The Narcissist's Daughter (15 page)

He caught me on top of the parking garage, just about where Ted had confronted me, only he didn’t want to talk. I was careless to even go up there, to follow my habits, and made it easy for him and easier still by not paying attention. I had barely stepped from my car when he came out of the shadows and swung his fist up into my gut. That suddenly I was down, airless and incapacitated.

He knelt beside me. I was on my knees, folded over. “Every time,” he said. He was panting a little, though probably more from adrenaline than exertion. It’s strange the things you think of when your world is wiped clean by the act of dying. “Every time you see her, I’m gonna pound your fucking ass.”

I fell over onto the stained and grease-scented concrete.

“You’re not too bright, so I guess this is what it’s gonna take till you get it. Leave. Jessi. Kessler. The. Fuck. Alone.”

My grunt must have sounded something like a response, because he stepped back and turned toward his car (the one I’d stupidly failed to notice though it was right there under a light). I managed to pull in enough air to speak, and said, or grunted, “Hey.”

He turned and stood backlighted by the street lamp, so I could only make out his bulk and the shape of his ape arms bowing away from his sides.

“Don’t know…your name.”

“What?”

“If we’re…gonna…meet like this—”

He laughed. He said, “You are one smart-mouthed shit, you know that? You might not be too bright, but you got balls. It’s Ron.”

“Ron,” I said. “Seeya.”

He laughed again, and left.

So began a new phase.

Under the guise of adventure—trying a restaurant in a strange part of the city; catching an afternoon movie; a day trip to anywhere—I steered Jessi into surreptitiousness. She seemed not to suspect anything. I just didn’t come to the house anymore. She in fact began coming to mine afternoons when Brigman and Chloe were at work (I learned not to be self-conscious about the mess, and anyway she never commented on it, as if everyone’s house looked like this), and in my room in my bed we made slow love in the way we had discovered in the pool. Her face grew pink and moist, and her lips dry. So much persisted in this way and so much was delivered that it was almost as if we had discovered some new activity altogether, our own form of physical communion that was derived from and related to sexual intercourse but had become something other than that, something new. Eventually we could last on the very edge for a full hour (I timed it on my alarm clock), and the release then was symphonic, epiphanic (it’s silliness really to even suggest a word for it).

In the meantime, in Holiday Inns and Motel 6s and a by-the-hour cottage on a highway west of town, I was spanking her mother. Oh, I beat that woman’s bounteous ass until it reddened and rocked, the reverberations riding down even into her dimply thighs, but not only that, no. I’d turn her over and push apart her legs and straddle her and with a limp leather strap that’d once been the belt to a 60s Chanel suit of hers whipped her there, too (that furry mons, those swollen swollen lips), until the juices flew, and I could see in her face that, whether she deserved it or not, she was in her bliss. You should know that she began then also, from that first living room moment of our reunion, to teach me about pain. I was open to it as I was open to everything she suggested if for no other reason than that I wanted still (perhaps even more desperately than before) to please her.

Even the first time she bound my wrists and ankles and blindfolded me and lit a candle and stung me with globules of hot wax, and I writhed against the restraints and swore magnificently at her, she said she knew that I was finally beginning to understand the secret: that this made it even better.

I did not plan this, did not conspire to double-time them with each other. My sin was weakness, not having the will to say no to any of it. My god, though, I have to say they both seemed happy in those middlemost weeks of summer—Jessi just lay sometimes looking at me and smiling and running her fingers over my face; Joyce took to licking me in surprising places, on the cheek or elbow or the back of my calf—and their happiness made me happy, too, at least for the hours we were together and there was no room to think of anything else but us.

In this way we passed into August.

I
came home one morning to find Chloe’s car idling in the street, and her in her work uniform dragging two suitcases and an overnight makeup kit down the front steps. When she huffed and set them down at the curb, I said, “Going somewhere?”

“Work.”

“Long shift, huh?”

“Shut up, Syd. I’m moving out, all right? Now you can run over and tell my dad.”

“You think he might not notice?”

“You’re so funny.”

“Maybe you should talk to him.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Oh. Well, good.”

She lifted one case into the trunk, then the other.

“Where you going to stay?” I asked then, as mildly as I could, though it was the question we’d both been waiting for.

“Jessi’s.”

I think I actually staggered. I said, “What do you mean?”

“Jessi? Remember her? Big house. Small dog.”

“Chloe—you can’t.”

“She invited me.” She threw in the makeup case and slammed the lid. “It’s not like they don’t have the room. And
they
don’t treat me like I’m twelve or something.”

“Well, from what I hear about when you were twelve, that’s probably a good thing.”

Her face fluoresced. I braced for a lashing, but not for her leaving without another word, which is what she did. It was for some reason just then that I understood it had gone bad, all of it, and was going to come crumbling down. I just didn’t know yet how bad, and how much would come.

When I pulled up at the station Brigman came out of one of the bays as if he knew already. I figured if I didn’t tell him that when he found out later he’d be pissed about that, too. Plus, he couldn’t really blow up at work. “Listen—” I said.

When I finished, he said, “Who are these people?”

“You know who—”

“This is your girlfriend?”

“Well—her father is that pathologist. Ted Kessler. With the one arm?”

“You’re dicking around with that guy’s daughter?”

“Sort of.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Chloe’s staying there?”

“Donny comes over, too.”

“Does he stay over, too?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She safe?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuckin Donny, I’ll kick his ass. And this doctor, who does he think he is? Maybe you should tell Jessi to move in with us, see how he likes it.”

“Oh,” I said, “yeah, that’d be great. If we’d just put in a pool and expand the house a little. Listen, do you want to—I could take you over there.”

“Fuck it.”

“She said she’d call.”

“Whatever.” He turned away, back to the banging and ratcheting and torquing of his life.

Jessi met me in the student union pizza bar.

She said, “I’m sorry about this—I should have at least told you. I know it’s not what you want. But I feel, I don’t know, like I owe it to her or something. Like
someone
owes her something.”

“Because you pity her.”

“That’s an awful thing to say.”

“Is it? I grew up with her. I know how people treat her.”

“Syd—”

“Don’t get upset. I’m not blaming you. I think it’s nice what you’re trying to do.”

“She doesn’t have a very easy life.”

“Really? She’s got a home and a car and a job and clothes and food and school. She needs a pool, too? A mansion to live in? She needs to be able to see some child molester?”

Now she looked away, through the plate glass windows, and covered her mouth with her hand. She waited some time before she spoke. “She’s just staying with us for a little while. That’s all. Call it a vacation. A long slumber party.”

“Because you’re friends.”

“Yes.”

“Not that you feel sorry or you think she has this horrible life or something.”

“We just hang out. There aren’t that many people I like to hang out with, in case you haven’t noticed.”

I touched her finger and she grabbed my hand and held on. I said, “And you’re leaving soon, anyway.”

“Syd—” My hand must have gone clammy because she let it go. “—I’m withdrawing my acceptance.”

“Why?”

“You mean is it because of you? You sound so panicked.”

“No.”

“It’s not just because of you.”

“But it is some.”

“More than some.”

“I—it’s just a hell of an opportunity to pass up. What are you going to do?”

“Take some classes here, get a job. I don’t know yet, exactly. That’s the point—I want to think. You’re supposed to be happy about it. You’re supposed to say ‘Yea! Good for us.’”

“I applied for a fellowship at OSU this fall.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. Your dad’s supposed to write the letter.”

She actually laughed.

“Have you told your folks?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, that’ll be a fun time.”

“I’m glad Chloe’s there. They can’t go totally ape. It’s such a blow, you know, Daughter not going to Daddy’s alma mater. It would have looked so good.”

Though we’d met in a public place I frequented, I didn’t give it much thought. I mean, we only talked, and then I walked her to her car and we had a quick kiss. So when that night as I drove in to work a police cruiser sped up behind me and flashed its lights, I was not apprehensive—just confused.

“Evening,” the cop said, inspecting my license.

“Was I speeding?” I said.

He handed the license back without bothering to take it to his car to check it, and said to hold on. Which I did, of course, suspecting nothing, until in my mirror I watched the passenger door open and Ron step out. I thought then about taking off, futile and self-destructive as it would have been. But I waited. He’d leer, I figured. Let me see he was so important he could get cops to make stops for him. I’d just nod and go to work.

He came up along the car as the cop had but before he came even with my open window, before I could see him beside me, inserted a nightstick and, wielding it like a pool cue, waited for me to look back at him, then rammed it into my eye. He must’ve been a hell of a pool player. I mean it rocked me, the pain so intense that I could only sit stunned and blinded.

He leaned in and said, “Enjoy lunch, asshole? What do you think not seeing someone means? You don’t want to learn a lesson in getting really hurt, you better figure it out.”

In the morning Brigman said, “The hell happened to you?” It was a pretty classic shiner, like in those old Tarryton cigarette commercials (I’d rather fight than switch!), encompassing the entire orbital from the round crown of cheekbone below to the rim above. Plus, for a little added drama, I’d had some bleeding in the eye itself, so the sclera now had a kind of scarletty vampire effect. Phyllis insisted that someone in the ER look at it, though they determined there was no internal damage. My vision was a little blurred but would come back, they thought, when the swelling went down (which it did within a day or two).

I said, “Door jumped out at me.”

“Bullshit.”

“What?”

“You didn’t hit no door. You’d have a line. I did it once. That’s round,” he said, pointing, “and it went in your eye.”

“What’re you, a forensic expert now?”

“A what?”

“Nothing. I’m all right. I had it checked out.”

“You don’t want to say what happened, then don’t.”

I looked at him. I could feel my mouth set in the way he always set his, tight and flat to telegraph disgust or at least displeasure not just with an individual but the whole world. I said, “It was a cop’s billy club,” and was conscious even as I said it of how easy it was to push the Destruct button, how simple at the moment of the doing it was to change your life.

“I said fine. Don’t tell me.”

“It was.”

“A cop hit you?”

“Ex-cop. He does surveillance and threats and stuff.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Guy’s been following me.”

“Why?”

“Because Dr. Kessler doesn’t like it that I’m going out with Jessi.”

“So he hired a guy?”

“Yeah.”

“And he
hits
you?”

“He has a few times.”

He lifted his beer from the TV tray and drank and set it back, all the while not taking his eyes off me.

“Why’n the hell wouldn’t you say nothing?”

Because even now his face was reddening in the way I had seen it only a few times—and never since the wreck—not with a temper flare, which was common with him, but a true burn, a dangerous thing. Because it wasn’t his mess. Because I didn’t want to have to talk about any of it.

Once at Motorhead a guy said some things to him low enough that I couldn’t hear, but I didn’t need to. I watched Brigman’s face in the bonfire light and felt the heat coming off him hotter than the fire, and I knew the guy needed to shut up and go, but he was drunk and he kept on. I’ve wondered since what he was saying, or rather who it was about, because I could think of nothing else that would set Brigman off in that way other than an insult to someone he cared about. I mean, if you bad-mouthed his car, he’d just tell you let’s drive. I never figured out who the guy was, but I knew before it happened what was going to. I wasn’t even sure until later that I saw it it was so quick. Brigman put his left hand around behind the guy’s head, almost like he was giving him a hug, their faces close together. Brigman said something, and the guy seemed to laugh, and then that fast Brigman brought the guy’s head down and his own knee up and the guy was on the ground bleeding and screaming, his nose spread up across his forehead. Brigman pointed at me to follow and we were gone. No repercussions that I knew of ever came from it.

But I felt glad now, too, that he knew. I was scared. I wanted this guy off me, wanted something on my side other than my big mouth.

“You know his name?”

“Ron,” I said.

“I want Chloe home.”

As if she’d been expecting company Joyce answered the door in a rich-suburban-doctor’s-wife getup—black slacks and a sort of tunic in a quasi-African print (zebra stripes on a gold background) held by a gold chain-link belt, jewelry on the neck and wrists and ears, makeup and perfume. I lost my composure for a moment and just looked at her, and she, fixed on my eye, looked back. We stood like that until I said, “Hello, Mrs. Kessler. I wondered if I could have my sister back?”

I thought she’d laugh, but she only glared, as she had that night in the kitchen. She said, “You’d better come in.” In the foyer she inspected my face from several angles, palpated the bruise until I winced, but instead of asking what happened, she said, “Jessi tells us she’s not going to Case.”

“Oh.”

She regarded me, then said, “Does this make you happy, Syd?”

“No. I think she should go. I told her that.”

“Well, maybe you’d better do something more than just tell her.”

“I thought it was Ted who wanted her to go so badly.”

“We both do. Though maybe for different reasons.” She smiled now, for the first time, and put her finger against the center of my belly and drew the nail down in a line until my belt stopped it.

Ted came in wearing green golf slacks and tasseled loafers without socks and a pale yellow V-necked sweater, and holding a drink.

“You make it to the club?” I said, in some kind of lame offer of friendliness, thinking maybe he’d golfed. He ignored the question and said, “Are you alone?”

I nodded. “He wants her to come home.”

“Is she safe there?” Joyce said. “Does he hurt her?”

“Oh,” I said, “no. Nothing like that. It’s about Donny.”

Joyce looked at Ted and said, “We’re…leaving it up to her for now. If Brigman wants, Ted will talk to him.” Ted just stood beside her looking like he’d eaten something rancid.

“She has rules. One is that Donny can only come over if Ted or I is here. If we find out he’s been here while we’re out, she’ll have to go home. You can tell him that.”

“He still won’t be happy with it.”

“Then I guess he’ll have to speak to us.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Of course.” She turned to go back up the stairs but Chloe was standing there already, watching.

“Come on, Ted,” said Joyce.

“Wait,” I said, then to Ted, “I’m not here to see Jessi.”

“What?”

“You understand,” I said, “that this is about Chloe. So, if we could, not have, you know—” I touched my black eye.

He shook his head and made a face and said, “What?”

Joyce’s eyes widened slightly as she looked at him, then at me, and said slowly (if one can be said to utter a single word in that way), “Ted?” It seemed to dawn on her then finally what’d been going on. When he looked at her, feigning ignorance, her face flushed and she turned suddenly and stomped away, and he followed.