Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  She’d be smart as a whip, of course. It just was not possible to imagine Tilly any way other than smart. But she’d be smart in a way that was not so acerbic or disrespectful. She’d be useful smart. She’d be incisive but not destructive; and by destructive Hollis intended that word to include all manner of self-destruction. She would have matured into adulthood without the drinking and the drugs and the sex. True, Hollis had never been sure just how much of Tilly’s white-knuckle adolescence had been for real and how much of it had been a well-orchestrated drama for him to fret over; a War of the Worlds production of Leave it to Beaver. Nevertheless, a normal adolescence would have avoided the concerns of self-destruction, real or imagined, altogether.

  He knew the world was a very different place than when he had come up. Tilly was not Hollis and he was not Homer and 1980’s Columbus had not been 1950’s Cincinnati. He knew he had not been an unreasonable father. He had not expected Tilly to live by the rules of a different era. But it also had not been too much to expect that Tilly follow her brother’s lead into adulthood. They had never had to worry about David. David had been so easy. David obeyed. David accepted. David appreciated.

  But Tilly.

  He and Susan had resorted to the gallows humor of supposing there was something genetic at work.

  “Could be worse,” Susan had said once, after another dinner had been destroyed by senseless arguing and slamming doors. “Matilda Leone burned down her home in Barcelona before stealing away to Indiana to marry my great grandfather.”

  He had not answered her and it was not until they had gone to bed that Hollis’ anger over the evening had subsided enough for him to reply.

  “Was that comment about Matilda supposed to put me at ease?” He asked. Now I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

  She was no David. Tilly seemed to relish being everything David was not. She had worn Hollis down, or she had tried, with her refusal to acknowledge his authority, the music wars, the dinner table rages, the strong opinions about everything she encountered, the harsh judgments of others; her punked-out, over-pierced, unhygienic, wastrel loser friends; not to mention the parade of stubbly, pot-reeking suitors marching through his home on a rotating basis. He could have done without all of that. And yet, even as bad as all of that had been, it was all preferable to Tilly’s periodic disappearances. Anyone seen Tilly? Not since last night. Not for two days now. Not for a week now. Not for two weeks now. All they could do was worry and wait for a call from the police, or the coroner, or whoever’s horrible job it is to call the parents of a dead child. In retrospect, he would have endured all the rest of it had she just stayed at home.

  Of course, as Susan was overly fond of reminding him, it had been Hollis who had called Tilly’s bluff the first time she had threatened to walk out and live somewhere else. Even after all of the intervening years and the ample opportunity to polish up the facts and to see things from a kinder perspective, it was one of the few misjudgments that Hollis had continued to acknowledge. It had been a stupid argument. Something about her demand for a stereo that Hollis had refused to purchase for her.

  But any argument would have done. She had been waiting for a reason, for any opportunity to issue her threat to walk out. And when her opportunity came she had taken it; through all of the snot and the tears she had thrown down the gauntlet in the middle of the evening news. Hollis had hardened his face and bent down to his daughter standing before him in the living room, defiant, enraged, and he had stared directly into those drowning, gorgeous green bloodshot eyes, ignoring the quivering lips and the shaky knees and Hollis had pointed rigidly towards the front door.

  He should never have done that, he knew. But he was tired of the daily combat. Tired of the profanity and the disrespect. Tired of the continuous challenge. Susan had tried her best to interject, to change the direction of things, but he had silenced her with a look that demanded unanimity. How many times had they agreed: no divided parenting. Susan had demurred and held her tongue and let him run the show. If Tilly was going to resort to threats of leaving then Hollis, her father, would goddamned show her who had the real control in that house. He would call that bluff and she would forever regret making such idle threats just to get her way. He had had quite enough of the insurrection.

  “The door is right there, Tilly. Do us all a favor, won’t you?”

  But he should have known that Tilly was calling all bluffs in that house and that he, Hollis the father, had been the one making idle threats.

  She had come back, of course, the very next day, shaken and crying, and Hollis had at least been smart enough not to ask questions or to rub her face in it. Susan had swooped into a kind of super-maternal overdrive, doting on Tilly in a way that either dangerously rewarded her behavior or suggested that home was a good place to be. Hollis, meanwhile, had silently chalked up a tenuous victory in the Tilly wars and had hoped that his dose of hard cold reality had put the end in sight.

  In a very real way, he had been right. The end was in sight, only not quite the end he had been expecting. It certainly had not been the end of Tilly leaving the house in defiance of his authority. That part had just begun. What he did not realize then, but came to realize in rather short order was that he had started a pattern of disappearing, which seemed to become easier and easier for Tilly. Each time she left, the parting had been less emotional. Less momentous. Less consequential. Each time she returned there were fewer tears and less conciliation in her eyes. She was stronger. Even more independent, if such a thing is possible.

  They had rarely known exactly where she went, other than that she was staying “with friends.” Each time she left she seemed to stay away longer than the time before, but Hollis knew this was only a vagary of memory. Before the last half of her senior year in high school, when she was almost never living at home, the duration of her disappearances actually had varied fairly dramatically. A day, then a week, then three days, then two, then ten. But what Hollis tended to remember was a different kind of disappearance. A kind of absence that accumulated and piled up like drifts of snow between them, even when she was back at home. Even when she was civil and pleasant. No, he remembered, especially when she was civil and pleasant. It was that kind of disappearance that he remembered having gotten longer and longer.

  The irony was that for all the worry and dire predictions, Tilly appeared to have suffered no adverse consequences from her early turbulence. To this day, sitting on the stairs in the basement of the house to which she had all but set fire, Hollis had no evidence that Tilly had ever suffered any injury, trauma or hardship from her poor choice of friends and reckless – or presumably reckless – living. They had never received the late night phone call from the morgue. She had never been arrested. She had never been hospitalized, never beaten up, never overdosed. There were no scars or needle tracks. No car accidents. No angry complaints from Ohioans whose sleep had been disturbed or property destroyed. Her friends had been thoroughly pierced and tattooed, but Tilly not at all. There had never been any hint of childbirth, abortion or venereal disease. School attendance was good, teachers were more than pleased, SAT’s impressive. She had left no opening for comeuppance. Even if she had promised to sit still and listen, Hollis never had any reason to say to her, you see there, Tilly? That’s what you get. Maybe you should just reconsider your choices. There had been no just desserts to serve as a corrective remedy and Hollis could not help but find that immensely frustrating.

  Their friends who knew Tilly thought her delightful and destined for some notable but conveniently undefined success. Oh, if you only knew, he’d insist in vain. Nonsense, Hollis, the friends would say, she’s beautiful and she’s smart. She’s got Susan’s grace and her father’s charm. That kid is going places, you wait and see.

  Such predictions tended to come from people who had known Tilly in her adorable, pre-feral years, particularly people like Rhonda Davenport, who had tended to treat Tilly as a niece rather than the daughter of a friend, and neighbor Heinr
ich van Susteran who, unlike his wife, Inga, had forgiven Tilly for her assistive role in David’s football reclamation fiasco that had accidentally flooded their basement with a lot of salt water and exotic tropical fish. As for Inga van Susteran, Hollis had never broached the subject of adolescent Tilly. Had he done so, Inga would probably have been able to offer Hollis the greatest commiseration of all their friends, since Inga would have seriously considered demonic possession as the root of the behavioral and relational problems that only Hollis and Susan seemed to see. For all of her hours of taking care of the kids when Hollis and Susan had evening engagements, Inga had never really been able to start over with Tilly or David after the asphyxiation of a dozen of her vanity fish. Inga was determined to see malice rather than childish mischief. But then, that was Inga, who had often needed to be talked out of the rafters when it came to the suspected machinations of others, including most frequently her husband, Heinrich, who had not gone quietly into the good night of middle age.

  Bill Swenson, the doctor who had delivered Tilly into the world a motionless, icy-blue tragedy, and in that sense the first person to really experience Tilly, had been more philosophic.

  “She knows how to play dead, Hollis. I’ll bet she knows how to play hellion.”

  “She’s not acting, Bill. Believe me.”

  “You sure about that? Usually it’s not really who they are, it’s just their way of getting your attention. That little personality is a work in progress, Hollis.”

  “There’s nothing little about that personality.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever the size, that personality will start to harden you know. What is she now, seventeen?”

  “Sixteen. Going on about thirty-eight.”

  “That’s about right. She’s trying to figure out who she is. Not an easy thing.”

  “Easier for some than others. Easier for me. Easier for David.”

  “She’s obviously got more to figure out. My guess is that there’s something on her mind. She’s angry. She’s afraid. Something.”

  “What? You’re an OBGYN, Bill. What the hell do you know?”

  “Hey…I’ve got three of my own.”

  “Please. They’re model children.”

  “They were all hellions at one point or another.”

  “I’m telling you, Tilly’s in a league all her own.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll bet she’s got something on her mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I wish I could.”

  Why had those words stuck in his throat? Had that been a lie? Had he been the one acting? Playing dumb? Playing dead to his daughter’s need to understand? Nonsense!

  Fortunately, Bill Swenson had needed a refill, a task to which Hollis had immediately devoted his entire consciousness, and the conversation had rolled past inquiries that were meant to lie dormant.

  “You know, it could be she doesn’t even know what’s really bothering her. Or could be she’s afraid to talk about it. Thought about family counseling?”

  “Nah.”

  “I’ve got a name or two. Mark Price is good. You know him.”

  “No, Bill. Thanks. Tilly’s not afraid to tell me anything. I don’t think she’s having any trouble communicating. You may not have noticed, but she’s a rather direct girl. Next time you come over I’ll hide you in the closet so you can see for yourself.”

  “Well, she’s a great kid, Hollis. She started her life by surprising and scaring everyone and I don’t think she’s done by a long shot. The simple answers will never apply to Tilly. I know it’s concerning…”

  “No. No. I’m fine with Tilly. She is a great kid and she’s just growing up.”

  “Powerful thing though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The need to be heard, Hollis. She’s trying to figure out who she is.”

  “MmmHmm.”

  “And that’s an interactive process. You know? Who she is depends on you. You’re a part of that process.”

  “MmmHmm. Yep. Yep.”

  It had seemed there, for a miraculous moment that was still suspended in his memory like a bubble bouncing between more sharply pointed recollections, that Tilly would pull it all together. He had found reason to hope that maybe it really had all been just a stupid phase, just as he had told Bill Swenson. He had hoped that her intellect had finally subdued her anger. An identity into which Tilly could grow and call her own had finally presented itself. She was to be a writer.

  “I was raised against my will to follow the fabulist tradition. It’s a part of me now. The truth,” she said, “lies in fiction.”

  At least, so she had informed David. She had been out of the house for good by then and while she stayed in regular, even if perfunctory, touch with her mother, any contact with Hollis had been rare. Even as to David with whom she was close, Tilly had revealed her new calling in life only once it had become irrevocably public knowledge that she had won first place for her age group in a statewide competition for short fiction. The Columbus Dispatch had printed a small article on the contest that Hollis had failed to catch. A call from David had sent Susan digging through the trash. The headline had read: Wilson High Senior Wins Big Updating Angus Mann Classic.

  It had been several months later that Hollis actually sat down and read the winning story. By that time it had been submitted for national recognition, although it would ultimately fail to place or garner any further attention. He could now recall virtually nothing about the story; the title, the plot, the point. Science fiction, he thought. Something about space travel. He knew nothing of Angus Mann, except that he, like Zane Gray, Sherwood Anderson, and Toni Morrison was an author the State of Ohio liked to take credit for from time to time. Hollis was not a consumer of popular fiction any more than he was a consumer of popular culture. It was not the story itself he had found remarkable so much as the fact that Tilly had written it. He recalled the dissonance he had felt in realizing that his hellion daughter not only had an interest in creative writing, but, apparently, an unusual aptitude for it. He had had no earthly idea.

  The Dispatch article had produced in Hollis the first in a quick succession of good feelings about his estranged daughter, all of which had coalesced into an alien feeling of fatherly pride that he had then nursed for many months thereafter. Family and friends learned of Tilly’s success and were quick to lavish their congratulations on Hollis and Susan. Even his mother, MaryAnn Easly-Johns, then a widow and in the last two years of her own life had called to take some genetic credit for Tilly’s success. Susan had not explained that it was actually Tilly’s namesake, Matilda Leona, from Susan’s side of the family that had been the fiction writer.

  College had come with virtually no assistance or direction from either he or Susan. Susan had prodded Tilly for assurances that she was tending to business. Hollis had cornered her for a lecture or two themed around the hard lives of uneducated cashiers and the statistical improbabilities facing those who depended on the performance of any subgenre of rock and roll music for a living; improbabilities not just in being financially successful, but, given the drugs and mayhem Hollis knew to associated with that lifestyle, improbabilities in living past the age of thirty-eight. Although Tilly had never shown any genuine interest in being a professional musician, professional groupie had not seemed beyond the pale as an option that she might be kicking around.

  But Tilly had invited both Hollis and Susan, in no uncertain terms, to butt out of her affairs. She had not provided assurances. She had not for their peace of mind ruled anything out of her future. Having a daughter living as a punk rock groupie making change at the local Thriftway had been left on the table for him to ponder.

  As it turned out, Tilly had applied for and received a writing scholarship to Wesleyan. Not Allegheny Wesleyan in Salem Ohio, and not Ohio Wesleyan in Delaware, Ohio, but Wesleyan University in Connecticut. So it was not an Ohio school. It was not Antioch, for instance, or Xavier, or Kent, or the Unive
rsity of Ohio, which had been Hollis’ delicately declared hope, just as it would have been the strong preference of his Ohioan loyalist parents. David had left the state to be educated in Louisiana of all places. Ben was not college bound at all. Barring grandchildren, that had left Tilly as the only hope for a diploma from within the borders of the Buckeye State. Hollis’ siblings, Maribel and Clayton, each had two children, and each of those children had gone on to excel in fine Ohio institutions, two at UNOH, one at DeVry and one at Ashland. MaryAnn-Easley Johns had been the proud product of the University of Ohio at Lima and her father, the venerable Benjamin Easly, had an honorary fellowship at UNOH Columbus for his generous contributions to their business and natural sciences programs.

  And then there was he and Susan, she at Kent State and he at Northwestern School of Commerce which was now the University of Northwestern Ohio, or UNOH, not to be confused with either the University of Ohio, or Northwestern University in Chicago, to which he had never applied for fear of being politely asked to leave the family. Hollis had picked the University of Northwestern Ohio, a small college tucked away in the seat of Allen County on the banks of the old Hawg Creek, where a proud history of railroading and oil drilling had surrendered to a future guided by a more genteel and better smelling consumerism marshaled by the likes of Ford Motor Company and Proctor & Gamble. He had chosen the school because it touted a specialty in business education, because his successes would be his own, and because it was a school founded in the great state of Ohio. It was only natural for Hollis to have wanted at least one of his own children to continue that legacy, however modestly, through an in-state enrollment.