Tiger, Tiger (23 page)
Peter stopped working to light a cigarette. “Tell me more about Paul and Cathy. They’re in love, right? Like us.”
“Love
and
lust
and
passion, the devouring kind. But it isn’t just Paul. All men want Cathy: young men, old men, middle-aged men, married men, single men, rich men, poor men, whoever. See, okay, Cathy’s brother, Chris, is obsessed with her, as is Julian, her dancing partner. But Julian is mean, he hits her, and one day he beats her up so she can’t even perform in a show. Cathy has Julian’s baby, and a few years later, she marries Paul. Because Julian committed suicide! You see, she was married to Julian first, then Paul, and then she married this other guy who was her mother’s husband! And all these men died!”
“Cathy sounds like a black widow spider. You know, the male spider of the black widow species, in order to avoid getting killed, has to tie up the female spider and then he, he . . . copulates.” He made a face when he said that word. “But if she breaks out of the webs, she kills him, lays eggs on him, and when they hatch, all of his children eat his dead body. I don’t think that’s very nice, do you?”
“It’s not so nice he puts her in a web either,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, back to Cathy—no, no, let’s talk about the Story!” The Story had really grown in the past year. Whenever Peter worked, that was mostly what we talked about. New characters were starting to crop up. Carlos now had a mother, Arana, who committed suicide by flinging herself in front of a train, but then returned as a ghost to haunt the family. Then there was Victor, Carlos’s brother, whom Peter animated in a rough, scratchy voice. Victor had gotten scarred for life after Arana had accidentally spilled boiling water on him as a baby; then, just because he wasn’t handsome, she locked him inside a closet all day. The Story switched in time, constantly going back and forth from the boys’ childhood to their future lives: Carlos’s glamorous life as a rock star and Victor’s miserable existence as a social outcast. I played Carlos; he was the most fun character for me because he was the handsome one, the one everyone loved. What I couldn’t understand was that Peter actually seemed to like playing Victor.
“Let’s see: what happened in the last episode? Was that the one where Carlos’s cousin Tracy tries to break into the house and kill Margaux? Then, remember, Peter had to shoot her in the leg. Then they’re all at the hospital. Let’s see, we’re at the hospital . . .”
“Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way, but can we try to talk about other things besides the Story? I mean, every day we talk about it.” I crossed my arms and glared at him. After everything I did for him. And not only did he continue to sand, he said, “It’s all you want to talk about. For hours. For me, it can get repetitive; I’m not your age. I mean, I
like
the Story; it’s just that sometimes it seems it’s all we talk about.”
“What else is there? There’s nothing else for us to talk about!”
“Well, we were just talking about Cathy and Paul and their love for each other. How it was like us. That was interesting.”
“Well, I’m finished with that!”
“I mean, you don’t understand. For me, the Story can get tiring—” “Then maybe we shouldn’t talk! Maybe you should just sand.”
“That would be peaceful. We could think. Enjoy some silent quality time together.”
I turned away from Peter, arms still crossed. I would teach him; I would deny him what he wanted later.
“I don’t think you could go ten minutes without talking.”
“If I’m so good for nothing, then why don’t I just kill myself!”
“See, I told you: you couldn’t go for ten minutes!”
I screamed, “All you care about is your stupid sanding! And your stupid painting! This is all you think about!”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” He stopped sanding. “We can talk about the Story.”
“No, I don’t want to now!” I kicked the wall.
“Okay, later then?”
“No!”
“Please?”
“No! The answer is no, no, no, no!”
That spring, after Peter finished renovating the first-floor apartment and a family consisting of a couple and their three kids, plus the husband’s nephew, moved in, we were outside almost constantly, in the yard, on the motorcycle, walking Paws, skating, or eating lunch at Woolworth’s. Sometimes we’d venture all the way to River Road, where we’d take the motorcycle to a small hot dog stand, and then ride through a narrow badly paved scenic road with rock-studded hills and gushing waterfalls. I’d feel like I was out of time on the back of the motorcycle, singing “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Burning Up,” and “Rescue Me,” my favorite Madonna songs.
For my thirteenth birthday, Peter bought me a pair of black leggings that we referred to as my “Madonna pants” and a navy-and-white sailor dress at a yard sale that was for someone younger and smaller than me, so it was too tight and too short, but since I liked to look sexy anyway, just like Madonna, I didn’t mind. He took pictures of me posing in the sailor dress on the motorcycle, holding the handlebars with my roller skates arching around the pedals; splayed out on the hammock with the skates on; sitting on the porch steps with my crimped hair loose and that silly sailor dress with its big silly white sash and long white kneesocks and the long red laces of my skates undone. Peter bought a small album just for these poses, entitled
Skate
Girl
, but, although I didn’t say anything, it upset me that he didn’t think to use any new pictures to replace the blown-up ones on his wall of me at eight, or remove the Jill picture in order to put one of the Skate Girl pictures in its place.
Or maybe he didn’t put a Skate Girl picture up because it was so sexy that it would have alarmed either my mother or Inès. As it was, neither seemed to notice the pictures he had up now, because they were so wholesome. Peter had even said to Mommy and me that because Poppa hung up works of art as well as pictures of famous racehorses on his walls but no photos of me, that it was more proof he didn’t care. Mommy wholeheartedly agreed, and then I, too, started to take it as still more evidence of Poppa not loving me. “Just being his daughter isn’t enough for Louie,” Peter railed, and Mommy said, “Yes, he’s obsessed with status.” Poppa had one framed picture that I loved to look at, though, of his father’s cousin, an important poet in Puerto Rico who’d gone insane and then died a penniless alcoholic in Harlem. I knew he respected her talent, despite her tragic life, and that was why he chose to display her picture.
A
t El Pollo Supremo, I tried to wear my mother down on the issue of going to Peter’s alone. I waited until Mommy had finished her roasted chicken and tostones and had moved on to her favorite thing: corn on the cob. There was nothing my mother liked more than the sweet buttery kernels. From our orange-and-yellow booth, I watched a deaf man sell key chains. Opposite us, an elderly Hispanic woman in a kerchief peddled rosary beads. El Pollo Supremo attracted numerous peddlers, whose lives struck me as ideal because they weren’t bound to any one place or situation. In my mind, peddlers, like rock stars, could go anywhere to make their living.
“Mommy, you need to let me have my independence. If you love something, you set it free,” I said. Peter had been coaching me on what I should say. “I’m thirteen now. Don’t you want me to do things on my own?”
Mommy sighed; she was so tired of this conversation. “Margaux, the main reason I don’t want you crossing streets is because you don’t pay attention. Even your teacher this year says you’re always in a fog. You get decent grades and all, but it’s like you’re always in dreamland.”
“Is that what she said: dreamland?”
“Dreamland or dreamworld, one of those, I can’t remember. I should have written down exactly what she said.”
“Well, that teacher is boring,” I said. I thought back to a week ago when Justine and her friend Jocelyn confronted me in the hall. During history class, Jocelyn had seen me writing love letters to Peter. She’d told Justine, and in the hall that day, Justine asked me point-blank if I was still a virgin. I had gotten so angry that I’d started shaking and walked away without answering the question. “She’s a loser anyway,” sang Justine loudly, stomping her suede boots for emphasis.
“I think the reason that she can’t concentrate is her father,” said Peter. “Didn’t you tell me that he gave her a hard time when she had to ask him for clothes?”
“A terrible time,” said my mother. “At minimum, she needs about two hundred and fifty a year, and that doesn’t include the winter coat.”
“Let me tell it,” I said, putting up my hand and looking into Peter’s eyes. “Let’s say I need two-fifty like she said. Well, I have to ask him for three-fifty just so I can talk him down to what I need. I have to argue with him for three straight hours!”
“She’s right,” my mother said. “He has nice clothes while I go around in rags. And Margaux has to beg like a street urchin for what’s technically her own money.”
“He doesn’t care about us.” I was in the midst of making a tiny hill of salt on my napkin. “I used to think he did, a long time ago. But then he did things, like when he scratched my mother’s forehead open. It was like a horror movie, he just—”
“Living with him
is
a horror movie,” said Mommy.
“No, living with him is a
horror channel
,” I said. “Without any commercial breaks.” I stuck my straw into my salt hill and licked the white grains off.
“He’s afraid of her,” my mother said, clutching her hands like a delighted little girl. “Her rages really disturb him. He sees her and it’s like he’s looking at himself.”
Peter frowned. “That’s no good. Two people in the same house with that kind of anger . . . Sandy, it’s time. Really, you should divorce him right away. You don’t have to worry about custody now. Margaux is old enough to testify in court that he’s been abusing you both for years.”
“I’m considering that,” Mommy said, nodding. “Now that she can testify.”
“If that happens you can stay with me for a while. Inès would allow that. We don’t have much room, but you’re always welcome.”
“Maybe you can get the tenants to leave and we can rent the downstairs apartment!” We could then all live like one big family, I thought.
“You know what, Peter?” said my mother. “He’s always had me brainwashed. He’s like an evil sorcerer. The more you’re around him, the more you’ll feel you’ve got a spell on you that puts your brain underwater. You can’t think. But today, talking with you like this, I feel stronger.”
Over the next few weeks, I began to sense something
was
going to happen. I knew Poppa sensed it too, when around ten o’clock at night he took my arm. I was coming out of the bathroom; I had showered and put on my pink nightie with a family of teddy bears on it. My hair was damp and it clung to my shoulders. When Poppa took my arm, static electricity passed between our skin, and I jumped a little. I had thought he was just on his way to his usual ritual of mopping up the bathroom floor after me even though I’d already done it.
“Listen to me,” he mumbled, avoiding my eyes. “Your mother is getting sick.”
I tried not to panic. If he put her in the hospital, I might not be able to see Peter for weeks, even a month. Alone and without distractions, depression would eat me up. “I don’t think so. She seems normal to me.”
“She is hyper. That is the first sign.”
“She’s fine. No more hyper than usual.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You know it and you are protecting her.”
“No, I’m not. She just doesn’t seem that hyper.”
“I need your support on this. You are the daughter. You have to help me convince her that she has to be hospitalized. Otherwise, something terrible will happen. I can feel it. I have a sixth sense.” He led me to the kitchen table and we sat down. “Tell me. What have you been noticing when it comes to her? You people are never around, so I have to find out secondhand. So, tell me. How has she been?”
“Fine, I think. She’s happy because the last time she got on a scale she saw she had lost weight. She told me that.”
Poppa shook his head. “Lost weight? It is from not eating, I am sure. Does she spend all her money on you? Do you
demand
things from her? Do you demand that she spend all her allowance on you? I am glad you have put on weight, but hopefully not at her expense. Not eating ice cream and junk. She will give you whatever you want; I know it. You are so difficult, such a difficult person that nobody has any choice but to give in to you. You bully your own parents—”
I stood up, feeling like I couldn’t take it anymore, the constant put-downs. He never had anything nice to say about me, ever. “I have school in the morning.”
He took my arm. “Wait.” He tapped me and I slunk back down. He put his hands on his head and sighed. “I am under so much pressure. So much pressure with this woman who keeps getting sick.”
“Well, I haven’t seen her listening to the old records or staring at the ceiling. She hasn’t been calling anyone more than usual.”
“Oh, she calls people. I heard her calling someone the other night, talking about me . . .
My husband, my husband
. Imagine what people must think of me! I am ashamed. The people on the street, who knows what kind of garbage she tells them? Everyone knows by looking at her that she is not okay, but still . . . Still . . . I am ashamed. I think it is up to us to make a
concerted
effort. A
concerted
effort to keep her from collapsing. I tell her every day that she is getting sick; she says she has never felt better. She is nasty to me and
I
am trying to help her. I am the only one who cares for her. We are all she has. I will call Gurney tomorrow and tell him she is showing the signs. Last time, he increased her Thorazine. I think it is time for him to raise that and the Seroquel. Otherwise, she will start running around town, endangering your life, making a mockery out of me.”
“She won’t have to go to the hospital, right?”
Poppa’s leg trembled. It was making me so nervous that I wished I could nail his slipper to the floor. “Maybe, maybe not, not if we make a concerted effort. This is what we will do for the next couple of weeks. I think your mother’s blood sugar is out of sorts. I think she has not been eating properly. For a few weeks, I want you and her home by five thirty, before I get here. When I come home, I will cook for both of you. This way, her blood sugar will stabilize and I can make sure she is taking all her medication at dinner. I can keep track of her behavior and report back to Gurney. Also, the days are getting shorter. It is not good for her to be walking in the dark with you while she is sick. You could both get run over by a car!”