I grew older. but I wasn't growing all that much taller. I was still five-foot-three, and it began to look as if when I had wished time would freeze, it had, but it had frozen only for me.
Another reason I felt out of place was that I was not half the athlete Brenda was. She didn't like to play any sport with me because I was so poor at it. I was no match for her in Ping- Pong. and I was pathetic when it came to basketball, half the time not even reaching the rim with a shot, and when I threw a baseball-- or anything, for that matter-- she would complain that I threw just like a girl.
What did that mean?
I
wondered. I was a zirl. Board games were my specialty. I could give her a challenge at checkers or backgammon, but she never had the patience to sit for hours playing board games. Through rain and snow, wind and gray skies.
Brenda would be outside shooting baskets, practicing her putt for golf, or just running to stay in shape. She was driven. Daddy used to say proudly. "That girl has drive. She loves competition."
Brenda did love competition, and she loved winning the most. She never played for the fun of it. When she and Daddy played basketball, she would work hard at defeating him. He was good, too, so it was always a battle. If he so much as seemed to let her win. she would rant at him and tell him she didn't need his charity. That would get him angry.
"Charity, huh?" he would puff, and they would play harder, play for keeps, and if she beat him, which she often did, her face would fill with a satisfied glow that made him shake his head as if he didn't
understand her at all, as if she weren't his daughter but some stranger.
Daddy had been a very good athlete in both high school and college. He had his certificates and his trophies, and staying in good health was very important to him. He was always exercising, claiming the physical activity helped him to be a sharper thinker and gave him more energy when others were faltering. In that regard, he was far closer to Brenda than he was to me, but when I was younger, he did think I was cuter, more lovable. He called me his panda bear, because I had Mama's coal-black hair and alabaster complexion, with ebony eyes he said were panda bear button eyes. One of the first stuffed toys he bought me was a panda bear. I kept it with me in bed, lying against the pillows when the bed was made. I kept it under the blanket with me when
I
went to sleep. I called it Mr. Panda and often carried on long conversations with it, rattling away as if I really expected the stuffed toy would suddenly come to life, like toys in the movies, and reply.
Brenda made fun of that when she heard me. Mama thought it was cute, and at one time, so did Daddy, but when he became Mr. Hyde, he mocked it and told me I should put my panda bear in a carton in a closet or give it to a younger girl.
"Where are your real friends?" he would demand. "You don't get invited to parties or anyone's house, and do you know why. April? I'll tell you why. You're too overweight. You won't have any social life. Go on a diet," he ordered.
He wasn't wrong. I didn't have any social life. I had never had a boyfriend, and the only friends
I
had at school were other girls who had never had boyfriends and had none now. No one asked us to dances or parties, and what bothered me a little was the fact that I had never had a heart-throbbing crush on any boy, either. It was a sensitive area for Brenda as well, and she was quick to come to my defense.
"People should be friends with her because of who she is, not because of what she looks like," Brenda told Daddy when he criticized me.
I could hardly breathe. My throat tightened, and my chest constricted. Could a girl my age get a heart attack? I wondered.
I quickly retreated to my room and closed the door. I wanted to be like Brenda and never cry in front of him, but it was harder for me. Maybe I just had more tears inside me than she had. Thank goodness I had my own room, my own sanctuary. He had stopped barging in on me after I was about ten. Mama had told him I was a young lady and that he had to recognize the fact. He wasn't upset about it.
In fact, his face lit up with happiness at the time, and he nodded at the three of us around the dinner table, declaring he had three beautiful women in his home. How could he go so quickly from that sort of a daddy to Mr. Hyde?
I imagined all sorts of fantastic answers. His body had become inhabited by some evil spirit, a poltergeist, or maybe even an extraterrestrial. Someone had cloned him, and the clone had an entirely different personality. Or maybe it was just as Mama had told us when it all began. "He is being this way now because he is afraid you will be too weak or we won't be perfect enough. He doesn't mean to be so cruel. It's just tough love."
"Yeah, right." she said, which was always her way of saying That's stupid.
Her room was right next to mine. We lived in a sprawling ranch-stye home with bay windows in the dining room and large picture windows in the living room. Brenda's and my bedrooms were on one side. and Daddy and Mama's master bedroom was on the other. Daddy had a small wood-paneled office off his bedroom, the living room was large, and the dining room was right next to the kitchen so that Mama had a pass- through window. Our furnishings were all contemporary. Mama liked what she called the clean, simple look. None of it was inexpensive, but in those days. Daddy rarely, if ever, complained about anything she bought. After he became Mr. Hyde-, nothing she bought was right or sensible, even dawn to the brand of milk.
When Brenda and I were growing up, money was never a concern. However, neither she nor I was wasteful or ungrateful for the things we had. We never took anything for granted or whined for expensive toys or clothes. Brenda never even asked Daddy to get her a car when she was sixteen, even though most of her friends and teammates had their own cars, even ones who came from families far less wealthy than ours. She passed her driving test, got her license, and drove Mama's car whenever Mama told her she could. She rarely, if ever, asked Daddy for his car. He used to offer it to her, but when he became Mr. Hyde, he wouldn't, even if he had no use for it and it meant Brenda had to beg someone to pick her up for a special practice or a game. A few times, she had to take the bus.
Because our house was bigger than most nearby and we had a larger lot in an upscale neighborhood of Hickory, a suburban community ninety miles from downtown Memphis, people and our classmates assumed we were very rich. Daddy was a successful business attorney, as his father had been. I couldn't remember my paternal grandfather, because he died of heart failure before I was two, and my paternal grandmother had died four years before that of cancer. Daddy lost his older sister. Marissa, to cancer as well. I was too young at the time to remember much detail. and Mama shielded me more from the sadness. but Brenda could recall how our aunt grew gaunt and pale. She said she was like a room full of light darkening and darkening.
"Every time I saw her, she looked smaller, but her eyes grew bigger. It was like her body was becoming more and more surprised by what was happening to it. It was very weird," she told me. "It got so I was afraid of going to visit her with Daddy and Mama. I envied you because you were so oblivious and protected. Daddy wouldn't take you along to visit like he took me, so you didn't see firsthand how very sad he was about it all. He tried not to be sad. He told me sadness hardens like tar on your soul, and you carry the weight of it forever."
Aunt Marissa was married but had never had children, and we had little contact now with her husband, my uncle Granger. He had left our area and moved to Oregon, where he met another woman and remarried.
Despite all this sorrow. Daddy held on to his optimism and happy personality. He had his own firm with two junior partners and was seemingly always busy. We took at least two vacations a year. Before his Mr. Hyde days. Daddy was a skier and had taught both Brenda and inc how to ski. Mama was okay at it, but almost immediately. Brenda was on the advanced slopes with Daddy, and I was left with Mama to navigate along with the other insecure skiers and children. We went to Aspen and Sun Valley, and once, we all even went to Austria during a Christmas holiday.
They took us to Disneyland and to Universal City in California. We went to the Caribbean. where Daddy and Brenda went scuba diving, and we took a train trip through the Northwest and Canada. There was a pile of vacation pictures in the living room and dozens of family videos on shelves and in drawers.
Our Christmases and Easter holidays were always happy and grand. The front of our house was decorated with lights, as were the trees. Mama would have a parry for her and Daddy's friends and business acquaintances. There was even a time when Daddy pretended to be Santa Claus and surprised me on Christmas morning. I was only four. That was when he gave me Mr. Panda.
Mama loved to cook and bake. She had gone to school to be a paralegal, and that was how she and Daddy had met, but after Brenda was born, she stopped working. She wasn't unhappy about it, and she never thought of herself as some shut-away housewife. She was active in community charity events and frequently held teas and dinner parties. It seemed there was never a dull moment or an empty hour in our house.
Sometimes. I felt as if we truly lived a storybook life, and every day brought a new chapter full of fun and excitement and surprises. If any family was a success, ours truly was. So many of my school friends came from broken families or one-parent families, and a few lived with their grandparents. If they didn't say it, I could read it in their eyes when they saw us all together at a restaurant or at the mall or just walking in the street. You're lucky. You can't fail.
I wasn't as good a student as Brenda was, even with all her extracurricular activities, but I wasn't a poor student. either. There was always an expectation about me. I would lose weight: I would get better grades: I would burst out with some talent. rd be socially popular. Soon. It was always soon.
Soon wasn't to come soon enough. Before it could, the darkness was to close in on us, folding itself over our happy home and then seeping in under the doors, through the windows, down the chimney, until it entered our very hearts.
If I were forced to pick any special moment and say. "There, that's when I remember it all becoming too hard to bear," I'd pick the day Daddy forgot it was Brenda's birthday-- and her sixteenth at that! I knew Mania had reminded him enough times about it. I even overheard her tell him what she was planning to buy her. It was a very expensive mountain bike.
Brenda didn't want a Sweet Sixteen party. She was never that sort of girl. Oh, she enjoyed pretty things and pretty clothes and had her favorite music, but she never seemed distracted by any of it. I remembered when Daddy thought that was a wonderful trait. "It's good to be like Brenda," he would tell me. "It's good to be dedicated and fixed on a Goal, to know your priorities and live your life accordingly."
I supposed he was telling me that because I didn't have any apparent priorities or interests, except that I did like to read. In fact. I loved to read. I could get so lost in a book that I'd lose track of time and even place. Both Daddy and Mama used to laugh remembering when they saw me lying outside on a chaise longue reading and not at all aware that it was raining. It wasn't a heavy rain, just a sprinkle, but surely enough to stain the pages of the book.
"April is truly into the book when she reads it," Mama said. "She's beyond the page, past the paper and ink."
Now. Daddy called that foolish and said I was absentminded. even lame-brained.
"Only dogs would stay out in the rain like that. Even cats are smarter," he would comment should Mama ever remind him of that time. He came very close to calling me retarded, and of course. I hurried away to hide my tears behind the closed door of my room.
I was so mad at him those days that I was happy he had forgotten it was Brenda's birthday.
Good.
I thought.
Now he's the one who looks like he's lame-brained, not me.
He had come home expecting that Mama had prepared dinner and we would be eating almost immediately. Instead, of course, she had made reservations at what used to be our favorite family restaurant. Dickson's Steak House. She told Brenda and me to get dressed and ready. anticipating Daddy's arrival, She did comment that she wasn't sure about his exact arrival time because he hadn't returned her phone call to the office and all his secretary would say was that he was in conference. She left a message and jumped to go to the phone every time it rang, but it was never Daddy.
The three of us, all dressed and ready, sat in the living room waiting. Mama looked nervously at the clock.
"What could be holding him up?" she muttered.
"Why doesn't he call you?" Brenda demanded. "It's just plain inconsiderate."
Brenda's face had changed so from her younger days. It used to be rounder, more like mine, but with her growth spurt. as Mama liked to call it, her face narrowed and seemed even to lengthen. I suppose her best feature was her eyes. They weren't quite as dark as mine. They were almost charcoal but clear and striking and almond-shaped. Her hair was more dark brown than black. She wore very little makeup, barely some lipstick, never cared about trimming her eyebrows, and rarely, if ever, wore earrings. She was wearing some tonight and did brush her hair, which she had let grow a little longer, more. I thought, to please Mama than herself.
Tall and lean like Daddy, she had a small bosom, long legs, and long arms. Her fingers weren't exceptionally long, but she had a very strong grip. I could see it in the faces of the men with whom she shook hands whenever she was introduced to someone. They were always surprised at the strength in her hand.
Part of her ability to focus was the intensity in her eyes when she fixed them on something, whether it be a basketball net or a hurdle to jump on the running track. She could apply this same firm attention to people as well, and most could not look her in the eyes.
"Now, Brenda," Mama began, preparing to roll out one of her many excuses for Daddy's current disturbing behavior.
"No, it's just plain rude for him to do this to us. Mama," she insisted.
"Oh. I'm sure he has something terribly heavy on his mind. Some of his cases are so complicated, Brenda. We just don't appreciate how hard he works. He's so good at what he does, we take it all for granted," Mama said.
"Yeah, right," Brenda replied, and folded her arms under her bosom so tightly her shoulders arched. She glared at the doorway.
Mama glanced again at the clock.
"We're never going to make that reservation. you know." Brenda muttered. "Call his office and see if he left, at least." she insisted.
"I've called twice," Mama revealed, quickly swinging her eyes away.
"Twice? Since when?"
"It doesn't matter."
"He can't be that busy that he can't take out two minutes." Brenda pursued.
Mama was silent. Her face was in a battle, fighting to maintain its composure. She closed her eves and took a deep breath. Finally, we heard the garage door go up.
Mama smiled and stood up.
The door to the garage was right off the pantry behind the kitchen. We all waited, our eyes fixed on the living room doorway. He didn't appear.
"Matt?" Mama called.
"In a minute," he said sharply.
He was walking down the hallway to his office. We could hew him. Mama winked at us and waited. Brenda looked at her watch and sighed loudly. I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until I felt the ache in my chest and sucked in some air.
"What the hell's going on here?" we heard.
His footsteps grew louder and faster, and a moment later, he was in the doorway. He stood there looking at all of us, the confusion clear on his face.
Daddy was always a handsome man. He had my coal-black hair and my ebony eyes with his dark complexion that gave him the look of a man who worked in the sunlight and not in an office. His chin was sharp, with a firm, masculine mouth and a perfectly shaped straight nose.
"What's happening here? Why are you all dressed and sitting the living room? Why haven't you made dinner. Nora?"
Mama laughed nervously, hoping that he was kidding and that he would suddenly burst out with "Happy Birthday" and reveal some surprise gift besides the mountain bike they had bought her. He was always doing something like that.
"Well?"
Her smile sank into her face.
"It's Brenda's sixteenth birthday. Matt. Remember. I told you this morning we have reservations at Dickson's Steak House."
His eves blinked quickly, and then he turned on Mama. "No, you didn't tell me that."
"I did. Matt"
"I said you didn't. I think I'd remember something like that. You've been doing this sort of thing more and more lately, making plans without first checking with me. I've made arrangements to meet Bob Peterson at eight back at the office. We have depositions on the Morgan case to prepare."
"But... you certainly knew it was Brenda's birthday," she said. He glanced at Brenda.
She stood up sharply. "I don't care about any stupid birthday dinner, anyway." she said. She put her head down and charted out of the living room.
My heart was pounding.
"But..." Mama looked at Daddy.
"Well, I can't help it," he said. "We'll have a birthday dinner tomorrow night. What's the
difference? Just put on a steak for me here." He turned and left Mama and me staring at each other.
She pulled herself together quickly, sucking back her tears and taking a breath so deep I thought it had originated in her feet.
"April, do me a favor and cancel our
reservation at Dickson's, please," she said. "Then come help me set the table,
"Mama, this is terrible. It's Brenda's Sweet Sixteen dinner!"
"Just do as
I
ask, please." she said.
She turned quickly so I wouldn't see her tears. I was glad about that. I didn't want her to see mine. I made the phone call and then set the table while she worked quickly to prepare a dinner for us. I could hear her sniffles. but I didn't ask her if she was crying or say anything. Instead. I went to Brenda's room and knocked on her door.
"What is it?" she snapped.
"It's just me."
"What do you want?" she asked without opening the door. "Mama's making us dinner. We canceled the reservation at the restaurant."
"I don't care."
"I'm sorry. Brenda."
I stood by the door, waiting. listening. Brenda rarely ever showed me any sadness. I used to wish and wish I could be as strong as she was, but Mama once said something I never forgot. She said. "Brenda cries on the inside, and when you keep your tears inside you all the time, you have a better chance of drowning in your sadness."
"Can I give you your present from me?" I asked through the closed door.
She was quiet.
Then the door opened, and I saw she had changed back into her jeans and the school sweatshirt that Daddy said was practically her second skin because she wore it so much. When he had first said it, it was like a funny joke, but now it was more like a bitter criticism.
"I'm not in the birthday mood. April. I'm sorry." she said, her arms folded, her eyelids lowered like tiny flags of surrender.