Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) (2 page)

The next day, my dad took me to the place he had, in a way, chosen over Mom and me—Suffolk Downs racetrack, or Suffering Downs, as he later told me it is called by those in Boston wise enough to avoid its grinding gears. My father was easy amid the frantic sea of strangers, who jostled each other as they hurried back and forth across the wide, barren space—like a city train station without the excitement of an impending trip. He ran into a friend and, barely introducing me, bent down to listen eagerly as the tiny man spoke. I trailed behind him as he made his way to place a bet at the window, his racing form folded under his arm. During our visits before, he'd been intent on me, and I didn't like how far he seemed from me now. There was no magic in the horses, or the jockeys' bright satin uniforms, or the pomp and circumstance of the announcer's voice over the loudspeaker. Everything was gray and dark and cold.

N
ot long after I returned to Augusta, Mom called me to her one day. “Your dad sent us a letter,” she said.

I leaned against her as she read it out loud in her soft, clear voice:

“
Halo Lovelies, Oh Sue I'm so sorry, I'm finally in touch with my irresponsibility, it's what I've wanted to feel lately, because I have been doing things all along and not feeling them, and I kept thinking I know I do these things, but I don't feel it like I used to and now I do, it's great, and I get the only one I really hurt is me. So now I am living and breathing and digging (loving) everything. I know it will take a while to straighten everything out, but it will be easier now, now that I'm here doing it, instead of wanting to do it and feeling sorry that I wasn't.”

The message ended with a description of how charmed he was by our conversation over dinner. “She's such a blessing and I'll be up as soon as I can.”

The majority of his letter had been way beyond my understanding. But I felt like my efforts to behave well had been rewarded, and I was happy to have made a positive impression. Even if he hadn't realized he couldn't stand to be away from me, which was my ultimate goal. And that meant more waiting.

A
s much as my separation from my father pained me, the life my mom and I were leading in his absence was actually running smoother than ever. After our house raising, the building had come together in fits and starts. By 1980, the construction site was our home, and we lived on the land with three other families, whose six kids were my first friends. The seven of us were given free reign to run back and forth through the woods between the houses, where our parents could rest assured that all of the snacks would be healthy and vegetarian, and we'd be encouraged to play outside whenever possible and only watch educational TV. The men had jobs off the land, but there was always a mom home somewhere, and I remember a safe feeling of being watched over.

Designed to heat itself with sunlight during the day, our house had four big skylights across its roof and four big windows in front. They looked out onto the yard Mom and Craig had cleared. It seemed I was
always standing at one of the windows, careful not to get too close because the glass was chilly, even in summer, and I had been warned not to smudge it. My father's promise of a visit “soon” had extended into more than a year, but today he was really coming to see me. I watched intently for the flash of yellow through the sun-dappled trees that would signal my father's taxicab, doing math in my mind—it took three and a half hours to drive from Boston to midcoast Maine. If he'd left at nine, then he would be there by twelve thirty, or maybe one, depending on how many stops he made. I hummed with anticipation and joy. His cab should appear any minute, and he'd be there with me, just like he'd said.

Our house was like my sibling. We grew up together, intertwined. A ladder of two-by-fours nailed to the wall gave way to stairs, which were pitched at a steep angle and crossed by a low beam that held up the two bedrooms. When I was little, I fell down those stairs constantly. By the time I was old enough not to fall, I was also tall enough to hit my head on the beam, never quite adjusting to the house's quirks. Our only source of heat was a pretty maroon woodstove, and we chopped our own firewood. From an early age, I knew how to use a small ax and feed logs into a wood splitter we rented from town, and one of my regular chores was to stack firewood in the summer, and bring in armloads of wood after school in the winter.

The house was what we did as a family when other kids and their parents were sailing or playing Ping-Pong or watching TV. Though, eventually there was a television with rabbit ears that sort of got a few channels, and a record player for the hours Mom and Craig spent listening to music—the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Armatrading, the Pretenders, the Police. I knew how to pound nails (not well) and spackle (which wasn't hard enough for me to be bad at it) and sand and stain wood (which was forgiving enough to hide the flaws in my work). I knew how to get a banked fire going again. I knew how almost every item of food I ate was made or where it came from. I knew how to weed and water the organic vegetables
we grew in raised beds Craig built for Mom. The garden was like my refrigerator. I pulled up carrots, wiped the soil on the grass, and ate them standing in the sun. My childhood motto, probably learned from Mom, was “A little dirt never hurt.”

But still, my dad was the one who I thought held the wisdom. As I waited for him to arrive, I rested my fingertips on the wood of the windowsill, staving off my fear of disappointment by redoing the numbers in my mind. At two, when he still had not come, I held on to the logic of my math problem: if he left at eleven, he'd be there by two thirty. But no, just to be safe, maybe he hit traffic, or got his cab serviced, or grabbed a fish sandwich on Route 1.

When four o'clock arrived and the phone rang, I felt a heavy knowing inside of me, like being aware of my own powerlessness. But I did not lose faith, not even then. I still believed in my dad, even when Mom summoned me to the phone, her face so devoid of any emotion it was scarier than if she were crying or raging with fury. In the absence of any signal from her, I didn't know how to behave.

I knew how I felt—bereft—but I didn't let it show. I took the cold plastic receiver and turned away from Mom, preferring to be alone within the sliver of personal space I wanted to believe I could control.

“Hi, Sarah,” my dad said.

My heart went sweet and sour like marmalade. I loved his voice, the languor of his slightly nasal New Jersey twang, like he couldn't be bothered to close up the syllables. He flattened out the
a
's in “Sarah,” saying my name as no one else could, his tone giving me value. He retained the dropped consonants of the teenage hoodlum who sang doo-wop in the Trenton projects, where he was one of the only white kids and got kicked out of ninth grade for his bad grades and truancy. His words were separated by spaced-out pauses, the synapses of his brain—and his world vision—altered by those 120 acid trips.

“Bernie couldn't lend me a cab for the weekend,” he said. Or maybe it was . . .

“
My cab broke down on Ninety-Five, and it won't be fixed until next week.” Or . . .

“I couldn't get the money together to come this weekend.” Or . . .

“My back is acting up. I can't make it this weekend. But I'll try to come next weekend. And if I can't get up then, I'll be up as soon as I can.”

Never that he
wouldn't
come to see me; always that he
couldn't,
as if there were a barrier between Boston and Maine that made it impossible for him to reach me. Of course there was an obstacle, only I didn't understand what it was at the time.

I listened to him very closely, careful not to do anything to scare him off. I did not cry or yell or lie down on the pine floorboards and kick my feet. I did not tell him I had been standing at the window all day, believing in him, when even he did not believe, not really, in himself, and Mom did not believe, and Craig did not believe, and my cat, Molasses, did not believe. “I'm sorry, Sarah,” he said.

“It's okay,” I said, not quite convinced of the lie myself but pretty sure he was.

“It'll be great when I can get the cab,” he said in a rush, relieved to be on to the fun promises that were always really, truly going to happen next time. “We'll go for a long drive. And we'll stop at McClellan's on Route 1 and get a fish sandwich. And we'll drive up to Rangeley and go camping. I have a little tent we can use.”

“Okay,” I said, clutching the phone, willing myself to hold on, just hold on.

I never asked for an explanation of what was keeping us apart or pressed him to tell me why I should trust him. I simply believed him, the way my dad believed, insanely, after losing everything hundreds and thousands of times at the track, he would suddenly win one day, and it would be transcendent, everything he'd ever dreamed of on all of those sad, losing days. Next time he would win, he managed to believe. Yes, next time we would win, I, too, believed.

My dad's great, lumbering laugh erupted from him; he was glad to be free of his earlier anxiety about disappointing me, and to have
gotten exactly what he needed from me. I was happy, too, because even though I hadn't gotten what I'd wanted, I'd made him happy.

If I didn't say anything to scare him off, and I made myself smart enough and funny enough and pleasant enough, maybe I could keep him on the phone just a while longer, and maybe, just maybe, he would come see me soon. I would be a good girl whose father wouldn't stay away for any reason in the world.

But long distance was expensive, and money was always an issue.

“I gotta go, Sarah,” he said. “This call's costing a fortune, and I missed a shift this week because my back was acting up.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing down the panic rising within me.

“Tell Mommy I'm gonna send yous the money for last month as soon as I can. I'll figure out when I can get up again, and I'll send a letter with the dates.”

“When?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“I don't know, Sarah, as soon as I can. I have to go.”

“Okay.”

When I was sure he had hung up, I returned the receiver to its cradle and tried to fold myself back into reality, which seemed flat and stale compared to even just his voice on the phone. Around me were the roughly built counters, which were nothing more than open wooden boxes, really, topped with plywood, containing the big glass jars in which Mom stored brown rice and dried beans. This was my real life, but it felt like a cheap substitute for what I most wanted: my dad.

W
hen we moved to the land full-time in the winter of 1980, Mom gave up her job at the health food store in Augusta. I loved having her at home with me. Her days were largely devoted to the never-ending tasks by which we shaped the house into a home and stayed warm and fed. Throughout the morning, she would return to the kitchen and punch down her rising bread, a job I enjoyed helping her with, my
small fists sinking into the dough, which was soft and sticky, pliant in a way that felt very much alive.

Once the bread was in the oven, Mom could usually be convinced to play a game or do a puzzle with me. Craig didn't like to play games or do puzzles, and he could be impatient with my little-girl whimsy, so we were not close. Instead, we were joined by a shared adoration of my mom. She made me a game out of small pieces of paper, each printed with a letter, which had a match hidden in the stack of squares. After we had played a few times, I knew my letters. I begged Mom to teach me to read, which fascinated me because I saw her doing it all the time. I wanted to be just like her, because she was beautiful and good at so many things.

Mom and Craig had met at Davis & Elkins in 1969 and maintained the bohemian habits of their generation, growing a few pot plants for occasional consumption during our first few years on the land. From an early age, I knew the plants were illicit and sometimes snuck other kids back to the clearing where they sprouted. Briefly, during Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign, I worried Mom and Craig would get arrested and be taken away. But, overall, the pot intrigued me, as did everything on the land. It was something the grown-ups did, and I was interested in everything the grown-ups did.

My only issue with them smoking together in the evenings was that I wanted to watch TV like other kids, and instead, Mom and Craig preferred to listen to music and talk. They sometimes let me watch
The Waltons
as a compromise.

One night, Craig turned off the television after my show was over, and a small orb of light hung in the center of the darkened screen for a long moment. When that faded, it seemed to sever any tie we had to the outside world. A rattling sound scattered across one of the skylights. My head jerked up, even though I was always terrified I would see a face looking down at me through the glass. There was nothing there, just more darkness.

“It was only an acorn,” Mom said, smiling at me.

Craig kneeled and slid out a record, handling it carefully the way he had showed me, even though my own hands were too small, and I wasn't allowed to play the records yet. There was a faint staticky hiss and the album began: Peter Gabriel's
Security
.

I sat next to Craig on the floor and pored over the album cover for Pink Floyd's
Wish You Were Here
, with its image of two suit-clad men shaking hands, one of them on fire. Craig lit a small purple glass bong. The room filled with sweet, musty smoke. He passed it to Mom. Her long hair fell around her face as she leaned down to inhale. Craig's stereo speakers were large and powerful, and Peter Gabriel wailed amid a wash of electronic instruments. I became very aware of our place in the world, just the three of us alone together, tucked away in a small house amid a big forest on the edge of the immense ocean, and felt a deep melancholy I didn't quite know what to do with.