Eileen

SATURDAY

By noon on Saturday a good six inches of fresh snow had fallen on top of the knee-high blanket already standing. Such mornings were quiet, all sound dampened by the new snow. Even the cold seemed to back off, everything insulated and hushed. Before the furnaces began to roil, logs in fireplaces smoked and burned, and the houses of X-ville all covered in snow and ice started to melt and drip like wax candles, it was peaceful. Cold as it was in my room in the attic, I felt there was nothing to be gained by getting out of bed. Enough of the world could be explored by simply sticking my arm out from under the covers. I lay on my cot, dreaming and thinking for hours. I had a large mason jar for such circumstances and for when my father’s moods forced me to hole up in the attic. It made me feel I was camping, living close to nature and far away from home when I squatted over that jar in my mother’s pilly nightgown and an old Irish wool sweater, breath dribbling out my nose like white smoke from a witch’s boiling cauldron. My pee steamed and stank, a honey-colored poison I poured out the attic window and into the snow-filled gutter.

The movements of my bowels were a whole other story. They occurred irregularly — maybe once or twice a week, at most — and rarely without assistance. I’d gotten into the gross habit of gulping down a dozen or more laxative pills whenever I felt big and bloated, which was frequently. The closest bathroom was one floor down and I shared it with my father. Moving my bowels there never felt quite right. I worried that the smell would carry downstairs to the kitchen, or that my father would come knocking while I sat there on the toilet. Furthermore, I’d become dependent on those laxatives. Without them my movements were always pained and hard and took a good hour of clamping down and kneading my belly and pushing and praying. I often bled from the effort, digging my nails into my thighs, punching my stomach in frustration. With the laxatives, my movements were torrential, oceanic, as though all of my insides had melted and were now gushing out, a sludge that stank distinctly of chemicals and which, when it was all out, I half expected to breach the rim of the toilet bowl. In those cases I stood up to flush, dizzy and sweaty and cold, then lay down while the world seemed to revolve around me. Those were good times. Empty and spent and light as air, I lay at rest, silent, flying in circles, my heart dancing, my mind blank. In order to enjoy those moments I had to have complete privacy. So I used the toilet in the basement. My father must have assumed I was just doing the laundry down there. The basement was safe and private territory in my post-toilet reverie.

Other times, though, the basement bore the grim tinge of memories of my mother and how much time she spent down there — doing what for so long? I still don’t know. Coming up with a basket of clean clothes or linens on her hip, sniffling, grunting, she would tell me to get going, clean my room, brush my hair, read a book, leave her alone. The basement still held whatever secrets I guess she had stewing down there. If my father’s dark ghosts and hoodlums sprang from anywhere, it was from there. But somehow when I went down to use the toilet, I felt fine. Memories, ghosts, dread can be like that, in my experience — they can come and go at their own convenience.

That Saturday I stayed in bed as long as I could until my thirst and hunger forced me into a robe and slippers and I shuffled downstairs. My father was curled up in his chair in front of the open oven. He seemed to be sleeping so I shut the oven door, drank some water out of the tap, filled my robe pockets with peanuts and put some water to boil. Outside it was bright, blinding, and the light filled the kitchen like a flood lamp on a crime scene. The place was filthy. Later, in certain particularly unkempt subway stations or public restrooms, I’d be reminded of that old kitchen and gag. It was no wonder I barely ever had an appetite. Grime and grease and dust coated every surface. The linoleum floor was freckled all over with drips and spills and dirt. But what use was there in cleaning? Neither my father nor I cooked or cared much for food. From time to time I’d rinse out a sink full of cups and glasses. Generally I ate bread, drank milk straight from the carton, only occasionally cranked open a can of green beans or tuna or fried a slab of bacon. That day I ate the peanuts standing out on the front porch.

Neighbors were digging out their cars — something I hated doing myself. I preferred to wait for one of the boys on the block to come around and do it for a quarter. I was always glad to pay. I threw the peanut shells into the snow-filled bushes, as close as I would get that year to decorating my own Christmas tree.

“Quiet!” yelled my father when the kettle started its high whine. “At this hour?” he mumbled, eyelids dragging open, wincing at the sunshine. “Pull the blinds,” he said. “Dammit, Eileen.” There were no blinds. He’d taken the old curtains down years earlier, claiming the shadows they made distracted him from what was real. He wanted a clean view of the backyard and anyone who might be trespassing through it. That morning he ground his fists into his eyes, then looked at me as I made a cup of tea. “Somebody might see you in that getup. You look like a bum.” He rolled on his side, rubbed his face along the rough and dusty upholstery. The chair creaked and ticked like a resting locomotive under the shifting weight of his body.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him. “I could boil eggs.”

“I’m parched,” he said, words slurring, saliva popping between his lips. “No eggs. No rotten eggs.” I watched his foot shake beneath the thin blanket. “It’s cold,” he said. I sipped my tea and stared at his face, his drawn eyelids a curtain of wrinkled skin. He seemed to have no eyelashes, barely any color in his cheeks. “For Christ’s sake, Eileen.” He suddenly bolted upright, wrenched the oven door down, letting the heat blast out. “You’re trying to kill me. Think you’re so smart. This is my house.” He snatched his blanket back over his legs, tucked his feet in. “My house,” he said again, and curled up like a baby in a bassinet.

My father had been a police officer at the county precinct, one of just a handful of local cops who rarely had more to do than scare cats out of trees or drive drunk guys home from the VA hospital one town over. They were a tight bunch, the X-ville police. My father was always well respected, of course, dear to all who knew him on the beat, and his cold blue eyes and charming moralism earned him the nickname Father Dunlop. He never lost the cutting brininess of being a marine. He loved his police uniform. While he was on the force, he slept in it most nights, with his gun. He must have thought he was really something, prepared for the middle-of-the-night call to come and catch the bad guy. Such calls for heroism never came. I have to put it one way, so I’ll put it my way: He loved only himself and was full of pride and wore his badge like a gold star affixed to his chest by God himself. If he sounds trite, he was trite. He was very trite.

I didn’t think there was anything strange about my father’s drinking until my mother died. He’d been a run-of-the-mill beer drinker, I’d thought, whiskey just in the colder mornings. He’d gone with his friends on the police force to O’Hara’s regularly, nothing unusual. O’Hara’s was the town pub, which I’ll name after the poet whose work I always felt shut out of, even after I’d learned to read like a grown-up. Dad became persona non grata at O’Hara’s after he’d pulled his gun on the owner. Once my mother got sick—“fell ill” is an expression I like for its prissiness and, hence, its irony with respect to her violent demise — my father started taking time off work, drinking at home, wandering the streets at night, falling asleep on neighbors’ porches. And then he drank more — in the mornings, on the job. He totaled a squad car, and then fired his gun by accident in the locker room. Because he had seniority and was beloved by the whole department for reasons I’ll never understand, these indiscretions were never discussed openly. He was simply encouraged into an early retirement, replete with pension and constant surveillance and babying as the time went on and he got into more and more trouble. For some mysterious reason he switched to gin once my mother died. The most I can make of it is that perhaps gin reminded him of her perfume — she wore a stringent, flowery but bitter eau de toilette called Adelaide — and maybe imbibing the very fragrance of the dead was somehow soothing to him. But maybe not. I’ve heard a sip of gin will make you immune to mosquitoes and other pests. So perhaps he drank it with that logic in mind.

I spent the early afternoon shoveling snow. No boy ever did come asking if I’d pay him to do it for me. In the past I’d always gotten a little thrill when one of the neighborhood boys would ring the doorbell after a storm. They couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old, mittens and hats on, smelling like pine and candy canes. One boy in particular was just adorable. Pauly Daly, name sing-song and a face like an angel — big rosy cheeks and sapphire eyes. Whenever I saw him I wanted to embrace him, snuggle him in his thick wool coat. Pauly did a perfect job cleaning the snow off the car and out from under the tires, shoveled the drive well enough that I could open the driver’s side door, something I always forgot to do when I shoveled myself. It seemed so thoughtful. It proved, I imagined, that he really cared for me. One time I invited Pauly Daly inside while I looked for change to pay him. He shook off his boots before stepping into the front hall, removed his little hat. He was very well trained. Hair soft and tousled, I had to stop myself from putting my hands in it.

“Want a hot chocolate?” I asked him. I could tell he didn’t have the wherewithal to judge me as the odd, stiff and stone-faced girl everyone else saw me as, or so I thought. He sniffled and looked down at the dirty carpet, twisted one foot behind the other, then put his hat back on.

“No, thanks,” he said softly, blushing.

I kissed him on the cheek then. I meant nothing by it. He was a sweet boy and I liked him. But then he blushed and wiped away the clear mucus glistening between his nose and top lip. He looked utterly dismayed. I skidded away and dug through the pockets of coats hanging in the front closet. “Sorry,” I said after an awkward silence. I dumped all the change I could find into his cupped hands.

He nodded, called me “Mrs. Dunlop,” left, and never came around again.

When I’d finished clearing the snow off the car that Saturday, I rolled down the windows and let the Dodge run to warm up and defrost a bit. It was early afternoon by then and I wanted to drive over to Randy’s. I felt I had to. He lived in the upstairs of a split-level house not far from the interstate. I held tight to the magical notion that as long as I kept close tabs on him, he wouldn’t fall in love with anybody else. As far as I could tell, he spent most of his time alone in his apartment. But I rarely stalked him at night — I was afraid to — so who knows how many female visitors Randy entertained in the dark. From time to time a second motorcycle appeared next to his, parked in front of his snow-filled driveway. I guessed he had a best friend or brother who came to see him, and even that made me jealous. I generally parked across the street, huddled down behind the steering wheel, and watched his house in my side-view mirror. There was no real use in hiding, though. I doubt Randy would have recognized me if he’d found me camped out back there, surveilling him. I doubt he even knew my name. Still, I prayed for the perfect occasion to win him over. I spent hours sitting there scheming how I’d impress him with my feminine wiles. My daydreams of fingers and tongues and secret rendezvous in the back hallways of Moorehead kept my heart beating, or else I think I would have dropped dead from boredom. Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy. And like all intelligent young women, I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds — look for the cleanest fingernails. My father, for example, had no discretion about his pornographic magazines. They were behind the toilet, under the bed he’d shared with my mother, piled on shelves in the cellar, in a drawer in the den, in a box in the attic. And yet he was so staunchly Catholic. Of course he was. My own hypocrisies paled in comparison to my father’s. I’ve never had any guilt for what I did to him. I’ve been lucky in that regard.

Before I left for Randy’s that afternoon, I put on my mother’s old sunglasses — big, funny, petal-shaped lenses with tortoiseshell frames.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” my father hollered, awake now and bent over the table, it seemed, to catch his breath. He wore the blanket over his back like a cape. “Going out with your pals? Happy happy?” He rolled his eyes, grabbed the back of the kitchen chair and rattled it. “Sit down, Eileen.”

“I’m late, Dad,” I lied, edging closer to the front door.

“Late for what?”

“I’m meeting a friend.”

“What friend? What for?”

“We’re going to the movies.”

He squinted and snorted and rubbed his chin and leered at me, up and down. “That’s what you wear on a date?”

“I’m meeting my girlfriend,” I told him, “Suzie.”

“What’s wrong with your sister? Take her to the movies, why don’t you?” He gestured widely with his skinny arm and the blanket fell away. He winced, as though the cold at his back were a knife stabbing him.

“Joanie couldn’t come.” Lies like this one were common. He never knew the difference. I turned the knob and opened the front door, looked up at those icicles. If I plucked one, I thought, maybe I could throw it at my father, aim for his head, hit him dead between his eyes.

“That’s right,” he said, “because your sister has a life of her own. She’s made something of herself. Not a hanger-on like you, Eileen.” He bent stiffly at the waist to pick up the blanket. I watched from down the hall and through the kitchen doorway as he struggled to tie the belt of his robe with his shaky hands, adjust the blanket, wobble back to his chair with a new bottle of gin in his hand. “Get a life, Eileen,” he said. “Get a clue.”

He knew how to hurt me. I understood, nevertheless, that he was a drunk, that whatever cruel words he had for me were the nonsensical mumblings of a man who had lost his mind. He was convinced he’d need witness protection from all the work he had done “pinning down the mob.” He seemed to think of himself as some kind of imprisoned vigilante, a saint forced to contend with evil from the confines of his cold abode. The shadowy pranks of those ghostly hoodlums, he complained, tormented him even in his dreams. I tried to reason with him. “It’s in your mind,” I said. “Nobody’s out to get you.” He’d scoff and pat my head like a small child’s. We were both a bit crazy, I suppose. Of course there was no mob in X-ville. In any case, my father had hardly done more as a cop there than pull a car over for a broken taillight. He was terribly confused.

Soon after my father retired, the chief of police took his license away. He’d been caught driving in the wrong direction on the freeway one night, and parked his car in the public cemetery the next. So he stayed at home. On foot, he was nearly as menacing. He’d wander outside in a blackout, knock on neighbors’ doors to perform invented investigatory searches, pull his gun out at shadows, lie down in the gutter or in the middle of the road. Cops dropped him off quietly at the house with a pat on the back, and one of them would scold me for letting him get so out of hand, always with an apologetic sigh, sure, but it still filled me with spite. Once, after a good six-day absence, a bender of greater proportions than I had ever seen my father go on, I got a call from a hospital two counties over and drove out there to pick him up. That persuaded me to gather up all his shoes and keep them locked in the trunk of the car from then on. He did stay indoors for the most part after that, at least in the winter. I wore the car key like a pendant around my neck. I remember the weight of it dangling there between my measly bosoms, thudding around, sticking to my hard and sweaty breastplate, scraping against my skin as I walked out the door.

Before I go on describing the events of that Saturday, I should mention the gun again. When I was growing up, my father would sit at the kitchen table after dinner and clean it, explain all of its mechanics and the necessity of its upkeep. “If you don’t do this and that”—I don’t recall his exact words—“the gun will misfire. It could kill someone.” He seemed to tell me this not as a way of inviting me into this intimate procedure, his life and work, but as a warning, to say that what he had to do was so important, sacred in fact, that if I should ever distract him, or if I should ever touch his gun, God forbid, I would die. I tell you this simply to put the gun into the scenery. It was there, from childhood until the end. It frightened me the way a butcher knife would frighten me, but that was all.

Outside, the yard was filled with exhaust and windblown snow and already dwindling sunlight. I got in the Dodge and drove toward Randy’s, biting my chapped lip in anticipation of catching a glimpse of him through his bedroom window — he didn’t have curtains either — or, better yet, on his way out, so I could follow him secretly through the X-ville streets, led by the heavenly roar of his motorcycle engine. Then I could imagine what he did when he was not at home. If there was a woman in his life, I would know, once and for all. And I could find a way around her, I reasoned. There was a limit to the lengths I would go to win Randy’s affection — I was lazy, after all, and shy — but my obsession with him had become such a habit, I really lost all good sense. Who knows what I would have done had I found him French-kissing some Brigitte Bardot type? I don’t know that I was really capable of real violence. I probably would have punched myself in the head and rolled the windows up in the Dodge, prayed to die. Who knows?

But Randy wasn’t home when I got there. His bike wasn’t parked out front. So, for whatever reason, I decided to make good on my lie to my father and go to the cinema. Seeing movies has never been a favorite pastime of mine, but that afternoon I craved company. I didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think. It’s insulting. And the stories are all so hard to believe. Furthermore, beautiful actresses always made me feel terrible about myself. I burned with envy and resentment as they smiled and frowned. I understand that acting is a craft, of course, and I have great respect for those who can toss themselves aside and assume new identities — as I have done, one might say. But generally speaking, women on-screen have made me feel ugly and lackluster and ineffectual. Back then especially, I felt that I had nothing to compete with — no real charm, no real beauty. All I had to offer were my skills as a doormat, a blank wall, someone desperate enough to do anything — just short of murder, let’s say — simply to get someone to like me, let alone love me. Until Rebecca showed up a few days later, all I could pray for was some kind of fluke or miracle wherein Randy would be forced to need and want me, like if I happened to save his life in a fire or a motorcycle accident, or if I wandered into the room with a handkerchief and a shoulder to cry on the moment he heard his mother had died. Such were my romantic fantasies.

There was a small cinema in X-ville that played only the most tasteful, childish movies. If I wanted to see Contempt or Goldfinger, I’d have had to drive ten or more miles south where the X-ville Women’s League’s clout ran out. I can’t say I was relieved or disappointed that my plans to stake out Randy’s place for the few remaining hours of sunlight fell to the wayside, but I do remember a sense of impending doom descending upon me as I drove toward the cinema. If I lost Randy to another woman, I’d have to kill myself. There’d be nothing else for me to live for. As I parked the car outside the cinema and rolled up the windows, it struck me again how easy it would be to die. One snagged vein, one late night skid on the icy interstate, one hop off the X-ville bridge. I could just walk into the Atlantic Ocean if I wanted to. People died all the time. Why couldn’t I?

“You’ll go to hell,” I imagined my father would say, busting in on me as I slit my wrists. I was afraid of that. I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell. And I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t always want to live, but I wasn’t going to kill myself. And anyway, there were other options. I could run away as soon as I had the courage, I told myself. The dream of New York City beckoned like the twinkling lights of the cinema marquee — a promise of darkness and distraction, temporary and at a cost, but anything was better than sitting around.

I bought a ticket to Send Me No Flowers and padded down the black and red diamond carpet leading to a studded leather door. An acned teenage boy guided me inside the theater with a small flashlight. The movie had already started. In the warmth and darkness and aroma of cigarettes and burnt butter, and despite Doris Day’s squawking, I could barely keep my eyes open. And when I could, what I saw bored me to tears. I vaguely remember the film. I slept through most of it, but it had something to do with a housewife whose husband becomes consumed by hypochondria, or perhaps just a paralyzing general fear of death. Doris was already an old lady at that point — a paper doll now frayed and haggard, hairdo like an infant’s, a wardrobe fit for a maid. Rock Hudson couldn’t have cared less for her charm. As it turned out, even Doris Day could barely get a man to love her.

Once the credits were rolling, I shuffled out of the theater amongst the crowd of X-villers, young and old, each of them wrapped in brightly colored wool coats and hats and mufflers. The cold evening air refreshed me. I didn’t want to go home. Across the street, Christmas lights in the window of the donut shop caught my eye. I went in and bought a Boston cream, ate it in one gulp, as I was wont to do, and walked out immediately remorseful. I didn’t want to be like the woman behind the counter — greasy and fat, body like a sack of apples. In a storefront window of a boutique next door I saw my reflection clear as day. I looked ridiculous in my huge gray coat, alone and stunned in the headlights of a passing car like a dumb and frightened deer. I tried to fix my hair, which had gotten messed up while I’d slept. I looked up. The awning over the door spelled the name of the boutique in canned girlish cursive: Darla’s. My eyes rolled as I went inside.

“Yoo-hoo,” said a voice when the bell over the door chimed. The shopgirl came out from the back room. “I’m closing soon but take your time and look around. Anything you need, just holler.”

My death mask didn’t seem to perturb her at all. It always peeved me when my flatness was met with good cheer, good manners. Didn’t she know I was a monster, a creep, a crone? How dare she mock me with courtesy when I deserved to be greeted with disgust and dismay? My manly boots tracked dirty snow across the carpeted floor as I circled the racks and fingered the wool and silk crepe dresses. It was preposterous to think I could wear such fine garments, let alone afford them. I remember all the bright colors and bold prints, satin and wool, everything cute and tailored, big bows and pleats and all that nonsense. I was greedy, of course, turning over each tag, tallying everything I coveted but despised. It wasn’t fair. Others could wear nice things, so why not me? If I did, certainly people would pay me the attention I deserved. Randy even. Fashion’s for the fools, I know now, but I’ve learned that it’s good to be foolish from time to time. It keeps your spirit young. I suspected as much back then, I suppose, since despite my contempt — or maybe because of it — I asked to try on the party dress in the window.

It was a gold shift dress with a high neck and lines of alternating gold and silver baubles patterned from the neck to the bust. It reminded me of photographs I’d seen of African village women with necks painfully extended by stacks of gold rings. The shopgirl looked at me wide-eyed when I pointed to it, then smiled and hopped to the window. It took her several minutes to unzip the garment, then scoot the mannequin to the side to tip it over so that the dress could be taken off. I casually sauntered to the back wall to have a look at the hosiery. Keeping one eye on the girl wrestling with the mannequin, I slipped four packages of navy blue hose into my purse with ease. I looked in the mirror on the glass jewelry display case, which was locked from the other side, removed my gloves and rubbed the chocolate off the corners of my mouth. I wiped my hands on a scarf hanging decoratively from a bamboo staff. The shopgirl carried the dress to the fitting room as though it were a sleeping child, arms extended, careful not to rustle the baubles. I followed her, folding my purse inside my parka as I took it off. I didn’t care if the shopgirl judged my pathetic outfit. She herself wore a demure but ridiculous circle skirt which, I recall, had pom-poms on it, maybe an embroidered kitten. “I’ll be out front if you need anything,” she said and shut the door.

I took off my sweater, blouse and brassiere and took an earnest look at my bust, assessing the heft and shape of my little breasts. I shook my shoulders vigorously at the mirror, just to horrify myself. When I menstruated, my breasts were sore to the touch and heavy, like lead, like rocks. I pinched and poked them with my fingers. I took off my pants, but didn’t look at myself below the waist. My feet were fine, my ankles, my calves. That was all passable. But there was something so foreboding and gross about the hips, the buttocks, the thighs. And there was always a sense that those parts would suck me into another world if I studied them too closely. I simply couldn’t navigate that territory. And at the time, I didn’t believe my body was really mine to navigate. I figured that was what men were for.

The dress was heavy, like the hide of a strange animal. It was too big on top, buckling awkwardly between my arms and breasts, the baubles crashing against each other like a tribal instrument as I zipped up the back. And the whole thing was too long. In the mirror I looked tiny, frumpy, my hairy calves poking out at the bottom like the hind legs of a farm animal. The dress clearly did not fit me, and yet I wanted it. Of course I did. The tag said it cost more than I made in two weeks working at the prison. I thought to rip the tag off, as though that would make the dress free. I considered pulling one of the metallic baubles loose and slipping it in my purse along with the panty hose. But instead I used the sharp point of my car key to poke a hole in the inside lining around the hem and tore it a little. I pulled on my old clothes, which felt all the more old and stank of my sweat, the shirt under my sweater cold and wet in the armpits. I walked out back through the store.

“How’d you do?” I remember the shopgirl asked, as though I may have done well or poorly. Why was my performance always called into question? Of course the dress looked awful on me. The shopgirl must have predicted that. But why was it I who had failed, and not the dress? “How did the dress do?” is what she should have asked instead.

“Not my style,” I said to her and walked out quickly, fat purse under my arm, wincing in the sudden cold but smiling in triumph. When I stole things I felt I was invincible, as though I had punished the world and rewarded myself, setting things right for once — justice served.

I drove around for a while that evening, passed by Randy’s place again, clucked my tongue at the disappointing dark of his windows. Then I headed up 1-H to a lookout over the ocean where young lovers went to park. I pulled on my newfound knit hat as I drove. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. One needed a car to go there and neck, so there was no risk of running into Randy on his motorcycle with some girl, I supposed. Still, as I rolled up the steep, snow-filled drive, I tried to see through the fogged-up backseat window of every car to make sure he wasn’t in any of them. I’d been up there many times before, just snooping. That night I parked and stared out at the black night over the ocean. I rolled up the windows for a few minutes and enjoyed myself, thinking of Randy. At my age, I’d still never been on a proper date. Later, once I’d left X-ville and had some romantic experiences behind me, I’d sit in parked cars with men—“the view is beautiful from up here,” they liked to say — and I’d know the sweet thrill of opening my eyes in a moment of ecstasy to see the moon blazing and the stars like Christmas lights strung across the sky as if just for my own delight. I’d know, too, the delicious shame of being caught by highway patrol in a breathless moment of passion and love, dear God. But that night I just sat with myself and looked up and wondered where my life would lead if I chose not to drive off the cliff in front of me. Inevitably it led back down to Randy’s place — still dark, maddening — and home again. Did I cry and pout with self-pity? I didn’t. I was used to my loneliness by then. One day I’d run off, I knew. Until then, I would pine.

At home I gulped water from the tap and swallowed a handful of laxatives which I kept below the kitchen sink. Then I sat down and drank a beer. My father raised his hand, saluting me gravely, mocking my mood.

“Cops brought whiskey,” he said, pointing to a bottle of Glenfiddich with a bow tied around its neck. It sat by the door to the cellar stairs. “How was the movie?”

He seemed calm, in a better mood. Gone was the cutting fury of earlier. He seemed to want to talk.

“It was dumb,” I answered honestly. “Should I open it?” I went and picked up the whiskey.

“By any means necessary,” my father said. I didn’t always hate him. Like all villains, he had his good side, too. Most days he didn’t mind that the house was a mess. He hated the neighbors, as I did, and he would rather have been shot in the head than admit defeat. He made me laugh now and then, like when he’d attempt to read the papers, bristling with contempt at any headline he managed to decipher, one eye shut tight, finger shaking at the words, drunk as he was. He still ranted about the Reds. He loved Goldwater and despised the Kennedys, though he made me swear I’d keep that a secret. He was a hard-liner about certain duties. He had a stern attachment to things like paying the bills on time, for example. He’d sober up once a month for that task and I’d sit next to him, opening the envelopes, licking the stamps, making out the checks for him to sign. “That’s terrible, Eileen,” he’d say. “Start again. No bank would accept a check written like that, like a little girl made it out.” Even on his dry days he could barely hold a pen.

That night I poured us each a few fingers of whiskey and pulled my chair up next to his, stuck my frozen hands toward the burning oven.

“Doris Day’s a fat hack,” I said.

“Waste of time going to the movies if you ask me,” he mumbled. “Anything good on the tube?”

“Some nice static, if you’re in the mood,” I said. The television had been broken a long time.

“Ought to have someone come take a look at it. Bulb’s broken. Must be the bulb.” We’d had the same exchange once a week for years.

“Everything’s a waste of time,” I said, collapsing a bit in my chair.

“Have a drink,” my father grumbled, sipping his. “Cops brought me good whiskey,” he said again. “That Dalton boy looks like some kind of weasel.” The Daltons lived across the street. He stopped, paused. “You hear that?” He put his hand out, perked his ears. “Hoodlums are rowdy tonight. What day is it?”

“Saturday,” I said.

“That’s why. Hungry as rats.” He finished his whiskey, absentmindedly fumbled through the folds of the blanket spread across his lap, pulled up a half-empty bottle of gin. “How was the movie? How’s my Joanie?” He was like that. His mind was not quite right.

“She’s fine, Dad.”

“Little Joanie,” he said wistfully, somberly. He rubbed his chin, raised his eyebrows. “The kids grow up,” he said. We stared into the hot oven like it was a crackling fireplace. I warmed my thawing fingers, poured myself more whiskey, pictured the moon and stars swirling as they would through the windshield if I’d sped off the side of that cliff and down onto the rocks earlier that evening, the glittering of broken glass over the frozen snow, the black ocean.

“Joanie,” my father repeated, reverently. Despite her whorish ways, my father adored my sister, pined for her, it seemed—“my dear, sweet Joanie”—spoke of her with such admiration and decency. “My good little girl.” Those last years in X-ville, I’d stay up in the attic most times she came to visit. I couldn’t stand to watch how he’d give her money, eyes filling with tears of pride and honor, and how they loved each other — if love was what that was — in a way I could never understand. She could do no wrong. Although she was older than me, Joanie was his baby, his angel, his heart.

As for me, no matter what I did, he was certain it was the wrong thing to do, and told me so. If I came down the stairs holding a book or a magazine, he said, “Why do you waste your time reading? Go for a walk outside. You’re pale as my ass.” And if I bought a stick of butter, he would hold it between his fingers and say, “I can’t eat a stick of butter for dinner, Eileen. Be reasonable. Be smart for once.” When I walked through the front door, his response was always, “You’re late,” or “You’re home early,” or “You’ve got to go out again, we’re in short supply.” Although I wished him dead, I did not want him to die. I wanted him to change, be good to me, apologize for the half decade of grief he’d given me. And also, it pained me to imagine the inevitable pomp and sentimentality of his funeral. The trembling chins and folded flag, all that nonsense.

Joanie and I were never really close growing up. She was always much more personable and happier than I was, and being around her made me feel stiff and awkward and ugly. At her birthday party one year, she teased me for being too shy to dance, forced me to stand and grabbed my hips in her hands, then squatted down by my nether regions and rotated my body side to side as though I were a puppet, a rag doll. Her friends laughed and danced and I sat back down. “You’re ugly when you pout, Eileen,” my dad had said, snapping a picture. Things like that happened all the time. She left home at seventeen and abandoned me for a better life with that boyfriend of hers.

I’m reminded of one Fourth of July when I must have been twelve, since Joanie is four years older and she’d just gotten her license to drive. We’d come home from an afternoon at the beach to find our parents hosting a barbecue in our backyard for the entire X-ville police department, a rare social event for the Dunlops. A rookie, whom I recognized from around town — his little sister had some sort of disability, I recall — was made to sit next to me at the picnic table, a situation that afforded my father a chance to joke to the boy that Joanie and I were “jailbait.” The meaning of this term eluded me until years later, but I never forgot him saying it, and I’m still resentful. I remember it irritated my thighs to sit on the raw pine board set up on two pails filled with rocks that served as a bench at this barbecue, and when I went inside to change out of my swimsuit, the boy followed me into the kitchen and tried to kiss me. I refused his advance by steering my head back and away from his, but he took me by the shoulders and spun me around, gripping my wrists behind my back. “You’re under arrest,” he joked, and reached his hand up my shorts and pinched me. I ran to the attic, where I stayed for the rest of the night. Nobody missed me. I know other young women have suffered far worse than this, and I myself went on to suffer plenty, but this experience in particular was utterly humiliating. A psychoanalyst may term it something like a formative trauma, but I know little about psychology and reject the science entirely. People in that profession, I’d say, should be watched very closely. If we were living several hundred years ago, my guess is they’d all be burned as witches.

Back then, on that Saturday night in X-ville, the whiskey dwindled fast. My father was asleep and I was on my way down to the basement toilet, burping up the liquor churning in my stomach and about to explode out the other end from the laxatives. I was drunk, tripped and would have killed myself on the steps had I not been gripping the splintery banister like it was the handrail of a sinking ship. I’d tripped and fallen down those stairs once before, when I was a child running from my mother who was chasing me with a wooden spoon and screaming, “Clean your room!” or something like that. I split my lip and bumped my head on the way down, scraped my hands and knees when I hit the hard dirt floor. I recall looking up at the yellow rectangle of light in the kitchen from the foot of the stairs, my mother’s silhouette appearing like a paper cutout. She said nothing to me. She simply shut the door. How many hours did I spend down there, hurt and terrified? It was dark and full of dust and cobwebs and a dank, moist smell, gray steel tools, the boiler, an old-fashioned toilet with a yank hanging from the ceiling that smelled of old urine. Mice. I got over my childhood fear of the dark that day, I suppose. Nothing came at me — no angry spirits attacked me, no restless ghosts tried to suck out my soul. They left me alone down there, which was just as painful.

By midnight I was back on that cold cellar floor, panting with the effort that my body had exerted in emptying my innards, thanks to the laxatives. The toilet tank ran hard. Part of me, I remember, wished one of my father’s dark angels would materialize from the musty shadows and yank me down into its underworld. Alas, no one came. The darkness spun and spun and then it stopped, and so I floated up the cellar stairs and through the cold kitchen and up to my attic and fell asleep, exhausted, pacified, and utterly miserable.