17.

Merry 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 repet.i.tion 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 s.l.u.t-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 b.u.ms 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 l.u.s.trous. 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 gla.s.s 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 d.a.m.n 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 gla.s.ses 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."

"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 sc.r.a.ped 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 b.u.m. Get rid of him." He tapped the edge of the table for emphasis. "No one but a b.u.m 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 b.u.m. 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 h.e.l.l 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."

18.

Merry June 1990 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."