Part 16 (1/2)

I put the book back and followed his howling call back to the kitchen, Gretel trotting close and anxious by my side.

Bill, still barefoot in his PJs, had my daddy bent over the sink. He was was.h.i.+ng Daddy's eyes out with what looked like a thin gruel of Maalox and water. He nodded to me, calm and firm, holding my daddy's face down in the sink with one solid arm. Daddy was struggling a little, but he stilled when I came in.

”There you are,” Daddy said. ”Oh, there you are. Don't go away. I have a speech I want to say for you. I have it on a paper. I been waiting so long.”

I ignored my father entirely and made my eyes click dryly in their sockets to look at Bill and only Bill. ”How'd you know to do that? With the Maalox?”

”I was a med tech. Army,” he said.

”Thank G.o.d you didn't leave,” Daddy said to me, bent over, his blue T-s.h.i.+rt riding up his back. I could see two sharp k.n.o.bs of spine in the s.p.a.ce between his s.h.i.+rt and his jeans. He was so thin, his very skin looked worn down and sheer, like any minute the bones would press up through it. Thom could break him in one hand. He was useless. ”I been waiting here to say my speech. Can you go get my paper? I wrote it all down in a paper in the drawer over yonder. The drawer in the phone desk.” He aimed his words down into the sink, and his voice still sounded thick with snot. I could hardly make him out.

”I'm Bill Mantles. I'd introduce you to Mr. Lolley here, but I take it you two know each other?” Bill asked me, all ironical.

”We've met,” I said.

”Can I pet your dog?” Bunny asked. She was at the other end of the galley kitchen, sitting in front of the built-in desk, in my mother's old chair. She'd turned the chair around to watch her dad, and she was swinging her feet back and forth. They were too short to reach the floor.

”She's a little het up,” I said to her. ”Give her a sec.”

Bill kept rinsing, and my father kept talking into the sink, asking me to go get the paper out of the desk drawer so he could read me his speech. Even his voice had aged and gone thin, and his ropy-looking arms had deep blue veins bulging up all over them. He looked like a photocopy, too, as bleached out and ruined as the print of the s.h.i.+ps hanging in the other room. I tried to let his voice run past me and go down the drain the same way the running water was going.

”The army gave you a cla.s.s on pepper spray?” I said to Bill. I spoke loud enough to drown my daddy out.

Bill nodded. ”I had chemical weapons training.”

”My daddy was in Desert Storm,” Bunny said, proud. The chair's ladder back blocked the drawer my father was asking me to open. Her feet swung back and forth, back and forth.

My father saw where I was looking and said, ”Yes! That drawer! That drawer!”

I stayed put. Daddy could go to h.e.l.l and read his speech to Satan. If I stayed here, Thom would come and give him the chance sooner than he might like. ”You still work in the medical field?” I asked Bill, like I was making small talk at a church social, like I couldn't feel each heartbeat like a gunshot in my aching head.

Bill's cheeks flushed a faint pink, and he kept working on rinsing out my father's eyes, not looking at me. ”I'm not working right now.”

”Daddy's home with me,” Bunny said, and the prideful tone had gone to defensive. Little tiger Little tiger, I thought, staring at me from the chair with her eyes gone fierce. ”He takes care of me.”

”You're lucky. I wish I'd had that kind of daddy, growing up,” I told her, and she looked away, mollified. ”I wish I had one like that now.” It came out heartfelt, the truest thing in the room.

Daddy said, ”Rose Mae? Ain't you gonna get my speech?”

I didn't answer. Bill let go of the scruff of my father's neck, but Daddy stayed bent over the sink, dripping. Bill said, ”Okay, Gene, take a swig of this Maalox. Rinse it around and then spit it out. Do that a couple times. You might want to swallow some, too. How do your eyes feel? Are they- Wait a sec. Your name is Rose Mae?”

I nodded. ”Rose Mae Lolley.”

Bill said, ”From my wall?”

Daddy finally stood upright. He took the bottle and tilted it back, mercifully plugging up his word hole with it. He swished the Maalox around a couple times and spit it out, then said to me, ”The bank called my loan on the house. Bill and them have had it, what, six months now, Bill? It was empty a long time. This place is a rental. I took it so I could watch out the wind-er for you and Claire.”

I'd forgotten that, how he always said ”wind-er” for window. It was strange because he said words like meadow meadow and and follow follow properly, but window had always ended in his mouth with an -er. properly, but window had always ended in his mouth with an -er.

”Wait a minute,” said Bill. ”What?”

”Bill wants to know how your eyes feel,” I said.

”Good,” my daddy said. He turned to Bill. ”Good.” His nose was still running. Bill handed him a paper towel to wipe it, but his eyebrows had puzzled up and his brow had creased.

”You should thank Bill,” I told Daddy.

”Thank you, Bill,” Daddy said, obedient, then he turned back to me and added, ”Look, Rose Mae, everything is the same.”

”You used to own my house, is that what you meant?” Bill asked, putting it together.

Daddy was looking at me, though, speaking only to me. ”I knew you'd come. I watch our old house alla time, when I'm home. I put the TV on for noise, and what I do is I watch for you and Claire right through that front wind-er.”

”That's kinda creepy, Gene,” Bill said. The kitchen seemed crowded now that Daddy was standing up. Too many hearts beating in the room, too much carbon dioxide. My vision was down to a pinhole now. My lungs rustled in my chest like dried-up leaves. I kept my eyes on Bill, and Daddy was a thin wraith in the fog beside him.

”I watch for you when I'm not working,” Daddy said to me. ”I have a good job now, Rose Mae. At the Home Depot.”

”I hear they have good benefits,” I said. Someone had told me that recently. I turned to the girl. ”Your name's Bunny?”

She was still sitting in the chair, pulling my gaze with the tick-tock swing of her pendulum feet. She giggled like I was the silliest thing she'd ever seen.

”My name's Sharon.”

I blinked, confused and swaying.

”Hand me my speech out that drawer, won't you, Sharon?” Daddy said, and then to me, ”I'm not good at talking things, so I wrote it down exactly, what I need to say.”

Someone said, ”I do not want to f.u.c.king hear it,” really loud, gunshot loud, in the quiet kitchen. The someone was me.

”I think we should head on home, Bunny,” Bill said.

Sharon hopped out of the chair and threaded her way past Daddy, to her father.

”Nice to meet you,” Bill was saying. ”Sort of.” He put one arm around Sharon and they went past me, out of the kitchen.

Now there was nothing in front of me to look at but my father. I said to him, ”What do you mean, everything the same?”

”I'm in the program, Rose. I got my five-year pin in January, but I been stuck on step nine, waiting for you and Claire. Please won't you let me read it to you?”

”Every little thing? Exactly the same?” I said. The air was thin and hot in my dry lungs. I was panting louder than Gretel. I followed Bill and Sharon into the living room, listing hard starboard as if my feet were borrowed or brand new. My father came after me. My body felt as unwieldy as a bag of sand, but I went straight to the sofa and made my heavy body climb up onto the cus.h.i.+ons. I grabbed my mother's faded s.h.i.+p print and jerked it off the nail. I slid it down behind the sofa, leaning it against the wall.

Bill and Sharon were at the front door. I heard Bill's sharp intake of breath, and then he said, ”Holy c.r.a.p. You did that to the wall? At my house, too?”

He meant my name and the black tick marks. My father had reproduced them here exactly, only fresher and darker. These had never been painted over.

I said, ”My mother did the ones at your house.”