Flesh and Blood (6 page)

“You shouldn't smoke,” she said.

He was standing, just standing and smoking, on the grass. “You missed it,” he said. “It was a whopper.”

“Is everybody all right?”

“I guess. Mom and Zoe are in bed.”

She folded her arms over her breasts and looked up at the stars. Todd would be getting into bed now, wearing only the bottoms of his pajamas. A row of trophies, little gold men with basketballs, would be shining on the shelf above his head like lavish, frozen dreams.

“Don't be so dramatic,” she said. “Billy, why are you always so dramatic?”

“Well, things get pretty dramatic. You probably wouldn't be asking that question if you'd been here an hour ago.”

Slowly, with deep weariness, she walked out onto the grass where Billy stood. “It's a pretty night,” she said.

“I guess it is,” he answered. “Yeah, I suppose you'd have to call this a pretty one.”

He was fifteen now, a sophomore, and instead of growing up he seemed to be hardening into some sort of sulky, continuing childhood. He had no interests. He dressed ridiculously, in patched bell-bottoms and flowered, billowing shirts. His only friends were a handful of hippies and hoods who skulked around school like stray cats. Todd was nice enough to Billy, but she knew he didn't really like him. No, that wasn't true. Todd liked everybody. He didn't respect Billy. He thought of him as an oddity, a character. He said, 'He's a real nut, that brother of yours.'

“What was it all about?” she asked.

“Does it matter? What does that have to do with anything?” Billy sucked fiercely on the cigarette. His face was all sharp points and blank, empty spaces. Bony thrust of nose and chin, no cheekbones, a mouth that refused to assume any particular shape. His skin was blurred with acne. Susan worried that his unfinished quality might become permanent.

“Daddy's going through a hard time,” she said. “He has a lot of responsibilities now. I think we have to be patient.”

“Right,” he said. “You should go in. It's cold out here.”

“I'm all right. Where did you get that cigarette, anyway?”

“I do all kinds of things you don't know about. I have a whole other life.”

She nodded. “Maybe I will go in,” she said. “I'm beat.”

“Okay.”

“It's just that he loses control sometimes,” she said. “I think he's getting better. He's trying. We have to be patient.”

“Have you ever noticed how he never breaks
stuff?”
Billy said. “I used to think that, too. That he just, you know, lost control. But tonight after the fracas I was looking at that little glass chicken on the windowsill. You know? We've had it as long as I can remember, it's been sitting right out there in plain sight, and he's never touched it. So, you know, lately I've been thinking, it's us he wants to hurt. He knows what he's doing. If he was really out of control, he'd have smashed that chicken a long time ago.”

“Did he do something to you?”

“Daddy?
Nah. He never laid a hand on me.”

“Billy. Come over here, in the light.”

“I'm all right.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Just a couple of slaps. Open-handed. They were like kisses.”

“I want you to come over in the light. I want to look at you.”

“Forget it,” he said. “I'm really okay. I just want to tell you one thing.”

“What?”

“I'm going to kill him one day, and when I do, I don't want people going around saying I lost control. Okay? When I kill him I'm not going to hurt anybody else, I'm not going to break anything. But still. I want it to be clear. I want you to say you stood out here with me one night and I told you I was going to kill him. Only him. Nobody else. Will you do that? Will you do that for me?”

She hugged her arms more tightly over her breasts. “You are so stupid,” she said. “I wonder sometimes if you know how stupid you are.”

Susan lay on her bed with the light off. Pink daisies swirled darkly on her wallpaper. When she heard the sound of her father's car she got up, put her robe on, and went downstairs. On her way into the kitchen she looked through the dining-room window, but couldn't see Billy in the back yard. Maybe he'd gone to bed; maybe he was walking around the neighborhood. She took milk from the refrigerator, and was setting a saucepan on the burner when her father came in.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said.

He stood in the doorway, looking at her as if he'd known her once, long ago, but couldn't quite recall her name or the circumstances of their acquaintance. Had he been drinking?

“I couldn't sleep,” she said. “You want to have a glass of milk with me?”

“Susan,” he said.

“Sit down,” she said. She pulled a chair out for him at the kitchen table.

“How are you, Susan?” he asked. “How is school?”

She knew this tone of voice: the careful articulation, the suave, earnest formality. When he drank, his accent returned.

“School's fine, Daddy. Well, school's school. Sit. I'm just going to heat this up, it'll only take a minute.”

He leaned carefully against the refrigerator. His face was ardent and innocent as a boy's. He still wore his work clothes, his white shirt and somberly striped tie. He could beat Billy up, stomp out of the house to get drunk, and return hours later with his tie perfectly knotted.

“You are gonna be queen of the prom,” he said. “Sweetheart, I am so proud of you.”

“Homecoming, Daddy. The prom's in the spring. And as of tonight I'm just a princess. Rosemary will probably be queen. She grew up here. She's got about a trillion friends at school.”

“You will be queen,” he said. “Yes. Oh, yes, you will be chosen.”

The milk started bubbling around the edges, and she swirled it in the pan. “It's not like Elizabeth, Daddy,” she said. “There are a lot of really pretty girls here. You can't imagine how they dress.”

She sucked in a breath as if she hoped to pull her last sentence back into her mouth and swallow it.
Don't complain to him about money, not when he's like this.
But his face didn't change. He continued looking at her with moist, unfocused eyes.

“Princess,” he said. “They are gonna make you queen. I promise.”

He was big and dangerous and full of love. What would happen if she wasn't chosen?

“It's a big honor just being one of the princesses,” she said. “Now sit
down,
Daddy. The milk is ready.”

She wondered where Billy had gone. He wouldn't kill their father, she knew that, but if he came into the kitchen now and acted a certain way there was no telling what their father might do.

“You're somethin' else,” he said as he lowered himself onto a chair. “How's everything? You happy? How's Todd?”

“Todd is Todd,” she said, pouring the steaming milk into two mugs.

“School is school and Todd is Todd,” he said. “This does not sound so good. This does not sound like happiness.”

She set a mug on the table in front of him. “Don't listen to me,” she said. “Everything's great. I guess I have a touch of se nioritis, or something.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, senioritis. A desperate urge to be done with school just about the time you've reached the top of the heap. It has medical science baffled.”

He nodded. He looked into his milk. “Your brother and me, we had a little disagreement tonight,” he said.

He wanted so much. He could do such damage.

“I heard,” she said. “I wish you two wouldn't fight like that.”

“Don't tell me. Tell him. You want to know what he called me?”

“What?”

“He called me a pig. A
pig.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

“Like what he calls the police. He called me a fucking pig, excuse the language. That's how your brother talks these days.”

“You have to ignore him sometimes.”

“Your mother, she told me to get out of the house—”

His voice was filling with emotion, a clotted sound. His face was darkening.

“She gets upset,” Susan said. “She's high-strung, you know that, these fights are too much for her.”

“I guess so. I guess that's true. You know a lot, don't you? Only eighteen, and you know so much.”

“Not all that much. Listen, Daddy, it's late. I should get to bed.”

“I wish your mother knew half the things you know. God. I wish she wasn't so mad all the time.”

“I have to get up in about five hours—”

He put his hand on top of hers. She recognized what was in his face, the love and the hunger and the bottomless grief.

“Susie,” he said. His face was imploring as a baby's, full of a baby's inchoate, violent need.

“I'm here,” she said. “I'm right here.”

She didn't move. She was frightened and vaguely excited. It wasn't desire; not exactly desire. She saw the power she could have. She heard her name being called out on the football field, saw a crown lifted in the floodlit air. Slowly, with tenderness, she took his big suffering head in her slender hands and guided his face to her own. His breath was full of beer, strong but not unpleasant. Human. She thought he would pull away. He didn't. She was frightened. She let the kiss go on.

1968/
Words caught in Zoe's throat. She watched instead. A leaf fluttered down from the ivy plant that was inching its way out of its Chinese pot. Dust brightened and dimmed in the square of light. A ghost slipped across the carpet, crying silently for all it couldn't find.

“Zoe?” Momma called. “Zoe, are you in there?”

She nodded. Momma tapped with her heels on the floorboards. She entered in a fury of perfume and sly glistenings. Her nylons hissed against her skirt.

“Right,” she said. “Not dressed. Hair's a rat's nest. Zoe, he's going to be here in twenty minutes. Do you get it? Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” Zoe said.

“Then will you
move?”

“I hate my dress.”

Momma's mouth made a noise, a dry sucking. Momma's mouth refused the cravings, made itself into a line.

“Last week was the time to tell me you hated your dress,” she said. “Last week, there was time to do something about it. Right now I want you
in
the dress, hair brushed and face washed, in exactly ten minutes. Got it?”

Zoe nodded. She poked her fingers between her toes. From upstairs, Poppa whistled a song known only to him. Momma hated his whistling, though she'd never say so. His songs were like needles on her skin and she'd learned to enjoy the pain.

“Zoe.” Momma wrapped a pink-nailed hand around Zoe's arm, yanked her out of the chair. “You're driving me to distraction. Do you know that? Now come on. I'm going to dress you myself.”

Zoe let Momma pull her out of the room, up the stairs past the pictures. She passed herself as a baby, terrified in pajamas covered with dancing bears. She passed her parents' wedding, and Susan in her baptismal dress. She passed Momma as a girl, with a pearl necklace and a hard, hopeful smile.

Zoe knew she'd never marry. A bride had to have a plan; she had to live in a house. Zoe would live in the outside, eat soup made from bark and rainwater. She was wrong for houses.

“—not so much to ask,” Momma was saying. “A twelve-year-old girl can be trusted to get herself ready, to not have to be watched and babied every single second. Honestly, I don't know what to do with you sometimes.”

Momma took her into the main bedroom, where time was slower. There, a white bedspread spoke silently about the patience of whiteness. Two silver dancers, a man and a woman, were stopped in mid-leap on the wall. Momma sat her down at the dressing table, which was cluttered with jars and tubes and little glass bottles, a miniature city of cosmetics. It had a jumbled, intricate life of its own. It was the center of something.

Zoe would live elsewhere, let her hair go free. She'd smell like moss and fur.

“Just sit still,” Momma said, taking up her brush. “If this smarts a little, I can't help it. Zoe, how do you get so many tangles in your hair? What do you
do
to it?”

Zoe saw herself and Momma in the round mirror. She saw that she was the end of beauty. She had unruly brows and a hooked nose. Something that had started in Momma and advanced into Susan had crashed against her small black eyes, her jutting chin.

She was somebody else. She couldn't carry the family manners.

“Mmm,” Momma moaned, forcing the brush through. From down the hall, from the bathroom, Poppa whistled. When he whisded, Momma pulled the bristles harder through the thick black snarls. Zoe bit down on the pain.

“It'll be over in a second,” Momma said. “If you'd done this an hour ago, when you were supposed to, we wouldn't have to rush.”

Susan's voice came in from the hall. “Momma, have you seen my sharmbreslet?”

“Your what?”

Susan stood in the door. Her face came into the mirror.

“My
charm bracelet”
she said. Her face moved next to Momma's face. They were all three in the mirror together. Zoe's eyes cupped their silence.

“It's in your jewelry box, isn't it?”

“I guess I would have checked there, wouldn't I?”

“How about the pocket of your coat? Remember, the last time you thought you'd lost it—”

“I looked there, too. I've looked everywhere.”

“Do you have to wear it?”

“I want to wear it.”

Momma made the exhausted noise, the little growl that lived at the back of her throat. “All right,” she said. “You finish Zoe's hair, I'll go find the charm bracelet.”

She gave the brush to Susan. She left the mirror and made impatient high-heel sounds in the hallway.

“Yikes, Zo, look at this
hair,”
Susan said. She brought her skimming, soaped smell. She brought the optimism and the swift, confident clicking of herself.

“I don't want to have my picture taken,” Zoe told her.

“Well, there's no escape. The Christmas picture is going to get you whether you like it or not. Now brace yourself, this might hurt a little.”

“Ow,” Zoe cried, although Susan's strokes hurt less than Momma's had.

“Just be brave.”

“I hate having my picture taken,” Zoe said. “I hate the dress she got me.”

“I know, I know. Things are terrible. Criminy, look at this
knot.”

Poppa came into the mirror. He brought his size. He brought his eager, turbulent face.

“Hello, ladies,” he said. “How goes it?”

“I'm just wrestling with Zoe's hair,” Susan said. “It's the most amazing thing. It looks like hair, but then you try to get a brush through it and you see it's really something else. Wire, or something.”

Poppa laid a hand on Susan's shoulder. “We got to hurry,” he said softly. “The photo guy's gonna be here any minute now. Your mother's going out of her head.”

“I guess there'll still be Christmas if he has to wait five minutes,” Susan said.

Poppa nodded, and smiled. That had been the right answer.

“Found it,” Momma called. “It was in the clothes hamper, for heaven's sake. I might have put it through the washing machine.”

She came into the room but didn't enter the mirror. Poppa took his hand off Susan's shoulder.

“Zoe's almost ready,” Susan said.

Momma came into the mirror. The air took on noisy possibilities, an electric impatience.

“Let me finish,” Momma said. She took the brush from Susan and forced it through Zoe's hair so hard that buried thoughts were pulled to the surface of her brain. Zoe let her eyes water, let the thoughts boil. She didn't make a sound.

Later, they all sat in the afternoon dusk of the living room while Mr. Fleming made his adjustments. Mr. Fleming was a small, busy man with heavy glasses and an astonished aspect. Something invisible, known only to him, seemed always to be happening a foot in front of his thin, serious face. His camera stood on three stork legs, aiming its blind eye at the room.

“Just relax, everybody,” he said, lowering a lamp. “This 'll only take a few minutes. Right? A few minutes.”

Zoe sat on the sofa with Billy. He wore his blue blazer, with a red handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket like a proud secret. Billy sat to make himself bigger, with his legs wide and his skinny arms splayed on the cushions. He believed things were important but not necessarily serious.

“Great dress,” he said to Zoe from the side of his mouth. She hunched up. Her forehead burned. Sometimes Billy meant what he said and sometimes he meant the opposite. The dress was green, tied at the middle with a red bow the size of a cabbage. When Momma brought it home, Zoe had shrugged in haphazard assent. She had somehow not fully understood that she was meant to wear it, and soon.

“Let's have the kids on the sofa,” Momma said. “And Con, you and I can stand back here.” She had about her an air of avid, defiant sorrow. She was already preparing to be dissatisfied with all the proofs Mr. Fleming would send.

“Ma,” Billy said. “That's what we do every year.”

“Well, professor,” Momma said, “do you have a better idea?”

“I want to stand this year,” Susan said. “I look fat when I'm sitting down.”

Susan wore the dress she'd fought for, white ruffles with an emerald sash. Momma had insisted it wasn't Christmasy enough.

But Susan wanted what she wanted with a glacial singularity. Momma's desires were too far-flung. She wanted Susan in a more Christmasy dress but at the same time she wanted new cordovan loafers for Billy and a different hairstyle for herself (would it look too young?) and six boxes of white Christmas lights instead of the colored ones she'd bought. Susan could always win that way, by knowing with a jeweler's precision.

Momma said, “It'll look funny if three of us are standing behind the sofa and just Zoe and Billy are sitting on it,”

“Why don't you sit between Zoe and Bill,” Poppa said to Momma, “and Susie and I can stand back here.”

Momma's mouth made its line. It said its no, silently, while Momma turned inside herself. She wore a red dress with a sprig of holly and three gold glass balls trembling at the breast.

“What if you and I sat on the sofa,” she said. “And all three kids stood in back?”

“Zoe's too short,” Billy said. “All you'll see is the top of her head.”

Momma nodded. “All right,” she said. “Fine. Whatever. I'll sit. Susan, you stand in back with your father.”

She was lost in multiplicity. She wanted to stand behind the sofa with Poppa but she also wanted new records of Christmas carols and a set of dishes hand-painted with candy canes and a real pearl necklace to give to Susan for high school graduation.

“Get ready,” Mr. Fleming said. “Get in your positions. Right?”

Momma put herself on the sofa between Billy and Zoe. She blued the air with her nervous shining and her pride, the tiny music of her earrings. In three weeks the cards would be back from the printer: Season's Greetings from the Stassos Family.

“Mr. Fleming?” she said. “How does this look to you? As a composition.”

Mr. Fleming rotated a lamp a fraction of an inch. He looked at the Stassos family with awestruck myopia.

“Right,” he said. “Perfect. Just about perfect. Susan, move a little to the left of your father. Right. There. That's perfect.”

Zoe shifted on the sofa cushion. She repositioned her arms in an effort to conceal the red bow at her waist.

“Zoe, don't fidget,” Momma said. She leaned toward Billy, adjusted the handkerchief in his pocket. She whispered to him, and he put out a helpless spasm of laughter. Zoe glanced back at Poppa and Susan standing behind the sofa. Briefly, she thought Susan was wearing a wedding dress, all sheen and lace. Susan stood next to Poppa. She was calm and beautiful.

“Fine,” Mr. Fleming said. “You look aces, all of you. Now you're all going to smile for me. Right?”

Zoe saw that she was not in the picture. She shifted her weight, moved closer toward the center. She still wasn't in the picture.

“Hey, Zoe,” Mr. Fleming said. “Are you going to smile? For me?”

She nodded. She started to smile. The room exploded with light.