Talk

by Rachel Zachary

  I stopped in McDonald’s and changed out my pad, doubling up because of all the walking I had to do and done and bought a large black coffee and a box of nuggets to have something hot to drink and some food in my belly. I kept walking and after three more blocks I was home.

  The first thing I did was take a shower before climbing into bed. I spent the rest of the day and most of the weekend in bed, catching up on my missed sleep and taking advil. On Monday I was feeling better, enough to order some pizza and share it with a couple friends who had come over to check on me (they all thought I was getting over the flu). By Tuesday I felt like my old self again and by Wednesday I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t stop smiling, I had my life back. I thought that being homeless, that living in Dogtooth, even having our house burn down was the worse thing I’d ever been through but this took the cake and ate it. I knew, knew down to my soul that if I hadn’t had an abortion that I would have killed myself. I promised myself that it would never happen again, that I would be careful, that I would always use protection that I had almost lost everything I had been working towards and that I had a second chance. I wasn’t going to waste it.

  ***

  I went to see Dad a few weeks later and he insisted on taking me out to dinner to celebrate my good health. I told him that I had set up a plan to pay him back in installments when he waved me off.

  “I don’t want you to worry about that,” he said.

  “But Dad that’s a lot of money.” I protested.

  He didn’t look me in the eye but stared at a spot on my chin.

  “You needed it, and it was important,” he said. “Can’t I just help out? Make things right?”

  I tried to tell him that he had nothing to make up for and that what had happened was in the past but he wasn’t hearing any of it. I still felt guilty. Not just for taking his money, but because I hadn't told him what I had used it for. I wanted to tell him, but something on his face told me not to push it, that things were fragile enough.

  “Okay Dad,” I said reaching out and putting my hand on top of his.

  “Nothing to say thank you for,” he said and cleared his throat. “You’ll always be my girl.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  The spring and summer was uneventful I graduated from NYU, Mary had come and so had Mom and Bob though I wasn’t sure why Bob was there, and Dad who had promised he would come and would be sitting high up in the stands of Yankee Stadium a few rows below the party deck.

  He stood out in a bright red sweater and hat, he stood up yelling my name and waving and I had cried when I walked across the stage because my whole family was there (and Bob) to support me and that Dad had come.

  Early that fall after I graduated I moved out of Manhattan and into an apartment in Brooklyn in East Flatbrush it was one bedroom, one bath, and the lease is twelve months. It was perfect. Especially on a teachers salary, I started last week teaching English at Brooklyn Gardens Elementary. After I had bought a mass of old quilts, blankets, and old squashy furniture with Dad who helped me move in it was cozy. The windows were level with the tops of the trees and I woke up to a sea of gold every single morning.

  A week before Thanksgiving when I was in the middle of packing a suitcase and an early Christmas present for a trip to Dad’s who had moved out of New York and down to the Florida Keys, I got a phone call. I had never even known Dad had wanted to move until he had called me and I had taken a week off of work to help him narrow down his ten choices for houses and condos he’d found online down to one, a nice little one story house with room for a flat boat for fly fishing and later to help him pack. I planned to pick Mary up in a rental car and drive down to Florida.

  It was the first one I’d spend without Mom in years, she had been angry that I was picking Dad over her, I figured she was trying one last last last time to convince me to come see her and Bob (who despite her best efforts and many hints still hadn’t proposed).

  “Mom?” I asked without looking at the screen. I pulled out two long sleeved shirts and shoved them into my suitcase.

  “No It’s Mary,” Mary said.

  “Hey,” I said smiling. “I’ll be over in, uh, thirty minutes okay. Have you gotten all of your stuff packed?”

  This would be Mary’s first Thanksgiving with Dad since she had moved in with me and she’d been nervous about it since I invited her to come with me.

  Mary hadn’t left Manhattan, she lived in a apartment with her art and theatre friends. She wanted to be an actress, she had already been in several plays (I kept all of the playbills in a shoebox) her director told me that she was very talented and had the perfect face for ‘emoting. She had a job as a waitress in a diner to pay the bills but I slipped her a few twenties whenever she came to visit.

  “That’s what I was calling you about,” Mary said slowly. “I’m not coming.”

  “What?” I asked. “Are you serious.”

  “Dead serious.” she said.

  I paused, she didn’t sound angry or upset but something was off.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m still going to drop by okay?”

  “Whatever,” she sighed. “I’m sorry I’m just not in a good mood today.”

  “That’s okay, do you think you’ve come down with something? I know it’s flu season.”

  “No it’s not that.” she said, and something in her voice made me stop.

  I grabbed the keys off the table, “I’m coming over now okay.” I didn’t wait for her to answer, I hung up and took the stairs down instead of the elevator.

  ***

  One hour later I pulled up in front of Mary’s apartment, the lights were off and she had left the door unlocked. I knew the second I saw her that something was wrong. It had only been a month since I last saw her, and Mary who was usually energetic and glowing with a healthy shape was now rundown, thin and pale. She was biting her nails or what was left of them, until the skin was raw and red.

  “Hey,” I said stepping in flicking a lamp on.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked trying for a smile. “I brought you some things that always help make me feel when I’m sick.” I set down some cold medicine and chicken soup on the kitchen counter.

  “I’m not sick,” she said. “You want anything to drink?”

  “No thanks.” I said eyeing the empty beer bottles scattered on the table and on the floor.

  She plopped back down on the sofa and wrapped herself in a thick blanket, I could see the hollows in her face, the dark circles under her eyes.

  “You want to order a pizza or something?” I asked her. “I’ll even get the one with pineapple.”

  “You hate pineapple.” Mary said.

  “Yeah but I know you like it.” I said trying for a smile.

  “I’m not hungry.” she said.

  I sat down on a beanbag chair and tried not to arch an eyebrow. She looked hungry. She looked tired, and scared.

  “Moving somewhere new on your own is always hard,” I said. “Even when it’s with friends. You know you can always come home if you want too”

  “I know but I don’t want to,” Mary said slinking down deep into the cushions. “I’m happy here.”

  “You don’t look happy.” I said.

  “Yeah well you caught me on a bad day,” Mary snapped. “It’s not like I invited you over.”

  She got up went over to the mini fridge and pulled out a Diet Cola with shaking hands and popped it. Foam bubbled over down her hands. We both shared a small laugh and cleaned it up with napkins. The whole place was a mess, I had offered to help them clean it up before but Mary had told me that would disrupt their creative juices. It had started to rain again, a constant drumming against the window, but it was warm and dry in here.

  “You know you can always talk to me,” I started. “I know you wanted space, but I can tell that something’s bothering you.”

  “If it's about Thanksgiving I can drop you off at Mom’s instead.” Because I don’t want to leave you here alone by yoursel
f.

  Mary snorted and finished her soda.

  “What makes you think I want to see her anymore than I want to see Dad?”

  “So it’s about Dad?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mary said. “No.”

  “Well which is it? I’m not a mind reader.” I said starting to get nervous myself.

  Mary didn’t say anything she crushed her can flat than tossed it on the already cluttered table.”

  “I can’t go with you to Florida,” she said grudgingly. “I’m not sick, and I’m not drunk I’m just...upset.”

  “Because of Dad?” I asked her slowly.

  “Because of Dad.” she said.

  Crap. My mind started racing, they had never gotten along and Mary had never had the relationship that I did with Dad, but I had thought that things might have softened between them over the years. I didn’t expect or ask her to forgive or forget what he had done. Hell I didn’t even know if they had talked without me acting as a go between, passing messages from Dad to Mary and Mary telling me to tell Dad to fuck off and me lying to Dad about what she really said (he never fell for it).

  “Have you guys talked recently?” I asked her. “Did you two have a fight or something?”

  “No,” she said thoughtfully looking out the window. “No I haven’t talked to Dad in years.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, confused. “Then why can't you come with me to Florida? Why don’t you want to go to Mom’s? Listen Mary, you gotta give me something to work with here because I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Nothing’s happening.” she said bitterly.

  “So something happened?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And it’s why you can’t see Dad?”

  “Look can you just drop it?” she asked me angrily.

  “No I can’t Mary,” I said getting angry myself. “Because you were fine on the phone just a few days ago and then I get here and you look like shit! You look like a skeleton and then you tell me that you can’t come with me to Dad’s and you don’t want to go to Mom’s because something happened but you won’t tell me what that is an-”

  “I was raped.” Mary said.

  Everything I was about to say, every thought in my head came to a screeching halt. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Then Time snapped back and I was jumping into action, fumbling for my cell phone already planning to call the police, return the rental car and bring my suitcase to the hospital with me, Mary would need clothes to wear when the police took hers and we were the same height (despite how much weight she’d lost).

  “What are you doing?” Mary asked me.

  “Calling the police.” my fingers didn’t work right, it felt like I had sat on them for too long.

  “Why?”

  “Jesus, because you were raped,” I hissed as if there was somebody around to hear us. “I have to call the police, let them know, did you see him? The man that did it?” Oh god, what if it was more than one man.

  “Susie,” she said and I froze at the steel in her voice and looked at her through my bangs.

  “It was Dad.”

  “What?” I croaked. My hands were empty. When had I dropped me phone?

  “Dad molested me,” she said patiently as if I was the one who needed comforting. “He touched me, and he hurt me, and he-he raped me for years.” she didn’t look at me, she kept looking out the window. My whole body gave a violent twitch.

  “There’s a lot that I didn’t remember, that I didn’t want to remember but I was in the theatre and there was a scene when Tommy, you remember Tommy? Had to lean over me and-and it was like I was six again and Dad was just standing there on top of me all over me and I couldn’t move I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t do anything.”

  “After that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I can’t stop.” Mary said with wide eyes. “I just keep going over it and over it in my head. I keep seeing him everywhere and if I go to Florida I just know something terrible is going to happen.”

  What if you’re wrong I wanted to ask her but I knew, I knew that she believed that this had happened to her. That Dad, it made me want to throw up but I couldn’t panic right now. or let her see that I was panicking. What was going to happen when Mom found out, and bob. What if she made a mistake? I could not rule it out. She had always hated Dad and I know she didn’t like me spending so much time with him. And I was afraid, afraid that if she was telling the truth then what if something had happened to me too?

  I didn’t call Dad, or Mom. I tucked Mary into bed and crawled in next to her, it reminded me of all those nights when she had crawled into my bed or I had crawled into hers when we had, had our own rooms. What were we running from? I thought hard, I remember always waking up afraid and I remember telling myself that Dad was downstairs drinking and watching the game. But it had never comforted me. We had never talked about it, even when we were old enough to sleep on our own, it was...safer together I realized. My stomach turned, because I had never thought about it that way until now. I watched Mary pretend to sleep.

  “Were you afraid of Dad?” she asked me.

  “When he was drinking? Yes.”

  “When he wasn’t.” she said.

  “Yes.” I said.

  “Do you believe me?” Mary asked looking straight up at the ceiling.

  “I don’t know.” I said honestly. I had promised that I would never lie to her. “I believe that something happened to you.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t even believe myself. It feels like i’m losing my mind. Like I don’t know, I don’t want to know what’s real and what’s not.”

  I reached out and grabbed her hands under the covers.

  “We’ll get through this.” I told her.

  “Will you stay with me?” she asked.

  “Of course I will,” I said.

  We would get through this, we had to. Pretty soon Mary fell asleep I pulled her close, her head under my chin my arms wrapped around her just close enough that I could feel her heart beating. I laid there for a while and then slipped out of the bed and padded into the kitchen.

  A pack of cigarettes were on the counter, two beers were left in the fridge. I grabbed one and drank it without stopping, and then took the second one too. I drank and I walked and when there wasn’t any beer left I smoked. I hadn’t smoked since my first job at the diner when I had second-handed it from the chefs but I wanted too now. I wanted to burn, the smoke. I wanted to drink. I wanted to shut my brain off.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave Mary, but Dad, Dad would be expecting me. We had been spending time together, we had fun together. I talked to him almost every day. I hadn’t forgiven but we had worked on our relationship (and if I had watched a couple marathons of Oprah to help me talk to him then that wasn’t anybody's business or place to judge) until we were friends. I could honestly say that I loved my Dad and that I wanted, I needed him in my life. I had been fly-fishing with him, he had sang along to old country music and taught me how to grill a fish. I had planned to decorate his house with him for Christmas. I had bought the biggest box of lights in the store, five miles. He was going to come up to New York in a few weeks and we were going to go ice skating. He was my friend. He was my Dad.

  What was I supposed to do?

  I thought about all those nights when I had hidden next to Mary. When he had disappeared for days on end. We had sat in the kitchen with a butcher knife in his hand and blood pouring all over the floor. How much Mary had hated him.

  You’ll always be my girl.

  God Dad, Dad what did you do to her?

  What did you do to us?

  ***

  Sleep came surprisingly easy, but it was anything but peaceful.

  I laid on the sofa trapped under a mountain of blankets pretending that I was back in dogstooth where there was no heating, no quilt and willed myself to remember what Mary had.

  I remember having to pee so badly when the football game w
as on and a hand, Dad’s hand on my thigh, but the hand became a spider and suddenly I had wet myself and Dad was yelling at me that I wasn’t a baby anymore and only baby’s did that and grabbing me up by the waist. My pants and underwear were yanked down one after the other and to my horror I realized that I was naked and Dad was cleaning me up but we were in the living room and Mom was still in the bathroom and everyone on the TV had stopped watching the field and were all watching me. They were laughing but Dad was so serious and quiet he kept saying the same thing over and over again. Don’t wake your sister. I couldn’t move. And then it was over and I was running upstairs and pulling on a new pair of pants and underwear and my old ones were thrown in the trash. Don’t wake your sister.

  I woke up holding onto my belt loops and checked myself and the sofa. My heart was pounding, in and out, in and out I took deep breaths until I was calm. I checked in on Mary. She was still asleep. It was just a nightmare. Just a nightmare. I grabbed my phone ready to call Mom. Mom who had told us not to wear our underwear to bed because it was too hot, but she had kept the windows closed and the bedroom door open. I had always woken up okay, and Mary had too as far as I could tell. Something turned in my stomach and I swallowed at a new ugly thought. Had she been getting us ready for him? Making it easier? Maybe...maybe it was just like Mom said and it had been too hot for underwear. Maybe it was completely innocent. Either way it made my skin crawl to think about it now.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  I thought about Dad while I made a cup of coffee. The beans fell out of the bag and onto the floor with a loud clatter. I screamed and suddenly I am nine again and making the coffee, the bag is ripped the grounds are all over the counter and on my shirt.