Eileen (15 page)

“Three, four years?” I could barely count. My past seemed to flatten down into nothing in Rebecca's presence. “It was only going to be temporary, while I moved back here for a bit when my mother was sick,” I explained. “And then she died and I just stayed on at the prison. And time's just flown by,” I said, escalating my voice to sound chipper, funny.

“Oh no. Oh dear,” Rebecca shook her head. “That sounds absolutely awful. Prison is no place for time to fly. Jeez Louise. And your mother dying. You must be eager to get out of here. Are you?”

“I'm happy here,” I lied, sipping my beer.

“You know, I'm an orphan, too,” said Rebecca. I didn't bother to correct her, tell her my father was still alive. “My parents both died when I was young. Drowned,” she said. “My uncle raised me out west, where the sun shines. I'll never understand how you all do it up here winter after winter. Positively creepy, all the darkness, and so cold. It just about drives me mad.” She talked about the ocean, how she loved the beach. Growing up she'd play for hours in the sun and sand, and so on. And then she spoke about her move to Cambridge, how she and her girlfriends rowed boats on the Charles. She praised the foliage, the history, mocked the intellectuals—“the stiffs”—said she was in a “strange love affair with New England.” She never mentioned her studies at Harvard. She said nothing about her professional life at all. “Things feel very real out here, don't they? There's simply no fantasy. And no sentimentality. That's what fascinates me. There is history and pride, but very little imagination here.”

I just listened. I had my whiskey and beer and Rebecca, and I hardly cared to disagree with her assessment of the place, my homeland. I just nodded. But of course she was dead wrong. We New Englanders are uptight for sure, but we have strong minds. We use our imaginations effectively. We don't waste our brains on magical notions or useless frills, but we do have the ability to fantasize. I could name countless thinkers and writers and artists as examples. And there was me, after all.
I
was there. But I didn't say much. I just sat there dumb, twisting my foot to the music. After a while she said, “I'm sorry. I've had too much to drink. I tend to talk too much when I drink.”

“That's all right,” I said, shrugging.

“Better than talking too little,” she said, winking at me. “Only teasing.” She swiveled on her bar stool, jostling my legs before I had a chance to feel offended. “The real silent one is that Leonard Polk. You saw him today?”

I nodded. The coincidence of Rebecca's new interest in Lee Polk with his mother's sudden appearance at Moorehead still struck me as odd, but I didn't feel it was my place to ask questions. I was just a secretary, after all.

“What did you make of that scene with his mother?” Rebecca asked. “Strange,” she squinted at me, “didn't you think so?”

I shrugged. I suppose I still felt ashamed that I'd spied on the boy in the cave. Even just remembering the look of him through that little window made my heart beat faster—the hands moving under his uniform, his eyes hooded and sleepy. It excited me even then. The shame of arousal, the arousal of shame. “I don't know,” I began. “Maybe he stopped talking because he had
nothing nice to say. You know what they say to children—if you can't think of anything nice to say, say nothing.”

“They say that to children?” Rebecca's face grimaced in disgust. “Well, I wondered whether Lee might have something to hide, or whether he'd taken his vow of silence to protest his incarceration. Or was it just to torture his mother, be the thorn in her side since he hadn't had the chance to slit her throat, too? I read his whole file, you know.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “There's nothing worse than when someone won't talk to you. Drives me crazy, at least.” I didn't tell her how my father would go silent for days, ignoring me, eyes glazed over as though I were invisible, saying nothing no matter how much I begged him to answer me. “What have I done wrong? Please tell me.” Rebecca didn't press me for details.

“But did she seem angry to you, Mrs. Polk?” she asked.

“She seemed upset. They're always upset, those mothers,” I told her. I wasn't sure what Rebecca was getting at.

“Perhaps his silence is for her benefit. His silence could be charitable, know what I mean?” She cocked her head thoughtfully, searched my face for a response. I hadn't followed her reasoning, but I nodded, tried to smile. “Secrets and lies?” she said, dipping her finger into her drink and sucking it. “I tell you, doll,” she said. I blushed. “Some families are so sick, so twisted, the only way out is for someone to die.”

“Boys will be boys,” is all I could think to say. Rebecca just laughed.

“The warden said the same thing this afternoon when I
asked him about Leonard.” This surprised me. She finished her martini, then swung around on her bar stool, again facing the table of men. Lighting a cigarette, her posture now became angular and seductive. She blew the smoke in a tall plume up at the low ceiling. “I asked him,” she began, voice modulated into a higher register, eyes squinting at the men who seemed to stiffen, wipe their mouths and look alive, “what Leonard had done to get so many days in the cave, as you all call it. And he said what you said, Eileen.” She put her hand on my knee and then just left it there, as though it had found its rightful place on my leg. “Boys will be boys. I bet it was for something of a sexual nature. Something deviant. They don't like to tell us gals such things. Leonard has the look. You know what I mean?” she asked.

I was shocked, of course. But I knew exactly what she meant. I had seen “the look” through that little window the day before. “I know,” I told her.

“I thought you might,” she said, winked, and squeezed my thigh.

“What'd you say your name was?” one of the men hollered, interrupting our private moment. Rebecca lifted her hand, placed it against her chest, looked wide-eyed.

“My name?” she asked, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. The men stirred in their seats, expectant as young dogs. “I'm Eileen,” she said. “And this is my friend.” Her hand found mine, still ice-cold and limp in my lap. “Do you all know my friend here?”

“And what's your name, sweetheart?” one of them asked me.
I can't tell you how fun it was sitting there with Rebecca, a table full of men at our disposal. At least that's how it seemed.

“Tell these boys your name, doll,” prompted Rebecca. When I looked at her, she winked. “My friend is feeling shy tonight,” she said. “Don't be shy, Rebecca. These boys won't bite.”

“Unless you ask us to,” the first man replied. “Jerry here's got some missing teeth, though. Show 'em, Jerry.” Jerry, the man nearest to me, smiled, peeling up his top lip to show a comical gap. “Go easy, Jerry,” his friend said, patting him on the shoulder.

“How'd that come about, Jerry?” Rebecca asked. Sandy set more drinks for us on the bar. I drank mine fast. I had a moderate tolerance for alcohol, but an extreme thirst for it once I got started. I was probably already drunk by that point. “Did you get in a fight with your wife?” Rebecca teased.

The men laughed. “That's it. You guessed right. His old lady has an arm like Joe Frazier.”

“Oh dear,” Rebecca shook her head, turned to pick up her martini, winked at me surreptitiously. “To Jerry,” she said, raising her glass. The rest toasted and cheered and for the silent moment while everyone gulped from their drinks, I looked around, astonished at my new place in the world. There I was, a lady, celebrated and adored.

“Tell me, gentlemen,” Rebecca went on. “Do any of you know how to fix a broken exhaust pipe? You all look pretty handy.”

“Your car got problems?” Jerry asked, lisping like a twelve-year-old.

“Not my car,” Rebecca answered. “Belongs to my friend here. Tell them.”

I shook my head, hid behind my glass of beer.

“What'd you say your name was, honey?” one of the men asked.

“Rebecca,” I answered. Rebecca laughed.

“Feel like dancing, Rebecca?” she asked me.

As if by magic, the jukebox kicked back on. I set down my glass. I can't say where I suddenly found the courage to dance. I never danced. I was drunk, of course, but even still, it astounds me how easily Rebecca pulled me off of my stool. I followed her to the little space by the jukebox, took her hands in mine, and let her lead me around, giggling and stopping every few seconds, covering my face in embarrassment and glee as we swayed and shimmied. We danced for what felt like an hour, first to quick, happy dance tunes, laughing, and then we waltzed around to slow love songs, sardonically to start, but eventually we were lulled into the heady, sweeping pulse of the music. I stared disbelievingly into Rebecca's serene, wistful face, her eyes closed, her hands on my shoulders like an angel and a devil debating the logic of longing. Rebecca and I moved together in a little circle as we danced, and I held her around her waist, with only my wrists pressed lightly against her body. I kept my hands stiff and stuck them out at an angle so that they wouldn't touch her. The men in their booth were at first mesmerized and entertained, but then they grew tired. None of them tried to dance with us. By the time the music quit, my head was spinning. Rebecca and I went and sat down at our drinks again. Still
entranced and nervous, I shot back the whiskey and finished the beer. “I've had plenty,” Rebecca said, and pushed her martini away. I drank that, too. It was gin.

Sandy came over, counted out Rebecca's change.

“How's Dad?” he asked me.

“Is this your brother?” Rebecca asked, shocked.

“No, he just knows my father,” I explained.

“Small towns,” Rebecca said, grinning.

I never trusted Sandy. He seemed terribly nosy. He's not an important figure here, but for the record, Sandy Brogan was his name and I disliked him. He said something like, “Don't know if it's a good thing I ain't seen him, or it means something else.”

“It means something else,” I said, and put my cape back on, pulled the hood over my head. I was feeling very brazen. “Can I have one of your cigarettes?” Sandy shook his pack out toward me and I pulled one out. He lit it for me.

“Quite a gal,” said Rebecca.

“This one's a good kid,” Sandy affirmed, nodding. He was an idiot.

I smoked awkwardly, holding my cigarette like a nine-year-old would, hand stiff, fingers outstretched, watching the burning tip, going cross-eyed as I brought it to my lips. I coughed, blushed and laughed with Rebecca, who took my arm. Together we left the bar, ignoring the men as we walked out.

Out on the street, Rebecca turned to me. The dark, icy night sparkled behind her, the snow and stars a galaxy of hope and wonder with her at its center. She was so alive and lovely. “Thank you, Eileen,” she said, looking at me oddly. “You know,
you remind me of a Dutch painting,” she said, staring into my eyes. “You have a strange face. Uncommon. Plain, but fascinating. It has a beautiful turbulence hidden in it. I love it. I bet you have brilliant dreams. I bet you dream of other worlds.” She threw her head back and laughed that evil laugh, then smiled sweetly. “Maybe you'll dream of me and my morning remorse, which you can count on. I shouldn't drink, but I do. C'est la vie.” I watched her get into her car—a dark two-door, is all I recall—and drive away.

But I didn't want to go home yet. The night was young and I was beloved. I was someone important at last. So I went back into O'Hara's, passed the same booth of men who were drunk, laughing, slapping the table, spilling their beers. I took the seat Rebecca had sat on, feeling just a hint of the warmth she'd left behind. Sandy slid an ashtray toward me, slapped a cocktail napkin beside my curled hand on the bar, red from the cold. “Whiskey,” I said, and stubbed out the cigarette.

The next memory I have is of waking up in the morning slumped over the steering wheel of the car, which I'd parked half inside a bank of snow in front of my house. A frozen pool of vomit sat next to me on the seat. My panty hose were full of runs. In the rearview mirror I looked like a madwoman—hair sticking out in all directions, lipstick smeared down my chin. I blew on my frozen hands, turned off the headlights. When I reached for the keys, they were missing from the ignition. I'd lost my cape, the trunk of the car was open, and my purse was gone.

T
he house was locked. I could see my father asleep in his chair in the kitchen through the windows, the refrigerator door wide open. He sometimes left it that way when the heat from the stove and the oven made him sweat. And on my father's feet, shoes. With the exception of Sundays, when he was closely chaperoned by his sister to church and back, if my father had shoes on, it meant there would be trouble. He wasn't a violent threat, but when he got out he did things the warden would have called morally offensive—falling asleep on somebody's front lawn, folding up postcards at the drugstore, knocking over a gum-ball machine. His more aggressive indiscretions included pissing in the sandbox at the children's playground, yelling at cars on Main Street, throwing rocks at dogs. Each time he got out, the police would find him, pick him up and bring him home. How I cringed at the sound of that doorbell when an X-ville cop stood outside on the front porch with my father, drunk and tugging at his chin, eyes crossed. The officer
would take his cap off when I answered the door, speak in hushed tones while my father busted into the house in search of booze. And if he chose instead to stay and take part in the conversation, there were handshakes and pats on the shoulder, the respectful pretense of love and loyalty. “Routine check, sir,” the cop would say. If a cop tried to express even the slightest concern, my father would take the guy aside and launch into a rant about the hoodlums, the mob, the strange noises in the house. He'd complain of ill health, heart trouble, back pain, and how I, his daughter, was neglectful, how I was abusing him, how I was after all his money. “Will somebody please tell her to give me back my shoes? She has no right!” And as soon as he turned to me, hands trembling and creeping up toward my neck, the cop would nod, turn and close the door and leave. None of them had the guts not to play into his delusions—ghouls and gangsters, ghosts and the mob. They would have let him get away with murder, I imagined. “America's finest,” the prison guards of the civilized world, those police. I will tell you frankly that to this day there is nothing I dread more than a cop knocking at my door.

That morning I rang and rang the doorbell, but my father wouldn't budge. I figured the keys were in the pocket of his robe or, worse, around his neck, wearing them the way I used to, a noose at the ready if I'd ever thought of it. I could have tried to walk to work that day, stick my thumb out, that's true. Nobody would have looked twice at my outfit at the office. Nobody cared.

I went around the back of the house and tried to open the
cellar door. Bending over and tugging at it had me burping up and gagging. It was not a pleasant morning. Nothing is more disturbing than waking up to the taste of vomit. With bare hands I cracked through the glazed layer of ice over the high snow and filled my mouth with it. It hurt my head. Maybe that was when the previous night came back to me: Rebecca, Sandy, leaving the bar and going back in. I recall sitting down in a booth, the sparks of matches, wobbling over manly fists with my Salems, the itchy wool of my dress or a man's rough sweater rubbing against my neck, then falling down and laughing. “Rebecca,” someone had said, and I responded, “Yes, doll.” I'd been Rebecca for a night. I'd been someone else completely.

A night of heavy drinking would kill me now. I don't know how I managed it back then, though I'm sure my shame and embarrassment were far worse than the hangover. I shook off my fractured recollections and tried to gain access to the house. The cellar door was locked, of course. I considered busting through a back window with the heel of my boot, but I didn't think I could reach up high enough to get my arm through and undo the lock on the inside of the back door. I pictured severing my arm on the broken glass, blood spewing across the snow. Surely my father wouldn't stay mad at me if I was bleeding to death in the backyard. The image of blood-stained snow turned my stomach and I bent down to retch but all that came up was yellow bile. My head throbbed remembering the frozen pile of vomit waiting for me in the car. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my dress.

When I went back around the front of the house and rang
the bell again, I saw that my father was missing from the chair. He was hiding from me. “Dad?” I called out. “Dad!” I couldn't raise my voice too high or the neighbors would hear. And given that the day was starting, mothers sending their kids off to school, men leaving in their cars for work, they would soon see the old Dodge smushed into the bank of snow. The car was fine, but clearly the person who'd parked it was out of her mind.

Already we, the Dunlops, were regarded as something of a case in the neighborhood. Even my father's reputation as a cop—an upstanding citizen, a man of service to his country—couldn't make up for the fact that in recent years our lawn was never mowed, our hedges never trimmed. A neighbor would do that once or twice a summer, to keep up appearances, I'm sure, but it was passed off as a gesture of appreciation for the old man's good work and sympathy for me, the skinny girl with no mother and little hope for a husband. We were the only house on the block without Christmas lights strung in our bushes, no fancy tree twinkling through the living room windows, no wreath on the door. I'd buy treats for Halloween, but no kids ever rang our doorbell. I ended up eating all the candy myself, chewing it up and spitting it all out in the attic. I didn't like any of our neighbors any more than my father did—not the Lutherans, none of them, no matter their gifts or favors. They were goody-goodies, I thought, and I felt they judged me for being young and sloppy, and for driving a car that filled the whole block with smoke when I started it. But I didn't want to earn any more of their scorn. I didn't want to give anyone more fodder for gossip. I had to get the car into the driveway before it
aroused suspicion. This was my thinking. And I had to clean the seat full of vomit before my father saw it.

But, of course, he'd seen it already. I suppose he'd been waiting up for me the night before and came out and yanked the keys out of the ignition after I'd passed out. It occurred to me all at once: He kept me from carbon monoxide poisoning that night. He may have saved my life. Who knows whether the engine had been running when he came out and yanked out the keys. It's possible. The windows were up when I came to. Perhaps he simply wanted his shoes from the trunk, and that's why he took the keys. Still, I like to think that somehow his instincts as a father—his desire to protect me, to keep me alive—kicked in that night, overrode his madness, his selfishness. I prefer to tell myself that story than to believe in luck or coincidences. That line of magical thinking always leads to too fine an edge. In any case, I was grateful to be alive, which was nice. At first I was all the more frightened at what my father would have to say, what he might want in return for saving my life. But then I thought of Rebecca. With her around, I didn't need to beg for my father's mercy. He could yell and cry, but he couldn't hurt me. I was loved after all, I thought.

Again I tried to knock on the front door, but my father still ignored me. I climbed over the wrought-iron handrail that went up the brick steps and jumped down behind the front bushes and looked through the living room windows. They hadn't been washed in years. I rubbed a spot through the frost, but there was still a thick layer of dust on the inside. I could barely see in. I caught then a weird vision of my father—pale, naked from the
waist up, thin and frail but full of tension, jolting slowly past the living room windows with a bottle in his hand. He seemed to have grown small breasts. And when he turned, I thought I saw long purple bruises up and down his back. How he stayed alive for as long as he did is sheer proof of his stubbornness. I pounded my fist on the thick glass, but he just waved his hand and kept on walking. I ended up sneaking in through a dirty living room window. It was, strangely, unlocked.

I was an adult, I knew that. I had no curfew. There were no official house rules. There were only my father's arbitrary rages, and once he was in one he would only relax if I agreed to whatever odd, humiliating punishment he came up with. He'd bar me from the kitchen, order me to walk to Lardner's and back in the rain. The worst crime I could commit in his eyes was to do anything for my own pleasure, anything outside of my daughterly duties. Evidence of a will of my own was seen as the ultimate betrayal. I was his nurse, his aide, his concierge. All he really required, however, was gin. The house was rarely dry—as I've said, I was a good girl—but somehow everything I did, my very existence, rubbed him the wrong way. Even my
National Geographic
magazines gave him cause to bewail my unruliness. “Communist,” he'd call me, flicking at the pages. I knew he was furious that morning. But I wasn't scared. I stood on the carpet in the foyer, snow sliding off my boots. “Hey,” I called out to him. “Have you seen the keys?”

He emerged from the closet with a golf club, thudded up the steps, and sat on the upstairs landing. When he was truly enraged, he got quiet—the calm before the storm. I knew he
would never try to kill me. He wasn't really capable of that. But he seemed sober that morning, and when he was sober, he was especially mean. I don't recall exactly what we said to each other while he sat up there, tapping the golf club along the rungs of the banister, but I remember I held my hands over my face, in case he threw the golf club down.

“Dad,” I asked again, “can I have the keys?”

He picked up a book from where they were piled along the hallway walls and threw it down at me. Then he went into my mother's bedroom and took a pillow off the bed and threw that down, too.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, setting himself on the top step again. He rapped the golf club against the rungs of the banister like a prison guard with a baton against iron bars. “You're not going anywhere till you read that book. From cover to cover,” he said. “I want to hear every word.” It was a copy of
Oliver Twist
. I picked it up, turned to the opening page, cleared my throat, but stopped there. A week earlier I would have acquiesced and read a few pages until he got thirsty. That day, though, I just put the book down. I recall looking up at him, still shielding my face with my hands. Through my fingers, to my regret, I caught sight of his gray scrotum peeking out one side of his billowy, yellowed shorts.

“You see the car keys?” I asked. “I'll be late to work.”

His whole body seemed to blush with rage. The shoes he had on were his worn black oxfords.

“Out all night, nearly crashed the car, sleeping in your own sick, and now you're worried about getting to work on time.”
His voice was eerily measured, grave. “I can hardly look at you, I'm so ashamed. Oliver Twist would be grateful for this home, this nice house. But you, Eileen, you seem to think you can just come and go as you please.” His voice cracked.

“I went out with a girl from work,” I told him. It was a mistake to disclose this, but I suppose I was proud and wanted to rub it in his face.

“A girl from work? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

I refused to defend myself. In the past I'd have begged his forgiveness, done anything to appease him. “I'm sorry!” I would have cried, falling to my knees. I'd gotten good at being dramatic; he was only ever satisfied by complete self-abasement. That morning, however, I wasn't going to stoop to his level.

“Well,” he said, “who is he? I at least want to meet the boy before you get knocked up and sell your soul to Satan.”

“Please, can I have the keys? I'll be late.”

“You aren't going anywhere dressed like that. Now really, Eileen. How dare you? That's the dress your mother wore to my father's funeral. You have no respect,” he said, “for me, for your mother, for anyone, and least of all for yourself.” He let go of the golf club, startling himself with the racket it made as it tumbled down the stairs. Then he started shaking. He sat on his hands, bowed his head. “Trash, Eileen, just trash,” he whined. I thought he might start to cry.

“I'll go get you a bottle,” I said.

“What's his name, Eileen? Give me the boy's name.”

“Lee,” I answered, almost without thinking.

“Lee? Just Lee?” He winced, wiggled his head back and forth mocking me.

“Leonard.”

He ground his teeth, jaw pulsing, and rubbed his palms together.

“Now you know,” I said, dropping my hands from my face as though my lie itself could shield me from my father's wrath. “Keys?”

“Keys are in my robe,” he said. “Come back quick and change. I don't want anyone to see you in that getup. They'll think I'm dead.”

I found my father's robe thrown in the empty fireplace. I got the keys, unearthed my purse from a pile of junk by the front door, put on a coat, and went back out to the car. The vomit was already melting, the edge of the puddle coinciding with the strap of the seat belt. It was awful. The smell transferred to everything I wore and lingered on my coat long after I'd abandoned the Dodge and disappeared a few days later. I had no intention of going to the liquor store, which would have been closed anyway at that early hour. But I had to extricate the front of the car from the snowbank. That took some effort. My father may have saved my life that night, but he clearly didn't care much for my well-being. He wasn't capable of much, I knew that. The one time I'd dared to ask him not to pick on me, he burst out laughing, then feigned a heart attack the next morning. When the ambulance arrived, he was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette. He said he felt fine. “She's on
the rag or something,” he told the paramedics. They all shook hands.

Once I got the car out of the snowbank, I drove back to O'Hara's. If I'd had my wits, I could have taken off then and there. I could have just sped off into the morning, a free woman. Who could stop me? But I couldn't leave yet. I couldn't leave Rebecca. I parked in front of the bar and went inside.