Chasing Windmills Page 6

  So I just said, “I'm sorry.”

  “Sorry isn't good enough,” he said.

  That's when I lost it. I actually shouted at him. Shouted. I said, “I need a break. I need a goddamn break. Kids who go to school get breaks. Easter, Christmas, summer. They get to rest. I need to rest. You work me too hard. You're killing me with this, don't you see it?”

  I almost never swore in front of him, because I was not allowed to. And I expected to get leveled for that. But he seemed to let it go by. Instead he shouted back and said don't put this off on him when he was sacrificing everything for me and I was the one screwing up.

  And I shouted that anybody would screw up under this kind of pressure.

  And he shouted, What pressure? What did I have to do that was so hard? And why was I always able to do it until just now, all of a sudden? And why was I refusing to admit that something was different with me? And what was going on, anyway?

  I shouted, “I just have a lot on my mind, is all.”

  And then the room went deadly silent and I thought, Oh, crap. Now I've done it. I really stuck my foot in it now.

  His voice went weirdly calm. Artificially calm. “So, tell me what's on your mind.”

  “No.”

  More deadly silence. I thought I could see something throbbing in his temples. “Why not?”

  “Because it's my mind. Not yours.”

  Yeah, I know. What was I thinking? But I just couldn't take it anymore. Besides, I felt like I had nothing to lose. Usually I avoided saying things like that to keep the peace. Today there was no peace to keep.

  I waited for him to say something. But it was almost as though he was too upset to form words.

  I said, “What are you going to do when I'm eighteen? When I turn eighteen, I can walk out that door and never come back, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

  “And go where?” he shouted. “And do what? You have no idea how to function in that world out there. You have no idea what it's like.”

  I shook my head. Under my breath I said, “And whose fault is that?”

  “What did you say?”

  I just shook my head again, and headed for the door.

  “What did you say to me, Sebastian?”

  My hand on the knob.

  “Sebastian! I forbid you to walk out that door!”

  I walked out the door. Slammed it behind me. I guess I'd finally had enough.

  Then, about ten steps down the hall, I turned around and went back in.

  “Ah,” I heard him say. “I knew you'd see the light.”

  I didn't answer. I walked into my room, got the letter to Grandma Annie out from its hiding place under my computer keyboard. Stuck it in my pocket. Then I walked out again. Never looked at him or said a word. This time, I slammed the door even louder.

  DELILAH SWUNG HER DOOR OPEN, took one look at my face, and threw her arms around me.

  “Child, child,” she said. I could feel her hands on my back. Why hadn't anybody ever touched me until now? Up until a few days ago, I couldn't remember the last time anybody had touched me. “Come tell me all about it. You want to go for a walk? Or you want to sit here?”

  “Let's walk,” I said.

  And she hobbled off to get her cane from beside the refrigerator.

  “I don't know what he wants from me,” I said. Trying not to cry. I'd be humiliated to cry in front of Delilah.

  “Whatever he's not getting from his own life,” she said. “Whatever big hole people got in their heart, they want something to fill it up. That's what he wants from you. But he'll never get it. Because you can't ever fill a hole in you with somebody else. But everybody keeps trying, though, even though it never brings nothing but heartache to both parties.” She came hobbling back with her cane in one hand, her geisha fan in the other. “Now let's go walk it off,” she said. “You'll feel better.”

  I took the letter out of my pocket and showed it to her. I said, “We'll have to get a stamp while we're out, and mail this. But I wanted to get your permission first. To use your address.” She read the envelope and seemed to get the message.

  “Oh, child!” she said, breathless with pleasure. “There's hope for you yet. I got you a stamp, right here.”

  “I WANT TO SEE A MOVIE,” I said.

  She said, “Well, that shouldn't be hard. What one you wanta see?”

  We had just turned the corner onto Lexington Avenue. I could see the mailbox on the next block. It looked more important and more dangerous and more frightening and more attractive than anything else on the street. Anything else in the world.

  “I want to see the one where the guy dances on the walls.”

  “Oh, yeah. I think it was Singin' in the Rain. Unless it was Anchors Aweigh. Or Royal Wedding. But no, I don't think Donald O'Connor was in Royal Wedding. And I'm pretty sure it was Donald O'Connor dancing on the walls. Unless it was Fred Astaire. Or Gene Kelly. No, it was Donald O'Connor. In Singin' in the Rain.”

  “Do you have that one?” I could see the mailbox getting closer. It looked even more dangerous close up.

  “No, but we could stop at that video store and rent it.”

  “Let's do that.”

  “But, you know, child, I'm not sure that's really the movie you want to see. It's an old musical, with dancing, from the fifties, before you was even born. Don't you want to see something from this century?”

  “What's it about?”

  “Oh, it's a love story.”

  “I want to see that one, then,” I said.

  “Okay. Whatever you say.”

  “Her name is Maria.”

  “Well, that's some kinda progress. You gonna see her again?”

  “Not tonight. Tomorrow night.” We stopped in front of the mailbox. I just stood there, staring at it. Like we were about to face off in a duel. “I think she's in some kind of trouble. She was crying. And twice she's had a bruise or something on her face.”

  Delilah leaned on the mailbox, fanned herself, and sighed. “Well, child, I'd tell you to be careful, except for two things. One, it wouldn't do any good anyhow. And two, I think we tell each other that too much. Be careful. Don't get hurt. Don't take chances. Don't try anything. Don't feel. Might as well be telling each other not to be alive at all. Boils down to the same thing.” She waited, but I didn't say anything. Just stared at the mailbox. “You okay?”

  “Never been better,” I said. I opened the box and dropped it in. Gone forever. Too late to take back. Done, and could never be undone. I had done it now. “Now let's go rent that movie,” I said.

  IT WAS FUNNY. The movie. I knew it was going to be about love, but I didn't know it was funny. It was about this big famous Hollywood actor, played by Gene Kelly, who met the love of his life when he jumped into her car to get away from this mob of his fans. They were tearing at his clothes, and he yelled for help to his friend, the Donald O'Connor guy. He said, “Call me a cab,” and Donald O'Connor said, “Okay, you're a cab.”

  I just cracked up laughing. Not just once either. Every time I thought about it again, it cracked me up.

  Delilah was giving me this look.

  “What?” I said.

  “That is the oldest joke in the world.”

  “Not if you've never heard it before.”

  “Well, that's true. Besides, it's nice to hear you laugh. I'm not sure I ever heard you laugh before.”

  “I'm not sure I ever heard me laugh before, either.” If so, I'd forgotten it now.

  Then Donald O'Connor did this wonderful, funny dance. He was singing a song called “Make ‘Em Laugh,” and the dance part was funny. He was in a movie studio, with guys carrying boards around, and he kept banging his head into them as he danced. And dancing circles lying on the floor, and over couches, and running into brick walls, and I just kept laughing. Then he danced right up a wall about three steps and flipped all the way over and landed on his feet and then did the same thing on the other wall.

  “Is that the part you wer
e telling me about?”

  “Oh, no, this is the wrong movie. It just hit me. That wasn't Donald O'Connor who did that, it was Fred Astaire. And he actually danced up there, a long time, not just three steps. I'll have to figure out what movie that was again.”

  “How'd they do it?”

  “Tell you later, after you've seen it. Want to turn this off?”

  “No! I want to see the end of this. I like this.”

  So Delilah made microwave popcorn while I watched Gene Kelly close up his umbrella and do a song and dance in the pouring rain, after kissing the girl he loved for the first time.

  “You sure you like this?” Delilah asked. “It's awful old.”

  “I love it.”

  And I really did. It was silly. I wasn't allowed silly. It was about love, and it made you laugh. Two more things you don't get at my house. It had absolutely no educational value. No real purpose, except entertainment. So it was the perfect entertainment. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life.

  It was my first vacation I could remember, all in itself.

  WHEN I GOT HOME, my father was sitting in his chair. Staring straight ahead. Not reading, not listening to music. Just sitting.

  “I'm not even going to ask you where you've been,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “But I was thinking, you do work awfully hard on your studies. Maybe a little spring break would do you a world of good. Maybe you'd even make better progress in the long run.”

  I stopped and looked right at him, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. “Thank you, Father, that was thoughtful of you to decide that.”

  Putting the day to rest once and for all.

  It had never occurred to me—before that exact moment—that if I refused to give an inch, he would have to.

  Carl surprised me by coming home from work early. About seven-thirty. I'd been home from Stella's for a couple of hours. But it really hit me hard.

  First of all, any surprise from Carl is hard. The more things go just according to plan in this house, the better. Second of all, he had this big smile on his face. Like this was some big happy surprise. But I couldn't help wondering if this was his way of reminding me that he could show up anywhere, anytime. Carl has this way of delivering a couple of different messages—or more—all at one time.

  “What are you doing home?” I asked. Trying to sound like it was a good thing.

  “It's a surprise. I got a half day off work. Just for you. I'm taking you out on a date. Just like the old days. Like we used to do back before the kids. Just the two of us. It'll be very romantic. I thought we'd go to that steak house we went to on our anniversary.”

  “Just the two of us?”

  “Yup. Just the two of us.”

  “We can't just leave the kids alone.”

  “And that's another surprise. I got us a babysitter.”

  This was one of those moments when my stomach starts doing acrobatics. Somersaults and loop-the-loops and some kind of aerial spins but I have to try to hide it. When Carl says he has a happy surprise, you do not want to rain on that parade. Things can take a bad turn real fast. But Natalie and a babysitter was just not going to work out.

  “What babysitter?”

  “The girl the McCrimmons use.”

  The McCrimmons were our neighbors two doors down the hall.

  “But we don't even know her.”

  “But they know her. They've been using her for years.”

  “But Natalie doesn't know her.”

  “Natalie will be fine.”

  But it was clear by the way he said it that he knew perfectly well she wouldn't be.

  He knew it just as well as I did. But he had made up his mind that she should be fine. So he was going to twist the world around to be what he wanted. He was going to insist that she be exactly what he thought she ought to be.

  “I've never left her.” She needs me.

  “My point exactly. It's time.”

  So, it was time. If Carl said it was time, it was time. But, oh my God. This was going to be bad. This was going to be fifteen different kinds of bad. Maybe more.

  CARL ORDERED US a bottle of wine.

  I was trying not to fidget.

  I said, “First a cab, now a bottle of wine. What'd you do, rob a bank or something?”

  It made me kind of sick to see so much money fly away. In a couple of weeks I'd have to break it to Carl that C.J. was outgrowing his shoes. And Carl would say he'd have to wear them a little longer, because he isn't made of money. It made me sick to see all this money go for something I didn't even want.

  “Just relax and enjoy it,” he said.

  But I wasn't relaxed. I wasn't enjoying it. And he knew that. And it was starting to tick him off. I was supposed to be having a good time. So I tried to pretend like I was. But I was just about to jump out of my skin, thinking of poor Natalie at home, wailing. She'd wailed and hung on to my leg until I was all the way out the door. Carl had to peel her off me. The girl he got to babysit wasn't strong enough. Or brave enough. I could hear her all the way down the hall. Until we were in the elevator and starting to go down. Carl kept looking at my face, like a reminder that I wasn't allowed to feel what I was feeling.

  In fact, he was still doing that as we drank our wine.

  If I knew Natalie like I figured I did, she would be losing her voice right about now, or at least very soon.

  It was all I could do to just hold still. I have never had a harder time staying in a place, in a moment, in as long as I can remember. I think even life with my father was better than this.

  Natalie should have had more practice before I left her alone.

  Meanwhile Carl took my hand and was looking into my eyes. Or trying, anyway. I wanted to take my hand back. I felt like it was on a hot stove. I let him keep it, but it was torture. I was trying not to think about the subway guy. So of course, whatever you try not to think about, that's all you can think about. Everything else disappears, except for that one thing you don't want.

  “Look,” Carl said, “I'm not spending all this money so you can sit there and be a million miles away. That's not why we're doing this.”

  “Why are we doing this?” That was a brave question. So I followed up real quick by saying, “Not that it's not nice. It's really nice. I just wondered.”

  He still had my hand. It still took every ounce of everything I had to not fidget. I tried not to think about Sebastian. I tried not to think about Natalie wailing. I wondered if Sebastian was the kind of guy who would go get takeout as a surprise. Because he would know it would be too hard on me—and on her—to leave her alone.

  Ho. There's a stupid thought. If he even knew there was such a thing as Natalie he would run like the wind. What an imagination I have.

  Carl said, “Lately I feel like we're not close. Not like we used to be.”

  “We're close,” I said. Trying to hold still. Trying not to take my hand back.

  “Not like we used to be.”

  “We're fine,” I said.

  “Look,” he said, “I know it's hard for you. Don't think I don't know that. Working a job and then taking care of two little kids while you're off. It's a lot of work. I know that. That's why I wanted to give you this little vacation.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Gearing up to lie big. “It's very nice.”

  A long silence, during which I mostly willed him to let go of my hand. He didn't.

  Then he said, “I'd be nothing without you. I couldn't live without you. I need you. You know that, right?”

  I didn't answer. I didn't know how to answer a thing like that. What do you say to a thing like that? I didn't know.

  “Well? Do you know that or don't you?”

  I was looking down at the table. Not into his face. Which I know is wrong. Bad. But looking up would not have been a good plan either. “I know I'm important to you,” I said.

  “I don't want to have to be afraid of losing you,” he said. “It has to be like it was bef
ore.”

  “It is. It is like it was before.”

  “Okay. Okay, good.”

  He let go of my hand, thank God.

  We said very little else for the rest of the meal. Every now and then, I looked up at him and smiled a little. That seemed to be enough for him. I guess because he really wanted it to be.

  He insisted on having dessert, which nearly killed me.

  • • •

  WE ENDED UP WALKING the twelve blocks home. After getting a look at the check, Carl decided that the weather was nice and we needed more exercise anyway.

  He was also finding more and more reasons to slow us down. The more he could see how bad I wanted to get home to Natalie, the more he came up with new ideas.

  “The market is only two blocks out of our way,” he said. “Want to stop in and say hi to the gang?”

  Now, that is a very many-layered question.

  By the market, he meant my work. The market where I used to work. And where he thought I still did. But he didn't like the people I used to work with, and he never, ever called them “the gang.” There was just no real reason for him to make a suggestion like that one. Except for the hidden ones.

  First off, he was challenging me not to rush home to Natalie. That's just an obvious one off the top.

  Secondly, he might have had some kind of suspicion regarding something around my work. I don't think he'd guessed that I got fired. If he had even suspected I was having experiences on the subway at night instead of going to the market, believe me, I'd know it. That would hit the fan very big. But I do think he might have thought I was having something going on at work, like a customer or some new employee I was getting overly close with. He was reading me to some degree.

  All this happened in my head very fast, just in a split second before I said, “No! God, no!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it's my night off. Why would I want to go to work on my night off? Would you want to go to work on your night off?”

  “I guess not,” he said. And I started breathing again. Then he said, “What's with your paycheck?”