The Murderer's Daughters (44 page)

“I want my family. We have so few years left.” My father offered his open hands. “Okay. I have no rights, Lulu. I won’t move to Boston, not if you don’t want me.”

Biting my lip until it became numb, I scratched NO, NO, NO into the soft flesh inside my arm. Swallowing, I finally spoke. “I’ve put fifteen thousand dollars into an account for you. For when you get out. To start your life. I’ll make sure you get it.”

For you, Grandma. I promised I’d take care of things, and now I have.

“Can I write to you?” he asked.

“Have I ever been able to stop you?” I rose to leave, my stomach hollow.

He folded his hands. My father. A penitent. My curse.

I walked away, then stopped and turned to face my father. “What color were Mama’s eyes?”

“The same as yours, Lulu. Just look in the mirror.”

I’d stopped visiting my father. After years of being his faithful daughter, his good daughter, the daughter on whom he relied, when I received the letter notifying me of his release, I’d stopped cold.

His letter had turned me to stone. Everything that followed—Victor, my troubles with Lulu—had sent me deep into a place from which I’d had to struggle to come back.

Now, here I was. Back in Brooklyn, looking for my father’s house.

Forsythia bloomed along the dense bushes lining the street. Benson-hurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood I’d never visited, seemed made of different brick than the Brooklyn of my childhood. I’d grown up surrounded by the dingy pink buildings of Flatbush. Here the bricks looked redder.

I checked the house numbers as I walked. Slowly. Putting off the moment. Twice I reached for my phone. I wanted to hear Lulu say everything would be okay, not to worry, but I pushed away temptation. I had to comfort myself. Lulu didn’t know that I’d come to visit, or even that I’d
left Boston at six that morning. If she’d known, she’d have convinced me not to make the trip.

My father killed my mother.

It would be thirty-two years in July.

I’d been five and a half.

Lulu had never visited him.

I always had.

Everything would be okay.

Halfway down the block I spotted my father holding on to a chain-link fence. Seeing him free stunned me. No guard-enforced rules were in place to prevent his hugs or kisses. To-the-minute visiting hours wouldn’t limit our time together. I tapped my chest repeatedly, giving myself full freedom to trace my scars through my soft spring sweater. No one plucked my fingers from my father’s mark.

His smile grew wider. He dipped his head a few times, motioning
come on, come on.
I dragged myself forward, my steps punctuated by shaky breaths. If my father hadn’t been outside waiting for me, I’d have turned and gone back to my rented car.

Finally, appearing impatient, my father unlatched the gate and walked toward me. I looked for signs of prison clinging to him, his gait—did he walk like a man being watched? Did he look nervous, as though too much space was around? All I saw was a graying man with a still-muscular build walking with the stride of a handsome man. Rectangular wire-rim glasses had replaced the Clark Kent frames he’d worn in prison, appearing oddly fashionable, as did the white Gap-looking shirt he’d tucked into a pair of beige chinos.

Grandma Zelda always said my father had been a hoo-ha fashion plate.

“Baby doll,” Dad said softly. “Tootsie.” He pulled me in for a long, hard bear hug.
Hug back, hug,
I prodded myself. I put an arm around him, forcing him to embrace the lifeless column I’d become. He pressed my rigid arms into my ribs.

“So,” he said. “Look at this. Here you are.” He kept a hand clasped on my elbow even as he gave up the hug.

“Nice house.” I pointed at the ordinary two-family, giving my arm something to do besides not hug him.

He beamed. “I did okay, huh? Come on.” He chucked his chin at the bushes. “Forsythia. Brooklyn’s official flower.”

“I didn’t know that.” My words felt clumsy, too big for my tongue.

“The apartment I got, it’s not bad. Well, you’ll see it, of course. It’s small. In the basement. An in-law. But, hey, got to start somewhere.” He led me down the driveway to a side entrance, opened the screen door, gesturing for me to enter first. “Take the stairs to the left.”

A thin carpet runner covered the worn wooden steps leading down.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Go in.”

I opened the unlocked door to a painfully clean kitchen.

“I rented it furnished, but it’s not bad stuff. For now.”

“I’m sure everything’s fine, Dad.” My jaw needed oiling. I’d rusted like the Tin Man.

Black place mats were aligned straight and perfect on a gray-veined Formica tabletop. A chair was tucked underneath the exact middle of each side of the table. Round brass studs held red leather seats to the chairs’ metal frames. White enameled cabinets hung over a cracked porcelain sink. The refrigerator and stove looked as though they’d have blocks of ice inside. I’d fallen into a hole in time.

“Here’s the rest.” He pointed through a doorway, proud, motioning for me to follow. Low-pile rugs covered most of the scuffed wooden floor in the combination living room–bedroom. He’d positioned a tweed daybed and chair at perfect right angles. In the corner, a desk and dresser stood straight with an old trunk between them. Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
hung framed in yellow plastic.

“It came furnished,” he reminded me. “But I bought the picture and the trunk.”

“You keep it neat.”

“Habit. One thing out of place in my cell drove me nuts.” He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Soon I’m going to refinish the floors.”

He showed me the small bathroom, which had a faded pink tub and sink and the same linoleum stamped with cabbage roses that covered the kitchen floor. Soap, toothpaste, and a green plastic glass lined the immaculate sink edge.

I made a show of admiring the small pantry holding Lipton soup mix, Froot Loops, and cans of tuna until we went back to the kitchen.

“Sit,” he said. “We have lunch.”

I touched the place mat lightly with a fingertip, feeling the newness, feeling positive that I was the first to use it, and that I was my father’s first guest. He placed two Corelle plates down, white with a thin blue band, and matching cups and saucers. “Do you drink coffee? I can’t have anything stronger in the house. Regulations.”

I nodded, as though home regulations were the most normal thing in the world. “Coffee’s fine. Great.”

“How do you take it?” The glass creamer and sugar bowl looked out of place in his rough hands, yet he held them with a shy delicacy.

“Just milk.” I tried not to cry at realizing my father didn’t know how I drank my coffee.

“This is half-and-half; I’ll get the milk.”

“No, Dad, don’t. Half-and-half would be a treat.”

“See? That’s what I thought.” He beamed as he placed the creamer in front of me. “Look at you, not an extra ounce. Perfect as ever.” He swung his arm around to indicate the framed gallery on his wall. An assault of photos hung in collages and individual frames. Every picture I’d given my father, he’d enshrined in wood. Tape marks still showed from where he’d hung them on his cell walls.

I saw my nieces as babies, as toddlers, as six-and ten-year-olds. Ruby in a pink tutu, Cassandra graduating from nursery school. My college graduation. Lulu’s wedding. Some looked as though he’d enlarged them. Hours of work were evident on the wall.

“I made the frames myself,” he said. “I set up a little shop in the cellar. I’m only half done. My landlady tells me I have the prettiest family in Brooklyn.”

“Except we don’t live in Brooklyn, Dad.”

“But I do, and didn’t you all start with me?” He put down a plate of bagels, enough for us to have half a dozen each. “I didn’t know what kind you’d want, so I picked some of each. Look, I bought garlic, plain, poppy, and something called ‘everything.’ That one I don’t remember. I don’t think they had it before. You pick first,” he insisted, as though we might face a shortage.

He went back to the refrigerator and returned with a platter heaped with lox and a pink tub of TempTee whipped cream cheese.

“I haven’t had TempTee since Grandma was alive.”

“I still feel like I should pick up the phone and call her,” my father said. “She never let me down. God knows I disappointed her.”

What was he expecting from me?
No, Dad. You were a good son.
“She was good to all of us,” I said. “I never relaxed with another adult my entire childhood.” I reached for an everything bagel. “Only Grandma.”

“Not even me?” he asked.

I held the bagel and knife still. “Are you kidding, Dad?”

“Honey, we saw each other all the time. How could you not be relaxed with me?” My father’s eyes begged me to lie.
Please, give me this bit of peace,
he pleaded in silence.

Appetite gone, I put the uncut bagel on my plate. “Dad, why do you think I haven’t seen you since December, or was it November?”

“Because of Lulu,” he said. “I thought maybe she told you not to come.”

Overwhelmed by the desire to rip the framed pictures off the wall and smash each one, I tore the bagel in half, then in half again. “How can you tell yourself these fairy tales?”

“Will we have to cover the same ground over and over now that I’m out?” My father picked up the knife and sawed a plain bagel in half, slowly, millimeter by millimeter until it fell apart, then went for his butter knife.

I reached out and stopped him, placing my hand on his. “Do you have scars?” I asked. “On your wrists?”

My father pulled his arms away, as though he thought I’d grab him and hold him down so I could see for myself. “Why do you have to do this? It happened so long ago.”

I stood and undid the top two buttons of my baby blue sweater, which I now realized was all fluffy angora and little-girl cute. I pulled the left side off my shoulder. “Do your scars look like this?”

“Stop. Please.” He came toward me. I backed away.

“You’ve never even seen my scars,” I said. “You’ve never seen what you did, Daddy.”

“I don’t have to see them, baby. I live with what I did every single day.”

“No. I do.” I closed my eyes, determined that I’d scrape the skin off my arms before I let myself cry. “I felt as though I were locked up in jail with you. When I wasn’t visiting, I was thinking about you being in there or dreading the visits because they terrified me, or feeling so guilty about dreading them, I’d write you a letter. And in all that time, only once did you tell me you were sorry.”

“Didn’t you know? I’m always sorry. Baby, I was just a kid when it happened.”

“No. You were twenty-eight. I was the kid.”

“What do you girls want from me? How can I make it up? How can I get you to understand how much I need you both, how much I love you? I want my family,” he begged. “Please, sweetheart, you’ve always been there for me. Don’t do this to me now.”

“When were you there for me?” I pulled up the shoulder of my sweater and leaned forward. Every beat of my pulse thudded in my ears.

“Didn’t I at least try?” he asked. “I kept up with your schoolwork, your boyfriends, your career—I cared about everything you did; it all interested me. Every report you wrote and all the drawings you sent, the cards, the poems; I have your entire life in there.” He pointed through the doorway.

My father made fists of his trembling hands and rested his head on them. I wondered if trying mattered, knowing, whether it did or not, his pain splintered my soul.

My father was right; he did have my entire life. He owned it.

“Okay, Dad,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m just suggesting you think about it, understand why it’s not something we can put away as easily as you’d like.”

I picked up my mangled bagel and spread TempTee on top, not knowing what I could do for him at this point, except eat the bagel.

“It’s all there,” he said. “In my desk. Every single thing you wrote. Do you want to see?”

“Really. It’s okay, Dad.” I choked a piece of bagel past my dry throat and into my clenched stomach. “Never mind.”
Please stop talking, please stop, please stop.

“You think I’m a monster, but I’m not. Do you understand? It’s late, but, please, I can still help you.”

His eyes were mine.

My father was a limited man. He’d never grow. I could only hope to learn how not to hate him immoderately or love him too much. I needed to make my father life-size.

I pressed my fingers against my mouth. My father had robbed me of so much. My mother. My family. A life I wanted hovered in the distance of my imagination, but being in his home, staring at his eyes, my eyes, I had neither the cowardice nor the courage to leave. And someday Lulu’s daughters might ask to meet their grandfather, and even if my sister managed to take them, she’d only have room for her rage.

“It’s a good bagel, Dad, the everything. I like it.”

He gave a shaky smile. “You never had it before?”

I shook my head. “It’s new to me.” One more fib. One more lie. One more present for my father. Lulu would probably think I was weak, but doing it felt right for me.