Watermark

by Christy Ann Conlin

  My father looked up, but not at me, at the beige wall. There were tears in his eyes, and he couldn’t stop them from coming out.

  * * *

  I remember all those times in the front hall of our house, when my father would leave for evening meetings. He’d be on the way out the door and he’d say, “Now, Isabella, you do your homework. Stay off the phone. Don’t be on the computer all night.” I’d smile and he’d pat me on the cheek. That’s my girl.

  When he drove down the road I’d call Sergei and he’d come over. My father would always have these chores for me to do, mow the lawn, weed the garden. Sergei would do them while I sat in the lawn chair. It was nice living in the country, so much privacy living up on the Mountain. You could do whatever you wanted. When Sergei’s back was turned I’d take my clothes off. He’d turn around and his eyes would pop and he’d run his tongue over his sexy red lips and give me this hot little smile.

  * * *

  I was sad when my mother left, but I was only twelve, and three years is enough time to get over it. She hated the house. It had been my father’s idea to move to the country. He said the commute was worth the peace and quiet. But she was bored, sitting in the chair looking down over the field to the valley below. She bought a painting and hung it there by the big window. It was all these pastel swirls and had words on it: Soft winter white makes pale winter blues.

  “Why are you going?” I’d asked her that day I got off the bus. My mother was in the doorway with her suitcases. It was June. She’d forgotten it was a half-day at school, and I came home to find her packing up her car.

  “You’ll be fine. You’re just like him,” she said as she got into the car, smiling at me. Not a mean smile. A smile like it was the only thing she could do and, even though it was such a small thing, she felt good about it. She was gone but it didn’t mean my father was around more. It was like nothing had changed for him.

  I was in the city once, on a school trip. We got lost and we ended up at a hotel, a fancy one in the city centre. There was a café in the middle of the lobby with all these potted trees. You could have a drink there or afternoon tea in the hotel café. There was a woman sitting at a table and Susan, my classmate, whispered she was a hooker. She had dyed platinum hair and stiletto black boots. I suppose she could have been a hooker. We were sitting there and who came in and sat down with her but my father. Susan didn’t know it was my father sitting there.

  He didn’t see me until we were leaving. I was outside on the sidewalk and he saw me through the glass wall. His eyes got huge. I just looked away and giggled with my friends as the bus pulled up for us. He got home late that night and I was already in bed. Of course I wasn’t asleep but he didn’t know that. He tried to bring it up the next day at breakfast but I just brushed him off and said I didn’t care.

  But I did care and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He had time to spend with her, some prostitute, but he never had time to spend with his own daughter. Just picturing her there with my father made me so mad. The nerve. Taking him away from me. I mean, she wouldn’t be laughing if she was put in her place, would she? It would have served her right to have me come up to her, and she’d look at me, like I was going to ask a question, and then I’d take out a hammer, just a little one like the kind they use for reupholstering furniture, and give her whore head a whack and see how long she was able to stand up on her high heels then.

  * * *

  The police wanted to know how I hooked up with Sergei. That was the term they used, hooked up. I tried not to laugh.

  I’d seen Sergei around at school. He kept to himself. He wasn’t much into school, really, just goofing off. He might be a loser, but he’s the best-looking loser around. He’s really tall and he was in martial arts for a while too.

  One day my dad dropped me off after an appointment with the orthodontist and Sergei was standing by the school door on the side having a cigarette. You aren’t supposed to smoke on school property, but Sergei never cared about rules. I walked by and he smiled and then, with those big eyes of his, he winked. Well, I winked right back at him, with my head to the side all sexy, and just kept going. I know he turned and watched me walk away, so I made it worth his while.

  I was grocery shopping with my father the day after and I saw Sergei in the parking lot loading groceries in the trunk of a car for this little old lady — his grandmother, he told me later. And then I saw him driving by when I was out walking the dog. I was just coming home and turned in the driveway when he went by. He waved. I stood there looking at him. At the last second, I waved, and then I turned my head as he gave me this big smile.

  The next day I walked by the north corner of the school where he hung out with the guys who always got in trouble, and he was leaning there against the wall and gave me his lazy smile again. “Why are you stalking me?” I said. He just laughed. And all his friends started laughing. But his laugh wasn’t mean — he just looked like he thought I was hilarious.

  When he went by that night I was outside with my father, who was home early for once. I told my father Sergei was following me, how he had this thing for me and wouldn’t leave me alone. I was pretty sure he did have a thing for me, but I wanted to be completely sure. I wanted his complete attention.

  My father signalled to him to stop. He started blasting him. Sergei looked at him and said, “I live down the road, dude. You can’t tell me what to do.” Then Sergei drove away really fast. My father was so pissed at Sergei and at me. It was so funny. But how was I supposed to know Sergei lived on our road? Later, when they questioned him, my father told the police how Sergei was obsessed with me. He didn’t tell them how it really happened, how Sergei was just going to his house. They didn’t need that fact.

  * * *

  At school the next day Sergei came up to me. “Isabella,” he said, “I think you’re trouble.”

  “Oh, I’m trouble, am I?” I smiled and tossed my hair back. I had this new stuff in it which enhanced the curl.

  He shook his head and smiled back. “Why did you tell your father I was stalking you?”

  “Well, I thought you were. I never saw you on our road before.”

  Then he started laughing again. “It’s not your road. We’ve been living on the Brow of Mountain Road since way before you moved there. It’s kind of sexy, your tunnel vision. The way you revolve around yourself like you are the sun and the moon,” Sergei said. He started laughing again. He has these big soft lips and chocolate-cake eyes.

  “Want me to come visit sometime when Daddy’s away?” He leaned toward me and I could smell his warm skin.

  “See, you are stalking me,” I said, and I gave him the little smile I do in the mirror at home.

  “Everyone wanted to know who was building that big-ass house. What was it, like, five years ago? You were just a little girl then.” He smiled with those red lips. “Are you all grown-up now?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I said in a soft little voice. I gave Sergei a wink and then walked away, saying, “See you around sometime.” The kind of voice my mother used to use on my father when I was in bed and they didn’t think I could hear. They put the back deck too close to my room. I’d never make that sort of mistake. I’d put my kids’ rooms in the basement so they couldn’t hear anything.

  After my mother left, I told my father I wanted to have the guest room as my room, at the front of the house on the ground level. It was supposed to be a sitting room, but they didn’t need it so it became this extra guest room and no one used it. He didn’t care. We had the room all done up and he got me a new canopy bed. I’ve got an amazing bedroom. We used Cinderella Pink on the walls. Pink is the colour of pure love. The ceiling is Iced Violet. It’s supposed to be calming. Sergei told me in Russia it’s the colour of the dead.

  * * *

  When my mother left and my dad brought in Bewitching Interiors he let me make all the choices. He trusted me. You have an ey
e for detail. You are all about the detail. It’s true. I am all about the detail, the trim, the edge, the look. The first thing I’d do in this stupid jail — sorry, youth centre — is put some colour on the walls. How can they expect these young people to make any changes in their lives with such dingy colours?

  The interior designer brought all these paint swatches and took me to a special flooring store to pick out carpet. She wore silk skirts that swished and I’m pretty sure her feet didn’t touch the ground when she walked. There was a way she had when she looked at me, with this little smile, as though she knew I understood how beyond the drab dull world I was stuck in, behind it, was a realm of raging colour and enchantment where people like she and I belonged.

  We picked out spectacular fabric to have the furniture reupholstered in. It was really gorgeous, just perfect. Every day when I’d come home from school one more part of the house would be finished. It looked like a new house. My father loved it. It was like we were papering right over my mother, painting her out of the picture.

  * * *

  My father has finally lifted his head and he wants to talk about Sergei. But I don’t want to talk about him, to have his putrid name on my lips.

  I remember when I finally let Sergei drive me home from school. I was always the only one who got off the bus at my stop and no one was ever waiting for me. This would make some girls nervous but not me. But the day before Sergei drove me home, there was a noise in the woods when I got off the bus and it did creep me out a bit. Maybe it was reporters or something, trying to get dirt on my father. I went inside and peeked out the window but nothing came out of the woods.

  The next day I got Sergei to drive me home from school, just in case. My father was never home after school so I wasn’t worried about him walking in. And sure enough, just when we got in the door my phone rang and it was my father: he had a meeting so he’d be home late, I should microwave something for my dinner.

  Sleep tight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

  We went out on the deck looking out over the Valley. He took out a joint. “You smoke?” I just shrugged and giggled. He lit up and then showed me how. He didn’t even laugh when I coughed, just patted me on the back and helped me take another toke. “You don’t always get high the first time,” he said. But next thing I knew my head was as light as sparkles and I was twirling around. I was wearing red shoes and he kept calling me Dorothy.

  It was spring and I could hear these evening birds and I took him by the hand into my canopy bed. He was so heavy and he said he didn’t want to hurt me and then I couldn’t stop laughing. “It’s not the first time for everything, you asshole,” I said, slapping him on the back. He was surprised, and it was the funniest thing I ever saw. That’s what I loved about being high, laughing my ass off.

  “Come on, Russian,” I said.

  “Dorothy,” he said, looking into my eyes. “Aren’t you a bad girl.”

  “I’m not Dorothy,” I told him. “I’m the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  * * *

  “You’re fierce,” he whispered with a huge smile the next day when he saw me at school. “My wicked witch.” I winked at him and he smiled.

  I didn’t bother telling Sergei that when I was little I saw a real witch who I was related to. Just after we built the house, I was on the front lawn with my parents. They were deciding whether to hire a new landscaping service. Then an old woman with frizzy hair on a horse and wagon came out of a little trail in the woods across the road. She stopped right in front of the house and gave us the evil eye. My mother ran over to talk to her. My father didn’t go anywhere near that shrivelled old lunatic who kept waving her arms at me and yelling “corruption, beware,” and stuff like that.

  My father whispered it was my mother’s distant cousin who lived alone on the north side of the Mountain near the bay in an old house on the Flying Squirrel Road. Poor old Lucretia had troubles, he said. She had been in jail for a long time. It was the bad side of the family. It was a pity, he said. But even as a kid I knew he didn’t care about a crazy old person. My mother was wringing her hands together. The old lady went bumpity bump away over the road, staring at me the whole time. What a freaky bitch. I wasn’t scared of her and stuck out my tongue when my parents turned away. I knew she was a witch of some kind. A real witch.

  We had this great thing all year, Sergei coming over and him doing whatever chores my father wanted done, and getting high and having sex in my bedroom until we were in the store and she came by, that girl. Lulu. What a stupid name. Sergei says it’s short for Lucille. Nicknames are for freaks. No one has ever called me anything but Isabella. Once a teacher called me Izzy and I stared at her until I thought I had frozen her to ice. “Isabella,” I said. “We don’t shorten it. Ever.” The teacher bit her lip. She never called me anything else again.

  * * *

  Lulu and Sergei never really went out, he said. He just really liked her but it was a couple of years ago. He had to do community service work at the senior citizens’ home as a part of his sentence for some crime he committed when he was fifteen, and she volunteered there, taking the old drooling people out for a bit of fresh air. He had to work in the gardens and so she’d go by pushing some old vegetable in a wheelchair, I bet winking her stupid eye at him while he killed all those weeds.

  But her name kept coming up all the time after we saw her in the store. For five months it was like she was always with us. We went to a movie and when we were buying popcorn the guy at the popcorn counter asked Sergei if I was his sister. And then he asked if Sergei had seen Lulu lately, said how Lulu was so hot and he couldn’t believe he let her get away. That guy was lucky I didn’t come around the counter and stick his face in the boiling hot buttery topping, because nothing would have made me happier than seeing his skin blister and melt. I was so pissed I walked out of the theatre and threw my popcorn all over the parking lot. Sergei tried telling me the guy was just an idiot, and he was jealous because my father was a rich politician.

  Once I went with him when he was buying groceries for his grandmother and there Lulu was at the end of the aisle, all little and cute, waving at him like she was sitting on a float in a dumb parade. I wanted to bash her head in with a can of peaches. And Sergei’s grandmother, she just loved Lulu, asking about her whenever I was there, like she was disappointed every time I came in the door. She even called me Lulu once. I almost lost it, but Sergei corrected her and told her I was Isabella. Oh yes, she said, but I could tell from her voice she was let down, like she was hoping if she counted to three I’d transform into that stupid Lulu.

  “I thought you said you never went out with her,” I asked him. “So how does your grandmother know who she is?”

  Sergei said he drove his grandmother to some social club for old people at the nursing home, and Lulu would do crafts with them sometimes or read to them. He said she played the flute and would do little concerts.

  Lulu, Lulu, tweeting away on her flute, like some bird that won’t shut up. She was just doing whatever she could to get Sergei back — and he was defending her.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her, asking him about her. I told him I wasn’t going to have sex with him anymore, how it was over unless he got rid of her. I just wanted him to tell her to leave us alone. To take a stand. I wanted her out of our lives. Sergei kept saying she wasn’t a problem, I should just forget about her. Well, how was I supposed to do that with her popping up everywhere we went? How, I asked him, was I supposed to believe him? How was he going to prove she wasn’t a problem?

  I told Sergei that if he didn’t get her to stop bugging me I’d tell my father he’d been coming over every night for months, and I’d tell the police he was a drug dealer. And no more touching my body. No more Wicked Witch of the West ever again, just Dorothy, and Dorothy isn’t any fun. He kept saying it was all in my mind, that I was getting totally paranoid and neu­rotic. Our town was so small we were bou
nd to run into her sometimes, he said. She wasn’t stalking him and he wasn’t lying or hiding anything. But I could tell. I just have this extra sense. I’m not like other people.

  * * *

  It was the winking. If only she hadn’t winked. Winking was our thing, I told Sergei when we drove home from the store. “Some things are supposed to be sacred!” I yelled at him. I couldn’t get to sleep at night. I’d see her with her long hair and those big blue eyes, her sexy smile, those long lashes like feathers touching as she winked right in front of me. And that’s when I told him he had to get rid of her.

  “Well, I guess he took you literally,” my father said when I first told him this. I nodded. Yes, this was what happened. Sergei took it literally.

  I told my father and the police about the evening it happened. Sergei had said we should go out, he wanted to take me out and show me something special. If I’d just come with him, he said, it would all be better.

  I wanted to believe him. It was getting dark later now because it was June. It was a pretty evening. The colours were gorgeous, all these different shades of purple and blue, just like eye shadow.

  Sergei drove me to the woods near this pond where he said there were water lilies blooming. He was going to show me a surprise, prove his love to me. He was already high when he picked me up. He was on meth. That’s not something I did. He’s the drug addict.

  We sat in his car and smoked a joint and then walked in on this path through the trees. It was like being in a storybook. And then we came out to this beautiful clearing and the sunset was reflecting in the pond, like the water was magic. There was a snap and I looked up and who was there but her. She must have followed us. Lulu. The sun hit her hair and she was standing there with the deep-green forest behind her like fucking Snow White. She took a few steps forward and smiled, all nervous, and said, “What was so important you needed to talk to me about, Sergei?”