“Looks about right,” Dad says. “Are we going in?”
He has an expression on his face that I haven’t seen there before. It’s almost like Mom left her iron will lying around, and he’s picked it up and put it on. His mild features set in those lines of determination make him look foreign and strange. I feel adrift again, without anchor, but before I can restore my equilibrium, he’s opened the door and started unfolding himself out of the car.
“Wait,” I call after him, getting out of my own door. “Maybe we don’t all have to go in. You and Elle could wait—”
“Oh, I’m going in,” he says.
“Elle, you stay here with Mia,” I call back over my shoulder, taking a few running steps to catch up with Dad, who is moving faster than I’ve seen him since I got home.
Tony is right behind me, which should be comforting, but the responsibility of his presence weighs heavy on me. As for Elle, once again she doesn’t listen, and she and Mia troop up behind us.
The door opens as Dad steps up onto the pallet that serves as a porch.
Marley stands there, looking even more like a younger version of Mom now that she’s not dressed for a performance. No makeup, her hair drawn back into a loose ponytail. She’s wearing faded jeans and a western shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
She steps out and closes the door behind her. A wave of stale tobacco accompanies her, along with the blare of the television.
“This really isn’t a good idea,” she says. “I’m sorry. Maybe—”
“I want to talk to him,” Dad says.
“He’s not fit to talk to. Usually he’s better at this time of the day. Tomorrow?”
“Now.” Dad again. I can’t think what’s gotten into him, but I’m grateful. Now that we’re so close, I can’t bear to walk away without meeting my birth father, without knowing the other side of where I came from.
“Please, Marley. We had a deal.”
She shrugs. “Fine, then. It’s on you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She opens the door and steps aside to let us troop in.
There are too many people for the space, that’s immediately clear, and we all stand in an awkward huddle, exchanging curious stares with an old man propped up in a recliner. He’s got a can of beer in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other. Two empties sit on a cluttered end table beside him, next to an overflowing ashtray.
“Who is this, then?” he demands. “Did you let some church group in, Marley?” His voice competes with a laugh track on the TV.
She crosses to him, picks up the remote from the arm of the chair, and presses Mute.
“This is your daughter—the other one. Maisey. She wanted to meet you.”
He squints in our direction. “Well, I’ll be a rat’s ass. Never expected to see your face, that’s certain. Come over here and let me get a look at you.”
He botches his first attempt to adjust the recliner so he can sit up, obviously confused by the problem of his occupied hands. He finally sets down the beer, takes another drag of the cigarette, and pushes the lever that brings him to sit upright.
His arms are thin and bony, his belly bloated. He reminds me of a spider.
I approach him the way I might something dead and stinking that needs to be attended to. There’s a sharp, bitter taste in the back of my throat. Up close I can smell beer and smoke and an infrequently washed body. He looks old. Much older than Dad. He’s bald on top, what’s left of his hair uncombed and lying in greasy strands. His front teeth are missing. Gray beard stubble sprouts from his jaw.
“You don’t look like her,” he says. “Marley favors Leah. You look more like me.”
It’s revolting but true. I can see the shape of my features in his wrinkled face. And his eyes, reddened and sunken as they are, still are the color of my eyes and Marley’s.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asks. “Seems like you must have had a reason for coming here.”
“Have a chair,” Marley interjects. “Sit down. I’ll bring more from the kitchen.”
I don’t want to sit. I want to bounce right out the door. But I perch on the edge of a ratty old couch, picking up a newspaper to make room. Dad sinks down beside me. Tony stays standing, and I can tell he’s on high alert.
“I didn’t know about you,” I say. “I did some digging after Mom died.”
“She’s truly dead, then.” He stubs his cigarette into the ashtray, but it doesn’t go out. Smoke continues to curl up, blue and sinuous.
“I told you, Boots,” Marley says. “You never listen.”
“Thought maybe you were making it up,” he says, dismissively. “Females.” He directs this at Tony. “Anybody want a beer? A cigarette? What can I do you for?”
I can’t think of anything to say. My imagination, generally so quick to jump in, completely fails to put this man together with my mother, even if I picture him young and possibly handsome. He’s tawdry and cheap and mean.
“You beat her,” Dad says, in a conversational tone of voice. “Frequently.”
Boots laughs. “Is that what she told you? Had a good imagination, did Leah. Passed it on to Marley. What about you, Maisey? You got an imagination?”
“Actually, Leah never mentioned you,” Dad goes on. His flat tone makes my spine prickle. Old and frail or not, there’s something menacing in the way he’s talking. “Damn close to forty years of marriage. Never mentioned you. Not one word.”
The old spider—I can’t think of him as my father—levels a look at Dad that is pure venom. “I had the juice of her,” he says. “You got the leavings. How was she? Still to your taste, I’d say, if you stuck with her so long.”
I’m going to vomit. Right here, in the middle of this sordid room in front of this horrible man and the sister who hates me. I press a hand over my mouth to hold it back, but then I have to breathe through my nose, and that does nothing to ease my nausea.
Dad is made of tougher stuff. “We found the broken bones when she was dying,” he says. “Ribs. A collarbone. A cheekbone. Did you break them all at once? Or one at a time?”
Boots takes a long swig of beer. “I’m empty. Fetch me another, Marley.”
Marley doesn’t move. She stands across the room, hands on hips, looking at him as if he’s as much a stranger to her as he is to me. “You beat her?” she asks.
He slams the can down on the table and raises his voice. “I asked you for a beer!”
She doesn’t budge. “And I asked you a question.”
“Don’t you turn this on me,” he says. He levels a finger at Dad. “You. Coming here into my house, turning my daughter against me. Get out. The lot of you.”
None of us move.
I’ve got both hands cupped over my nose and mouth now, trying to use them like a mask.
Marley crosses the floor, only a few steps, each one taken with precision, to stand directly in front of Boots. “Nobody ever told me that you beat her.”
“She left us,” he says. “Walked away from me and you when you were just a bit of a thing. Not a second thought for either of us. Don’t you let these people make you forget that.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” Marley says.
“What kind of mother leaves a child behind?” Boots smiles a gap-toothed smile at her.
Silence descends. Every one of us can see that there is no excuse for abandoning a child. Mom took me with her. Why not Marley?
In this moment I understand my sister’s anger. How would I feel if I’d been left behind? Not just left, but left with this old asshole of a man. I wonder how often Marley has been beaten. I can’t help picturing fists smacking against my mother’s flesh hard enough to break bones.
God.