It's always been out of my hands

Marianne had died on a warm summer night, I would learn. Her favorite time of year. My aunt Tilly had found her lying in a hammock outside of her trailer in who knows where after she disappeared. Figures, I thought. Tilly flipped out and called my dad, as if she'd never been around an overdose before. I never got to see my mom's body, but I kind of had a sense of what it had looked like. She had died the day before my twenty-second birthday. Showstopper.

Marianne liked to sit in my dad’s car and smoke for at least thirty minutes a day. He called her an addict, though my dad was pretty obviously addicted to more severe substances than tobacco. Still, it added to his assumption that she was dirty, white trash. When my dad would drive the car, he would open all the windows to clear out the smell of smoke. But he liked that he got to complain- he liked that he got to be right. Marianne was thin and weak, but determined and entitled. My dad resented her for her ungratefulness. He thought of himself as a victim of his own civil servitude- everything he did, as he saw it, was for the benefit of other people, including marrying Marianne. Her physical inferiority to him and other men forced him to assume the role as her protector. He thought she would die without him, and, though I think Marianne has much thicker skin than my dad gives her credit for, he’s probably right about that. 

My dad would take my sisters and I to Morris Park library every Sunday instead of church. I knew my dad was raised religious, but clearly didn’t feel compelled for his children to be, too. When I asked him why we didn’t worship God like other families, he pushed “Ham on Rye” by Bukowski over to me and said “this is God”. I mostly spent my time pretending to read at the library. I remember my sisters thought they were being tested the first time they were expected to read. 

“I always felt like he was judging me,” Elaine, my youngest sister, admitted to me a few years later. “Judging my character. I thought he was trying to decide whether he would leave me there.” My oldest-but-still-younger-than-me sister, Danny, was much less prudent. Though initially suspicious, she eventually got tired of finding books that spelled out my dad’s name with the first letter of each word of the title, and moved on to her beloved Nancy Drew Books. No wonder she hated puzzles. Anyway, it was our own kind of church.

I had vowed never to return to my dad's house once I graduated high school. Being a college student gave me enough excuses that my dad would sympathize with- I had skipped most holidays by faking an internship or a community service opportunity, and dodged birthdays because of my "busy exam schedule". I always made sure to send a card. Anyway, returning to the two bedroom apartment wasn't ideal. Riding in the elevator with its fluorescent light, smelling the cancer-inducing mold that was growing in the corners. My dad opened the door immediately after I knocked.

"Oh, Charlie," he said. He looked distracted.

"You knew I was coming, Dad." He waved me off: "Yeah, yeah."

I walked into the foyer, slinging my messenger bag onto a hook on the wall, like I had done with my backpack when I lived there. I watched my dad move over to the kitchen to sort through some mail, neck craning, standing tall and angry. Nothing had changed, I realized.

"When is Danny coming?" I asked, following him into the kitchen. The mail that he was sorting through wasn't bills.

"Condolences?" I asked, scanning the envelopes. He shook his head with a tsk.

"No, clients."

His dismissive tone enraged me, and I was suddenly aware of the sweat dripping down my neck and forehead. I needed to calm down.

"What, no one liked mom?" I attempted at a joke. My dad still wasn't looking up, shifting through the papers and occasionally taking a letter opener and slicing one open when it made him raise an eyebrow.

"Danny's already here, she's just running an errand. Elaine's still at school." I tried to ignore the deflection. "I was surprised you came at all." Never too early for aggression, I thought.

"Well I did." He shrugged.

"I suppose you said you would." He should have stopped. I would have. But my father never ceased to amaze me in his unnecessary cruelty.

"And that wasn't enough assurance? My word?"

My dad paused for a moment, sucking air in, but freezing the motion of his hands.

"No." And he resumed his sorting. I turned around, forehead pressed so hard against the cabinet doors I was sure it would leave a mark.

"It doesn't matter. We can't impress you anyway" I said, shutting my eyes hard, bracing myself. Quiet- he had stopped shuffling.

"That's not what you're meant to do."

Once I had turned around, he had left, and there was a red, rectangular splotch in the center of my forehead.

I was grateful when Danny finally arrived. It had taken another thirty minutes of me standing uncomfortably in the kitchen, worried that if I moved, he would appear again. She, too, looked surprised to see me.

"Oh, hi Charlie," she said, taking the walkman off, "Woman" by John Lennon pouring out of the headphones. She quickly turned it off, smiling sheepishly, but only as a courtesy. She put down the bags of flowers she had been holding and wrapped her arms around me, and I realized she had gotten taller since I had last seen her. She heard it when I laughed softly.

"I'm five-seven now," she said once they broke, placing her hands on her hips in a silly way, showing off like a kid. "Almost have you beat."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mhm," she nodded, proud. "I'm nothing like Elaine, though. Have you seen her recently? She sure has sprouted. I think she's..." and she put her finger to her chin, "maybe two inches taller than me. Model height. She's got all the boys wrapped around her finger." It was a little jarring to think of Elaine as womanly.

"She's forever a little girl to me," he said. Danny's face contorted, and I couldn't quite read the expression.

"Maybe, but then again you haven't seen her since she was a little girl." Danny was trying to be nice, but there was a familiar disturbance under the surface of her pearly smile. It struck me that it was how she used to look at our dad, and I suddenly felt sick.

"How's Wellesley?" I asked, desperate to change the subject, and Danny seemed happy to oblige.

"Really nice," she replied, as she started moving the flowers (and groceries, I observed after peeking into the bags) into the kitchen. "The girls are kind. Naturally, they offered to take notes for me while I'm gone."

"Naturally."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't make fun," she scolded me, now putting away the groceries in the kitchen. I followed her in. "You could at least pretend to be proud of me. Dad certainly won't." I wasn't really listening to her anymore. Instead, I was watching the food she was putting away- potatoes and beans were normal, but salmon? Organic brussels sprouts and the good chocolate? Basmati rice?

"Who's the food for?" Danny sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"Mostly us. And a few of Dad's friends."

"Mom wasn't popular enough for a real crowd?" I was trying to lighten the mood, but Danny just pursed her lips and shook her head.

"Girl-crackheads are only good if they'e easy."

The door came bursting open, followed by a thump. A teenage girl skipped into the kitchen, but paused when she saw me. She looked at me like a loiterer.

"Hey Elaine," Danny said, hardly looking up from the cookbook she had been flipping through. I was looking at this girl in shock. Her knee high socks tucked neatly into black and white saddle shoes, double-knotted. Her blouse, admittedly unbuttoned at the top, but you could never tell with how tightly her tie was tied around her neck. Her hair was cut into a tasteful but still youthful bob, and she had the figure of a woman. Danny was right, she was tall. And she was looking at him with the same anger as Danny had.

"Welcome home, Charlie." She walked over the counter, brushing off his presence and continued to speak to Danny.

"So how big's this wake gonna be?" She grabbed an apple and bit into it, chewing loudly but with her mouth closed.

"Not too big. Most people don't even know dad's married. It's just us and a few friends of his. James, Bill." I chuckled a little at the mention of James. James was an older man and would stare down at me at an angle where the sweat dripping from his chin felt dangerously close to the tip of nose. I remember his stare would stir something inside me, something that made me want to rip my fingernails off of their nail beds. I told Marianne I thought he was a pervert when I was six, which she responded to by telling me I was “engaging in senseless worrying”.

“You’ve known James for years,” she said. “If he wanted to molest you, he would have done so when you couldn’t fight back. You know, when you would wet the bed and that would be that.” But my dad turned serpent green after she said that, and slapped Marianne. I kept my head down, worrying that my eyes would wander towards my dad’s dripping nose and bloodshot eyes. His quivering mouth, slightly open and letting drops of spit slip between his gums and teeth. Looking like the dog that I knew he was.

"God, I hate James," Elaine said.

"Same."

My solidarity wasn't reciprocated by them, instead they ignored my interjection. I was starting to get really pissed off. Dad walked in before I could fight them on it.

"How was school Elaine?" he asked, and the balance of the conversation, which had previously been favoring my sisters, had now entirely shifted to my dad- the ball was in his court, as usual.

"Fine."

"Daniella, James and Bill are bringing their wives too." Danny rolled her eyes, and kept rubbing her forehead.

"Jesus, maybe we should make your friends RSVP." She slid down against the cabinets, now sitting in a semi-squat on the floor.

"Stop complaining, you're not a housewife for God's sakes. You don't want to do something, don't do it." I wasn't impressed by this retort. My dad seemed to be running out of his wit. He was always focused on our sense of autonomy, and was disappointed when we followed his lead. An unhappy man, he was also disappointed when didn't.

"Why, will you do it?" I asked. It had been three hours since I first stepped foot into this apartment and this was the first time my dad had made eye contact with me.

"Don't be smart, schoolboy."

The bastard. Shaming me for leaving, as if anyone would want to be around his manipulative ass. As if it's my fault that Danny's so stressed, when he's around all the time to help her. Having the audacity to call me a schoolboy when Elaine's prancing in her private school uniform in our below-the-poverty-line kitchen.

"And what are you doing to help?"

He looked at me, not disappointed, just bothered. "Paying for your education."

"You prick, I put myself through college. You didn't pay a dime." I remembered the clients. "And what are you now, a corporate slave? Abandoning your punk roots? Or have your addicts upgraded to mailed checks?"

My dad laughed at me. I balled my fists.

"Shut up, Charlie." Elaine had finished her apple and was now glaring at me, standing with her feet shoulder-width apart, like she needed good footing. "At least he's here." That made me hysterical.

"Oh right, look how he's got you. He bothered to stick around, thank God for him. What a saint, a father who didn't abandon his children."

"And where's mom?" Now she was yelling.

"Dead in a ditch, I never said she was a good mom." I was yelling, too, but I couldn't stop. "But at least she didn't pretend to be something she's not. I left because these people are crazy, Elaine, and you will, too."

She shifted close to me, maintaining her stance, which told me she'd been in a fight before. I wasn't going to move back. I stood stubbornly, awaiting her fist, confident I'd be able to catch it. I wasn't- she struck me hard in the cheek with her knuckles. It wasn't a girlish slap, nothing that'd you'd expect to come from her twig, borderline malnourished arms. If I wasn't her brother maybe she would have knocked my teeth out.

"Elaine!" Danny spun up, finally saying something. Up until that point, she'd just been sitting on the floor, her head between her knees, like we were all too much for her. Danny grabbed Elaine's arms and pinned them behind her back, prompting Elaine to kick and stomp at Danny's ballet flat shoes. Eventually, Danny couldn't withstand the pain and let her go.

"For God sakes, Charlie, don't you think you have anything to be sorry for? Or is it all out of your control?"

"You're insane, d'you know that? Insane." She lunged at me with her entire body weight, wrapping her arms around my torso and slamming me against the wall. Now that hurt. I pushed her off of me, finally finding some strength, and she fell hard on the floor.

"He'll never like you," I said, pointing at my dad, but making fierce, rage-induced eye contact with my sister who sprawled on the tiled floor. I remembered her bob and why I liked it- our mom had first cut her hair like that, to look like Clara Bow. "You look to much like Marianne."

"You're an animal," I heard my dad say. I turned to face him. "'Marianne'? She was your mother." I was breathing hard now. As I leaned up against the wall, I realized that I was his height. Maybe taller.

"Well," I began. My eyes were probably bloodshot, I wasn't sure. But they stung. "Isn't that what you always called her?"

"For God sakes, Charlie, who do you think you are?"

"Who do I look like to you?" I wanted him to hit me, to kill me. Just to be moved by me, in some way. He laughed and looked away, and the tension was broken, just like that. But his gaze met mine again with a familiar intensity, one I had known my whole childhood.

"You look like your bastard mother." I wanted to swing at him, but there was nothing left. The anger I had felt all my life towards him, that I was so desperate to release, re-compartmentalized itself in seconds with one look from him. I looked down at my sister, still sitting on the floor, motionless. Watching her a little closer, I noticed tears in her eyes. I remembered her crying in Morris Park one Sunday, after the librarian had yelled at her for dropping a book. I thought she was going to drown- in what I wasn't sure. But looking at her made me upset, the sheer helplessness of it all. A four year old girl running around as if she wasn’t, in a library full of books she could barely read, couldn't understand, and couldn’t reach. Her horrible bob that my mom had cut for her. Her shorts that revealed her bony legs and sharp knees, the scrapes and bug bites that ran all along her thighs and calves. Her mismatched socks and untied shoes. She was a kid, but I could feel her overwhelming desperation to be more. I remembering picking the book up and putting it back on the shelf for her, and my dad looked me up and down, scowling: “She could have done it herself.”

"Enjoy the wake."

I grabbed my bag from the front hall and slammed the door. I was wrong to have come back. I had left for a reason, and a very good one at that, no matter what Elaine thought. She was a child, she didn't understand- she had no way of expressing the pain that all three of us felt, but clearly only I understood.

I walked down Seymour Avenue on autopilot, running down the first subway station I found and taking it to God-knows-where. The end of line, I guess. I was sitting in my seat, knees bouncing, and tears welling in my eyes that I rubbed a couple of minutes. I was like a faucet that I had clogged with a rag, but it kept slipping out.

"Are you alright, young man?"

I didn't know who was talking to me at first until I looked straight in front of me. There was a woman sitting across from me, holding her two children who were playing rock-paper-scissors over her lap. She smiled gently, but with great concern. I sniffled a little, nodding. "Bad day". Right.