The Queen of Everything (24 page)

I was scared. In the store, my father spent a
long, long time walking up and down the cool aisles. His face looked thin in the
bright lights. Distracted with worry. I wanted to stay there too. In that light
where nothing ever goes very wrong, with those boxes of comforting
things

238

like toilet paper and lasagna noodles and
Prest-O-Logs and vegetables that are too shiny.

When we finally left, my father's eyes shot to
the place the car had been.

"He's just trying to send a message," my father
said to himself.

I wondered about that message. In my mind I saw
Wes D'Angelo in that tuxedo with the carnation in the lapel. My father looked at
the parking space that now held a Volvo station wagon with a baby seat and a dog
in the back. The window was rolled down, but it was hot. I felt sorry for that
dog.

Kale said, "I want you to call me next. I want
you to call me when you're ready." We stood in front of my house. It was nearly
one in the morning, and the air was finally breathable and the cement under my
feet cool as clay again.

Melissa had changed her mind about Kale. She
didn't think he was right for me after all. Honestly, she told me, he frightened
her a little bit. I was acting differently lately, and she didn't want me doing
anything that would get me into trouble. I ignored her. Kale and I had gone to a
movie, then made out in his car, which was now parked in front of my house. He
stuck his hand up the front of my shirt.

"They like me," he said.

239

"At
least someone does," I said. I
whacked Kale's hand away. My father's car was gone from the driveway. If you
asked me, he should have been supervising me better. I looked down the street to
see if Jackson Beene might suddenly start washing his car again, but he didn't.
Their house was still and dark.

"This is where you pretend you don't care,"
Kale said, kissing my neck. "I'm catching on to you."

"You're too short for me," I said.

"Fuck you," he said, but then he started
laughing. "You almost got me with that one. Next time you're calling
me."

I had begun seeing things in our house that
didn't belong to my father or me; I started looking for those things. Items
Gayle had asked him to hide for safekeeping. Boxes of jewelry, those small
velvety ones that close with a snap. A man's Rolex watch. Papers, that looked
important, with their names on them in capital letters. Wesley James D'Angelo
and Gayle Earline. She must have hated that middle name.

They said it was Wes D'Angelo's gun. Gayle had
asked my father to keep it. "We don't want to get ourselves shot," she told him.
I never saw that gun. But I imagine it sometimes, in my mind. Clearly enough
that I forget I
hadn't
seen it, there in his drawer, rolled into a pair
of black work socks. When I see it in my mind, I am

240

unrolling that ball. That gun is black and
hard. Permanent looking, the way very hard things are. I imagine my father
feeling its hardness in his hand. Weighing it.

Kale got in his car. "Okay?" he said. "I'm done
chasing. You call me when you're ready."

"When hell's the temperature of a penguin's
balls," I said.

I went inside the house and got into bed. A few
moments later I heard my father come home too. I lay awake for what seemed like
hours. Lately it seemed that my body was waiting all the time.

About five or six in the morning, I heard
Jackson practicing his bagpipes, slow and repetitive as a lullaby. They sounded
foreign and far away but somehow familiar as grass. I heard someone yelling at
him to shut the hell up. But by that time I was close enough to sleep to drop
into it with relief and gratitude.

Lunar cycle high,
my horoscope read.
Make room for travel, romance. Clandestine arrangement adds spice! Study
Sagittarius message.
But my lunar cycle was anything but high the next day,
and neither was my father's; he was a Capricorn too. I was slow and sleepy from
the late night, so even less equipped for the condition of my father, this
haggard man I saw in the kitchen. The funny thing was, he was pouring
the

241

remains of yesterday's coffee in this potted
plant he had on the kitchen table. I couldn't tell you the name of that plant if
you offered me money, but I did know it was usually as neglected as the Beenes'
poor dog, Boog; we gave it a bit of water only when it started looking dry as a
potato chip. It was a gift from Bonnie Randall, and she was the one who used to
water it. Neither Dad nor I had been very good caretakers, but now it looked
positively zingy with new shoots and a round knob that might even have been the
start of a flower. Apparently he'd been giving it the old coffee for a few weeks
now, and it appreciated the caffeine with its whole heart. It just goes to show
how things sometimes can thrive even with faulty, perverse attention.

Or not. My father put the coffeepot back in its
stand and turned around. I almost gasped, he looked so exhausted. Like a man
walking around carrying his beating heart in his two cupped hands. Sure, maybe
something can appear to thrive with faulty attention, but it seemed my father's
roots had turned black. Plants need water, not coffee--just water, pure and
simple. And air and sun. Good things.

"What happened, Dad?"

He sank into his chair at the kitchen table,
put his head in his hands. His robe was too loose around him and I could see his
chest start to cave in, actually fold inward with a sob.

242

"I'm such an idiot," he said, his voice
cracking.

The sight of my father crying made my own
throat cinch up tight with tears. That's what a father's tears can do. Make you
feel like the ground underneath you is soft and fragile.

"What?" I whispered.

"She's going back. To him. Oh, God," He took a
big breath. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robe. "I'm
sorry...."

"No, Dad, no. It's okay." Tears gathered in my
own eyes.

"I just... I don't know."

"Maybe it's for the best," I said. "Her going
back." I put my hands on his shoulders. "This is killing you, Dad. This is
destroying
you. If you could only see yourself."

"It's money and fear," he said. "Money and
fear, money and fear. That's what is keeping her there. Goddamn it.
Goddamn
it!"
He exhaled shakily, which started his tears again. "She says she has a
physical
revulsion
to him. I don't understand. No, I do. I know why she
went back."

"Dad, come on," I said. "She never really
left." It was horrible to see him like that, slumped over, his face shiny with
tears, his eyes red and old-looking, and that stupid plant reeking coffee fumes.
But it was good, too. To finally have it out, to say all the things that
had

243

so badly needed saying that they had become
acid in the mouth. "No," he said.

"It's true, Dad, and you know it. She's playing
with you! She's just
one woman,
Dad. There are lots and lots of
women."

"No," he said. "Not like that.
Not like
that.
I don't understand it myself." He put his palms over his eyes. "God, I
feel like such a fool. She makes me so crazy. She makes me feel like ... I don't
know. Like I'm
breathing.
But this back and forth, back and forth ..." He
shook his head angrily.

I honestly thought he'd had enough. Relief
started seeping in. Relief is simple-minded. The big dumb guy of emotions,
wearing clodhoppers and a loud bow tie, willing to believe anything you tell
him.

"Jesus, look at yourself, Dad. This isn't love.
God, I hope not. There are others, you know? You'll find someone else to be
crazy about."

"I've got to get myself together," he
said.

"You do," I said.

"I can't go on like this."

We made it,
I thought. It had been
disturbing and awful, but it was over. I was filled with the energy a narrow
miss brings. I was surprised at how worried I had actually been--something you
don't realize until you aren't any longer.

Big Mama assures me that real love is
deep

244

and true and careful. And finding it is like a
long, long walk on the beach. Where a lot of other things get put in your
pocket--rocks ugly when dry, jagged parts of shells, all called treasures--
before you find that whole, white sand dollar. That whole sand dollar that you
trust has the five bony seagulls inside, but you'll never break it open to find
out for sure.

Which is a nice and comforting thought. That
whole, white sand dollar. I need comforting sometimes.

But I don't forget the other things she says
about love. The other things she says sometimes go in the pocket. Those shiny
and dazzling things that can make you want them with a desperation that can
destroy you. Sometimes love gets all confused with wanting, Big Mama says. Then
love is the slate where we draw our own needs, the ground where we show our
darkness.

My father's resolution to get himself together
lasted two days. Until the flowers came. I saw them on the porch when I came
home from True You. Placed in the shade and stapled under a tent of waxed paper,
but still looking a bit soft and wilted from what was now August heat. I opened
the tiny card, of course, plucked it from the pronged fork sticking out from the
vase of roses. Signed, if only. g.

"Dad, don't be an idiot. I see his car there
all the time," I said to my father as he carefully

245

undid the staples from the waxed-paper tent.
But I could see by his face that he was gone again.

"I think this falls into the category of my
business," he said.

"Dad, no," I said. "Please."

"I know what I'm doing," he said.

He actually leaned in to sniff those goddamned
flowers.

I would give you another kind of weather for
that night if I could, the kind of summer night on Parrish where the light on
the strait twinkles so brightly it hurts your eyes, then dims to a magical
twilight; where the cool, when it finally comes, brushes across your sunburned
shoulders and makes them tingle. I would give you the kind of night where the
new drove of tourists just off the ferry have happily scattered--to drink Red
Hook ales under the outdoor umbrellas of Scully's, to shed their shoes on the
round-rocked beaches, to mount their bikes for a calm evening ride past the
oyster beds where Ms. Cassaday and her friend Elaine Blackstone worked summers.
The kind of night where Cliff Barton happily buzzed around in his biplane,
pissing off Jade Starr, who always brought her sister in to sing at the hotel's
outside cafe; and where Max walked around outside with only a diaper on,
followed by Homer, tongue hanging out and desperate for a cold drink or a
pacifier.

246

But that's not the kind of night it was; that's
not the way it happened. And I'm trying to be honest here, so if you think a
storm arriving that night is some big cymbal-crashing drama on my part, too bad.
I can't make it different. Anyway, it's the truth of what happens in August on
Parrish. You'll have this blazing, perfect eighty-two-degree day and suddenly
the sky turns black as asphalt and the hail comes pelting down, as if there was
only so much sun a Northwest town would be allowed before the rain stands up and
waves its bratty arms singing,
Yoo hoo! Don't forget about me!
No one but
that prune Cora Lee at the Theosophical Society would claim a storm that night
had any deep meaning.

When you live in the Northwest, you know when a
summer thunderstorm is coming. The air is so still and charged it's like
watching an angry man hold his breath. The clouds started rolling in that
evening, rolling, rolling, rolling, reminding the blue who was boss. Bad-guy
clouds that all joined together finally to make one still smear of black. My
father got up from the movie we were watching and began to shut the windows of
the house.

"Should I pause the movie?" I asked.

"Nah."

I could hear the sliding of windows being
closed, the clatter of blinds as he moved through the rooms upstairs. When the
phone rang, I

247

punched the button on the remote, making the
image blur to wiggling lines. I took my feet off the coffee table, where they
were propped. Then I eased up from the couch and went into the kitchen to answer
it. "Hey."

I could hear the open connection that meant my
father too had picked up the phone. I covered the mouthpiece and shouted
upstairs. "It's for me, Dad."

"Maybe he should just put a tape recorder on,"
Kale said after the click. "If he wants to hear what I say so bad."

"I thought I was supposed to call you," I
said.

"Always so antagonistic. If I didn't know how
much you like me, I'd have my feelings hurt."

"You should be thankful for your good looks, is
all," I said truthfully.

"I'm giving you another chance. There's a party
on the
Red Pearl.
I'll be messed up for work tomorrow, but hey, what the
hell. I'll pick you up. Nobody should cross their legs for so long. Is it some
kind of religious thing?"