The Angry Woman Suite (39 page)

“Elyse, look,” Bean cried. “It’s Stella!”

Daddy roused himself from his somnolence and declared he was stopping his medications.

“Withdrawal,” Mother explained when Daddy’s limbs began jumping again and his lower lip quivered. “Normal.” She opened the drapes for the first time in weeks, and Aunt Rose made apple fritters, and while Bean steered clear of Daddy, she chatted up a storm with everybody else. Stella’s doing, I concluded.
But how?
A miracle, Mother explained, which I couldn’t buy in a thousand years, and so I investigated, asking Bean what she and Stella did on those evenings they closeted themselves in the Airstream alone. Bean answered they drew pictures.

“You draw pictures,” I repeated.

“Portraits,” Bean said loftily. “But Stella points out things I miss. I draw better portraits because of Stella, Elyse.”

“I see,”—although I didn’t.

Bean reflected. “Elyse, we do
art.”

“I see,”—although again I didn’t. But if Bean was happy, so was I—and so I ran to the fields, free at last, hair flying in the breeze, sun hot on my cheeks.

But I didn’t run to solitude, that one thing I’d always craved.

I ran to Michael, the boy I loved.

We’d met at the downtown library. He was in college, majoring in philosophy. Daddy hated college boys, ranking them up there with smartmouths and Masons and hypocrites, and so Michael was my splendid secret. We spoke of history, the Revolutionary War mostly, because George Washington was the topic of the paper I was working on when Michael pulled his chair up next to mine. His was a wide, inviting smile. He leaned over the library table. “You’re beautiful.”

I’d never paid much attention to my appearance. My dark blonde hair was long and straight, parted in the middle, like most girls wore their hair in the last half of the sixties. And I was tall and gangly, and my clothes were not trendy, plus I was studious. Only Aunt Rose and my grandparents had ever called me beautiful.

But the idea of someone trying to snare my sudden beauty suggested all the trappings of a very interesting, interactive game.

I smiled back at Michael.

Every Saturday afternoon, Michael and I met at the library, then he drove me to a house he shared with some other students. We’d stretch out on the floor of his room and drink sloe gin and smoke joints, listening to Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Steppenwolf, and the Stones; and we spoke of the conflict in Vietnam, professing our hatred of politicians, liars, and profiteers, sounding, I rather suspect all these years later, much like Daddy did then. “Nights In White Satin” had just rolled off the hifi when Michael rolled over onto me, and our first kiss was unsure—but I arched my neck and opened my mouth, and Michael’s tongue went around mine, and my legs folded over his, like a mantis clamping onto its prey for survival, and we rocked in time to the Stones.

Aidan eventually parked the Airstream at a recreation park by the bay, twelve miles away, and while he and Stella and Magdalene drove over in the Cadillac every night for dinner, they drove back to the Airstream shortly after, cutting short Bean’s special times with Stella. Bean got sullen, and Daddy took to calling her “Sadsack.”

Things escalated.

“Miss Highandmighty,” Daddy said one night at dinner, looking at me. The look was particularly vicious, and my stomach plummeted.

“Why can’t you entertain your sister?” Daddy demanded. “Her chin’s down to her knees. What, she’s not good enough for you?”

Daddy hadn’t talked mean in ages. And it wasn’t wine making him talk mean now; he hadn’t been drinking. His mouth drooped weirdly on one side. I glanced around the table. Everybody was staring at Daddy. Bean’s eyes were terrified. Even Papa had stirred.

Daddy’s eyes blazed. “Cat got your tongue?” he shot at me.

“Francis,” Mother said, in her warning voice.

“Daddy,” I whimpered.

“Piss!”
Daddy exploded.

“Daddy, no—”

Papa struggled to his feet—but Daddy was already on his, weaving over the table. Papa’s voice quavered from non-use: “Francis, I will not have—”

“Shut up!”
Daddy bellowed.
“Sit, old man!”

He pushed Papa back into his chair, and Papa, so sad and brittle, cried out, and Stella cried along with Papa, whining,
“Stop it, please stop it …”
I jumped to my feet.

“
You
sit down!” I shouted at Daddy—and it was astounding: Daddy actually sat. And gazed up at me meekly. “And don’t you ever,” I railed, “
ever
talk that way to Papa again! Do you hear me?
Do you?”
Daddy hung his head, a posturing so over the top it might’ve been funny except we were talking Daddy here, and nothing about Daddy had ever been funny.

Aunt Rose ducked her head and grimaced as if she’d just been told a terrible thing, and Magdalene reached for my hand. “We’re going for a walk,” she said. It wasn’t a request.

We stood without speaking, watching the orange ball of a sun sink behind a red hill in the distance far beyond the fields. Magdalene broke the silence.

“That was a hard thing you did, going up against my son. In my day it would’ve been considered disrespectful. Children never talked back to their elders. Even when their elders were dead wrong. We had so-called standards.” Her arm went around my shoulders. The orange ball was three-quarters gone. “Maybe I can shed some light, Elyse.” But she sounded suddenly doubtful. “How old are you now?”

“Almost eighteen.”

“Old enough. I have a book for you. Aidan wrote it for your daddy. Your daddy left it at Grayson House many years ago. He never asked for it back.”

Anything to do with books had my attention. “What’s it about?”

Magdalene hesitated. “Two people who died in a fire. But their story may help you understand about your daddy, Elyse … though it will still be hard. It’s frequently hard understanding people. It’s easier to avoid, to exert less effort. Look.” She pointed. “See how the sun is almost gone now?” Her fingers tightened on my arm. “But it will rise tomorrow. And tomorrow, if you’re lucky, you’ll get the chance to do another hard thing.”

Daddy was waiting for us on the front porch when we returned. Magdalene walked by him without saying anything, but Daddy put his hand out, stopping me.

“Elyse, I don’t know what happened … my nerves. I’m sorry—and I’ve apologized to your grandfather.” Suddenly Daddy hugged me so tight my nose felt squished against the crook of his neck. I let him squish me, what choice did I have? He was so terribly sorry.

“Elyse, my dear Elyse,” he murmured. His arms quaked. He smelled like soap and cigarettes, like my scared childhood. I examined the crevices that lined the back of his neck, the way the nape of his dark hair was shorn into a perfect upside down horseshoe. Daddy always had perfect haircuts. Daddy always wanted everything perfect.

“Tell me I’m a good father,” he pleaded.

He’d degraded himself way lower than mean, and I hated myself almost as much as I loved him right then, recognizing yet again that Daddy and I were alike, encouraging neediness to the same extent we pushed it away. I closed my eyes and Daddy and I rocked back and forth, hugging, as if slow dancing.

“You’re a good daddy,” I reassured him, focusing on all those times he
had
singled me out to be his special girl. Because, right then, reassuring him is what was needed for peace. Daddy sighed, obviously relieved, but when I gently extricated myself from him and turned to go inside the house, I saw Mother standing in the doorway watching us, looking as if she wanted to throw up.

I knew exactly how she felt.

I leaned over and kissed Papa’s cheek. I imagined his red-rimmed eyes to be pinpoints of knowing, and I was ashamed. Nothing I’d said to Daddy had been completely untrue, but it
was
sickening how I blew with the wind, two-faced like a Santa Ana, hot when I was supposed to be cold, like a normal wind knew to be. How could I explain my lack of constancy? Not that Papa was asking, or even accusing. In fact, it was as if Daddy’s vitriol had jump-started Papa back to life: he seemed very much with it, knowing
and
ever
-
compassionate. Still, it seemed as if I
should
have explanations for how I behaved with Daddy. I couldn’t explain, though. I couldn’t explain even to myself why I yelled at Daddy one minute and comforted him the next.

Suddenly I wanted Michael. Beautiful, uncomplicated Michael, with whom
I
was beautiful, and with whom I always blew straight and clear and consistent. I phoned him. Twenty minutes later I was back at the fields, under a tree and under Michael, feeling beautiful.

Night after night I snuck from the house and met Michael in the fields—but it was unfathomable the way Daddy’s face swam behind my closed eyes whenever I kissed Michael.

One night, lying on oak leaves, a canopy of branches overhead, Michael asked for the umpteenth time, “But why won’t you let me come over? Why won’t you invite me to your house?”

I propped myself up on an elbow. “It’s not you, Michael. It’s
them.
I … can’t explain.”

“Can you try?”

But it sounded even more stupid when I said the words aloud:

My dad was mean. But he could be kind. He’d killed my dog. But he loved me. He had a nerve problem. So he’d punched me and pulled my hair. He’d dragged me around the house and broken my finger. Right now he was just off his medicines and I couldn’t feel sure of him. He shook like he had a palsy. He’d said I could trust him. He’d said he would do anything in the world to protect me. But I didn’t trust him. I’d
never
trusted him. I didn’t even trust myself. And my sister had never trusted any adult until Stella … and then there was my mother. She was distant; she didn’t protect me. But she was also loving. I admired her. I never wanted to be anything like her. She was helpless. She was strong. She had the eerie ability to shape whole new realities out of nothing but thin air.

She terrified me almost as much as my dad terrified me. The two of them together were beyond terrifying.

“Don’t you see?” I cried. “When it’s just you and me, I know who I am, Michael! But if I were to bring you home, I’d lose that. I’d lose
me!
What there is of me, that is. If I were to bring you home—well, I might just as well
invite
my dad to take pot shots at you, because, trust me, he would if he felt like it, and my mother, she’d let him! Then what always happens next is my mother gets mad at my dad for making a scene, for upsetting her made-up world, whichever one she’s inhabiting at the time, and then my dad gets down in the mouth, then mean, then meaner …

“Later, my mother makes my dad grovel until she decides to forgive him, but by that point they’re both so mad at
me
for making them mad at each other, only of course they’ve no clue how or why they’ve concluded that
I’m
the one who’s ruining their lives!”

I could see Michael was confused. And why not? I was confused, too.

“But … what about your sister? Your parents get mad at you and not Bean?”

“Because!” I almost shouted my frustration. “They don’t see Bean!
They
used
to see Bean, but they haven’t seen her for ages now.
Nobody
sees Bean! Bean doesn’t talk! Or didn’t use to, anyway!” Like that, the truth rammed into me like a car I hadn’t seen coming, and,
whoooosh,
I fell back on our bed of leaves. But quickly as it hit, the truth hurtled past, its wake like dandelions in the wind.

“Bean can make herself invisible, Michael. Most of the time she exists only on paper: she draws pictures of herself.” I held myself perfectly still, gazing at the tree above, half expecting any movement on my part to blow those wisps of truth completely out of reach, to the very tops of the branches.

“My dad used to be a musician. A good one. A
big
name. A really big star—I’m serious. He gave up his career for us. For our family.” I stopped, considering what I’d always been told, what I’d taken as gospel.

“No, that’s not the real truth,” I said. “Daddy gave up music because styles changed and he didn’t. Daddy didn’t know
how
to change. He never learned how to
bend
.”

I looked at Michael then. But he’d stopped listening. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking
above
me. Sudden needles of fear poked my flesh and I jumped to my feet, instinctively raising my arms.

I never actually felt it happen. I heard it instead.
Whack!
And something snapped in my neck. I stumbled backward, blinded by sudden blood. It was my fuel. I pawed the earth.

“Get down!”
Michael shouted from a million miles away.

But I charged, and my forehead connected again—and I heard Daddy grunt. The pain was excruciating, and Daddy’s hands, shaky when off his medications, but now so sure, went around my throat. I stepped back. He took a step forward. I took another step back, and he followed, a macabre tango that lessened the hold he had on me—until my back came up against the tree under which I’d just been so beautiful.

I was trapped. I was Daddy’s, not Michael’s. Always Daddy’s.

Daddy lowered his head to mine, and the pain in my neck crescendoed. He sniffed my hair, my ears, my throat.

“Okay,” he even managed to somehow slur just that one word.

“Daddy, stop. I’m … hurt.”

“Not
okay,” he muttered. “I was walking, looking for you. I was—”

“We weren’t doing anything!” I defended myself, but talking made the pain unbearable. So I began to cry instead, but that hurt too, hating Daddy for fooling me, for hurting me, for not being the kindest man in the world, the bastion of Morningstar Street.

He sniffed me again.
“Lilacs. You smell
like lilacs.”
He sounded incredulous.

The gall rose in my throat.
He
was incomprehensible. But
I
didn’t have to take it any longer. I could get off the seesaw. I didn’t have to ride if I didn’t want to.

I said from between clenched teeth,
“No, I don’t. It’s blood, you idiot! From where you hit me, you idiot!”
And then Daddy began coaxing me to be a good girl, to calm down, talking to me as if I were two years old. He said he’d take care of me, but first I had to shush. I had to stop talking nonsense. He had never hit me. Never ever ever. But now, right now, I had to stop yakking his ear off, or he didn’t know what he’d do.