Steps and Exes

by Laura Kalpakian

  “Sunny’s here.”

  “Sunny is not Elizabeth’s sister, not by any real measure or standard of kinship. Sunny is the daughter of the abuser. So is Victoria, of course, but at least Victoria is a half-sister to her.”

  Struck dumb by his pedantry, Celia looked up to see Sunny scrawling on the message board, No anger. Move on. Celia cleared her throat. “I can help Bethie. I want to help. I have to help her. I’m her mother.”

  “Elizabeth has identified you as part of the problem, Celia. She doesn’t want to talk to you. I’ll take her a message this time. Don’t call again. What is the message?”

  Knowing, fathoming somehow that Bethie herself was on the phone, sharing it, as Sunny and Nona shared hers, Celia went on, at once astringent and imploring. “I want to tell Bethie that I love her. That she should know I will always love her. I want to ask her why, how—why,” Celia stuttered and stumbled, “how she could make these brutal accusations against me. Against Bobby.”

  “Are you calling Bethie a liar?”

  Leaning against the doorway for support, Sunny exchanged pained glances with Celia, and Nona sat at the table, lips cinched.

  “Surely,” Celia ventured reasonably, “it’s more complicated than that.”

  “I’m afraid it is. In freeing herself from the comforting restrictions of denial, Elizabeth has to discover the pain. Pain is often masked by rage and fear and resentment she has repressed for so long. As a victim of abuse, she has to find the truth before she can begin the healing. You must discover the truth of your abusers within your own family and confront them. Writing that letter was a great step forward for Elizabeth, but it was just the first step. As Elizabeth heals she will discover and recover. If this means 197

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  you have to share her pain, well, then share it. It’s time for all of you to take responsibility for the pain you have inflicted, and for the lies you have told. Elizabeth must forgive herself for becoming a victim and living all those years with reduced self-esteem. The victim must discover, recover. Then she can forgive you for the lies and abuse you inflicted. If you want me to tell her you’re sorry, I’ll take the message.”

  Nona scribbled hastily on an old receipt, Say nothing. If you apologize, it means…

  “We love Bethie, Wade. All of us. Bobby too. We have never done anything to hurt her—”

  The phone clicked off. Since none of them moved to hang up, shortly thereafter came on the dreadful Midwestern twang advising them, If you want to make a call, hang up and dial again; if you need help…

  “We need help all right,” said Celia. She hung the phone up, went upstairs and closed the door to her room, denying Sass and Squatch entrance.

  Nona rose slowly. She patted Sunny’s shoulder. “Well, it’s going to be ugly around here for a while, Sunny. Celia’s always said she doesn’t care what people think about her. This is her chance to prove it, isn’t it? Of course she’s had thirty years’ experience at that, and you haven’t.”

  “It’s like dying, Egypt.” Sunny fought tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I don’t know what to do either. Romance, that’s my forte. Sex and love.”

  “That’s what this is about,” said Sunny. “It’s about sex and love.”

  They burst against the sky, great blossoms of fire and light, color dappling the dark waters of Moonless Bay, fire-points dripping 198

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  down into the night, dissolving at last into the reluctant sunset. Isadora Island’s Fourth of July festivities, renowned all over the Northwest, culminated in this fireworks display which could be seen from neighboring islands, and depending on the weather, from clear across the Sound. The Fourth—Isadora’s finest moment—was calculated to bring tourists flocking, to attract flotillas of pleasure crafts that docked at the island marinas and dotted the bays, to fill every room, restaurant and campground. Hordes of day-trippers went back and forth on the ferries. Along the horse-shoe-shaped beach of Moonless Bay, where the fireworks were actually set off, prime seats had to be secured early on in the day because by six o’clock (the show didn’t actually start till ten) the rocky beach was carpeted with blankets, lawn chairs, barbecue fires, and as darkness slowly fell, people readied themselves to oooh and aaah and cheer in unison.

  The tribe from Henry’s House had their blanket on Moonless Beach, as they did every year, but the strains and tensions, the divi-sions inflicted amongst them by Bethie’s terrible accusations were everywhere apparent: on their faces and in their relations, reactions to one another. Launch and Brio alone were excepted, and Brio sat on Launch’s shoulders, sated with pop and hot dogs, shouting,

  “More and higher!” with every burst of fireworks across the summer sky.

  In the welter of noise and explosions, Sunny wished now she had sent Brio with the others and that she had stayed far away from the smoke, the bursting fireworks, the explosions and crowds. Isadora’s public festival made painfully clear what Sunny had long suspected: that everyone who lived on Isadora knew of Bethie’s allegations against Sunny’s father, knew of Celia’s presumed passive acquiescence in the outrage. A great vein of gossip had opened and people took sides. The largest share of island sympathy fell to Bethie. She was, after all, The Charmer, better known than Bobby Jerome and better liked than her mother. Too, it was terrible to hear of her emotional breakdown, news of which floated back to the island via a few people connected with ReDiscovery. The extent of Bethie’s heartbreaking crack-199

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  up reached her family slowly and by the alluvial channels of sneers and whispers. Bethie’s breakdown, along with intimations of darker deeds at Useless Point, the whiff and stench of child molestation, all this came to be laid at Bobby’s door, at Celia’s door, which was also Sunny’s door. And Dorothy’s. And Russell’s.

  Sunny could scarcely abide Russell. Not his presence in the little house, or even on the crowded beach (much less the two sullen teenage children he’d brought with him for the Fourth). When he had come home that terrible weekend in June and read Bethie’s letter, he suggested offhandedly that perhaps Bethie’s allegations held an element of truth. Oh, not that Bobby was malicious or pervy necessarily, nothing that corrupt, just that Bobby was often stoned and touchy-feely. Everyone was into hugging in the old days. People didn’t know then that all that hugging stuff, bodily contact, was often non-consenting, and frequently undesired. Bobby might have done it, unknowingly. A man who loves children, well—Russell indicated in his learned way—if you look at the Greek roots, it’s pedophile.

  Dorothy Robbins had completely discounted, dismissed and refused to hear these gross infamies, especially as they related to Celia’s shortcomings as a mother. Ned, however, sitting next to her in his lawn chair on Moonless Beach, nursing a beer and scowling, thought his wife a great moth-head. Once apprised of these disgusting rumors, Ned urged Dorothy to give up her silly job, ordered her home, insisted she must escape people who were mired in this, the worst sort of sexual taint. Never, Dorothy had replied. Never would she be disloyal. Ned had pointed out to her that Celia Henry was not her sister or her wife, not her ally, not her family, not anything at all requiring loyalty. But Dorothy steadfastly replied, She saved my life. I owe her that. No very great intellect or intuition was needed to see that Ned detested all of them. He detested as well his own im-potence and inability to extricate Dorothy from this cesspool. He loathed above all his daughter-in-law, Victoria, whom he blamed for bringing this catastrophe down on the Robbins family.

  Sunny, glancing over at Victoria, felt her estrangement from 200

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  all of them. Victoria sat in a chaise with headphones on, listening to Books on Tape and watching the fireworks impassively. Sunny felt the breach between herself and Victoria as poignantly as the breach between herself and Bethie, save that this one was even more difficult to understand. The crisis occasioned by accusations against their father ought to have bro
ught the daughters of Bobby Jerome together.

  They ought to be united in denying any such things could have ever taken place. But instead Victoria withdrew. She had little to say to anyone, even to Bobby. When Bobby would not take Victoria’s calls—Janice said he stayed in his room all day, watching car-toons—Victoria gave up and quit phoning. Victoria wore her emotions like accessories and took them off whenever possible. Sunny could not do this. She had tried to reach, to reach out to her father, in every way, phoning, writing, even going over to his house, taking Brio with her. A disastrous visit. The Wookie was there. Bobby would not come out of the bedroom and Sunny had to endure both Janice and the Wookie heaping deprecations on Celia, her failures as a mother and a woman, on Sunny’s failures as a daughter.

  This family tragedy had eroded or wrecked nearly all Sunny’s ties, save for Celia. Celia and Sunny clung to one another. Together they obsessed over what they could not change or understand. They taxed their every friendship because they couldn’t talk or think about anything else. They were unrelievedly immersed in the devastation Bethie’s accusations had wrought. They wondered persistently what they might do about it, trod over and through Bethie’s motivations, discussed how they might combat the rumor, innuendo and ruin.

  But since there was no obvious path and no discernable tactics, they obsessed in the way that divorce obsesses the people going through it—and finally bores every- one else.

  Sunny often wished she could take to drink or drugs, some easy palliative to pain. Bobby had clearly retreated into a twilit world enlivened only by the color TV. Bethie had clearly turned into a sort of emotional burn victim. Victoria retreated from any contact whatsoever. Celia’s sorrow took the form of being unable 201

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  to work. She could go over to Henry’s in the morning, rising very early as she always did, but by noon she was spent, wrecked, and Dorothy took over. Sunny’s work suffered too and her health eroded.

  She lost weight and sleep, and even Brio was not immune to their unhappiness.

  I ought not to be here, Sunny told herself, watching Brio joyfully greet a rocket as it rained down light and fire. But there was no leaving. The smoke from beach fires, the sounds from dueling radios, swirled around her; each burst of light against the sky, each echoing boom exploded inside Sunny’s head. Under-foot, the thundering report of each blast inched audibly into the bones of her feet. Her legs ached and her head throbbed. Like being transported back to the days as the producer’s assistant on the Dirty Death pictures when fires and explosions and battles and men screaming filled her life day after day, etched themselves into her sleep night after night.

  And now, smoke from beach fire battles clouded her eyes and choked her and the noisy crowds shifted into a many-faced, multi-voiced phantasm and Sunny fell forward, inadvertently jostling one of Russell’s children, the son, who turned to her with a hostile stare and gave no reply to her mumbled apology. Shivering, in spite of the July heat, she stepped back into, rather than against, a presence, felt rather than seen. Everyone greeted Grant Hayes who declined a beer, stayed put, planted right behind Sunny and when she flinched, he came closer, so close she could feel the warmth of his body through her overalls, like an infusion. By degrees she leaned into him. Carefully, lightly he brushed her shoulder with his hand.

  But when Sunny winced again from the booming overhead and the thunder underfoot, in a wordless gesture, Grant turned her toward him, pressing her head against his chest, covering her other ear with his hardened palm. She trembled against him, chilled and shaken, and she tried not to cry.

  Quietly, Grant got Celia’s attention and she brushed Sunny’s hair from her face. Celia herself looked worn. “It’s been intolerable,” she said glumly, “but worse for Sunny. She takes everything to heart.

  She always has. She’s like Bobby in that respect.”

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  “I’ll take her home. But she has to leave now.”

  “Don’t worry about Brio, Sunny. I’ll take care of Brio.”

  “More and higher!” cried Brio from her perch on Launch’s shoulders, her attention successfully diverted, while Grant, his arm around Sunny’s shoulder, led her away from Moonless and toward the town.

  Massacre itself straddles a neck of land, and walking through town could be very quickly done, especially since there was no traffic on this night and nearly every business was closed. Those few still open (including Duncan Donuts and the Chowder House) were empty, their cooks, clerks, waiters and patrons on the sidewalk watching the fireworks. Less than half a mile from the town, on the opposite shore, the Massacre Marina was lit, every slip filled on this holiday weekend and people watching the show from the decks of their boats. Music, laughter, rippling conversation and loud drinking echoed out over the marina. Recognizing Grant, some people called out to him. He waved, but kept a firm guiding arm on Sunny all the way to the back of the marina, to the last slips for small boats where the Pythagoras was moored. He stepped on board and drew her after him, leading her back to the stern.

  Sunny collapsed in the stern, and wept. Finally, she willed herself to stop crying, tried to concentrate on the sounds around her: water slapping the hull, noisy exchanges from the distant docks, the sputter somewhere of an outboard motor. When she next looked up a buttery square of yellow light fell at her feet as Grant turned on the cabin lights. There were more immediate sounds, Grant pumping water, firing up the stove, filling the kettle, the sound of the marine radio. Sunny smiled and eased. How did he know the weather could be so comforting? That it was like having someone tell you an old, old story, the singsong weather voices on the marine radio. Then she remembered she and Grant were Unfettered alumni, so naturally the marine radio’s weathery song consoled. She and Grant had a shared past, though they had not had the same experience. She flinched with yet another burst against the night sky and Grant came out with a

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  light blanket which he put around her. Sunny thanked him. He was not by any means a beautiful man, certainly not pretty, like so many of the men Sunny had known in L.A. But where their beauty was altogether visual and attracted only the eye, something about Grant Hayes made her want to touch his cheek, to put her fingertips on his face, as you would touch a piece of wood to explore its grain.

  “They’ll end in a bit,” he said. Red-white-and-blue lit the sky overhead, dripped down in glorious chrysanthemum formations.

  “They won’t go on much longer.”

  “I don’t know what came over me. Smoke or something. The explosions.”

  He sat down next to her. “I’d say it was pretty damned self-explan-atory what came over you. I’m surprised you and Celia have held up as well as you have. And Bobby? Celia says he’s still really broken up.”

  Sunny bit her lip. “He never went back to the community college and his music students are drifting away and he doesn’t care.

  Sometimes when I call, he won’t even talk to me, just hands the phone to Janice. Bobby doesn’t have a grain of toughness. He never gets angry. He just gets hurt. Janice is beside herself, desperate to rouse him, but even she can’t.”

  Grant watched as the last of the fireworks flared in the sky. “At least if you’re accused of embezzling, you can find records that will testify to your innocence, but this kind of thing just leaves a stink in the air.”

  “It doesn’t get better, either. It gets worse.”

  “It’s taking a terrible toll on you.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Are you?” He invited her into the cabin, apologizing in advance for what she’d find. “It’s all still in progress, this boat. It sails round these islands just fine, but it’s not ready for Central America.”

  She asked where the bathroom was. Since he’d just installed a new marine toilet, he had to call out directions for flushing it, adding that it might not yet be wholly reliable.

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  In fact, when she came back out, refastening her overalls, her face still damp from having splashed it in the sink, Sunny noticed that for a sailboat named after a geometric theorem, the Pythagoras was not at all shipshape. A rumpled unmade bed lay in the bow. Along the couch (which made out into another bed if need be) there were navigation charts, balls of string and dowels for kites. Under the table lay several pairs of work boots and an open tool chest, and from hooks along the port side there hung a variety of jackets, sweatshirts and work shirts. Crowding the shelves were books which all had the words nautical, marine or sailing in the titles, save for a book on kites, and a handful of architectural tomes.

  From a tiny dish rack Grant pulled a single cup, joined there by a single plate and a few pieces of plastic flatware. He rummaged on a shelf for another cup and a box of tea bags. The diminutive size of everything in the low-ceilinged cabin seemed further diminished by his broad-shouldered presence and Sunny wondered how he and Lee had both lived here before Lee moved in with Robin. On the wall there hung a plaque, first place for a bridge building competition which Grant had won at WSU, and a single framed photograph, a snapshot of two bald children, their heads painted a brilliant orange, and a Halloween-fiendish expression on their faces. Clearly these boys were looking for a fight.

  “Me and Lee.” He passed her a mug of hot tea. “Right after they shaved our heads and painted us up for ringworm. Celia took the picture. She said it was priceless.”

  “It’s a pretty unforgettable story, your mother leaving you off at the Useless PO.” Sunny slid along the bench behind the table.

  “Too bad it’s true. But even the Useless PO beat the hell out of living in Yakima. We were island boys, me and Lee, and when our folks split up, Mom took us back to Yakima where she was from.

  Lee and I thought we’d died and gone to hell. It was hell. Her family was hell. My aunt, she was really hell! My mother was fragile.”

  “Her health?”

  “She wasn’t strong,” he said, without actually clarifying.