When I got out of the tub I painfully toweled myself dry and went to my bedroom. I was still sick to my stomach with the acrid taste of whiskey tattooed on my tongue, like a permanent stain. I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was only just past three in the morning. I could still smell the stench of vomit in my room. I dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a white cotton tee-shirt. I went back to the bathroom and I brushed my teeth and combed my hair. I needed to be clean. I made coffee and drank it down, scorching my throat. I needed to be sober. Then I went to Sarah’s door and I knocked softly.
“Sarah baby, can I come in?” I pleaded. “Go away.” Her voice was still choked with tears.
“Honey, I think we need to talk.” I tried to push the door open but there was something obstructing the door from the inside.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She said with her childish voice.
“Honey, I love you. I need to talk to you. I think we got a little confused and we need to talk about this.”
“I want to go back to live with grandma and grandpa.”
Her words were a stiff blow to my gut. I started to weep. I slumped to the floor with my back pressed to the door while a stream of saline drizzled down my cheeks. “Come on honey,” I cried, “let me in. I need to talk to you. We need to make this right. If I don’t have you then I might as well be dead.”
After a few minutes I heard her slide off of her bed and her little feet hit the floor before she padded to the door and pushed something aside. She padded back to her bed and I heard the squeak of her mattress springs as she hopped back into bed and I heard the shrug of cloth being filled with air as she pulled the covers over her body.
I struggled, my motor skills still affected by the whiskey, to pull myself up by the door handle; then I slowly opened the door.
Sarah had the covers pulled over her head. I knew that she was both confused and embarrassed. I knew too that it was not her fault. I had encouraged her, not with the intent of molestation, but by having her overtake the physical role which Catherine had once held. She had confused matriarchy with marriage; sex with love.
I sat on the edge of the bed and I reached under the covers and found her warm little hand. I squeezed it. She pulled it away.
“You don’t love me.” She said again;
the white cover still over her head made it seem as if I were talking to a Halloween ghost.
“Oh, yes I do, more than you will ever know.” I tried to speak in an authoritative and fatherly tone.
“You love Amber more than me.”
“Not true. What I have with Amber is very different than what I have with you, but I could never love anyone as much as I love you.”
you?”
“You were with her tonight, weren’t
“No, honey, I wasn’t.”
She pulled the covers down enough for me to see her eyes. “What was Amber doing to you when I saw you together?”
I took a deep breath. It was quite obvious that she had spied on Amber and me during intercourse. I had hoped never to have to have that conversation with her. “That was sex. It’s something grownups do. It’s how we make babies.”
“I want to be a grownup. I want to make a baby.”
“And you will someday, but even then, I’m your dad and I can’t have sex with you.”
“What if we get married for real?”
“We can’t. I’ll always be your dad and dads can’t marry their little girls. Besides, I will love you more if you’re my baby forever than if we were to get married. Married people sometimes get divorced. Dads don’t get divorced from their little girls. Isn’t that better than being married?”
Sarah took a long pause, “I guess so.” “You shouldn’t be embarrassed for what you did. You just wanted to show me how much you loved me. You just got it a little confused. But it’s okay, really. I love you no matter what and you love me no matter what, right?”
“Yes.” She pouted her lip.
“And this will be a secret. I won’t tell anyone it happened and you don’t either, okay?”
“Okay.”
I pulled her to me and I cradled her in my arms, the blanket still wrapped around her body, and I held her as if she were an infant and I rocked her and hummed to her until she fell asleep. Then I tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead.
* * *
What would Catherine have said to me had she been alive I wondered of Sarah’s destructive behavior; of her confusion of roles; of her murderous act? Catherine, being a soul elevated far above the level of trivial pettiness, would have said “I told you so!”
Was it old William Shakespeare said that “sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”? I felt much lower than sarcasm. But leave it to
Melanie to stop by during the wee hours of the morning and cheer me up as I sulked and waited for the miserable effects of the whiskey; the throbbing head, the churning queasy stomach, the addled brain; to wear off while rocking compulsively in my rocking chair. Melanie knocked softly at the rear door at six- thirty in the morning, a knock that I confess I mistook for a mouse scratching the plaster behind the floor-molding. Melanie’s second attempt was slightly harder and louder and I got up on unsteady legs and answered the door.
Melanie was Beautiful, her hair freshly washed and her face made up, even while she sported a frumpy red pocket-tee and a pair of loose-fitting blue-jeans.
“I thought you might want some coffee and some company.” She smiled cheerfully, as if the whiskey had had no ill effect on her, and handed me a Styrofoam cup of gourmet coffee, the aroma of which tickled the happy receptors in my brain. But a red light was flashing deep inside my skull telling me that I was in trouble.
“Thank you, that was thoughtful.”
“I actually wanted to talk to you about last night.” She looked down at her white tennis-shoes and then back up at me.”
“I know… we shouldn’t have…”
“But I’m glad we did.” She interrupted, her green eyes gazing up at me seeking complicit sympathy.
“But what about Amber? She’d be hurt if she knew.” I searched her eyes for the least hint of remorse.
“I thought about that…I mean I love Amber and she’s my best friend in the world, but she is married and you know she’s never going to leave Charlie…and I think she sees you as, well…a sex toy.” “You may be right about that, but it was wrong for us to go behind her back like that.”
“We were drunk, and anyway I’ve wanted that to happen since you first moved in to my place.” Her eyelashes batted flirtatiously as she rose on her tip-toes. “It’s the reason I asked you to be my security.”
“You wanted me to see you strip naked and dance in front of a bunch of creepy men while I watched because you wanted to…make love to me?”
She rolled her eyes like a silly child, “I know. I thought about it afterwards and that was pretty dumb.” She smiled a bit embarrassed, “but I got to spend some time with you…and I got to show off my best assets.”
“Your assets are… Beautiful.” I smiled at the memory of her nakedness, but the realization that she might be infatuated with me pulled me quickly back to the present.