Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  “I am logical. I’ll live here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I live in Kansas City. We can’t share custody over that kind of a distance.”

  Despite his dismissive tone, there’s an implicit threat behind those words that makes me bite my lower lip to keep my mouth shut.

  A throat-clearing sound draws my eyes to the kitchen door. Dad stands there. He’s wearing a T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. His feet are bare. They look vulnerable and pathetic, the toes twisting into each other, vine-like, as if trying to grow in new and unusual directions.

  “This is Leah’s house,” Dad says. “All her things are here.”

  He starts to pour himself a cup of coffee, but his hands are shaking, and he drops his half-filled cup. It splinters on the floor, and scalding coffee splatters everywhere. He continues to stand there, still pouring coffee out of the pot in his left hand, staring at the broken mug as if it’s a strange occurrence completely disconnected from his control.

  I knock my chair over with a clatter, leaping up to help him.

  “Here, let me take that. Don’t move. You’ll cut your feet.”

  His eyes take a slow elevator trip from the floor up to meet mine. “I spilled the coffee.”

  “Yes, you did. We can make more.” I bend down to clear away the pieces. Elle comes running with paper towels. His feet are reddened where the hot liquid splashed him, but I don’t see any blisters. Greg’s expression is pure I told you so.

  I want to kiss the burns better, like I used to do for Elle when she was little. All I can do is take Dad’s hand and walk with him, side by side, down the hallway to his room.

  “Come on, let’s find you some dry clothes, okay?”

  Mom’s drawers are still full of precisely folded clothes. Dad’s are untidy, dirty socks and underwear stuffed in with the clean.

  “Jeez, Dad, you’ve got a college boy system going here.”

  “Don’t sell the house, Maisey.” He drops heavily onto the bed.

  “Oh, Daddy. I don’t want to.” I kneel on the floor in front of him and press his hands between mine. They are so cold, so stiff.

  “There’s money,” he says. “Don’t tell Greg. You can live here. I’ll give you full access to all the bank accounts.”

  “I’m not good with money. Maybe it would be better—”

  “No!” His vehemence startles me. “Don’t let him. Don’t let Greg do it. You have to stand up to him.”

  “Elle.” My throat closes around her name. Everything always comes back to Elle. If I antagonize Greg, maybe he’ll take her from me.

  Dad pulls his hands away from me and scrubs them across his face. “It’s Leah’s house,” he says. “She’s here. She’s everywhere.”

  “I know, Daddy.”

  He seems to have shrunk since my mother’s death. His T-shirt hangs on him, too big. The bottoms of his pants are coffee-soaked.

  “How are your feet? Do they hurt?”

  “Don’t have much feeling in my feet. Diabetes.”

  “We’ll have to watch them. Make sure they heal.”

  It hurts too much to look at him, and I turn back to the drawers, throwing obviously dirty clothes into a pile on the floor and rummaging for clean ones.

  “Laundry is definitely on the agenda. Here we go. Clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt. These socks pass the sniff test. Do you need help getting dressed?”

  “I’m not a child,” he says, which I choose to take as an assurance that he can dress himself.

  “Okay. Holler if you need anything.”

  My feet drag me back to the kitchen and Greg. Elle is down on her knees, scrubbing the floor with the dishrag.

  “Thanks, baby.” I keep Greg in my peripheral vision while I load the filter for a fresh pot of coffee. He’s bent over paperwork spread out on the table and starts in talking as if there’s never been a gap in the conversation, as if the horrible meltdown with Dad never even happened.

  “We’ve got a couple of Realtor offices to choose from. I spoke to Karen at Frontier, and she sounded like she knows what she’s doing. I’ll give you her number.”

  “We’re not selling the house.”

  I didn’t know I’d made the decision until the words came out of my mouth, but they have the ring of truth.

  “Oh my God, Maisey. Really?”

  “He doesn’t want to.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. But he’s hardly fit to make decisions. He can’t possibly take care of himself.”

  “He was completely clear last night.” I focus my attention on the stream of water running into the coffee pot, as if it is the most important item in the universe.

  “That’s how dementia is when it starts. Patches of clarity and stretches of confusion and disorientation. It’s going to get worse, not better.”

  “We don’t know that, Greg. Dr. Margoni says it’s possible he’s just confused right now because of grief and shock.”

  “And maybe you’re in denial.” His words hang between us, harsh and uncompromising.

  Unwanted tears blur my eyes, and I can barely see to pour the water into the reservoir. Some of it misses, puddling on the counter.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Greg says, as I wipe up my mess. “Of course you’re in denial. Your mom died suddenly. The last thing in the world you want is to lose both parents. Which is why it would be best to let me take care of things.”

  “No.”

  I turn to face him, leaning against the counter for support. “My parents. My job. I’m grateful for your advice and your help, but he wants me to take care of things, and I will.”

  “Maisey—”

  “Let me finish, Greg. Just this once. Let me talk. There is no urgency to sell the house or make Dad move. He’s better here. It makes sense for me to stay here for a bit until things settle out. I’ll let my apartment go so I have no ongoing expenses elsewhere.”

  “And Elle?”

  “I’m staying here,” she chirps. “Grandpa and Mom need me.”

  “You have school.”

  “School is out next week. Do you know what happens during the last week of school? Nothing. Busywork stuff.”

  “This is an adult conversation, Elle. Please don’t argue.”

  “It’s a conversation about me! I think I deserve to—”

  “Enough. If you can’t hush and let us talk, you need to leave the room.”

  He doesn’t yell or raise his voice, and there’s nothing horribly wrong with the words. What’s all kinds of wrong is the tone he uses, the same dismissive tone he uses on me, as if my opinion is a slight thing not worth his consideration. Hearing him speak like that to Elle shrivels me on the inside.

  Elle, stronger than I am, plants her feet, lifts her chin, and says, “I don’t like it when you talk to me like that.”

  The slap comes out of nowhere. No anger, no warning, delivered so rapidly I blink and doubt what I saw. But nothing else makes that same dull thwack but flesh on flesh, and an angry red splotch marks Elle’s cheek.

  Greg turns back to his papers as if nothing momentous has just happened. “I suggest making Walter an appointment with a psychologist for competency testing,” he says, “although if we can get him to sign power of attorney papers during a period of clarity, that might be easier. Chances are good nobody will look too deeply into whether he was competent when he signed. At least, as long as the police continue to leave him alone.”

  As my shock dissipates, my anger increases.

  Elle hasn’t moved an inch. Her back is ramrod straight, her chin is still tilted up, but she sniffles, despite her attempt to blink back tears. The last thing in the world she’ll want right now is sympathy or a rescuer.

  “Elle, would you please go check on Grandpa?”

  She accepts the option clause I’ve given her, dashing out of the room and down the hallway. Greg glances up, eyebrows lifting in surprise when he catches my glare.

  “What?”

  “Do you make a habit of hitting her?
”

  “Only so far as she makes a habit of sassing me.”

  I try to keep my voice level. “Was that sassing? It sounded like a legitimate request to me.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Maisey. Somebody needs to discipline that child. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be spoiled rotten.”

  “I didn’t ask about discipline. I asked if you slap her like that often.”

  Greg sighs, heavily, pushes back his papers, and turns to face me. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation. There are more important things to worry about right now.”

  “Nothing is more important than my daughter.”

  “Which is exactly why she needs to be slapped. You’re letting her get way too full of herself. She needs to be taken down a peg. And stop looking at me like that. She’s not hurt. It will be good for her.”

  “Was it good for me the time you hit me?”

  “Are you really going to bring that up, now? That was what, twelve years ago?”

  “I had a root canal twelve years ago. That was good for me. I’m wondering about the therapeutic value of getting slapped by your lover. Or your father.”

  “If you insist on revisiting that night, let’s just put it in perspective, shall we? You were pregnant. With our baby. I wanted to do the right thing and get married. You were completely delusional and incapable of rational thought.”

  “So you hit me.”

  As I say the words, understanding floods in. Somebody has turned up the volume on the sun. Light reflects off the tile floor, shines out of the walls. Everywhere, light. I can almost hear the angels singing.

  It wasn’t my fault that he hit me. His anger is not my fault. I am not responsible for his behavior, then or now.

  “You’re blowing that one supercharged moment into something it wasn’t,” Greg says.

  “My cheek turned purple. My eye swelled up. I told people I ran into a door.”

  “Don’t be a drama queen, Maisey. I barely tapped you.”

  My response is derailed by Dad shuffling back into the kitchen and over to the burbling coffee pot. He’s gotten into the clothes I put out for him, but his shirt is buttoned crooked. I look behind him for Elle and am relieved to see she hasn’t followed.

  Greg scans my father’s disheveled appearance in a slow-motion, exaggerated, top-to-bottom eyes-as-movie-camera pan meant to emphasize his point. “Can we get back to business now? This isn’t something you can put off.”

  Dad picks up the coffee pot and a mug. I hold my breath, willing his brain and his hands to put together the process this time around. He hesitates, then sets the mug on the counter and starts to pour.

  “I always wondered about Maisey’s story that she walked into a door,” Dad says. “It didn’t fit. The bruises were all wrong.” He successfully returns the pot and turns to face us, holding the mug in two uncertain hands. There’s nothing uncertain about his eyes, though, or the words he now directs at Greg.

  “You need to leave my house. You’re not welcome here.”

  Greg laughs, a discordant, misfit sound in the drama-filled kitchen. “With all due respect, Walter, I don’t believe you really mean that.”

  “I remember the night you told us you were pregnant, that you had moved out of Greg’s place,” Dad says, looking at me now. “Your cheek was greenish-black. You told us the door story. And you know what? I wondered. I wondered then, when you said the two of you had a fight and it was over between you. You always were precise with words. You didn’t use the word argument. You didn’t say disagreement or falling-out. A fight. That’s what you said and what you meant. He hit you. We could have known. Should have known.”

  “Twelve years ago,” Greg says. “Actually, thirteen. I made a mistake.”

  “And now my granddaughter is hiding in her room, and she has a bruise growing. Did she walk into a door? Or was that also a mistake?”

  Greg slams down the papers he’s holding. “Can we get back to what’s important here? Settling your affairs and keeping you out of jail, for example?”

  Dad shrugs. “I have an attorney. I have money. I don’t need a man who hits women in my house.”

  “Maisey,” Greg says. “Please speak reason to him.”

  There’s a wildcat in my belly, hissing and spitting. My hands have claws. I want to launch myself at this man who has hit my daughter, to tear his smug face with my fingernails, to scream and shriek and watch him bleed.

  Which would make me as bad as he is. I breathe. Once, twice, three times, before responding.

  “You heard him. It’s his house.”

  “You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”

  I stare him down. His eyes actually fall away from mine, and his hands start packing papers back into the briefcase.

  “Fine. If you come to your senses, let me know. You have today. My flight leaves tomorrow morning, and I’m driving to Spokane tonight. I have a ticket for Elle, by the way, and will be by to pick her up tonight at seven. Please make sure she’s ready.”

  The click of the latches sounds like finality.

  “She’s staying with me, Greg. I’m the custodial parent.”

  “Are you sure you want to play that game with me, Maisey? I’d think about that very carefully if I were you. I’ll be by for her at seven.”

  We let him see himself out.

  Dad stands by the counter, still holding a mug that has yet to make it to his mouth. I get up and take it from him, carrying it across to the table.

  “Drink up,” I tell him. “I need to go talk to Elle.”

  Elle sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, scribbling furiously in a journal. When the door opens, she glances up to see who it is, then resumes writing without saying a word. Her hair screens her face, and I tuck it back behind her ear so I can see her cheek.

  “I don’t think that will bruise,” I murmur, half to myself, letting my fingers trace the reddened skin.

  “I’m fine,” she says, the pen not pausing for an instant. “And I don’t require a lecture.”

  “Why on earth would I lecture you?”

  “Because I talked back, and I should learn when to keep my mouth shut and then I wouldn’t get hit.”

  “Is that the way it works?”

  She shrugs. Won’t look at me.

  “Does he hit you often?” I select my words with care, as if they are expensive items on display, and I can only afford a few.

  The pen hesitates in its mad rushing, and she shakes her head so her hair falls free again in front of her face.

  “Elle.” I place my hands over hers and stop the scratching of pen on paper. She is rigid beneath my touch, and when her eyes come up to meet mine, I’m relieved to see hot rebellion burning as bright as Blake’s Tyger. Greg hasn’t broken her or her beautiful, extravagant self-confidence. Not yet.

  “I don’t care if he’s my father. He didn’t have the right to hit me. Not like that.”

  “I agree.”

  “Linda doesn’t.”

  “She thinks it’s okay?”

  Elle drops her eyes and slams her journal closed, holding it pressed flat between her palms. “Not exactly okay. She said sometimes being a girl sucks, but you have to be smart. And if you’re smart, and watch the signals and don’t antagonize a man, then he won’t hit you.”

  “That’s what she told you?” I picture Greg’s gentle wife, so lovely and warm toward Elle, giving this advice. The image makes me shiver. “I’m not sure she’s right about that, Elle Belle.”

  “It’s what you do,” Elle says.

  Touché.

  The world narrows down to this single moment, to the huge responsibility of selecting the right words to set my daughter straight. Grief hits me for my own beautiful self-confidence, shattered so many years ago that I can’t imagine ever putting the pieces all back together. Maybe it’s too late for me, but Elle still has a chance to stay free of this broken thinking.

  “I think it’s like this,” I say, finally. “If you were
really rich, some sort of gazillionaire, some thief might come and steal your money. And then maybe people would say, ‘She should have had better security. She should have put the money in a safe and hired a bodyguard.’ And maybe those things are true, or maybe not. Either way, the guy who came and stole your money is a thief and a criminal. Do you see that?”

  “I guess. What does that have to do with Daddy?”

  “Any man who hits a woman is like that thief.”

  “You spanked me when I was little.”

  “Maybe I was wrong to do that. I don’t know. You needed to learn some things, and I couldn’t think how else to teach you.”

  Elle lies back on the bed, journal clasped over her chest, and peruses the ceiling as if it holds all the answers.

  “And maybe Daddy is doing the same thing. Teaching me.”

  God have mercy. My mother used to say that parenting classes should be mandatory before people were allowed to reproduce. She didn’t mean this to apply to herself, of course, but to the ignorant hordes whose children run wild in Walmart, pillaging candy bars and throwing tantrums. At this moment, I’m thinking there should be a mandatory university degree, which includes not only psychology but also existential philosophy.

  I lie down beside my daughter and join her in staring at the ceiling. There’s a water stain in the corner, but otherwise no answers I can see.

  “Does that seem true to you?” I ask, finally.

  “It feels—different,” she says. Her voice catches as her rigid control finally breaks, her breath uneven with sobs she can’t suppress.

  I lie perfectly still, quelling the need to hold her. She doesn’t want that, doesn’t need that, and this conversation is so not about what I need.

  “And how does it feel?” I ask her, or the ceiling, or maybe the universe.

  “Not good,” she says, and I think that’s all I’m going to get. She’s only twelve, for all her precocity and adult behavior. But then, as usual, she surprises me. “It makes me feel like . . . gum. Old parking lot gum. On a shoe. Inconvenient. Annoying. Disgust—”

  She can’t finish the word, crying now in earnest, and I have to work hard to translate what spills out of her, distorted by her weeping.