social formula; you curtsey, I bow, we all join hands. That’s how I really got out; I remembered the eclipse and what happened on the deck while the eclipse was going on, And you’ll have to remember, too. I think it’s the only chance you have to get free. You can’t run away anymore, Jessie. You have to turn and face the truth.
That again? Only that? Jessie felt a deep wave of exhaustion and disappointment. For a moment or two, hope had almost returned, but there was nothing here for her. Nothing at all.
You don’t understand, she told Punkin. We’ve been down this path before-all the way down. Yes, I suppose that what my father did to me then might have something to do with what’s happening to me now, I suppose that’s at least possible, but why go through all that pain again when there’s so much other pain to go through before God finally gets tired of torturing me and decides to pull down the blinds?
There was no answer. The little girl in the blue nightie, the little girl who had once been her, was gone. Now there was only darkness behind Jessie’s closed lids, like the darkness of a movie screen after the show has ended, so she opened her eyes again and took a long look around the room where she was going to die. She looked from the bathroom door to the framed batik butterfly to the bureau to her husband’s body, lying beneath its noxious throw-rug of sluggish autumn flies.
“Quit it, Jess. Go back to the eclipse.”
Her eyes widened. That actually did sound real-a real voice coming not from the bathroom or the hall or from inside her own head, but seeming to seep out of the very air itself.
“Punkin?” Her voice was only a croak now. She tried to sit up a little more, but another ferocious cramp threatened her midsection and she lay back against the headboard at once, waiting for it to pass. “Punkin, is that you? Is it, dear?”
For a moment she thought she heard something, that the voice said something else, but if it did, she was unable to make out the words. And then it was entirely gone.
Go back to the eclipse, Jessie.
“No answers there,” she muttered. “Nothing there but pain and stupidity and… “And what? What else?
The old Adam. The phrase rose naturally into her mind, lifted from some sermon she must have heard as a bored child sitting between her mother and father, kicking her feet in order to watch the light failing through the colored church windows shift and glimmer on her white patent-leather shoes. just some phrase that had caught on sticky flypaper in her subconscious and stayed with her. The old Adam-and maybe that was all it was, as simple as that. A father who had half-consciously arranged to be alone with his pretty, vivacious young daughter, thinking all the while There won’t be any harm in it, no harm, not a bit of harm. Then the eclipse had started, and she had sat on his lap in the sundress that was both too tight and too short-the sundress he himself had asked her to wear-and what had happened had happened. Just a brief, goatish interlude that had shamed and embarrassed them both. He had squirted his squirt-that was the long and short of it (and if there was some sort of pun buried in there, she didn’t give a shit about it); had shot it all over the back of her underwear, in fact-definitely not approved behavior for Daddies and definitely not a situation she had ever seen explored on The Brady Bunch, but…
But let’s face it, Jessie thought. I got off with barely a scratch compared to what could have happened… what does happen every day. It doesn’t just happen in places like Peyton Place and along Tobacco Road, either. My father wasn’t the first college-educated, upper-middle-class man to ever get a hard-on for his daughter, and I wasn’t the first daughter to ever find a wet spot on the back of her underpants. That’s not to say it was right, or even excusable; it’s just to say that it’s over, and it could have been a lot worse.
Yes. And right now forgetting all that seemed a much better idea than going through it yet again, no matter what Punkin had to say on the subject. Best to let it fade into the general darkness which came with any solar eclipse. She still had a lot of dying to do in this stinking, fly-filled bedroom.
She closed her eyes and immediately the scent of her father’s cologne seemed to drift into her nose. That, and the smell of his light, nervous sweat. The feel of the hard thing against her bottom. His little gasp as she squirmed on his lap, trying to get comfortable. Feeling his hand as it settled lightly on her breast. Wondering if he was all right. He had begun to breathe so fast. Marvin Gaye on the radio: “I love too hard, my friends sometimes say, but I believe I believe… that a woman should be loved that way…”
Do you love me, Punkin?
Yes, sure-
Then don’t worry about anything. I’d never hurt you. Now his other hand was moving up her bare leg, pushing the sundress ahead of it, bunching it in her lap. I want…
“'I want to be sweet to you,'” Jessie muttered, shifting a little against the headboard. Her face was sallow and drawn. “That’s what he said. Good Christ, he actually said that.”
“Everybody knows… especially you girls… that a love can be sad, well my love is twice as bad…”
I’m not sure I want to, Daddy… I’m afraid of burning my eyes.
You have another twenty seconds. At least that. So don’t worry. And don’t look around.
Then there had been the snap of elastic-not hers but his-as he set the old Adam free.
In defiance of her advancing dehydration, a single tear slipped from Jessie’s left eye and rolled slowly down her cheek. “I’m doing it,” she said in a hoarse, choked voice. “I’m remembering. I hope you’re happy.”
Yes, Punkin said, and although Jessie could no longer see it, she could feel that strange, sweet gaze on her. You’ve gone too far, though. Back up a little. Just a little.
An enormous sense of relief washed through Jessie as she realized the thing Punkin wanted to remember had not happened during or after her father’s sexual advances, but before them… although not long before.
Then why did I have to go through the rest of that awful old stuff?
The answer to that was pretty obvious, she supposed. It didn’t matter if you wanted one sardine or twenty, you still had to open the can and look at all of them; you had to smell that horrible fish-oil stink. And besides, a little ancient history wasn’t going to kill her. The handcuffs holding her to the bed might, but not these old memories, painful as they might be. It was time to quit bitching and moaning and get down to business. Time to find whatever it was Punkin said she was supposed to find.
Go back to just before he started to touch you that other way-the wrong way. Go back to the reason why the two of you were out there in the first place. Go back to the eclipse.
Jessie closed her eyes tighter and went back.
Punkin? All right?
Yes, but… it’s a little scary, isn’t it?
Now she doesn’t have to look into the reflector-box to know something’s happening; the day is beginning to darken the way it does when a cloud passes over the sun. But this is no cloud; the murk has unravelled and what clouds there are lie quite far to the east.
Yes, he says, and when she glances at him, she is enormously relieved to see he means it. Want to sit on my lap, Jess?
Can I?
You bet.
So she does, glad of his nearness and warmth and his sweet smell-the smell of Daddy-as the day continues to darken. Glad most of all because it is a little scary, scarier than she imagined it would be. What scares her the most is the way their shadows on the deck are fading. She has never seen shadows fade quite like this before, and is almost positive she never will again. That’s perfectly okay with me, she thinks, and snuggles closer, glad to be (at least for the duration of this slightly spooky interlude) her father’s Punkin again instead of plain old Jessie-too tall, too gawky… too squeaky.
Can I look through the smoked glass yet, Dad?
Not yet. His hand, heavy and warm on her leg. She puts her own hand over it, then turns to him and grins.
It’s exciting, isn’t it?
Yes. Yes it is, Punkin. Quite a bit more than I thought it would be, actually-
She wriggles again, wanting to find a way to coexist with the hard part of him against which her bottom is now resting. He draws in a quick hissing mouthful of air over his bottom lip.
Daddy? Am I too heavy? Did I hurt you?
No. You’re fine.
Can I look at it through the glass yet?
Not yet, Punkin. But very soon.
The world no longer has the look it gets when the sun dives into a cloud; now it seems as if twilight has come in the middle of the afternoon. She hears the old hooty-owl in the woods, and the sound makes her shiver. On WNCH Debbie Reynolds is fading out, and the deejay who comes in on top of them will soon be replaced by Marvin Gaye.
Look out on the lake! Daddy tells her, and when she does, she sees a weird twilight creeping over a lackluster world from which every strong color has been subtracted, leaving nothing but subdued pastels. She shivers and tells him it’s creepy; he tells her to try not to be too scared to enjoy it, a statement she will examine carefully- too carefully, perhaps-for double meanings years later. And now…
Dad? Daddy? It’s gone. Can I-
Yes, Now it’s okay. But when I say you have to stop, you have to stop. No arguments, understand?
He gives her three panes of smoked glass in a stack, but first he gives her a potholder. He gives it to her because he made the viewers from panes of glass cut from an old shed window, and he is less than confident of his abilities with the glass-cutter. And as she looks down at the potholder in this experience which is both dream and memory, her mind suddenly leaps even further back, as nimbly as an acrobat turning a flip, and she hears him say The last thing I need…
