Daddy's (8 page)
Authors: Lindsay Hunter
He sat on the bed for a while, watching families walk by his open door with towels and snorkels and baggies of sandwiches and cookies, looking in at him and then looking quickly away. He walked to the 7-Eleven on the corner, bought a pint of rocky road and a couple MoonPies. On the way back to the motel the sun was an orange yolk sliding down the sky. He forced himself to look into it, but after a short time had to look away.
Back in his room he thought for a second about hanging himself from the shower rod. Ate both the MoonPies and started on the ice cream, turned on the evening news. Someone had been abducted, a small girl with saucer eyes and messy hair. In the morning he’d drive north, make another state, maybe two. He finished the ice cream in four large spoonfuls. It slid down his throat and iced his heart. He pulled the covers up to his belly, wondered what he could leave of himself behind and all he could do without, thought of how his wife often had lipstick on her teeth, how it made her look like she’d just bitten into something alive, something that bled. At a commercial break he picked up the phone, dialed home, hung up when he heard his daughter’s voice, small and distant, singing Hello, Hello, Are you there?
NOTE
I wrote my sister this note about all the things I hate. Gorgons, it said. And how people go nutville any time the moon throws a shape. Nasty ass Nilla Wafers. The smell of crotch, which only seems to come wafting out from my sister’s room. Football players and especially football players who spend time in my sister’s crotch-smelling bedroom. The way the cable box gets all warm so Daddy knows when he puts his hand on it I been watching my shows instead of doing my papers. Cats, but not kittens. Arm hair. Cutting the grass on Sundays ’cause Daddy didn’t have no sons. Thigh chafe. Sun-In. Hair that has Sun-In in it. Hair from my sister’s head and finding clumps of it in the drain or in a tangle breezing around the bathroom floor. Anything orange-flavored. I hate, I said, and then I corrected myself by crossing out hate and writing despise above it, but not crossing it out so much that she couldn’t still see the word hate, I despise shit in other people’s teeth. Namely peppercorns and chewed-up bread products. But then I got specific and said Shit like them threads, them
filaments
, I said, that get left behind and flutter from between your teeth once you bite into a orange slice and have swallowed down all the juice and loose pulp, because my sister sure did like a good orange slice. The words loose and pulp coming anywhere near each other, come to think of it, I said. And also, the smell coming from the kitchen drain. That spoon that got caught up in the kitchen drain that I keep getting stuck with which is surely mangling up my lips with every bite of store-brand breakfast whatever. Lip chap. People that don’t brush the mung off they tongue. The sound of two tongues meeting somewhere in the middle, like slurp-slap, slap-slurp. Any song by that one guy. Any song that could be described as a song to get kissing to. Any boy that makes any kind of noise loud enough for me to hear as I happen by my sister’s room on my way to none of your business. Any boy says Jesus like anyone else’d say Mark or Dave. Thick lines of dirt in some fingernails. How cologne smells like toothpaste and rubbing alcohol. How Daddy walks around shirtless. How I can’t help but notice the swirls of hair around Daddy’s nipples. How Daddy has nipples in general. The word nipples or any word starting with the letters N-I-P. How Momma farts when she’s doing her exercises and no one reacts. The VHS that’s been sitting on top of the TV since last summer labeled For Adults Only. Adults in general, and how they seem unaware of things like fate and magic and daughters who are losers and music that is current and candy that ain’t Hershey’s. How God is I guess an adult too.
filaments
, I said, that get left behind and flutter from between your teeth once you bite into a orange slice and have swallowed down all the juice and loose pulp, because my sister sure did like a good orange slice. The words loose and pulp coming anywhere near each other, come to think of it, I said. And also, the smell coming from the kitchen drain. That spoon that got caught up in the kitchen drain that I keep getting stuck with which is surely mangling up my lips with every bite of store-brand breakfast whatever. Lip chap. People that don’t brush the mung off they tongue. The sound of two tongues meeting somewhere in the middle, like slurp-slap, slap-slurp. Any song by that one guy. Any song that could be described as a song to get kissing to. Any boy that makes any kind of noise loud enough for me to hear as I happen by my sister’s room on my way to none of your business. Any boy says Jesus like anyone else’d say Mark or Dave. Thick lines of dirt in some fingernails. How cologne smells like toothpaste and rubbing alcohol. How Daddy walks around shirtless. How I can’t help but notice the swirls of hair around Daddy’s nipples. How Daddy has nipples in general. The word nipples or any word starting with the letters N-I-P. How Momma farts when she’s doing her exercises and no one reacts. The VHS that’s been sitting on top of the TV since last summer labeled For Adults Only. Adults in general, and how they seem unaware of things like fate and magic and daughters who are losers and music that is current and candy that ain’t Hershey’s. How God is I guess an adult too.
How attractive Jesus is in his pictures. And anyway, I said in this letter, I hate how Momma buys store-brand feminine products with names that always end in O. TampOs. MaxOs. And then also how you answer everything with Oh. It’s 8:30, where’re your school books? Oh. That boy you shut in your bedroom the other day was manhandling a girl that wasn’t you over behind the library. Oh. Your face is a shiny clock without no hands. Oh. And alright, I hate the following things about myself: big boat feet, mosquito-bite chest hints, plague of freckles, can’t sing, brain feels swole all the time, but least I don’t go around offering up my tater on a platter for a cocktail party of wieners to lay up against, and least the cat ain’t got my tongue when I see you in the halls, and least I can look at a jar of buttons and see it for what it is whereas you look right at something and see all them dances to come and boys to kiss and stars to count while you laying in the driveway looking up and I’m laying in bed looking nowhere.
PEGGY’
S BROTHER
S BROTHER
We play truth or dare and it keeps getting worse. I run down the driveway and back up again with a hot dog in my teeth and my bikini bottoms in a wedge, I am on all fours, my naked butt in the air, a turd-like swirl of toothpaste on the small of my back, my best friend Jessica licking it off and gagging, I am dared to eat one of the twins’ boogers. This I don’t do. I take one look at it, dark red in the center, both dry and glistening, and I run to the bathroom and lock myself in.
Peggy’s mom’s soaps are shaped like seahorses; the one in the bathtub dish has been worn down into a featureless grubworm. I hold it in my hand, its underside slick and cold, while the other girls knock on the door, say, Come on you don’t have to eat it, and Shelley wiped it on Peggy’s brother’s door so don’t worry, and, from Jessica, You’re being boh-ring.
After I hear them walk away and pad down the hallway, I come out. Peggy’s brother’s door is open slightly, I can hear the low tones coming from his television. The last time I was over at Peggy’s he’d woken me up and I’d had to step over the other girls as he led me into his room and then he just held my hand, rubbing my knuckles with his thumb so hard that the next day my knuckles were red and chapped and my mother rubbed Eucerin on them for a week. That was all. He’d held my hand and then he’d dropped it and opened his door, waited for me to leave, and then closed it behind me. In the morning we ate cereal across from each other and he told Peggy he’d farted into her box of Corn Pops.
I hear Grace say, I am seriously going to vomit, which means the game is still going on. I knock on Peggy’s brother’s door and then, when I hear one of the girls coming down the hallway, I duck in and shut the door gently behind me. Peggy’s brother is watching
The Shining
, waves of blood rushing down a hallway, two dead girls laying askew. I’d watched it many times at Peggy’s house, and it had always seemed funny, too dramatic, we roared with laughter at the little girls asking Danny to Come play with us, forever. But here, in Peggy’s brother’s room, it is suddenly terrifying, Danny’s face frozen in fear, the stifling browns and gold of the hotel, Danny’s mother’s crowded, gnashing teeth.
The Shining
, waves of blood rushing down a hallway, two dead girls laying askew. I’d watched it many times at Peggy’s house, and it had always seemed funny, too dramatic, we roared with laughter at the little girls asking Danny to Come play with us, forever. But here, in Peggy’s brother’s room, it is suddenly terrifying, Danny’s face frozen in fear, the stifling browns and gold of the hotel, Danny’s mother’s crowded, gnashing teeth.
Hey, Peggy’s brother says. Come over here.
My face is hot, I feel goldfish in my stomach and I trip on a basketball making my way over to him in the dark room. He laughs quietly. There’s nowhere else to stand but in front of him, stretched out on the bed, his feet crossed at the ankles and sheathed in white gym socks.
Sorry, I say, for blocking your view.
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