She cried all the time. And my hands were fearful of her, that I would drop her, that her face would be between my breasts, one hand supporting her head, the other under her butt, that my tired hand, my right, would get sweatier and sweatier and slip from the plastic diaper, that my left hand would cup the absence of her skull as she fell.
I told Sam about my thoughts. Sam said, “A thought is just a thought. We all have stupid ugly thoughts.” He held me. He always holds me when I’m overwhelmed. Sam has this way of saying trivializing things so feelingly they seem smart. I always feel better after I tell him my secrets.
Still, he was wrong, is what I’m thinking. I work my big toe into a knot in the pine floor. A thought is not just a thought. It must be followed.
“Your daughter is a nymphomaniac,” I say to myself, and I hate myself for saying it. Claire is thoughtful, and smart, and has manners. “She’s not a nymphomaniac. She’s an eight-year-old child exploring sex. Frankly, it’s normal. You can’t. You shan’t….” When I hate myself, I’m haughty with myself. This isn’t something to give into. Talking to oneself. Letting my senses disintegrate until I’m sitting in the hallway like a lame animal, and wanting Sam—wanting someone to act with purpose, so that I can act purposefully, also.
Get up, I think. As soon as I’m standing I reason with myself: “You didn’t molest your daughter.” Then I laugh, audibly, an insane snort that I experience spinally, like fear. I take the stairs two at a time. Feel dizzy in the foyer. The front door looms with the porch light shining behind it. I hate that yawning glow it has. I walk around the living room, dining room, and kitchen, gathering things in my arms that look out of place. Stop when I’m holding a bowl of stale popcorn, a bottle of coral nail polish in a shade called Malicious, and Claire’s terrycloth robe, which she took off when I said bedtime and streaked up the stairs naked as if it were a prank. She knows her nakedness provokes me and she likes to provoke me. The nail polish goes in the fridge, so it’ll last. Throw the popcorn in the trash on top of the supper, but my hands slip. Reach into the trash. Grab the bowl. Feel something that is slimy enough to be trout with one finger, but the other fingers feel the innocuousness of popcorn, and then the edge of the popcorn bowl. It goes in the sink. Reach up to dry my hands on the dish towel that’s always draped over my shoulder in the kitchen but, no, it’s Claire’s robe, her little robe patterned in pink peonies Maman made from the same pattern she used for mine and my sister’s when we were little, smeared with popcorn butter and fish grease now. I scour the stain. I am always thoughtlessly ruining the things I love. I watch the spot go bleary, on the cusp of focus where despair is normally manifest in tears. I breathe instead. Too disgusted to indulge myself. When I felt like this I could always call Maman, she’d say it was all my fault and that if we’d only had Claire baptized the Lord would intercede. In a way, Maman would’ve been right. I never would have asked her who she loved best. Her affection followed an ordained hierarchy: God, husband, children, and domestic animals. She suffered from it more than we did: the dogs loved us, we loved Papa, and he loved his work. No one loved her best. But her fractious, fearful voice always made the world seem real to me again. Her worry was as unconditional as her love was supposed to be—and wasn’t it akin to love, her worry? It certainly demanded the same kind of attention. Maybe worry is what unrequited love turns into, maybe after a time, it was all she could muster. For the second time, I laugh audibly, almost theatrically, at my thoughts, and because there’s no one to see me, I don’t stop.
When Sam comes home, I feel his steps on the porch and his key in the door so keenly. Like a dog does. I grab the newspaper and open it to a random page because I can’t stand to be seen lying in wait.
Sam is smiling at me, and patiently untying his shoes. Picking them up. Putting them away. I always kick mine off so aggressively. He joins me at the dining room table.
“Claire tried to make out with me.”
“What?”
“She said she wanted to know what it feels like.”
“That’s crazy. I mean, it’s an understandable impulse, but it’s crazy.”
“I hate that. An understandable impulse. What’s understandable about the way she thrusts herself at us? It’s disgusting.”
“It’s not disgusting.”
“I’m disgusted by it.”
“Those are only feelings.”
“What is a person besides, like, feelings.”
“Carbon?” He asks, and I scowl. “Ok. Should we take her to therapy? Is that what you want?”
“Therapy is for rich people. So they can keep thinking the world revolves around them.”
“Should we take her to church then, so she can be like the rest of the lemmings.”
“I hate that you think that’s what I want.”
“Ok. You hate that too.”
His mouth is open and that is rare. He looks at me as desperately as when he asked me to be his wife; his questioning simplified by passion, but sadly. I feel the need in me and sit on his knee, and he tucks my head under his head. My face is on his shirt, which my makeup will stain. I let my tears wash the beige pigment off of my skin and into the waffle-knit cotton. His thumb nervously traces a circle on my neck. This current runs through us—this begging of lovers for love. I cry harder. I say to his chest, “Sometimes, I hate her.” I close my eyes to compose myself. I feel the edges of myself, my nose, my knees, my heels dangling off the floor. I need to remember where he ends and I begin to be able to say anything at all. “Tell me all the times she said she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“Every little girl tells her father she hates her mother.”
“She doesn’t hate you.” He says, and shushes me tenderly. I dry my tears and let him put a hand on my shoulder. But what has to escape is not inside our bodies it’s in my mind.
“I hated how husky she sounded when she was proud of us. I hated her laughter. I hated the way she said my name.”
“Your mother?”
“I was worried I was her.”
“Claire doesn’t hate you.”
“Don’t keep her secrets from me,” I say. I can feel his posture righting itself, asserting our separateness. “If you keep her secrets, you don’t love me anymore.”
“That’s insane.”
Behind him there is the night in the screen door. It’s as dull as a TV turned off. I go to the threshold and it’s a bit better. The back porch is lit white against the night and so are the wicker chairs, and the wicker table, and past them the white posts and the rail. The tiger lilies nod against it. Spattered orange petals flippantly fall away from their ocher stamens. These marshy flowers proliferate across the yard with a flagrant sameness that seems to proclaim that this domestic order is also nature, merely another permutation. This casual landscaping we’ve inherited from the former owners couldn’t be more different from the prim white-painted rocks we’d placed around Maman’s rose bushes, touching them up every spring with stinky oil paint using artist’s brushes.
“I hate these flowers,” I say. Outside, the smell of the lilies is grievously sweet. I struggle to find a stalk and yank. My feet falter against the slick grass. When the roots come loose, I hold up the lily. It’s as tall as me. Sam is on the porch.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and when I ignore him he pleads: “It’s dark. You can’t garden in the dark.”