“What do you make of it, kiddo?” Father would say to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder in front of his masterwork.
“It’s got symmetry, Pop.”
Before bed we snacked on Cheese Nips and Slice ‘n’ Bake. Birdie ate the cookie dough straight out of the wrapper. Those nights we ordered Chinese food, Father made us virgin Scorpion Bowls out of Kool-Aid and cans of fruit salad.
Dr. Who was the only program on which we could agree. We enjoyed the blue police box which became his space ship and tumbled into the galaxy. There was something about this arrangement that seemed plausible that summer. We watched the show in solidarity.
Father, Birdie, and I sat cross-legged with our backs against the couch, which Birdie had stripped of its cushions. “What’s your name?” Dr. Who says to the girl as they run to evacuate ship. “Cas,” she says. “You’re young to be crewing a gunship, Cas,” Dr. Who says. “I wanted to see the universe. Is it always like this?” she says. The two stand on either side of the door and yell passionately at each other as they part. “I’m not leaving this ship without you,” Dr. Who calls out to her. “Get out of here,” Cas says. “While some of the universe is still standing.”
10
During the day while Father worked, we were watched by a train of women.
Our first girl was a bleeder. The daughter of a psychologist and one of the women who worked line at the cafeteria. She lived in a small Cape close to the center of town. Those mornings I’d seen her standing at the foot of her drive as the bus rounded the corner, she looked like the sort of star who’d wasted the fetch of her youth trying to settle down with some country boy who’d loved her and left her. In his wake, she’d taken to hitching her way across America to understand just what it was the rest of us were doing. I expected her to stick out her thumb when she saw the bus round the corner.
Our bleeder was not a regular. The driver kept a look out for her. Those mornings she was running late, just exiting the small door of the house as our chariot pulled into view, the girl moved down the drive at a slither, her leather clad arms full of bags and bangles, not a book or proper paper weighing her down. Once aboard, she disappeared down the aisle of the bus. We left the last seat empty for her next to the Emergency Exit. We figured her for someone who bet on solitude to make her happy until she found her way out of this place and into the big thing for which she was meant.
Her name I never was clear on. Everyone called her something different. It was one of those headliners which had a purr to it — Katerina, Katya, or Katelyn — the derivative of some family name which must’ve belonged to a distant grandmother. Luckily, she was the type of girl who lent herself to nicknames and variations — Katie, Kathy, Kat. I just called her K, as in the letter, because it was easy to remember and it allowed her to be whomever I wanted her to be on that particular day or hour.
The first night K arrived I understood that Father was meeting Mother. I could tell by the closeness of his shave, the way he tucked and bothered. K had driven over, a move Father usually would’ve declined as he always drove our girls. This evening when K arrived, he’d barely looked at her, his usual attempt at conversation replaced with a nervous fidgeting around in the kitchen for his wallet and his keys. “These them?” K said, pulling out the clunky iron ring from under a stack of newspapers on the counter.
She held the ring out in front of her. When it came to keys, Father wasn’t frugal. He had an eye for lock boxes and bike chains, anything that could be secured and then unsecured through a series of numbers that tested logic. Father never threw out an old key because he could never remember what it belonged to. There was probably a key on that chain that unlocked his dorm room in college. I figured it for the small, three-toothed brass.
Once he was gone, K and I were left standing in the kitchen. She eyed herself in Mother’s windows as she crossed into the living room. Though she wasn’t overly thin, she moved with a balletic confidence.
“Do these things open?” she said, nodding at the window. She stood on the back of the couch, undoing the upper lock.
“We usually keep them closed,” I said.
“You get that one,” she said.
Once the windows were cranked, she smoked a cigarette overlooking the deck.
“Some fall,” she said, leaning out for a moment.
The fact that it was her duty to entertain us, seemed to eclipse her. I was taken aback by her pause.
“I’ve tried them,” I eventually said.
“Really,” she said. She exhaled and let the smoke linger. “I never figured you for a smoker.”
“I’ve watched Mother,” I said. That was true. There was something about this statement that seemed to soften K.
“Well,” she said. “It’s never too late to quit.”
She finished the remains of her drag, pinching and flicking the stink out the window. The rest of the butt she carried through the kitchen and flushed.
I retired to my bedroom to scheme. Eventually I came down to check on her under the guise of getting a glass of water from the kitchen. She was sitting in the dark watching television eating slices of ready-made dough. The way the contours of her face lit up in the flicker of the screen, her beauty struck me not only as a presence but a talent.
I lay in bed waiting for Father’s return in a strange incapacitation. I watched the various levels of darkness come into the room, training my eyes to detect the slightest change in gradient, which signaled the approach of a car. When Father pulled into the drive, the pattern of the headlights on the ceiling seemed comic-like in their amplitude. The dim beam of K’s own headlights followed as she backed into the road and pulled away.
I waited for the sound of any movement on the stairs, the slow, deliberate shuffle of Father’s feet signaling that he was once again retiring alone. In the silence, I half anticipated Mother’s bound. Mother functioned in only two speeds. Her body shifted imperceptibly between the loll-and-graze and the dart-and-skid. I’d watched her lithe frame passing Father on the stairs one evening before she’d left. She’d angled herself between his hip and the railing so as not to interrupt his march. Instinctively he’d reached out to trap her, circling one arm around her waist. He’d held her there, taking the back of his free hand and spanking her. She’d struggled in his arms. They’d shared a long kiss at the top of the stairs.
“I’m wiped,” I had heard Mother say in Father’s ear.
“Not yet, you’re not,” Father had said.
That night Mother had on a short nightgown when she came to tuck me in. I’d seen her wear the nightgown when applying her makeup on those rare nights she and Father were going out. I’d admired the neckline and the thinness of the straps on her shoulders in the bathroom mirror from where I sat on the counter the way women admire each other when they’re alone. In the thin light of the hall that evening, as Mother had bent over to kiss me goodnight, I could see the curves of her thighs where they separated between her legs and the patch of hair between them.
That was the first night I’d heard my parents engage in their respective yearnings. Just as I was about to find sleep, I’d heard the clang of the headboard, which I recognized from those mornings Birdie and I jumped on their bed. I would have thought little of the noise had it not been for the rhythm. Its persistence would die out for a moment only to return with a louder, faster gait.
After a time, the rhythm was punctuated by a loud calling out. Mother’s voice erupted into the darkness. Its pitch reminded me of the high notes I’d heard her reach for in church. There was something sad about this noise. I used to imitate it on the walks I took to the marsh after she left. In the woods, it sounded lonely, the sort of call a bird would make to her young to signal her return to the nest with her kill.