But When She Was Bad

by Peddicord, Lou;

  We wait for the mail, we wait for our kids to grow up, we wait for death to come by and tap us on the shoulder.

  And then we wait some more.

  I pick up the phone and call this place out in the Midwest where they’ve surely finished up with the DNA testing on my and Todd’s chromosomes. The hell with their procedure, which (their brochure clearly says) is inviolate and which entails all results being put in the mail as soon as they are “routinely” available. Well, then, fax me the damned results if you can’t tell me over the phone. Failing that, tap twice on the phone for a “Yes, you’re the dad” … or tap three times for “No, you were royally screwed, sucker.”

  I reach a bureaucrat, a woman who would be at home in government work. She says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wexler, but our procedure is precisely as outlined in our literature. Your results will be mailed when they are available.” I’m pleasant. “Which is probably today, wouldn’t you say? So perhaps you could fax them.” The woman smirks into the phone; you can always hear a bureaucrat smirk. “Oh, no, Mr. Wexler, only if an attorney requests such can we release the results of our testing procedures via facsimile. Otherwise, they shall be in the mails.” I chaw on my lips. “Think of me as an attorney. Fax them.”

  We go ’round and ’round like this for a while and finally I slam the phone down in disgust.

  Trying to get into a words-of-wisdom mode, I tell myself, strenuously, It’ll come when it’s time for it to come. Plus, I remind myself again and again, Things happen when they’re ready to happen. Not a minute late, not a second early. I think a while about swill like that and decide instead to tell the universe, Screw you. I feel better right away.

  So … Day Seven and apparently I can’t rush things. Should I zip over to Todd’s day care center and see where he wants to go for lunch? But then I remember yesterday’s confrontation with Mrs. Darlington. This is something new—Annie’s sudden decree that I can’t see Todd during the day without her permission—and it’s something I should probably take seriously and deal with. No, I decide a minute later. Just the control freak in dear old Annie coming out. A couple days more and it’s a moot point anyway.

  Then, abruptly, I find myself thinking of the moment ten or so days before—when my world took a sickening lurch and skidded off into another dimension … the one that has me waiting and waiting and waiting for some word on who I really am now.

  47

  The rage came unexpectedly.

  It dropped in on me and possessed me so totally that, for the first time in my life, I literally saw red.

  The minute before, my life had been the familiar routine I’d always known—a little work, a little pleasure, then some more work, then some more little pleasures. But after the rage came, I saw, through a red-tinged film of hate, that all the old landmarks were gone; that all the comforting, easy, lulling routine was to be no more.

  It was a rainy, ugly afternoon, with roiling thunderclouds dropping sheets of wind-driven rain down on us. I’d just picked up Todd; Annie had called and said she was going to be tied up in a meeting; she was finally working, having taken a job with an art supply store. Could I watch Todd for a bit? I said sure.

  Given that playing in the yard was out of the question, I suggested to Todd that we head on down to the basement for a while. There are piles of castoff toys down there, and Todd loves to root around in the mess. For my part, there were the sprawling file boxes I’d someday have to start weeding through.

  I watched Todd happily searching through bags and boxes of toys and I looked over the ceiling-high stack of files, which fills an entire wall in the basement.

  I thought about winnowing through NEGATIVES, 1982–87 or maybe INVOICES, 1984, or even PERSONAL O&E, OLD LIFE/JILUAN. Nope, I thought, too much like work. Then I spotted the many KID STUFF/MEMORABILIA boxes. Right on, I decide.

  It’s easy to toss out crayoned scraps of paper and piles of undistinguished test papers from second grade. You go through stuff like that with an amused, nostalgic smile etched on your face, tossing the obvious junk to one side and, on the other side, preserving the much smaller, much more discrete pile of masterpieces. Then ten years later you go through MASTERPIECES, KID and you toss most of that away, too.

  I checked that Todd was okay. He was busily scrounging through toy parts and marker pens and soft foam-rubber animals that might or might not still have their squeakers, so I pulled a KID STUFF/MEMORABILIA box down at random and dug in.

  It’s funny how the most important moments in your life so frequently seem to come about by accident. I could have picked another KID STUFF box that day, or I could have done the harder thing and weeded through an INVOICES box, or hell, I could have just played with Todd in the mess of toys on the other side of the basement.

  But I didn’t.

  I picked a particular KID STUFF/MEMORABILIA box and there it was, right on top. Maybe the gods had finally gotten tired of my figuratively picking my nose and lackadaisically scratching my ass and decided, “What say, guys? Let’s wake this doofus up.”

  So they handed it to me.

  It was one of those cheap grade-school notebooks with the black and white marbleized covers, marked JURNUL in Wolfie’s childish block printing. I smiled widely and breathed, “Wow, it survived.” Like so many things that are vital to a six- and seven-year-old, the journal had apparently lost its magic one day and migrated down to the basement, to be neatly captured for posterity.

  Opening it up and leafing through the pages, I marveled that Wolfie had for whatever reason let it go and merged it into the memorabilia category. For the longest time it was his obsession, this JURNUL. He took it everywhere, furtively notating this or that—the fruits, we all assumed, of his tracking and skulking adventures. I remembered seeing him clutching his JURNUL in both arms like a fullback fighting his way through the line, guarding against sneak attacks by Allegra or Jack, both of whom whined incessantly that he wouldn’t s-h-o-w it.

  “Why should he?” I routinely said. “It’s his. It’s private.”

  “He’s writing things about us,” the two enemies insisted, aggrieved.

  “So what?” I responded with the irrelevant wisdom kids come to expect from parents. “If you don’t know what it says, it can’t hurt you, right?”

  They glared at me for that stupid truism and so did Annie, who always took Allegra’s and Jack’s side in this ongoing domestic dispute.

  “Why would you care?” I asked her. “It’s just a kid thing; just a passing fancy.”

  “I care because he’s always watching me—tracking me.”

  “This is what he does. You know that.”

  “He’s either skulking around the house or he’s writing in that damned journal.” Annie glared at me some more. “Of course, seeing how you’re always in the studio, supposedly working, do you even know anything about that?”

  Little did I suspect how closely Wolfie was watching her.

  Sitting there on the basement floor, I flipped through the pages, noticing that Wolfie had actually dated each day’s relatively neat entry. I was impressed anew at the kid’s tenacity (if not his penmanship). The journal started with January 1st and went all the way through December 31. Every day was filled with some observation or other and oftentimes a long recital of events. It took me a while to decipher the abysmal scrawling (clarity has never been a Wolfie strong point) but eventually it started coming clear. A typical entry:

  JUNE 21: DAD IS GROUCHY. TELLS ME TO LEAVE ALLEGRA ALONE. LADY SAYS NO TRACKING AT BEACH HOUSE, ITS RUDE AND INCONSIDIRITT …

  Ah, I think, placing the year. It must have been just a couple of months before Annie and I married. I’d rented a beach house that summer, taking everyone down for a couple of weeks and making trips back and forth between the city and the shore to get my work out.

  JUNE 28: TRACK LADY TO FOOD STORE AND STORE WITH FACE STUFF AND LIPSTICKS. WATCH ALLEGRA STUFF CLEENIX KLEENEX IN HER SHIRT FOR BOOBS. ALLEGRA CHASES ME TRYING TO HIT ME. SHE TELLS DAD AND
HE SAYS HE WONT TELL ME AGAIN. BUT HE DOES, LOTS OF TIMES …

  I flip some more pages. So this is the fabled JURNUL, huh? None of us ever figured out why Wolfie would have picked up such an intensive, maniacal hobby—except to note (in furtive whispers among ourselves) that he was a pretty obsessive kid. But every single day for a full year? And then to drop it just like that? Thinking through all this again as I thumb forward in the notebook, I remember the catch-phrase we used back then when talking of young Gaynor, aka Wolfie: He’s one s-t-r-a-n-g-e little dude! Indeed he was.

  JULY 14: TAKE JACKS GREEN LANTERN COMIC. HIDE IT IN ALLEGRA’S CLOSET. LADY GIVES ME A CAKE BOWL TO LICK …

  More on some bike riding over to the pond that day; more on fights with Jack and Allegra. He’s not a bad little reporter, I think. Pretty extraordinary, actually, for—what was he then? Seven, seven and a half?

  JULY 28: PLAY BALL WITH DAD IN BACKYARD. DAD THROWS TOO HARD …

  There were big entries for August 23 and for several days following, when Wolfie noted the wedding and the reception and his stay at my brother’s house for the weekend.

  I skip some more, knowing I’d better get on to other things in the MEMORABILIA box, but just for sheer amusement, I find myself reading entries all the way into October, seeing if I can make it all out, given the atrocious handwriting:

  OCTOBER 19: TRACK LADY TO SKULPTER GALLERY, CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL AGAIN IN ALLEY BEHIND STORE. MAN IN STORE HUGS LADY AND RUBS LADYS CHEST LIKE DAD DOES WHEN HE THINKS WE’RE NOT LOOKING. LADY LAUGHS AND PULLS AT MANS PANTS. CUSTOMER COMES IN AND MAN LEAVES. MY LEG CRAMPS SO I CLIMB OUT OF WINDOW WELL AND GO OVER TO JEFFS HOUSE FOR …

  Whoa! Am I reading this right?

  Suddenly I’m holding all thought in abeyance. I realize that I’m gripping the JURNUL very tightly. My heart has speeded up. Quickly now, I read ahead.

  OCTOBER 20: PLAY WITH STUFF IN DADS STUDIO WHILE DAD IS ON PHONE. DAD KEEPS SNEAKING UP ON ME AND TICKLING ME SO I HIDE DADS BOOK HE CALLS A DAYTIMER AND WE SEARCH WHAT DAD CALLS HIGH AND LOW. DAD’S TALKING TO HIMSELF AND GETTING MAD SO I FIND THE DAYTIMER AND DAD SAYS I’M A GREAT KID. TAKES ME TO FEDERAL EXPRESS AND THEN TO FRIENDLY …

  Christ, I even remember that day—so the little punk hid the Day-Timer himself! Relieved, a lot relieved, I read on. In the back of my mind, I’m starting to decide that it was me in Annie’s sculpture gallery that day. Maybe I’d stopped in and we’d gotten playful with each other. Okay, good. Now put this thing back and get on with rest of the box.

  OCTOBER 21: TRACK LADY TO STATIONERY STORE THEN SKULPTER GALLERY, CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL. KILL BIG SPIDER COMING OUT OF LEAVES. LADY TAKES TALL MANS HAND IN STORE AND PULLS HIM TO TINY DESK ROOM RIGHT UNDER WINDOW WELL. LADY PUTS HANDS ON DESK AND TALL MAN GOES BEHIND HER AND PULLS UP LADYS DRESS AND PUSHES AT HER FOR A LONG TIME. LADY LAUGHS AND SHAKES HAIR UP AND DOWN. BORING, SO I LEAVE AND GO UP TIM’S HOUSE AND TIM AND SONNY AND EDWARD AND ME ROLL IN LEAVES …

  Oh, Jesus, I’m not reading this. A real sense of panic sets in and denial begins to shout Stop! in my mind. Put it down! Don’t read any more! I jump ahead a week, ten days. No more, I’m hoping. It’s just something he made up.

  But I know better and I scan ahead.

  NOVEMBER 10: TRADE 8 RIPKINS FOR A LUIS APARICHIO. TRACK EDWARD TO ARCADE BUT HE CATCHES ME. GO OVER TO ALLEY, CLIMB IN WELL. LADY IS LAYING ON DESK AGAIN LIKE YESTERDAY AND TALL MAN IS LIKE TICKLING HER. LADY LAUGHS AND SORT OF LIKE GOES OOHING A LONG TIME WHILE MAN PUSHES AT HER. THEN MAN LIKE FALLS ON LADY AND LAYS REAL STILL A LONG TIME. BORING, WITH THEM DOING NOTHING, SO I LEAVE REAL QUIET AND GO HOME. JACK HITS ME WITH TV CONTROLLER. DAD RUNS FROM STUDIO AND …

  Don’t tell me this!

  NOVEMBER 28: JORDIE WANTS TO PLAY SOCCER BUT WE CANT FIND A BALL. GO TO SKULPTER GALLERY, CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL. LADY AND TALL MAN ARE LIKE DANCING NEXT TO DESK WITH NO CLOTHES ON. I SEE MAN’S NIGGLE AND LADY’S BOOBS LIKE IN MAGAZINE JACK HAS UNDER HIS MATTRISS AND LIKE DAD’S NIGGLE. START GIGGLING WHEN LADY LIKE KNEELS AND MAN PUTS NIGGLE IN HER MOUTH. IM AFRAID SHE HEARS ME LAUGH SO I LEAVE REAL QUICK AND RUN IN ARCADE STORE. GO OVER TO JEFFS AGAIN BUT HIS MOM SAYS NO NINTENDO BECAUSE HE HAS HOMEWORK. I WATCH LADY AT NIGHT TO SEE IF SHES GLARING AT ME OR ANYTHING BUT SHE DOESN’T EVEN LOOK AT ME MUCH. DAD TELLS US A STUPID MADE UP STORY ABOUT SPACEMEN AND HAS BUFFIE WAVE HER PAWS BUT ITS NOT AS FUNNY AS WITH OLIVER …

  My hands are shaking so hard I’m afraid Todd will notice from across the room. But he’s still busy with the toys. He’s building a tower of some kind with Lego blocks. I read ahead a little more and it’s more of the same and more of the same and even though some large part of the reality I’ve safely, contentedly inhabited for years is falling apart around me, I think, Look in December, for when we went up to the mountains and made Todd. I do and there it is:

  DECEMBER 8: TRACK LADY TO LIBRARY AND DRUG STORE, THEN SKULPTER GALLERY. WAIT A WHILE. BORING. KILL 2 SPIDERS AND WACK AT MY LEG WHEN IT FALLS ASLEEP. THEN LADY AND TALL MAN COME IN BACK ROOM AND LADY TAKES HER PANTS OFF AND MAN TAKES HIS OFF. MAN PUSHES LADY AGAINST DESK AND HOLDS ONTO HER BACK AND PUSHES AT HER FOR A LONG TIME. KILL ANOTHER SPIDER. THEN MAN PUTS HIS NIGGLE IN—

  I drop the marbleized notebook so proudly labeled JURNUL in a kid’s brash new printing and I stare sightlessly at all the leftovers of my life in the basement. Old furniture, old clothing, old files, old toys—and a happy, contented four-year-old named Todd.

  Oh, Christ, Todd! Do you know what this means?

  Art Linkletter had it wrong, at least when it comes to Gaynor Wexler, boy reporter extraordinaire. Kids can see the darndest things—but they don’t know what they’ve just seen. Even a smart kid like Wolfie doesn’t always make sense of it when he sees something out of the ordinary. It’s just another passing event to him, another silly or boring thing that grownups do. Maybe he fashions himself as the younger set’s David Letterman, who’s gone beyond stupid-pet-tricks and collects stupid-parent-tricks instead.

  But for me, that afternoon in my basement, everything he’d so dispassionately recorded in the fabled JURNUL was very, very real.

  And very, very convincing. It was the last puzzle piece clicking into place for me. It was that startling moment of Jesus Christ! Why didn’t I see this? that hits us when the obvious becomes all too clear. It was a replay of the little voice somewhere back in the pre-conscious that, years before, kept on saying, No, something’s wrong here, something doesn’t fit.

  That voice found its vindication in Wolfie’s scribblings.

  I guess a part of me had known all along that Annie was screwing around on me. It was a whole catalog of things I’d ignored: the secret little smiles I caught on her face; the random bruise on her arm; the smell of sex on her at odd moments. And now, because of some kid’s so-called JURNUL, I couldn’t block out that knowledge any longer. My safe little cocoon of ignorance had collapsed around me.

  Sitting there on the floor, staring sightlessly at the detritus of my life, pure, rocket-fuel outrage builds in me. The red film of a nameless, boundless rage is washing over me and coloring everything in the basement.

  I grab up the JURNUL again. I see that Wolfie notes his overnight trip to my mother’s house on December 9th, when Annie and I took off for our romantic, Todd-conceiving trip to the mountains, and then his birthday party on December 10th, with notations of all the presents he received. Like the compulsive character he is, he rates each of them on an A, B, C, D scale. With my finger shakily tracing down the page, I move to the next day, the Monday after we returned from the trip.

  December 11: SONNY HITS THE BALL INTO THE OLD BIDDY’S YARD BY EDWARDS AND WE ALL LEAVE. GO TO SKULPTER GALLERY, CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL. TALL MAN AND LADY COME IN BACK ROOM AND TAKE OFF ALL THEIR CLOTHES AND MAN SITS IN CHAIR BEHIND DESK. I SEE MANS NIGGLE AND LADYS BOOBS AND LADY LAUGHS AND SITS ON HIS LAP AND MAN LICKS AT HER BOOBS, ONE AT A TIME. LADY BOUNCES AND ROCKS ON HIS LAP AND SHAKES HER HAIR BACK AND FORTH. THEN SHE LIKE THROWS HER HEAD BACK AND AHH-OOHS A LITTLE AND MAKES SCRATCHES ON
THE MAN’S BACK. HE HITS HER AND LADY JUMPS UP, Sear pages of the CREEMING LOUD. MAN GRABS HER AND PUSHES HER ONTO THE DESK AND PULLS BACKWARDS ON HER HAIR AND THEN GOES PUSHING AT HER …

  There was more there but I went instead to a week later, then two weeks later. How long?, I was thinking somewhere in my outrage. Before and after. But how long?

  December 21: TRACK LADY TO BAKERY THEN SKULPTER GALLERY. LADY WAITS ON CUSTOMERS FOR A LONG TIME AND TALL MAN COMES IN AND WALKS BACK AND FORTH IN TINY DESK ROOM UNDER MY WELL. THEN LADY PUTS CLOSED SIGN IN WINDOW AGAIN AND COMES IN SMALL ROOM. SHE YELLS AT MAN BUT MAN PUSHES ON HER SHOULDERS AND MAKES HER KNEEL IN FRONT. MAN LIKE MOVES BACK AND FOURTH FUNNY FOR A LONG TIME AND HOLDS LADYS HAIR. AFTER A LONG TIME SHE STANDS UP AND SPITS ON THE FLOOR AND TRIES TO HIT THE MAN WITH HER HAND BUT MAN—

  No, I’ll pass on that. I just want to know how long it went on. I go to the last, end-of-the-year pages of the JURNUL. Most of it concerns Wolfie’s Christmas haul (again, the A-to-D rating system) and the usual holiday goings-on at the house. But there’s one more:

  December 30: TRACK LADY TO BAKERY AND LIPSTICK STORE, THEN GO IN ARCADE FOR A WHILE. BEAT JOSH 3 GAMES IN ROW, MAKE A DOLLAR FROM HIM. GO OVER TO SKULPTER GALLERY, CLIMB IN WELL REAL QUIET BECAUSE LADY AND MAN ARE ALREADY IN TINY ROOM. I HEAR LADY YELLING NO A LOT AND NO MORE A LOT AND MAN HUGS HER LIKE DAD AND THEN PUSHES HER AGAINST THE DESK AND LIFTS HER SKIRT AND PUSHES AT HER FOR A LONG TIME. AFTER A WHILE HE LEAVES AND LADY CRIES FOR A LONG TIME AT THE DESK. TRACK LADY HOME FROM SKULPTER GALLERY AND SEE LADY RUN INTO DADS STUDIO AND GRAB HIM IN A HUG WHILE DAD IS LOOKING AT PICTURES. DAD CLOSES CURTAINS AND I GO—

  Good God, I remember that! She had me do her right then and there, over the goddamned desk! With some other guy’s wet still in her! I drop the book again and surge to my feet. I want to hit something or break something or beat something up but I have to be content with taking a few of the file boxes and hurling them against a far wall. I’m panting with rage and exertion and Todd is standing there, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong, Dad?” he calls in fear. I stop and try to collect myself.