While my mother cooked and washed up, my father sat on a butterfly chair on the patio. He smoked a cigarette with his legs crossed languidly. When my father was on his feet he was always moving, his hands working screwdrivers, doorknobs, polishing the grilles of cars. But when he sat down, he fully sat, his flesh softening into all the ovals of his bones. My mother, on the other hand, barely sat. My memories of dinnertime are of my father and me at the table and my mother rinsing plates before we were even halfway through. I suppose she did sit in restaurants.
That night it was no different. When the pastina was ready, my father and I sat down at the pine dining table. There was a side of chopped spinach with butter. My mother was not good with vegetables. They were always dark and limp. As we ate, she Windexed the shelves of the refrigerator. My father looked at me with a pasted-on smile. He was always smiling at me, even in the wake of misery. Tenderly, he moved some hair off my face. I winced a little, the touch of a man suddenly meaning something other than what it always had. Beyond the screen door the summer evening vibrated with bugs.
We didn’t talk at all that night, my father and I. Talking was something I did with my mother. My father listened to me and smiled and ruffled my hair. He was still and resolute in all ways. A steadfast man. Even his veins were powerful.
—My little princess, he said, went to the pool all by herself today. Did she swim or read?
Flashes of hands and the feeling of a tongue went through my mind. It made sense that my father would have no idea what had happened to me that day, but it was unimaginable to me that my mother wouldn’t. She’d often told me she was omniscient, a witch, and I believed her. As she bent forward into the mustard-yellow refrigerator, I felt she was trying to trap me with her silence.
—Both, I replied, watching my mother’s body for a clue.
—Why don’t you bring the dishes to the sink, help your mother clean up.
—I don’t need any help, my mother said sharply. Her voice stopped our movements, even our breath. How can I explain her power? It was a magical thing. She was cold but her body was warm; even today, even after everything, I would give both my arms to be held in hers.
After a while my father turned on the television. The Sound of Music was playing. To this day I can’t watch it. I can’t hear the notes of any of the songs without shaking all over. That night we saw the last hour. My father had his arm around my shoulders. Just the day before, his mother had been violently raped, and only a few hours earlier, his daughter had been sexually assaulted. I didn’t know what he would do if he learned of the latter, but I knew he’d gone looking for the man who’d raped his mother. I felt it was possible he’d killed him. My father was one of those men with secrets. I thought that all of his secrets were the honorable kind. Revenge killing. Acts of mercy for maimed animals dying by the side of the road.
I didn’t understand why my mother was being so cold. I figured it was a combination of horror that my father might have killed someone and disgust over what I had done. I was terrified she would stop loving me and terrified my father might go to jail. Up until the following day I wouldn’t have had any of the long conversations with Gosia that would mark the rest of my formative years, but once she had told me that simply going to sleep and seeing the next sun could fix you up. That the new day would be infinitely more survivable. Or at least it would seem to be. So that was what I longed for. I longed for the night to be over. For the new day to dawn. I swore I would never go back to the Top of the World Pool. I would swim exclusively in the pool with the logroll and the tired ducks and the green paddleboats and the mosquitoes. I would be a perfect child.
30
VIC ONCE SAID TO ME, What do you have to fear, kid? You’ve lost so much. What is there left to fear? That was one of his cruelest moments. I’d been with the young boy, Jack, all afternoon. I’d blown off work to go to a Mets game with him. We drank piss-colored beers and cheered and shared a hot dog from opposite ends until our mouths met in the middle. After the game Jack left me to go to Fire Island with his friends; they were off to the gay part of the island, Cherry Grove, where they liked to get drunk as older, mustachioed men hit on them. I called Vic and he came. Out to Queens he came and we ate at a wonderful Thai restaurant with uneven tables and a drop-tile ceiling with water stains.
That night I cried over a bowl of papaya salad and crispy ground catfish. I was crying because of Jack, because I felt stupid. I told Vic it was only fear. The nameless fear that followed me everywhere. But Vic was stung. He had to accept Jack
