The Angry Woman Suite (36 page)

Daddy wasn’t even all the way in the door from work before Mother started hurling things at him: a platter, a dishtowel, stupid things. Things that couldn’t really hurt. Daddy’s eyes went soft. And the softer his eyes went, the more things Mother found to throw. I wisely stayed in the background, and Bean stayed farther back. I’m not even sure Mother and Daddy realized we were watching them.

“We’re not going!” Mother cried. “And that’s my final word!” She threw a cup at Daddy, who caught it neatly.

“Now, calm down,” Daddy crooned. “Diana, just calm down …”

“Calm down, my foot! You promised!”

Daddy moved in closer. He offered his hand. A smile lifted the corners of his lips. He showed his teeth. Mother hesitated.

“None of your tricks, Francis.”

Daddy’s smile widened. He looked excited. “No tricks, Diana.”

Mother put a trembling hand out, meeting Daddy’s halfway. Tears glistened in her eyes. “You … sure?” She practically fell into his arms.

“I’m sure,” Daddy said.

“You told me we could always live in California,” Mother wept. “That we’d
never
have to move to Pennsylvania … I could never move the girls, Francis. Why, their grandparents are here, their aunt. I could never do that to Elyse or Bean. I could never take them to the ends of the earth.” Mother hiccoughed. “You promised, Francis.”

I saw Daddy wince. But he soothed Mother, patting her hair and saying, “I know, I know …”

And that’s when I understood that Daddy was homesick and yearning for something
more
, and he’d expected his family to
want
to look for that more with him in Pennsylvania. But Mother was resisting, using me and Bean as the reasons why Daddy couldn’t have more. Which was silly. Mother
had
allowed Daddy to move Bean and me to Mississippi, another end of the earth, hardly even looking back over her shoulder when she did that, so it made little sense to be using Bean and me as excuses now—something Daddy was also realizing. His eyes, like black, shiny pebbles, flew open then and landed on mine, spiking fear back up into my throat. His arms dropped away from Mother.

“Get your coats,” he barked at Bean and me.
“Now!”

Mother whirled, and seeing my sister and me standing frozen in the hallway, cried out,
“Francis, no!”

But Daddy was all over the place, in the coat closet, rummaging furiously, throwing things out on the floor behind him. “There and there!” he yelled. “Put it on. Put it on! Put it on, I tell you!”

Bean and I dove for our coats, and as Mother stumbled trying to grab us away from Daddy, he shoved me and Bean out the front door. The click the door made was solid, final, and Mother didn’t even try opening it to look at us one last time.

“Get in,” Daddy ordered. Bean and I climbed into the back seat of the car. We held hands—Bean’s shook in mine. In fact, Bean shook all over, and it was that very trembling that made my nerves move back into that safe, flat place in my head where I could watch Daddy unseen. I took note of the way he twitched and gnawed on his lower lip; the things he always did when Mother tried outplaying him.

Daddy drove carefully down Morningstar Street, taking a left at the corner, and then two blocks farther, turning right, driving us deep into the country, away from Pacific Gardens, away from civilization, away from reason.

Once we’d passed the last streetlight, and the night was so black that I could only see the ghostly-lit speedometer and twin yellow fingers of headlights, we picked up speed. Not all at once. Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly—but then faster, then faster still. We whizzed down the two-lane road, not even a good road, a road littered with pot holes. It was a country road, for God’s sake, with a black river on one side and rocky ravines on the other. At high speed, a death trap.

Was Daddy out of his mind?

“Daddy!” Bean suddenly shrieked. “Daddy … please, Daddy, don’t fall me in!”

But Daddy didn’t slow down.
He picked up speed.
I squeezed Bean’s hand and looked over the front seat at the speedometer—70 miles per hour!—and Daddy hunched over the wheel. His shoulders shook. I couldn’t see his face.

“Daddy!” I cried. And then Bean let out a scream so horrible it took all my attention.

“Make him stop! Oh Elyse, make Daddy stop!”

80 miles per hour! 85! 90!

I pounded the back of Daddy’s seat, and Bean clung to me.

“Daddy,” I yelled. “Stop! Stop this very second!”

100 miles per hour!

Of course there was no doubt he meant to kill us. Us and him, too. And make Mother sorry she wouldn’t let him move us to Pennsylvania. She didn’t even know the meaning of sorry yet … she would learn. Daddy would teach her.

And then the stop was so abrupt it wrenched Bean from my arms and pitched me head first against the back of the front seat. The overhead light came on. Daddy’s eerie wail pierced the night:

“Not myyyyyyyyyyyy fault!
Stuck! The accelerator … stuck! Stuck!” He twisted around in his seat and looked down at us, the whites of his eyes huge, the pupils dilated. “You girls all right?”

“Stop it, Daddy,” I sobbed. “Don’t … talk.”

“Elyse, it wasn’t my fault! It’s
never
my fault!”

I
wanted
to believe him. He was my daddy after all, and he loved us.

His shoulders stopped twitching then. And did I imagine it, or did Daddy’s eyes darken further … was that triumph I saw? Who knew, the way my realities were tripping all over the place? But I did
not
imagine that drama was Daddy’s drug, or that more rapidly than even Papa could’ve predicted, Daddy’s sickness was sucking Mother in, making drama her drug as well—and what I was I really afraid of? It wasn’t of what was
out there
. I was afraid of me. Of what was
inside
me. I was afraid drama would become my drug, too. That I would catch Daddy and Mother’s sickness. That I would become like them.

I reached for Bean lying on the other side of the hump on the floor. And how could the drama not sicken Bean, too?

I was almost fourteen when Bean was diagnosed with elective mutism, and when Daddy, drunk and mean, broke my finger as I rode his back to keep him from trying to shame Bean into talking. Poor Bean! So small, so scared.

Later, when Daddy was sober and everyone subdued (although Mother still looked like she wanted to wring
my
neck), Daddy tried explaining.

“God did not make Bean silent,” he said, fixing me with bloodshot eyes. “And, Elyse, He did not make you like your aunt Rose, or my aunt Lothian. Bean
could
talk if she wanted, and, Elyse, you
could
interact with family and behave properly, not like the murdering bitches who raised me. Your rudeness is hurtful. Do you realize how hurtful you are to your mother, acting like you don’t have two minutes of time for her, always reading or down at those goddamn fields? Now, if you and Bean could just be more loving …”

I didn’t know squat about Daddy’s Lothian, but I knew
he
was pathetic—yet somehow he still got to me. He
always
got to me, because I could tell he
was
ashamed, and so was Mother; I could tell by the way they kept looking at my hugely bandaged finger. And so while I was telling everyone who asked about my finger that I’d walked into a door, I quietly examined all sides of the situation, even calling up Papa’s play book in my head, eventually suspecting I
might’ve
been impetuous, jumping on Daddy and startling him so that his grabbing my hand and yanking it back had been reflex, nothing more.

Daddy didn’t give up drinking right then, but he
did
evolve into a quieter drunk, and I in turn began loosening my grip on sanctimony, resolving to be more loving. I also resolved to be on the lookout for anything having to do with those murdering women Daddy was always talking about, especially his Lothian. If I knew just one thing, it was this: Daddy had been putting out a call for a new game for some time now. And he wanted
me
to play. Mother would no longer play with him. Mother was sick of him.

I called the game “Murder Mystery” because I was pretty sure Daddy’s bitches were somewhere in its mix—maybe even the point of his game. Another thing I was almost as sure of? A centered person
could
win the game—and whoever won would be considered the undisputed winner of all time.

That summer, at about the same time Daddy said he’d put his trumpet away for good and that church would no longer be a part of our lives because horn and church had
both
tried taking his family away from him, Daddy gave me Jack, a skinny gray mutt he’d found wandering the neighborhood. Jack was a few months old, and had wet baby seal-eyes.

Immersed in my love for Jack, the game with Daddy was put on indefinite hold.

“Jack is a responsibility,” Daddy said, smiling. “But he has to stay outside, Elyse. Your mother would have a coronary, a dog in her house.”

I thanked Daddy profusely, loving him again, assuring him I understood about responsibility, and then I went looking for Bean. I found her sitting at the side of the house, looking pained. “This is the only place I can get any privacy,” she said.

I knelt, spilling Jack in her lap. “Should I leave?”

Bean gave me a sharp look. “Daddy hates dogs. Remember the story about the dog that tried to kill him when he was little, and he killed it instead?”

“No,” I scoffed, but I scoffed nicely because I’d become a nicer person since I’d gotten Jack. “It’s women Daddy doesn’t care for,
not
dogs. Daddy found Jack for
us,
Bean
.”

We went to the fields and collected pollywogs from the stream, in pimento jars, laughing at Jack splashing in the shallow water, and I repeated for the umpteenth time that Jack was the best thing that had ever happened to us, and all because of Daddy.

Mother got the flu, and Daddy said I could stay home from school and run the house for Mother. I did the washing and ironing, then fixed dinner, getting everything tidy by the time Daddy arrived home from work. I even changed into nicer clothes, like Mother always did for Daddy. Sitting down to dinner, I expected Daddy to say how good everything was, like he usually did with Mother, but he filled his wine glass, saying nothing. He refilled his glass many times, and then his lower lip began to quiver. Things were definitely not right, and I could tell Bean felt the tension too: her cheeks had gone pale. I quickly cleared the dishes, anxious to leave the kitchen, sensing the see-saw Daddy and I rode was about to flip Daddy sky-high.

He said almost casually, “Jack was in the house today.”

There was no defense, but I answered, “Daddy, I thought the one time wouldn’t matter—”

“Shut up!
”

I cringed. Daddy’s stony eyes bore into me.

“You’re always working against me!
Always, always, always!”

His tantrum was mind-blowing. What had he done to deserve a daughter like me? he ranted.
What?

Work, work, work, that’s all he’d ever done. And all I’d ever done was throw everything back in his face. Well, he wouldn’t have it. No, he was done with it! Done with being the world’s doormat!

Hideously aware of what was at stake—Jack and his trusting eyes—I begged. I cajoled. I screamed. I made promises. Daddy’s hands shook horribly.

“Piss!” he spat at me before leaving the room.

***

I’d meant to sleep only a few minutes, so I could be out as soon as the house was dark, hitching a ride to Sacramento, taking Jack with me. But it was already daybreak when I woke. I shook Bean awake. Still in our nightgowns we ran to the backyard, to the dog house Daddy had made for Jack.

Empty!

I tore around to the front of the house. Mother was standing on the porch, her face white, obviously still sick. Our car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant Daddy had gone, taking Jack with him. I shook with fear.

“I hate him!”
I screeched.
“I hate his guts!”

“Just stop it,” Mother said tiredly. I thought she’d say next that I wasn’t to talk about Daddy that way. That I was to show respect. I was sick of that. I was sick of her.

“Just stop it,” she said. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

Daddy said he’d gone fishing at the river. Jack liked water. Everybody knows dogs like water. He hadn’t meant for anything to happen to Jack. One minute Jack was there, the next he wasn’t. Daddy didn’t see
it
happen. Most likely Jack hit his head on a rock when he fell, going immediately under. Daddy was so sorry, just so sorry. And
incredulous.
What was to happen next? Everywhere he looked, every time he turned around, there was something or someone plotting against him. He just couldn’t win.

He’d killed Jack, of course—I knew it just like I knew how much I hated him and would always hate him—and I promised myself that
this time
I’d never stop hating him. Updating the list of things I hated about him became a daily undertaking, a safeguard against the rage pressing against me. I hated his wine, his nerves, and his grotesque blaming everybody in the entire world but himself when something bad happened. I hated having to share meals with him. I hated the way his long fingers trembled. It was unnerving, like static. I hated the way he chewed his lower lip, and that he hated females, always pulling that stupid murdering bitches story out of his back pocket, as if any of us cared. I hated his asinine justification and unjustifiable bias. I hated the way he looked at me, and the way he said things so illogically opposed to logic. I hated that no one had asked
me
if it was okay for him to take over my life. I hated that I felt guilty if my life intruded upon his. I hated that he’d taken me away from Papa. I hated that he wasn’t dead like my real father. But more than anything, I hated that he’d set me up, giving me love in the form of Jack, then snatching Jack back and destroying him, just because he could, just to show me up,
just to win the game
, which
was about as cruel a thing as one person could do to another.

I vowed to get tougher. I vowed to never smile again. I vowed to make sure Daddy knew I hated his guts, without coming right out and being called a sassy-mouth. But, still, I hated being a hateful person. I even hated the fact I felt guilty over keeping a list. I didn’t show it to Bean.