The Narcissist's Daughter Read online

  “Well, from what I hear about when you were twelve, that’s probably a good thing.”

  Her face fluoresced. I braced for a lashing, but not for her leaving without another word, which is what she did. It was for some reason just then that I understood it had gone bad, all of it, and was going to come crumbling down. I just didn’t know yet how bad, and how much would come.

  When I pulled up at the station Brigman came out of one of the bays as if he knew already. I figured if I didn’t tell him that when he found out later he’d be pissed about that, too. Plus, he couldn’t really blow up at work. “Listen—” I said.

  When I finished, he said, “Who are these people?”

  “You know who—”

  “This is your girlfriend?”

  “Well—her father is that pathologist. Ted Kessler. With the one arm?”

  “You’re dicking around with that guy’s daughter?”

  “Sort of.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “Chloe’s staying there?”

  “Donny comes over, too.”

  “Does he stay over, too?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “She safe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuckin Donny, I’ll kick his ass. And this doctor, who does he think he is? Maybe you should tell Jessi to move in with us, see how he likes it.”

  “Oh,” I said, “yeah, that’d be great. If we’d just put in a pool and expand the house a little. Listen, do you want to—I could take you over there.”

  “Fuck it.”

  “She said she’d call.”

  “Whatever.” He turned away, back to the banging and ratcheting and torquing of his life.

  Jessi met me in the student union pizza bar.

  She said, “I’m sorry about this—I should have at least told you. I know it’s not what you want. But I feel, I don’t know, like I owe it to her or something. Like someone owes her something.”

  “Because you pity her.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say.”

  “Is it? I grew up with her. I know how people treat her.”

  “Syd—”

  “Don’t get upset. I’m not blaming you. I think it’s nice what you’re trying to do.”

  “She doesn’t have a very easy life.”

  “Really? She’s got a home and a car and a job and clothes and food and school. She needs a pool, too? A mansion to live in? She needs to be able to see some child molester?”

  Now she looked away, through the plate glass windows, and covered her mouth with her hand. She waited some time before she spoke. “She’s just staying with us for a little while. That’s all. Call it a vacation. A long slumber party.”

  “Because you’re friends.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not that you feel sorry or you think she has this horrible life or something.”

  “We just hang out. There aren’t that many people I like to hang out with, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I touched her finger and she grabbed my hand and held on. I said, “And you’re leaving soon, anyway.”

  “Syd—” My hand must have gone clammy because she let it go. “—I’m withdrawing my acceptance.”

  “Why?”

  “You mean is it because of you? You sound so panicked.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not just because of you.”

  “But it is some.”

  “More than some.”

  “I—it’s just a hell of an opportunity to pass up. What are you going to do?”

  “Take some classes here, get a job. I don’t know yet, exactly. That’s the point—I want to think. You’re supposed to be happy about it. You’re supposed to say ‘Yea! Good for us.’”

  “I applied for a fellowship at OSU this fall.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. Your dad’s supposed to write the letter.”

  She actually laughed.

  “Have you told your folks?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, that’ll be a fun time.”

  “I’m glad Chloe’s there. They can’t go totally ape. It’s such a blow, you know, Daughter not going to Daddy’s alma mater. It would have looked so good.”

  Though we’d met in a public place I frequented, I didn’t give it much thought. I mean, we only talked, and then I walked her to her car and we had a quick kiss. So when that night as I drove in to work a police cruiser sped up behind me and flashed its lights, I was not apprehensive—just confused.

  “Evening,” the cop said, inspecting my license.

  “Was I speeding?” I said.

  He handed the license back without bothering to take it to his car to check it, and said to hold on. Which I did, of course, suspecting nothing, until in my mirror I watched the passenger door open and Ron step out. I thought then about taking off, futile and self-destructive as it would have been. But I waited. He’d leer, I figured. Let me see he was so important he could get cops to make stops for him. I’d just nod and go to work.

  He came up along the car as the cop had but before he came even with my open window, before I could see him beside me, inserted a nightstick and, wielding it like a pool cue, waited for me to look back at him, then rammed it into my eye. He must’ve been a hell of a pool player. I mean it rocked me, the pain so intense that I could only sit stunned and blinded.

  He leaned in and said, “Enjoy lunch, asshole? What do you think not seeing someone means? You don’t want to learn a lesson in getting really hurt, you better figure it out.”

  In the morning Brigman said, “The hell happened to you?” It was a pretty classic shiner, like in those old Tarryton cigarette commercials (I’d rather fight than switch!), encompassing the entire orbital from the round crown of cheekbone below to the rim above. Plus, for a little added drama, I’d had some bleeding in the eye itself, so the sclera now had a kind of scarletty vampire effect. Phyllis insisted that someone in the ER look at it, though they determined there was no internal damage. My vision was a little blurred but would come back, they thought, when the swelling went down (which it did within a day or two).

  I said, “Door jumped out at me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t hit no door. You’d have a line. I did it once. That’s round,” he said, pointing, “and it went in your eye.”

  “What’re you, a forensic expert now?”

  “A what?”

  “Nothing. I’m all right. I had it checked out.”

  “You don’t want to say what happened, then don’t.”

  I looked at him. I could feel my mouth set in the way he always set his, tight and flat to telegraph disgust or at least displeasure not just with an individual but the whole world. I said, “It was a cop’s billy club,” and was conscious even as I said it of how easy it was to push the Destruct button, how simple at the moment of the doing it was to change your life.

  “I said fine. Don’t tell me.”

  “It was.”

  “A cop hit you?”

  “Ex-cop. He does surveillance and threats and stuff.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Guy’s been following me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Dr. Kessler doesn’t like it that I’m going out with Jessi.”

  “So he hired a guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he hits you?”

  “He has a few times.”

  He lifted his beer from the TV tray and drank and set it back, all the while not taking his eyes off me.

  “Why’n the hell wouldn’t you say nothing?”

  Because even now his face was reddening in the way I had seen it only a few times—and never since the wreck—not with a temper flare, which was common with him, but a true burn, a dangerous thing. Because it wasn’t his mess. Because I didn’t want to have to talk about any of it.

  O
nce at Motorhead a guy said some things to him low enough that I couldn’t hear, but I didn’t need to. I watched Brigman’s face in the bonfire light and felt the heat coming off him hotter than the fire, and I knew the guy needed to shut up and go, but he was drunk and he kept on. I’ve wondered since what he was saying, or rather who it was about, because I could think of nothing else that would set Brigman off in that way other than an insult to someone he cared about. I mean, if you bad-mouthed his car, he’d just tell you let’s drive. I never figured out who the guy was, but I knew before it happened what was going to. I wasn’t even sure until later that I saw it it was so quick. Brigman put his left hand around behind the guy’s head, almost like he was giving him a hug, their faces close together. Brigman said something, and the guy seemed to laugh, and then that fast Brigman brought the guy’s head down and his own knee up and the guy was on the ground bleeding and screaming, his nose spread up across his forehead. Brigman pointed at me to follow and we were gone. No repercussions that I knew of ever came from it.

  But I felt glad now, too, that he knew. I was scared. I wanted this guy off me, wanted something on my side other than my big mouth.

  “You know his name?”

  “Ron,” I said.

  “I want Chloe home.”

  As if she’d been expecting company Joyce answered the door in a rich-suburban-doctor’s-wife getup—black slacks and a sort of tunic in a quasi-African print (zebra stripes on a gold background) held by a gold chain-link belt, jewelry on the neck and wrists and ears, makeup and perfume. I lost my composure for a moment and just looked at her, and she, fixed on my eye, looked back. We stood like that until I said, “Hello, Mrs. Kessler. I wondered if I could have my sister back?”

  I thought she’d laugh, but she only glared, as she had that night in the kitchen. She said, “You’d better come in.” In the foyer she inspected my face from several angles, palpated the bruise until I winced, but instead of asking what happened, she said, “Jessi tells us she’s not going to Case.”

  “Oh.”

  She regarded me, then said, “Does this make you happy, Syd?”

  “No. I think she should go. I told her that.”

  “Well, maybe you’d better do something more than just tell her.”

  “I thought it was Ted who wanted her to go so badly.”

  “We both do. Though maybe for different reasons.” She smiled now, for the first time, and put her finger against the center of my belly and drew the nail down in a line until my belt stopped it.

  Ted came in wearing green golf slacks and tasseled loafers without socks and a pale yellow V-necked sweater, and holding a drink.

  “You make it to the club?” I said, in some kind of lame offer of friendliness, thinking maybe he’d golfed. He ignored the question and said, “Are you alone?”

  I nodded. “He wants her to come home.”

  “Is she safe there?” Joyce said. “Does he hurt her?”

  “Oh,” I said, “no. Nothing like that. It’s about Donny.”

  Joyce looked at Ted and said, “We’re…leaving it up to her for now. If Brigman wants, Ted will talk to him.” Ted just stood beside her looking like he’d eaten something rancid.

  “She has rules. One is that Donny can only come over if Ted or I is here. If we find out he’s been here while we’re out, she’ll have to go home. You can tell him that.”

  “He still won’t be happy with it.”

  “Then I guess he’ll have to speak to us.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “Of course.” She turned to go back up the stairs but Chloe was standing there already, watching.

  “Come on, Ted,” said Joyce.

  “Wait,” I said, then to Ted, “I’m not here to see Jessi.”

  “What?”

  “You understand,” I said, “that this is about Chloe. So, if we could, not have, you know—” I touched my black eye.

  He shook his head and made a face and said, “What?”

  Joyce’s eyes widened slightly as she looked at him, then at me, and said slowly (if one can be said to utter a single word in that way), “Ted?” It seemed to dawn on her then finally what’d been going on. When he looked at her, feigning ignorance, her face flushed and she turned suddenly and stomped away, and he followed.

  “So. What?” said Chloe.

  “Brigman would like you to come home.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “He’s worried.”

  “Joyce had the Safe Sex talk with me, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No—I mean, that’s good. I’m glad. You should listen to her. But there are things going on, Chloe, some trouble, and you should be there, at home.”

  “I’m safe here.”

  “The trouble is here.”

  “Jessi told me.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Chloe—trust me on this.”

  “Syd—”

  “Listen—”

  “I’m staying. Good-bye.”

  The next morning I took a rear booth where Joyce told me to meet her for breakfast (a quick call to the hospital, a command, a click, no chance to refuse), a nicer place than I usually dined, especially this early.

  When she sat down across from me, I said, “So, what’d Ted have to say?”

  “About your new friend? Not much. I didn’t think he would.”

  “You didn’t know about it before last night?”

  “That you were being beaten? You think I’d have let it go on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do.” She let her fingers play lightly across mine on the table top, then said, “So, how often do you see her?”

  “I don’t know. Now and then.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Have lunch.”

  “That’s all?”

  “More or less.”

  I should have told her then. And I told myself I would have if she’d asked directly—are you having sex? But she didn’t. She said, “I don’t understand how having lunch with you has influenced this decision about college.”

  “I think she’s just not sure what she wants to do, and needs some time.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “In so many words.”

  She looked away for several moments and seemed to consider things, then wiped at her eyes and said, “It’s going to stop now. Everything. All this violence. You and Jessi. You and Ted. It’s over.”

  “Joyce—”

  “I told him, Syd. About us.”

  I had raised my iced tea to my lips but couldn’t swallow.

  “About you and me. That that’s how it’s going to be now.”

  It was I who wanted to cry then, who saw with a horrible clarity the knot of forces that had been set loose to twist and turn on itself, writhing and furious and self-consuming.

  “I’m not sure you understand.”

  “Syd,” she said, “I have a surprise. Come on.” She put some cash on the table. We took her car, though she gave me the keys and had me drive. She guided me onto a quiet leafy boulevard of large frame houses in the Old West End and into a driveway, and she led me not into the house but the backyard, to the garage, and up the flight of wooden stairs fastened to the side of it. She produced a new key and unlocked the door at the top.

  “For us,” she said.

  It was a studio apartment outfitted with nothing but two modest though upholstered chairs, a gymnasium-sized bed, and a wooden trunk, which I found held an array of tools and devices and scarves and ropes and oils and unguents and penetrating implements the likes and uses of many of which I had barely imagined let alone used before that.

  When she told me to lie down, I did.

  Masterson called that afternoon. “I’m sorry, Syd,” he said.

  “I didn’t get it?”

  “Well—no.”

  “Okay.”

  “The truth is, I never sent in the applicat
ion. There was a…problem. The situation changed.”

  “I see.”

  He apologized again and hung up, as if he couldn’t bear to hear my voice anymore.

  Brigman had several old tire irons in the garage. I took one, angled and tapered at one end for prying off hubcaps with a socket at the other end for fitting over lug nuts, and put it on my passenger seat. So when that night after I turned off the thoroughfare into the neighborhoods behind the med center (I often came this way, traversing a few blocks of ghetto to use the rear entrance, which fed straight into the parking garage) his front grill came up hard on my rear bumper and his big face leered in my mirror, I felt a calmness come over me. And with it the old anger came back. I wondered where it had gone. Though I stopped he pulled around anyway to cut me off.

  They were big houses along here, clapboards and shingle-sides and bricks, some duplexes, most with wide front porches where families sat to watch the street, though they didn’t stay out at night. The place was dark and dead and I knew that if I were to leap from my car and scream for help, for someone to call the cops, no light would go on, or if it did it would snap off again just as abruptly. The ER got a guy in once who was stabbed right here a block from our entrance and had to drag himself out to the lights of Cherry Street before someone dared to stop and help him.

  I rolled down my window and the thick humid air poured in, but he sat looking at me as if (like the animal he was) he smelled a change, sensed that I was done taking his shit. But if he was waiting for me to mosey up so he could nut-grab me again he was kookier than I already thought. He got out so slowly you could practically hear him grunt, as if having to actually work was some big inconvenience. I gripped the iron.

  He stood away from my door, a little in front of it, and crouched to look in. He said, “Heya, fuckface. Whyn’t you get on out.”

  I said nothing.

  “Come on, otherwise I might have to mess your car up, too.”

  “Well, there’s a threat,” I said.

  “Listen, I want to talk. I want to know—I mean, you proud, getting the girl to drop out of college? This your big wet dream come true? You like ruining people’s lives?”

  I said nothing.

  “Perfectly happy healthy family, and you gotta come in from your white trash ghetto and fuck it up. Don’t look shocked. I know where you live. I watched you and your grease-monkey dad and your freak of a sister. I know what kind of toilet you crawled out of. Thing is, you picked the wrong family. So now you gotta pay.”