Eileen, page 5
I didn’t think there was anything strange about my father’s drinking until my mother died. He’d been a run-of-the-mill beer drinker, I’d thought, whiskey just in the colder mornings. He’d gone with his friends on the police force to O’Hara’s regularly, nothing unusual. O’Hara’s was the town pub, which I’ll name after the poet whose work I always felt shut out of, even after I’d learned to read like a grown-up. Dad became persona non grata at O’Hara’s after he’d pulled his gun on the owner. Once my mother got sick—“fell ill” is an expression I like for its prissiness and, hence, its irony with respect to her violent demise—my father started taking time off work, drinking at home, wandering the streets at night, falling asleep on neighbors’ porches. And then he drank more—in the mornings, on the job. He totaled a squad car, and then fired his gun by accident in the locker room. Because he had seniority and was beloved by the whole department for reasons I’ll never understand, these indiscretions were never discussed openly. He was simply encouraged into an early retirement, replete with pension and constant surveillance and babying as the time went on and he got into more and more trouble. For some mysterious reason he switched to gin once my mother died. The most I can make of it is that perhaps gin reminded him of her perfume—she wore a stringent, flowery but bitter eau de toilette called Adelaide—and maybe imbibing the very fragrance of the dead was somehow soothing to him. But maybe not. I’ve heard a sip of gin will make you immune to mosquitoes and other pests. So perhaps he drank it with that logic in mind.
I spent the early afternoon shoveling snow. No boy ever did come asking if I’d pay him to do it for me. In the past I’d always gotten a little thrill when one of the neighborhood boys would ring the doorbell after a storm. They couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old, mittens and hats on, smelling like pine and candy canes. One boy in particular was just adorable. Pauly Daly, name sing-song and a face like an angel—big rosy cheeks and sapphire eyes. Whenever I saw him I wanted to embrace him, snuggle him in his thick wool coat. Pauly did a perfect job cleaning the snow off the car and out from under the tires, shoveled the drive well enough that I could open the driver’s side door, something I always forgot to do when I shoveled myself. It seemed so thoughtful. It proved, I imagined, that he really cared for me. One time I invited Pauly Daly inside while I looked for change to pay him. He shook off his boots before stepping into the front hall, removed his little hat. He was very well trained. Hair soft and tousled, I had to stop myself from putting my hands in it.
“Want a hot chocolate?” I asked him. I could tell he didn’t have the wherewithal to judge me as the odd, stiff and stone-faced girl everyone else saw me as, or so I thought. He sniffled and looked down at the dirty carpet, twisted one foot behind the other, then put his hat back on.
“No, thanks,” he said softly, blushing.
I kissed him on the cheek then. I meant nothing by it. He was a sweet boy and I liked him. But then he blushed and wiped away the clear mucus glistening between his nose and top lip. He looked utterly dismayed. I skidded away and dug through the pockets of coats hanging in the front closet. “Sorry,” I said after an awkward silence. I dumped all the change I could find into his cupped hands.
He nodded, called me “Mrs. Dunlop,” left, and never came around again.
When I’d finished clearing the snow off the car that Saturday, I rolled down the windows and let the Dodge run to warm up and defrost a bit. It was early afternoon by then and I wanted to drive over to Randy’s. I felt I had to. He lived in the upstairs of a split-level house not far from the interstate. I held tight to the magical notion that as long as I kept close tabs on him, he wouldn’t fall in love with anybody else. As far as I could tell, he spent most of his time alone in his apartment. But I rarely stalked him at night—I was afraid to—so who knows how many female visitors Randy entertained in the dark. From time to time a second motorcycle appeared next to his, parked in front of his snow-filled driveway. I guessed he had a best friend or brother who came to see him, and even that made me jealous. I generally parked across the street, huddled down behind the steering wheel, and watched his house in my side-view mirror. There was no real use in hiding, though. I doubt Randy would have recognized me if he’d found me camped out back there, surveilling him. I doubt he even knew my name. Still, I prayed for the perfect occasion to win him over. I spent hours sitting there scheming how I’d impress him with my feminine wiles. My daydreams of fingers and tongues and secret rendezvous in the back hallways of Moorehead kept my heart beating, or else I think I would have dropped dead from boredom. Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy. And like all intelligent young women, I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails. My father, for example, had no discretion about his pornographic magazines. They were behind the toilet, under the bed he’d shared with my mother, piled on shelves in the cellar, in a drawer in the den, in a box in the attic. And yet he was so staunchly Catholic. Of course he was. My own hypocrisies paled in comparison to my father’s. I’ve never had any guilt for what I did to him. I’ve been lucky in that regard.
Before I left for Randy’s that afternoon, I put on my mother’s old sunglasses—big, funny, petal-shaped lenses with tortoiseshell frames.
“Who do you think you’re fooling?” my father hollered, awake now and bent over the table, it seemed, to catch his breath. He wore the blanket over his back like a cape. “Going out with your pals? Happy happy?” He rolled his eyes, grabbed the back of the kitchen chair and rattled it. “Sit down, Eileen.”
“I’m late, Dad,” I lied, edging closer to the front door.
“Late for what?”
“I’m meeting a friend.”
“What friend? What for?”
“We’re going to the movies.”
He squinted and snorted and rubbed his chin and leered at me, up and down. “That’s what you wear on a date?”
“I’m meeting my girlfriend,” I told him, “Suzie.”
“What’s wrong with your sister? Take her to the movies, why don’t you?” He gestured widely with his skinny arm and the blanket fell away. He winced, as though the cold at his back were a knife stabbing him.
“Joanie couldn’t come.” Lies like this one were common. He never knew the difference. I turned the knob and opened the front door, looked up at those icicles. If I plucked one, I thought, maybe I could throw it at my father, aim for his head, hit him dead between his eyes.
“That’s right,” he said, “because your sister has a life of her own. She’s made something of herself. Not a hanger-on like you, Eileen.” He bent stiffly at the waist to pick up the blanket. I watched from down the hall and through the kitchen doorway as he struggled to tie the belt of his robe with his shaky hands, adjust the blanket, wobble back to his chair with a new bottle of gin in his hand. “Get a life, Eileen,” he said. “Get a clue.”
He knew how to hurt me. I understood, nevertheless, that he was a drunk, that whatever cruel words he had for me were the nonsensical mumblings of a man who had lost his mind. He was convinced he’d need witness protection from all the work he had done “pinning down the mob.” He seemed to think of himself as some kind of imprisoned vigilante, a saint forced to contend with evil from the confines of his cold abode. The shadowy pranks of those ghostly hoodlums, he complained, tormented him even in his dreams. I tried to reason with him. “It’s in your mind,” I said. “Nobody’s out to get you.” He’d scoff and pat my head like a small child’s. We were both a bit crazy, I suppose. Of course there was no mob in X-ville. In any case, my father had hardly done more as a cop there than pull a car over for a broken taillight. He was terribly confused.
Soon after my father retired, the chief of police took his license away. He’d been caught driving in the wrong direction on the freeway one night, and parked his car in the public cemetery the next. So he stayed at home. On foot, he was nearly as menacing. He’d wander outside in a blackout, knock on neighbors’ doors to perform invented investigatory searches, pull his gun out at shadows, lie down in the gutter or in the middle of the road. Cops dropped him off quietly at the house with a pat on the back, and one of them would scold me for letting him get so out of hand, always with an apologetic sigh, sure, but it still filled me with spite. Once, after a good six-day absence, a bender of greater proportions than I had ever seen my father go on, I got a call from a hospital two counties over and drove out there to pick him up. That persuaded me to gather up all his shoes and keep them locked in the trunk of the car from then on. He did stay indoors for the most part after that, at least in the winter. I wore the car key like a pendant around my neck. I remember the weight of it dangling there between my measly bosoms, thudding around, sticking to my hard and sweaty breastplate, scraping against my skin as I walked out the door.
Before I go on describing the events of that Saturday, I should mention the gun again. When I was growing up, my father would sit at the kitchen table after dinner and clean it, explain all of its mechanics and the necessity of its upkeep. “If you don’t do this and that”—I don’t recall his exact words—“the gun will misfire. It could kill someone.” He seemed to tell me this not as a way of inviting me into this intimate procedure, his life and work, but as a warning, to say that what he had to do was so important, sacred in fact, that if I should ever distract him, or if I should ever touch his gun, God forbid, I would die. I tell you this simply to put the gun into the scenery. It was there, from childhood until the end. It frightened me the way a butcher knife would frighten me, but that was all.
Outside, the yard was filled with exhaust and windblown snow and already dwindling sunlight. I got in the Dodge and drove toward Randy’s, biting my chapped lip in anticipation of catching a glimpse of him through his bedroom window—he didn’t have curtains either—or, better yet, on his way out, so I could follow him secretly through the X-ville streets, led by the heavenly roar of his motorcycle engine. Then I could imagine what he did when he was not at home. If there was a woman in his life, I would know, once and for all. And I could find a way around her, I reasoned. There was a limit to the lengths I would go to win Randy’s affection—I was lazy, after all, and shy—but my obsession with him had become such a habit, I really lost all good sense. Who knows what I would have done had I found him French-kissing some Brigitte Bardot type? I don’t know that I was really capable of real violence. I probably would have punched myself in the head and rolled the windows up in the Dodge, prayed to die. Who knows?
But Randy wasn’t home when I got there. His bike wasn’t parked out front. So, for whatever reason, I decided to make good on my lie to my father and go to the cinema. Seeing movies has never been a favorite pastime of mine, but that afternoon I craved company. I didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think. It’s insulting. And the stories are all so hard to believe. Furthermore, beautiful actresses always made me feel terrible about myself. I burned with envy and resentment as they smiled and frowned. I understand that acting is a craft, of course, and I have great respect for those who can toss themselves aside and assume new identities—as I have done, one might say. But generally speaking, women on-screen have made me feel ugly and lackluster and ineffectual. Back then especially, I felt that I had nothing to compete with—no real charm, no real beauty. All I had to offer were my skills as a doormat, a blank wall, someone desperate enough to do anything—just short of murder, let’s say—simply to get someone to like me, let alone love me. Until Rebecca showed up a few days later, all I could pray for was some kind of fluke or miracle wherein Randy would be forced to need and want me, like if I happened to save his life in a fire or a motorcycle accident, or if I wandered into the room with a handkerchief and a shoulder to cry on the moment he heard his mother had died. Such were my romantic fantasies.
There was a small cinema in X-ville that played only the most tasteful, childish movies. If I wanted to see Contempt or Goldfinger, I’d have had to drive ten or more miles south where the X-ville Women’s League’s clout ran out. I can’t say I was relieved or disappointed that my plans to stake out Randy’s place for the few remaining hours of sunlight fell to the wayside, but I do remember a sense of impending doom descending upon me as I drove toward the cinema. If I lost Randy to another woman, I’d have to kill myself. There’d be nothing else for me to live for. As I parked the car outside the cinema and rolled up the windows, it struck me again how easy it would be to die. One snagged vein, one late night skid on the icy interstate, one hop off the X-ville bridge. I could just walk into the Atlantic Ocean if I wanted to. People died all the time. Why couldn’t I?
“You’ll go to hell,” I imagined my father would say, busting in on me as I slit my wrists. I was afraid of that. I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell. And I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t always want to live, but I wasn’t going to kill myself. And anyway, there were other options. I could run away as soon as I had the courage, I told myself. The dream of New York City beckoned like the twinkling lights of the cinema marquee—a promise of darkness and distraction, temporary and at a cost, but anything was better than sitting around.
I bought a ticket to Send Me No Flowers and padded down the black and red diamond carpet leading to a studded leather door. An acned teenage boy guided me inside the theater with a small flashlight. The movie had already started. In the warmth and darkness and aroma of cigarettes and burnt butter, and despite Doris Day’s squawking, I could barely keep my eyes open. And when I could, what I saw bored me to tears. I vaguely remember the film. I slept through most of it, but it had something to do with a housewife whose husband becomes consumed by hypochondria, or perhaps just a paralyzing general fear of death. Doris was already an old lady at that point—a paper doll now frayed and haggard, hairdo like an infant’s, a wardrobe fit for a maid. Rock Hudson couldn’t have cared less for her charm. As it turned out, even Doris Day could barely get a man to love her.
Once the credits were rolling, I shuffled out of the theater amongst the crowd of X-villers, young and old, each of them wrapped in brightly colored wool coats and hats and mufflers. The cold evening air refreshed me. I didn’t want to go home. Across the street, Christmas lights in the window of the donut shop caught my eye. I went in and bought a Boston cream, ate it in one gulp, as I was wont to do, and walked out immediately remorseful. I didn’t want to be like the woman behind the counter—greasy and fat, body like a sack of apples. In a storefront window of a boutique next door I saw my reflection clear as day. I looked ridiculous in my huge gray coat, alone and stunned in the headlights of a passing car like a dumb and frightened deer. I tried to fix my hair, which had gotten messed up while I’d slept. I looked up. The awning over the door spelled the name of the boutique in canned girlish cursive: Darla’s. My eyes rolled as I went inside.
“Yoo-hoo,” said a voice when the bell over the door chimed. The shopgirl came out from the back room. “I’m closing soon but take your time and look around. Anything you need, just holler.”
My death mask didn’t seem to perturb her at all. It always peeved me when my flatness was met with good cheer, good manners. Didn’t she know I was a monster, a creep, a crone? How dare she mock me with courtesy when I deserved to be greeted with disgust and dismay? My manly boots tracked dirty snow across the carpeted floor as I circled the racks and fingered the wool and silk crepe dresses. It was preposterous to think I could wear such fine garments, let alone afford them. I remember all the bright colors and bold prints, satin and wool, everything cute and tailored, big bows and pleats and all that nonsense. I was greedy, of course, turning over each tag, tallying everything I coveted but despised. It wasn’t fair. Others could wear nice things, so why not me? If I did, certainly people would pay me the attention I deserved. Randy even. Fashion’s for the fools, I know now, but I’ve learned that it’s good to be foolish from time to time. It keeps your spirit young. I suspected as much back then, I suppose, since despite my contempt—or maybe because of it—I asked to try on the party dress in the window.
It was a gold shift dress with a high neck and lines of alternating gold and silver baubles patterned from the neck to the bust. It reminded me of photographs I’d seen of African village women with necks painfully extended by stacks of gold rings. The shopgirl looked at me wide-eyed when I pointed to it, then smiled and hopped to the window. It took her several minutes to unzip the garment, then scoot the mannequin to the side to tip it over so that the dress could be taken off. I casually sauntered to the back wall to have a look at the hosiery. Keeping one eye on the girl wrestling with the mannequin, I slipped four packages of navy blue hose into my purse with ease. I looked in the mirror on the glass jewelry display case, which was locked from the other side, removed my gloves and rubbed the chocolate off the corners of my mouth. I wiped my hands on a scarf hanging decoratively from a bamboo staff. The shopgirl carried the dress to the fitting room as though it were a sleeping child, arms extended, careful not to rustle the baubles. I followed her, folding my purse inside my parka as I took it off. I didn’t care if the shopgirl judged my pathetic outfit. She herself wore a demure but ridiculous circle skirt which, I recall, had pom-poms on it, maybe an embroidered kitten. “I’ll be out front if you need anything,” she said and shut the door.
I took off my sweater, blouse and brassiere and took an earnest look at my bust, assessing the heft and shape of my little breasts. I shook my shoulders vigorously at the mirror, just to horrify myself. When I menstruated, my breasts were sore to the touch and heavy, like lead, like rocks. I pinched and poked them with my fingers. I took off my pants, but didn’t look at myself below the waist. My feet were fine, my ankles, my calves. That was all passable. But there was something so foreboding and gross about the hips, the buttocks, the thighs. And there was always a sense that those parts would suck me into another world if I studied them too closely. I simply couldn’t navigate that territory. And at the time, I didn’t believe my body was really mine to navigate. I figured that was what men were for.
