Monstrous Affections (9 page)

Mom called it their haven; for without the security of a paid-off
house in a jurisdiction where the taxes were low, who knew where
their awful circumstances would take them? She couldn’t work
anymore, not since the accident at the restaurant three years back
where she’d bunged her knee; a mortgage or even regular rent on
a place like this would ruin them. She couldn’t carry it on worker’s
comp alone.

“Keep that thing in the shed,” she said, as Dad brought the basin
inside. Mom probably wouldn’t have sounded angry to anyone but
Shelly, and maybe Blaine.

If Dad understood her tone, he didn’t let on. “Won’t do in the
shed,” he said. “Got to be here, or there wasn’t any point.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “
There wasn’t any point
. You got that right.”
She picked up the remote from the side of the couch and pointed
at the TV. Frasier’s dad and the little dog vanished, and the room
darkened a bit. With a grunt, Mom shifted her feet from the couch
to the floor, and lifted herself on her cane. It was no mean feat; Mom
had gotten
heavy
since she’d taken off work. “You going to catch a
rabbit with that?” she asked.

Dad didn’t get it, and Mom laughed unkindly.

“Mom’s talking about Bre’r Rabbit,” said Shelly, trying to help.
“From
Song of the South
.” She’d seen the movie over at her friend’s
house at Thanksgiving, and there was a tar baby in it. Bre’r Fox had
used it to catch Bre’r Rabbit — and it’d nearly worked.

“Jail didn’t teach you much, did it now?” she said.

Dad sucked in his breath, like he was about to say something —
and he looked down at the basin in his arms.

“Oh no,” he said. “We’re not starting
this
again. Not now.” He
looked up, and his eyes had a calm about them.

“I’m putting this in the basement,” he said. “You won’t have to
smell it, or even look at it if you don’t want to. So it won’t be any
trouble for you — all right?”

“Whatever you say,
dear
,” said Mom, then turned to address
Shelly. “Lord, now, isn’t it good to have a man around here? See, I
wouldn’t have any idea how to put a bucket of tar in the basement
and
not
stink up my house with it. Stupid little me wouldn’t know
how to keep those fumes out of the vents, and before you know it, all
the sheets’d start stinking like a blacktop highway in July!”

She was looking at Shelly, but she was moving towards Dad,
stumping sideways on her cane like some kind of crab. Shelly tried
not to glare at her: it seemed like Mom just couldn’t give Dad a
chance.

“And why, I’d
never
think to take my two children out to steal
tar from a construction site! On a night just two days I’d been out
of jail!”

Dad was grinning now. He held out the basin in front of him as
Mom came nearer. The metal of it made a bonging sound as he lifted
it an inch or so.

“Good thing,” she said, raising her free hand and touching the
rim of the basin, “my husband’s come home to set things
right
!”

“Careful, Dornie,” Dad said. “Don’t want to get yourself into a
state.”

Mom still wasn’t looking at Dad — she didn’t stop looking
at Shelly, and Shelly could see by her narrow eyes that Mom was
working herself into quite a state indeed. If that state had been
directed at Shelly, she would have been frightened for herself — but
tonight, Shelly was just a channel, a way for five years and a day of
bottled-up rage to get to Dad.

So Shelly just watched as events unfolded.

Mom’s fist tightened around the edge of the basin, and she
shifted her weight so she didn’t need the cane under her and could
lift it into the air so as to swing it. “I’ll give you a
fuckin
’ state,” she
said in a low and terrible voice, finally turning her angry eyes to
focus right on Dad. The basin began to tip toward her under her
weight. Dad smiled, and the metal bonged again.

There was a third bong, and it seemed as though Mom’s already-unsteady footing slipped, and the basin overturned. Mom yelped,
and tried to yank her hand away. Dad’s grin opened up into a toothy
smile, and he let the basin fall to the floor. Shelly shut her eyes as it
hit — thinking about all the tar inside it, and how it’d be to clean up
tar, how long it would take and what kinds of solvents she’d need to
do the job to Mom’s standards.

But when she opened her eyes again, she saw there’d be no
need — the old shag carpet didn’t have a drop of tar on it, because
the tar baby was all over Mom.

It had taken hold of her hand first — two twig-boned fists grasped
her fingers, and it must have used her fingers to swing on because
all of a sudden its skinny tar-black legs were wrapped around her
elbow. Mom was wearing a bright yellow tank-top, no sleeves, so it
hadn’t gotten on her clothes right at first. But as Mom reached over
with her free hand to try and yank the tar baby off, she pushed the
thing’s back against her chest, and that did it. She was a mess.

Mom looked like a big bat as she lifted both arms away from her,
strands of tar making a web between them and her chest — where
the tar baby seemed to have fixed itself. “
Get it off!
” she hollered.
“
Get this fuckin’ thing off me!
”

Dad was laughing so you could hear it now. He bent over and
slapped his blue-jeaned knee, and fell down to his knees and laughed
some more, shaking his head.

“Look at that,” he said. “Damn me if it’s not suckling off you,
Mama!” And he howled.

Sure enough, thought Shelly, it did look like the tar baby was
suckling. Somehow, it had managed to get turned around and now its
face — or at least the front of its head; the tar baby didn’t really have
a face — mashed into Mom’s left breast, like it was taking milk.

With nothing there to hold it up, the tar baby started to peel away
from Mom’s tank-top; and for a second, as it turned first to face the
ceiling and then forward, Shelly thought she could make out a little
grinning face on the thing — mouth open, thin snot-strands of tar
between upper and lower jaw, and tiny little button-eyes, staring up
at Mom’s tit. But the face went away as the tar baby turned, and it was
just a mound of hardening tar again. Mom’d stopped hollering, and
she’d started to sob. Dad picked up the basin from where it’d fallen on
the floor, and held it under the tar baby. It fell into it with a bong.

Everyone stood silent. Mom was covered in tar — somehow, it’d
gotten on her face and into her hair; it smeared down her shoulders
and onto her hands like lines of thick, black finger-paint. Mom
looked up at Blaine, and cleared her throat.

“Blaine honey,” she said, voice calm and reasonable. “Fetch your
Mom her cane.”

Blaine did as he was told, but when it came time to hand the cane
over, he didn’t get too close to Mom. Shelly didn’t blame him. Mom
took the cane, propped it against the floor and pushed herself to her
feet.

“I’ll just put the baby in the basement then,” said Dad, to no one
in particular. He whistled as he carried the basin into the kitchen
and down the stairs.

“You mean the
tar
baby,” said Shelly, but Dad was beyond
hearing.

Dad drank beer from a bottle at the kitchen table, and Shelly sat with
him, sipping her Coke from the can. They didn’t speak at all while
the shower ran; Dad had just stared out the window into the dark
yard, drank his beer, and occasionally reached over to pat Shelly on
the hand.

For her part, Shelly just watched him. She hadn’t seen Dad
since she was just five — not properly anyway, not outside of a
prison visitation — and he was for all practical purposes a complete
mystery to her. He had last gone to jail for armed robbery — he’d
used a hunting rifle to rob a grocery store in Huntsville with his
buddy Mark Hollins, who’d gotten off as an accomplice and did
hardly any time in jail at all. Shelly tried to imagine her father doing
such a thing, and found again that she couldn’t. When she’d gone to
see him with Mom and Blaine, he was always laughing and gentle —
even when Mom egged him on. It wasn’t that there was any doubt
he’d done the robbery; Dad had confessed to it and pleaded guilty
when it came time to go to court. It was just that Shelly couldn’t see
how he’d done it, pulling out a gun and telling someone to hand over
their money or they’d get it. Dad just seemed . . . too nice. Compared
to the rest of the family, that was.

Finally, the shower shut off, and Dad squinted at the ceiling, like
he was gauging something there.

“Out of hot water,” he said.

“Maybe she’s clean now,” said Shelly.

Dad just shook his head. “Soap and water won’t do a thing to tar.
Your mother should know better.”

Shelly nodded as though she understood, and swallowed the last
of her Coke.

“She’ll know better now,” said Dad, staring back out the
window.

They sat quiet again, as Mom stomped wet-footed on the floor
upstairs and the vestiges of water drained from the bathtub through
the old pipes under her feet, over their heads. Shelly squeezed her
Coke can as if to crush it, but she didn’t have the strength and the
side just popped. Dad started at the sound, then smiled, and reached
over to put his big hand over Shelly’s. “Let’s both squeeze,” he said.
Dad’s thick fingers pushed on Shelly’s, and for a minute she felt like
he was crushing her against the can. But the metal crumpled easily
under their combined grip, and Shelly laughed when Dad let go of
her.

“Teamwork,” said Dad. “That’s what this family’s going to be
about, from now on, little girl.”

“Teamwork?”

Dad nodded sagely. “Most families do it, you know — ours is just
peculiar that way. Or it has been. We’ve been like a bad cell block in
a bad jail; we’re always fighting and squabbling and hurting each
other. Won’t be the case any more.”

Shelly looked up at her father, who was staring back out the
window. It was true what he said; they
were
like a bad cell block in
a bad jail, or at least they were always hurting each other. Dad had
a point.

“Mom’s wrong about you,” she whispered.

Dad blinked, and smiled down into the dregs of his beer. He gave
Shelly a squeeze around the shoulders.

“You better go to bed, little girl,” said Dad. “It’s late.”

The bathroom door opened upstairs, and Mom made her way
noisily to her own bedroom. A minute later, the mist of her shower
wafted down — carrying with it the combined scent of perfumed
soaps, old angry sweat, and tar-fume.

It was, Shelly realized, the first time she’d smelled tar since Dad
had shut the basement door and Mom had gotten in the shower.
For whatever reason, the tar baby’s smell had just stayed put. Shelly
laughed to herself: Mom had been wrong on
that
score too.

Dad stood up, and patted Shelly on the back. “Come on, little
girl,” he said. “Daddy’s going out for a walk — you get on up to bed.”
Blaine was already in the top bunk when she came into the bedroom.
He had his reading light on, and was propped up on an elbow
over some kind of magazine — Shelly couldn’t see what because
of the angle, but she suspected it was one of his mountain biking
magazines.

“I’m not turning out the light,” said Blaine.

“Who said I want you to?”

“You always want to go to sleep early.”

“I’m not the one in
bed
already.”

Blaine glared at her, picked up his magazine, and rolled over so
he was facing the wall. Paper rustled angrily as he positioned the
magazine out of his own shadow.

“You’re lucky,” he muttered.

Shelly supposed he was right. Normally, after a little exchange
like that one, Blaine would swing down from the bunk, grab Shelly
in a headlock and take the last word in the argument by sheer might.
Shelly would have to apologize — no, she would have to
beg
, and if
she were lucky, that would be all it took.

Tonight, Shelly guessed she was really lucky.

She sat down on the bottom bunk and pulled off her T-shirt. The
springs over her head creaked as Blaine shifted his weight.

“Lucky,” he said again, his voice low and kind of scary. “I could
come down and pound you right now. You know I’d do it.”

Shelly unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them off and slid under the
covers.

“You know that — don’t you, shitty Shelly?”

“Stop it, Blaine.”

“
Shitty Shelly
,” said Blaine, and he started to sing it: “
Shitty Shelly
shitty Shelly
.”

“Stop it,” she repeated, but of course he wouldn’t.

“Shitty Shelly shitty Shelly. What are you gonna do, shitty Shelly?
Get mad like Mom did?”

“This is
stupid
,” she said. “This is what Dad was talking about.”

She rolled back on her haunches, and lifted her feet to the
mattress of the top bunk. Part of her screamed a warning:
Suicide!
Don’t even try it!
But the taunt was getting under her skin — Blaine
knew how to get under her skin better than almost anyone — and
she couldn’t help herself. She bucked back on her shoulders, and
pushed hard against the mattress with her feet — not too hard, just
enough to send him a message.

She felt Blaine’s weight roll to one side, and heard a crack! sound
like snapping wood, and she felt the bed-frame tremble even as
Blaine shouted. If she’d been even a little angry a second ago, it was
all gone now; Shelly was just scared.

“You dumb bitch!” Blaine sounded an inch from tears. “You dumb
goddamn bitch! That was my
head
!”

Before she could even answer, Blaine was half-way down the
ladder from the top bunk. His head. She guessed she’d rolled him
against one of the bed-posts, given him a good bang on the skull.
Blaine was going to pound her all right. Shelly screwed her eyes
shut and curled herself into a ball — waiting for the rain of fists that
would follow, and hoping they’d just fall on her back and shoulders.
She knew from bitter experience that if she let Blaine get to her
stomach and face, there’d be no end to the pain . . .