♦
“She’s tired. She’s recovering,” Sam would say. “She’s been through a lot with the separation. Your father hasn’t treated her very well.” A favorite subject of hers were stories about Dad. Her body inflated, leaning toward ours as she listed all his crimes. “Crimes,” that’s what she called them. She talked for hours, sitting there at the dinner table. Mom in bed. Sam’s big black eyes beamed. I felt alone. I put my hands beneath me and rocked in my chair. The leftovers dried on our plates. Her kids made remarks, agreeing with their mother though they’d never met Dad. Saki cried and Sam lifted him from the floor to her lap to give him her enormous breast. He sucked noisily and burped.
“Your father had been fucking Camille for over a year.” Fucking. She accentuated fucking, making it really hard. “They had it all planned out, their escape,” Sam said. When Saki finished she gave her breast to Pursey. He was eleven, three years older than I. His bushy head of hair fell down her chest. You could hear him slurping, as if through a straw.
“Do you want some?” Sam asked, catching me staring.
“Do you eat your baby’s poop?” I asked.
“It’s the best part of him,” she said, and smiled.
♦
Mornings Dad’s little white VW appeared in the driveway outside the kitchen window. Julia and I rushed out to it with our lunch bags and book bags. Dad had the court order that allowed him to drive us to school three days a week.
“Hello, Ian,” Sam said, leaning out the kitchen door. Half in, half out. It was cold outside, but she wore a sleeveless nightgown. Her fleshy arms drooped and no goose bumps rose on her skin. Thick black hair emerged from her armpits. Steam issued from her mouth. Her hands rested on her hips. The two of us kissed Dad and piled into the car. Jane had already caught the bus. Dad would ask us about her. He’d ask Julia what he could do to get her to ride with us.
Sam’s kids crowded at the kitchen door eagerly, hoping for a ride. Wild creatures, I thought. They had hair all over the place and Pursey’s was longer than mine. And their clothes were all hand-me-downs, rattier than the clothes we gave to the Salvation Army. I hated that they went to my school and that kids and teachers would know they lived with us. Mom told Jane, Julia and me to treat them like we treated each other, as if they were our own sisters and brothers. The only sisterly thing I ever did was chop off Belva’s hair to make her look better. Chopped it all off in the bathroom until she had short, short hair. “A pixie,” I told her. She was six months younger than me.
“Would you mind giving the kids a ride to school? They’ve missed the bus,” Sam asked Dad. They’d missed the bus because they’d taken such a long time getting ready. They could never find anything of their own and were always borrowing from us, and now I couldn’t find anything of my own. Sam’s voice was strong. She never flirted to get her way, the way Mom did, smiling up at men with her curly blond hair and that gap between her teeth. Mom even flirted with Sam. Sometimes I thought Sam thought she was Mom’s husband. “Jealous husband,” Julia would add.
Dad’s face became long. Sam’s eyes held him, unblinking. The kids rushed from the house and piled into the car with us. One up front next to Julia, two squooshed in the back next to me. Dad said nothing the whole drive to school, while the rest of us talked and shouted.
The next time Dad said something to Sam. “I drive fifty miles to spend a few minutes with my children before school.” The words came almost visibly with his hot breath in the cold air. Her kids stood behind her at the door, peering around her, big hopeful faces. Belva reminded me of a rat with her short hair. I was glad I’d cut it. Julia and I sat in the car while Sam screamed at Dad. “You’re a calculating man, Ian Cooper.” She listed the things he’d done, “his crimes,” but I didn’t listen. I covered my ears and sang and Julia sang too. But even through the singing I just knew Sam and her children were hating Dad now and I knew they would tell Mom and soon enough she’d be hating Dad even more than she already did and then so would Jane. Everybody’d be hating Dad. I wondered if I could ever hate Dad as much as that.
A snowfall from the night before covered the ground and the limbs of all the trees. Icicles hung from the eaves of the house. The windows were frosted. Mom’s bedroom blinds were down. I wondered if she’d heard Sam. The temperature was way below freezing. Inside Dad’s car was warm. The engine vibrated. Sam stormed into the house, slamming the door. A few icicles fell and stabbed the ground. Dad leaned his head on the steering wheel. I looked at the house, our big white house in the woods. Dad and Mom had built that house. They bought the property together and moved out here from New York when I was just born.
♦
After awhile we grew used to Sam and even came to like her. There’s nothing quite like it when someone mean warms to you. Makes you feel special, like you’ve conquered something, you alone, because you’re grand. She taught us to sew in the basement and took us to fabric stores to buy material. I made five halter tops for summer and also a skirt. Sometimes Sal would come to the basement and mope and then Mom would come down and mope and they made fun of each other for moping. We’d make bets and have competitions to see who could mope the longest. Sal and Mom would stare at each other, faces long, eyes drooping, until one of them erupted in laughter. The sewing machine churned and Jane laid the patterns on the fabric and cut it out. Seeing Mom laugh was like nothing else, her body alive, moving inside her nightgown. Sometimes I’d just hug her, cling to her until she’d tell me not to. Sam would take care of all of us by making enormous amounts of whole-grain bread and hot oatmeal. For a bit it was like a family. The basement floor was filthy with black centipedes.
♦
At the foot of the driveway, strung taut between two trees, Sam rigged up a metal chain. On the mornings that Dad came to take us to school she marched down the driveway and fastened the chain.
“Your father is not a good man.” At the dinner table Sam told us stories of affairs he’d had before Camille. Affairs with his secretaries and once with a whore. I imagined a whore and laughed.
“A whore?” Julia asked, laughing too, and then so did Sam, and then the whole table was laughing. Even Jane was laughing. It was great to see Jane laugh. She was always so serious. Mom would tell her she’d get wrinkles around her lips if she didn’t lighten up.
Sometimes the way Sam went on confused us, made us feel she was speaking about someone else, made us want to join her, made us want to hate Dad too.
“It disturbs your mother too much to see him, to know that he’s here picking you up. It sets her back,” Sam said, interrupting the laughter.
Sam stood at the foot of the driveway in big clompy boots and her nightgown. A shawl draped her fleshy arms. Her nose was pink and it dripped. Julia and I stood by her side, bundled up in duffle coats. Our cheeks bright red. Julia’s nose never turned red and that made her proud.
“Hello, Mr. Cooper,” Sam said excitedly to Dad when he arrived. Black hairs sprouted from a mole near her lips. Exhaust from the car filled the air. I gulped a few deep breaths, loving that smell. I could have put my nose right up to the pipe, the way I did with the nuzzle of a gas pump, and sniffed for a good long time. The snow had melted and frozen again and icy patches glistened in the strong sun. Ice coated the branches of trees, forming a canopy of icicles over the road. I thought about sledding. Afternoons, Sam took us to the roller-coaster hills. That’s what we called them. Hills in the Sourlands. Enormously steep hills, and because of the ice the sleds tore down them. If you stayed low, sometimes you’d make it halfway up the other side.
“What’s the metal chain for, Sam?” Dad asked patiently.
“To keep you from driving up the driveway,” she said pleasantly. Her black eyes sparkled.
He thought for a moment. Looked at the gloved back of his hand, fisted and flexed it a few times.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked, the words coming out slowly.
“‘What have I done?’ is what you should ask you
rself,” Sam said.
♦
“How was your weekend?” Sam asked. Sunday around the dinner table. Sal was there looking sad, a look that reminded me of a sadness I saw in my father’s eyes. Sal’s novel was going terribly. He had absolutely no money left, no prospects of earning any soon with his work. It looked like they’d live with us forever. It occurred to me he should get a different job.
“Why don’t you get a different job?” I asked.
“Be quiet, Kate,” Sam said. I shut up, but it didn’t make any sense his being unhappy all the time for a job that paid him no money and that he didn’t have to do. “Now how was your weekend, girls?” she said to Julia and me.
“Good,” we’d say, afraid to say something wrong. Each time we came back from a weekend with Dad was the same.
“Well, what did you do?”
We’d tell them about where Dad had taken us, or what he’d read us or a dinner that Camille had cooked.
“Camille?” Sam would say, her eyes brightening, head leaning toward us. “Tell us about Camille.”
We’d tell about Camille, that she was beautiful, with long ginger hair, and generous. That she walked around the house in her underpants.
“In her underpants?” Sam asked.
That she was very organized and her house was filled with so much of everything. We searched for something that would interest Sam, wanting to please her as if by doing so we were pleasing Mom.
“Camille says that they fuck like rabbits,” I blurted, laughing nervously, imagining rabbits fucking.
“She said they make love like rabbits,” Julia corrected. Julia had asked Camille about sex and about babies. Camille had said that when you had a baby the doctor slit your vagina all the way back to your poop hole. I had closed my ears. Julia loved knowing details like that. Camille was filled with them.
“She talks to you about sex, does she?” Sam asked, puckering her lips together.
♦
All around us, like islands floating in the desert basin, were small black mountain chains with jagged, jagged spines. Jane, Julia and I alone in the camper. Now that Anton had announced to his kids that he was going to marry Mom, she tried harder than ever with them, trying to get their love. For the most part, it made us sick the way she’d ooze affection all over them. Especially over the boys. Sofia said that was because she didn’t have any boys. Sometimes, now, the three of us liked it to be just us, and when the others would go off to town we’d stay behind.
Julia brushed the knots out of my hair. Her fingers searched for them, rolling them, pulling them, examining them. Jane read.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Your hair hasn’t been brushed in days,” Julia said. She had a comb and a brush on the table and a little bowl of water to dip her fingers in. She hovered above me, looking into my scalp. Her knees pressed against my back and I could smell and feel her clean clothes. They were stiff and lemony, not like mine, which were soft with dirt. It was quiet. Her concentration was intense. All I could hear were Julia’s fingers pulling my hair gently away from my scalp and the wind outside flapping the sheets that Mom had washed and hung up to dry.
“I like the quiet,” I said. Jane put down her book and straightened out of a slouch.
“I like the quiet too, Kitty,” Jane said.
“Me too,” Julia said.
Out the window an infinity of power-line poles receded over the land. I thought of all my telephone calls and of all my letters. I thought again of the foolish hope that Dad would trace them across America until he found us. His little white VW appearing on the horizon.
“I hate Dad,” I said.
“No you don’t,” Jane said.
“Yes I do,” I insisted. “I do.” I hated it when she told me how I felt, especially since I was saying something I thought she’d like to hear.
“All right, you do.” She looked at me. “Why?”
“For the same reason you hate him.” I didn’t really know why she hated him. I examined my hand, the scars I had from picking at my fingers. I looked up at Jane and I thought of her reading and cooking and acting like Mom and I thought, I am not like that. I thought of Julia knowing everything and showing it off. I thought of her flirting with Nicholas and Anton and I thought, I am not like that either. I felt suddenly lonely.
“I’m leaving,” Jane said. Her whole face flushed and she pushed her palm into her cheek.
“No you’re not,” Julia said, taking her fingers out of my hair. She slumped down into the booth.
“Do you have any of that money left?” Jane asked me.
“No,” I lied instinctively. I didn’t want to give up any of my money. “Yes, I mean yes.”
“You can’t leave,” Julia said. The indoor-outdoor carpet was stained with old food, crusty in spots. I smelled old milk. The wind banged the screen door.
“I can’t protect Mom anymore,” Jane said, getting up to stop the door from banging. “Anton would be nobody without all these people. He gathers them around so he can tell them what to do and feel like somebody. James agrees with me. James and I have talked about this. He’s going to leave soon too.”
“Anton’s just weak,” Julia said. Jane gave her a look.
“Mom says you’ll get wrinkles if you keep your face so serious all the time,” I said to Jane. I didn’t want to protect anybody but Finny.
“Can I borrow some of your money?” Jane asked. I didn’t feel lonely anymore, but scared instead.
“Where are you going to go?” Julia said, suspiciously.
“To Anna’s.” Anna was her best friend. She was Eurasian, with long, silky black hair that she could sit on. Her eyes were green – greener than Mom’s or mine – and almond-shaped. Her skin was pale like Jane’s. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. “How much do you have?”
I lifted my gun from its holster, twirled it on my index finger. They weren’t impressed. I pulled out my wad of cash. That impressed them.
“You have a bloody mint, Kate,” Julia said, counting it. “You’ve got over three hundred dollars.” She counted it again. The money was beautiful in her fingers. “You could go to the moon with all this, Jane. Where’d you get it?” she asked me suddenly and suspiciously. Her left eyebrow rose, slowly.
“I stole it.” I didn’t like admitting that, but I didn’t feel like lying anymore. They laughed. They couldn’t stop laughing and then I started laughing too and told them how I had stolen it and as I talked pride rushed through me, making me exaggerate. I told Jane she could have the money because I knew how to get more if I needed it and they laughed at that idea too. We heard the Eldorado coming back and we turned serious. I scrambled to tuck the money away.
“I don’t hate him. I don’t hate Dad,” Jane said. “It’s just that he left us to take care of so much.” I knew she wanted to say ‘Mom’ and that made me sad. Jane seemed so grown-up to me then. Her hair was neatly braided and she wore a yellow peasant blouse with different-colored flowers embroidered around the yoke. I didn’t think I was like her but I wanted to be. She was almost thirteen.
We crept up the driveway. I thought again of Sam and knew she’d be mad. Then I thought about the Chocolate Shoppe and I asked Dad if we’d go. “We’ll go, Katy, once we get your sisters.”
“You think they’ll come?” I asked getting happy inside. Dad wore a forest green wool sweater and khakis. His thick black hair was graying. I noticed the skin on his hands was wrinkled and I thought about Mom complaining about wrinkles around her eyes, wrinkles you could hardly see. But she’d pinch the skin at the corner of her eyes and lift it. “One tuck,” she’d say. She did that when she was happy, when the only thing on her mind was her eyes. Dad’s hands clutched the steering wheel, his knuckles red, fingers white from pressure. Sun poured through those trees.
Dad got out of the car and walked through the kitchen door into the house. Julia and Jane were at the table with Sam’s kids. Sam stood at the stove concocting something that smelled te
rrible, like liver. All the windows were raised and a breeze raced through the kitchen. Julia looked up from her cereal bowl and smiled and then, remembering something, stopped smiling and her face dropped.
Sam turned from the stove. Her baby clung to her hip. “Let’s go, girls,” Dad said. “I’m taking you to the Chocolate Shoppe.”
“You’re forbidden by the court of law to enter this house,” Sam said. “Leave this house immediately or I’ll call the police, Mr. Cooper.” God, I hated that she called him Mr. Cooper, as if he were a stranger. The baby smiled a big toothless smile and Sam patted his back and he burped. Dad walked over to the table and told Jane and Julia to get ready.
“Over my dead body,” Sam said. I could almost smell her pleasure, as if it was sweating from her. I wished just this once Jane would give in.
Dad put his hand on Jane’s arm. Her face darkened, at first bewildered. “I have to get ready for school,” she said softly. Her voice faltered. For a second, I thought that meant she’d come with us. But then I felt distant from Jane, as if by going with Dad I no longer belonged to this side of the family. Inside the house was different now. Sam’s world. Nothing was familiar anymore. I smelled that liver smell again.
Jane shook Dad’s hand off her arm. Her face turned a nervous red. Her chest would have been splotched with red and white patches. Sam’s kids stopped eating. The baby laughed. I wished Dad would just forget about Jane. I bet I could get Julia to come and I thought maybe that would make him happy enough. I could bribe Julia with my nose, let her bite it as much as she wanted.
“I’m not coming with you, Ian,” Jane said. My stomach fell. The kitchen was dark and everyone seemed like a shadow.
“I’m your father and you are coming. Now get your things. Come on, Julia.” Dad held Jane’s arm again, tightly. Julia stood up and Sam picked up the phone.
Bright Angel Time Page 20
