Eileen (21 page)

Rebecca's expression hardened as she spoke. I looked closely at her face, at the delicate lines around her eyes, her translucent skin, fresh and rosy. In one moment she looked like a mature woman, in the next, a little girl. My eyes seemed to be playing tricks on me, as though I were peering into a fun house mirror, as if it were all a dream. She tapped my hands to get my attention. “But Lee isn't responsible for this,” Rebecca went on. “That's what he explained to me yesterday. The whole ordeal. It's too much for a child to keep to himself.” She turned away as
though overcome with emotion, but when she faced me again she was calm, steady, even grinning. “It's terrible, this photo, yes. It's disturbing. When I saw it, and then met Lee, I just couldn't put two and two together. A smart, shy boy like that doing something like this. It didn't add up. I asked him if he'd really done it, killed his father.” She tapped her finger on the photo, over the dead man's face. “He said that yes, he had done it. Or really he just nodded. I asked him why, but he just shrugged. He didn't open up to me right away, you know. I had to ask the right question. At first I was just stabbing in the dark. Did his dad beat his mom? Did his mom have him kill his dad for the insurance payout? What was it? I just had a sense there was something rotten happening in the family. It's written all over the mother's face, anyhow. You saw her. I knew something was going on. That's why I called her and told her to come in. I told her, ‘I think your son would like to speak with you.' You saw them together. The poor boy could hardly look her in the eye. And so afterward I just asked him point-blank. ‘What did your father do to you? Did he touch you?' And he spoke. He spilled it all in a matter of minutes. That man, Mr. Polk, was raping him, his own son. Nobody had ever bothered to ask Lee before. Nobody wanted to know.”

At this point Rebecca was wild-eyed with enthusiasm, you'd say, nearly salivating, her hands having moved up my wrists and forearms to hold me by the shoulders. I was riveted by the pink of her mouth and gums, the black grit of wine in the chapped corners of her lips. I'd heard of stories like the one she was telling. I had a vague idea of what it all meant. “It doesn't take
a degree in psychology to get down to the truth,” she went on boastfully. She let go of my shoulders. “And it doesn't take a prison sentence to set things right. The wardens and shrinks of this world are crazier than most killers, I swear. People will tell you the truth, if you really want to hear it. Think about it, Eileen,” she said, squeezing my hands again. “What would drive someone to kill his own father?” She looked up at me imploringly, her eyes darting back and forth between mine. “What?” she demanded.

I had spent years debating a similar question. “Killing him,” I answered, “would have to be the only way out.”

“The only recourse, yes,” Rebecca nodded.

We stared again at the photo, her head next to mine, so close that our cheeks touched. She leaned over my shoulder, put her arm around me. The wind shook the house, a spray of snow vibrating the drafty kitchen windows. I closed my eyes. This was as close to another person as I'd been in years. I could feel Rebecca's breath on my hand, hot and quick and steady.

“You have to wonder,” she continued, “why the mother didn't
do
something.”

I looked up at her. Her strange, shifting expression, strained in the harsh light, eyebrows raised, eyes wide, mouth open in delight or expectation, I couldn't tell. She seemed excited, agitated, ecstatic and full of wonder. I twitched. “My mother's dead,” I said defensively. Rebecca wasn't irked by the non sequitur. I held my breath.

“Mothers are very difficult,” Rebecca replied. She stood suddenly and gazed down at me as she spoke. “Most women
hate one another. It's only natural, all of us competing, mothers and daughters especially. Not that I hate you, of course. I don't see you as competition. I see you as my ally, a partner in crime, as they say. You're special,” she said, softening. I could have cried hearing those words. I blinked hard, though my eyes were dry. She reaffirmed her statement by squeezing my hand again, and squatted back down to meet me at eye level. “That mother,” she went on, “Mrs. Polk, you remember her, don't you?”

“She was fat,” I said, nodding.

“Quiet,” Rebecca whispered all of a sudden. She got up, put a finger in the air to hush me. The wind rattled, but otherwise the house was silent. The music had stopped without my noticing it. I held my breath. “Lee's mother,” she went on, punctuating the words by clattering her fingernails on the table, “is the real mystery. There's no lovely way to say this, Eileen. It broke my heart to hear the boy tell his story. But as you and I know, it's so important to let the truth out. Lee told me that each evening after dinner, his mother would take him upstairs to give him an enema before bedtime. Then she just sat around watching
The Honeymooners
or painting her nails or sleeping or whatnot until they were done. Why didn't she stop him? The answer is quite plainly that she didn't want to. She must have been benefiting from it all somehow. I just don't understand how.”

I was disgusted, of course. But I was also skeptical. “It's really awful,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “Gross,” I said again. I watched Rebecca ease back from the table, lean against the counter. She crossed her arms and gazed up at the ceiling. I was suddenly cold and lonely with her so far away. I
yearned to get up and go to her, snuggle inside her bathrobe, curl up in her arms like a child.

“You really have to imagine it, Eileen,” she went on. “You're just a kid sitting at the kitchen table.” She took me through the entire nightly routine at the Polk house as she imagined it, describing in depth how an enema works, the size of the child's anatomy, how the nether regions get torn during the sex act, and then the psychology of the father—how he must have suffered all his life with a desire he couldn't satisfy. “The father's motivation is rather obvious,” she said. “He had some wires crossed. For him, doing that with his son, that must have been love. As awful as that sounds, love is like that sometimes. It will make you rape your own son. It's not something we think we'd ever do, but Mr. Polk must have known no other way.” I thought of my own father, and my mother for that matter, how little affection they gave me but for a pinch and a poke now and then when I was growing up. Perhaps I was lucky after all. It's very hard to measure out, in hindsight, who had it worse than whom.

“But the mother—Rita is her name—I just don't understand her motivations.” Rebecca was intent on getting to a point. I really could not have cared less about the Polks—I had Rebecca now. We were partners in crime. She'd said those very words. I would have cut my palm open with the kitchen knife and made a pact in blood then and there to be friends, sisters, forever and ever. But I sat and listened attentively, feigning interest the best way I knew how, nodding and furrowing my brow and batting my lashes and all.

“I don't get the feeling that the father was threatening her,”
Rebecca continued. “She doesn't come across to me that way.” I knew what she meant, actually. When Mrs. Polk had visited earlier that week, she hadn't come off as a victim. She held her head high, seemed more angry than sorrowful, had an air of judgment in the way she gazed at us—me, Randy, Rebecca, Leonard. And she didn't seem like the type of woman who would try very hard to please others. She was fat. She wore ugly clothing. “I believe something crucial must be resolved with that woman,” Rebecca continued, “before Lee can really move on. And like I said, I don't believe in punishment, but I do believe in retribution. Lee's father raped him. He did a bad thing, so he got killed. Lee killed his father, so he's in prison. The mother is guilty of her own crime, and she hasn't suffered any consequence. And Eileen?” She leaned forward, grabbed me by the calf. “You can't tell anyone about this, you promise?” I nodded. Rebecca's hand on my leg was enough for me to promise her the world. I still couldn't understand her earnestness, her grave intensity about the Polks. What did it matter? Why did she care? When she stuck out her slender pinky finger, I hooked mine around it. We shook. This gesture felt so heartfelt, so pure, and yet so perverse, my eyes filled with tears.

“This isn't my house, Eileen,” Rebecca said then. “It's the Polk house. I have Rita Polk tied up downstairs.”

 • • • 

I
should say that as a rather sheltered young person in X-ville, I had little experience of direct conflicts between people. My parents' dinnertime fights when I was growing up
were all for nothing, just gripes covering the surface of whatever deeper grievances they each carried around, I'm sure. Nothing ever came to blows, though in my last years with him my father would occasionally wrap his flat hands around my pencil-thin throat and threaten that he could squeeze the life out of me any time he felt like it. It didn't hurt. His hands on my neck were, in fact, a kind of balm—it was all the affection I received back then. I recall that when I was twelve, a girl a few towns over went missing and they found her naked body washed up on the rocks at the beach in X-ville. “Don't take rides from strangers,” and “scream if someone tries to grab you,” our teachers said to warn us, but their alarm never scared me. On the contrary, being kidnapped was something of a secret wish of mine. At least then I'd know that I mattered to someone, that I was of value. Violence made much more sense to me than any strained conversation. If there had been more fighting in my family growing up in X-ville, things might have turned out differently. I might have stayed.

I must sound terribly self-pitying, complaining that my father didn't love me enough to hit me. But so what? I'm old now. My bones have thinned, my hair has grayed, my breathing has become slow and shallow, my appetite meager. I've had more than my fair share of scrapes and bruises, and I have lived long enough that self-pity is no longer a pathetic habit of the psyche, but like a cold wet cloth on my forehead bringing down the fever of fear about my inevitable mortal demise. Poor me, yes, poor me. When I was young I didn't care at all for my physical well-being. All young people believe they are invincible, that
they know well enough not to heed any silly warnings. It was this kind of brave stupidity that led me out of X-ville. If I'd known just how dangerous a place I was escaping to, I may never have left. New York City was no place for a young woman all alone back then, especially a young woman like I was—gullible, helpless, full of rage and guilt and worry. If someone had told me the number of times I'd get groped and grabbed on the subway, how often my heart would be broken, doors slammed in my face, my spirit smashed, I may have stayed home with my father.

Back in X-ville, I'd read tales of violence in the prison files—awful business. Assault, destruction, betrayal, as long as it didn't concern me, it didn't bother me. Those stories were like articles in
National Geographic
. Their details only fostered my own twisted imaginings and fantasies, but never made me scared for my safety. I was naive and I was callous. I didn't care about the welfare of others. I only cared about getting what I wanted. So when Rebecca's revelation hit me, I wasn't as horrified as you'd expect. I was insulted, however. Suddenly it became obvious to me that her friendship was not motivated purely out of admiration and affection, as I'd have preferred to think. Rebecca had forged a rapport, it was clear, as part of a strategy. She assumed I'd be useful to her, and I suppose in the end I was.

“I'm so sorry,” I stammered, trying to hide my disappointment. “I'm really not feeling well.” I could have told her she was crazy, that I wanted nothing to do with her, that she ought to be committed, but I was so hurt, so dismayed by her scheme to seduce me into being some sort of accomplice that I failed to muster any cutting words or phrases. “Good luck,” might have
been enough, I suppose. Anyway, I wasn't going to reveal my brokenheartedness to her—I felt humiliated enough already. I'd been such a fool. Of course Rebecca didn't really like me. I was pathetic, ugly, weak, weird. Why would someone like her want someone like me as a friend? “I should really get going,” I said, and got up and headed for the door. In the hallway, however, Rebecca grabbed my arm.

“Please,” she said. “Don't run off so quick. I'm in something of a little pinch.” I could tell from looking at her that she was scared. I thought of breaking free, driving home to tell my father, calling the cops. But with Rebecca looking at me like that, as though I could save her, saying, “Please, I really need you, Eileen. Be a friend,” I began to cave. She pulled a cigarette out for me, lit it with trembling hands. “You're the only one I trust,” she said. That was all it took to reel me back in. She respected me after all, I chose to believe. She wanted me on her side. Tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She mopped them up with the cuff of her robe, exhaled, shuddered, looked up at me imploringly.

“OK,” I said. Nobody had ever cried to me before. “I'll help you.”

“Thank you, Eileen,” she said, smiling through her tears. She blew her nose on her sleeve. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm a mess.” It pleased me to see her scared and vulnerable like that. She took another slice of bread from the counter, picked at it mindlessly for a moment. “I don't know how I got into this. But now that we're in it, we have to finish what we started.”

I sat down, straightened my back against the chair, crossed
my legs like a lady, folded my hands in my lap. “We could call the police and just explain what happened,” I said softly. “It was an accident, we could say.” I knew full well this suggestion was ludicrous. I just wanted to reap all the desperation I could out of her. I deserved at least that much in return for my loyalty, I thought.