The Last Darling (10 page)

The drunken stranger had once been a successful student working toward his engineering doctorate at a prestigious New England university. He lost interest in his studies shortly after his girlfriend refused his marriage proposal. He had worked hard to shape his life around the qualities he thought she desired, but when he learned that she did not, nor would she ever, reciprocate his love, he refused to open another book, attend another class, or start his adult life until she spoke to him. She, unfortunately, embarrassed beyond words, refused to even meet with him and so, the poor student, in a bout of self-loathing, abandoned his potential and embraced his genetic disposition for alcohol. He entered bars, taverns, pubs, and any other alcohol dispensary, chatting-up patrons in the hopes of getting free booze. Women sometimes propositioned him, but he left only if they could prove alcohol was waiting for him at their residence. He got into fights no less than three times a week and, given his dejected demeanor, he lost every one. He had learned early on that booze flowed freely at parties and celebrations, which is why he slammed his mug down in front of Leo Darling. The failed student had been drinking heavily that night, and though he had developed a tolerance, he was past his tipping point. He didn’t mean to fall into the adjacent table or spill his drink, but his was too drunk to care. He rolled onto the floor and passed out in a pile of his own vomit.

The patron, now covered in beer and smelling of pungent vomit, demanded retribution. When he could not take his anger out on the drunken stranger, he directed it toward Leo Darling. He shouted, threw his glass bottle, and kicked at Leo’s chair. Leo, now feeling equally insulted, punched the patron in the stomach and face so that he fell backwards knocking over the table and chair. The patron’s three friends stood, and a bar fight ensued.

The police arrived exactly thirty-four minutes later; however, the damage was already done. Aside from a small fire, some broken bones, cuts, and bruises, everyone was fine. Leo Darling would receive the only wound that was irreversible. In the chaos, a broken glass bottle had stabbed a hole through Leo’s right hand and severely cut his left. Despite a series of operations and experimental treatments, he would never fully regain the use of his fingers. Though he could hold a tattoo needle, he lacked the finesse to use it. He was just as bad with a pen, paint brush, and chisel. His career and livelihood were over. And though the tattoo parlor asked him to stay on as a consultant, he refused. He could not bear the sight of artists when he could no longer count himself among them. He swore off all forms of art and made Rose promise never to mention them in his presence.

By this time, Rose had reached her final trimester and it was only a matter of weeks until the baby would arrive. Rose and Leo, trying to savor every moment, had decided to let the gender remain a secret, creating two lists of names – one set for girls, the other for boys. They jokingly argued over the names and lovingly disagreed over the gender.

Leo suppressed his frustration and melancholy with thoughts of the baby – who it might become, what it might achieve, who it might love, if it would have children of its own one day. These thoughts made him happy and he could almost tolerate the absence of his artwork.

One evening while the tattoo employees were visiting, the absentminded owner cradled a watermelon as if it were a baby and jokingly sung lullabies to it. He handed the watermelon to Leo, telling him to start practicing. When Leo attempted to hold it, it slipped from his hands and cracked on the floor. He tried to pick it up, but his fingers were neither agile nor strong enough. He spent nearly ten minutes failing to hold the cracked watermelon. The guests became silent and sad. Leo, covered in juice and seeds, fell against a cabinet and cried, realizing that he would be incapable of holding his child. His pride and temper got the better of him. He threw pieces of watermelon at the absentminded owner and stormed out of the apartment.

He walked without a destination. It became dark and difficult to see. Neither his anger nor sadness subsided. If he had been more focused and less agitated, his death could have easily been avoided.

A car, making a blind turn, over-steered and jumped the lip of the sidewalk. Leo rolled over the safety rail, missing the bumper by only a few inches. His momentum was so great he slid down the embankment into a pool of muddy rain water. The driver, nervous and new to driving, convinced herself a deer had grazed her hood, not a man, and so did not bother to pull over or inspect the road. Once home, she would find a long scratch along the front and side of her car. Using finger nail polish, she would do her best to hide the damage from her parents, who still owned the vehicle. She would eventually forget the incident and years later, when selling the car, have no explanation for how the strange discolorment came to be there.

Leo Darling would never learn of these events, nor would he have much time to ponder them for he would die moments later. Soaked in mud and feeling as if a second chance had reached him, he wished only to return home to a warm shower and the love of his life, Rose Fox. He would, however, do neither.

While climbing up the steep embankment, his fingers, failing to grip a patch of grass, slipped and his head, colliding with a rock, sent him back into the muddy water, unconscious. His body would be found four days later by a pair of joggers.

The news devastated Rose, and her heightened emotions induced labor. She was rushed to the hospital and, despite the death of Leo Darling, the birth was as safe and uneventful as it could have been. Rose, expecting a boy, planned to name him Leo in honor of his departed father. When the nurses laid a beautiful baby girl in her arms, she was overjoyed, but uncertain what to call her. She decided on the name Daisy, thinking it to be the name of Leo Darling’s mother.

Daisy Darling was a healthy and happy baby. Her early childhood, like her birth, was safe and uneventful, which was, most certainly, attributed to Rose’s careful precautions. After Leo’s death, Rose silently promised that Daisy would never have to endure the misadventures of her parents. Less than a week after leaving the hospital, Rose sold all their trivial possessions and relocated to a small and quiet suburb where Daisy could make lots of friends and avoid the pitfalls of loneliness and deviancy.

Rose, now a single mother and no longer employed at the tattoo parlor, was forced to work three jobs to support her daughter. The first two jobs, data entry and outbound sales rep, were done from home. The third, a part-time receptionist at a dental office, was within walking distance. The receptionist job guaranteed Daisy would have health insurance – the data entry job guaranteed enough money to hire a babysitter. Collectively the three jobs, though time consuming and mindless, provided enough money for Rose and her daughter to live comfortably. Rose, however, purchased only the necessities, placing all the extra money in a savings account for her daughter. Once Daisy was old enough for kindergarten, Rose quit the first job and began taking classes online. Within three months, she had acquired her GED and considered attending a nearby junior college. She would postpone these thoughts when the school informed her that Daisy had contracted chickenpox. Holding her motherly duties above all others, Rose took two weeks off from the dentist’s office to care for her daughter.

One night after a bath and bedtime story, Daisy gazed at her mother’s tattoo with wonderment and awe. She was old enough to recognize the images, but still too young to understand them. Each night Daisy asked her mother many questions about the beautiful peach tree tattoo, but each night, to Daisy’s dismay, Rose answered only one. Daisy became obsessed with the peach tree tattoo, filing down a whole box of crayons trying to recreate it. Though she was passionate and eager, she had no proficiency for art. This sad fact she realized months later while finger painting with her fellow classmates. She excitedly covered her construction paper with greens and blues and reds, which resulted in a brown and purple mess that was neither pretty nor interesting. Somewhat discouraged but still eager, Daisy glanced at her classmates’ work which displayed a wonderful array of colors and shapes far better than her own. With a pouty scowl, she took the small containers of paint and emptied them all in the sink – an act that would keep her in timeout for the rest of the afternoon.

Though Daisy quickly gave up her short-lived art ambition, she never lost interest in the peach tree tattoo. Each night she asked her mother a new question and each night her mother provided her with a complete and unapologetic answer. The one and only question Daisy never managed to ask involved the identity of the artist.

When she hinted at the tattoo’s creator, Rose was incapable of letting his name escape her throat. She felt that if his name ever parted her lips, it would part from her soul as well and so, when she learned he had left this life, she swore to never say his name again. This was particularly difficult at the funeral and the months that followed.

Sometimes, late at night, when the infant Daisy began to cry, Rose would lean into the adjacent pillow and almost whisper his name. She felt foolish and depressed when she remembered he was gone, but she did her best to keep the sadness far from her daughter.

Daisy knew the artist was a man who had been close to her mother. Over the years, she had developed a number of theories about his identity. Perhaps he had been a stranger that saved her mother’s life, or a relative that had died, or a lover that had gone to war, or perhaps he was a rapist that had mutilated her body with beautiful art. The more Daisy thought about him, the more bizarre and vivacious her theories became. Soon, she began to fantasize about him. In each fantasy he had a different set of attributes; sometimes he was tall, sometimes strong, sometimes short, sometimes skinny, or alternating combinations of each. His skin type and age differed as well. Sometimes he even turned out to be a woman. Daisy began to study the figure in her fantasies, trying to understand his behavior and the variables that influenced it. Eventually her fantasies transformed into case studies that she applied to living people.

One afternoon during high school algebra, Daisy observed a boy in the seat across from hers. She memorized his physicality, mannerisms, and as much of his personality as could be observed. That night, in the safety of her room, she fantasized about him – not for pleasure, but to test her skills of deduction. Based on her observations, she fictionalized the size and decoration of his room, the contents of his dresser and desk, the personalities of his parents, the type and color of his pets, the number and type of his siblings, his hobbies, and his reactions to different situations.

The next day, after school, she introduced herself, being friendly and somewhat flirty. Unaccustomed to the attention of a pretty girl, the boy happily led her to his room where she discovered almost every one of her theories to be accurate. She was wrong on two counts. She guessed he had two sisters and one brother when, in fact, he had only one sister and no brothers. She was so excited and pleased with herself that she made out with him for the rest of the afternoon.

To avoid any unflattering rumors, she called him boyfriend for the remainder of the school year. Their relationship would end that summer when he discovered Daisy and his sister kissing in his bed. Daisy would explain that their actions were purely scientific which he would not believe, or even hear over his own shouting. His sister, Jaclyn, would be just as surprised by Daisy’s dry and logical explanation. For though Daisy had described the act as an experiment, Jaclyn assumed it was an experiment of the heart, not the mind, and agreed to kiss only because she hoped Daisy’s heart would be a mirror to her own. Out of embarrassment and heartache Jaclyn would keep her affections a secret and instead pledge her loyalty in the form of friendship. Her desires would sometimes spill out in subtle ways – an embrace lasting too long, a casual kiss, cuddling during movies or sleepovers, and other small forms of physical affection that not even Jaclyn was aware of.

Daisy’s inquisitive mind and personal experimentation gave her a keen awareness of the human condition, but she failed to apply this knowledge to the people closest to her – her mother, Jaclyn, and, later, the men that speckled her sex life. This blind spot got her into trouble more than once. On one occasion, while studying the effects of alcohol at a party, she stumbled into the arms of a man she had never met and remained there almost the entire night as he slowly peeled off her clothes. He was about to take her to a secluded room and remove the few clothes she had remaining when Jaclyn punched him in the face twice and carried Daisy to the car. Jaclyn managed to get Daisy into her own bed and then, motivated by worry and sexual desire, she curled under the sheets next to her. The next day, Daisy’s only regret was the loss of her green tank top and the slight hangover that lasted well into the afternoon. She did not, nor would she ever, thank Jaclyn for providing her with protection; instead, she would immediately move on to her next experiment while Jaclyn remained her silent and unacknowledged sentry.

When Daisy was accepted to a university on the other side of the country, Jaclyn followed her, ignoring the scholarships she had earned for several Ivy League schools. The truth was, since the moment they had kissed, Jaclyn could not imagine loving anyone except Daisy Darling. She was attracted to other women – even had a few short and secret relationships, but none of them could ignite her heart the way a casual glance from Daisy could, and did. Daisy, slightly self-indulgent and always occupied with thought, had not noticed Jaclyn’s affections, nor had she even hinted at them. She was too enveloped by the wonders of college. She had discovered there was a name for her passion – psychology, and she committed herself entirely to it. She snuck into upper division classes and sometimes eavesdropped on professors and TA’s. She read everything she could find within the differing curriculums, and then searched for ideas that were newly published.