House Broken

by Sonja Yoerg

They waited, talking little. Geneva worried she might lose her mother before she had a chance to understand her. When she realized this meant she truly did love her, she wept again. Tom wrapped her in his arms until her tears were spent.

  • • •

  Finally, after two hours, a doctor came to see them. She said they had pumped out Helen’s stomach and her condition had stabilized. The blood work showed she had taken Demerol, but earlier in the day. “Which was lucky,” the doctor added, “considering her blood alcohol level.” They would be keeping her overnight and, depending on her condition and state of mind, she could be released as early as midday tomorrow.

  As they headed to the parking garage, Geneva texted the children to say they were on their way.

  • • •

  She slept fitfully. At quarter to five in the morning, she arose and walked quietly across the room to let Tom sleep, picking up discarded clothes along the way. Diesel stood when he heard her footsteps in the hall. He stretched his forelimbs in front of him and stuck his rear end in the air, yawning hugely, then met her in the kitchen. She squatted before him and massaged the skin behind his ears until his lids drooped with pleasure. When she stopped, he pushed his muzzle into her neck and licked.

  “Yuck.” She wiped her neck with the sleeve of her robe. He darted in for another lick, but she blocked his head with her hand and scratched him under the chin. “That’s enough, thank you.”

  She turned on a single light in the kitchen, started the coffee, then proceeded to the laundry room, Diesel at her heels, to make inroads on the mountain of dirty clothes that had been accumulating all week. She sorted the clothes, going through pockets as she went, removing a stick of gum from Ella’s hoodie and a parking stub from Tom’s trousers.

  In the jeans she had worn yesterday, she found the piece of paper she’d taken from her mother’s bed. Staring at the worn pale blue paper, she felt for the wall behind her and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. A hard lump of dread caught in her throat when she unfolded it and read Paris’s name at the bottom. The date at the top was May 26, 1995. Twelve years after their father had died.

  Mother,

  This is the only and last letter you will get from me. I will make myself as clear as I can, then I’ll have nothing more to say.

  You say that because we were both victims of Daddy’s “unusual desires,” we should have sympathy for each other. I reject your premise. I have never been anyone’s victim. I loved Daddy and Daddy loved me more than anyone or anything in the world. I don’t believe in God or heaven but I do believe I was put on this earth to love my father. As much as you have tried to take that from me, you can’t.

  I’ve thought many times over the years of what might have happened if you had been able to give Daddy everything he deserved. Would he have turned to me if you had loved him better? Of course I believe he and I were destined for each other—and he believed it, too—but you seem to want to hand out blame, so you can take that share for yourself and live with it.

  The idea that you were Daddy’s victim almost makes me laugh. Are you too big a fool to see the irony in this? You were clever, I’ll give you that.

  You write that you want me to have a family and live a normal life. You mean, one like yours? No, thank you. I’ve had great love once, and that was more than enough. Now I have my work. If you stay out of my life, I will have everything I ever wanted.

  Paris

  Her mind raced to make sense of what she had read, but the ideas would not line up and instead spiraled away from one another. It was a language in which her understanding of the individual words was defeated by the syntax. Destined. Blame. Heaven. Irony. Desire.

  A wave of nausea flowed through her stomach, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. She suddenly felt sick but didn’t know why. She put a hand to her head and noticed her heart was racing. She glanced at Diesel, who lay outside the room watching her, his brow furrowed. Had she moaned or made a noise that worried him?

  She began to read the letter again, and got as far as “victims of Daddy’s ‘unusual desires,’” and stopped. The ground became fog that swam around and under her. She swayed and rocked. Lowering the letter, she tipped her head against the wall to ground herself and end the sickening pitching and swirling. She closed her eyes and saw her father and Paris dancing in the living room. He lifted his arm and she twirled under it, around and around, her dress lifting as she spun.

  Geneva’s stomach heaved. She turned to the side and vomited onto the laundry. She pushed herself upright and wiped her mouth with a piece of clothing. In front of her, Paris was spinning, her face close to Geneva’s, her blue eyes sparkling, saying with each turn, “Did you love Daddy? Not like I did. Did you love Daddy? Not like I did.” Diesel barked sharply. He pawed at her legs half covered by her robe and barked again.

  • • •

  “Are you all right?” Tom scanned the scene, then knelt beside her and put a hand to her forehead. “You’re really pale.” Diesel peered at Geneva over Tom’s shoulder. “It’s okay, boy. I got it now. Go lie down.”

  She handed him the letter.

  He gave her a questioning look, then sat down. She watched him read, the way one waits during a speech for the translator to begin. It was possible those words didn’t mean what she thought they did. But then she saw him shake his head slowly, and wince, and knew that as much as she wished she had been mistaken, she wasn’t.

  Tom folded the letter in half, then raised his head to meet her gaze. “How could he . . . ? Nobody knew? And why didn’t your mother . . . Oh, darling . . .” Tears shone in his eyes. He leaned forward and stroked the hair away from her face. “Let me help you up. I’ll clean this up later.”

  As he slipped his hands under her arms, she saw a tear run down his cheek. She wiped a hand across her own cheek and looked at her fingers. They were dry.

  Tom led her down the hall and asked if she wanted to go to bed. She shook her head.

  “I think I’ll go outside.”

  “It’s not light yet.”

  “I know.”

  “You want me to come?”

  “I’d rather be alone, I think.”

  “Sure. You get dressed and I’ll pour you coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her limbs were heavy and her fingers felt thick as she pulled on her yoga pants and T-shirt and zipped up her sweatshirt. She picked her robe off the floor and searched the pockets. She went to the kitchen.

  “Do you have the letter?”

  He pulled it out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her, along with a steaming mug. “Let me get the door.”

  Diesel followed her onto the porch and stood beside her, peering into the darkness in search of the reason they were outside at this strange hour. She sat on the top step and put down the mug. Diesel sat, too.

  In her hand, the folded letter felt less like paper than the thin sueded hide of a small animal. The texture sickened her and she breathed deeply to stem the nausea. She concentrated on the outline of the redwoods against the sky, where a few stars lingered ahead of the impending dawn.

  Diesel yawned.

  “If one of those stars falls, be careful what you wish for.”

  She started to open the letter to read it again, to see whether this time the words it held would shock her less. Maybe if she read it again and again and again, eventually she would no longer feel as if she’d been turned inside out.

  But the letter was a Pandora’s box. The truth about her father had escaped and was running wild. The only question was what she was going to do about it. Already in the half hour since she’d opened it, the truth had trampled through her memories of her father, memories she had held dear for more than thirty years, and corrupted them like a virus. And Paris was no longer the eccentric enigma, but an abuse victim in absolute denial, a denial cultivated by her father, whic
h made him even more despicable.

  And her mother. She had a thousand questions for her mother, but only one mattered: How could you have let this happen?

  An image came to her of Paris at sixteen, unwrapping a box and lifting out the nest Geneva had found in a dogwood tree. Paris held the nest lightly, respectfully, and smiled at her. Geneva glanced at her father, to see if he approved of her gift, too, but his eyes were on Paris.

  The same age as Ella. Her throat clenched shut and pressure built at her temples. She doubled over to control the sobs racking her body. Diesel poked his nose into her neck. She threw her arms around him and hung there, trembling, until the first birds tentatively heralded the morning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ELLA

  There was no way she could go to school today. It wasn’t because of the song, though yesterday that seemed like a reason to crawl in a hole and die. (And she still thought if she actually saw Marcus in this lifetime she would, in fact, die.) And it wasn’t because of some post-traumatic stress from finding a gun in her brother’s backpack, though that had seriously freaked her out. No, the reason she couldn’t go to school—couldn’t even get out bed, in fact—was because she had almost killed her grandmother.

  If only she’d gotten a conscience a little earlier, like before Nana showed up, then her parents would have known the Prince was not a prince after all, but a sneaky little shit. Maybe they would’ve decided having a crazy alcoholic in the house wasn’t such a hot idea, or would have let her come but kept him on a shorter leash. But Ella didn’t say anything and the shit hit the fan, and Nana acted as if it was no big deal but then went to her room and downed a bottle of vodka and some pills, and the ambulance came and her mom said, “Don’t worry,” which was adult code for “major disaster,” and Nana nearly died.

  Good job, Ella.

  The alarm on her phone went off a half hour ago. Usually if she didn’t show up in the kitchen by this time, someone knocked on her door or at least yelled down the hall. Weird. She dragged her butt out of bed to see what was up.

  Her dad was drinking coffee in the kitchen. He looked like crap. Worse than yesterday, which was saying something.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi, Ella. I was letting you sleep in.”

  “I don’t have to go to school?”

  “No. I’ve got to take Charlie in, and maybe pick up Nana later, and I want you to stay with your mom.”

  “Why? I mean, sure, but what’s wrong with Mom?”

  He looked into his mug like there were tea leaves in there. “This stuff with Nana is tough on her.”

  She swallowed hard. “I thought Nana was gonna be okay.”

  “She is. But it’s still tough.”

  Great. More collateral damage. “Is she sleeping? Can I go see her?”

  “Sure.” He got up and headed for the fridge. “Have some breakfast first?”

  “Not hungry, thanks.” She drew a slow circle on the wood floor with a toe. “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Mom going to be okay?”

  He came around the counter and put his hands on her shoulders in pep talk position. “She’s got you, doesn’t she? And me.” He smiled a little. “And Charlie.”

  For her mom’s sake, she hoped one out of three was enough.

  • • •

  Her parents’ door was half open, so Ella stuck her head in. Her mom was sitting in the rocking chair, but she wasn’t rocking. She was staring out the window, which was strange all by itself. She wasn’t the staring-out-of-windows type, unless there was a new bird at the feeder or a squirrel doing backflips.

  “Mom?”

  She didn’t move an inch. “Yes?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  There was only one chair, so she sat in front of it on the rug. Finally her mom turned to her. She looked worse than Dad. “Are you okay?”

  Long pause. “Not really, to be honest.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Like she was a therapist.

  She smiled a little. “No. I can’t really. Someday I’ll tell you about it, maybe. I’m sorry.”

  Ella felt half relieved and half left out. She’d had enough truth and drama recently, but she was also sick of secrets. But her main worry was that her mom looked sadder than she’d ever seen her. How could she help her if she didn’t know what was going on?

  “Have you called Uncle Dub? Maybe he can help.”

  Her eyes got all glassy. “It’d be great to call him with good news instead, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure. But it’s okay. He’s your brother.” And not the kind of lying rat fink hers was.

  Her mom nodded, then turned to the window again. Ella sat there awhile, to keep her company.

  Finally her mom got up and they went to the kitchen to get some food.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  HELEN

  When she came to she didn’t know where she was, but her head hurt so bad she didn’t care. Like someone held a splitting wedge along her brow and was smacking it with a sledgehammer. She closed her eyes again and hoped to God she would die.

  Someone said her name and shook her. She squinted and saw a black man in a white coat. She tried to tell him to leave her alone, but her mouth was too dry to work. Reaching up to push his arms off her, she got tangled in something—tubes or wires—and gave up. Too weak to put up a fight and too numb to care.

  Sleep was all she wanted but they wouldn’t let her. Cruel, that’s what it was. But she’d messed it up, got greedy with the vodka and then forgot about taking the rest of the pills. This was her punishment, lying in this bed, tubes stuck in her body, head split in two, being shook awake by a black man who knew her name but not a blessed thing about her. He was making it his job to keep her on this earth, as if he was her creator and the decision was his. She cursed him.

  • • •

  A woman bent over her and pulled the tube out of her nose, then stuck a straw in her mouth. The water tasted like tin. Her head was better, meaning someone was banging it against the floor instead of cutting it in half.

  Hours later, Tom appeared at the foot of the bed. She asked him where Geneva was and he said she wasn’t feeling well.

  “Same here.”

  He didn’t smile, but said he might be back later, depending on how the visit with the psychologist went.

  This was news to her. “They want to see if I’m crazy?”

  He glanced at the nurse who was checking Helen’s drip. “Something like that.”

  “Tell them the truth and save them a trip, then.”

  “It’s not funny, Helen.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  He stared at her, like he was thinking about saying one thing, then changed his mind. “Helen, did it ever occur to you that Geneva might need you?”

  Now the nurse was staring at her, too. “She hasn’t needed anything from me since she was out of diapers.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  And he walked out without another word.

  • • •

  The nurse brought her a tray and told her the food would help her nausea. She ate and watched TV while she waited for the psychologist. Her headache had eased some, and wasn’t much worse than an ordinary hangover. Must have been the oxygen and medication and whatnot they’d been pumping into her. That suited her fine. If she was going to live, she didn’t want a darn headache.

  She had already decided there was no point in fighting the system. What choice did she have? Stay here in the hospital? Volunteer for the mental ward? She didn’t have a clear plan, but that was no different from any other day in the last thirty years. She could live with it until she decided not to.

  Meanwhile she wanted out. Hospitals brought nothing but bad memories. Most people felt the same, she supposed,
but she had her own particular reasons. Hospitals were more alike than they were different, and that was the problem. The week at the Good Samaritan after she crashed her car was bad, but the pain meds had dulled things. Now she was sober—or close enough to it—and everything about this room reminded her of ten days she would give her life to forget.

  • • •

  Paris had been at college six weeks and Eustace drank hard for all of it. In the middle of October he was playing golf—and drinking—and caught a heel in a divot. Went ass over teakettle into a bunker. Lay there for a good long time, the men at the club said, just staring at the sky. Wasn’t until he finally decided to get up that he figured something wasn’t right with his arm. Pointed in an odd direction.

  His shoulder broke in two places, but he didn’t take to being laid up, and insisted on carrying on as usual. He went to the mayor’s office every day, and didn’t let up on his socializing—or his drinking. Refusing to rest didn’t help him heal, and he experienced considerable pain, especially at night. He thrashed something fierce and was up and down like a fiddler’s elbow all night long. Desperate for sleep, Helen went downstairs and lay on the couch. She tried Paris’s room once but it gave her the willies.

  Between missing Paris, the encumbrance of the sling, and lack of sleep, Eustace was in a foul mood. The children gave him a wide berth and Helen didn’t talk to him unless she had to. The last two weeks of October and the beginning of November went like that. Helen didn’t know what was worse, Eustace’s present condition, or what’d be going on when Paris came home for Thanksgiving.

  One cold November morning, Helen picked up the paper from the front walk and sat down to read it before anyone else got up. That was the one advantage of sleeping on the couch—having a fresh paper all to herself before the others made a hash of it. She scanned the headlines for a story that struck her fancy. On page three she found one: RALEIGH MAN DIES OF TYLENOL OVERDOSE. Just last week she’d bought another bottle of Tylenol from Grether’s. The doctor had given Eustace some medicine with codeine, but he objected to the way it hung in his head in the morning, so the first week after he broke his shoulder, he switched to plain old Tylenol.