Goodnight, goodnight, my little m.
EDITH (1997)
“I’m too old,” Dennis says and waves us on. He’s standing by the barbecuers in the grass below.
Mae and I climb under the railing and crawl along a narrow ledge to the caves along the side of the cliff. I don’t look down. The caves have small openings. As we crawl into them, our hands brush against dirt and trash. Candy wrappers or is it condom wrappers? Dennis is shouting directions at us from below.
“To the left, to the left,” he’s saying. I stick my head out and see he’s pointing to the cave next to us. That’s the one he camped in back in the day.
We climb over to it. I hoist Mae in and then she pulls me up. The cave is deeper than the others and darker. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust, and then I see an outline of a figure. I can feel Mae tense but before she can do anything, I cover her mouth with my hand. There’s a man very close to us. Asleep. He is naked, lying on top of a sleeping bag. Even in the dark I can see his dick. It’s draped on his stomach, looking directly at us with its eye. Mae and I nearly fall out of the cave, crawling backward. I bet it’s the first one she’s ever seen.
“What happened?” Dennis says. Mae and I are both out of breath. Her face is smudged from where I covered her mouth. A Snickers wrapper is hanging off her knee and Dennis peels it off.
“We saw a snake,” I tell him. I don’t know why I lie. It just comes out.
“Oh,” he says. “Was it green and yellow?”
I nod.
“A garter snake. Don’t worry, they’re harmless,” he says.
There’s a woman standing next to him. Not the one from the theater, a different one. The way she smiles at us makes her look like a horse. When she tries to compliment Mae on her hair, Mae growls.
MAE
Dad had a lot of women. It was better not to encourage them. The worst was when they tried to act motherly, and then it felt like some awful community theater production where they were auditioning for a part that didn’t really exist. Edie and I both made a point of being rude to them, though we had different reasons. I had finally been given a father and I didn’t want to share him, while Edie thought these women were an insult to Mom.
I don’t think Dad knew how to keep all the women at bay. His whole life he got a lot of female attention. Growing up, he was the youngest, and his mother and sister doted on him. And then, as an adult, he was handsome and charismatic, tall enough to have to stoop through doorways, talented and famous. Of course women liked him! But it didn’t seem like he took any of them very seriously. He was completely focused on Edie and me. Being in the center of someone’s world like this was intoxicating. The way he looked at us… I’ve never experienced anything like it.
One night when Edie was asleep, I snuck out of our room and crept up to Dad’s door. I stood there for a while, gathering my courage to knock. I needed to tell him that I couldn’t go back, that I couldn’t leave him, but I was afraid to say anything in front of my sister. I was nervous to break rank and go behind her back.
I remember as I tapped on his door, it pushed open and I found him sitting at his writing desk, staring at a photograph. I startled him, and he quickly slid the picture into a drawer.
“What are you doing up?” he asked.
I lost my nerve. I didn’t know what to say. And what if Edie was right? What if his love for us was an illusion, and my words would expose this and scare him off? So, I said nothing.
But I didn’t have to. “Come here,” he said, and pulled me onto his lap.
“Are you scared?” he asked me.
I nodded, and he kissed me on the forehead.
“Who wouldn’t be,” he said.
EDITH (1997)
“My two beautiful daughters, my beautiful, beautiful girls,” Dennis says at breakfast. My shoulder is warm under his hand. His eyes are soft like we’re his baby birds.
I look at Mae looking at him and I can see things, important things, slowly shifting around in her like plate tectonics.
I’m not gonna lie. I also felt a moment of sudden completeness when he touched me, like the wires in my Bullshit Alarm had been cut. But at least I recognize it for what it is. Two weeks have gone by since Mom disappeared into the hospital and we’re betraying her already.
“I thought I would take you to the Met today,” he says. The phone rings but he keeps smiling at us. I squirm out from under his hand. It’s Markus, probably, calling me back. I’ve left him three messages. That, or one of Dennis’s ladies. So many ladies. They call and call. One showed up the other day in a trench coat with nothing on underneath. She’d been out of the country and came straight from the airport to surprise him. Surprise! She couldn’t even sit down, just held the coat closed tight around her neck with one hand as she shook our hands with the other. I almost felt bad for her.
“Hello?” I say into the phone.
It’s a male voice. “Could I speak to Mr. Lomack, please?” It’s the doctor, I think.
I hand Dennis the phone. I watch his face as he listens.
“Yes,” Dennis says. “How is she doing?” He looks down at his hands. “Yes,” he says, “yes.” He turns from us, and the cord on the phone wraps around his back. “What about the medication?” he says. “I see,” he says. “Yes.” His voice gives away nothing.
My heart is beating in my throat.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, but he doesn’t sound particularly sorry. I can’t see his face. What is he sorry to hear?
Mae shifts in her seat, and the chair creaks. I must be giving her a mean look because her lips are quivering. She’s sensitive. That’s what Mom always says. Be careful with your sister, she’s so sensitive. I smile at her, or try to, then take a deep breath.
“Yes,” Dennis says again, about three thousand times. They’re keeping Mom there against her will. She’s probably tied to a bed, screaming. She’s lost her voice. That’s why they won’t let me talk to her. She has no voice. I picture her face screaming and no sound coming out. This scares me so I take Mae’s hand.
“Ow,” she says, and rubs where I touched her. She can be a real brat sometimes.
Dennis hangs up the phone. His eyes are shining and he doesn’t say anything until he sits down at the table with us.
“The doctors think it would be best,” he says, burying his fingers in his beard, “if you moved here on a somewhat permanent basis. Your mother is not doing well. She needs more time.”
“No,” I say.
Dennis nods. “I know this isn’t what you were expecting,” he says.
“What about school? We can’t just leave in the middle of the spring quarter. We can go back and live there by ourselves. I’m 16. Who do you think has been taking care of things this whole time?”
“Legally, you couldn’t do that,” he says.
“We can stay with Doreen.” Doreen is like Mom’s sister. Not biological, but they grew up together.