“Come here, my lovely girl.”
The adolescent moved forward and placed her hand in the old man’s hand, both rough and moist. He led her as for a waltz to the other side of the bear, facing him, and invited her to kneel as well and guided her small hand into the thick fur under which the bear’s body was still warm and haunted by the echo of a heartbeat.
“Pat him.”
The old man turned around and stood and walked up to their father who said:
“So there was still one more kill in you.”
“There’s always one more.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That you had to kill him.”
“Don’t be. I made it happen. The day I took Billy. If I’d left him there the good Lord would have killed him and when I saved him I took his life into my hands and I knew I’d find myself here. I knew I was the one who’d have to kill him and that’s how things had to happen because by saving his life I’d agreed to be God for him. Don’t be more sorry for me than for God who counts each of our hairs and kills us all one day or another. You can’t be sorry for me any more than you can be sorry for God, any more than you can blame us or pardon us. That’s been turning around in my head. For about ten years. I’d talked to my wife about it. She was a God-fearing woman, my wife, and I asked her why in a religion where they talk so much about forgiveness there’s no ritual for forgiving God. She said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I explained ‘It’s God’s fault if his son suffered. He’s responsible for children having no father and parents ruined by their children and battered women and women being raped and he’s responsible for all the wars and the dead soldiers and the maimed. Nothing happens on earth that he doesn’t cause or that he doesn’t allow to happen so why do we never try to forgive him?’ She told me I’d committed a terrible blasphemy and she made me promise never to repeat it anywhere and I promised but the next week I asked the same question to the priest at confession. He told me the same thing as my wife: ‘There’s no point in my giving you any Hail Marys but I’m going to pray for you and you’d do well to ask all the people you know to do the same.’ I still said what I thought. I think people don’t talk about it because in a religion where you have to forgive everybody you can’t mention God’s name when you talk about forgiveness. You can praise him and sing for him but you can’t ever say anything about his most important attribute which is to be unforgivable. Everyone has his reasons except him because he’s the one who decides what’s what and he’s the only one who can make things happen differently. It’s the same thing for Billy and me on a smaller scale and it’s the same thing for you and your girls. You’re the whole world for them and you knew when they were born everything that might happen to them and that you’d have no excuses to give them and you’d have to be responsible for everything. Our brothers and our sisters who are idiots and understand nothing they can always say they didn’t know and they didn’t do it on purpose and it’s not their fault and people will forgive them because they’re just the same. But we’re the clever ones and people know it and you can never say it’s not our fault because those with the knowledge are never forgiven.”
Their father shook his head.
“I don’t know anything about anything. Especially not what you’re talking about.”
The old man kissed the little girl on the top of her head and walked towards the little halo of light over the back door.
Their father said “Come my beauty, we’re going,” and she ran to the car without looking at him and like Monsieur Roberge without looking at the bear.
In the car her father cleared his throat several times. He hummed and cleared his throat again. All along the way the adolescent repeated in her head: “Don’t talk don’t talk please don’t talk.” They only saw the trees and the telephone poles and the houses and garages and barns in silhouette and the night was an incandescent black light that shone on things just enough to hide them behind their shadows and its work was complete except for a few naked bulbs aglow over the lintels.
She knew what he would have said.
He would have said:
“The world is a hard place for men and maybe worse for women and it’s hard for a man to bring children into it and maybe even worse if they’re girls. You can show boys all you know and hope they’ll handle things just like you did but girls are delicate things and it’s tempting for a father never to teach them anything and to hope nothing will ever happen to them and to try to protect them from the world instead of showing them how to live in it.”
All during the ride she repeated “Don’t talk, papa,” because if he’d talked she’d have had to tell him that she’d learned all that a long time ago all on her own and his silence hadn’t protected her from anything.
When they got back to the house everyone was sleeping and cats were lying here and there in the darkness and the TV’s blue glow was pulsing and in fits and starts turning their grey fur a bit paler. In the half-light the grandfather clock tolled midnight and the little girl was limp with a fatigue that kept her from sleeping and she knew that the next day she’d be dizzy and would have a stomach ache but she was fine with that because she didn’t want to sleep right away. She brushed her teeth and left the bathroom to her father and wished him good night. In her room she let her jeans drop to her ankles and pulled off her socks and her sweater. She undid her brassiere and let it fall to the ground and with her nails scratched the moist undersides of her breasts. Lucie hadn’t moved or talked and her breathing was deep.
She lay down on her side to look at her sister. She didn’t want to wake her but it felt good to see her on the other side of the room.
When she was very little she’d often had the same dream. She was in a familiar place like her room and she was playing with a doll or petting a cat and all at once the door behind her slammed and the room got small and in her arms the cat was dead and from under her button eyes the doll was weeping blood. Something enormous was moving in the closet and the doorknob was turning and slowly the door opened, creaking on its hinges. She always woke up before having seen what was stirring in the darkness. If she’d had those dreams later that would have explained it but she’d had them well before so it must have been a sort of premonition because that’s how things happened precisely. She always felt safe when he appeared and in a flash there were no more escape routes. Nothing stirred in the closet because she wasn’t always in her room, sometimes she was in the garage or out in the fields but there was nowhere to run to, nothing in the closet but inside him there was something that rasped and seethed. He looked a lot like her father and as with many men who looked like her father there was neither the same softness nor the same strength in his face and in his eyes.
She was not sure of having tried one day not to struggle and not to flee and not to be afraid. She remembered one time but perhaps she was imagining it because she’s the little girl now. She’s living in her dream and she’s lying inside it swathed in a little pink nightie hiked over her hips and he’s in front of her on his knees beside the bed and on the other side of the room her sister is looking at her with dead eyes and all the doors are locked and thick boards are nailed across the windows.
With one finger, then two, he slips into the hollow of her womb a shameful warmth. As always he’s gentle with her and as always he’s careful not to rush her and not to hurt her. As always he leaves no mark on her body and no scar, only on her skin the flush of an inscrutable pleasure and shame in her heart. Shame she tries to throw off as always all alone hidden deep in herself but suddenly someone’s behind her in the bed and her arms are slender and her breasts are warm pressed up against her back. She’s known boys and she’ll know others but it’s her sister who is the first to murmur in her ear “my love” and to repeat “my love” until she’s calmed.