Little Bird of Heaven (10 page)

Yes, I said. I liked it that there might be a secret between Zoe Kruller and me; and that Daddy was part of it, too.

“Well, Puss!—your dad has to leave, too.” Awkwardly Daddy leaned over me and kissed me on the forehead, a wet embarrassed swipe of a kiss at my hairline. “See, I’m going out to a construction site—I just dropped back here to change my shirt. Well—O.K.! See you later, Krissie.”

If it seemed strange that Zoe Kruller and my father scarcely acknowledged each other—scarcely glanced at each other—somehow it didn’t register on me, at the time. Strange too that Zoe left the kitchen carrying her shoulder bag slung over her shoulder by a strap, with an airy growl “G’bye, you two”—and almost immediately afterward Daddy left the kitchen by the same door; within seconds there came the sound of the Willys Jeep pulling out of the driveway, and surely Zoe Kruller had to be riding with Daddy, in the passenger’s seat—but already by that time I was distracted peering into the refrigerator for a snack, leftover tapioca pudding from the previous evening’s dessert neatly covered in Saran Wrap.

Never did it occur to me to think at that time
Mrs. Kruller was here with Daddy! Mrs. Kruller came to visit Daddy.

Still less would I have thought
Daddy brought Mrs. Kruller here, to be alone with her. While Mommy was away.

“Mrs. Kruller was here,” I told Ben. “Last year. When the teachers had their meeting, and we were let out of school at noon.”

“We weren’t! That never happened.”

“You
weren’t. It wasn’t your school.”

“Bullshit Mrs. Kruller was here. She wasn’t any friend of Mom’s.”

“She dropped by to see Mom, she said. She called Mom ‘Lucy.’ But Mom wasn’t home so she went away again.”

Ben said doubtfully, “Why’d she come here? Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.”

There was something sad and flat in the way Ben spoke the words
Mom and Mrs. Kruller were not friends.

“Daddy was here, too. At the same time.”

“He was not! You’re making this up.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Zoe Kruller wouldn’t have come here, Krista. That is such bullshit.”

“Will you stop saying that! She was, too. And Daddy was here, too.”

“Krista, he was
not.”

“They went away in Daddy’s Jeep. I had a half-day at school and came home early and they were here.”

“Bullshit.”

“They
did.”

Ben struck me in the shoulder, hard. “That never happened, you’re a God-damned liar. You tell anyone about that, I’ll break your scrawny neck.”

Ben pushed past me and out of the room. I felt a flame of pure hatred ripple over me for my brother who was so crude, and so cruel.
Scrawny neck!
—I would never forget these words.

Later, I would come to wonder; maybe Ben was right, and I was wrong. That might be better to think, than the other.

Had Zoe Kruller really been in our kitchen, rinsing coffee mugs at the sink? Had Zoe Kruller really been here, whistling? And Daddy had come into the kitchen combing his hair back from his face, his left arm bent and part-cradling his head, his right hand gripping the black plastic comb he carried in his rear pants pocket, and Daddy had been limping just slightly, you would have to know that Daddy had a
bad knee
to register this limp. Maybe I was remembering all of this wrongly?—the way I hadn’t been hearing Mrs. Bender at school, or hadn’t been able to see the smaller chalk markings on the blackboard at school.

Here was another possibility: Zoe Kruller had come to our house and Mommy
had been waiting for her
. Maybe it hadn’t been the half-day at my
school but another day. Mommy had invited Zoe Kruller to the house because Lucille Diehl and Zoe Kruller were friends, and it wasn’t Daddy who was Zoe Kruller’s friend after all.

Which would mean: Daddy had not been here. Daddy had not driven Mrs. Kruller away in the black Willys Jeep.

Daddy hadn’t been here at all. Not at that time.

B
UT
I
CAN LOVE YOU BEST,
Daddy! I can forgive you.

That would be my secret, not even Daddy would know.

In the County Line Tavern, in our booth in a farther corner of the barroom Daddy tossed change onto the sticky tabletop—quarters, dimes, wild rolling pennies.

“Here’s change for the phone, Krista. Call your mother and let her know where you are. Let her know that you are
safe
”—Daddy twisted his mouth into a sneer of a smile—“and you’re having dinner with me and why doesn’t she come join us?—we’d like that.”

Would we like that? I wasn’t so sure.

Daddy winked at me as obediently I slid out of the booth. I laughed uncertain what Daddy’s wink meant.

As if my mother would want to meet
us
—in all places, the noisy County Line Tavern which was a country place on the highway five miles north of Sparta and about that far from my home, in another direction. Here the air was dense with men’s uplifted voices, laughter. Loud rock music, country-and-western, blaring from a jukebox. That smell that is so poignant to me—that smell that indicates
my father, my father’s world
—of beer, tobacco smoke, a just barely perceptible odor of male sweat, maybe male anxiety, anguish. There were a few women in the County Line—young women—some very young-looking girls who had to be at least twenty-one to be served alcohol, seated together in a festive knot at the bar—but predominantly the place was men: local working men, farmers, truckers who left the motors of their enormous rigs run
ning in the parking lot—why, I never knew—wouldn’t they be burning up gasoline, needlessly?—causing the fresh chill air outside to burn blue with exhaust.

At this hour of early-evening, nearing 6:00 P.M., past dusk and dark as night, the County Line was very popular. Men in no hurry to get to their homes, or men like Eddy Diehl somehow lacking a home, invisibly disfigured and yet determined to be festive, hearty. In my Sparta High jacket which was made of a synthetic fabric that resembled silk, eye-catching deep-purple glancingly-glamorous silk, in my much-laundered jeans and with my luminous-blond ponytail flaring at the back of my head and halfway down my back, I caught the eye of men the way an upright flame drifting through murky shadow would catch the eye. In a gesture of vague paternal protectiveness my father had led me to a booth in the “family” section of the tavern when we’d first entered—he’d seated me with my back to the bar—but seemed heedless now, that to call my mother on the pay phone I would have to make my way through the bustle of the barroom, by myself.

In my flurry of excitement—the daughter-enchantment of being with the forbidden Daddy—it would not have occurred to me to think
Why would Daddy bring me to such a place!
Nor was I willing to think
Is it to show me off—Eddy Diehl’s daughter, who still adores him?—has faith in him?

In the cramped corridor outside the restrooms a thick-bodied man with bristling hair stood at the pay phone cursing into the receiver—“Expect me to b’lieve that, fuck
you.
” It was a furious and yet intimate exchange, I had to wonder at the person—a woman, surely—at the other end: wife? Ex-wife? Girlfriend? Already at fifteen I seemed to know that there would not be, in my life, anything like this sort of blunt matter-of-fact intimacy; anything like such vulnerability.

The heavyset man fumbled to hang up the receiver, turned and blundered into me, muttered
Hey sor-ry!
His breath stank like diesel fuel. In exaggerated surprise his bloodshot eyes blinked at me. “Debbie, is it? Debbie Hansen? You lookin for company, Deb-bie?”

I told him
no.
I wasn’t Debbie and I wasn’t looking for company.

“No? Not Debbie? Shit—you’re too young, what’re you—a kid? High school? You callin’ a boyfriend, honey? You don’t need to call no boyfriend if—like—you need a ride home? You need a ride home? My name’s Brent, I’m like your daddy’s age—you need any help, honey.”

Again I told him
no.
Told him I only just wanted to make a telephone call.

“You need some—change for the phone? I got a pocketful—see—”

He was teetering over me. I told him please leave me alone.

“—lots of change, see—help y’self—”

On his sweaty palm coins glinted. I had a sudden impulse to slap his hand, send the coins flying. With a nervous little laugh I ducked beneath the bristly-haired man’s elbow as I ducked beneath the older girls’ upraised elbows on the basketball court, and before he knew it I’d escaped him into the women’s restroom. Laughing to show that I wasn’t frightened, I knew he meant me no harm. “Now go away! I don’t need anything from you.”

There came a bark of laughter and the rap of knuckles on the door.

It wasn’t a restroom door you could lock. I would have to run to hide inside one of the toilet stalls, to lock a door.

If I did, he’d have me trapped.

Still it was just a joke, playful-drunk joking that would not escalate into anything serious as through the ill-fitting door the bristling man with the bloodshot eyes called me
honey, baby-girl
and went on to speak of something more complicated, something I could not follow and so I cupped my hands to my mouth to say: “I’m not alone here! My father is here! My father is in the barroom! My father is Eddy Diehl, he’s in the barroom, you’d better leave me alone or—”

Desperately I counted to ten, counted to twenty, now thinking
Why here, will something happen here, will my father hurt someone here
recalling how when we’d first entered the barroom from the parking lot my father had led me inside with his arm around my shoulders, fluffing my ponytail with his fingers, proudly he was showing me off, God-damned proud of his pretty blond daughter who was nothing like the wife who’d cast him aside, nothing like Lucille Bauer who had come to know Eddy Diehl too
well. Entering the smoky barroom where much of the light was a lurid-neon rippling cast from beer and liquor advertisements and from the squat color TV above the bar, entering this clamorous place immediately we’d attracted attention, we’d attracted glances, and more than glances. The bartender, doughy-faced guy with Elvis sideburns, swiping at the sticky bar top with a rag, calling out, “Jesus! Is that—Ed Diehl?” It wasn’t clear immediately if the greeting was a friendly one—a warily friendly one, perhaps—but the men shook hands, they were of a height, and of a certain stature, and in their early forties; near enough in kind to be brothers.

At the bar, as Daddy and the bartender spoke together, other men paused in their conversations to observe, and to listen: and these too were wary, friendly-wary, as if recognizing my father but uncertain how to address him.

Daddy said happily, excitedly: “This is my daughter Krista, my little girl Krista, she’s older than she looks, she plays basketball at the high school, say
H’lo
to my buddies, Krista.”

Buddies!
This was pathetic, I thought.

This was not like Daddy, I thought.

Still like a three-year-old on display I smiled and said
H’lo.
My face beat with a pleasurable sort of pain and I saw that Daddy was pleased with me, I had not let him down.

Now it seemed that Brent had departed. Cautiously I pushed open the restroom door—he’d gone. Quickly I went then to the pay phone and faced the wall making myself as unobtrusive as possible. Men were trailing in and out of the men’s room a few feet away, and I did not want them to take note of me. Dropped in one of Daddy’s quarters and prayed for Mom to answer when I dialed the number but in immediate rebuke there came a busy signal.

“Mom, pick up! Please, Mom. It’s me.”

Though I had no idea what I would say to my mother if she answered the phone. That I’d been complicit with my father, who’d violated the court order forbidding him to approach me? forbidding him even to speak with me? That I had violated my mother’s trust by going with her enemy,
willingly? By wanting to be with him, and not wanting—at least at this moment—to be with her? By loving him—at least at this moment—more than I loved her?

Or maybe none of this was so. Maybe it was a desperate story that I was telling myself, at fifteen. I loved my father not because he was a good father or a good man—how could I have judged him, that he was a “good” man or otherwise—but because he was my father, he was my only father.

And maybe he’d been showing me off, a little—and why was that so terrible? Why couldn’t that be forgiven?

Daddy hadn’t truly expected Mom to take him up on his invitation, to come out to the County Line for dinner—had he? He’d spoken wistfully, an edge of hurt in his voice. He’d winked at me, he’d been joking.

Your daddy’s a tease, sweetie. Don’t think that I pay your damn ol’ daddy much mind.

I was becoming excited, nervous hearing the busy signal at the other end of the line. Hung up the phone and waited for the coin to drop into the return slot and another time I tried my mother’s number, and this time a stranger, a man, answered the phone—“Yeh? Who’s this?” and it turned out that I had misdialed, I’d dialed a wrong number. And all this while the door to the men’s room was being pushed open, allowed to swing closed. I tried not to inhale odors of spilled beer, spilled urine. And a powerful stench of disinfectant beneath.
How men are their bodies, there is no escaping men’s bodies
came to me as a dismal epiphany. I was hiding from men who whistled at me in passing, called me
Honey-babe
in passing, fluffed my ponytail with rude playful fingers; I was hiding from them pressing my forehead against the smudged black-plastic surface of the pay phone. Another time I dialed my mother’s number—that is, our home number—and another time the busy signal came like jeering.

Of course, my mother was likely to be on the phone. Relatives were always calling her. She spoke with her mother and her sisters several times a day. She spoke with “new friends” at her church and with the minister and the minister’s wife. She spoke with individuals at the county family court and she may have spoken with a lawyer. Yet it seemed to me that my
mother was being deliberately irresponsible, indifferent to me, keeping the phone in use at a time when I might have tried to call her.

I don’t need you! I hate you. Daddy has come to take me with him away from you.

Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

I snatched up the coin from the return slot and went back to the booth where Daddy was waiting for me, drinking. By this time most of the barroom was filled. I had to make my way through a maze of tables. I had to make my way through the crowd at the bar, which was a horseshoe-shaped bar, long, curving, fraught with obstacles. I saw just one woman at the bar—the laughing young women had left, together—and she was a woman in her late thirties with springy curly flyaway hair in the style worn by Zoe Kruller which was a style from the popular TV show of an earlier era,
Charlie’s Angels;
it was a young glamorous style but the woman at the bar was not young and glamorous but thick-jowled, with lipstick so dark it appeared black. As I approached she glanced up at me with sudden stricken attention. And others at the bar glanced up at me. Self-consciously I smiled, it was my instinct to smile, as perhaps an animal will cringe, bare its teeth in a simulacrum of a smile, to forestall harm. I pulled at my pony tail to straighten it. Loose damp tendrils of hair were stuck to my forehead. There was a way of walking I envied in some of the older girls at the high school, a kind of self-exhibiting, heads lifted high and eyes bemused
Don’t interfere with me!
but this way of walking was beyond me, I lacked the sexual assurance. And there was a man stepping out to block my way. He was no one known to me—was he? He had a straggly goatee, his mouth a wide wet scar. “You’re his daughter? Diehl? Why’d he come here? Why’d he bring you here? What’s he doing here? The fucker.”

I was stunned. Too surprised to react other than to stammer foolishly—“I’m s-sorry….”

This man, this angry goatee-man whom I’d never seen before, dared
to take hold of my arm. Asking again in a righteous drunken voice why had my father come here? Why’d he come back to Sparta where he sure as hell wasn’t wanted? And I tried to say, stammering and apologetic, that my father was “visiting.”

“Visiting who?”

I said I didn’t know.

Wanting to throw off the man’s hand. For my fear was, Daddy would see us. And something terrible would happen, and possibly to Daddy. I hoped that Daddy wasn’t seeing this confrontation.

“Your old man never did time, did he? For what he did to Delray Kruller’s wife? Y’know who that was—Zoe? How old are you? Why’d he bring a kid like you here? How’d he get away with what he did? Why’s he back here? ‘Visiting’—who? God-damned murderer motherfucker.”

I tried to protest. I was being jostled, pulled-at by someone else—the big doughy-faced bartender who had shaken my father’s hand. And there was another man, a friend of the goatee-man. Saying, “Shit, Mack, let the girl go. She’s got nothing to do with it. Come on.”

“Son of a bitch killed Delray’s wife, and never paid shit for it. Is that him over there, in the booth? That’s Diehl?”

I tried to protest, my father had not murdered anyone. My father had not been arrested, even. My father had not been indicted….

Spittle-mouthed Mack was pulled aside. There came someone shoving at the bartender, who grabbed him by the shirt collar as in a cartoon, shook and unsettled him and shoved him back. There were raised vehement voices. The bartender—his name was Deke—said “Chill out. C’mon chill out. Settle down”—as now the woman with the springy flyaway hair and a creased-monkey made-up face intervened: “Don’t listen to these assholes, honey! Your father has every right to drink any damn place he wants, this is the United States of America for Christ’s sake.” I was grateful to think that this woman was my friend, she wore a hot-pink satin designer blouse and tight-fitting jeans, she teetered on ridiculous high heels of a kind Zoe Kruller might have worn on the bandstand at Chautauqua Park. Her breath reeked of cheap whiskey, she was leaning into my
face aggressively. “That Kruller woman what’s her name—God-damned Zoe—hot-shit ‘Zoe’—she was asking for it. Everybody knew what Zoe was. It hadn’t been one man it’d been another. ‘Get the bed you lay down in’—the bed you deserve, see?—who the fuck fault’s that?”