Thirteenth Child (10 page)

Kate stiffened. This was the first time Angie had ever said anything—ever brought anything out into the open. For a moment she hesitated, then closed herself off again.

“Nothing happened,” she repeated.

“Then why won’t you talk to Barney? What did he do?”

This wasn’t like Angie at all, and there was no way Kate could deal with it right now. She wasn’t ready for it. She had to stop it.

“All
right.
I’ll go down. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.” She swung her feet off the bed. Angie still didn’t make a move to leave. “I said I’m going down, leave me alone, okay?” Instinctively,
she put up a hand to cover her cheek. It hurt. Was there a bruise?

Angie’s eyes followed her movement. They narrowed. Kate caught her breath.

But Angie didn’t follow through. “Okay,” she said, backing out the door. “I’ll tell him.”

Kate headed for the mirror. There was a bruise. After washing her face, she reached for the makeup she rarely bothered with and slathered it on. In the harsh daylight it looked heavy and fake, but it covered the discoloration. Her face looked gaunt, her eyes dark. There were puffy circles under them. She plastered on more makeup, then in desperation added a slash of bright lipstick. She looked like a clown. She rubbed off the lipstick, gritted her teeth so hard it sent a fresh splinter of pain up her already aching jaw, and went downstairs.

Barney looked as embarrassed as she was.

“Look—I’m really sorry. I mean … about what I did last night.”

“It’s not your fault.” The words came out woodenly, all wrong.

“It’s just, when I saw him hit you….”

“He was drunk. He gets that way sometimes. Forget it, Barney.”

“But if I hadn’t been here none of it would have happened. If I hadn’t made you go with me…. I feel like it’s my fault, Kate.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Even more wrong. Kate tried to pull herself together, but she couldn’t
bring herself to look at him. “Of course it wasn’t your fault.”

Barney looked at her helplessly. “I always mess everything up. Just like my dad says. If there’s an idiotic way to do something, I’ll be sure to do it.”

The smartest guy she knew? He had to be kidding. “Don’t be dumb, Barney,” she said. “Look, let’s just forget about last night, okay?” She picked up a dishrag and started to wipe up a coffee ring on the counter.

Barney looked as if he wanted to say something else, but she forestalled him. She didn’t want to hear anything more about his dad. She had problems enough of her own. “I’m sort of busy.”

“Ill help if you like. I didn’t bring the motorcycle. If your dad comes in I’ll disappear fast, okay?”

“No. I don’t need any help.” Kate regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth. They sounded cold and angry. She hadn’t meant them that way. She probably should be thanking him. But how could she? Thank a guy for beating up on her own father? It was too much. The whole thing was just too much.

Barney dropped his eyes. “Yeah. I understand.”

“Barney….”

But it was too late. He was already out the door.

There was a commotion in the fish tank. The cichclid made an angry dash for Fred, and the stingray retreated under the gravel with an injured air about him. Kate stared after Barney,
all kinds of feelings milling around inside her, not the least of which was guilt. She turned to the refrigerator and yanked open the door to get worms to feed the fish, fighting the feelings down. It wasn’t fair. Why should
she
be the one to feel guilty?

She dumped the tub out onto an old board and took up a knife. Wielding it viciously, she sliced worms into slivers, for once not even noticing how disgusting the job was. Angie came in with a funny look on her face. She’d probably been listening to every word. Kate turned away and began to make a fresh pot of coffee.

“Look, Kate,” Angie began.

“I’ve got a load of washing to do,” Kate interrupted. “Be right back.” She almost ran into the laundry room. She stayed there for as long as she dared, but when she heard a car draw up and honk for service, she knew she had to come out. Rather than go through the snack bar, she angled around the side of the house. It was a carload of fishermen, noisy and boisterous. They spilled out and into the snack bar. When she finished gassing up their car, Kate followed. Angie would never be able to cope with that lot.

Mercifully, the rest of the day was almost insanely busy. Not once was there a break long enough for Angie and Kate to talk. Kate was thankful for that. Several times she caught Angie looking at her with a more than usually worried expression on her face. It only added fuel to Kate’s
anger. Everything Angie did grated on her nerves today, but Angie, it seemed, was in a state of nerves even worse than Kate’s. She bumped into things, spilled things, and dropped a trayful of glasses. They didn’t mention Steve, or the fact that he hadn’t come out all day, but Angie’s eyes kept straying to the window and the garage beyond.

By closing time there was no avoiding the fact that there had been no sign of her father for almost twenty-four hours. As the last of the customers left and they hung the CLOSED sign on the door, Angie finally broke.

“I’m going over to that room, Kate. I’ve got to see if he’s all right.”

“Probably just passed out.” The callousness in her own voice shocked Kate out of her anger for a moment, then she shrugged. As far as she was concerned, from now on she couldn’t care less what her father did. Or her mother either, for that matter.

Ten minutes later Angie came back. All the frantic nervousness of the day was gone; she moved like an automaton. Her dress was torn, one eye was red and swelling fast, her lip was bleeding. She gave Kate a curiously blank look, then reached for the telephone.

“Mom! What happened?”

Staring at Kate as if she were a total stranger, Angie spoke into the receiver.

“Police? I want to report an assault. My husband—he’s drunk. He beat me.”

“Mom! What are you
doing?”

Angie gave the address in a voice almost eerily calm. She hung up.

“Mom! You can’t do that! You can’t call the police on Dad!”

“I’ve had all I can take, Kate. And he hit
you
last night. He admitted it. Says he’ll do it again if he has to. Says he’s got to ‘straighten you out’.”

“He won’t, Mom. Call them back. We can work it out….”

“No. He’s gone too far, Kate. This time he’s finally gone too far. I kept waiting—hoping he’d change, straighten up—I can’t fool myself any longer. It’s not going to happen.”

Kate lunged for the telephone; Angie put herself in front of it.

“No, Kate!” Her voice spiraled higher. “I won’t let him hurt you again. I’m your mother! I can’t let him do that!”

“I’ll go talk to him….”

“NO!” What was left of Angie’s self-control finally shattered. “Don’t go near there!” She grabbed Kate by the arm. “I mean it, Kate. I’ve never seen him like this. Don’t go anywhere near him!”

A police car pulled up, siren screaming. Angie ran out. Kate saw her pointing at the garage door. Two officers began pounding on it, calling Steve’s name. When there was no response, they opened it themselves and pushed through.

Kate watched as if she were watching something on TV. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. Even when she saw them pull her father out of the room, filthy, stinking, staggering, and swearing—even when she heard Angie say, “Yes, I’ll come with you and sign a complaint”—she couldn’t make sense of it.

Angie turned back before she got into the police car.

“You’ll be all right, Kate? I’ll be back as soon as possible….”

There was no room in Kate’s throat for words. She was still sitting, alone and stunned, when Mike turned up.

“I heard,” he said.

Kate looked at him. “She called the police on him,” she whispered. “My mother. Called the police on him. On my father. Her own husband.”

“About time, too, from what I’ve seen,” Mike answered.

“But the police! You don’t call the police on your own family!”

“You do if you want to live. What did you want her to do—wait until he killed her? Or you?”

“He wouldn’t have—”

“Oh no? I suppose you got that bruise on your face by walking into one of your mother’s doors?”

“You don’t understand. You couldn’t understand. Something like this can’t happen to us!”

“Wake up, Kate, it just did. What makes you think you’re so different from everybody else? Your
mother’s finally showing some guts, that’s all.”

“Guts?” Kate echoed the ugly word. “Is that what you call it?”

“You got to fight back in this world, Kate. You don’t, you just get wasted.” The words came out cold, flat, and hard.

The next morning Kate got up and went down to the snack bar as usual, but she left the CLOSED sign up. Angie had come back late the night before and had looked in on her before going to her own room, but Kate had pretended to be asleep. In reality, she hadn’t slept at all. She sat now at the kitchen table, but made no effort to get herself anything to eat.

When Angie came down she paused in the doorway.

“I’ve got to go down to the jail, Kate,” she said. “If your dad’s sober they’ll probably let him out until he goes before the judge.” Her voice shook. She sounded frightened, as usual, but there was a determination about her that was new. “When he does, Kate, I’m still going to press charges.”

“Why, Mom? Why are you doing this to us?”

“It’s not me that’s doing it, Kate. It’s your father. And if I don’t stop it, it’s just going to happen over and over again.” Angie came to the table and reached out for a chair. Her eye was an angry purple now, and almost swollen shut. Kate couldn’t look at it.

“Try to understand, Kate. I have to do this.
He even hit you!”

“I don’t care what he does. He can’t hurt me.”

“No. It has to stop,” Angie repeated. She pressed both hands to her head. Kate could see her fingernails digging white grooves into her scalp; the scarlet polish on them was mostly peeled or gnawed off. “There was a doctor there last night, Kate. He said … he said it was because of the booze. He said that if your dad goes to jail he’ll get treatment. He’ll be made to go off the booze. He might get better.”

“But in the meantime he knows he’s going to go to jail. And if he’s sober today, what’s he going to say about that? What’s he going to do? You know how mad he gets. What’s to stop him from getting drunk again tonight, and what’s going to happen then?” In spite of herself, Kate’s voice trembled.

“I don’t know.” Angie’s voice shook too.

“But you’re still going to do it,” Kate said.

“I’m still going to do it,” Angie answered.

Kate shoved her chair back from the table and jumped to her feet. Angie’s voice stopped her before she could reach the door.

“Kate—you can get out of here. Get into a university—you’ll be out of here and gone. But I’ve got to stay. And I can’t stay if it’s going to go on like this.”

“You could leave.” The words were hollow, Kate knew it.

“I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here. I
want it to be like it was before, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it that way. You don’t understand, Kate.”

Oh, I understand, all right, Kate thought. I understand that my father’s going to jail and my mother’s sending him there. I understand that I’ll never be able to face anybody in this town again. I understand that things were bad enough before, but they’re going to be ten times worse now, and I don’t have a thing to say about it! There was a whirlpool of darkness closing in on her—she was sucked remorselessly, relentlessly into it.

Kate watched Angie go out an hour later. She kept the CLOSED sign up and ignored any cars that drove in, but found herself prowling restlessly from room to room. She even turned the TV on, but the faces and the noise they made didn’t make any sense. She left it on anyway, just to avoid the silence. She watched the fish swimming endlessly back and forth, and felt as caged in as they. By noon she couldn’t ignore the hunger gnawing at her, but she couldn’t be bothered making a sandwich. She grabbed some chips and drank a Coke. The hunger was appeased, but now there was a hard, burning knot in her stomach.

Angie came back soon afterwards. She walked into the living room where Kate was sitting, staring sightlessly at the TV. Kate looked warily behind her, but there was no sign of Steve.

“Dad still sleeping it off?” she asked. Her voice wavered in spite of her effort to sound cool.

“No. They put him in the hospital. Last night after I left he passed out and he hasn’t come out of it. He’s really sick, Kate.”

Kate heard the suppressed panic in her mother’s voice, but she couldn’t help the relief that flooded through her. Whether she blamed her mother or not for having him arrested, she hadn’t realized just how frightened she had been of Steve coming back.

When Kate came down the next day, she found Angie already in the kitchen, having coffee. Her mother was dressed carefully, she had curled her hair and combed it back. Her nails were clean and neatly manicured.

“Where are you going?” Kate asked.

“To the hospital. To visit your dad.”

“I don’t get it. You’re going to have him put in jail, but you’re all dressed up to go visit him. How can you be so hypocritical?”

“I don’t think he’ll be well enough to talk to me—he might not even know I’m there—but I have to go. The doctor will be there too. He said he’d tell me about treatment.”

“Why can’t you just arrange for treatment without laying charges?” Kate didn’t even try to control the anger in her voice. She’d forgotten just how afraid she’d been the day before. Or, if she hadn’t actually forgotten, she was choosing not to remember.

“The doctor said the chances of him following through with the treatment on his own aren’t very good, Kate, even if he agreed to it, and he might well not. It’s for his sake, too, I’m doing this, Kate.”

“Sure it is.” Kate’s mouth twisted.

“Don’t you want him to get better?”

“I don’t want a father in jail!”

The words hung in the air between them. Finally, Angie spoke.

“Do you want to come with me?”