When I walked through my kitchen door Sarah was holding a large kitchen knife in her hand and I could tell from her expression that she was pissed. She was like an angry midget housewife, standing on a milk-crate in the kitchen with her tiny apron wrapped about her waist, one hand on her hip and the other pointing the gleaming knife at me.
“I made a special dinner tonight. Where were you?”
“I’m sorry,” I slurred, “I stopped by to see Melanie honey. I didn’t know you made a special dinner.”
Sarah stepped off of the milk-crate and stormed toward me and dropped the knife onto the kitchen table and sulked out of the room with tears streaming down her face, “You don’t love me! You love Melanie and Amber, but you don’t love me.”
I was heart sick. I followed her into her room and I picked her up and put her on my lap but she fought me all the way, kicking and covering her face. “I love you honey, more than anyone in the whole world.” I did my best not to slur my words but I was piss drunk.
“No you don’t. You just want to kiss on Melanie and Amber like they do in the movies.”
“Honey, I could never love them as much as I love you.”
She pushed me away, “Go eat your dinner. I worked on it for four hours. You could at least eat your dinner.” She was so pathetic and adorable at the same time. In the fog of the whiskey I felt like I had somehow betrayed her. I had certainly let her down. But she made me feel as though I had been unfaithful, as to a wife. It was strange feeling subordinate to a child.
Food was the last thing I wanted at that point, but I wasn’t about to disappoint Sarah any further. I shouldn’t have stopped off after work. The guilt of having slept with Melanie was beginning to eat at me too. I hoped that Melanie wouldn’t say anything to Amber. I cut up and shoveled what should have been a delicious breaded veal cutlet into my mouth followed by heaping helpings of mashed potatoes and butter-corn, but to my churning intestines pickled in hooch the food was as vile to me as ipecac. Poor Sarah, I thought. I had let her down. I shouldn’t have done that. I remember the disappointment I felt as a child when my father had made a promise to take us to a movie or some such event only to come home smelling of whiskey much too late to fulfill his promise. What right had I to go out and have fun without Sarah while she was home slaving over a stove at the age of seven. I was all that she had and I had left her alone at home while I went out and had fun. And the fun I had had seemed to weigh like a rock in my stomach as I shoveled food into my face.
When I was finished I stumbled into the living room and I sat next to Sarah on the couch. She was watching an old Bela Laugosi vampire movie on the television. I pulled her to me and she reluctantly let me sit close to her, but I fell asleep in the middle of the movie and must have begun to snore loudly because Sarah elbowed my in the stomach.
“If you’re not going to stay awake you can just go to bed.” She sounded like an angry little wife.
“I’ll stay awake.” I said, but as hard as I fought to keep myself focused, before long I was snoring again. Once more she elbowed me in the gut.
“I thought you were going to stay awake?”
“I’m sorry honey; I guess I had better go to bed.”
I got up and staggered to my room filled with onus and I stripped myself, down to by boxer shorts, of my filthy work clothes and I collapsed into the bed still stinking of whiskey and Melanie’s coital scent. I don’t know how long I had been sleeping, but I remember having a dream where I was in a fight with Tommy Sullivan. I was throwing and dodging punches after accusing him of killing Catherine. But Tommy somehow got the upper hand and he ended up sitting on my stomach bouncing up and down on top of me. I remember asking him to stop but he wouldn’t. And then I realized that I wasn’t dreaming. That someone was actually bouncing up and down on my stomach and I felt like I was going to throw up. I slowly opened my burning bloodshot eyes and I was horrified to find Sarah, completely naked, straddling my waist (I still had my boxer-shorts on) and bouncing up and down on my belly as if she were trying to fornicate.
“No! Sarah, what are you doing?” I grabbed her by the waist and tried to shove her off of my stomach but she slid her tiny feet beneath my thighs and continued to bounce. I did my best to keep from heaving. I had grown extremely nauseous from a combination of the whiskey in my gut, Sarah’s bouncing on my abdomen and the revulsion of the image of my daughter simulating sexual intercourse with me. I sat up at the waist and I pushed Sarah back onto the bed, perhaps a little too hard. “No! Sarah, what are you doing?”
Sarah began to sob heavily, “I’m doing what married people do, like you and mommy did and like you do with Amber. It’s what married people do, daddy!” she screamed as tears ran down her reddened face.
“But baby,” I covered my nakedness and I tried to pick her up; I wanted to cradle her, “I’m your daddy. We’re not married.”
“Yes we are! We went to church, remember?”
“Yes honey, I remember, but that was just pretend.”
Sarah pushed me away and jumped off of the bed and ran out of the room. I rolled off of the side of my bed and I heaved into the little blue garbage can I kept by my nightstand. I heaved until my dinner was gone. I heaved until all of the whiskey that was left in my stomach was gone. I heaved until the image embroidered on my brain of Melanie was gone. But I couldn’t heave away the vision of Sarah on top of me naked. I got up, staggering and stumbling, carrying the garbage pale filled with my vomit while holding a sheet about my waist and I went into the bathroom and fell to the floor and poured my puke into the toilet. I turned the faucet on in the tub and rinsed the pail and then I crawled into the tub banging my chin on the side as I rolled into the tiny white porcelain cavity. I needed to sober up to deal with Sarah. The poor child was so confused.
She deserved better than me. I was filled to my eyebrows with peccancy. I began to think that maybe Sarah would have been better-off if I had left her with Catherine’s parents and gone to jail. At least then she would have been in school. At least then I wouldn’t have further espoused her. At least then she wouldn’t have been trying to fuck me.
I remember thinking: Fuck Oedipus and his whore of a mother! Fuck women! Fuck Catherine for dying. Fuck her for cheating! I have never wanted to be dead more than at that moment, still stinking drunk, scalding water pouring over me as I tried to burn the shame and guilt from my body. I swore I would never drink again. I swore that I would never espouse Sarah again. I swore that I would never cheat again. I was confused and vile and filled with self-loathing. I was a despicable human being. I wanted to march down to the local police precinct and turn myself in to the authorities. In my head I screamed “I’m the one you’re looking for. I’m the murderer! And now I’m a child molester too! I’m the piece of shit that cheated on his married girlfriend with her best friend!” I just wanted to blow my brains out and rid the world of my existence. But before I did any of that I needed to make things right for Sarah. I needed to straighten her head out. I needed to show her that it was possible for me to love her more than anyone could love someone without inserting my prick into her. I needed her to know how much I loved and adored her, but as a father not a wife. I held my head under the scalding water and I let the stream cauterize my scalp. I used a washcloth to scour the stink from my flesh, from my arms and my face and my chest and my belly (where Sarah had pressed her vagina) and may prick where Melanie had wrapped her open cunt, until all of my body parts were red and burning.