I press the buzzer on my railing. Over and over I press the buzzer. A nurse peers in the window at me and then she’s gone. My father smirks and I can see his incisors, like yellow grains of rice. He gets so close I can see the thread crosshatching the buttons on his shirt.
—Nobody wants to take care of an ungrateful little shit like you, he says. He raises his arm to smack me, just a warning smack the way he used to when I forgot to water the tomato plants or take down the laundry, but then Dr. Mercer comes in and he retreats to his chair to watch the show.
She takes my hand. It feels warm and sweaty and I love it. I’m surprised she wants to touch me at all. She sits on the edge of the bed, still holding the hand. I watch it as if it is an appendage that doesn’t belong to me.
—If the door of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite, she says.
We’re quiet.
—Before you give me credit for such a wonderful line, I should tell you it’s by Blake, she says.
I want to ask, How can you cleanse the door to perception? It sounds so easy. Metaphysical Windex. But my tongue is too unruly in my mouth and I can’t seem to remember how to speak yet.
—Let’s talk about the truth now, she says.
I nod at her. I would do anything for her, to make her stay. To make him leave.
—My father—
My voice comes out with rocks in it. She holds up a finger—so good at hushing—and takes a pitcher of water from the table at the foot of my bed. She cradles my head and helps me drink. I can’t help it. I think: She leadeth me beside the still waters.
—My father hanged himself when I was eight, I say.
—I know that. I know, she says.
—I was the one who found him.
—I don’t forget the things you tell me, Twyla.
I nod again.
—But nobody knows that when I found him, he was still alive.
Her face is expressionless. I want her to tell me I’ve done a good job. In the corner, my father howls.
—What did you do? she asks.
—I watched him, I say. I didn’t run for help until he was still.
My father is writhing now, his legs are curling and kicking at the floor, his face purples, the rope tightens around his neck.
—That’s a big confession, Dr. Mercer says. That’s very brave. Thank you for sharing that with me.
She squeezes my hand. She restoreth my soul.
—How do you feel? she asks.
—Old.
—Good girl. Good girl.
She’s watching my eyes. I wonder where she keeps her rod and staff.
—If it’s all right with you, before we go any further, I would like you to tell me one other thing.
—Anything, I say. And I mean it.
—Tell me what it is that you’re looking at in the corner, she says.
And I tell her, Nothing.
Just a trick of the light.
7
Children of Saturn
-MARCIA-
April 2007
When people lie, they put their hands over their mouths to keep the secret from escaping. If they feel compromised or inferior, they put a palm on the back of their neck and rub. When they feel close to getting caught, they cross the threshold and overcompensate with penetrating eye contact.
The best liars are fluid. They sit still, but not too still. They are worried about being uncovered, but not terrified. Most of all, they are experts at tact, so when my dad asked me about school over the phone and then mentioned, casually, that he was coming up to the sorority house for a visit next Saturday, I told him that I couldn’t wait to see him.
—Why isn’t Mom coming? I asked, and he told me that her coworker Karen was having a baby shower but he was feeling restless, and wouldn’t it be great to have one-on-one time together for a change. I told him that would be great, so great, really great.
I’d taken the call in the living room. Eva, who had been dozing under an econ textbook on the couch, cracked an eyelid.
—Your dad’s coming?
I nodded, hand on forehead. (Sometimes liars rub their foreheads when they want to feign exhaustion. Amateur liars.) Eva continued:
—Moments like this, don’t you wish we still had flip phones? They were way better to hang up with.
—All I can do is fling the phone.
—It is definitely not as satisfying, Eva said.
—Can I ask you something?
She nodded, and the econ book slipped off her chest and onto the floor. She made no effort to pick it up.
—Do you like your parents?
—I like the idea of them, she said.
—Did you always feel that way?
—No, she said. I used to really, really like them. But things changed when I watched my mom try on a bathing suit in the Macy’s fitting room without underwear.
• • •
I knew my dad would want to see my bedroom so I went upstairs and filled out the Alert Board. A sorority house is built to look deceptively welcoming. He could see the immaculate foyer, the living room, and the dining room, but he would not be allowed beyond the kitchen doors without notice. Unfortunately, the riskiest sisters are the ones who are garbage at reading the board, so on Saturday morning I knew I would still have to tell Elina to put on a bra.
• • •
I don’t have a problem with liars, really. Eva is usually a liar. So is Shannon, who purges, and Margot and Deirdre, who make out with each other, and Amanda, who says she’s not a virgin. The good thing about liars, though, is that they are so busy playing defense they never notice when you are trying to hide something yourself.
• • •
My brother Nathan lived in the Rosewood complex on the other side of town. He’d dropped out of college four years ago under the pretense of taking time off and now he works as a fry cook at Valentine’s and is trying to create a start-up that has something to do with containers designed to store leftover pizza slices. He isn’t depressed, but I am depressed for him. The apartment smells like his job.
—Dad’s coming on Saturday, I said.
—Shhh, he said from the recliner. Dr. Phil’s about to tear this lady a new one.
We watched Dr. Phil’s mustache jump as he gesticulated at a woman with a midwestern haircut and runny mascara.
—Janet, let Darryl into your heart! Nathan yelled at the TV. He looked at me, faux doleful.
—Marcia, when will Janet learn to accept true love?
If it were a nice apartment I could have thrown a decorative pillow at him. Instead, I chucked an empty Pez dispenser from the floor.
—You are so empathic, I said.
—I sweat empathy.
—You sweat something. Dad’s coming on Saturday, around ten.
—You already said.
—What are your thoughts? I asked him.
—He hasn’t called me, Nathan said.
Of course he hadn’t gotten the call. Since his dropout, Nathan made guest appearances at holidays and uses work to excuse himself from other visits home. Our parents don’t beg for a different outcome. Last Christmas, my mom asked him to take the family photo. I stood in front of the tree, Mom and Dad on either side, my brother hidden behind the shutter. I should have offered to switch places so they could have pictures flanking each child. I did not offer.
—He might call, I said.
—Probably won’t.
—You could come meet him with me at the house. My sisters will be around. He’ll be nice. It could be nice.
—Hey, it’s his thing. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable if he doesn’t want to see me.
—But I want to see you, I said.
—You’re a peach. No wonder you’re the favorite.
—Don’t say that, I said.
—It’s okay, he said. You’re my favorite, too. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!
Nathan did a jokey tantrum stomp into his kitchenette and started th
inning the basil seedlings that were sprouting on his windowsill. He nibbled at the tiny double leaves as he pulled. It was weirdly disturbing to watch.
—You look like that Goya painting where Saturn devours his sons.
—There’s only one son in that painting, Nathan said, and I wondered for the thousandth time why he hadn’t finished college, though of course there are plenty of smart people who don’t finish or don’t go and lead successful lives and maybe vocational schools are right for them or maybe they find direction in the military and so on and so on, I know.
—I asked one of my sorority sisters how old she was when her parents stopped seeming so perfect to her and she said that she knew it when her mom tried on a bathing suit without wearing underwear.
—Raunchy, he said.
The basil pot had been annihilated. Only two seedlings remained.
—Remember being little and thinking that our parents were awesome?
—Sure.
—I miss that. I used to watch other kids roll their eyes at their parents and I’d feel horrified.
He smiled and nibbled thoughtfully on the root of a tiny seedling.
—I don’t know if I ever had the reverence for them that you did, he said. But I get what you mean. I miss thinking they were special.
—How do we get that feeling back?
—You don’t. You just get used to knowing that your parents are assholes like the rest of us.
—I really do think he’ll call you before Saturday, though.
—Don’t count on it, he said.
We watched a full thirty minutes of daytime television before he said, Maybe he’ll call. Who knows.
• • •
My father was handsome. When I was a little girl, I loved going out with him because I thought everyone was looking at me. He wore Ray-Bans and dress shirts rolled up at the forearm and carried a Zippo in his front pocket, but I never saw him smoke. Up close, I could see the scar on his neck from a tracheotomy that he’d had as a boy. We had a game where I would ask him what caused the scar, and every time he would answer with fresh morals:
Don’t juggle marbles in your mouth.
Don’t brush your teeth on the stairs.
Don’t swallow a whale’s eye whole.
Nathan, knowing that it was his job to protect his little sister from becoming a gullible idiot, would shake his head at me from across the table.
• • •
Margot’s dad stopped being perfect when he took her to play minigolf and told the girl behind the counter that she had a sweet mouth. He didn’t compliment her smile, she said. It was the mouth, specifically. It was vile.
Shannon said she stopped admiring her mom when she noticed she couldn’t calculate the tip at a restaurant in her head.
Amanda said her granddad was amazing, and kind, and she was so lucky, how did she get so lucky? Her voice was so timorous that I didn’t push it any further. She would make a great nun, I thought. She’s got that quiet, sanctimonious gusto.
Twyla said that her dad hanged himself when she was a kid. Her honesty was mortifying. I stopped asking other sisters.
For me? I was eleven. He was working in the yard. I came in for a glass of Tropicana and the phone rang, no name on the caller ID. He’d told me time and again not to answer a no name. It breeds more of them, you know. Spam callers just wait for a person to pick up and then they sell the number to other companies. But I was bored, and I answered, and on the other end, I met Sylvie. Sylvie, who was crying. Sylvie, who was asking for him by name. I don’t think I spoke after the hello. I hung up. The phone rang again, no name, and she did not leave a voice mail. Outside, my dad was scooping soggy leaves out of the gutters and tossing them onto a tarp below. I crept up to him and jiggled on the bottom rung of the ladder, not enough to harm but enough for him to know that I was there.
• • •
On Saturday morning my dad stood outside on the front steps, still handsome. He had a full head of springy brown hair, precisely parted on the side. Wrinkles were converging around the edges of his eyes that made him appear kinder than he really was. He carried a care package filled with my mom’s efforts: banana bread, my favorite lilac soap, a jar of night cream, dental floss, and pictures of the family pug, a furry void-filler who had joined the house when I left for school last fall.
—Thank you for this! I said, and gave him an airy hug, trying not to crush the bread. He did not give my mom credit for the package.
—Who painted the lines in your parking lot? They’re close, he said. Do you have an assigned spot? Do you park next to someone who is careful with their doors?
I spoke loudly in the foyer: SO GLAD YOU COULD COME, DAD! DAD, HOW WAS YOUR DRIVE?
—Does your mom know that you’re doing this with your hair now? he asked.
He ran his hand over my stubby blond ponytail. It was so short I had to use bobby pins to pull pieces of it back.
Doors edged open and shut. Somewhere, Elina was lurking without a bra, and two pledges were hung over and vomiting and sobbing in the upstairs bathroom. I’d found them holding hands under the stalls just minutes before, sisters of suffering. It was kind of sweet. I let them be.
I seated him on the living room couch and noticed, just in time, that someone had left an errant condom wrapper under the coffee table. This was the downside of Saturday visitors. I batted it under the couch with my foot as if it were a hockey puck. God only knew where the actual condom was. I sat gingerly beside him.
—I’ve missed you, he said.
—I’ve missed you more, I said.
• • •
A polygraph test would be ideal. A cop with Dr. Phil’s mustache would sit before us. My dad would have sensors affixed to his chest and arms. There would be a card table. There would be folding chairs. A single lightbulb dangling on a ceiling chain would be too much though, too Hollywood.
The Dr. Phil cop would ask some baseline questions and then the real stuff would begin. I’d wear glasses. I’d be taller. Maybe Nathan could do it and I could disappear from the scene altogether. Nathan would say,
—Tell me about the scar.
—Tell me why Marcia is the favorite.
—Tell me how long you’ve been cheating on Mom. Does she know? Why doesn’t she leave?
• • •
—How are classes? he asked.
—I got an eighty-eight on my introductory accounting midterm, I said.
I made eye contact, but not too much. I did not cover my mouth with my fingers. I asked him: How’s Mom?
—Terrific, he said. But she sure does miss you.
—Remind me again where she is?
—She’s playing a scramble with Sarah, he said.
—That must be why her cell went to voice mail this morning.
—Yes, he said. Her handicap is at twenty-one now. Not bad for a woman her age.
—That’s something, I said. How’s Nana?
—She’s good! They found a new med for her arthritis. She fired another aide.
—What a bitch, I said reflexively.
—Language, he said, and then we smiled conspiratorially at one another.
—It’s so quiet, he said. Where are your sisters? If they’re your sisters are they my daughters?
—My sisters are hungover and hating their lives, I said, and I uncrossed my legs and turned toward him. He was smiling.
—Let’s have a tour.
He nodded approvingly at the kitchen and asked about my diet. Was I taking a multivitamin these days? Did I get enough calcium? Did I still think I was allergic to cashews?
—You managed to escape the freshman fifteen, he said. Wish I’d been so lucky. I gained twenty pounds my freshman year and your nana put me on Atkins that summer.
He stopped speaking; his lips disappeared between his teeth. (This is a shame gesture, the books say, and it indicates that the speaker feels they have overstepped.)
—Who checks the fire detectors in this house? he asked
.
In the bedroom hall, he did not comment on the strange oblong stain on the carpet outside the bathroom door. The Alert Board had been flipped to reveal a framed photograph of our sisterhood’s crest, our secret signal for a visiting parent. I showed him to my room. I’d painted it sea green and pushed the twin beds together to make a king. Every night I managed to roll into the gap and edge the beds apart, but at least it looked seamless with a duvet on top. Under the bed, behind a storage bin of salt-stained boots, I’d hidden my pledge paddle, my bowl, my grinder, my wrapping papers, a tiny Baggie of E, and a series of wineglasses covered in puffy paint that had my pledge name emblazoned across them. I had no interest in my father discovering that I’d been dubbed Nala after a long, loopy night on weed rolled in PCP, where I convinced myself that all of my sisters, in their fuzzy-hooded parkas in the snow, were actually lions with terrifying manes.
—Tidy! he said approvingly. He sat at my desk. So, this is where my smarty-pants girl spends her free time.
—You got it, I said. God, I thought, please don’t open the drawers.
Elina loped by while his back was to the hallway. She stopped and lazily lifted her shirt to flash me, exposing her droopy tits, before she shuffled out of sight, middle fingers extended. On the other side of the house, out of the clutches of parental purgatory, the doorbell trilled.
He got up and peered out of my window. I had a nice view overlooking the woods. Clumps of forsythia were popping up in the brush below.
—Who trims the trees here? he asked. Do you guys have an arborist? I don’t like how this one leans toward your window.
—I think a guy takes care of it during the summer, I offered. I rubbed the back of my neck with my palm.
Down the hall, I heard feet hurrying. Eva appeared. She still had one fake eyelash on from the night before.
—Sorry to interrupt, she said, but there’s someone here to see you.
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