“Tell me, gentlemen,” Rebecca went on. “Do any of you know how to fix a broken exhaust pipe? You all look pretty handy.”
“Your car got problems?” Jerry asked, lisping like a twelve-year-old.
“Not my car,” Rebecca answered. “Belongs to my friend here. Tell them.”
I shook my head, hid behind my glass of beer.
“What’d you say your name was, honey?” one of the men asked.
“Rebecca,” I answered. Rebecca laughed.
“Feel like dancing, Rebecca?” she asked me.
As if by magic, the jukebox kicked back on. I set down my glass. I can’t say where I suddenly found the courage to dance. I never danced. I was drunk, of course, but even still, it astounds me how easily Rebecca pulled me off of my stool. I followed her to the little space by the jukebox, took her hands in mine, and let her lead me around, giggling and stopping every few seconds, covering my face in embarrassment and glee as we swayed and shimmied. We danced for what felt like an hour, first to quick, happy dance tunes, laughing, and then we waltzed around to slow love songs, sardonically to start, but eventually we were lulled into the heady, sweeping pulse of the music. I stared disbelievingly into Rebecca’s serene, wistful face, her eyes closed, her hands on my shoulders like an angel and a devil debating the logic of longing. Rebecca and I moved together in a little circle as we danced, and I held her around her waist, with only my wrists pressed lightly against her body. I kept my hands stiff and stuck them out at an angle so that they wouldn’t touch her. The men in their booth were at first mesmerized and entertained, but then they grew tired. None of them tried to dance with us. By the time the music quit, my head was spinning. Rebecca and I went and sat down at our drinks again. Still entranced and nervous, I shot back the whiskey and finished the beer. “I’ve had plenty,” Rebecca said, and pushed her martini away. I drank that, too. It was gin.
Sandy came over, counted out Rebecca’s change.
“How’s Dad?” he asked me.
“Is this your brother?” Rebecca asked, shocked.
“No, he just knows my father,” I explained.
“Small towns,” Rebecca said, grinning.
I never trusted Sandy. He seemed terribly nosy. He’s not an important figure here, but for the record, Sandy Brogan was his name and I disliked him. He said something like, “Don’t know if it’s a good thing I ain’t seen him, or it means something else.”
“It means something else,” I said, and put my cape back on, pulled the hood over my head. I was feeling very brazen. “Can I have one of your cigarettes?” Sandy shook his pack out toward me and I pulled one out. He lit it for me.
“Quite a gal,” said Rebecca.
“This one’s a good kid,” Sandy affirmed, nodding. He was an idiot.
I smoked awkwardly, holding my cigarette like a nine-year-old would, hand stiff, fingers outstretched, watching the burning tip, going cross-eyed as I brought it to my lips. I coughed, blushed and laughed with Rebecca, who took my arm. Together we left the bar, ignoring the men as we walked out.
Out on the street, Rebecca turned to me. The dark, icy night sparkled behind her, the snow and stars a galaxy of hope and wonder with her at its center. She was so alive and lovely. “Thank you, Eileen,” she said, looking at me oddly. “You know, you remind me of a Dutch painting,” she said, staring into my eyes. “You have a strange face. Uncommon. Plain, but fascinating. It has a beautiful turbulence hidden in it. I love it. I bet you have brilliant dreams. I bet you dream of other worlds.” She threw her head back and laughed that evil laugh, then smiled sweetly. “Maybe you’ll dream of me and my morning remorse, which you can count on. I shouldn’t drink, but I do. C’est la vie.” I watched her get into her car — a dark two-door, is all I recall — and drive away.
But I didn’t want to go home yet. The night was young and I was beloved. I was someone important at last. So I went back into O’Hara’s, passed the same booth of men who were drunk, laughing, slapping the table, spilling their beers. I took the seat Rebecca had sat on, feeling just a hint of the warmth she’d left behind. Sandy slid an ashtray toward me, slapped a cocktail napkin beside my curled hand on the bar, red from the cold. “Whiskey,” I said, and stubbed out the cigarette.
The next memory I have is of waking up in the morning slumped over the steering wheel of the car, which I’d parked half inside a bank of snow in front of my house. A frozen pool of vomit sat next to me on the seat. My panty hose were full of runs. In the rearview mirror I looked like a madwoman — hair sticking out in all directions, lipstick smeared down my chin. I blew on my frozen hands, turned off the headlights. When I reached for the keys, they were missing from the ignition. I’d lost my cape, the trunk of the car was open, and my purse was gone.
WEDNESDAY
The house was locked. I could see my father asleep in his chair in the kitchen through the windows, the refrigerator door wide open. He sometimes left it that way when the heat from the stove and the oven made him sweat. And on my father’s feet, shoes. With the exception of Sundays, when he was closely chaperoned by his sister to church and back, if my father had shoes on, it meant there would be trouble. He wasn’t a violent threat, but when he got out he did things the warden would have called morally offensive — falling asleep on somebody’s front lawn, folding up postcards at the drugstore, knocking over a gum-ball machine. His more aggressive indiscretions included pissing in the sandbox at the children’s playground, yelling at cars on Main Street, throwing rocks at dogs. Each time he got out, the police would find him, pick him up and bring him home. How I cringed at the sound of that doorbell when an X-ville cop stood outside on the front porch with my father, drunk and tugging at his chin, eyes crossed. The officer would take his cap off when I answered the door, speak in hushed tones while my father busted into the house in search of booze. And if he chose instead to stay and take part in the conversation, there were handshakes and pats on the shoulder, the respectful pretense of love and loyalty. “Routine check, sir,” the cop would say. If a cop tried to express even the slightest concern, my father would take the guy aside and launch into a rant about the hoodlums, the mob, the strange noises in the house. He’d complain of ill health, heart trouble, back pain, and how I, his daughter, was neglectful, how I was abusing him, how I was after all his money. “Will somebody please tell her to give me back my shoes? She has no right!” And as soon as he turned to me, hands trembling and creeping up toward my neck, the cop would nod, turn and close the door and leave. None of them had the guts not to play into his delusions — ghouls and gangsters, ghosts and the mob. They would have let him get away with murder, I imagined. “America’s finest,” the prison guards of the civilized world, those police. I will tell you frankly that to this day there is nothing I dread more than a cop knocking at my door.
That morning I rang and rang the doorbell, but my father wouldn’t budge. I figured the keys were in the pocket of his robe or, worse, around his neck, wearing them the way I used to, a noose at the ready if I’d ever thought of it. I could have tried to walk to work that day, stick my thumb out, that’s true. Nobody would have looked twice at my outfit at the office. Nobody cared.
I went around the back of the house and tried to open the cellar door. Bending over and tugging at it had me burping up and gagging. It was not a pleasant morning. Nothing is more disturbing than waking up to the taste of vomit. With bare hands I cracked through the glazed layer of ice over the high snow and filled my mouth with it. It hurt my head. Maybe that was when the previous night came back to me: Rebecca, Sandy, leaving the bar and going back in. I recall sitting down in a booth, the sparks of matches, wobbling over manly fists with my Salems, the itchy wool of my dress or a man’s rough sweater rubbing against my neck, then falling down and laughing. “Rebecca,” someone had said, and I responded, “Yes, doll.” I’d been Rebecca for a night. I’d been someone else completely.