“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much, darling, so much. You should stop now, sweetheart. Stop now, sweetheart.” His voice had a strange, choked sound. “You are so beautiful. So beautiful and loving; and this was such a beautiful evening. Thank you, thank you so much, sweetheart, thank you for loving me. Thank you for accepting me.” He broke out into a wide smile and pulled up his pants in a quick movement. “This is the best birthday of my life!”
“Well, you owe me now, Peter!” I said. My voice all of a sudden sounded brassier, like the popular girl at school. “When my birthday comes, I want a big party! At Burger King!” I looked down; my voice fell to a mutter. “Poppa says . . .”
“Let’s go back upstairs,” Peter said suddenly, looking nervous. “Before they start calling a search party! Now, what did your father say?”
“That I shouldn’t eat at Burger King because the hamburgers are made out of cows’ crushed-up eyeballs and tongues and the bones of the cow, all ground up in a big machine . . .”
Peter shook his head. “He’s crazy.” We were approaching the wooden steps. “Take my hand, love. I know that these stairs are a doozy.”
“Poppa’s a liar, anyway,” I said in that other voice.
“Speaking of Poppa and of your mother too, for that matter . . .”
Peter stopped and turned on the wooden step, looking at me, a step beneath him. “You know better than to ever tell them about this . . .”
I rolled my eyes and wagged my finger at him. “How many times do I have to tell you, Peter? I can keep a secret!”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s just that no one else would understand the way we feel about each other. They would attack us. They would separate us. They would say we were disgusting and bad for loving each other.”
“I know, Peter, I know.”
“I’m going to show you how I keep secrets.” He took my hand in his. “I make a little lock, see, like this?” He put his pinkie on my mouth as if it were drawing a lock. “And then I give you the key, see?” He put the make-believe key in my left hand. “And,” he said, taking that hand, “you lock the secret away. And here, I’m putting around your neck a little chain, and on the end of the chain, I’ll tie the key.” He pretended to fasten it. “So long as you keep that key with you at all times, and make sure no one steals it, you don’t have to worry.”
He kissed me on the forehead and I said, “I’ll guard the key with my life.”
I rubbed my nose against him. “Eskimo kiss!” He laughed.
“Fish kiss,” I whispered, and we puckered our lips like fishes.
“Okay,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Let’s go, Butterfly Girl.”
“Why are you calling me Butterfly Girl? You never called me that before.”
“Cause you’re like a butterfly, always flitting back and forth, and you’re so delicate I’d never want to hurt you; I’d never want to cause you pain, not like your father. And I’d never want to lie to you or make you feel ashamed, ever. I value what you’ve given me, I treasure it. And sometimes it drives me crazy that I can’t marry you now, but I try to be patient. And I know we’ll be married eventually; not a big wedding, though, I don’t think, unless you become a rich lady someday. I’m sure your father wouldn’t pay,” he said, grinning. “Too cheap. Look at me. Look into my eyes. Let’s look at each other, just for a moment.” I looked at him then, really looked at him under the low light of the single naked lightbulb. I looked at his long, pointy nose, which he’d once said he didn’t like; his eyes, which he said as a kid were baby blue but which had darkened and turned aqua; and his hair, once platinum blond, which had darkened into the sandy-silver it was now at fifty-two.
All I could think was that I was running.
When I got to the shed door, the door to the rabbit hole, with the hunter fast at my feet, the door to the milk carton house, the door at which the Hudson Park robin pecked, I was no longer the rabbit. Maybe it was the moment my sneaker slipped off, dragging my sock into the white snow. Maybe it was that moment when I first dropped to my knees and scooted under a low table. Maybe it was when his hands reached for me under the table, when my feet were kicking at his hands, and I was growling, hating him. I hated him because he was humming. Because the blue hat looked stupid on his head, and I hated it. Because he had sweatpants on, not jeans. Because I was a tiger now, not a rabbit.
“Go away, go away, hunter, or I’ll kill you!”
“You’ve got nowhere to go, little rabbit! Nowhere to go . . . without your magic snowshoe!”
And he pulled my Kangaroo sneaker out from behind his back, and I loved him again, and started to cry.
“Don’t be scared. I’ll leave, okay?” he said.
“Don’t leave me!” I charged out from under the table, banging my head again, more painfully this time, and clawing at his clothes.
“Don’t
ever
go away from me!”
He held me. “Why are you crying, my love? It’s only a game, my darling.”
I’m crying because. Because I hated him. It had hurt me so much to think that for a minute I had wanted to kill him. I had wanted to see him die in a million exploding blue hat pieces. I could not tell him this—that I had truly hated him.
“I’m crying because I banged my head. It hurts. And I lost my shoe and my foot is cold. See, it hurts.”
“Oh, poor baby, I know it hurts, my love. And I will make it better; only I can. I have the sock, it’s wet, but I have it. I have the shoe; it just has a little snow in it. Here, let’s clear that out. Everything is fine, my baby, my little baby love, my little girl.”
“It won’t stop. Feeling this sad won’t stop.” The kisses came. On my hair. On my face.
He kissed each toe of the wet, cold foot. Then he put the wet, slimy sock over it. He slipped the Kangaroo shoe onto that poor, sad foot, and bound it with each strap of pink Velcro.
“THERE’S SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH THAT MAN”
L
ately, I had started thinking about the showers I had taken with Poppa up until I was five years old. These showers were great fun; we’d fling the washcloths on the tub floor, pretend they were roaches, and stomp them, singing the silly song “La Cucaracha.” During the showers I had noticed the difference between me and Poppa but hadn’t thought much of it. Now I couldn’t remember if what Peter called his “babymaker” was different from Poppa’s, so one Saturday when Mommy went to her therapy session with Dr. Gurney, I asked Poppa if we could take a shower together like in the old days.
At first, he muttered that I was too old for that now. But I begged him, and finally, he gave in. In the steamy, junglelike shower, I found myself staring at Poppa’s penis. He saw me looking and covered himself with his hands. The shower grew louder with the silence. I felt like something needed to be said, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I found a way to speak. I didn’t know what my words meant, only that they had to be said. As I spoke them I used that popular girl’s voice.
“Poppa, is that a toy? Can I touch it, pretty please? Is that your toy there for me to play with?” I wasn’t sure where I’d learned those words, but it felt like I knew them by heart.
Poppa turned away, his skinny legs bent. “No,” he muttered, nearly inaudibly. “No.”
I reached over anyway to make him feel good. He shouldn’t say no when that special part of him was mine, too. He was
my
father. Swatting my hand away, he squeezed the faucets shut. Poppa got out, dried off, dressed, all in silence. He put a towel on the floor next to the tub for me and then hurried out the door.
Sometime that winter after the shower incident, there was the drama of Benihana. We went there, the four of us; Poppa treated everyone, as he’d promised to earlier.
Inès decided not to go. Peter didn’t seem to want to go either, but he knew that he had to. Preparing for meeting Poppa, almost a week before the actual Friday night, he tried on an old suit that he called his wedding-and-funeral suit. He looked so strange in a jacket and tie. He started to dab on some cologne, but I warned him not to; he had gotten it at the Dollar Store, and I knew one sniff of it would banish him forever from Poppa’s good graces.
“Better no cologne at all than cheap cologne,” I lectured. “And don’t cut yourself shaving. Poppa says a man who can’t hold a razor straight isn’t somebody he trusts. He says anyone who cuts himself shaving is a nervous character.”
“I’ll use an electric razor,” Peter said, as he stood before the gilt mirror.
Mommy called out from the living room. “Peter, if it’s not a close shave, he won’t respect you. You don’t want to have a five o’clock shadow when you meet Louie. He’ll think you’re unkempt.”
“Unkempt.” Peter shook his head. “Unkempt and uncouth. Hooligans: the lot of them. Barbarians. Savages.”
I giggled.
“Oh, and make sure you talk to Poppa,” I added. “That’s the most important thing. We went out to dinner one time with a friend of Mommy’s and her husband. The husband didn’t say much all night because he was shy. Poppa made fun of him when we got home. He called him ‘The Mute.’ Poppa says that he would rather stay home with some saltine crackers and deviled ham from a can than be stuck at a restaurant with a person who can’t say two words to save his life. So make sure you talk a lot!”
For our big night out, Mommy was wearing a glitzy shirt with a snow leopard on a tree branch against a dark blue background. I had chosen it for her. She was also wearing lipstick and some rouge on her cheeks. I was in brand-new Mary Janes, white tights, a canary-colored Orlon sweater with large black flowers, and a black miniskirt. I had also put on some light pink Tinkerbell lipstick and nail polish, though Peter said he didn’t like makeup. He liked nail polish only if it was chipped; I told him he was weird. My hair had grown out a little, so I looked less ugly than earlier, but I despaired of ever being pretty again; Poppa was already talking about cutting it. Inès noticed me sadly touching my hair in front of the mirror, so she offered me two metal butterfly-adorned bobby pins, but I knew I couldn’t accept them: Poppa would know they weren’t mine, and insist I take them out before I got lice.
We waited in the foyer a good twenty minutes before Poppa was due. “Louie’s hair is thinning and he’s very upset about it. So he grows it long in the back and combs it over,” Mommy said. “He has a ducktail straight from the fifties. You’ll see.”
Poppa showed up five minutes early in a sharp black suit and freshly polished shoes, all decked out with his giant gold cross replete with precious gems and his thick gold watch. He reeked heavily of cologne. The first thing Poppa did was firmly shake Peter’s hand; I could tell by the expression on his face that he was going to put on a big show that night.
The first thing Poppa did when the waitress came over was order sake. It came in a white ceramic jug shaped like an hourglass and was poured into tiny round cups no bigger than doll teacups. Poppa immediately offered Peter some, and I could tell Peter was afraid to say no.
“Maybe a little later,” he said after a short pause. “After I’ve got some food in me. Sake, strong stuff, wouldn’t you say? It’s the drink of the kamikaze pilots, so it would’ve needed to be pretty strong.”
“The strongest!” Poppa said, looking pleased. “Japanese rice wine! I love it!” He opened a cloth napkin and tied it around my mother’s neck. At Benihana, eight to ten people would sit at a long hibachi table with a sheet of metal in the middle, used for cooking the food. Poppa had never minded sitting with strangers; he usually started conversations with them. Tonight, however, he was focused on Peter. “So I hear you fought in Korea?”
“I wasn’t in actual combat, no. The air force used me as a carpenter. I imagine it was because I’ve always had an aptitude for working with my hands. I guess that’s something we have in common. You’re a jeweler, right? I was a locksmith before I hurt my back.”
“You went to school for that?”
“Self-taught. Bluffed my way in, taught myself from books and on the job. I guess you could say I’ve always been a great bluffer. Could talk my way into anything.”
Poppa nodded. “A good quality to have. I went to trade school. I made my wife’s engagement ring myself. Also, you see the earrings on my daughter’s ears? That is my work. My crucifix, too,” he said, tapping it.
The waitress came and took our orders. Poppa encouraged Peter to order anything on the menu; it was his treat. Peter, looking uncomfortable, finally settled on the teriyaki chicken. Poppa ordered the Benihana Special for himself, and one for me and my mother to split. The Benihana Special consisted of teriyaki steak and a lobster tail.
Poppa got up to go to the bathroom, and as soon as he was out of earshot, my mother patted Peter’s hand. “You’re doing just fine,” she said.
“I hope so,” said Peter.
“Did you see how much sake he drank? And I think he was drinking before he left the house . . .”
“Probably,” said Peter, too nervous even to bad-mouth Poppa.
“Here you go,” I said, leaning over and kissing Peter on the cheek. “For strength.”
“Aww,” said my mother. “That’s just what you needed.”
By the time Poppa got back, the waitress was setting down our onion soup appetizer. Poppa thanked her for her promptness, and then said in a surprised tone, “Peter, I notice you are not wearing a watch! I could make you one, perhaps. I personally find it a crime to be late.” He smiled and drank some more. He had pushed his onion soup over to my mother for her to eat. “Is there a particular reason why you don’t wear a watch? Or any jewelry, for that matter?”
“I don’t like the feel of anything on my arms. I’ve never been much of a jewelry wearer. As for being late, I usually make it to places way too early. I told Sandy that when I was a teenager, I got a call from the hospital where my mother was dying and I had to rush over there. I made it with only fifteen minutes to spare: ever since then, I never could stand to rush. In some ways, I thought it was merciful for God to take her after all she’d suffered. She was paralyzed on her left side and had been for four years due to a stroke. It was such a shame. She was a beautiful woman. Back in her day, she was a model for Barbizon.”
“Really,” Poppa said. The Japanese chef in his tall white hat had begun to douse the metal sheet with hot oil. It sizzled. “And your father?”