“The man that wrote you this.” She hands me one of my own crumpled business cards. I stare down at the familiar logo until she turns it, so that the handwriting on the back is legible.
After these crowds are gone, I want to kiss your beautiful pussy on that table in the corner where I first saw you, and forfeited my heart.
My first, unbelievable response is regret that I haven’t read this before—that I might have missed an opportunity to be with him one last time before I left. Relief that he still wanted me despite his seeming detachment that night. Then I look into my mother’s remote gray eyes, the elevated chin, arms crossed over her flat belly. She is still lovely in her plum turtleneck and ivory cords, still righteously self-assured, after all we’ve been through. My face starts to smolder with anger and shame. It’s as if not one minute has passed since the day she caught me masturbating in the bath when I was twelve. As if the world hasn’t turned inside out since then.
I turn from her, start walking farther down the hill.
“I didn’t mean to snoop,” she calls after me. “I was just trying to clean your jacket.”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t.” I march toward the iron gates. “I wish you would stop trying to take care of people! I’m perfectly capable of cleaning my own jackets and managing my own affairs.”
“Sylvie, wait! Where are you going?” She’s behind me, trying to keep up in her slick-soled loafers.
“I don’t know. I need to walk,” I practically shout. Then I twist my ankle and stumble, losing my clog. My mother catches my arm.
“I’m not here to chastise or preach,” she pants. “Though I do think a relationship with the Lord might be crucial during such—”
“I’m forty-two years old, Mother,” I interrupt, struggling to get my shoe back on.
“I know you’re old enough to make your own choices, honey — obviously, since you’ve chosen not to even be a part of this family for nearly a decade!”
“That’s not true, exactly —”
“I just want to give you a little advice.” Her eyes soften and fill. “If you’ll take it.”
For a while we just stand there, facing each other outside the spiked gates. I remember the day—almost thirty years ago—we stood in this exact spot, accepting contraband fireworks from Mr. Robert, how she snipped at him for being with his family that day, how she told me to lie.
“How can you advise me about infidelity or marital responsibility, or whatever it is you’re going to say?” I cross my arms against the damp, heavy air.
“Because I’ve been there,” she snaps. “I know how intoxicating it is to have a man’s desire and secret devotion—to be adored, seduced, seen—married life pales in comparison!” She’s trembling, whether from the cold or from emotion, I can’t say. Somehow this gratifies me. “But it’s a dangerous game, Sylvia. It will tear you apart,” she concludes.
She’s right about that. I want to ask if she ever felt she was falling through her life, pulled down through dream and memory by a force larger than gravity. I want to know if she felt the splintering pain of it —a terrible, fruitful pain like birth, a pain you can’t stop because you have to know what’s on the other side.
“Maybe my situation is different.” After I say it, I realize with a start that this is just what I’ve been telling myself, how I’ve been justifying my actions—my story is different than hers. I sigh, putting my hands over my face. She touches my arm, pulls me back.
“Do you love this man? Is he worth risking everything for?”
“No—I don’t know,” I blurt, my hands flying out insanely, grabbing at the ends of my hair. The weight of despair squeezes my chest, as if I’m being shoved into a corner, pinned by something massive and invisible. “Yes,” I whisper. “I love him, okay? And I love Nathan, too, Mom. I love Nathan, too.” The tears spring out of their own accord, despite how hard I’m holding them.
“Well.” She grips my upper arms. “Then saving your marriage will be the hardest choice you ever make, Sylvia. And the most important.”
“How can you say that?” We’re both shivering now, like saplings vibrating in an earth tremor. “How do you know, Mom? You didn’t save your marriage. We didn’t save it! We threw Dad over for someone else, because—because I told you to. Because we wanted to be happy, right? And now he’s dead and there’s no way we’ll ever know, is there? There’s no one who can tell us how that story would have gone!”
“Is that what you think?” Her face is chalky; she looks as if I’ve slapped her. “You really believe that you, at age twelve, were somehow responsible for my choices?” One thin hand floats over her mouth, the other still grasping my arm.
“Well—I did tell you to.” I wipe my face with my sleeve, pull in a tattered breath. The rain starts, softly at first; I can see it beading on her carefully sprayed hair. I start pulling away again. “I need to walk, I need to walk for a long time.”
“You can’t go off now. Emmie will be up soon. She doesn’t want Alison or me. She barely knows us. She’ll want her mommy.” I pause and sigh, turning back. She’s right again. My daughter will wake grumpy as she always does. She’ll be inconsolable if I’m gone.
She places her hand on my cheek. “The reasons for our family coming apart were far more complicated than that, sweetheart. Sometime, when we have more time—”
There are so many things I could ask her, standing on the border of Gram and Poppy’s property. But the rain is starting to soak through our clothes and Emmie will wake any minute. I know I’m running out of time for this conversation.
My mother offers me her arm and we start up the long hill together.
1975
THE SUNDAY BEFORE LABOR DAY, MOM DELIVERED HER final answer, while Ali and Theresa and I splashed in the pool during a rare, perfect summer afternoon. At the time, we knew nothing about the fateful conversation occurring on the other side of the house, but later my mother would tell me.
He was in the garage, doing some typical Sunday task amid the ten-speeds and dust, the flashlights with burnt-out batteries, hammers hanging down like question marks against the white plaster. Perhaps he was waxing the infamous red car the day she told him—something that made him shudder with satisfaction. He was waiting for her answer, sure she’d want to give their marriage one more chance. At least, I want to picture him that way, assured and hopeful, his manhood settling and shifting in his joints, but feeling okay, really, until she came in.
I imagine her wearing a pair of white and green palazzo pants, a slim white halter, shoulders freckled and warm from the sun. Maybe he was thinking, “How thin she looks!” or “She’s still beautiful!” Or perhaps he was wondering how he looked to her. He was still handsome, wasn’t he? At the very least, he was rich and getting richer—chief cardiovascular surgeon at the hospital now, head of his practice. He could give her almost anything she wanted.
I can feel the tingling in his toes and fingers as he dropped the chamois cloth, felt the words a moment before she spoke them.
“I don’t love you anymore, Don. I want a divorce.” Did she say that? Did the grim lines around her mouth soften into sorrow? “I’m tired of the struggle.” I can picture my mother there so clearly, every mole on her shoulders, the slight sag of the forearms, regret hardening to resolve in those wide gray eyes.
She said he cried then. Did his head drop slowly into his hands until she pried his fingers away? Or did he wait, holding tight to his grief and shame the way a child holds a bruised shin, fingers laced over the hurt? I can imagine him holding on, watching her leave, opening the door to his car and getting in. I can picture him sealing himself in with his sorrow while my mother went back to her housework, while we girls screeched in the yard, practicing cartwheels off the diving board, as if it were an ordinary Sunday afternoon.
Sammy came for dinner that night. I wonder now if my mother invited her out of fear. Dad had undercooked the leg of lamb, but we all ate it bloody and pink—even Mom and me, the vegetar
ians of the family—afraid to say anything that might push him over the edge of his loaded restraint. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what had caused this shift. Just that morning he’d been practically jovial as he clipped the roses, filled my shirt with fresh tomatoes off the vine. Now his jaw muscles were as tight as guitar strings as he sawed into his meat, filling his glass again and again, splashing dots of red wine across the ivory linen tablecloth, which Mom didn’t even try to salvage.
“Are you girls looking forward to your new school this week?” Sammy tried, unaware of the nerve she’d be hitting, unprepared for the geyser of complaint this would unleash.
“No, we’re not looking forward to Seventh-day Adventist school,” Ali started. “We’re not looking forward to leaving all our friends and riding the stinking bus for an hour every day to some ugly old school that doesn’t even have a cafeteria.”
“Alison—that’s enough! It will be a welcome change,” Mom countered. “I’m hoping there will be fewer distractions, and that the girls can concentrate on important things for once. A change of scenery is sometimes good for the soul, right, Sylvie?”
“I guess,” I said, stuffing a glistening sliver of meat into my mouth. I didn’t really want to go to the Christian school either, but I decided to keep quiet.
“It’s an asinine move,” my father said after an awkward pause, opening a fresh bottle of wine. “The public schools in this neighborhood are exceptional, Sammy. This Palmwood is a step down. Not that anyone wants my opinion.”
“I want my children to learn something besides how to sneak out to dance clubs on Saturday nights,” Mom clipped, looking at Sammy.
“Your children?” Dad growled.
“When was the last time you went to a teacher conference?” Mom said, returning his stare. “When was the last time you drove around looking for your kid at midnight, or had to drag her out of a nightclub?”
“Jeez, Mom, you make me sound like a fucking criminal,” said Ali.
Mom raised her hand in the air, then caught herself, brought it back down to her lap, trembling.
“Go to your room, Alison.” Her voice clenched. “Stay there until your mouth is clean.”
“Fine!” My sister threw her napkin on the table and stormed down the hall, slamming her bedroom door. After a pause, Mom apologized to Sammy and we ate the rest of the meal in silence, as we so often did. Calamity Jane sulked in from the kitchen and twined herself around my legs. I fed her pieces of the bloody lamb when no one was looking.
Immediately after dinner, Sammy got up to leave, making excuses about an early shift in the morning. Mom followed her outside, where they talked for a few minutes on the front lawn before she came back in and disappeared down the long hall toward her room.
Then only Dad and I were left at the dirty table as the sky turned tangerine and magenta. I sat with him in the quiet dusk, though every cell of me was screaming to go. “I guess everybody’s leaving tonight,” he said after a silence. “You going, too?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not leaving.” I finished my ice cream, taking careful bites in the shadows while my father poured himself a final glass of wine, draining his second bottle.
“Well, I wouldn’t blame you.” His voice was wrecked and rusty—a piece of old farm equipment dragged across the Nebraska prairie. “I know I haven’t been the best dad in the world. These last couple years haven’t been easy.”
I stared at him in the near dark, utterly at a loss.
“My own dad was a terrible father—even worse than me. D’you know that?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean—you’re not such a bad dad.” My throat felt as if I’d swallowed a fistful of dirt. “We all make mistakes.” It was all I could come up with. For years I’d revisit this comment with shame and longing. If only I could have said something else: that I’d only ever wanted his love. That I was sorry for my part in everything. That I forgave him, even for the things he hadn’t yet done. We live forever with the words we don’t say.
“That’s for damn sure,” Dad said, tripping on his consonants. “But let’s try not to regret the past, shall we? Life’s hard enough, Sylvia, without regrets. You just have to do what you can, and hope for some pardon along the way—okay?”
“Okay,” I said, thinking this was the saddest and truest thing he’d said to me.
After a while he emptied his glass, cracked his knuckles and slurred, “Well, sporto, guess we’re left with kitchen duty, eh? Best clean up this mess.”
“Yep.” I quickly started clearing the table while my father emptied the dishwasher. His movements grew more manic and careless as he worked. Then he dropped a crystal wineglass, and it shattered against the tile.
I gasped.
“Goddamn it,” he said, and then we both turned to see CJ hunched on the counter, licking the juice from the leftover meat. Dad leaped across the room.
“Don’t—” I started, but he was already shoving my cat under one clenched arm, where she hissed and squirmed. I followed him, pulse thudding in my throat as he marched to the screen door, slid it open and tossed CJ onto the patio. She crouched there, dazed.
“Jeez, Dad, she was just hungry,” I snapped, opening the door, scooping my stunned pet off the ground and bringing her in. “You don’t have to be such a jerk!”
My father pounced at once, pulling CJ from my arms by the scruff. She tore at my skin, clawing the air as he hurled her onto the patio again—this time with such force I thought he’d broken her—then slammed the door, wrenching it off its track. When I reached for it, he yanked my arm, eyes bulging, insane. He looked like a man with nothing left to lose.
My own anger boiled in my throat now, shook me to the core. I wanted to foam like a rabid dog at him, curse and claw and tear him up for every cowardly thing he’d ever done. My fury expanded me, made me bigger than him, my heart steely and stupid. I stepped around him, pried open the screen door with freezing fingers.
“Don’t you defy me again,” he whispered, and I paused, considering this, my crazy heart pounding beneath my breasts. After a moment, I lifted CJ off the pavement where she still hovered, terrified. I carried her through the door, held her close to my body in front of my dad, as if to show him what it was to hold a thing, to care for and love a thing. For an instant, it seemed we’d reached some silent understanding—I thought I saw a blue flash of recognition in his eyes. Then he was on me, the cat flying, his fists grabbing my hair, wrenching my neck backward, unearthing me. I crumpled to the tiles and he dragged me to the family room like a dog, arms flailing, orange carpet rising fast to meet my face. Just when I thought it was over, the point of his shoe caught my back, my ribs and arms, his feet kicking and kicking until my limbs curled up, mouth full of snot and carpet and a scream that never got out.
Then he was gone. I heard him grab his keys off the counter, rattle the shutters on the back door. The clock ticked hollowly on the mantel, and my breath came back in a sickening rush. I smelled something rancid and realized with a shock that I had shit in my underwear. After a minute, I rolled onto my back, felt my face, my neck and arms. There was no blood, though my body throbbed in places. No broken skin, no proof of this moment except my hot soiled underwear, which proved nothing but my dirtiness. I lay there for a while, hearing the faint, tinny sound of Mom’s voice at the far end of our house. Her talk fluttered on for a while and then there was a stark, awful quiet. I got up and went to the bathroom, to clean myself.
Later, I lay on their bed in my nightshirt, listening to her yell at him over the phone. Alison sat scrunched in an armchair in the corner, looking green. I had told them everything, even allowed Mom to lift my nightshirt and see the bruises, already spreading and turning purplish. I’d told the story in a clipped, matter-of-fact voice, like a reporter, and a few minutes after my stilted confession, Dad called with his own.
“You made her defecate in her underwear,” Mom kept saying. “You made her defecate, do you realize?” Each time she said that word, I got s
maller and sank farther into the bedspread until I was no more than a speck of lint floating in the air between them, so small that I couldn’t utter a word when she finally put the phone to my ear. “He wants to say sorry,” she told me, but all I heard were my father’s thick, horrible sobs. Then the line went dead.
That night, I started having the dream—a man I couldn’t recognize fell from an impossibly high cliff, his body tumbling like a rag doll, battered and breaking against rocks while I stood by, watching. I had a vague feeling I’d pushed him, or at least given a little nudge. A Santa Ana wind was brewing when I woke panicked and hot, and I couldn’t get back to sleep through the racket. I lay on my bedroom floor, running my fingers over the marks he’d left on my arms and back—a map of fire. I was listening for his return, but there was only the dry, frantic clapping of palm fronds, people’s trash barrels knocking down the street. Sometime after midnight, the streetlights sparked out and my night-light went black. I heard sirens, and in the darkness my body seemed to swell as though it would fill the house. The weight of my dread pressed down like water—vast, immovable.
After a while I got up, stood on tiptoe to reach the pine box and the Kinney’s shoe box in the upper corner of my closet and brought them, bulging with contraband, into the night. It was nearly impossible to light the fire pit in that swirling Santa Ana, but I kept at it, lighting match after long wooden match, holding each letter firm until it caught, curled and blackened into flame, until the boxes were finally empty. Bits of ash danced and dispersed across our patio.
Then I climbed the fence, joined with the wind. I walked up La Loma to Crestwood to Skyline Drive, wind thrashing my hair, dirt pelting my eyes. Tumbleweeds the size of televisions cartwheeled across the road and I felt I might walk forever, over those mountains, across whole states and through other lives, until the land ran out. I walked until an orange dawn bled over the San Gabriel Mountains, until I could no longer feel my toes, when my mother finally drove up beside me, her face ashen, and told me to get in.
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