Chapter Three 7 страница

“He said that? ” I blurt, stung and weirdly embarrassed. “What a liar. ”

“Yeah, well, it goes with the territory. Anyhow, he isn’t exactly cooperative, so now we have to use a little reasonable force, ” Nigel says with a grim smile. “I’m kneeling on his back and my partner’s cuffing him and he’s cursing away, but by the time we hit the squad car he’s bawling, telling us how sick he is and how much he hates himself. ”

“I can’t deal with this, ” Andy says abruptly. He jams the bottle between his legs, wheels, and whips out of the room.

Slowly, cheeks burning, I untuck my hair and dip my head.

“I’m sorry, Meredith, ” Ms. Mues says, touching my clenched hands.

“Feel sorry for him. ” I say loudly. “The details are real and if he won’t face them, then what’s the difference between him and my mother? She won’t deal with what really happened, either. ”

“Fuck you, Meredith! ” Andy shouts from his room.

I’m up and out of my chair before his voice fades, down the hall and into his bedroom, lashing out and kicking him, bruising numb flesh that doesn’t even flinch. The sound of the vicious blows fuels my frenzy because I want him to feel it, all of it, and he won’t. He can’t.

But I don’t want to be the only one.

“Don’t ever say that again, ” he says, fumbling with his wheels. “You think you know, Meredith, but you don’t. ” He spins away from me, his knuckles skeleton white on the metal rims. “Christ, I wish I was in Iowa! ”

I reach out, grab his braid, and jerk him to a brutal halt. See my own clenched fist yanking taut the woven rope. Drop it and step back.

“I can’t stay here, Mer. Don’t you get that yet? ” he says hoarsely, reaching around and rubbing his scalp. “I’m useless. I know what he did to you and to me and to all those other kids and I still don’t have the balls to do anything about it! ” His voice cracks. “I see him walking around out there all free and cocky and I swear to Christ, I want to rip his heart out. But I can’t. ” His chin sinks to his chest. “I can’t even look at him. ”

Our backs are to the mirror and we’re temporarily blessed with no reflections. I can see the oak Madonna, though, and smell the scent of roses mingled with the fear seeping from Andy’s skin. I put my fingertips against his temples and feel his pulse jittering beneath them.

“I begged him not to do it and it didn’t matter, ” he whispers. “I trusted him and he screwed me. Told me I could call him Dad in private…he called me Buddy and I thought it was so cool that he’d given me a nickname, you know? I thought it meant he really liked me. ” A shudder rips through him. “And then he got me. He took my power and when he went to prison I thought I had it back, but I don’t. I don’t. ” He breaks and weeps like a little boy.

I look to the Blessed Virgin, but she keeps her counsel. I stroke Andy’s back and bowed neck. There’s nothing I can say to comfort him because he’s right. My father trapped us in time and we will always be small around him.

“Meredith? ” Ms. Mues fills the doorway. Her face sags like bread dough. She motions me out of the room and toward the kitchen.

I rest my cheek against Andy for a moment, then step away.

He doesn’t ask me to stay. Maybe doesn’t even know I’m gone.

I follow her back to the kitchen and take my seat. I can still hear him crying.

Ms. Mues and Nigel sit across from me like mourners at a wake.

“When Andy started getting hurt, I thought he was just at the awkward age little boys go through. All arms and legs and no coordination, ” Ms. Mues says, staring down at her fingers. “I figured he’d outgrow it. You know how kids are. One day, he was climbing a tree behind the old house and I was doing the dishes and watching him out the window. He kept going higher and higher. I got nervous because he was accident-prone and if he fell from that height…. Well, I was just about to call him when he inched out onto a limb and just…let go. ”

I light a cigarette.

“I begged God to spare him and miraculously he survived the fall with only two broken ribs and a broken collarbone. I didn’t tell the doctors what I’d seen. Maybe I should have, but all I wanted to do was protect him. His father was dead, the man I had brought into our home was pulling away from us, and I thought Andy was heartbroken at losing him. I didn’t know what was going on, I swear. ”

The curling smoke makes my eyes water.

“When Andy got out of the hospital he begged me not to leave him alone, ” she says, voice faint. “He said he couldn’t breathe while I was gone. When I finally had to go back to work he went hysterical and told me about your father. ”

Nigel curses under his breath.

“I could have killed Charles with my bare hands. I’d trusted him, given him carte blanche to my son. He’d lied to me about everything. ” Her voice fades and she resurrects it. “I wanted to have him arrested, but Andy begged me not to. He didn’t want anybody to know. He said if the kids at school found out they’d call him a ‘gay boy’ and a ‘faggot’ and nobody would hang around with him anymore. ”

“Kids are great, huh? ” Nigel mutters.

“What about counseling? I thought you took him to a psychologist or something, ” I say, crushing out my cigarette in the brimming ashtray.

“I did. ” Ms. Mues sounds exhausted. “We went after I told Charles that if I ever heard even a whisper of his touching another child I would see him in hell. ”

“Fat lot of good that did. ” The malice in my voice shocks me. Am I mad at her, too? Do I blame everyone for not protecting me?

“We had a saying in the army, ” she whispers, staring down at her hands. “ ‘God hates a coward. ’ ” Her chin trembles. “I pray every night for the opportunity to redeem myself. ” She meets my gaze. “And now this. ”

“Which kind of brings me back to my original point, ” Nigel says. “Four years ago we had a traumatized little girl and a confession from her father. We had a couple of other kids swearing on a stack of Bibles that he’d wronged them, too. We had bloody sheets and DNA evidence. Medical records on Meredith’s injuries. We had everything to make this an open-and-shut case. ”

I pick up the saltshaker. Chip a spot of dried tomato sauce from Mary’s painted robe. Set her down.

“The lawyers start blowing smoke. We get character witnesses for old Chuck stretching all the way back to when he was a high school baseball star. We get ‘expert testimony’ from a two-thousand-dollar-a-

day rent-a-shrink hired by the defense. We get two little boys who go hysterical when they’re asked to point to who did this to them. ”

“I didn’t know that, ” I interrupt. Two boys crumble on the stand while I, the daughter, the one with everything to lose, finger him without a hiccup.

“Yeah, it was a circus. ” Nigel’s face creases with disgust. “The town wanted it over fast on account of your granny being mayor and all, but your mother didn’t. She gave the paper some big sob story about false accusations and how sad it was that the mayor’s daughter had to sell her house to pay for the defense. ”

So that was why we moved into the condo. Not to spare me bad memories, but to save my father from prison.

Nigel stabs out his cigarette and squints fiercely through the lingering smoke. “The point being, Paula, is that praying is all well and good, but it doesn’t do squat for us right now. We need hard evidence because if we had him dead to rights last time—and we did—and he was sentenced to nine years and he still got out in three, then what the hell do you think he’s gonna get for groping one teenager on video, even if she is his daughter? ”

I stare down at my hands. Hear Andy’s chair moving over the bare wood floors of his room and the faint strains of “Little Green Apples. ” I don’t know what to say or do now that Nigel has banished our illusions and Andy has bailed out.

“So that’s it? ” Ms. Mues says.

“I’m afraid so, ” Nigel says. “There’s nothing we can do except wait until that lying sack of llama turds gets serious—”

“No! ” Ms. Mues is on her feet and the chair goes over backward, landing with a crash. “What does he have to do, attack Meredith again? ”

“Do you really think I want to see that happen? ” Nigel says, glaring at her from beneath his brows. “Christ, Paula, the point is to nail this guy once and for all. ” He rises and lumbers, swearing, about the room.

“I wish he would just die, ” I hear myself say and draw back as they stop and stare at me. “What? ” I burn under the heat of their combined gazes. “Oh, come on. Like nobody’s really wishing that but me. ”

Ms. Mues and Nigel exchange looks. Something dark passes between them.

“Meredith, he’s your father, ” she says. “You don’t really wish he was dead. ”

A sharp, sudden thrill of fear makes the hair on my arms rise. We are three and three is the number of initial completion, the first stage achieved. We need only harness our dark, unspoken desires to become four—

“Yeah, well, get the idea of your old man croaking right out of your head because it ain’t gonna happen, ” Nigel says, hitching up his baggy pants. “I saw him running around out there, remember? He’s as healthy as a damn ox. ”

I blink. Shrug. Okay, I can play along. Pretend I’m the only one hoping for a permanent solution. “So maybe he’ll get hit by a car, or swallow wrong and choke. ” I knew I shouldn’t have thrown away those steaks. Whenever somebody chokes, it’s always on a hunk of steak.

Ms. Mues and Nigel are talking, but I’m caught up in the fantasy of my father’s permanent absence. It’s a siren song that promises peace and remains maddeningly out of reach.

“His kind live forever, ” Nigel mutters.

His words snatch the dream right out from under me.

Ms. Mues pats me. “Don’t fret, honey. God works in mysterious ways. ”

I don’t even have the strength left to deny her words. To open my mouth and agree with Nigel, because as hope dissolves it gives me a glimpse of what my life is going to be like with my father and without Andy. I run my thumb along the outline of the knife in my pocket and wonder why I just don’t use it.

Maybe because my mother would have heart failure at the sight of blood splattering her shiny white whirlpool tub and I don’t want irritation to be her last memory of me. Or maybe I’m afraid my father will be the one to find me, and if I’m dead or dying, I won’t be able to fight off his last invasion.

I don’t know. I’ve learned too much today and can’t hold myself steady. I have no balance left. I should have taken my vitamins.

“Meredith? ” Andy calls. “Can you come here a minute? ”

“Yes, ” I say and go to him because it might be the last time.

The silence in the kitchen follows me down the hall.

Andy’s face is swollen and blotchy. He has a key ring in one hand, his bottle in the other. The giant oak Madonna lies across his lap. Stray wisps of hair escape his braid and cling to his cheeks.

I perch on the bed. Memorize his face so when I close my eyes I can still find him. My wonderful, three-year vacation is over. The pressure in my chest cracks my ribs and floods my bloodstream, swelling my arteries to capacity.

“We’ll be out of here early tomorrow morning. ” He places the ring in my palm and closes my fingers over it. “I’m leaving you my keys, just in case. ”

“In case of what? ” I ask numbly.

“I don’t know, anything, ” he says, shrugging and avoiding my gaze. “In case you need a place to hole up. ”

“You’re not coming back. ” My head pounds as I pocket the keys. “That’s why you’re taking her with you. ” My fingertips burn against the Blessed Virgin’s smooth, wooden face. If she had working eyelids, I would close them. This is no time for witnesses.

“I’m coming back, ” he says, but his color deepens as he hurriedly hefts her onto my lap. “I was just gonna leave her with you in case you…I don’t know. ” His fingers intertwine with mine. “Need her, I guess. ”

I want to ask if he still loves me, but I’m not sure I can deal with either answer. The patchouli incense has gone out and the rose scent is fading. The CD has stopped. The weight of the Virgin Mother rests heavy across my thighs, and I don’t know what to do about any of it. These are four dark omens.

“Thank you. ” The girl in the mirror stares back at me with no expression. “I didn’t take my vitamins today. ” So many loose ends to share before it’s over. Who will I talk to after this? “Did I tell you that the first present my father ever gave my mother was a baseball shirt? ” I glance at his pained expression. “No, I guess I didn’t. Well, it was. Funny, huh? ” I dig my lighter from my pocket and hold the trembling flame to the tip of the incense stick. “He’s the one who wants the new baby, you know. She doesn’t. She’ll just do anything to keep him. Probably even look the other way the next time he comes after me. ” I get down on my hands and knees and sniff the edges of the room, searching for the failing air freshener that isn’t giving me my roses. “I know she won’t take me to the hospital again because then he’ll be arrested. ”

“Meredith, please get up, ” he says, wheeling closer to me.

“I can’t. ” I crawl along the base moldings. “You should play the Dino CD some more, Andy. I think that song is starting to grow on me. ” I spy an outlet and for one brief flash see myself sticking the tip of the knife into one of the slots. But I don’t, because frying will make me smell awful. “Do you know that I’ve never had a pet? Not even a gold-fish. Isn’t that sad? ” I sit up on my haunches and sniff the air. Patchouli but no roses. “Are you really coming back on Wednesday? ”

“Yes, ” he says after a heartbeat.

“But it’s not gonna be the same. ” I brush a dust bunny from my overalls.

“I can’t live near him, Meredith, ” he says quietly. “I know my mother has this grand plan about haunting him for the rest of her life, but that’s her atonement, not mine. If he disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow I’d stay here forever, but he won’t, so I have to. Move, I mean. ”

I find another dust bunny and add it to the first. Roll them together into a ball.

“You want to come with me? ” he asks, gliding over to me.

No. I want him to stay here. “If I leave he’ll target some other kid and I can’t deal with that. Knowing that I just let it happen. ” He doesn’t ask how I’m going to stop it from happening, though, and my heart curls in on itself. My father has stolen Andy’s soul and broken all his defenses except flight. “And besides, my grandmother would pull every string she could to find me and then you’d get in trouble for harboring a runaway and end up going to jail for twenty years. ”

“Yeah, I thought of that. ” He strokes my hair and I wilt against his chair, listening to the familiar gurgle as he upends the bottle of Jim Beam. “I’d risk it if you were closer to eighteen, but three years is a long time to lay low. ”

“Mm-hmm. ” I tug up his pant leg and inspect the pale flesh. Puffy, plum-purple bruises are already forming beneath the fine, brown leg hair. I touch each stormy splotch and wonder if the victim soul in Iowa will heal these for him, too, or if they’ll stay as souvenirs, aging to a sickly greenish yellow by Wednesday.

“Good thing I can’t feel them, huh? ” he jokes, but his voice hitches and dies.

I wonder if he’s scared of losing this shield that protects him from physical pain and what Ms. Mues will do with her life when my father is back in prison for good. I wonder if Nigel will be able to claim the role of arresting officer again, even though he’s retired, and if my mother will ever grow sick of the taste of shame and seek a divorce.

And I wonder if she will ever forgive me for what I’m about to set into motion.

“I have to go now, ” I say and release Andy as my anchor.

The Blessed Mother watches as we kiss good-bye, as he crushes the air from my lungs, releases me, and wheels away, hobbled by his own fear-born failure.

We exchange glances, the icon and I, but we don’t weep.

There is no place here for miracles.

Chapter Nineteen

N igel and Ms. Mues go quiet as I enter the kitchen.

I hug her good-bye and wish her luck in Iowa. I hope for both their sakes that the trip spurs Andy’s recovery. I don’t say it, but I really don’t expect to see her again. She’ll come home on Wednesday, but by then it’ll all be over and I have no idea where or if I will even be.

Nigel watches hard as I shake the curtain closed over my face. He sees something before I disappear, though, and says roughly, “Don’t push for an end here, kid. Trust me, I’ve been around this block before and it’ll all play out. You just hang in there a little longer, okay? Don’t go doing anything stupid. ”

“I won’t, ” I say and step out the door into the oven.

The sun is slinking off to the west but the heat remains, shimmying up from the baked macadam and drawing the moisture from my skin. The Dumpster court reeks.

I force myself up the side lawn and around the front. Stop with my hand on the doorknob and wonder if I should knock before entering or somehow slip unnoticed back into my room. I don’t know how to engineer my own destruction.

The knob twists beneath my fingers and the door flies open. My mother jerks to a halt. “Oh! There you are. ” She gives the Madonna icon a quick frown, grabs my arm, and says, “Go inside right now and change. We’re going out to dinner. ”

I wait for mention of our last confrontation, but she’s already calling my father’s condo to report my return.

“I don’t want to go, ” I say as she hangs up the phone. “Why don’t you two just go have dinner without me? ”

“Because this is our first time out together as a family and your father wants you with us, ” my mother says, brushing a speck of lint from her pink linen dress. “Now go get ready. I bought you an outfit. Put it on. ”

“I don’t want to, ” I say, setting down the Blessed Virgin and beginning my vitamin ritual. I swallow my lifesaving pills in lots of four, but the number denies me its usual comfort, leaving me sloshing with V8 and slightly nauseous.

Her fingernails tap the countertop. “Do you have to argue with everything I say? Can’t you just say ‘okay, Mom’ one time? Is that too much to ask? ”

“If I have to go I want to wear my own stuff, ” I say, stifling a burp.

She takes my empty glass and sets it in the sink. “Meredith, so help me, I’ve just about had it with you today. Now, go into your room and put on the outfit I bought you or we’re going to have a serious problem. And take that thing with you, ” she adds irritably, gesturing to the Madonna. “It’s getting on my nerves. ” She waits but I don’t move. “Well? What’re you waiting for? ”

“Your face makeup’s cracking, ” I say, motioning to the frown lines in her forehead. “I think it’s on too thick. ”

I watch as my mother slides the shimmering, pink lipstick across her lips. She swishes on blush and bends down, touching the soft brush to my cheeks. “Ooh, you’re so beautiful now, Meredith. Just like a grown-up lady. ”

“Like Cinderella? ” I say, staring up into her beloved face.

“Better than Cinderella, ” she says, laughing because she knows what’s coming next.

“Like you? ” I say, beaming.

“Oh, better than me, ” she says, lightly pinching my cheek.

“Nobody’s better than you, Mommy, ” I say, seizing and smooching the back of her slim, perfumed hand….

Hurt creases her face and she runs for the bedroom.

Slowly, I cap the last vitamin bottle and put it back into the cabinet. Any satisfaction I feel in besting my mother is tempered by the ghostly sweep of a blusher brush against my hot cheek. The memory shakes something loose inside of me and it rattles in my hollow chest.

“You’d better get moving, ” she calls from the bedroom.

“Okay, Mom. ” I put the icon on my nightstand and head for the shower. Emerge minutes later and slip into my bedroom. Lock the door.

The outfit my mother laid out for me is big, awful, and beige. A boxy cotton jacket, a baggy white blouse, and of all things, tailored, knee-length walking shorts. Good thing I shaved my legs at Leah Louisa’s.

I don the clothes. Study myself in the mirror.

With the exception of my tangled bed head, I blend right into the walls.

I slip my knife in my pocket, my cigarettes, and the remotes in my purse.

When I enter the kitchen, my mother hides a swift, satisfied smile. “You look very nice, ” she says, smoothing her own dress. “Let’s go. ”

“Thanks. ” I know she’s lying, but I don’t mind looking ugly if it will repel my father for a few more hours.

I follow her out to the car, climb into the backseat, and swelter until the air-conditioning reaches me. The leather makes my butt sweat and if this keeps up my shorts will be dripping by the time we get to the restaurant. Lucky me, I’ll be more repugnant than even my mother could have hoped for.

We cruise through the complex to my father’s. Nigel’s car is back in his own parking lot and I can see Gilly watching the world go by from the picture window.

My mother pulls into a spot and toots the horn.

My father, handsome and respectable in Gap khakis and a button-down plaid, comes out onto the porch.

“Aren’t you even a little glad he’s back, Mer? ” my mother says softly, watching him follow the sidewalk toward us.

I look at him and the only answer is if. If he hadn’t. If he didn’t. If.

Andy says he stole our power, but that’s just part of it.

He taught me how to wish him gone forever.

He opens the front passenger door and a gust of hot, gritty air sweeps in.

“This must be my lucky day, ” he says, sliding into the seat. “Dining out with my beautiful wife and daughter; who could ask for more than that? ”

“You’re so silly, ” my mother simpers, leaning over for a kiss. “But I love you. ”

He ignores me—punishment, I guess, for running away a second time—and spends the ride charming my mother instead.

And Andy’s right; each word my father speaks is a shove, a mocking reminder that I am small and weak enough to be used without regard, and that I was.

My mother turns up the CD player. “When a Man Loves a Woman” grates out.

My father flips down his vanity mirror under the pretense of checking his clean-shaven chin for stubble, but he is actually looking at me.

I know this because I can feel the force of his gaze probing my curtain for cracks. I don’t move, so he finally gives up and closes the mirror.

“That is such a good song, ” my mother says, sighing as it ends.

I don’t ask if she’s completely delusional when she pulls into Steakhouse Sam’s crowded parking lot. I don’t remind her that Sam had a son in the Boys’ League who missed my father’s coaching by a month, or that Sam is an ex-marine with a low boiling point.

“Steakhouse Sam’s, ” my father muses. “I’ve missed this place. ”

“I haven’t been here since you left, ” my mother says. “We used to have such good times here so I figured what better place to begin again? ”

They are delusional, I decide as I follow them across the parking lot, up the steps, and into the foyer. They don’t notice the whiplash double takes we’re receiving or hear the bass rumble beneath the restaurant’s cheerful clatter.

“Sam! ” my mother cries, swinging up to the front desk. “How are you? ”

The stocky guy goes still. His gaze flickers past my sparkling mother and settles, hardening, on my father. Slowly, he reaches up and removes the pen tucked behind his ear. “Sorry. We’re full up tonight. ”

“Oh, we don’t mind waiting, ” my mother burbles, glancing over her shoulder at my father. “We’ve been dreaming of your steaks for—”

“I’m sorry, ” Sam says expressionlessly. “You’ll have to go somewhere else. ”

My mother’s smile turns bewildered. “What? ” She cocks her head as if to hear him better. “I mean, do you take reservations now or—”

“We’re full up tonight, ” Sam says.

My mother turns to my father. “Charles? ”

He steps forward and the air around us buzzes like hornets. “C’mon, Sam, ” he says but his heartiness is forced. “You sure you couldn’t squeeze us in? ”

“I’m asking you to vacate the premises, ” Sam says, holding my father’s glittering gaze. He raps the pen against the desk. Once. Twice. Three times. “If you don’t leave right now, I’ll get the cops to escort you out of here. ”

I edge closer to the door.

“Fine. ” My father grabs my mother’s arm. Wheels and stalks out.

I scurry after them into the humid night.

My father mutters a stream of curses through the parking lot and as we’re pulling out, he gives the crowd lingering on the steps both middle fingers.

“Charles, ” my mother warns, glancing in her rearview mirror.

“Don’t lecture me, Sharon, ” he says, staring out his window. “What the hell is wrong with this town, anyway? Christ, they used to love me. I was the only one who could get their kids to play decent ball. I led them to three winning seasons and now, what? I’m some kind of freak? ” A muscle ties in his jaw. “I never should have come back here. ”

“Don’t say that, ” my mother says.

“I mean it, ” he says. “I’m not staying here any longer than I have to. ”

The air in the car is suddenly heavy and still.

“What are you saying? ” my mother asks.

He shoots her an irritated look. “What am I, not speaking English? I’m saying I’m not spending the rest of my life in this dump, that’s what. We’re going to have to move. ”

“Move? ” my mother says, exhaling in a rush. He has used the “we” word and now she knows she’s not being abandoned. “Hmm, that might not be a bad idea. Then we really could make a new start. ”

I sink low in the backseat, wrinkling my frumpy outfit, but it doesn’t matter. I’m being buried alive in my parents’ mass grave and now all bets are off.

We dine at the new Olive Garden up on the highway where no one knows us.

I eat salad and get dressing in my hair.

My father hisses in revulsion when I wipe it from the strands, but as we’re walking to the car afterward and my mother is searching her purse for her keys, he lags behind and presses briefly against me.

“I love watching you walk, ” he whispers and his breath crisps the hair at the back of my neck.

My adrenaline spikes and my fingers close around the knife in my pocket.

He winks and ambles past to catch up with my mother. She smiles and slips her arm through his. Her tread is light and bouncy and I can almost see the ghost of her cheer-leader’s ponytail bobbing at the back of her head.

Slowly, I uncurl my fingers from around the knife. I keep my hands buried in my pockets, though, because the shaking will give me away.

He didn’t choke on his lasagna and there isn’t a drunk driver in sight.

There are only the three of us and our dark, burgeoning desires.

I am so afraid of what comes next.

Chapter Twenty

I see the flashing red lights while we’re waiting to turn off Main Street.

“Looks like something happened in your building, ” my mother says and gazes at my father, missing two gaps in the stream of oncoming traffic that would have allowed her to turn into the complex.

My father shifts and yanks irritably at the seat belt’s restraint.

“Charles? ” my mother says as if waiting for instruction, as if all he has to do is say the word and she’ll flick off her signal light and sail right past the complex and we will never, ever come home again.

“What? ” he asks.

She clears her throat. “Did you really register today? ”

My father stabs her with a scornful look. “Turn in already, ” he says, giving the finger to whoever is blowing the horn behind us. “Jesus Christ, Sharon, I told you I did, didn’t I? What, are you gonna start now, too? ”