“We’ll talk. Talking to me will make a person sleepy, believe me.” He gives a little crooked, pained smile. It’s sad. She remembers Ronda’s talk, and abruptly feels sorry for him, wonders if he might’ve heard some of it. Her own sense of avoidance causes her to walk over to him; she wants to show him that she’s not afraid, not leery of him. She stands close, and looks directly down at him.
For a long time, he simply looks back. At last, he reaches to the coffee table behind her and takes a small piece of the cake, and holds it up to her mouth.
“No thank you,” she says.
He puts it in his own mouth, and chews it, still staring. “You’re not hungry?” he says. His eyes are glassy in the light.
“No,” she says.
He swallows, then reaches for some more. “Sit.”
She does so.
“Tell me about yourself.” He eats the bite of cake. “Are you going to be in the theater, like your parents?”
“Maybe,” she says. “But maybe I’ll be a writer.”
“Oh, a writer. That’s a nice thing to be. Will you write about, say, loneliness? That’s what most of them end up writing about, I think. Loneliness. Or maybe you’ll write about old men living on their married children.”
She smiles at him. “No.”
“Ah, hell. Of course I’m just being silly. Never mind me.”
She’s aware that a line has been crossed, and sees that he’s aware of it, too. She feels almost as if she should try to console him, watching the shaky way he reaches for more cake.
“Well,” he says. “You’re so nice to come keep me company. I don’t often have anybody to talk to in this house.”
She can’t think of anything to tell him. It’s as if he can see what Ronda said about him in her face. She looks at the television, where there’s an image of a red car on a mountain road.
“What do you want to talk about? Tell me—let’s see. If you could have any wish in the world, what would it be?”
“I’d be a writer and an actor.”
“Wow. And you’d travel and be rich?”
“I don’t really care if I’m rich or not.” She begins telling him about her love of books and music and her excitement at getting to see her parents onstage, all her enthusiasms. She explains that her father told her about the Greek root for the word entheos, “the God within,” and before very long, she’s surprised to find herself describing how the image of her father playing Edmund’s death in rehearsals got fixed in her head while they were waiting for some word to come through.
“You’re very expressive,” he says, reaching for the bottle. She watches him pour more for himself. “Your parents must be awful proud of you.”
“Yes,” she says, enjoying his attention. “But it’s kind of rough at school sometimes.”
He sips the drink. “Tell me.”
“Well, you know. I think they think I talk too much in class. I’m too grown-up, you know, because I like Ella Fitzgerald.”
“You know more than they do.”
“I know I’m talking your ear off.”
“No, go ahead. It makes an old man happy to hear a young, pretty girl talk about herself. The world’s an ugly place a lot of the time. We need all the pretty girls we can get.”
“Well, I’m not pretty,” Lily says.
“Oh, yes you are.”
“Aren’t you nice to say so.” She gives a little nod of her head.
“Go on, talk to me.” He pours more of the whiskey. “This doesn’t bother you, does it?” He’s seen her watching him.
“Not at all.”
“You ever tasted whiskey?”
“Once. My father let me have a sip. I didn’t like it. He says he used to put it on my gums, when I was a baby. You know, teething.”
“Yeah, I did that with my kids, too. Back in the dark ages, when they were young, and I was younger.”
“You’re not so old,” she tells him, thinking again of Ronda’s talk about him and also of her own father’s teasing complaints about being almost forty.
“Life’s gone by me, missy,” he says, swallowing the whiskey. He pours still more of it. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I get just a little plastered tonight.”
“It’s fine,” she says, because she can’t think of what else is expected.
He sits back. “So, tell me more about yourself. It’s tough’n school.” He gives a little wave of his hand.
She tells him that, at school, she feels singled out, different. Like some sort of freak. Because she likes Ella, for instance. She says the name again, proud of her mature taste, as her mother has put it, and certain that it will impress him. It does.
“That’s someth’n, that you know that music.”
“I know all of her music. And Louis Armstrong, too. And Benny Goodman. Glenn Miller.”
“Damn,” he says, staring.
“I know Chet Baker, too. I have a record of his.”
He says nothing, gazing at her, and then down into his glass. He sighs, and takes another swallow.
“I read a lot of plays, too,” she says. “Not just books.”
“Well, you would. With your folks.”
“Yes. They encourage me quite a lot.”
“I’ll bet they do.” He pours still more of the whiskey. “Yes, you’re a—you’re quite a young woman.”
“Not really.”
“No—you are.” Again, he pours whiskey, and his hands are unsteady now. He spills some of it. He’s quite drunk now, and she’s fascinated, watching him. She sees that his tremor makes him move more slowly, more deliberately.
“What’re you thinking about?” he says.
“Oh,” she tells him. “Nothing. Just—this is nice. Talking to you.”
“Do you like that?”
“Yes, I do. It’s calming.”
“Calming.”
“Comfortable.”
“Yes. You’re ’bout as expressive a girl as I’ve seen in my life. Very grown-up.”
“I’m just—I don’t know. Lucky. My parents encourage me.”
“It’s character, too, though. Don’ ever underestimate th’ power of character. Char-ac-ter.” He says the word slowly, as if repeating it for himself. “That’s what I mos’ly lack. An’ always have, too.”
“I bet you do have it,” she says.
“How old are you?” he says.
She smiles. “It’s my birthday, remember? I’m fourteen.”
“Fourteen.” He takes another piece of the cake, and eats it slowly, thinking, looking down. His glass is empty, listing to one side in his limp hand. She thinks he might be going to sleep. But then he lifts it, drains the last drop out of it, and puts it down, carefully.
She can smell the cake, and abruptly she can smell the whiskey, too. She says, “Or, really, it’s the day after, now. I was fourteen yest—”
He has turned and taken hold of her arms, tight. A small sound comes from her, like a sigh. A lost cry, gone on her breath, as now he buries his face in her chest, pleading with her in garbled words. She knows it’s pleading, and she can’t pull away, isn’t quite sure how this is supposed to be, this strange, caught moment. But then his hands go in under her nightgown, under what she remembers, as it is happening, is Ronda’s nightgown. His hands are all over her, and she’s falling, the two of them are tumbling off the couch onto the floor. “No,” he says. “No. I’m sorry. Please. Please forgive me.”
But his hands are still working, still holding her. She tries to scream, can’t get her breath. He’s moving on her, pulling at her panties, raking at her thighs. His weight is suffocating her, and she can’t find the air to make any sound but the struggle to breathe; she flails at him, strikes the top of his head, in utter disbelief that this is taking place; and at last she’s able to find her voice, a long, low cry, and then something like a shriek. His hand comes to her mouth, the fingers tasting of salt. She bites down, pulls at his hair.
He stops. She’s still pulling, trying to shout.
&nbs
p; “No,” he says, breathless. “Forgive me. You—please. You must, please.” He pushes off of her, lifting himself from her, and falters away, coughing, crying, standing over her, then reaching down to take her hand, actually helping her rise. She’s quiet, her hair has fallen across her face. She watches him stagger to the other side of the room, both hands held to his head. “I didn’t—I didn’t do it. Didn’t—it—this—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Jesus Christ.” He’s crying, sobbing into his hands. “I don’t believe, I don’t believe…”
It amazes her. With her own trembling fingers she pushes the hair from her face, rearranges the nightgown, still wary, backing toward the door. And now he comes at her in a rush, taking hold of her arms so that she gives forth another little cry. He holds her so strongly that again it’s hard to breathe.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You can’t say anything about this. Do you understand? Never, never say anything about this. You’ve got to believe me, I never did anything like this.”
She starts crying, and her gorge rises; she’s afraid she’ll be sick.
“Jesus—oh, Jesus. I wish I was dead. Promise me—please.”
“I promise,” she says, crying, shaking. “I promise.”
“Stop it. Stop crying. Control yourself. I swear I’ll do something to hurt you.”
She looks directly into his eyes. “No,” she manages, between sobs. “You,” she gets out. And then: “Won’t.” She breathes the words into his face one by one with little gasps of rage and fright and confusion.
“I’ll kill you, I swear.”
She doesn’t answer him this time.
“It—it couldn’t be helped. I had too much to drink. Do you understand? Nothing happened. It didn’t—”
Again, she says nothing.
He straightens, and his grip loosens slightly. “You came down here and tempted me. You should’ve stayed where you belong.”
“Let me go,” Lily says. “Please.”
“No one will believe you. Nothing happened. A little groping. Nothing.”
“Will you please, please let me go, now.”
He does so, and moves again to the other side of the room, that asthmatic sound coming from him. She leaves him there, and makes her way unsteadily up the stairs. She hurts along her arms, and in her chest and back. She’s woozy with terror, and with a sickeningly confused mixture of revulsion and guilt—something about all of it seeping into her consciousness as inexpressibly a matter of her own will, something she can’t put into words, but a visceral sense of the whole ugly episode being an event over which she had possessed some kind of control, something she sensed and then invited. For wasn’t she pleased to sit there under his admiring adult gaze? Didn’t she luxuriate in his appreciation of her?
She stops outside the bedroom, hearing him drop the bottle into the trash. He’s still weeping. Leaning against the frame of the door, she tries to think. Pulling the sleeves of the nightgown back, she looks for bruises, and is surprised to find none. She moves into the upstairs bathroom, closes and locks the door, and then puts the light on.
She sits on the edge of the tub, and runs water, then stands, and, after checking again that the door is locked, pulls the nightgown over her head, shuddering, sobbing silently, and half choking.
The small knock at the door causes her to gasp out a tiny shriek.
His voice: “You okay in there?”
“Don’t come in,” she says.
“Good night.”
Silence. She waits for more sounds, but nothing comes. When she turns the water off, there’s only the quiet of a house at night, in the middle of a winter storm: the heat kicking on; the infinitesimal crackle of ice and sleet hitting the skylight. Darkness up there, and a reflection of Lily, standing naked in the light, looking up. “Good night,” he said, as if nothing had happened. He, the grown-up, the adult, the one who knows how things are supposed to be.
She bathes quietly but with a feverish pressure on her skin, rubbing herself clean, sobbing softly, thinking with a burning in her stomach of the night ahead, and the morning. She dries herself off, waits until the water drains from the tub, then washes away all traces of herself in it—the ring of dirtiness, the sign of this thing that has happened, that part of her almost disbelieves. “Good night,” he said.
After a long wait, in which she thinks she hears him breathing, she opens the door and steps out into the hall. Nothing. He’s fluting and sighing and suffering a nightmare in his bed, uttering little terrified sighs, and then blubbering and breathing again. She enters the dark of Ronda’s bedroom, where Ronda lies sleeping, stupid with sleep, mouth agape, snoring.
She doesn’t sleep. And she knows from the sounds, coming from the hallway and the downstairs, that he’s now awake, too. Several times, she hears him coughing and sighing on the other side of the door. Once, she thinks she hears the television. She lies very still, hands over her mouth and nose, breathing into the little warm space of her palms, her own heart beating in her ear on the pillow. She watches light come to the room, the shape of Ronda in the bed next to her, coming into outline.
Ronda wakes, yawns, gets up and moves to the window. Lily pretends to be asleep. Ronda goes out and down the hall, and is gone for a time. Someone coughs downstairs; Lily can’t be sure. There are other noises—a radio, water running, doors opening and closing. She gets up and struggles out of the nightgown, and dresses hurriedly, standing in a corner of the room, away from the door.
She hears him at the foot of the stairs. “Lily? Are you awake? Your father is here.”
“Yes,” she calls. “I’ll be right down.”
They’re talking. She hears the ordinary tone; it’s the calm, friendly chatter of adults down in that room, with its low hum of music from the radio, and now here is Ronda coming back from the bathroom. “How did you sleep?” she says.
Lily watches her lift her nightgown over her body, which is still a girl’s body, no breasts, no hair under the arms, lean, bony legs.
“Well?”
“Fine,” she says.
“I tossed and turned,” Ronda says.
“I didn’t see.”
“You didn’t see. That’s a weird thing to say. Of course you didn’t see if you slept fine.”
“My father’s here.”
Ronda walks over and hugs her. “It was fun. See you at school?”
Downstairs, her father is sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. Mr. Stapleton is seated across from him. He doesn’t look at Lily, pouring more of the coffee; and then he does look at her. There is nothing at all in his face, his tired gray flat lightless eyes, the eyes, she thinks, of a statue. There are little forked red veins showing in the whites, which have a faintly yellow cast to them. The eyes see her without taking her in. “How did you sleep, young lady?”
She can’t answer him. She moves to her father’s side, and takes hold of his upper arm.
“Still groggy?” her father asks.
“I slept fine,” she tells him, looking down.
“Are we shy this morning?” her father says.
She glances at him, and then over at Mr. Stapleton, who smiles and nods, holding the coffee cup to his lips; his hand trembles only slightly. “I slept so heavily last night, I’m afraid I might’ve sleepwalked. Ever do that?”
“Had a cousin who did,” Scott says.
“I never did until lately. Don’t know where I am or what I’m doing. It’s a little scary at my age.”
“I want to go home,” Lily says.
Her father puts his coffee down and his arm comes around her middle. She almost draws away from him, feels a sinking at heart that he has noticed nothing—and, awfully, that there doesn’t seem to be anything to notice. They conduct themselves as cordial strangers, Mr. Stapleton rising now and going to the entrance of the hallway, calling Ronda, who comes down still wearing slippers, though she’s put a skirt on, and a white blouse with a frill in front. She hugs Lily’s father, and kisses her grandfather on
the side of the face. Everything is lightness and warmth. Lily reiterates that she wishes to go home. Mr. Stapleton says that, poor thing, she must not have slept very well. “I bet I sleepwalked last night. I bet I was bumping around in the halls and kept you awake. You do look a little tired. Didn’t you—didn’t you sleep well, there, young lady?”
Lily can’t look at him. “No.”
“You said you slept fine,” Ronda says.
“Well, we’d better get you home,” says Lily’s father.
“I hope I didn’t keep you awake with my wandering around at night. I—I don’t even—don’t even know I’m doing it.” He laughs, a picture of exasperation with himself, shaking his head.
Just as Lily and her father are leaving the house, Ronda’s parents arrive, talking breathlessly about what a terrible night it was, trying to get home in the ice. Lily’s father tells about the accident, the long minute of realizing he had no control over the car and that it would not stop until it hit something. “We were only going about ten miles an hour,” he says. “We hit the curb and the bumper caught on the street lamp in some way and we couldn’t get loose. We ended up walking very slow down to the Willard. Everything was ice. Everything. You couldn’t even grab on to anything.”
Ronda’s parents ask how the opening night was. And he takes time to describe for them the way things went: packed house, in spite of the weather. Lily looks around and sees that Mr. Stapleton is not in the room. She leans a little to one side, to see along the hallway, and there he is, waiting there, gazing back at her. His eyes are empty, and cold. He nods, and moves out of her view.
She pulls at her father’s sleeve. “Let’s go. Please.”
“All right. Hey, don’t be rude. These nice people put you up.”
“Well, we weren’t here for it,” Ronda’s mother says. She turns to Lily: “You’ll have to come back and do it again, when we’re here.”
“Yes.”
“You know, you could spend the night tonight, if you’d like. We don’t have any plans.”
“Do,” Ronda says. “Oh, that would be so cool.”
Lily shakes her head. “I’m tired. Please, Daddy. I want to go now.”
Her father seems puzzled, shakes his head, shrugging at the adults. They go out to the car, another car. Confused, she hesitates.
Hello to the Cannibals Page 3
