Imperative Fate (8 page)

Of course, I want to see you smiling and giggling in my lap while we joke about politics and current events. Of course, I want all the hindrances of adulthood to disappear when I walk through the threshold of your bedroom, so we can lie together—thoughtlessly—and you can pretend to have nightmares so I’ll hold you closer. I want to continue to hold you, mold you, educate and help you, Ellie Anne.

But for this to happen, there must be no suspicion. There must be no Jacob Riis to unravel us like a taped infection.

So I cannot tell my wife I wish to singe our way of life for a
girl
. So I cannot tell my wife I love the last person I should. If I did, my son would suffer. If I did, my wife could retaliate with a lawyer. The press and my constituency surely would.

All the constructs of clocks and common decency and civilization are working against us, dear.

I’m going to make you a one-time offer, a largely unromantic and potentially catastrophic offer: With the death of your immediate family and as that which is left is of degenerate stock, I am willing to take any legal or customary proceedings to provide you all the necessary (and admittedly luxurious) fruits and labors of a guardian. I am willing to be that “long-term moderator” who keeps you out of trouble and kisses your wounds when you’re ill.

I could literally replace your father, Ellie Anne. I could adopt you and
confidentially
be your Hearten or what-have-you, if you’d still desire it. And, perhaps, when you and my son are emotionally mature enough, I can consider breaking off from my wife and starting a life with you, clandestinely clean. But not now, not yet. You must answer the question first:

Are you going to let me adopt you and drop your unworkable, childish demands? Or are you going to continue to taunt me with perfume and a question too big to fit in your mouth?

Whatever your first answer is, make it your last answer. I will not condone self-conscious tricksters, so if you hesitate, groaning your words, or if you gasp in anything other than surprise, I cannot take you as a lover. I will not be your second choice thriving on sick hope.

Remember when you were
thirteen and I taught you about simple economics? I recall the tendrils of pineapple escaping through your light breath and little teeth, that you’d just gotten an unfortunate haircut; it made your tresses fizzle out like copper wire and had the texture of cotton candy. Your weight leant between the niches of my arms as you obnoxiously gnawed on a gum-ball, minutely invested in my lesson. If you haven’t learned already, this is basic marginal analysis.

The marginal cost of me giving up my job, my family, and my reputation outweighs the marginal benefit of me chasing after you in hopes you’ll never grow up, never grow so bored of me you’ll experience other lovers and trials.

So, in terms of opportunity cost, it is not best that I desert my family because I can’t be sure you’re irrevocably committed to me. Let me know. Tell me, truthfully.

I tell you this in hopes you’ll take a step back and use the logical, discriminating part of your brain; rather than entertain grandiose, gleaming spider webs: the unnatural beauty
of human nature, the irrational works of the feverish like Nabokov.

Momentarily, your head is filled with very lush lucid dreams. You paint lovely pictures, Ellie Anne. But they’re not living possibilities. They’re not real-life. I can give you an extraordinary opportunity and structure; not a fast-paced fairy tale.

Be my lover and let delusions of grandeur go
or
be my responsibility and let your heart hemorrhage no more.

Consider reality. Consider yourself. Consider me as I am.

Affectionately,

Harold

Introducing Ellie Anne

             
                                                                                   
3/9

My daddy is dead. But it’s okay. I’m getting a new one and
he’d tell me to be strong . . .
I breathe in, I breathe out.
Mommy is dead.
I bite my lip, clumping the clear coat of gloss.
She never loved me anyway
, I remind myself, twiddling Daddy’s wedding ring. At his funeral as colossal in attendance as it was heart-wrenching, one of the pallbearers gave it to me. As torture or comfort.
That was six months ago, but it may as well have been this afternoon.

It must’ve been so strange to have been a part of their youth,
I think, flipping the tiny memento over, trying not to look upon anything in my room that might give me more nostalgic memories.
Before I ruined it,
I mean.

For two puerile years before my existence, Mama and Daddy adored each other, playing in the snow and drinking all the wine Vermont had to offer. Then, Daddy was a naval man with a cloak-and-dagger drinking problem and Mama was a promising businesswoman with too many magenta pantsuits. In unison, they’d denounce Mama’s family’s “Cult of Domesticity” narrative and went out, hand-in-hand, off to the next adventure.

It took two hours to destroy all of that.

While Daddy was working overtime, fiddling with a job in factory management, Mama was getting wasted at some shoddy tavern with an ambitious nightlife. The trendy kind of shifty she’d never admit to enjoying unless it was in season. And I do mean
never
.

That night, she ran into Daddy’s brother, Rudy, and just couldn’t shake him. She poured down every drink he bought her and slid out of every almost-embrace on the dance floor. Bad
ideas befriended both sides. Mama shouldn’t have been leading him on for free Screwdrivers, knowing how violently emotional Rudy is, and Rudy shouldn’t have been supplying them, knowing how devious the gesture could look to his older brother.

When he and Daddy were kids, Rudy was the type to burn ants or hunt songbirds for hours, sulk and hold obscene grudges when he didn’t get the girl or gadget he wanted. Not liking to work, waiting for Heaven-sent opportunities, Rudy was always jealous of Daddy. His esteemed education, lucrative jobs, or arm candy. Never mind how hard Daddy had to work for those things; he made it seem easy.

But the chief thing Daddy had, that Rudy could never grasp, was a sense of decency, of boundaries. All Rudy saw was the lust for instant gratification. Rudy simply lacks the mental and moral capacity to see otherwise.

I’ve overheard enough of Mama and Daddy’s fights, survived enough my family’s rugged personalities and enough omniscient nightmares to thread together how I think the rest of their relationship went down:

For a night, Rudy wanted to be the lucky man Daddy was, relish the sensation of a beautiful woman. And who is more beautiful than Daddy’s Swedish prize, Carol Price? Who already knew Rudy better than anybody else in the club?

So Rudy took initiative, mad and drunk enough to ignore the consequences. He thought about what his brother would do. His brother would be a man about it, of course; he’d be determined and received. And didn’t most things work out for his brother?

Of course.

Keeping only a goal in mind and no schedule for hindrances, Rudy followed Mama out of the club, his mind distorted in a heinous shade of red and gross generalities.

Dragging on a cigarette, Mama laughed at him as he stumbled closer to her, beside the lightless backdoor. “You’re a joke, you know that, right?” she taunted, extinguishing the stub.  

Rudy was quiet, used to slights from pretty women. Sensing Mama’s detachment, he knew he’d have to be quick and efficient to get what he wanted. Surely, Carol would be like all the other pretty faces; if he asked for any kind of relationship, she’d toy with him, permitting no sex, and puncture his feelings in the end. Besides, she wasn’t quite drunk enough to go to bed with someone as homely as him. Nor was she very fast or coordinated in her buzzed state.

Seizing his opening when Mama turned to dispose of her cigarette, he leaped at her throat and threw her on the cold cobblestone before she could cough on the ashes.

No second thoughts, no hesitance. He’d face rejection no more; he’d be celibate by circumstance no longer. With his stocky build and boorish strength, he easily crushed her out of sound, pinned her in just the position he desired.

By 3 in the morning, a new slit up the leg of her cranberry dress and cold moisture spangling her skin, Mama walked home, murmuring comforting sayings, groggy, flummoxed, and on uneven footing.

Rudy disappeared like an ashen fog.

Despite the throb and stink marring her body, she’d not acknowledge the attack until days later; Daddy made her face it.

Daddy never cared for what family is
supposed
to do; he cared for doing what is right.

He was all set to turn his brother into the cops, but Mama threatened to leave him if he did. “It’s not worth all the trouble; I’d been drinking, I barely remember anyway,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to have to.”

But then, of course, there was the complication of me; I was growing inside her, a culmination of opposite hatred, missed potential, and tarnished fate. I was a fast-track to finding more faults in her and Daddy’s relationship: Daddy was a fastidious Conservative. She was a bleeding-heart Liberal. Daddy was a Southern artifact. She was a New England yuppie. Daddy wanted to raise a family with traditional values somewhere in his home state of Texas. She wanted nothing to do with that “bourgeois” kind of living.

Resentment would slowly bleed through the cracks.

She’d remember all of this every time she’d look at me.

She knew that; she opted to get rid of me before I was fully formed and she’d have to admit I’m as human as her, regardless of what culture fabricates.

Twice as furious as when he’d found out she wanted to protect Rudy, Daddy stuttered: “An a— A-Abor—” He couldn’t so much as say it straight through. “You won’t even admit what that fiend did to you, convict or testify against him, but you’ll take it out on the child?! Carol, I’m sorry, but—”

“It’s too late. I’ve already scheduled it,” Mama insisted with cinched brows. “I don’t need this, this other pest, this other parasite. I can be done with it before it starts.” (Funny, how her tone never changed as I grew into a
bigger
“clump of cells.”)

Grimacing, Daddy wiped the sweat from his forehead and refused to hold his tongue. “You’re running away from the wrong problem, Carol. You’re going to be playing into Rudy’s hand, making more regrets, self-inflicted ones. I won’t let you do this. If the child’s Rudy’s, the child’s just as much mine. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Calm down. Let’s take a step back. Let’s take this heartbreak and let the other
heart beat. This is just a progression of how we’d end up, right? Married with children. The child can still have blond hair and green eyes, be sound of mind. We’ll make this work. Don’t act on misplaced revenge.”

Daddy saved my life before I even knew him.

He never totally convinced Mama of my need or place in this world, but his trying eyes were enough to keep her home on the scheduled date.

Daddy gave up drinking and Mama gave up her job. They moved to Texas and eloped, never muttering the means of me and staying far from family to keep it a secret sore. Their history nearly eluded me, in fact, but Mama had become grossly embittered after 16 years of silence, 16 years of me. She was done with my trouble-making and attention-seeking attitude without Daddy there to placate me, off “wheeling and dealing” as a Senate leader.

She waited until he was home to reiterate my “worthless founding” with more pernicious zeal, challenging him to look me in the eye and “play Daddy” once again.

Naturally, I was shaken, but everything just reinforced my admiration for Daddy and amplified my ire for Mama. Daddy was right; her
choice
was always to be miserable.

Divorce was looking to be a ripe avenue, but in a mere four months they were both extinct anyway. 

In his final hour, Daddy begged me to stay a wholesome child who thinks of him as my true father. He didn’t have to; nothing can pierce my gratitude.

Three months later, when I all but lived in a world parallel to her, Mama was still a self-loathing, self-imposed failure.
A sickly one with bones that protruded like nails.

It was true I drank prematurely and complained of my companions often, but I never set out to act impishly towards Mama. I craved her approval like a baby requires milk. I would sew my dresses when they got torn while I was playing in the woods and keep my room clean as a soap bubble, hoping she’d notice and kiss my forehead or place her warm hand at the crease of my back. I wouldn’t take but one furtive, chaste lover named Harold, thinking Mama would at least see me as ascetic.

But none of these things totaled to tolerance. She begrudged me to her last gust of breath, decrying something of a “vile, unwanted slut.”

Even though I wasn’t told of my origin until seven months ago, at age seven, I could sense Daddy wanted me more; he’d do everything Mama wouldn’t: To lull me to Wonderland, he’d read historical tales to me. To educate me, he’d put me through the country’s finest art academies and show me, firsthand, how government works. To cheer me from the chill of Mama’s supervision, he’d take me on the campaign trail.