She had let him believe she’d come with him to Joshua’s, and then she’d made him go alone. He could lie to her too. He could say anything he wanted. “I’m still here,” he might tell her, the water rushing over his ankles, the slickness of the log working itself against his back. “I never left.”
Passengers
SHE IS TALKING ABOUT her father again, and I don’t mind listening. Her stories are usually more interesting than mine and I like her voice, the way it fills a place. We are in my car. I guess we’re parking, if that’s what you’d call it, although we aren’t in the back seat and all of our clothes are intact. We are down at the Peninsula, off on the bay side next to a thin stretch of beach. I know about the spot from sailing. My father showed it to me once when I was younger and we used to take the boat out together. Across the bay I can see downtown Erie, the lights of the bars and restaurants as bright as bonfires. Outside it is hot, with just a little bit of a breeze coming in off the water. We are the only two around.
She tells me again how her father, when he was younger, had a wild streak in him. She tells me about the parties he threw, complete with gin baths and people jumping off the roof naked into the swimming pool and white lines from one side of the kitchen counter to the other. She has heard all this secondhand from her father’s friends. But after she was born, he finally got himself straightened out.
I don’t know exactly what to think of her father. I’ve never met him because by the time she and I got things going she was already living on her own, working long hours, paying her own bills. And by then they didn’t speak anymore. I was getting the impression that that was basically where all of this was headed. Things had just fallen apart between the two of them.
She begins telling me about growing up. Most of it I already know. He raised her alone. When she was four, her mother ran off to Florida with a welterweight boxer and so it was just her and her dad.
“Through all of it,” she says: the skinned knees, her first period, the heartbreaks. It was just him and her and so they had this special relationship. “But the fighting was always there,” she says. “We fought, but at least back then we still talked.” She slides closer to me on the leather seat. She is wearing a tank top, and her skin, where it touches my arm, feels hot and angry, like just talking about her father heats her blood. I free my arm from where it is wedged between us and stretch it across her shoulders. In front of us Presque Isle Bay is as shiny black as an oil slick. The lights of the Bicentennial Tower shiver on its surface.
“He’s unreasonable,” she says. “You’re lucky you’ve never had to meet him.” I nod, but not too dramatically. She can still get defensive about him.
With all the things she’s told me, I shouldn’t even want to meet him. According to her he’s rash and bullheaded, can blow a fuse over the slightest thing. But still I’m curious. It’s been half a year, and I haven’t met any of her family, not a cousin or a grandparent. I have already introduced her to all of mine.
“I’m the one you’re with,” she says when we talk about it. “Those other people shouldn’t matter.”
My mother has a different opinion. She did some asking around and found out where the girl lived, and that was enough for her.
“Her stock is below yours,” my mother told me one night several weeks after we began dating. We had just finished eating dinner and were sitting in the living room. My father was reading the paper, but when my mother said that he lowered it and looked over.
“I’m sure she’s a nice girl, and I know you don’t want to admit it now, but you’ll never survive it.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, like I was trying to change something I had no control over and she already knew how it would all end.
“We’re in love, and that should be enough,” I said, realizing immediately how childish I sounded. My mother looked at me in a sort of disappointed way.
“Take ‘should be’ to the bank,” she said, “and tell me what you get for it.”
Of course I never told her what my mother said. And to her face my mother acted pleasantly uninterested, the same way she treated my friends whose last names she did not recognize. When I brought her along to dinners my mother engaged her in brief conversations before turning away.
“Another thing about my father,” she continues, “is that everything has to be taken to the extreme with him. He either loves you or he hates you, and sometimes one is as bad as the other.” She stops and looks at me. Her face is round and seems to give off a pale glow. In the dark she always looks sad, even when I know she isn’t.
“He never even laid eyes on me until I was three years old,” she says. I have heard this before. She has told me he was in jail, during her birth, her first steps. She has told me her mother would not take her to visit him in prison. She has told me this much, but never goes any further. Like all the people she knows whom I’ve never met, may never meet, the rest is just speculation for me. “I told you he was in jail.”
I nod, stare ahead at the bay, pretend to absorb this information without any questions, hoping she’ll go on. I’m afraid to prompt or push her in any way, afraid that if I do, she’ll abandon it, leaving me guessing. And besides that, it is her story to tell. But I have already wondered for a long time.
I lift my arm off her shoulders and over her head. I reach for her hand and grip it. It is almost the end of August and soon I’ll be leaving for school. Leaving her here, to work and live the way she’s done since long before meeting me. She knows this but doesn’t like to talk about it. I feel like this is the closest I’ve come to really knowing her. Across the water Erie seems a thousand miles away. The distance makes me feel safe. “We’re alone,” I say. “Nothing can touch us here.” And then with her hand warm and slick in mine and her head resting like a stone in the crook of my neck she tells her story.
“My father’s brother, my Uncle Charlie, was his best friend growing up. They were only two years apart, so they played together, went to school together, everything. When my dad graduated from high school, Charlie was already working tool-and-die and so he got my dad a job at the same shop. It was alright at first, paid okay, but what they really wanted was to get into business for themselves, and both of them had done some construction in the past. So after saving for a while they found a rundown building on East 14th and Parade and bought it, cheap. They both still had their regular jobs, but on nights and weekends, they would go over there and work on it together, fixing it up. It took them some time but they turned the place into three separate apartments. Nothing fancy, but nice enough to rent. It was the first thing they ever really owned, and my dad still gets proud when he talks about it. So eventually they started to rent them out, but you know that area. Lots of crime. No one has a job. So of course they’re getting stiffed on payments left and right. Tenants are staying for a few months, tearing the places apart partying, and then leaving. It gets to the point where my dad and Charlie have to start hounding people to get them to pay. But there’s this one guy in particular. He hasn’t paid rent since the first month, and he’s almost never there so it’s near impossible to even ask him about it. My dad and uncle are counting on this money; they only have the three units and they over-extended themselves. They have bills and credit lines, and my dad’s got my mother at home pregnant with me. Things are about as tight as they can get. So one Saturday my dad and Charlie are over there replacing some siding, and they see the guy pull up. He parks across the street and half-stumbles out of the car like he’s just getting home from drinking all night. Charlie is a little more laid back than my father, so he says to stay put and that he’ll go talk to the guy and figure this out once and for all. So my dad keeps working and Charlie goes across the street to where the guy is. My dad can see them talking but he can’t hear anything they’re saying. It looks like they’re arguing, but he can’t tell for sure. Charlie says something else, and points at the building and the guy nods. Charlie starts walking back over to where my father is. He’s got a big smile on his face like him and the guy have come to some agreement. My dad’s just standing there watching, and he sees the guy reaching into the backseat for something. And then as calm as if he were unloading groceries the guy takes out a shotgun. My dad starts yelling and pointing, and Charlie turns around. But before he can do anything the guy shoots him in the stomach. Charlie gets knocked backwards on the pavement. Then the guy aims at my dad and shoots again. But he’s too far and misses. The shotgun’s no good from there. So he drops it and starts running, runs right past the wide open door of his car. Doesn’t even think to jump in and drive off. And my dad’s seeing all of this happen. His first instinct is to chase the guy, and so he starts running after him. By now people have come out on their porches but my dad doesn’t see any of it. All he can think about is the guy. He already had a head start when my dad started chasing him, but it doesn’t matter, all that matters to my dad is catching up with him. They run for blocks, dodging cars, cutting across lawns, my dad gaining ground little by little. And the whole time he’s been chasing the guy, he’s been holding the hammer he was working with. He hasn’t even thought to drop it. When he finally catches up with the guy he reaches out and grabs a handful of his shirt and the two of them go down on the pavement in a ball. And my dad ends up on top, and the next thing he knows he’s swinging, hitting the man full force with the hammer. He’s hitting the guy everywhere, his chest, his arms, his head, and he keeps hitting until finally the guy stops moving, stops kicking and squirming and screaming beneath him. My dad stands up, walks over to the curb, and sits down. And that’s how he stayed, covered in blood, still holding the hammer, until the police got there and arrested him. Charlie died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but not the other guy. After all that he lived, but it wasn’t much of a life. He was at St. Mary’s. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t walk. For all practical purposes he was already dead. And normally, for something like that, my father could have been put away for life. But under the circumstances the jury knew he’d pretty much gone insane for a while. So he spent a little over three years in jail. And he hardly ever talks about it, but when he does he says he knows he did the right thing because he loved Charlie.”