Freaky Green Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Dad spoke in this warm, tremulous voice as he did on TV when an athlete or a team had done something spectacular. As a former football star, Reid Pierson identified with athletes the way most sportscasters never could. His boyish, battered good looks and one-hundred-watt smile had made him a favorite of TV sports fans, and when we saw him on TV, it was just so unbelievable, he was our dad.

  There was this fantastic tenth birthday of mine, when Dad was on TV covering a game in Florida for the network, and Mom had made a big bowl of hot buttered popcorn, and my big brother, Todd, and my little sister, Samantha, and I were sitting with her in the family room watching the program, and there was Reid Pierson looking so handsome and happy, and just before a station break, he winked at the camera and said, “Happy birthday, Franky!”—real quick, it went so fast probably nobody heard it except us. Happy birthday, Franky.

  Sure, I was proud. I’m only human. I’d have liked Dad to be home for my birthday but it was pretty decent compensation, that Reid Pierson was my father, and could wink at me via TV and wish me a happy birthday.

  Dad was one to celebrate things. What he called his Good News Bonanzas. Always there would be a Good News Celebration. A huge Chinese banquet, for instance. Dad loved getting on the phone and ordering enough food for a dozen people, and if Mom was in the room, she’d laugh (just a little anxiously, sometimes) and protest, “Oh, honey, who’s going to eat all that?”

  Today, Mom wasn’t with us. I knew that Dad was pissed, I’d overheard them “discussing” the subject that morning. It must have been that Dad knew his good news was imminent, though he’d been secretive about telling us (for in the world of public relations and press releases you were bound to secrecy until certain facts were publicly acknowledged), so he didn’t like it at all that Mom was going to an arts-and-crafts fair in Santa Barbara, California. Not just that Mom would be absent from our Good News Celebration, but Dad disapproved of his wife being involved with “artsy-craftsy” people he described as “menopausal females” and “gay boys”—categories of human beings to be scorned.

  I knew that Dad had put pressure on Mom to cancel her trip, like he’d pressured her into canceling a previous trip to Vancouver, B.C., back in January. That time, there hadn’t been any special Good News occasion, just that Dad wanted Mom home for the weekend. He traveled so much for his TV job, he said he depended on Mom being home when he was home. “Darling, it’s my job that finances our elegant lifestyle. And you enjoy our lifestyle, don’t you?”

  Mom had said quickly, “Reid, you know I do. Of course I—”

  “The least I can expect from my wife is emotional support, I guess?”

  “Yes, Reid. You’re right.”

  “Am I right ‘with a kiss’?”—this was one of Dad’s favorite things he’d say to all of us. You had to laugh at Dad—it wasn’t enough for you to agree with him (even when he wasn’t one-hundred-percent right) but you had to kiss him on the cheek, too.

  Mom had laughed, giving in. Mostly Dad was so funny, you did give in.

  You would think that Dad would take us all traveling with him, but actually that wasn’t the case. Except for summer vacations of maybe two–three weeks. Because Dad was so busy, and TV competition was “cutthroat” (Dad ran his forefinger across his throat when he uttered these words, with a certain zest like he enjoyed the feel of an invisible razor), he hadn’t much time to himself. That was why he disapproved of Mom taking Samantha and me to visit our grand-parents in Portland just for a few days. (Something must have happened between Dad and the Connors, because my mom’s family almost never came to Seattle to visit us. Nobody ever stayed at our house as guests except sometimes friends or professional acquaintances of Dad’s.) I guess Dad was old-fashioned at heart—he didn’t like anybody in the family traveling far. Like when Mom’s older sister, Vicky, was hospitalized with dysentery in Mexico City a few years ago, Dad said, “See what happens when you leave the U.S.? Especially a lone spinster.” Dad was joking but always he was serious, too.

  I asked my brother Todd why’s it such a big deal with Dad, if Mom goes away for a few days? “It isn’t like Mom is flying to the moon,” I said. “She’s coming right back.”

  But Todd always took Dad’s side in any disagreement. He said, with this put-upon-older-brother expression of his, “’Cause Dad wants Mom home.” Like that was all it was: so simple.

  Anyway, Mom had left for Santa Barbara that morning. At the time of the Good News Celebration she was one thousand miles south of Seattle. When she called home, she said, sounding guilty as a naughty little girl, “It’s summer here, can you believe it? The ocean is shimmering and beautiful. I’ve been walking barefoot along the beach. . . .”

  Here it was cold, misty, and mushroom gray, like there was a sticky membrane over everything. Typical spring weather in the Pacific Northwest.

  I loved Dad’s Good News Celebrations. But I couldn’t help wishing that Mom had taken me with her.

  Just this once! To the Santa Barbara Arts & Crafts Fair. Where we could slip away and walk barefoot along the beach . . .

  On the phone, Mom had said hesitantly, “Francesca, please say hello and love to your father, will you? I can’t seem to reach him through his office or cell phone. He hates e-mail messages unless they’re business. But he knows how proud I am of him. . . . Francesca?”

  “Sure, Mom. I’ll tell him.”

  There was something strange about this conversation. I didn’t want to think about it at the time. An almost inaudible quavering sound to Mom’s voice. Like she is pleading with me. Why?

  “Love ya, honey!”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  It was our usual sign-off. It was really hard for Mom and me to say “love” like we meant it, even when we meant it; the words had to be jokey, casual.

  When I tried to relay Mom’s message to Dad that evening, he waved me quiet. “No hypocrisy, ‘Fran-ces-ca.’ Now that your mother is absent from this house, let’s have some integrity, please.”

  Dad usually called me Franky. When he called me Fran-ces-ca in that emphatic way, it meant that he was mocking Mom, who called me Francesca and never Franky.

  Todd heard this and sniggered. He knew what Dad was doing.

  Samantha heard and just looked from one of us to the other. Too young to gauge the undercurrents of family politics, my little sister was clueless.

  (What was I thinking? I tried not to. If I laughed at Dad’s mockery, I’d be betraying Mom. If I frowned, I’d be indicating to Dad that I didn’t approve of his sense of humor. So I kept my face stony neutral.)

  So I was quiet. And Samantha was quiet. Dad was in one of his flaming moods that could veer in one direction or in another. Like those scary flash fires you see on TV when the Santa Ana blows and causes devastation, houses and thousands of acres of forests burn.

  Todd, who was home from college for the weekend, made up for us.

  “Hey, Dad, congratulations! One of the guys on the team showed me the piece in USA Today. That’s cool.” Todd had torn out the clipping, which Samantha and I read eagerly. Dad showed us a boxed notice in the morning’s Seattle Times:

  Popular CBS sportscaster Reid Pierson has just signed a five-year contract with the network for a salary his agent describes as “generous, but no more than Reid Pierson is worth.” Pierson will be a mainstay of the network team covering next year’s summer Olympics.

  Dad said happily, “Sky’s the limit, kids! You can all come with me.”

  When I was younger, I used to believe that Dad would actually take me with him on some of his trips. Samantha may still have believed—she was only ten. But Todd and I understood, this was just Dad’s way of being generous with us. His words weren’t meant to be taken literally.

  Except maybe: this time would be different?

  “Let the banquet begin. Franky?”

  As usual, Dad had ordered enough food for a platoon. He’d grown up, he often said, in “circumstances of hunger”—which meant, I guess, that
his family life back in Moose Lake, Washington, hadn’t been very happy—and he intended to make up for it. With Mom gone, I was in charge of the kitchen. Heating up food in the microwave, mostly. Samantha helped me carry in the steaming platters, pretending we were waitresses. If Mom had been here, she’d have brought the food out in courses, but Dad wanted everything on the table at once so we could see it: Peking duck, shrimp fried rice, sesame noodles, General T chicken, beef with garlic sauce, pork Szechwan style, lemon chicken, and shrimp Happy Family, plus brown rice and a big platter of Chinese vegetables. Samantha and I had Chinese tea (which we hated—it tasted like old socks) while Dad and Todd were drinking Chinese beer. It was a festive time, but a kind of anxious time, too.

  Just four of us having dinner together in the family room, with Mom gone, felt wrong. And Dad kept making remarks that alluded to this in a sarcastic voice. “Shrimp ‘Happy Family.’ Well, we think so.”

  Rabbit, our Jack Russell terrier, was shut away in another part of the house, and once in a while you could hear him whining. Poor Rabbit! When Mom was gone, Rabbit couldn’t settle down; he was Mom’s dog mostly, though Samantha and I loved him a lot. For some reason, Dad had never liked Rabbit. He complained that Rabbit got on his nerves, so we had to keep Rabbit separate from us as long as Dad was home. (I kept waiting for Dad to ask what that noise was, Rabbit whining and scratching, and say something sarcastic about Mom not taking her precious pet with her, but he didn’t.)

  As usual when we ate in the family room, Dad switched on the TV so that he and Todd could watch sports. There was a boxing match on a sports channel, on our giant screen that took up half a wall. Lucky for Rabbit, the noise drowned out his noises.

  “Wow! Look.”

  Two tightly muscled young lightweights were pummeling away at each other. One was a light-skinned black with a ferocious scowl, the other was a Hispanic with a badly swollen eye. It was weird to see two young men fierce to hurt each other, about ten feet from where we were sitting eating our Chinese banquet. Dad turned up the volume, and the crowd’s roar filled our family room.

  If Mom had been home, she wouldn’t have liked this. Another sport maybe, basketball or baseball, but not boxing. It was unusual for Dad to watch TV boxing, since he didn’t cover boxing matches and it wasn’t one of Reid Pierson’s sports. Also he disliked listening to sports commentators on rival programs, especially those who’d never been athletes themselves. He called them “phonies”—“hypocrites”—who hadn’t earned their jobs as he had.

  Dad said, excited, “This is turning into a real fight. These boxers may be lightweights, but they have heavyweight hearts. Know what ‘heart’ is, girls?”

  No need to ask Todd. At six foot one, weighing over two hundred pounds, and an athlete himself, Todd obviously knew.

  Of course, Samantha just looked mystified. She’d been playing with her food and now shook her head, “No, Dad . . .”

  I sounded like Freaky, giving a stand-up answer: “ ‘Heart’ means super courage. ‘Heart’ is what an athlete has when he doesn’t give up no matter how he’s hurt.”

  Our training coach at Forrester was always urging us, Be aggressive!

  Freaky Green Eyes was aggressive by nature. But hesitant sometimes to show it.

  Dad liked my answer, though. As a star player for the Seahawks, Reid Pierson had displayed “heart” on more than one occasion. Once he was carried writhing in pain from the football field with a torn tendon in his calf.

  “Right, Franky. Except it’s ‘she,’ too. A female athlete can have ‘heart,’ too. Just as a female athlete can choke under pressure and let her team down. It isn’t just men who can be heroes or cowards, sweetie. It’s women, too.”

  Dad spoke in that intense way of his that signaled a deeper meaning. Letting your team down, letting your family down. It comes to the same thing.

  The Freaky thought struck me, to defend Mom. (“Hey! Mom isn’t a coward.”) But the words choked in my throat. It was Dad’s Good News Celebration. It was Dad’s time. And maybe, just maybe, I was a little afraid of my father.

  Anyway, I knew about “heart.” Giving all you have and then some. I participated in school sports myself—soccer, track, swimming, and diving. I guess I was a good swimmer/unpredictable diver, sometimes excellent and sometimes not-so-excellent. Our diving coach at Forrester told me that by the time I was a senior, I’d be one of the best. If I kept practicing.

  I used to love sports when I was younger. I guess everything is easier then. As soon as you hit high school, getting on the team is all-important. I practiced swimming and diving sometimes to the point of exhaustion, because I wanted Dad to be proud of me someday. Mom was always telling me not do overdo it—but what did she know?

  Dad was saying, “Sam-Sam? You understand, don’t you? The importance of ‘heart.’”

  Samantha nodded quickly. “Yes, Daddy.” Probably she hadn’t any idea what we were talking about. She was a dreamy ten-year-old with a sweet, shy disposition and beautiful dark eyes no one would ever call freaky. Through dinner she’d been quieter than usual. I guessed she was missing Mom, and she was aware of poor Rabbit whining and lonely in another part of the house.

  Dad was urging us to have more of the “delicious food.” Samantha protested faintly, but Dad ignored her, spearing pieces and dropping them onto her plate. And there was so much shrimp fried rice, and sesame noodles that were stone cold and sort of squirmy-greasy, I hoped Dad wouldn’t make me eat more—I was on the verge of gagging. As usual, Todd had a hearty appetite. He worked out hours every day, so he needed carbohydrates and protein to build up muscle. But I was a finicky eater, and Samantha never ate much at one sitting. I had thought I was fairly hungry when I sat down at the table, but the sugary, gluey Chinese specialties filled me up fast. “This is our celebratory banquet, girls. Your mother couldn’t make it but we made it, didn’t we! We are not going to waste any of this delicious food.” I was tempted to ask why we couldn’t save some of it for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, but I knew better; Dad did not appreciate “smart-aleck” commentary. So I said, “My favorites are the black mushrooms.” And I took another serving of mushrooms, on a small mound of brown rice. Samantha, who wasn’t so quick or canny, stared in dismay at the platter Dad was pushing at her. When she hesitated, biting her lip, Dad spooned more of the sweet Szechwan pork onto her plate, and the sweeter lemon chicken, which tasted like candy meat. Samantha looked as if she was about to cry.

  Todd usually ignored both his sisters, but he seemed to take pity on Samantha now and deflected Dad’s interest to the boxing match. “Dad, look! Wow.” The black boxer was firing blows at his opponent, forcing the Hispanic boxer backward across the ring. Suddenly then the Hispanic boxer was down, flat on his back on the brightly lighted canvas. The referee stood over him counting in an eerie silence: Dad had turned the volume down. Dad said, “Looks like a knockout. Well done.”

  While Dad was watching the screen, I began clearing away some of our plates. Deftly I eased Samantha’s plate away and carried it with others into the kitchen, and Dad never noticed.

  I ran water in the sink to rinse the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. I took advantage of being out of the family room by running to check on Rabbit, who was frantic with loneliness in my bedroom. “Poor Rabbit! I’m so, so sorry. But you’ll be let out soon, I promise.” (I’d overheard Dad making plans on his cell phone before dinner, and knew that he was going out for a “nightcap” later in the evening.) Rabbit licked my hands, wriggling his tail like crazy. I thought how sad it was to be a dog, a dumb animal, and not understand that the person you love most in the world, which in this case was my mother, was actually going to come back to you.

  Dad’s celebratory banquet had to be complete, with fortune cookies and ice cream. Heaping bowls of fudge ripple and butter crunch. When I returned to the family room with our bowls on a tray, the telephone began to ring. It had to be Mom.

  We waited for Dad to answer. To
dd scratched nervously at his neck. But Dad ignored the ringing phone, watching slow-motion replays of the knockout on TV. Finally after three or four rings I made a move to pick up the receiver, but Dad shook his finger at me without turning. “Fran-ces-ca. Where are your manners? No phone calls during meals.”

  “But, Dad, it might be—”

  “—might be Mom.”

  Samantha and I spoke at once.

  Dad set his jaws in a way he had that meant the subject was closed. He said nothing, continuing to watch TV as the phone rang another time, then clicked off into voice mail, which we couldn’t hear.

  I was feeling anxious, jumpy. I just knew it was Mom. And I wondered what she’d be thinking. I wondered what message she would leave. (“Sorry to miss you. Maybe you’re all out at the House of Ming? Well, I’ll try again later. Love you!”)

  I expected the boxing program to end, but the replays continued, from different angles including overhead. The Hispanic boxer’s right eye was swollen shut, and his face was shining with blood. It was terrible; the close-ups spared nothing. Not only was this twenty-two-year-old boxer hurt, he was being humiliated.

  Samantha was staring toward the telephone, looking faintly sick.

  Todd said suddenly, “Dad, maybe I could try boxing? With a team, there’s all these other guys getting in the way.”

  Dad said, “You? Boxing? You’re too slow, son. You’re built for football, like your old man.”

  “I thought you said I was a heavyweight. . . .”

  “But you don’t have the skills, Todd. Or the reflexes or the drive. Those boxers are hungry to win—they’re killers. Your life has been too soft. You’re a suburban white kid.” It was like Dad to suddenly turn on one of us, as if all along he’d been playing some sort of game, pretending to think we were great. The way he said “suburban white kid” made me shiver.