Such a Pretty Girl (4 page)

“There is no such thing as miracles, Andy,” I say.

He leans away and cool air rushes to fill the absence.

I twist to look at him and the stubborn hope blurring his face pushes me further, makes me want to gouge holes in his faith. “I mean, come on, if the Blessed Virgin has such infinite mercy, then how can she listen to your prayers every day for years without doing something about them?”

He upends the bottle. Wipes his mouth. “Maybe she is.”

I grab my bra. My hands are palsied and I hate them for it.

“We’ll be back on Wednesday,” he says.

“Have a nice trip,” I say, sliding the straps up onto my shoulders.

“I’ll give you my keys.” His hands cover mine, which are struggling to hook my bra. “I wouldn’t leave you here with nowhere to go.”

I stop battling my underwear. “Four days is a long time.”

“I know.” He rubs soft circles on my back.

I close my eyes against the Believe poster taped to his closet door. “Anything could happen,” I say, surrendering to the rhythm of his warm strength. His hands slip ’round to nudge my bra aside.

“Come here if it gets bad. You’ll be safe.” His sigh stirs my hair. “I promise.”

I look at the oaken Madonna. Her face is serene, her gaze a caress. Silently I ask why she’d send him all the way to Iowa now, while my father’s on the loose, but although I listen hard for an answer, the Blessed Virgin isn’t talking.

Andy is, though. His mouth is against my ear and his hand is in my overalls.

I reach up behind me and pull his braid forward, unbanding and spreading the rippling strands down over his shoulders. Down over my face. The curtain closes and I open. His reach is blind but accurate.

“Two,” I whisper, pressing my teeth against his cheek and taking fistfuls of his hair. Two’s a good number, one for me and one for him, pleasure evenly divided.

“Four,” he counters, a smile in his voice.

I forgive his approaching abandonment. I forgive him for not being what I want and am thankful for his being what I need. I open my eyes and gaze up into his face. His pleasure is giving me pleasure and I would not disappoint him.

“You know I love you,” he says.

The room smells of roses and freshly turned dirt.

“Andy,” I say, buffeted by the rush.

And then again.

“Andy.”

M
y self-imposed curfew on purification Fridays is 11:30
P.M
. Leaving Andy’s before midnight when his mother ends her exile is easier on us all. There really
is
such a thing as too much information, and when I ease from his lingering grasp and slip out into the night I am, with my friction-knotted hair and bruised lips, walking proof of this. One look and Ms. Mues would have the answer to a question she’s deliberately never asked.

I pause on the back porch, shrouded in darkness. The metal steps are cool under my feet. The night air is thick with moisture and ratcheting cricket songs.

“…the hell is she? It’s almost midnight.”

“Relax, Charles.” My mother’s voice carries a thread of impatience. “She’ll be back. She’s a big girl, you know.”

I lean out over the rail just far enough to peek around the corner of the building. My parents are sitting on our front porch, my mother in the center of the step, my father pressed up against the railing. His shoulders are hunched forward like he’s going to launch himself the moment I come into view. Only problem is he’s staring in the wrong direction.

Silence. And then icily, “She’s a fifteen-year-old
child,
Sharon.”

My mother laughs and leans against him. “I was only twelve when we got together, remember?”

His head snaps around toward her and although I can’t see his expression, the startled flash zapping my mother’s face speaks volumes. “She’s
my child
and I’m not going to sit by and let her run wild doing who knows what with who knows
who.
I’m putting the brakes on this tonight.” His voice is rising and my mother touches his arms, shushing him. He shrugs away.

Air conditioners thrum and lights glow behind shades. The complex is a tomb, haunted only by the Shale family and the Dumpster’s putrid miasma.

Whap!

“The mosquitoes are eating me alive,” my mother says.

“So go inside,” he says, keeping his gaze pinned on the blind curve of the main road. “I’m staying here.”

My mother pouts and scratches her ankle, but doesn’t surrender her spot.

I climb soundlessly over the opposite railing and drop to the grass. Pad through shadows, heading away from the court and my building, taking the long way up around Andy’s building so that I’ll come out above the blind curve. I would be a fool to go straight home from Andy’s, to reveal my sanctuary to the serpent.

I fish a cigarette from the pack and pause to light it. My father will smell the smoke on my breath the moment I open my mouth. He’ll also smell pizza, patchouli incense, maybe even the tangy scent of Andy’s mouth, moist with Jim Beam, anointing my skin.

I pick up my pace.
His child.
Right. Maybe I was once, but not anymore.

Andy’s pending departure makes me feel grimly reckless. It’s like he’s confirmed what I’ve always known but never gave voice to; when it comes to nightmares, we are each truly on our own.

I pause above the blind curve near the front of the complex. My father’s new condo is in Building A and I can see it from where I’m standing.

If I had a big old rotten tomato, I’d splat it against his front door.

Maybe I will tomorrow night while he’s submitting to my mother’s determined seduction. With her urchin hair and face stripped of makeup she may actually get somewhere as long as the lights are out and his imagination is active.

And providing there’s a daughter lying sleepless in the bedroom across the hall, bearing unwilling witness.

I take a deep drag on my cigarette. Flick the ashes.

In my dream, I am bouncing along a path with Tigger. We boing up and land with a booming
thud
and a springy
eeee.
The noises split my dream and I crawl up and out of the woods…

Thud, thud, thud.

I climb out of bed and go to my door. A light shines at the end of the black tunnel where shadows rise and fall on the walls.

I enter the darkness. The night-light is off. I’m supposed to call 911 for bad things, but I go down the hall to my mother instead.

Heart thundering, I edge to the brink of the open door.

My mother is on her knees on the bed.

My father’s face is crunched up and his hair is wet on his forehead.

I am paralyzed. My mother has never said to call 911 on my father.

He spots me, gaze burning, and puts a finger to his lips.

I back up a step, wanting to run to my room.

He shakes his head, makes a “wait” sign. Watches me watch him, nails my feet to the floor, and makes my chest ache for air.

Thudthudthudthudthud!

My father’s eyes roll back. I’m terrified because he’s gone into an ep-il-ep-tic fit like old Mrs. Nelson’s collie Boyd always does. I dash back to my room, bury myself under the covers, and then my father crouches near my bed whispering that I’m a brave girl and if I ever hear noises like that again I should come see what’s wrong like I did tonight, to watch quiet as a mouse and make sure that my mother is safe, but never to let her see me because it will be our secret…

I pretend to be asleep until he leaves.

The next night the noises go on and on and I realize that they’ll never stop unless I do what my father has said. So I do and when it ends my feet are no longer nailed to the floor and we’ve kept my mother safe for another night.

The next afternoon I’m playing in old Mrs. Nelson’s kitchen with her collie Boyd and he goes into an ep-il-ep-tic fit and I watch, quiet as a mouse, to make sure he stays safe.

Two nights later when the thudding starts, I rise and drag into the hallway. I don’t put it off anymore because I don’t want my mother to suffer any longer than she has to. This time she sees me at the brink of the shadows.

“Meredith! Charles, stop!” She pulls away and covers herself. Whips a pillow in front of him. “Meredith! What’s wrong?”

“I heard a noise,” I mumble, staring at my feet. I didn’t know she could get away so easily and now I feel stupid.

“It’s all right, everything’s fine,” my mother says, wrapping the sheet around her. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Mommy,” I whisper, as she leans over to kiss me. “Are you safe?”

Her eyes flicker. “Of course I am. I have you and Daddy to protect me.”

“Good.” I snuggle down, satisfied that my father hasn’t lied to me…

Fool. I peer through the smoke at his condo and wish I had a whole bushel of tomatoes right now. I’d whip them at his door, watching each burst into a scarlet heap of—

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Meredith.”

Inside, my stomach jumps. Outside, I turn to meet Nigel Balthazar and his enormous, white Great Pyrenees, Gilly. Nigel is a retired Estertown cop and lives in a building near my father’s. My parents don’t know this and, once again, I see no reason to enlighten them.

“I’ve been around,” I say, relaxing and tucking my hair behind my ears. “At Andy’s mostly. My grandmother’s once or twice. She’s been trying to talk my mother into letting me stay with her over the summer, but my father wants me home and of course his wish is my mother’s command.” I shrug and scratch the top of Gilly’s Plymouth Rock head.

She wags her tail and washes my arm with her tongue.

“Hmph. Figures. Andy okay these days?” Nigel asks, jabbing a Winston into his mouth and rummaging through his shirt pocket for his lighter. The windproof flame tints his weathered face a sheer tangerine. He lifts his head, exhaling.

“I guess,” I say, flicking my cigarette into the gutter. “He’s leaving for Iowa on Sunday with his mother. They have an appointment with a victim soul.”

“What, one of those religious rainmakers? Christ, those two. Hard heads, both of them. That kid needs a good shrink and some physical therapy, not some corn-fed quack quoting Scriptures and waving a crucifix.” Nigel squints at me through the spiraling smoke. “It’s lousy timing for you, but I’ll keep a good thought for our boy. Who knows, maybe it’ll pay off and he can send that chair back to the old folks’ home where it belongs.”

One of the things Nigel and I have in common is loving Andy. The other is knowing far too much about my father, his past, and probable future.

“I hear your old man’s out,” he says and taps the cellphone wedged into his shirt pocket. “Boys on the force say he hasn’t been down to register yet.”

“He hasn’t? Well, I’ll have to remind him then.” My lips twitch at the thought.

“That why you’re out so late?” he says, hitching up his pants. He wears old man jeans that hang low under his belly, brown slipper moccasins, and a faded plaid shirt that does nothing to soften the edges of his solid bulk.

“Pretty much. He’s at my house right now, waiting for me to get home so he can ‘put the brakes’ on my disappearing act.” I glance at my father’s building. “He’s in A-Eight.”

“I know.” Nigel’s eyes narrow. “Hear from social services?”

“Next week, but what can they do? He’s out and he’s here. So he makes my life miserable, so what? Nobody cares. If they did they would never have released him.” I blink hard and my vision clears. The tears surprise me; I haven’t cried in years.

“He get out of line with you yet?”

I shrug. “He cornered me and said we should forgive each other. And he called me…Chirp.” The once-innocent nickname shrivels my tongue.

Nigel swears briefly. “You gonna be able to handle this on your own?”

I think of Andy’s pending absence and my mother’s deliberate blind spot. My grandmother’s still an option, but she leads a very busy life and she and my mother have never really gotten along. I know she hates my father, though; I once heard her say that child molesters were often murdered in prison and she’d sounded very hopeful. I’m pretty sure she’ll help me if I need it.

“It’s gonna be bad,” Nigel says, watching me.

“Good. Then maybe he’ll leave,” I reply.

“I meant bad for you,” he says.

“I’m not helpless anymore,” I say, and almost believe it.