“Won’t you change your mind and let me come?” he asked.
When she shook her head, she felt the springy shiver of less than half the hair Darden was expecting to find. He wasn’t going to like that at all. “I have to go by myself.”
“I could drive you. Be your chauffeur.”
If only,
she thought and headed for the garage. “I have to go alone.”
“But you don’t have a license.”
“I know how to drive.” She had been starting the Buick and turning it around once a month for the last six-plus years. Sometimes she had even driven it away. Oh, yes, she knew how to drive. Maybe not well. But going into town was forward, and forward was easy.
“What if someone stops you?”
“Who would? Anyone who sees me will call the police station, but the chief will be home having dinner and Dan’ll be in town watching for the bus.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No. But I know Dan.”
And she was glad that he would be there. She didn’t know what Darden would do when he saw her hair.
Jenny knew he wouldn’t beat her. That wasn’t his style. Rather, he would prey on her weakness, would poke her guilt back to life and prod it until it had swollen to ten times its normal size, until it was so oppressive she couldn’t breathe, until she was willing to do anything,
anything
to make it shrink.
If that happened, she might lose her resolve.
She whirled around and clutched Pete’s shoulders. “You have to be here when we get back, promise me,
promise
me, Pete?”
He crossed his heart.
She might have asked it a dozen times and still not been reassured, not for lack of faith in Pete, but for fear of Darden. But she had to leave. It would not do at all to be late.
So she climbed into the Buick, turned the key, and pressed its aged engine to life. Moments later, she was weaving down the road and into town.
It shouldn’t have been dark at 6:12, but the clouds had been gathering over the heat all afternoon and were piled so thick that the lowering sun was lost. What remained was a stifling gloom.
Jenny heard the bus first, a warning rumble coming from over the rise. She could almost smell the diesel and dirt before they became reality when the bulky vehicle rolled into town. Hissing and whining, the bus pulled in ahead of the Buick. As Jenny watched, its door swung open.
Nothing happened at first. Jenny stared at that door, stared without blinking while she struggled to breathe. Every imaginable glitch preventing Darden’s return raced through her mind, every imaginable complication that might keep him from walking off that bus had been prayed for.
Please, God, let him go somewhere else.
She didn’t care where, as long as it wasn’t near her.
Then he appeared, and her heart twisted. He wore the slacks and sweater she had taken him on her last visit, and carried a small duffel containing his personal effects. He took one step down, then the next, and hit the ground staring at her, looking none too steady and far older than his fifty-seven years. She wondered if he was sick, or if being free had simply shaken him up.
For sure,
she
wasn’t being shaken up by freedom. She was embracing it with open arms. All she had to do was survive that stare.
“Hi, Daddy.” She covered the small distance to where he stood, kissed him on the cheek, and took his bag. “How was the ride?”
He continued to stare. Behind him, the door unfolded and shut and the bus wheezed off. Even then he didn’t move. He looked stunned.
“Where’s your hair?” he finally asked in a strangled voice.
An accident at work, she could say. Burned in the flare of a broken gas range. Close call, she could say. Lucky she escaped with her
life,
she could say.
“I cut it,” she said.
“But I like it long. I want to see it long. I want to
feel
it long. MaryBeth,” he whined, “what the hell did ya cut it for?”
She had hurt her arm, she could say. She hadn’t been able to wash or comb long hair, so she had cut it, she could say. Her arm was better now. Thank you.
“I hated it long,” she said. “I always… did.” Her voice withered at the end, Darden’s glare was that frightening.
“So that’s my welcome home? That’s what I get for sitting more’n six years in the can? That’s what I get for dreaming night after stinkin’ night of your hair? How could you
do
that to me, baby? I
loved
that hair long.”
The guilt, oh, the guilt.
Stay calm.
He’s my father.
No matter. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.
He’ll try.
You knew he would, but you’re not a child anymore.
“It’s only hair, Daddy.”
“You cut it right before I got home, knowing how I felt, knowing I wanted it long. You did it to hurt me.”
“No.” But she had.
“Hey, Darden,” said Dan O’Keefe, coming out of the dark, “how’s it going?”
Darden faced Jenny for a long moment before acknowledging Dan with a curt, “Not bad.”
Jenny looked hard at Dan, begging him,
begging
him with a flurry of brainwaves not to say a word about her leaving or, worse, about Pete. She would tell Darden herself when the time was right.
“So you’re out,” Dan said.
“Looks that way.”
“MaryBeth’s done a real good job keeping the house up for you. You ought to be proud of her, doing it alone. I got a call from your parole officer the other day. He says you’re thinking of getting the business going again.”
Darden shrugged. “I don’t know how much moving there is to do. I don’t know how people’ll feel about hiring an ex-con to do it. Keys in the car, MaryBeth? It’s startin’ to spit.” He walked to the driver’s side of the Buick.
Dan took the duffel from Jenny and tossed it into the backseat, then closed the door once she slid in. She didn’t have to look at him to hear him think:
Call me if there’s a problem, Jenny, call me whenever, and I’ll do what I can.
But he couldn’t help. With Darden back, no one could.
Darden gunned the engine, swung a U-turn, and sped back through town. By the time they got home, the sprinkle had turned to a steady rain. He pulled into the garage, climbed out, and caught Jenny’s hand just as she was about to make a run for the house.
“Come ‘ere, baby,” he said, pulling her close. “Give Daddy a hug.”
Jenny tried to pretend it was innocent, that it was the kind of hugs fathers gave daughters all the time. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, and ignored the feel of his mouth on her neck and the way his body curved to fit her, but she couldn’t bear it for more than a second, couldn’t
bear
it, so she gasped, cried, “Omigod!” and tried to pull away. “The stew’ll burn. I have to go.”
His arms held. “I need this more than food.”
“But I worked so
hard,
Daddy.” She wriggled away one body part at a time. “I knew you’d hate my hair, so I worked hard to make dinner right. Please, don’t make me spoil it,
please?”
He let her go. She forced a smile, but it vanished the second she hit the rain. She raced to the house and, ignoring her wet clothes, busied herself at the stove.
Pete was in the attic, packing the last of their things. Her mind’s eye saw him there, waiting like they had agreed, letting her talk to Darden one last time. But he was listening, she knew that. He had an ear to the floor in just the spot where the voices from below carried up. He would be down in an instant if Darden tried anything. He would be down, anyway, when it was time.
She clung to that thought.
Darden dropped the duffel on the floor. He grabbed the dish towel from the bar on the oven door and mopped rain from his face and neck. Jenny took it from him in exchange for a beer. “Your favorite. Welcome home.”
He put the bottle to his mouth and tipped back his head. The beer glugged past his Adam’s apple again, and again, and again. By the time he righted his head, the bottle was empty.
He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a second one. “What a shitty day. First the bus, then your hair, then Dan O’Keefe watching me. I’ve been watched more in the last six years than in all the ones before that taken together.” He slipped an arm around her waist and nuzzled her ear. “The only one I want to be watched by now is you, y’hear, MaryBeth?”
She tried to take a breath, choked, and began to cough. It was a while before she could stop. She wiped at her nose and her eyes. “I don’t feel so good,” she whispered.
“That’s ‘cause your dress got wet. Go change. You must have something else that’s nice.”
Jenny had the dress she had bought at Miss Jane’s. She ran up the stairs to her room, tore off the despicable flowered one, and fumbled wildly in her closet for the other.
“Pete?” she whispered toward the attic. “Are you there?”
“God, yes.” He had the hatch up and looked none too pleased. “I don’t like this, Jenny. I’m done up here. I’m coming down.”
“No.”
“You can introduce me, we’ll tell him we’re leaving, then we’re gone. He can help himself to the stew.”
“No! I owe him this. Please. Just dinner.”
“Who are you talking to, baby?” Darden called.
She whirled around, clutching Miss Jane’s dress to her chest. “Not talking. Taking breaths. Breaths.”
He came into the room. “We could lie down a little, you and me.”
“No, oh no, I’m fine. I want to give you dinner. It’s ready.”
He reached out and tugged at the dress.
She knew that hungry look and held tighter to the fabric.
“Let go, MaryBeth.”
“Dinner,” she begged.
“Let me see. Just for a minute.”
Still she resisted. That was when he said her name in a harder voice, a voice that told her he would have his way if he had to tie her down to do it, that the more she fought, the more exciting she was, that “seeing” would be the least of it if she didn’t give in.
She released the dress, bowed her head, and, like old times, sent her mind off to that special place where the pain and the shame couldn’t reach. Only her mind wouldn’t stay there this time. It came right back to the bedroom and Darden with a desperation that made her stomach churn. A scream gathered at the back of her throat and threatened to shatter the night.
Stay calm.
She listened to the rain on the slate roof.
Stay calm. The choice is made.
“I need my dress,” she said.
He handed it over. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I love you, baby. I love to look at you and touch you. Okay, so it’s been a while, but you used to like it.”
“I
never
liked it,” she muttered into the folds of the dress. The fabric had barely fallen past her hips when she hurried by Darden and ran down the stairs.
Her hands shook while stirring the stew and dishing it out. She tried to cheer herself by thinking of Pete, of Wyoming, of freedom, of love. But it was hard with Darden in the room. He had a way of sucking out the good in a place and leaving nothing but bad. Even this dress— so long coveted, so special, the first thing Pete had ever seen her wear— was soiled now. She would never wear it again.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Darden asked. He was on his third beer and starting to sweat.
Jenny couldn’t have swallowed food if her life depended on it. “My stomach’s upset. Is the stew okay?”
“It’s fine. Just fine. You always were a good cook, MaryBeth, a damn sight better one than your ma, I gotta say.”
“She taught me.”
“She never made anything like this.”
“She did. I remember.”
“And I don’t? Believe you me, I know what that woman could and could not do. She couldn’t cook, she couldn’t think of no one but herself, and she couldn’t fuck worth beans. You can do all those things, baby.”
Jenny scraped back her chair and went to the stove. She gave the stew a venomous stir, took the whole pot to the table, and refilled Darden’s plate. She pushed the basket of warm rolls closer. Beyond it, she set a dish of still-warm tapioca pudding and several square Rice Krispies treats, ready and waiting.
From the far end of the table, she said, “I’m leaving, Daddy.”
Darden looked up and made a face. “Leaving what?”
“Here.”
He sighed. “Some things never change. Ten times a week when you were little, you said you were leaving. Running away, you said then. Come on, baby, come on. It’s time to grow up.”
“I have. That’s why I’m leaving.”
He sat back in his chair and stared at her.
Once, she would have shrunk from that stare. Now she thought of her choices and stared right back.
He pushed a hand through his hair. It had gotten thinner in the time he was away. “MaryBeth, baby, don’t do this to me now. You’re what I lived for in jail. Don’t start in with threats.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Shut up, MaryBeth.”
“I’m leaving tonight.”
He sighed again. “Okay. Where are you going this time?”
Jenny was past the point of caring if he pretended she was a child. “It doesn’t matter where. I just wanted you to know.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t matter where. I’ll find you wherever. I’ll come after you and bring you right back.”
“No you won’t.”
He frowned at her then. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Take what? My love, I’m your father. Most girls’d give their right arm to be loved like you are.”
Jenny didn’t think so.
He came toward her, moving quickly. “Now stop it! You’ll do or take whatever I say. You’re mine,
mine,
MaryBeth. I made one fuckin’ big sacrifice for you. You’re not running out on me now.”
Pete suddenly filled the door behind Darden, motioning her to come. Jenny saw him there. But she couldn’t leave yet. She had to make Darden understand, had to give him one last chance. She owed it to him and to herself. “I can’t stay, Daddy. What we do isn’t right. It’s sick.”
“Sick that I love you? Sick that I live for you? Sick that I told them I was the one hit your ma, when it was you all along?”