What really got to me was the look on her face when she was waiting for me to explain myself. It was the type of look you might see at an accident site when a bystander catches a glimpse of something he wishes to hell he never saw. And she knew damn well I was lying! She knew it, but went straight into denial, pretending everything between us was hunky-dory.
By the time I got to my parents' house, I was feeling worse than shaky – kind of weak in the knees, like all I wanted to do was get to bed, lie down and hide from the world. When I opened the door I saw both my parents sitting in the den. They had the TV set on, but it was obvious they weren't paying attention to it. When they turned to me, my mom's mouth started to move as if she were chewing gum and my dad looked as if he dreaded what was about to happen.
'Can you sit down, Joey?' my dad asked.
'What's this about?'
My mom's mouth was closed but it was still moving furiously. It seemed like an effort for her to stop it. 'Do what your father tells you to do,' she demanded sharply.
I took a couple of steps into the room. 'Look,' I said, 'I'm tired and I don't have time for this nonsense. What do you want?'
'Sit down!' my mom ordered, her voice shrill and bordering on hysteria, her mouth once again chewing away on her imaginary gum.
'If this is about what happened at church-'
'Elaine called us today,' my dad said. He had slouched forward and was wringing his hands. He could barely look up at me. 'She told us how you drove to Albany the other day and how you called this morning. Courtney's been upset all day about your call.'
At first I was numb. Then as I looked at them, at my mom's raisin-like face rigid with fury and my dad's hangdog beaten expression, I could feel the blood rush to my head.
'You lied to me before,' I said. 'You knew where my daughters were and you lied to me about it.'
'Son, listen to me-'
But I didn't. I turned and raced out of the room.
The blood was now boiling in me. I was actually seeing red, honest to God. I started choking on the treachery and unfairness of it; that my own parents would conspire with my ex-wife to keep me away from my daughters.
My parents must've sat in their chairs stunned. I don't think they had any idea where I was headed until I locked the door to their bedroom. Then I heard some activity from them, but I ignored it. I started pulling drawers from the dressers and dumping their contents onto the floor. My dad knocked meekly on the door, asking me to unlock it, and then my mom joined in, rapping on it frantically, but I ignored them. And then I found the pictures.
There were maybe fifty of them in total. They were all of Melissa and Courtney taken at different ages. As I looked at them, I felt the rage that had been burning inside me fizzle away. Both my girls looked a lot like Elaine. They were both petite and blonde. They both had such thin legs and arms. As I went through the pictures and saw my girls as they grew older, I could see some of me in Courtney, at least around the eyes. And there was a little bit of me in Melissa too; this sorrowful little smile that she had. Both girls had grown up to look a lot like Elaine; they were both pretty as hell, but there was just enough of me in both of them to keep them from being beautiful.
The rapping on the door had grown harder and more frantic. My mom yelled at me not to dare go through her things. The combination of it – her yelling and the rapping – knocked me out of my thoughts. I felt a heaviness settle in my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to swallow back the emotion that was fighting its way forward. I was damned if I was going to let the two of them see me cry. It took some effort, and some deep breathing, but I got myself under control.
I went over to the door and opened it. The two of them stood there, shocked, their eyes first going to the mess on the floor and then to the stack of photos that I was holding. My dad looked like death warmed over, my mom's shriveled face was livid.
'You had no right going through my possessions,' my mom squeezed out in a tight, cold voice.
'Shut up.'
'Don't you dare talk to your mother like that,' my dad said without much conviction.
'You two can go screw yourselves,' I said. 'You're going to lie to me about my daughters? You couldn't even let me see pictures of them? Go to hell.'
'Give me those pictures,' my mom demanded. And then she made a grab for them. I backed away and raised my hand so I was holding them above her head. She started hopping up and down trying to reach for them.
'You give those back to me or I'll call the police on you,' she forced out between hops. She was breathing heavily now. 'What you're doing is stealing.'
'Go right ahead and call them,' I said.
The whole situation was so laughable that I couldn't help myself. I just started laughing like a crazy man. Maybe I was having some sort of minor breakdown, I don't know, but I just kept laughing away as my mom hopped up and down trying to grab those photos from me.
The gunshot brought me out of it. That one shot was really made up of almost four simultaneous noises – the gun blast, glass breaking, a whirling rush past my ear, and then the bullet thudding into the wall. Four distinct noises all within the span of less than a second. I pushed both my mom and dad down and then drove to the floor.
Just before I hit the floor there was another shot and the sound of another window shattering. Then I heard tires squeal as a car raced away. At first my mind was completely blank, and when it started working again, all I could think was that sonofabitch Junior had tried making a go at me. I got to my feet and raced to the front door, but the car was long gone.
I went outside and could see from the street the two windows that were shot out. I had a pretty good idea where the shots came from. A car must've stopped in front of the house and fired the shots before speeding off. The first one had missed me by inches. It had been too close to have been meant as a warning. Whoever fired the shot was trying to blow my head off.
As I was standing there a couple of the neighbors poked their heads out. I yelled to them, asking whether anyone saw anything, but they just shook their heads and went back inside.
I ran back into the house and to my parents' room. Both of them were still on the floor. My dad looked out of it and my mom was making little mewing noises as she clutched at her hip. I saw where one of the bullets had hit the wall, and dug it out with a penknife. My guess, it was a seven millimeter, probably fired from a hunting rifle. I got on the phone and called the police and asked them to send an ambulance. Then I went over to my parents.
My dad was sitting up, but was still completely out of it. I helped him to his feet and walked' him over to the bed. After I had him laid down I went over to my mom and knelt next to her.
She looked like she was in a great deal of pain as she clutched at her hip and made tiny sobbing noises.
'Mom, do you think you can stand up?' I asked.
'Get away from me, just leave and get away from me!'
'You don't mean that. You're in pain. Let me-'
'I said get away from me! And get out of my house! I don't ever want you back here.'
She had her eyes shut and tears were streaming down her small withered face. As I knelt next to her, she let go of her hip with her right hand and swung out, catching me on the side of the face. There wasn't much to her blow, probably weaker than what a three-year-old might do, but the shock of it sent me to my feet and stepping away from her.
The hell with it. The hell with both of them.
I looked around and saw that when I had dove to the floor after the first gunshot, I had flung the photos and they were now scattered across the room. I bent over and started picking them up. I was only partially paying attention to my dad, but noticed he had gotten off his bed and was standing beside me. All of a sudden, he started pummeling me, hitting me with both fists -not hard enough to do any real damage, but hard enough to hurt. And hard enough to almost send me to the floor. I caught my balance and moved back a few steps before turning to face him.