Cursed Be the Child (9 page)

Victoria could not accept that. She could not accept her father’s burning in hell forever, could not accept his being a hypocrite, a liar, a fornicator, an adulterer.

Mrs. Miller could not accept it, either. Within a year, she was mumbling to herself about blood sins and winged serpents and communists, and six months later, muttering prayers, she tried to burn down the house. She was committed to a mental institution; a year later, she died there.

Victoria and Carol Grace were taken in by their father’s brother and his wife, Uncle Chester and Aunt Toni. It was Aunt Toni who began calling Victoria “Vicki” and kept calling her that until the time came when Victoria did feel like Vicki. Their aunt and uncle were not members of the Holiness Union Church or any church. Uncle Chester’s religious philosophy would coincidentally later become a beer advertisement: “What I believe is you only go around once in life.”

Vicki decided that that was what she thought, too, and in those moments when she heard a tiny voice within her mind saying, “You’re cutting God out of your life,” when she felt something that was not exactly loneliness or emptiness within her but a particular type of longing hurt, she found ways to refocus her attention on the here and now. There were books she had never read, had not been allowed to read. There were television shows and motion pictures, and there were high school dances. She wore make-up and high heels. “Hon, you’re an attractive young lady with a cute shape to you,” Aunt Toni counseled, “and there’s not one thing sinful about dressing yourself up!” She giggled and gossiped and went out with boys to picnics and parties. The here and now, she learned, was quite all right. It wasn’t sinful; it was just the world as it was.

The farther Vicki drifted away from her strict religious upbringing, the more Carol Grace embraced those early teachings. Vicki could not understand her sister. Carol Grace…well, you could not talk with Carol Grace. Carol Grace did not answer questions; she issued proclamations. She did not converse; she condemned or proselytized or both.

Vicki Miller grew up, went off to college and dropped out in her third year to marry Warren Barringer, a graduate student who’d just been granted admission to the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Carol Grace grew up and married Evan Kyle Dean, a minister, an evangelist, a faith healer who had gone on to no little renown. Carol Grace and Vicki had not spoken in ten years.

Uncle Chester and Aunt Toni retired and bought a condo in Clearwater, Florida, where they meant to enjoy their golden years, but Aunt Toni was dead in six months, a brain aneurism, and Uncle Chester followed her with a fatal heart attack a mere two months after.

So Vicki Barringer lived her life entwined with the lives of her husband and their child, lived her life in the here and now, occasionally taking note that God was no part of it.

And sometimes late at night, so alone, when she had no choice but to be totally honest with herself, she admitted she missed…Him.

“Really, you don’t have to feel obligated,” Laura Morgan was saying. “I just thought I’d ask if you’d like to come to church with me this Sunday. I’m not trying to convert you or anything.”

She wasn’t tracking and hadn’t been for a while, Vicki realized; she had slipped away from the here and now, but she heard Laura’s invitation.

“Yes,” Vicki said, “I would like that.”

— | — | —

Eight

Melissa? Melissa!

How come you always bother me when I’m sleeping? It’s bedtime. I’m supposed to be asleep. You should be asleep, too, Lisette.

No, Melissa. I can’t sleep.

Well, I can, so good night. Go away.

No.

I cannot hear you. I am asleep. I am snoring. Szzss…

Melissa, you said you were my friend. I’m lonely. Do you want to make me cry?

No! When you start crying and calling for your mama, it gets real icky, all cold and everything. Not cold like winter but cold like…

Talk to me, Melissa. Please.

Hi, Lisette. How are you, Lisette? How old are you? I’m seven. Do you go to school? I’m in second grade. Do you like hot dogs? I like hot dogs. Here’s a joke. What’s orange and throws rocks? An orange lawn. I lied about the rocks.

Hey, I thought you wanted to talk, so talk!

You are being mean to me.

So what? I could care less. You don’t know how to talk right and you won’t play and the only time you come is when I’m asleep. You’re like you’re all messed up or something, not like a real girl, so that proves it. You are too imaginary, and I don’t need you.

But I need you, Melissa. I need you to be my friend. That’s why I gave you my beautiful paperweight. That’s real, isn’t it?

Yeah.

There’s another gift I have for you, if you’ll be nice to me.

Show me.

Here, Melissa. Do you like it?

Wow, that is neat! It’s not junky plastic or anything. And it’s for me?

Yes, Melissa, but you have to give me something first.

I thought so. Don’t you know that’s not the way you’re supposed to act? That’s being selfish. You’re supposed to give somebody something just because you want to and you shouldn’t ask for something back.

Isn’t it lovely, Melissa? Don’t you want it?

Yeah. So what do I give you this time? If you want another hair, I guess you can have it.

Blood, Melissa, one tiny drop of your blood.

Blood? Lisette, you’re not just imaginary, you’re crazy! What do you think you are, Dracula?

Please, Melissa, please.

I had to go to the doctor last year for a blood test, you silly dope, and it really hurt. It made me cry.

It won’t hurt, Melissa.

Do you promise?

I promise.

Cross your heart and hope to…

I said I promise, Melissa.

Okay, okay, if it won’t hurt. But I have to stick my thumb with a needle like at the doctor’s, and I don’t have a needle.

You’ll think of something, Melissa.

Okay…yeah, my Smurf button. There’s a pin on the back. I can use that, I guess, but it better not hurt or you won’t be my friend anymore.

Please, Melissa.

Okay, okay.

Do it, Melissa.

I don’t know…

Do it now!

Ow! Oh, it hurts, it does so hurt! It hurts bad. You’re nasty! You lied to me, Lisette. You told a lie!

— | — | —

Nine

Sonofabitch. Son-of-a-bitch!

What happened? What had gone wrong? He’d been blazing through the manuscript, creativity racing on automatic pilot so that he hadn’t even had to think to transform vision into words.

Then forget it! After countless attempts, page 79 of his novel was pure shit. He yanked the paper out of the Underwood, wadded and tossed. Two points, right in the wastebasket, a sure sign that was where it belonged.

Warren leaned back, shoulders tight, the nape of his neck on fire with tension. His reading glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. He took them off and laid them on the desk.

So the novel wasn’t working right now, but, well, that happened. He’d been flying on the proverbial wings of inspiration, but inspiration had flapped off—meaning he had a writing problem—but that was all. Problems had solutions. So, Warren, engage the brain, think out the problem and find a solution.

Brandon Holloway Mitchell, the novel’s protagonist, the civilized man of
A Civilized Man,
has just been told by his wife, Claire, that she is having an affair with Darwin Leaf, Mitchell’s colleague at the university.

Question: What does Brandon Holloway Mitchell do now?

Approach it rationally, objectively.

What did
you
do when you found out Vicki was getting it on with David Greenfield?

Remember Warren?

Christ was there ever a day when he did not remember?

Hell, time to call it quits for this session. It was nearly one in the morning and he’d been working and getting nowhere since nine.

It was time for a drink.

On his way down to the basement rec room, he carried on a silent conversation with himself

(Say, when you went out for supper, Vicki’s pay day celebration treat, didn’t you have two cocktails before and a Heineken with your meal? Mathematically speaking, Professor, two plus one equal three—and you’re watching it, aren’t you, keeping it to three—and-no-more-than-three? Right, but that was yesterday. It’s now past midnight, a brand new day.)

At the bar, he put three fingers of Johnny Walker into a highball glass and added two ice cubes.

He sipped. Excellent, he decided, 12-year-old, peat-flavored ambrosia.

Another taste. Very good, very good indeed, that fine, familiar spread of relaxation throughout the nervous system. He went to the sofa, slipped off his shoes and put his stockinged feet up on the coffee table. He picked up the television’s remote control. A good idea. Television was a mind relaxer, sure to induce mental paralysis.

He zipped through the channels with the remote control. All right, the Three Stooges, masters of the mindless! He was grinning, chuckling to himself, as Moe, Larry, and Curly as plumbers destroyed a stuffy heiress’s mansion. He raised his glass. Only ice remained.

Another drink?

Why not?

After all, he needed to unwind. He knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t going to get shit-faced, uh-uh, just slip into some therapeutic numbness.

Damn, he thought, fresh drink set up, he was feeling the liquor. He was feeling…not drunk and not on the way to being drunk. He was feeling okay, getting back in balance with himself.

But he couldn’t blot out Vicki and that sonofabitch David Greenfield. Shit, it had nearly killed him. He hadn’t suspected a goddamn thing until she’d told him, flatly and unemotionally. And though he had felt like killing her, he merely said they had better talk it over. He truly loved her, so he forgave her.

He thunked the glass down on top of the bar. He loved Vicki. He did. All the love he felt for her welled up inside him, the shared years and the good times. There was the celebration when he sold a story to Chicago Review, cheap champagne, all they could afford, but champagne all the same; going to see Rocky Horror, a few years older than the cult crowd, but getting into the trashy excitement, laughing and laughing; a rainy summer night in a leaky cabin in Michigan; that one time winning lottery ticket she’d bought on a whim with that big pay off of $44.00 that she insisted he take and spend on anything he chose (naturally, he bought books); and Missy, that feeling of magical omnipotence when he rested his hand on Vicki’s belly to feel the movement of the life within Vicki’s life, life that they had caused to be.