The Murderer's Daughters (24 page)

“You look good, sugar.” We sat, and he peered across the table at me. “But tired. You’re not burning the candle at both ends again, are you?”

“Again? When did I ever burn them the first time?”

“Don’t kid a kidder.” He seemed concerned, trying to be a real father right in the middle of the visiting room.

Gray showed in the stubble of his beard. Poor Dad never got a close shave. His razors had to last a long time. How long had he been using the too-used blade that scraped his face?

“Do you need a refill in your account, Dad?”

He pushed my words away with his hands. “I’m fine. I’m working, aren’t I?”

“Right.” I’d get him some money as soon as I got home. I tried to remember how much I had in my checking account. Three hundred? I’d send twenty dollars.

“So who’s the guy?”

“What guy?”

“The guy who put those black rings under your eyes.”

I touched the thin skin beneath my eyes.

“Look, Tootsie, whoever he is, he isn’t right for you. You’re not back with that ballplayer, are you?”

“He’s not a ballplayer, Dad; he used to be. He owns a gym.”

“Gym, schmim. He owns a wife and kids. He’s a bum. Get rid of him.” He tapped the edge of the table for emphasis. “No one but a bum cheats. Say what you will, I never cheated on your mother.”

Jesus, take me now.
“I didn’t say I’d gone back to him.”

“And you never said you didn’t.”

“It’s immaterial. I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“Cheaters cheat, that’s what they do. You need a man you can trust. Someone to lean on.”

“Right. You’re right, Dad.” Telling him about Quinn had been crazy, a desperate reach out for help, for closeness.

“I worry, Sugar Pop.”

“I know you do.” I rummaged in every corner of my brain for a conversation I could have with my father where I wouldn’t want to drive a knife into my own heart.

“So,” he said. “Your sister, how was her birthday?”

“It was two months ago.”

“Right. I knew that.” He ran a hand over his chin. “Jesus, these razors. I go around like a bum. I know when your sister’s birthday is, Merry. What I meant to say is, what did you do?”

“We went out to eat. With Drew.”

“Drew, huh? Seems like he’s always around. Think he’ll be my son-in-law?”

I nodded. “Sure do, Dad. He’s one of the good ones, like you want for me.”

“Not a cheater, right?”

“No. Not a cheater.” Not a cheater, not a beater.

My father’s crime had another name now. My job forced me to name
him more than a killer; now I knew to call it domestic violence. My father was a specialized killer. Now I had something else I couldn’t bear to think about.

Lulu said
domestic violence
sounded too clean for what our father did. She didn’t want to talk about it.
Murderer
was enough of a name for her. She said nothing else mattered.

But I knew she was wrong.

“Does Lulu ever ask about me?” My father wore his puppy eyes.

“She usually wants to know how the visit was.”

She wants to know if you finally dropped to your knees to ask forgiveness. She wonders if you finally howled to the winds and admitted that you ruined our lives.

“She asks if everything’s okay.” I crossed my fingers at the lie, knowing how angry Lulu would be if she heard me.

“It’ll never be okay. I’m stuck here forever.” He smacked one hand into the other, and I jumped at the sound. “Jesus Christ, what am I supposed to do to get her to come here? She’s as stubborn as your mother ever was.”

I sat tight and straight, crossing my ankles and pressing them together.

“It would help a hell of a lot if she wrote to the parole board, you know.”

I let his voice trail off. “I’ll ask again.”

He made thumbs-up signs with both hands. “Hey, that’s all I can ask, right? Thanks, Tootsie.”

Lulu’s June wedding day dawned pure with promise. Helping her dress, I worked hard to keep the atmosphere as clean and beautiful as the North Carolina sky that filtered in through the French paned window. The sky was southern-spring blue, and we had a view of Asheville spread out before us. The hotel room’s elegance reflected my sister’s regal bearing. “You look beautiful.”

Lulu gazed at herself in the mirror. “I should have eloped.”

“Mama would like that dress,” I said. Satin slipped over Lulu’s hips like thick cream. “You have such a great body. Like Mama.”

“You’re the one who looks like her, not me.”

“But you have her body.”

“How would you know?”

“I know.”

Lulu shook her head. “No. Mama was curvy. Like you. You think that I’m built like her because she was tall, tall compared to you, but you have her shape. You’re her in miniature.”

Looking in the mirror, I studied the reflected contrast between my dark hair and my shell pink dress. Mrs. Winterson, Drew’s mother—
Call me Peg, hon
—would be horrified by the high neckline, just as she’d been by the scar-hiding dress I’d worn to the rehearsal dinner last night. Next to Peg, I’d looked like a nun. Her tight-fitting yellow silk dress with four-inch heels dyed to match had showed off a set of breasts she treated like a favorite accessory.

“Honey, look at that beautiful bosom and that tiny little waist.” Peg had eyed me up and down with triple-mascaraed eyes. “You have to wear something cut down low, honey.”

Drew had intervened before his mother went any further. Drunk as she was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d taken out a pair of nail scissors and cut my cocktail dress down to the cleavage.

“Mom, between you and Daphne, we’ll have enough to go around,” Drew had said, lifting his chin toward his sister’s overflowing breasts.

“Drew!” Daphne had scolded, leaning against her plastered husband.

Peg Winterson had tinkled her deep-cigarette laugh. “Well, don’t blame me if you get the heat vapors, Merry. Really, high neck and sleeves in June!”

Lulu must have been thinking my thoughts as she continued looking in the mirror. Cupping her hands under her breasts and pushing them up to make small mounds, she asked, “Bosomy enough for Peg, do you think?”

Lulu’s light brown hair curled in a loose knot gathered low. She’d suffered the hairdresser’s machinations insisted upon by Peg gracefully. “I look like a milkmaid, right?” Lulu asked, touching her unadorned white dress.

“You look ethereal,” I said. “You can leave the hootchy-kootchy to Daphne and Peg.”

“Grandma.” Lulu smacked her lips to set her lipstick. “Remember how she told me not to wear miniskirts?”

“Because you’d look like a hootchy-kootchy dancer,” I said. “I wish she were here. How old would Grandma be?”

“I don’t know. What’s the difference?”

“I’m just curious. Don’t you wish Mom were here?”

Lulu crossed her arms over her breasts. “She’d show enough cleavage for the entire wedding.”

“And look better than anyone in the Heritage Ballroom.”

“Anyone in the entire Grove Park Inn,” Lulu added.

“Anyone in the state of North Carolina.” I turned my head from side to side. “Do you really think I look like her?”

“Don’t fish. You know you do.”

“Dad says you look like his side of the family.”

“Grandma would be eighty-seven, I think,” Lulu said. “And Mimi Rubee would be sixty-six, or maybe sixty-five. God, she was young when Mama was born.”

“Dad asked me to give you and Drew a present from him.” The moment I said the words, I wanted to wind them back in.

“What? A tin cup?”

“Don’t be mean, Lulu. Not today.”

“Just don’t say his name, okay? Don’t give me any presents from him.” My sister shook her head. “It’s my wedding day. Stand up for me—Drew’s drunken relatives are about to eat me alive. I just want it to be perfect, just for today.”

“And for tomorrow?”

“Calm. Good. Sweet and nice. Is that too much to expect?”

“No.” I took Lulu’s hand, her white-gloved-all-the-way-to-the-elbow hand, and we walked out to her marriage.

Lulu and Drew spent their honeymoon in Iceland, where the average June temperature was fifty-four degrees and the record for heat was something like seventy. Drew’s summers with his family in North Carolina had given him an allergy to hot weather. While visiting his parents the previous August, he’d broken out in rashes, which he’d ascribed to the weather. Lulu thought he was allergic to his voluble drunk mother, but Lulu kept her counsel, and passed the calamine lotion.

Besides, Lulu had said, she liked the idea of going to Iceland. She couldn’t go much farther and still be in this world. In Iceland, she could let go of deception. She wouldn’t have to remember her made-up past. If they had books to read and Drew could find an occasional poker game in the hotel, they’d always be happy. As long as they had each other.

In a moment of prewedding vulnerability, Lulu had said letting go of our father’s name was her best wedding present of all. I knew how she felt—I wished I could take Drew’s name. Not that I’d ever break my father’s heart like that.

I packed up my apartment during the weeks I waited for Lulu and Drew to return from their honeymoon. I was getting ready to move into the huge, rambling Cambridge house they’d bought before the wedding. We weren’t going to live in the same space, of course; I’d have my own apartment with my own entrance. Long ago, a previous owner had divided the house into two apartments. The Victorian home sat on a big corner lot. My entrance would be on one street, while theirs would be on the other.

I supposed it seemed pathetic, me living next door to my sister and brother-in-law, but it felt safe for Lulu and me, and Drew didn’t seem to mind.

When I’d met Drew, I couldn’t miss how he and Lulu came together like magnetized dolls. Drew’s life didn’t have the drama of Lulu’s, but he’d grown up with elements of craziness. Drew’s father blamed Drew’s mother’s southern roots for her drinking, her affairs, and her overlarge personality. Drew’s mother blamed the state of Nebraska for her husband’s frozen personality. Their ice and heat created a house of storms.

Lulu and Drew both worshiped peace.

When I moved into the new house next week, I’d walk up one short flight of steps to enter my three medium-size rooms. I suspected my apartment had once been the servants’ quarters, but that seemed fair, as Drew’s money had financed the entire deal.

Drew and Lulu entered their much larger apartment off an outsize deck built in the back. The house had modern touches, especially the updated kitchen and master bath, to suit Lulu, while retaining the period details, like the ornate crown molding and ceiling medallions that drove Drew crazy with architectural love. I’d heard enough poetic waxing about the antique amber doorknobs to be satisfied with that particular topic for the rest of my life.

Lulu and Drew had tons of room on their side. They could have kids, and offices, entertainment centers, and even a massage parlor if they so
wished. It was all fine with me; three rooms suited me. I had no intention of procreating. Motherhood made you a prisoner. I remember Mrs. Cohen always watching out for her granddaughter, Rachel, practically tying herself to the little girl for fear she’d fall out a window or something. Each time Rachel visited, Mrs. Cohen locked up anything the little girl might swallow, eat, or be smothered by, choke on, or use as poison.

When I babysat Rachel, I didn’t dare blink because that meant I spent a moment blind to her imminent death. I didn’t want children, and though I never said a word, I hoped Lulu and Drew wouldn’t have them either. The three of us would do just fine as our own pack of refugees from family dysfunction living in Cambridge.

My emptying apartment seemed smaller and dirtier the more I packed. Each poster had covered some sordid detail I’d forgotten, such as the hole Quinn had punched in the wall the last time I’d told him to leave, when I’d threatened to call his wife if he ever contacted me again. Like the area where I’d thrown up Manischewitz wine after some half-assed Passover seder Lulu, Drew, and I had attempted; I’d covered the pink blotch on the gray carpet with a hooked rug.