The Angry Woman Suite (40 page)

“Elyse!”
Someone called my name—and Daddy heard it too, because his hands dropped to his sides—and that’s when I saw my opening: a fast sidestep, and I’d be free of him, free to run. I gathered my strength, talking myself through the agony in my neck.

“I hate your stupid game,”
I hurled at Daddy.
“And I hate you.”

And that was it, just time enough for the moon to crest the hill beyond the field, illuminating Daddy’s panicked expression.

The words he threw back at me were a flash flood of sideswiping debris, attempting to pull me under, to bury me with guilt because of what
he
needed—which I knew because I knew his game. I’d studied it nearly my whole life.

“I saw you hurt yourself!” Daddy protested. “I wanted to help you, to save you. I’ve always wanted to save you, Elyse! To fix things so life could be better for you and Bean! But you’ve fought me since the day I met you. You’ve fought me every inch of the way, never believing in me. I don’t know why you treat me the way you do. And now lilacs.” Daddy’s shoulders shook with wrenching sobs. “You smell like … Lothian.” He threw his head back.

“Why?”
he howled.
“Why can’t I do anything right?”

And then a hand shot out of the darkness. It grabbed Daddy by the shoulder and spun him around. “Shut up now, Francis,” Uncle Buster said gently. “Just shut the fuck up.”

And I fell into Aidan’s arms.

I withdrew. Big-time withdrew. I didn’t even want to see Michael, and I didn’t ask after Daddy
or
Mother. I allowed just six people into my hospital room: Bean, Papa, Aunt Rose, and Aidan and Magdalene and Stella. And I got whatever I wanted. Suddenly everybody wanted to make me happy.

The first story I heard was that Michael had run up Morningstar Street shouting at the top of his lungs, and everyone had stepped outside and followed him back down to the fields. Everyone had watched me carried out of the fields, and everyone had watched me vomit. “Told you,” I overheard a neighbor say while the paramedics were stabilizing my neck. “Told you that one would be trouble one day. Lying with a boy under a tree and hitting her head on a branch coming up for air.
Oh please.”

Michael’s story, so I heard, was that I’d lost my bearings after running interference with the tree branch, going a little nuts right after, blood streaming down my face, blinding me—not to mention, scaring
him
half to death.

Oh please
, I thought. Was
he
blind—hadn’t he seen Daddy wallop me?

The doctor’s story was that I had a concussion and a cracked vertebrae. The levator muscle over my eye had been nearly severed.

All the neighbors watched me transferred onto a gurney, into the ambulance. They watched Papa and Aunt Rose and Mother huddle together, and they saw Aidan’s arm go around Magdalene. They saw Bean cling to Stella.

But no one saw Daddy or Uncle Buster leave the fields that night.

In fact, nobody on Morningstar Street ever saw Daddy or Uncle Buster again.

Mother’s story, so I heard, became that Daddy had been taken back to a cancer hospital. For more treatment. Aunt Rose’s story was that of course she believed me. If I said Daddy socked me, then Daddy had socked me. She knew from experience that Daddy could go off half-cocked. And she pitied my mother. Yes, she did. That girl had been looking for somebody to rescue her after Stephen Eric died, and had found herself shit for brains instead.

Aunt Rose put a cool hand on my forehead. She suggested I file a complaint against “Francis” for socking me—and I was sure Aidan heard her say that because suddenly Aidan’s story became that Daddy wasn’t in the same hospital as before, in San Bernardino. And Aidan also volunteered another tidbit (and Aunt Rose didn’t make a face when he said it, because she thought Aidan walked on water, even if he couldn’t see the truth of Francis):

“Your daddy,” Aidan said, “… well, it’s true he’s not too well. But he’s getting the help he needs. Keep that in mind, will you? Like all fathers, your daddy wanted to be the only man in your life, Elyse. That’s all.”

When Aidan stepped out of the room, Aunt Rose said, “Well, wherever Francis is, and I’m not saying I know, because I don’t, though for sure Aidan does … but what I am saying is, when Francis gets back home, I’ll still help you square things however you need to, Elyse.”

Bean, sad and silent again, stroked a dollar-sized area of skin on my arm over and over, and Stella rocked back and forth on her heels, chanting, “Let’s go home, let’s go home.” This sounded like, “Es go hoe, es go hoe.”

Only Papa didn’t seem stricken. In fact, Papa seemed more like his old self, seeing through things right and left. He caught me alone, a rare thing in a hospital room.

“The center, Elyse,” Papa urged. “Stay with it,
Liebling
. Do you understand? The game’s far from over. You can’t quit now. You can’t let
him
win.”

My heart fluttered recognizing Papa was fully back. He bent nearer.

“If you quit, then
they
don’t have to face what happened. That’s what they want, Elyse. That’s all anyone wants. Not to have to face the truth of his or her life. But that wouldn’t be fair to
you,
pretending what happened was
your
fault. Now here’s what I see: Francis’ mother is less threatened than anyone else.”

It hadn’t gotten by me that my stepfather was now Francis to me and my family, not “Daddy” anymore.

“Magdalene?”

“Yes—Magdalene.
She’s
the center. Has she said—?” Papa looked over his shoulder again, as if expecting an interruption.

“No. Wait—before, she gave me a book. It’s Aidan’s journal. But I haven’t read it.”

Papa’s breath quickened, as if the world turned on this piece of information.

A nurse poked her head into the room. Papa nodded—and I’d have sworn something passed between him and that nurse. Papa fixed me with a stern eye.

“Remember what I said. You
must
play from the center only.”

It seemed Magdalene was the only one
without
a story. She said just one thing: that she was taking me and Bean home with her to Grayson House for the summer.

Aunt Rose packed our suitcases, and she and Papa came to the hospital to see us off, walking beside the nurse pushing my wheelchair to the curb where Bean, Aidan, Stella and Magdalene waited at the car, the Airstream hitched behind it. I looked around. No Mother, and no Michael. I kept my expression neutral. After all, no surprise concerning Mother. And I hadn’t even told Michael I was going to Pennsylvania, because I was feeling unsure of him, too. Just like I was unsure of the name of the game that
everyone
in the whole world now seemed to be playing.

***

It was a relief to exert less effort. While the others rode up front in the car, I stretched out inside the Airstream and buried myself in Aidan’s journal, transported to older fights for independence. The country’s, and Aidan’s.

The Grayson family story also drew me in. With the exception of Magdalene, they had treated Stella shamefully—and only Magdalene had been able to see through her parents, Lear and Elizabeth. Once the gift is bestowed, you have it for life, it seems. Only one flaw in the narrative: I couldn’t reconcile how Frederick’s true nature had gotten past Magdalene to begin with. But then I recalled how Papa had changed when my grandmother died, and that’s when I understood that even people who have the gift have to pull away from it now and then because it can be just too painful.

I
assumed
Magdalene had told Aidan she’d given me the journal, but Aidan said nothing other than, “Would you mind turning that down?” when I joined them for our first meal on the road, a picnic at a road stop, transistor radio held to my ear. And then, “What
is
that god-awful racket, anyway?”

“Rolling Stones. And they’re not awful. They’re neat.”

“Subjective assessment, thank you very much.”

I finished reading the journal and stared out the window of the Airstream for two days, oblivious to Texas (which took those two days to cross), thinking about what had happened to Stella, and wondering about Lear Grayson, how such a person is made. And I thought about the war between the Waterstons, and considered the fire that had killed them. By the time we’d crossed the border into Louisiana, my fingers had inched back to the journal, and I’d begun writing down my questions.

It was slow going. There was the problem of my youth. I hadn’t yet
accepted
the messiness of love, and I’d no personal frame of reference for how complicated marriage is, so I was limited in my understanding of the Waterstons’ marriage.

But, basically, I just needed to remember that each of us keeps plenty of blinders handy for those things that scare the shit out of us.

I looked over my notes. I had eight questions. They were bait, rhetoric, because I already knew who’d killed the Waterstons. What I really wanted was more background, more information, about my daddy, the killer’s
grandson,
so I could have a fuller picture, so I could make sense of the insensible; so I could understand my life.

“Where’s Jamie?” I asked, stepping out of the Airstream. “Is he dead?” We’d parked at a campsite, and I’d waited until Magdalene and Stella left for supplies, taking Bean with them. Aidan looked up from his newspaper. It was clear he hadn’t expected the question so soon.

“And which angry woman did it, Aidan? Not Magdalene, or she’d never have given me your journal. So
was
it Lothian who killed the Waterstons? Was Lothian trying to punish Sahar for threatening to cut Jamie out of her will if he’d anything more to do with her?

“Or—was it Sahar herself, as Jamie seemed to think? Or
could
it have been Elizabeth Grayson? Elizabeth who was ticked at the world in general, and Matthew Waterston in particular, for even painting those pictures of Magdalene?

“Or was it “crazy” Stella, after all? Which angry woman did it, Aidan? Which angry woman was so out in left field that she killed Matthew and Sahar Waterston, and then continued taking her craziness out on the rest of the Graysons and ruined my daddy for me in the process?”

There, I’d said it pretty much the way I’d written it down.

But then Aidan said the craziest thing back, and believe you me, I’d learned a thing or two about crazy from Daddy.

He replied, “I’m not an isolationist. And it wasn’t a woman.” Aidan ran his hands through his thick hair. He looked tired.

“It was Lear Grayson, wasn’t it? That’s who you mean, isn’t it, Aidan?”

But Aidan rambled. “I was once, and in every sense of the word—an isolationist, that is. Like you’ve been lately. Avoiding getting close, like everyone’s … hot. Did you know isolationism used to be a very American attitude, in the political sense?” He ran his hands over his head again. “But what happened with me is that some people came along and showed me how to be …
more
. Lear Grayson was one of those, though in the beginning he actually wasn’t all that friendly. Didn’t matter. He still pulled me out of myself. Matthew did that, too, and so did Jamie. And Magdalene, naturally.”

Now
he looked at me. “I know something about war, Elyse. I’ve lived through two of them, plus I’ve been studying our own war for independence my entire life … so I know the way you end one war isn’t necessarily the way you end another. But sometimes—sometimes you just get frozen and you can’t come clean and so you end up being isolationist by default.”

“So, is that what happened the night of the fire, Aidan? Did you freeze? Did you actually see what Lear did, but then you froze?”

He shifted his gaze to a spot over my shoulder. I waited, not
really
expecting him to tell me that he’d watched Lear Grayson kill the Waterstons. I was playing a game after all, weakening my opponent by wearing him down. But I was also getting too far off point. So I came straight out and asked Aidan if he thought Daddy was sick like Matthew Waterston, and like Jamie. Is that why Daddy shakes? I asked. Or was it the Grayson women who’d made Daddy so shaky?

Later, after I returned to the Airstream and replayed in my head everything that Aidan told me, and what he hadn’t, matching it up against what he’d written in the journal, I suddenly saw what
could’ve
happened if I hadn’t gotten hurt in the fields, and Magdalene and Aidan hadn’t taken me and Bean on the road with them: I could’ve been hurt worse, because Huntington’s is progressive.

And then I pulled away from looking at what Aidan had saved
me
from: Daddy’s full potential.

I pulled away just like Magdalene had once pulled away from looking at Frederick. And like Papa had pulled away when my grandma died, understanding yet again that sometimes you just have to pull away in order to stay intact.

At lunch Bean said, “We’ve missed you,” peering at me intently. “Your eye looks better.”

Bean was so enamored of Stella, riding with her in the back seat of the car, hunkering down beside her at campfires, even sleeping next to Stella and not me, how was it possible she’d missed me?

“Yes, we’ve missed you,” Stella echoed. Her pale eyes, like Magdalene’s, scrutinized me, too.

“Aidan says we’ll be at Grayson House in two days. Isn’t it exciting, Elyse?” Bean didn’t sound excited. She sounded tense. “Can we ride in the trailer with you?
I
miss you, Elyse.”

There was a place inside me reserved just for Bean. It had always been there, a haven we’d built together from shared fear. Its opening shifted like sand, and I went in and widened it more, holding its weight on my shoulders, taking on the blame, saying, “Bean,” and letting my sister back in, touching her shoulder and leaning into her. I flattened my face against her hair, coming home, taking deep gulps of Bean’s safe, familiar smell: I knew who I was with Bean. I was her protector, and she was my other comfort.

***

We watched from the Airstream, crossing another state line, this one separating Pennsylvania from Ohio. Some hours later, Stella announced, “Look,
everywhere
there’s water, there’s the Brandywine.”