The Murderer's Daughters (23 page)

I tried straightening the sheets, a difficult task as I could barely stand without weaving.

“Leave it.” Quinn unwrapped me from my shiny red shirt as though I were a Christmas present. After getting me down to bare skin and lowering me to the bed, he knocked away a pile of books, fumbled around for my tape player, and hit Play, ready to accept any sounds that came on. Marvin Gaye poured out, and I didn’t give a damn how obvious the choice sounded. Quinn seeped through my pores and up into my brain, and once again he owned me.

He covered me, rocking us, welding us together, and then pressing me down hard to finish. I thought maybe I’d never come back. Then I fell into a deep sleep.

At four
A.M.
, I woke to find Quinn standing over me. When he saw my eyes open, he sat at the edge of the bed and tried to cover me.

“Don’t,” I said. I struggled up and rested my head on his shoulder, smelling bar, soap, and cigarettes.

He ran his hand over my tangled curls. I nuzzled my chin into his large, warm hand. “Got to go, kid.”

“Where does she think you are this time of night?”

“Who?”

“You know who.” My hand crept to my chest.

“She thinks I’m exactly where I am, hanging out with a friend.” His voice closed the topic. Don’t broach the holy wife, whore. Don’t name the sainted children. Quinn’s scowl slammed my words down my throat. I backed away and locked my arms around my knees.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

“Don’t.”

“Are we starting this again?”

I picked up my wrinkled cotton robe. Quinn had taught me to go to bed naked. No man before Quinn had seen my scar. He’d accepted my lies about a knife fight at Duffy without comment or judgment. At first, I’d loved that. Now I knew the truth; he simply wasn’t that curious. Thus, I realized, he didn’t love me. When you love someone, you’re curious about everything he does, everything he is.

I knew because that’s how I felt about Quinn.

I managed to avoid Quinn’s calls for a week and two days, until it was time to go to New York. Lulu folded my laundry as she watched me pack.

“What’s your plan, Merry? You intend to be his good girl forever?” Lulu smoothed out the wrinkles in my black jeans with angry, determined hands.

I shoved a book into my backpack as I worked on the right response. Tomorrow I’d take my biweekly Greyhound ride to see Dad, riding the bus to Port Authority, and then the ferry to the prison. Each time, Lulu came over the night before to berate me in advance for going. Then, when I got back home, she’d be waiting for me, wringing the visit out of me like water from a sponge.

“Dad’s good girl?” I was too tired to argue. Avoiding Quinn’s phone calls had left me limp. I’d begun the day in sleep deficit. “Is that who you mean?”

I picked up a sweaty bottle of Michelob. Lulu knew that I’d slept with
Quinn again. She’d read the signs, and when she asked and I answered, she’d simply shaken her head. Her reaction depressed me, as though my transgressions were now so unsurprising they rated no more than a gesture.

“Right. Daddy’s good girl,” Lulu said. “I can’t imagine Quinn thinks of you as a good girl.”

“It’s not like our father has anybody else.” Our conversation had the exhaustion of repetition as we laid out our tired arguments without hope. Each of us was years into waiting for change from the other.

Lulu grabbed my backpack. She arranged and wedged things far better than I ever could. “So what?” She rolled a cotton sweater around my copy of
Ms. Magazine.
“He doesn’t deserve anyone.”

“Like it or not, he’s family,” I said.

“You and Drew are my only family.” Lulu refolded a shirt.

“Do we have to do this?” I tried changing the subject. “How’s work?”

“Work is a constant state of terror. I thought being a resident might bring relief, but now I have the fear of an intern killing someone while they’re under my supervision.”

“At least you love what you do.”

“Maybe that’s because I like who I am,” she said.

“Screw you.” I turned away so she couldn’t see me pinch my forearm hard and fast to keep from touching my chest. Lulu believed sharing her brute opinions would help me, and nothing convinced her otherwise. “I’ll find the right job. Not everything is about my being whatever loser you think I am.”

Lulu zipped up the backpack and leaned on the headboard, pushing my pillows behind her. At least I’d made my bed before she came over. “I don’t think you’re a loser,” she said, “but you give it all away. Look at Quinn. You don’t believe he really has anything to offer, do you?”

“What should he be offering?”

“Security? Marriage? A life? A family?”

“Maybe none of that interests me. Maybe I want a different life.”

“Fine. What kind do you want?” She clasped her hands on top of her head and looked up to the heavens for help in saving my slut-worn soul. “Going to bars and sleeping with other women’s husbands isn’t a life.”

“It must be a life, because I’m living it.” I finished my beer, watching Lulu watch me. I lit a cigarette, and Lulu coughed.

“We just want you to be safe. And happy.”

“We?” I searched the room. “Is Drew hiding in the closet? Christ, Lu, you’re not even married yet. What, are you and he so joined at the hip you can’t even say you want something without bringing him in? He didn’t hang the moon, Lulu. Maybe what you wish isn’t what I wish. For instance, I wish you’d see Dad. Just once. For me.”

Lulu’s face tightened. Closed for repairs, closed for the winter, closed for the season. Lulu shut down at will.

“Not going to happen, Merry,” Lulu said. “Never going to be. Find a new wish.”

I took the 5:45 morning bus and planned to take the 8:00 back that night. I leaned my head against the Greyhound seat’s headrest, feeling the familiar tug in my chest as the bus pulled into Port Authority. I dreaded getting off and seeing the crumpled newspapers and food wrappers covering the bus station, watching the bums panhandling, and smelling stale coffee and urine. No matter how many quarters and dollars I gave away, I knew it made no difference.

Port Authority had become a den of hungry families, thieves, and legless men on wooden platforms. A woman layered in sweaters despite the September heat held out dirty-nailed fingers, clawing for the money I was about to offer.

I caught a subway downtown. Shoppers filled the Saturday morning train. I shifted my backpack so the straps could dig into different spots.

Thick graffiti obscured the subway windows, making it impossible to see out. My feet rested on some sticky, dried-down puddle of what looked like blood, which I prayed was soda.

The woman seated across the aisle took a mirror from her purse and turned from left to right, examining herself. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. As my mother would be now. Like Mama, she had dark hair, though not as thick and lustrous. I touched my own dark waves. This woman’s hair seemed thin, despite her sad efforts to make it puffy. I could
see where she’d teased it, the empty spots between the stiffly sprayed strands.

I tried to imagine what my mother would look like, but, as usual, I only saw photographs. Mama had frozen at her death age. Lulu was now a year older than Mama had been when she died, but at twenty-eight, Lulu seemed far younger than my memories of Mama. My mother’s death added years to her memory; she was ever the adult and I would always be the child.

The woman across from me twisted her wedding and engagement rings in circles. Perhaps she felt my eyes, because she looked up at me with the “What? What?” expression New Yorkers perfect.

I arrived at the ferry exhausted from trying not to stare at people. Every female on the train became my mother or Aunt Cilla. I wished I’d slept while traveling from Boston. Quinn’s last phone message played in my head.

Come on, Merry! Meet me at Burke’s tonight.

I’d listened after Lulu left. The thought of a night in his arms had pulled at me so hard I’d had to take a pill just to avoid the
See him
screaming in my head. I’d gone into my dwindling stash of Valium, first spilling them on the bed to count, and then cutting one in half. My complaints of back pain brought only so many pills from my doctor. After swallowing the half tablet, I’d watered down a glass of Chablis by half and then half again, and sipped at it as I watched television, increasing the volume each time the phone rang.

I pulled my shirt away from my chest, trying to shake in cooler air as I waited, next in line. My top had a high neck to hide my scars and long sleeves so I’d attract as little attention for being a woman as possible.

Officer McNulty’s grin showed his age. Blinding white dentures had replaced his familiar tobacco-stained teeth.

“Merry, how are you?” He gave me the briefest of examinations for contraband. “I hear from your father you’ve a position in a court.”

I nodded. “I work with the victims.”

He nodded. “Good, good for you.”

He said this as though working in criminal justice was my karmic reordering.

“Have a good visit,” he said. “It’s your father’s highlight. You’re a good girl.”

Everyone knew that, even if Lulu said it as a curse.

I walked across the never-changing floor. The spotted linoleum forever reminded me of blood splatter and bits of brain, a path to my father.

A grin split my father’s face, the same damn smile each time.
Love me! Make me happy! Let me be a father for an hour!

I leaned in and felt his arms around me. Despite the rules, he snuck a hug in with the sanctioned kiss on the cheek.
One of these days, Dad,
I always warned him. One of these days, he wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt and some new guard would pull him out and klop him right across the back.

Dad smelled smoky and a little stale. Metallic odors clung to him. From the bars on his cell? From the shop where he made glasses for the inmates? We still barely spoke of anything that went on inside Richmond, locking the prison away like the knowledge of a mad aunt.

“How about some circus peanuts,” Dad.” I put my hand down low and grabbed his, squeezing tight for a second, then pulling away from his iron grip. “I left a package for you. Hope it still tastes good after being X-rayed.”