing the air between us with his finger. “I’m calling them, so fuck you too.”
Voice cold and flat, I told him, “If you don’t give me back the phone, I will walk out that door and you’ll never set eyes on me again.”
He looked startled and his nostrils flared. We watched each other until a sob broke the air and we turned to see our father crying.
Tears streamed down his cheeks as his head moved back and forth. He looked up and held out his hands to James, pleading, “Non, je m’excuse, s’il vous plait, Papa, je m’excuse.”
We stared. Neither of us had ever heard him speak French. Suzette never did, and we knew our mother had never learned a word.
I covered my mouth. James set the phone down on the counter and swallowed, running his fingers through his hair, then stuffing his hands into his pockets. He took a couple of steps, pulled a hand free and moved a chair closer to our father. Looking to me first, he sat and awkwardly patted Daddy’s forearm.
“It’s okay. It’s no big deal, man. Let’s just have a beer. All right?”
Daddy nodded solemnly at James.
I grabbed the Kleenex box and set it between them, yanking one for myself. Our father looked at the box. I pulled one free for him but he blinked up at me, lost, until I held it to his nose and told him to blow. He honked, I wiped.
James laughed nervously. “Nice one, buddy.”
He went to the fridge, grabbed two beers and the phone off the counter. He twisted off the bottle caps and set one in front of Daddy and one in front of himself before he dialed Mountainview Nursing Home. He told them our father was here and demanded to know why they had never called to tell us he was missing. Furthermore, he asked, in the three years his father had been in that home, why had James never received any reports? If the nurse had anything to say, if she tried to mention that perhaps James didn’t know anything about his father because he had never been to see him, I couldn’t tell. James wasn’t letting her get a word in edgewise.
We made supper together that night. Showered and clad in jeans and a T-shirt, James sat at the kitchen table with a cutting board and showed his father how to slice an onion, the way one would teach a small child: how to peel it, how not to cut your fingers, the difference between mincing and chopping.
“Where’d you learn that?” I asked him.
He told us about a chef he had dated and loved, how she had dumped him. James had begged to stay with her, but she told him to be gone by the time she returned. After she left, James wandered her apartment, the air clammy from a wet spring. All he wanted to do was hang on. Finally he stole her apron, he said, so he wouldn’t feel so alone. I thought of Suzette’s story, the way James came into the world holding fast to our mother’s womb.
After dinner, I pulled out James’s mask—our father’s mask, which had always fit James’s face perfectly. I put it in Daddy’s lap and let him hold it, watching the flicker of memory in his eyes as he ran a finger over the contours of the cheeks, the forehead, and the nose that he and his son shared. James and I both watched him.
Then I took the mask carefully from his hands and raised it to his eyes, pressing it close till the tip of his nose poked through. I handed my brother the black felt tip. Daddy grinned like a birthday boy as James began tracing him a new face.
Did You Grow Up With Money?
OUTSIDERS NEVER SAW HIM, but we did. Money’d sit up late with my father, drinking, smoking a joint—Dad liked him there cuz he could roll. All night they’d be up playing Johnny Cash over and over: I fell in to a burning ring of fire. I fell down, down, down, and the flames went higher. In the morning they’d be gone but it was obvious he’d been at it again—showing Dad how to mark cards, mark time, make a mark out of a sucker.
Oftentimes he’d ditch Dad and hang out with my
mother; he was a big drinker so he got along with everyone in the family. He’d sit with her, run his fingertips lightly over her throat, bite her gently, and they’d laugh a laugh that came straight from their groins. I’d have to leave the room.
Nobody ever said anything about Money. One day we were happy—as happy as a family can be, trying to get through it—and the next, Money was a part of our lives.
We guessed that Dad had brought him home from a game, since that’s what they seemed to do all day: play cards, practise cheating at cards. We didn’t know anything about him, didn’t know his real name or who he was outside our house. He seemed like a war vet: tattooed numbers here, a dramatic slogan there. But he never talked about war, not the regular kind anyway. Dad adored Money, though, and always had an arm for his shoulder, a loving slap for his jaw. He didn’t notice the way Money had the same for Mom and Mom’s behind. He didn’t notice or didn’t care.
My sister was six years older than I was and I adored her. She was the most perfect creature on earth, with her long chocolate hair and willow-thin limbs. The night Money hid in her closet to watch her undress, things’d gone too far, but still we didn’t say anything. Beth found him nestled in her shoes, skirts and blouses dripping down his face. She was standing in her bra and jeans when she opened her closet and she carefully shooed him out as if he were a strange dog playing with her child.
She told me this later, so matter-of-factly that I could find no reaction in myself. It was as though we couldn’t react. Money just was.
It wasn’t long after that he came roaming around upstairs as I got ready for bed, came into the bathroom as I brushed my teeth. I turned to see him but I didn’t say anything. Just kept brushing and he watched, his eyes following the brush as I moved it back and forth, in and out of my mouth. Too self-conscious to spit in front of him, I was considering swallowing the foam when Money spoke. He asked my age. Toothbrush in one hand I held up five fingers of the other and blinked them twice like an eye before stuffing my head deep in the sink, covering my face with an arm as I turned on the cold water. Rinsing and spitting. I felt his eyes move down the length of me. My nightie was old and threadbare and I wondered if age had made it see-through. Money remarked that I would probably look like Beth in a few years, that it was nice looking at me now, knowing it was just the beginning.
I rolled that around a moment, confused by my nerves. I thought Money was nothing to be afraid of. He moved from the door frame and came round behind me, looking over my head into the mirror. His arms fell down on either side of me, hands resting on the counter. I still held my wet toothbrush and I started to fidget, elbows close at my sides, avoiding the insides of his arms. A sinewy hand came back and landed on my hip.
“You’ve already got an ass like your sister’s.” He moved his hand around, sandwiching it between his crotch and my backside.
I couldn’t speak and I didn’t want to cry in front of him.
“You like this, don’t you—you’re just like your sister.” He watched me in the mirror while his fingers gathered material, easing up my nightgown. I gripped the toothbrush at my chest like the cross. The cold water was still running.
“You fuck!” howled off the bathroom walls, and something long and wild tackled us.
Beth hurled herself on Money and suddenly we were all sprawled on the floor, screaming. I clambered out of the thrashing arms and legs and crawled between the toilet and the wall to cry. Beth was still on Money, banshee-screaming, smashing her fists into his neck, his face, her dark hair snaking in all directions.
“You fuckin’ touch my sister, I’ll fuckin’ kill you—I’ll kill you, you cocksucker.”
I held onto the side of the toilet. This wasn’t Beth. Beth didn’t know those words and Money wasn’t real and Beth didn’t talk to Money and I was ten and men don’t touch ten and nobody said Money’s name and no one else could hear so none of us were here. I crawled farther in behind the toilet.
Money got hold of Beth’s wrists. He slammed her over onto the bathroom tiles and scrambled on top of her, holding her arms over her head, against the floor. He forced her knees apart and pushed his hips against her. Beth’s wrists were now in one of Money’s hands and she was pinned. He moved his face close to hers, stared in her eyes, and said, “Don’t fuckin’ tempt me.”
Beth spat. Money used his free hand to wipe the saliva off his cheek and back onto hers. He slammed her wrists against the floor once, like an exclamation point, and let her go before he stood. He ran a hand through his greasy hair. Beth lay still. Money smiled and gave a two-fingered salute from the crown of his head, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.
My sister had me sleep with her that night and her door stayed locked once we were behind it. All doors stayed locked if we were behind them.
The next morning, I woke up to Beth’s breathing. She was still sleeping hard and the air smelled stale and used from dreaming. I climbed out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen toward my father’s voice. His words were bent by corners and by the time they reached me I could make out only their garbled sides. Just enough to know that Dad was making a point, the kind where he used a lot of table thumps to underline the important bits.
As I moved nearer, the words were clearer, something about kids and value. Coming through the doorway, I didn’t see my mother. I saw my father, cards and chips and Money sitting across from him. The breath stopped moving so well in my chest. I didn’t look into any eyes.
Money turned to watch as I opened the fridge and my father interrupted his speech to tell me, “Milk’s sour,” before he went on. I took the juice, put it on the counter and picked the least dirty glass in the sink to wash.
“These freakin’ kids don’t know the score—they couldn’t tell ya the value of a goddamn buck to save their souls. Half of ’em take off and jump on the freakin’ welfare gravy train. Ya can’t tell ’em nothin’—and you sure as hell can’t give ’em nothin’, cuz I’ll tell ya, you take one of these little buggers today—”
I chewed on the inside of my mouth, trying to be small, unnoticeable, just pour juice and not have to answer a trick question—not have to say the thing that would bring on a table thump and a See, what’d I tell ya!
Money was chuckling, waving off Dad’s theory, saying there were good kids around who knew what was what. I heard chair legs groan against floor as he pushed himself away from the table, and I rushed to get the orange juice back in the fridge. I got back to my glass just as Money did.
He pushed the juice out of my reach and put himself between me and it. Stuffing a hand into his pocket, he looked at me. “This little one here knows what’s what, don’tcha darlin’?”
I watched the crack of the open silverware drawer, thought about falling through the little line of space and lying with my head in the hollow of a spoon.
Money pulled his hand out of his jeans along with a crisp, folded ten-dollar bill. Opened it flat and smoothed a yellow thumb and forefinger along its clean perfect crease. Then put it on the counter and slid it toward me.
“Tell Money whatcha’d do with a ten-spot.”
I looked at it. Said nothing. Beth was coming down the stairs now. I could hear her slippers scuffing toward the kitchen.
Money watched me. “Go head, sweetheart, pick it up.”
Didn’t want to look him in the eyes. I looked at the bill some more. Then picked it up off the counter and held it, running a nail along the sharp edge. Beth’s slippers were sliding across the kitchen floor now. Money looked away from my hands and smiled at Beth as she came up beside me.
I looked at Money smirking at Beth.
He said, “How ’bout you, Angel, what would you do with ten bucks right about now?”
Beth smirked back and gently took the bill out of my hand. She only had it a second before she tore it in two and handed half back to me. “I always share,” she said and rested her hand on the back of my neck.
Dad had already started up again
as we left the kitchen: “What’d I tell ya. In a nutshell. In a goddamn nutshell!”
Beth’s face kept a hard look after that. We stayed in her room mostly and mostly she’d sit in silence, nodding all the while as if someone were giving her instructions. We didn’t talk much about Money, said almost nothing about what had happened, probably because it was still happening.
About a week later, she sat me down. For the next couple of days, she said, I was to be nice to Money; we were both going to be very nice to Money.
And it was two nights later that she asked me in the hallway upstairs if I’d like to go down to the river. The toilet flushed and Money came out the bathroom door, face to face with Beth’s queer smile.
At ten o’clock that night we were standing upriver in the shallows, Beth peeled to her underwear and me in the smallest of her old dresses. It was July but nights were still a little cold to be standing half naked with water rushing over our legs. We knew he’d show up, though, weasel out of whatever drunk fest our father had planned and look into the friendly reception he’d been getting from us lately. So we stood and shivered a while and, sure enough, about fifteen minutes later we saw him, lead-foot-drunk, tripping his way along the rocks, wearing the same dirty buckskin coat he wore all year round, a bottle in one hand, his Johnny Cash tape in the other—he seemed to think there’d be a cassette player everywhere he went.
My sister waded a little farther out, up to her knees, her long body icy in the moonlight; she was the irresistible decoy, “Money, you bad boy, did you follow us out here?”
He cackled and splashed out into the water, throwing his arms wide as if they were old army buddies. I smiled, scared, trying to look like sex, like Beth. My sister walked to meet him and I followed, taking care not to slip on the smooth rocks, straight legs sticking out under the faded wet flowers on my dress.
“It’s a party,” he said, and belched wolf calls in the air, drowning them in another swig of Scotch. He reached Beth, ran his hands down her neck and brushed the strap of her bra down her shoulder. “You waitin’ fer me, beautiful?” and he took another drink and left the bottle in his mouth, holding it between his teeth while he stooped to roll up his drenched pant legs, showing off the serial number tattooed on his left ankle as if he were a sailor showing us the panther on his chest. He showed that number a lot, had showed it to my father a few times, said it was the number on the first fifty he ever won at cards.
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