Sister (16 page)

“Now say Uncle Sam.”

“Uncle Sam.”

“Uncle Sam please.”

“Uncle Sam please.”

“Gordon, you're hurting him,” my mother would say.

“Uncle Sam please with a cherry.”

“Uncle Sam—”

“Get off him, Gordon. I mean it.”

My father would get up then and call Sam a sissy who needed his mommy to rescue him. And Sam would cry with rage, his cheek a bright red smear where my father had rubbed it back and forth against the carpet.

But this time Sam wasn't backing down. “What did you do to Mom?” he said, his face inches from my father's. “Tell me or
I'll kill you
!”

His voice was high, a kettle's desperate whistle, and something in my father seemed to give beneath that sound. “Look, sport,” he said, releasing Sam's hips. “You just calm down, OK? I'll let your grandma explain it to you.”

He got up, dialed my grandmother's number, and passed the phone to Sam. For a long time, Sam didn't say anything. Then he began to nod. Yes, he would pray for her. Yes, he would be a good boy while she was gone. He hung up and went upstairs to our room without looking at either of us. My father sat back down at the table, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers, an oddly delicate gesture.

“What gets into you kids?” he asked. It was clear he did not expect an answer.

My mother came home from the hospital with gifts for Sam and me: neat bars of hospital soap, paper shoes, a handful of tongue depressors. She let us look at her stitches and promised we could touch her scar as soon as it healed. When I tried to tell her about the scissors, the spanking, she didn't seem to hear what I was saying. Instead, she looked vaguely uncomfortable, the way she had the time my father sprained my shoulder, or the time he'd broken Sam's finger roughhousing, or the time Sam left his bicycle behind my father's car despite my father's warnings, and my father had backed over it deliberately. “I'm sure your father did the best he could,” she said, and that was the end of it. Cer
tainly my father never brought it up again. And so I doubted myself. Maybe I was exaggerating. Maybe I was making things up or misunderstanding what I'd seen.

In Baltimore, the night before I went home for Christmas, I packed everything I could carry: clothes, books, musical scores, stuffed animals, keepsakes, letters, folders of notes and completed assignments. “You're just going home for two weeks,” Phoebe said. She was pacing wary circles around my matching faux leather suitcases, garment bag, overnight bag, and carry-on case.

“Two and a half,” I said.

The smallest of the suitcases was open; she knelt down to look inside. “Syllabi?” she said. “A campus map? Salt and pepper shakers—from the cafeteria? Nice touch. Oh, and six bars of soap. Of course.” I was busy trying to cram my second swimming suit into a side pocket of the garment bag. A glove popped out like a drowning hand. “Abby, your parents will have soap, don't you think?”

How could I explain that I was afraid the past few months would disappear as soon as I opened my parents' front door?

My last final was on the morning of Christmas Eve; my parents picked me up at the airport that night. I was shocked by the gray in my father's hair. He hugged me briefly, awkwardly, before stepping back to let my mother throw her arms around me. Then none of us seemed to know what to say. As we went to get my luggage, I noticed how my parents didn't look directly at each other, how they kept their bodies separate, distant. “How are you?” they kept asking me. “How are
you
?” I'd ask back. But when my luggage came down the conveyor belt, item after item, that finally broke the ice. “Good God,” my father said, restored to his own self. “I better go get a skycap. What did you do, bring the whole damn state of Maryland with you?”

“This isn't just an overnight stay,” my mother defended me. “She probably had to bring a lot of schoolwork with her.”

My father's back was clearly bothering him; still, he insisted
on lifting each piece of luggage off the conveyor belt. I checked each one for my name. I hoped I had brought enough.

 

The next morning, I woke up at dawn, and for a moment I couldn't remember where I was. I listened for the traffic noise of Charles Street, but all I heard was silence. Then I remembered I was home. It was Christmas. I groped for the nightstand lamp; it was gone. Lots of things weren't where I'd remembered them to be: the owl-shaped wall clock in the kitchen; the collapsible TV trays in the living room; the portable TV in the kitchen. I assumed that my father had taken them to the shed, which was where, for all practical purposes, he was living. After coming home from the airport, he'd surprised me by saying good night at the kitchen door. Not knowing what else to do, I'd simply watched him cross the snowy yard to the shed. “I'll see you tomorrow, then,” I called suddenly, and he waved before going inside.

“Do you eat separately too?” I'd asked my mother.

“Oh, goodness no,” she said. “He just sleeps better there. Our bed irritates his back. By the way,” she said, changing the subject, “I told Father Van Dan you'd sing the offertory at noon Mass.”

“You did?”

“Just the Ave Maria. He only called yesterday to ask. Serina Oben was going to do it, but she's ill. I didn't think you'd mind.”

Aside from chorus practice once a week, I hadn't sung all semester; this morning, I'd have some serious warming up to do. I got dressed by touch, my eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness, which was not darkness, I realized, but a vague, grainy dullness. There was light coming from somewhere. But who could be up this early? I opened my door and followed the light down the stairs and into the living room, where my father was standing by the mantel, clean-shaven, neatly dressed in corduroys and a button-down shirt and his leather bomber jacket.

“Good morning,” he said, as if I still came down these steps every day. “I'm glad you're up.”

“Hi,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah,” my father said, and he made a wry face at the bare room. “Not much of a Christmas, huh?” There were no decorations; there was no Christmas tree. The house was the most orderly I'd ever seen it. The last of our cats, a battered gray tom, had died, and now there were no pets, no children, no family to clutter rooms that had seemed so much larger when I was young. “Say, look what I found,” my father said. He held up a small orange ashtray made of coiled clay, an old school project of mine. I reached for it, but he put it on top of the mantel, carefully, as if it might crumble away.

“Sam was just five when he made that.”

“I made it,” I said.

He smiled at me the way adults smile at a child who is telling a lie.

“My initials are on the bottom.”

“Those are Sam's initials,” my father said. “Your mother can have it, if she wants.”

“That's nice,” I said. Perhaps Sam
had
made it. He'd had to make ashtrays in art class too.

“Tell her it's a Christmas present,” my father said.

“You can tell her yourself,” I said, and then I teased him, saying, “So where's
my
Christmas present?”

“I thought I saw a bag of coal outside,” he teased back. “Have a cup of java with your old man,” he said, and I followed him into the kitchen, where the coffee was already made.

“What time did
you
get up?” I said. He filled two mugs that had the Fountain Ford logo on one side and a slogan on the other. One said I'
M THE BOSS
; the other said
DON'T BLAME ME
. They were Christmas gifts from his staff. Each year, he got a new mug, a new slogan.

“Oh, fivish,” my father said. “I want to be on the road by
six.” The mugs steamed madly in the chilly air. “Choose,” he said, and I took I'
M THE BOSS
. “Your mother's daughter, aren't you?” my father said.

“Where are you going?”

He seemed genuinely surprised that I would ask. “Didn't your mother tell you?” he said. He sat down at the kitchen table, pulled out a chair for me, and worked an oversize brochure from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. I looked at a series of glossy pictures: palm trees, boats, a fountain. Neat rows of trailers, identically landscaped, with tiny screened-in porches. “‘Pleasant Acres Adult Community,'” my father read aloud. “‘Pineland, Florida. Live the life of leisure in a mature environment.'”

“Are you going to live there?” I asked stupidly.

My father nodded. “Friday was my last day at Fountain. Got my gold watch, plus they gave me a pair of sunglasses. Ray Bans.” He went through his pockets. “I guess they're already out in the car. They gave me a couple of those plastic flamingos too.” He laughed.

“What about Mom?” I said.

My father drained his coffee cup and stood up. “Your mother isn't going anywhere,” he said. “Your mother is going to stay right here and wait for your brother, for Sam…” His voice faltered. “You know, the goddamn cops aren't even looking anymore,” he said, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Then he handed me the brochure. “You can keep this, OK? And give your mother the ashtray. Don't forget.”

He started to zip up his jacket. Then he stopped. “Hell,” he said, looking down at it. “I sure won't be needing this where I'm going.” It was an old bomber jacket I'd admired for years. “You want it?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Put it on,” he said, and I did. The cuffs came to my fingertips; the shoulders were big and boxy. It was perfect, and I thanked him. “Merry Christmas!” he said. “There, something you
like! I must be an
OK
father after all! One of you kids survived me anyway.” He laughed bitterly.

“You were
OK
,” I said. I didn't know what else to say.

He ran his hands through his hair. He looked at me, a quick, grateful glance, then looked away. “Well,” he said, “you be careful. Take good care of yourself. Let me know if you need anything.” He tugged affectionately at one of the jacket's lapels, turned, and left the house. It was starting to get light. I watched from the kitchen window as his Ford coasted down the snowy drive, the back seat packed to the roof. I wondered which pieces of his life with us he was taking along, which things he'd chosen to forget, to leave behind. It occurred to me that I might never see him again—too late, I wanted to run after him and tell him to stop. His wheels spun briefly at the bottom, where my mother was always getting stuck, but then the car lurched forward onto the highway, taillights glaring north.

I put the brochure in my new jacket pocket and wandered uneasily from room to room, sipping at my lukewarm coffee. I thought about the lamp that had disappeared from my bedside and imagined my father moving through the house, fingering this, deliberating over that, distilling the past into whatever fit best inside a four-door sedan. Already, the rooms were reshaping themselves, swallowing his absence the way they had swallowed my brother's. Soon there would be no clue, no sign, that either of them had ever lived here.

Except Sam's ashtray. I picked it up, enjoying the good firm weight of it in my hand, before flipping it over to read the underside.
AES
/1970. My own childish scrawl. I put it back on the mantel. I wanted to smash it. The stairway creaked, and I turned to see my mother coming down the stairs in her robe and a pair of glaringly new pink slippers.

“Where is your father going this early?” she said. She yawned, then covered her mouth after she'd finished. “You look good in his jacket.”

“He gave it to me.” I managed to keep my voice from shaking. “He's gone.”

“Gone where?” she said. She came over to the mantel and picked up the ashtray. “My goodness, I haven't seen this in a while! Did Sam make it? I can't remember.”

“I did,” I said, my voice rising. “Dad left it for your Christmas present. Mom, did you know Dad was moving to Florida?”

My mother looked at me. “Is he leaving today?”

“
Mom
,” I shouted. “He just left!”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. I had asked him to wait until after Christmas.”

“What's going on?” I said. “Why hasn't anybody told me anything? Are you getting a divorce?”

“I don't believe in that sort of thing,” she said. “I've been telling him that for weeks.”

I knew that if I didn't leave the room, I would grab her and shake her until her teeth rattled. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I said. I was amazed at how calm I sounded. “Dad made some before he left.”

“That would be lovely,” she said politely, and I knew that, at that moment, I could have offered her anything—a glass of cold water, a box of crayons, Sam's safe return—and she would have replied in the same way. “Look in the bread box too, if you would,” she said, still gracious and lost. “There's a wonderful fruitcake from Thillie in there somewhere.”

We wound up splitting the fruitcake, which was heavy with rum, and to help along my father's weak coffee, my mother brought out the bottle of Old Grouse he kept in the cupboard above the refrigerator. For a while, things started to look better. I turned on the radio, and we sang along with the Christmas carols. “Let's celebrate!” my mother said giddily. “I'm a bachelor now—I mean, a bachelorette!” And we made Christmas pancakes with walnuts and peach preserves; we ate strawberry ice cream and cold mashed potatoes and cherry Jell-O avalanched with Cool
Whip topping. It was such a disappointment to discover all the Old Grouse was gone. But there
was
an unopened bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a gift from one of my father's business associates.

“Wait!” my mother said, and she scampered up the stairs. I glanced uneasily at the bare space where the clock used to hang above the sink. I suspected that it was around ten o'clock; I was supposed to sing in two hours. But when my mother came back with two long-stemmed champagne glasses from the attic, I let her fill them up with Bailey's, and after a while she filled them up again.