Eileen (5 page)

“Paying for his sins,” I replied.

“Good riddance,” said my father, wiping his hands on his robe.

The mail sat in a pile on the counter by the stove. The
National Geographic
was rather lackluster that month. Several years ago I found that same issue in a used book store—December 1964—and have it here somewhere between all my books and papers. I doubt a thing like that is valuable fifty years later, but to me that magazine feels sacred, a snapshot of the world before everything in it changed for me. It was nothing special. The cover shows two ugly white birds, doves maybe, sitting on a cast-iron fence. A holy cross looms out of focus above them. The issue includes profiles of Washington, D.C., and some exotic vacation destinations in Mexico and the Middle East. That night, when it was new and still smelled of glue and ink, I opened it briefly to a picture of a palm tree against a pink sunset, then slapped it down on the kitchen table, disappointed. I preferred to read about places like India, Belarus, the slums of Brazil, the starving children in Africa.

I handed my father the letter of warning from Officer Laffey and sat down for a few peanuts. He waved the letter in front of his eyes and tossed it in the trash. “Just for show,” he said. The delusions he suffered from were the most effective kind—everyone played a role in his conspiracy theories. Nothing was as it appeared. He was haunted by visions, dark figures— “hoodlums,” he called them—that moved so fast, he said, he
could only see their shadows. They'd duck under porches and hide in dark spots and in bushes and up in trees, and they watched him and taunted him, he said. He'd thrown some snowballs out the window that day just to let on that he knew what they were up to, he explained. The police had to admonish him to make it look like there was nothing fishy going on—just an old man losing his mind.

“They're in here, too,” he said about the hoodlums, waving his finger around at the house. “Must be getting in through the basement. Walk around like they own the place. I've heard them. Maybe they're living in the walls, like rats,” he said. “They sound just like rats, in fact. Black ghosts.” He was tortured by them day and night, so his only recourse was to drink, naturally. He sat down at the kitchen table. “It's the mob who's sent them,” of course. “Why do you think the cops are always here? They're here to protect me. After everything I've done for this town?”

“You're drunk,” I said flatly.

“I haven't been drunk in years, Eileen. This,” he held up his can of beer, “is to calm my nerves.”

I opened a beer for myself, ate a few more peanuts. When I looked up I asked, “What's so funny?” because he was laughing. He could do that—turn on a dime from terrorized to cruelly hysterical.

“Your face,” he replied. “You have nothing to worry about, Eileen. Nobody's going to bother you with a face like that one.”

That's it. To hell with him. I recall catching my reflection in the dark glass windows of the living room later that evening. I looked like a grown-up. My father had no right to bully me.
Joanie stopped by that night wearing a white faux-fur jacket and a miniskirt and snow boots, her hair coiffed and bouncy, eyes lined in thick black liner. She was a blonde, pouty and lighthearted, back then at least. My guess is she went on to be soured—that pout was on its way somewhere, after all—but I hope she's healthy and happy and with someone who loves her. Here's to hoping. She was a special kind of girl. When she moved, she seemed to throw her flesh around as though it were a fur coat, so relaxed and comfortable, I couldn't understand her. She was charming, I suppose, but so critical, always with this naive way of asking me things like, “You don't feel funny wearing your dead mother's sweater?” And sometimes it was more sisterly, such as “Why is your face like that? What's your problem now?”

That night I just shook my head, made a ham sandwich. Bread, butter, ham. Joanie clapped her compact shut and came up from behind to poke me in the ribs. “Sack of bones,” she said, grabbing my sandwich off the plate. “I'll see you,” she said, kissing Dad in his chair. I never saw her again.

I went up to the attic to lie on my cot with my magazine. Would I miss my sister if she died? I wondered. We'd grown up side by side, but I barely knew her. And she certainly didn't know me. I pulled chocolates from a tin and chewed and spat them out one by one into the crinkly brown paper they came in. I turned another page.

B
y 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.”