DIRTY[COMPLETED]✔️

Chapter seventeen

If I’d had my choice, I wouldn’t have had Dan come with me. He didn’t ask me, however, what I wanted, and so I found myself bathed, dressed and in the passenger seat of his car before I really had time to think. It was good he drove me. I’m sure I’d have had an accident. I couldn’t even get the seat belt to click, as my fingers fumbled it too much. He had to reach across and buckle it for me.
We made it to the hospital in time for me to say goodbye, though I didn’t have much to say. My mother had set up a vigil by my father’s bedside, and she wasn’t about to allow her position as the Martyred Widow to be preempted by the Prodigal Daughter.
I did what I could. I sat at his other side, holding a hand that felt as dry and brittle as sticks. This was the man who had taught me to read. Who had taken me fishing, taught me how to bait a hook. Taught me how to whistle like the boys did, with two fingers. This was the man who had walked me to the bus on my first day of kindergarten and had been the one to cry when my mother had not.
This man was my father.
He died without a few words of pithy wisdom. Without even opening his eyes. I waited, my two hands holding his, for some revelation. Something. Some sign he knew I was there. That he cared. That he was sorry, maybe, or maybe that he wasn’t. I waited for acknowledgment, but in the end he just slipped away without bothering to give me anything, and I was outraged and disappointed and struck sick with grief, but I was not surprised.
My mother didn’t seem to know he’d passed until I put his hand down and got to my feet. She looked at me with narrowed eyes and a small, hard smirk. “Coward” that look said. “Running away again.”
“He’s dead, Mother.” I sounded cold and hadn’t meant to.
She looked at him. Then she began to wail. She keened and howled like the mythical banshee. One that’s come too late to warn the living of death but in time to shriek it’s already happened.
Nurses streamed into the room. I was pushed aside, backed out, ignored amongst the bustle of their preparations, and I didn’t care. There was nothing for me to do in that room. My heels clattered on the industrial tile in the hall. I heard them telling my mother to calm down. I heard them suggesting she be given “something.” I heard silence a few moments later, but by then I was already at the end of the hall and pushing through the doors into the waiting room where Dan sat on a couch the color of frat boys’ vomit and sipped coffee from a foam cup.
“Elle.” He got to his feet. “How is he?”
“Dead,” I said flatly. “And my mother is acting like the holy fucking ghost herself.”
He grimaced and reached for me, but I stepped back. “I need a drink.”
He held out the coffee to me, but I shook my head. Our eyes met. I don’t know what he saw in mine, because I have a hard time recalling what, at that moment, I was feeling. If I was feeling at all. It seems likely I was angry, but the memory is cloudy, like viewing something underwater.
“There’s a bar across the street,” he said.
“There always is, isn’t there?” came my oh-so-clever reply, and as I had done when we first met, I let him take me there.
�
It seemed fitting to toast my father’s passing with a gin and tonic, since that was his drink of choice. I’ve never been so spectacularly drunk. Shit-faced. Pissed. Trashed, wasted, sloshed. Or, as my father had been fond of saying, before the alcohol had robbed him even of his desire for conversation, extremely well lubricated.
I remember walking into that bar, a nice enough little pub called The Clover Leaf. I don’t remember walking out. I think I recall a long walk down dark streets, and singing, but that might have been a dream. At any rate, the next thing I do remember with any clarity is the inside of my toilet bowel and the sound of blood rushing in my ears as I heaved.
It shouldn’t be difficult to imagine how a person such as me, a woman who barely feels comfortable around people when she is well, feels to have an audience when she is ill. That it was self-inflicted was no comfort, and in fact made my shame worse. I squirmed with it like the worms on the hooks my father had shown me how to bait. I cursed with it. I’m sure I frankly wallowed in it.
Dan, who could have left without a word of judgment from me, stayed the whole time. He brought me ginger ale to sip and saltine crackers, which I promptly vomited again. He held my hair back, then found a ponytail holder in my drawer to do it for me. He rinsed and wrung cool cloth after cool cloth to put on the back of my neck. Most of all, he sat, rubbing my back, while I wept or puked, or sometimes both at the same time.
There’s a reason why there are clich�s. Because much of the time, they’re true. That it’s always darkest before dawn proved itself to me that night as I crouched on my knees and lost my guts over and over. While I lost my self-control.
He made a pillow for me from a towel and covered me with a sheet. I slept in the clothes I’d worn to the hospital. I woke with muscles aching, head pounding, stomach churning but staying in place. Dan slept next to me, propped between the tub and cabinet under the sink. His head had fallen forward. He snored.
He opened his eyes when I shifted. “Hey.”
I said nothing, afraid to open my mouth. Afraid to move too much. It felt as though my head were going to fall off, which might have been a blessing, considering how much it hurt.
Dan reached forward. “How are you feeling?”
I swallowed with a grimace at the taste of sickness. “I feel like shit.”
He looked sympathetic. “You drank a lot.”
“Yeah.”
I rubbed my eyes and brought my knees to my chest to rest my forehead on them. The tile floor hurt my butt and made it cold, but I couldn’t rouse myself to move. I was still bone tired.
And my father was still dead.
I waited for grief to strike me but I’d numbed myself so sufficiently the night before, I think I was incapable of feeling much of anything. Dan moved closer and rubbed my back.
“Why don’t you get in the shower? It might make you feel better.”
I lifted my head to look at him. “You stayed with me all night.”
He smiled and stroked a piece of hair off my forehead. I cringed to imagine how I must look, hair glued with sweat, rings under my eyes, skin pale. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Of course I did. I couldn’t leave you alone. I was worried about you.”
The concern in his eyes made my stomach twist a little more, but I didn’t feel like I had to throw up again. He cupped my cheek, then squeezed my shoulder and got to his feet.
“C’mon. I’ll run it for you.”
He made the water just the right temperature, not too hot or too cold. Like an ancient lady, I stood, grabbing the edge of the sink for support. The room spun and I closed my eyes against the sight, gritting my teeth to keep another set of gags from forcing my stomach out through my throat. Shoulders hunched, I shuffled across the tiled inches to the shower. He held my hand and arm to help me in.
Once in the shower, I got down on my knees again to let the water pound against my back. I put my forehead in my hands on the shower floor. This was a favorite position of mine, almost fetal, which allowed water to surround me as I rested. If I wanted, I could lie flat on my back with my legs slightly bent in this shower, which I’d had built oversize during the renovations. I’d slept this way, with hot water blocking out the world and reminding me of what it might have been like cradled in the womb.
I might have slept now, so exhausted was I still, but the rattle of the curtain on its rings announced Dan’s presence. He got in beside me. I didn’t move over to give him any room.
“Elle, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not acting fine.”
I turned my face to let water splash on it. “My father just died, Dan, and I went on a bender. How fine do you think I am?”
He rubbed my back. “Okay, I get it. Ask a stupid question—”
“Exactly.” I wasn’t up to verbal sparring.
He reached for my shower gel and a washcloth, and he started washing my back. It felt too good for me to make him stop. After a few moments he uncapped another bottle and began working shampoo through the thickness of my hair. It couldn’t have been easy, especially without me helping him, but he persevered, even rinsing out all the soap using the cup I’d set on the ledge for just that purpose. He added conditioner, working it through the strands and massaging my skull with strong fingers. He massaged my shoulders, too, and my back, the water assisting him like some sort of fancy spa treatment.
By the time the water started to run cold, I was as limp as a rag doll, and he helped me out of the water and dried me with such tender care I wanted to weep again. I didn’t. I only wanted to.
He wrapped me in my robe and dried my hair, then took me to my bedroom. He tucked us both into my bed beneath fresh sheets that smelled good. As soon as my head hit the pillow, my eyes closed. I heard the sound of his breathing, but in moments I was asleep.
�
There was to be a funeral, of course, and a gathering at the house, after. The perfect theater for my drama-queen mother to parade her grief in front of friends and family. I didn’t begrudge her, really. She’d never been a perfect mother or wife, and I had my issues with her, but she had been married to the man, after all. She’d chosen to stay with him. She’d earned her martyr’s crown.
Considering my father’s body had enough alcohol in it to keep him pickled for a year, she nonetheless wasted no time in setting it all up. If she couldn’t wait to get him into the ground, I don’t suppose I can blame her. I understood that urgency, that sense of having to always get the worst out of the way so as to move on to something else. I’d learned it from her.
“When are you coming home?” Her voice stabbed me through the phone.
“I told you, Mother, tomorrow morning.”
“Are you bringing that man?”
I sighed. Light the color of butter streamed through my kitchen window. I traced the line it made on my table with the end of my pencil.
“I don’t know yet. Maybe.”
She was actually silent for a good thirty seconds. “Don’t expect me to let him sleep in your room with you. Just because Daddy’s gone doesn’t mean I’m going to allow you to slut around in my house.”
“I told you, Mother, I’m not staying overnight.”
I heard the snap of her lighter and the intake of breath. I imagined her drawing the smoke into her lungs and holding it, letting it stream from her nostrils in twin streams. She slurped, probably coffee, and I closed my eyes against the sudden sorrow that someone I knew so well should be someone who consistently brought me so much grief.
“The funeral’s at 10:00 a.m. People will come over right after. It will be late by the time it’s over. And you’ll be drunk.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’ll have a designated driver, isn’t it?” I tried not to let her accusation sting me, but of course it did. She knew just how to stick that needle between my ribs every time.
“Oh, your friend doesn’t drink?” The emphasis she put on the word friend was meant to be insulting, but I refused to take it that way.
“He does. We’ll be fine, Mother.”
She snorted, and I heard the tap-tap of her long nails on some hard surface. The side of her coffee mug, the one with the picture of Andrew on it. Her favorite.
“I’m going to need you,” she said after a moment, wheedling. “I’ll need you to go with me to Mass on Sunday.”
“I don’t go to Mass. You know that.”
“They won’t chase you out, Elspeth,” she said sharply. “It might do you some good to go to confession, you know. Wash yourself clean.”
My fingers tightened on the phone. “I don’t have to confess to sins that aren’t mine.”
She laughed. When I was younger, I had thought my mother’s laugh sounded like wind chimes. I thought she was a fairy queen, beautiful and perfect, her love unattainable. Her laugh hadn’t changed, but my perception of it had. Now it sounded like a rusted metal gate that refused to open all the way. The kind that would catch your clothes and tear them if you tried to squeeze through it.
“I’ll be there tomorrow morning.” I told her. “I’ll meet you at the church.”
“At least I know you’ll have a black dress,” she retorted. “Put on some makeup, for Christ’s sake. Tell me you won’t embarrass me.”
“No more than you will yourself,” I returned and had the guilt and satisfaction of hearing her sniffle.
She hung up on me without saying goodbye. I didn’t mind. I had another call to make, one I was dreading only a bit less than the one to my mother. I dialed the familiar number but got Chad’s voice mail.
His jovial message made me smile. “Hey, this is Chad. Stop wishing you were me and leave a message, already.”
After the beep, I spoke. “Chaddie, it’s Elle. Dad died. The funeral is Saturday. Tomorrow, Saturday. There’s going to be a wake. I think you should come home, Chad.”
I found speaking to his voice mail easier than telling him personally. The news of our father’s death slipped off my tongue with no more discomfort than if I’d been telling him about the loss of a pet or a stranger.
“She’s going to expect me to go to the cemetery, and I guess I’m going to have to go. I could really use you there, little brother.” My throat tightened, and I had to clear it several times before I could find my voice again. “She wants me to come home, and…I’m going to go. I think I should go, I mean, I think I have to, it’s the right thing to do. But I could use you there. I know you don’t want to come home, Chad, but this is your last chance to say goodbye to him. It might be good for you, too.”
I had no idea if his voice mail had a limit to the length of the messages it took, but so far I’d heard no beep to indicate it was cutting me off.
“I’m taking Dan with me,” I said into the receiver. “If you come home, I’d like you to meet him. Okay, please call me on my cell, I’ll be heading out to Mom’s tomorrow. The funeral’s going to be at St. Mary’s, and everyone’s going to Mom’s after that. I love you. Call me.”
I hung up, and though my phone rang a couple more times, it was never my brother returning my call.
�
“I’m not Catholic. Does it matter?” Dan eyed the front of the church with apprehension.
“Not to me.” I took in a deep breath and adjusted the lapels of my black suit one more time. I hadn’t had to buy something new, my closet was filled with black and white, but I hadn’t worn this in a while and it had gotten loose. It was not so much that I cared how it fit for vanity’s sake, but because I knew the Dragon Queen would be eagle-eyeing me for loose threads, missing buttons, runs in my hose, worn soles on my shoes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she held a color wheel up to my face and told me my shade of lipstick wasn’t in my palette.
“You look fine.” Dan rubbed my shoulder. “Are you ready to go in?”
“You should leave.” I turned to face him. My hands twisted my handkerchief into a ball and released it, over and over. “Go. You don’t need to sit through this. It’s going to be long and really boring.”
Dan’s brow creased. “Elle, I don’t mind. I want to be here for you.”
Faster my fingers twisted, as I looked from him to the church and the line of people slowly filing in. “Dan, I appreciate it, I really do, but I think maybe I should do this alone. My mother—”
“Your mother needs you to be here,” he cut in smoothly. His hand rubbed my shoulder again, then slid down to take mine, hanky and all. “But you need someone to be here for you. You want me to stay.”
I couldn’t refute that any more than I could any of the other things he’d shown me I wanted. I sagged, shoulders hunching, and he put his arms around me. His embrace was matter-of-fact, nothing sensual about it. An embrace without lust. And he was right. I needed it, and I wanted it.
“Are you ready?” He asked after a few moments, his mouth moving against my hair. “It looks like everyone’s gone inside.”
I nodded against the front of his suit. Today he wore a somber black tie. I missed the trout and the hula dancers. I ran the soft material between my fingers, up and down, then let go.
“I’m ready.”
He put a finger to my chin to lift my gaze to his. “Elle, I’m here for you. Okay? If you feel like you need something, let me know.”
I nodded, voice stolen by emotion I wasn’t ready to face. Dan smiled. And, as I usually did when confronted with Dan’s smile, I smiled, too.
St. Mary’s is not a large church, but it is lovely. It had seen my first communion. My confirmation. It had heard my first confession and all the ones that had followed. I’d spent my childhood here under the gaze of the Blessed Virgin and, stepping through the heavy wooden doors to breathe in the scent of incense and holy water, I was transported.
Dan’s hand fit neatly under my elbow, guiding me. I dipped my fingers into the holy water font, the odd oily slickness of the water proof to me it was more than just water but something else, something divine. I pressed wet fingers to my forehead, the hollow of my throat, each shoulder, then rubbed them together until they
dried.
Father McMahon had already begun, and more than one head turned as Dan and I walked down the aisle toward the first pew where my mother’s black-garbed figure awaited. It might have been sacrilege to imagine this was how Hansel and Gretel had felt walking through the forest toward the witch’s house, but I figured if the holy water font hadn’t started to boil when I dipped my fingers into it, God would surely overlook a little harmless imagination. Besides, I thought as I genuflected and made the sign of the cross, the analogy was faulty. Hansel and Gretel hadn’t known they were heading to their doom. I, on the other hand, had a pretty good idea about what awaited me.
Dan hesitated behind me, not making the quick, one-kneed motion that Catholics have perfected before sliding into the pew beside me. I heard Mrs. Cooper, my mother’s neighbor, murmur something to her husband Fred in the pew behind us, but I didn’t turn around to look at her. Mrs. Cooper used to bake me cookies and had taught me how to crochet. I hadn’t seen her in at least ten years.
My mother grabbed my arm the moment I sat down and clung to me as though she were hanging over an abyss and I the only rope that could save her. Considering I’d often imagined my mother as hanging from a rope over an abyss, the irony of her sudden dependence on me wasn’t lost, but rather made me smile in an entirely inappropriate way I hid behind my hanky.
She ignored Dan, and Mass was not the time for introductions. Once more I was transported. I’d forgotten how the familiar words used to soothe me, or how the bars of colored light coming in through the stained-glass windows always added up to numbers with perfect square roots. I’d forgotten the ebb and flow of religion and how it could make you mindless, and that wasn’t necessarily bad. My head might have forgotten how to pray, but my heart had not. I murmured the words, counting the beads of my rosary. It was learning one could pray using numbers that had first convinced me everyone must have never-ending calculations in their heads. I’d been astounded almost nobody else did.
I was aware of Dan beside me, but he sat quietly without saying much of anything. He didn’t hold my hand, nor did he reach for a prayer book. He watched with interest on his face, like he’d never been to a Mass before, his eyes following the priest’s back-and-forth meandering around the altar as though he were viewing a particularly interesting tennis match. At the waving of the incense burner, he let out one stifled sneeze.
I looked at him. We both smiled. I gave him my handkerchief. After that, he held my hand even though my mother sniffed and muttered and stepped up her wailing on my other side.
My father was one of seven children and the first to die, so there was much commentary given about him before the Mass had ended and we could “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” I couldn’t avoid being part of the line of mourners at the door, shaking hands and accepting the sympathies of those who filed by us. Dan kept to my side, gamely taking hugs and shaking hands and murmuring thanks to those who must have assumed he had a right to be there. I was glad to have him at my side, a buoy helping me keep above the water my mother would have dragged me under. She kept her glare mostly hidden beneath the veil of her hat or her gigantic handkerchief, but every so often in a lull between mourners she’d turn and shoot me with venom, always adding an extra dose for Dan, who either didn’t notice or was calmly unconcerned.
By the time the last person had left the church and headed to cars for the procession to the cemetery, my feet and back ached, and my face hurt from trying to smile and look woeful at the same time. My head hurt, too, from tension that radiated from my skull down the back of my neck and knotted between my shoulder blades.
“I’ve rented us a car,” my mother said stiffly. “Since I knew I couldn’t expect you to drive.”
“I’ll be happy to help you to it, Mrs. Kavanagh.” They were the first words Dan had spoken to my mother, and I tensed, waiting for her to snap his head off.
Ah, but she was the queen of many things, the art of lulling her prey into a state of false security only one of them. “Thank you, Mr….?”
“Stewart.”
“Mr. Stewart,” she said with an imperious lift of her chin to indicate the disgrace of having to even ask.
The car she’d hired was big, black and ostentatious, but while I might have rolled my eyes another time, I was glad for her pretensions this time. It meant there was plenty of room for the three of us. There would have been room, even, for two more…but those two weren’t here.
“So, Mr. Stewart,” said my mother without preamble. “What did you think of the Mass?”
“It was very nice.” Dan’s answer was diplomatic.
“I noticed you didn’t pray along,” my mother continued.
I groaned. “Mother, for God’s sake—”
“I’ll thank you,” she said sharply, rapping me on the knee with her knuckles, “to watch your mouth.”
Precious advice from a woman who had once stood in the doorway of my room and told me I was a no-account whore whose lying tongue would rot and sprout maggots on my way to Hell. I glared at her, but Dan seemed unfazed.
“Well, no. I’m not Catholic. I didn’t think it would be appropriate. I was there to support Elle.”
She sniffed, sitting back against the expensive leather seat. “What are you, Lutheran? Methodist? Don’t tell me you’re one of those Evangelicals.”
“No.” Dan smiled with a small shake of his head. “I’m Jewish, actually.”
For once my mother seemed to have nothing to say. My own jaw dropped, though I recovered quickly. He looked at us both with a hint of amusement in his shining eyes.
“I see,” my mother said, though I was sure she didn’t. I was also sure she’d never met a Jew in her entire life. I was surprised she didn’t ask him to part his hair and look for the horns.
Dan met my eyes, his mouth quirked in a tiny smile. He gave a small shrug, which I returned. The revelation kept my mother quiet until we got to the cemetery. Not as many people came to the graveside service, which was fine with me. Fewer hands to shake. Fewer hugs to suffer.
We got out of the expensive hired car on a small hill of grass, and my stomach fell away. This time I was the one hanging over the abyss, and Dan was my rope. While my mother marched her completely competent self down the small gravel path toward the pile of dirt and open grave that awaited her approval, I gripped Dan’s hand so hard my nails gouged his skin. I had to turn away from the sight.
“Roses,” I said through gritted teeth.
He looked down the hill and put himself between me and the sight. “Doesn’t she know you’re allergic?”
I had forgotten I’d told him that lie, because really, what’s one amongst so many?
“She knows.”
He put his hands on my upper arms, rubbing lightly. “Then we won’t go down there.”
“I have to go down there, it’s my father’s service, she’ll be expecting me…”
I was babbling and knew it but couldn’t seem to stop. Dan shushed me, his hands stilling. I looked up at him.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Elle.”
I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. Sunshine streaked his face, showing his freckles and the lines around his eyes. In bright light like this I saw the gold flecks in the blue-green irises.
“We can listen from up here,” he told me. “You don’t have to go down there if you don’t want to.”
He was right, but what’s more, wouldn’t budge. I babbled some more about duty, respect, honor, and expectations, and he listened to all of it but did not step aside to let me move toward the service that had begun without me.
“You don’t have to go down there,” he insisted. His hand came up to smooth my hair. “It’s all right.”
It was not all right. None of it was. It was wrong, all of it, and I knew I’d pay the price for my cowardice if not then, then later. I always did.
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My family is large and boisterous, happy for the most part and, for the most part, drunks. Alcohol is the thread that ties them all together, the jolly Irish aunts and uncles from my father’s side and my mother’s sentimental Italian relatives. I have all four living grandparents and a slew of cousins, many of whom are now married and starting families of their own. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, though a lot of them still lived close to the town in which my mother still lived. They probably saw more of her than I did, spent more time in her house with its never-changing decor and my father in his chair in the corner of the den.
The chair was empty now and looking forlorn, and though there were more asses than seats to put them in, nobody sat in it.
“Like some sort of shrine,” I muttered from my spot by the wall. I had indeed been drinking, but only one glass of wine. A drink at which my father’s family would scoff and my mother’s sing odes. “This whole house is a fucking shrine.”
Dan had been welcomed in with open arms by everyone but my mother, who was too distracted in her role as Grieving Widow to make much of a fuss. He’d shaken hands and suffered through good-natured ribbing with an aplomb I envied. He’d fetched and carried drinks and plates of food for the old ladies, flirting with such chivalry he set them all to tittering.
He leaned against the wall next to me. “Your family seems nice.”
I didn’t answer him right away, sipping wine and letting it fill my mouth before swallowing. “Most families do, don’t they?”
He didn’t have much to say to that. He looked around. My mother hadn’t changed much since I’d lived there. Her frenzy for having the latest and the best was reflected in her appearance less than the house’s. The television, a big screen that dwarfed the room, must have been my father’s idea.
My cousin Janet appeared in front of us, her face and form rounder than I’d seen her last but the infant in her arms the clear reason for it. She smiled at Dan and reached to give me a one-armed hug that didn’t jostle the baby. I admired her skill and supposed new mothers got used to doing things that didn’t wake their babies.
“Ella,” she said warmly. “It’s so good to see you. How…how have you been?”
“Good. You’re looking good. Congratulations.” I peeked down at the sleeping baby. “I got your announcement.”
“We got your gift,” she said. “It was lovely. You made it yourself?”
I glanced at Dan and my cheeks heated at his look of interest. “Yes.”
“It’s beautiful.” She turned to Dan. “She knitted us the most gorgeous baby blanket. Hi. I’m Janet.”
I made a quick introduction. “I was glad to do it.”
“We’d hoped to see you at the baptism,” she said. “Your mother said you were out of town.”
“Oh…yeah. I travel a lot.” Another lie.
She nodded sympathetically. “Well, don’t be a stranger. You know where we live.”
She looked across the room at Sean, her husband, who had graduated from high school with me. “We’d love to see you. And you, Dan,” she added. “Any friend of Ella’s is a friend of ours.”
The beauty of Janet’s words was that she meant them. She gave me another hug, this time one that woke her sleeping angel, and with a murmured apology about breast-feeding and diapers, she moved off through the crowd.
More family and friends came through, most of them pausing to talk to me and tell me how good it was to see me. I nodded and smiled at all of them, because I did appreciate their sentiments. I did. It wasn’t their fault I had run away and didn’t want to look back.
“Why,” Dan asked after another round of relatives had faded for the moment, “do they call you Ella?”
My third glass of wine had left me with flushed cheeks and a pleasant tipsiness I didn’t want to become full-blown intoxication. “It’s my name.”
Another cousin interrupted us. By the time she was done reminding me I owed her a phone call, my bladder had begun to twinge. The small powder room off the kitchen had seen a steady stream of action, and I’d just seen Uncle Larry heading into it. I couldn’t wait for Uncle Larry. That left the bathroom upstairs.
“I’ll come with you,” Dan said when I told him where I was going. “I need to go, too.”
We wove through the throng, most of them well on their way to being soused on my father’s gin. I put my foot to the bottom of the stairs, looking up. I hadn’t been up there since leaving home, but my hand found the light switch with unerring ease, proving once again the body remembers what the mind tries to refuse.
Sixteen stairs. I’d counted them too many times to forget that. What once had been white shag now was bare, polished wood with a stapled runner of beige and gold flowers running up the center. It’s nearly impossible to get blood out of white shag carpet.
“You all right?” Dan said from behind me.
“Fine.” I took a step with him close behind.
Faces followed us up the stairs. My mother had hung pictures in matching wooden frames, each in its place the same precise distance from the next. One was askew, possibly knocked by a stray elbow as people passed each other on the narrow stairs, and I reached a finger to straighten it.
“Is that you?”
The gap-toothed smile and ponytails were mine, indeed. “Yes.”
“You were a cutie.”
I looked at him with a raise of my eyebrow. “Sure. If you like kids who look like monkeys.”
Dan laughed. “You didn’t look like a monkey, Elle.”
I’d have been more than happy to keep moving, but Dan studied all the photos. Elementary school pictures. Photos of my mother and father in bad 1970s haircuts and polyester fashions, grinning with an infant in front of them. Sports teams with the individual photo set off to one side. She had so many pictures hung it seemed impossible that any could be missing, but I knew they were. She’d taken them down, every hint or reminder she’d had two sons, not just the perfect one. It was as though Chad had never existed, and I was an afterthought, my smile captured behind glass as though to prove a point and not because of maternal pride.
Dan was smart. It didn’t take him more than a moment or two to scan the wall of photos and see there were few of me and many of another. His brow furrowed in concentration as he looked at frames filled with the same smile. The one that did not belong to me.
At the top of the stairs was the final set of photos. A triptych, a threefold frame. The first held a picture of Andrew, grin broad, skin tanned, eyes twinkling. The second slot was a photo of me, a girl with long dark hair and puffy cheeks, skin flawed with pimples. No smile. The third slot was empty.
“Elle.” Dan looked from the frame to one a bit farther down in which I held up a fish for the camera, my head tipped back with laughter. There had been only three years difference in time between the pictures but a lifetime had happened. “Is this you, too?”
“Yes,” I answered and kept moving to the hallway above.
He caught up to me, followed me down the hall. His hand caught and turned me gently. “What happened?”
“I stopped smiling” came my answer. “And nobody asked me why.”
We stood like that for one of those eternal moments that last seconds but seem like hours. A shadow passed across his gaze. I put my hand on the doorknob directly behind me, pushed open the door, stepped inside.
“Want to see my old room?” The words came out sounding like a challenge rather than an invitation.
“Sure.”
He followed me inside. Emotions cascaded over his expression as he looked around the space that had been left untouched for ten years. I saw interest, then awareness and discomfort, but it was the flash of pity that turned my heart hard.
“Roses,” Dan said.
“Yes. Roses.”
I’d slept in a room full of roses. Roses on the curtains, the wallpaper, the bedspread, the pillows. Big red roses like something from a fairy tale, only not even the thorns had been enough to keep the monsters from this room.
“There used to be a rug, too,” I said carelessly, pointing at the bare wood. “But it got stained. I guess she threw it away.”
“Elle…”
“You can call me Ella.” My voice was like stones tossed against a windowpane. One thrown too hard could break the glass. “They all do. Or Elspeth. It’s my real name.”
“It’s pretty,” he said, moving closer as though he meant to hug me, but I stepped away. “I’ll call you whatever you want.”
He looked around the room at my collection of dolls and model horses, set high on their shelves and yet free of dust. My desk. My closet, where he might find my ballet slippers and cast-off crown if he opened the door.
He didn’t open the door. “What happened to him? The boy in the pictures?”
I think he already knew, but wanted to hear my answer. Maybe he hoped it would be different. Maybe he hoped I’d lie. And maybe I should have, except that I was so weary of lying. Tired of hiding behind a wall of thorns.
“I told you what happened to him already,” I said, voice flat and sounding very far away. “He slit his wrists and bled to death while I watched from the doorway. He’s dead.”