Dead Letters(76)

Amid this juvenilia, I find a portrait Zelda did of our family in sixth or seventh grade. She was gifted at mimesis, could cleverly capture strange, realist details. Ever the artist. This portrait is elaborate, colored with paint and pencil, the mediums blended together. A different story of our family. One of the four edges is jagged, evidence of having been torn. Marlon has been removed from the picture. Zelda, in an uncharacteristically childish gesture, tore him out shortly after he left. And effectively cut him out of her life. His betrayal was final for her, and while they were always civil, Zelda and Marlon were, in effect, done for when he walked out the door.

In the weeks and maybe months before he decamped, Marlon had barely been home, and every time our parents wound up in a room together, there was a verbal eruption. Nadine would bait him until he cracked, and nothing was more alarming to me than seeing Marlon’s other side, his dangerous side. We were so used to Nadine’s nastiness that we found her explosions unsurprising—in a way, her behavior reinforced consistency. Nothing to see here. But Marlon’s quick rage was unsettling, and whenever I heard the two of them start—usually in the kitchen, where they were both forced to venture regularly in order to refill their glasses—I would try to disappear. Outside, into a book, anything. I hated their catalogue of wrongdoings, the scripted recriminations.

“Jesus, Marl, you’re not even a good liar. Your bookie has called three times today. You think I’m an idiot?”

“No, Nadine, I think you’re a drunk. And not a nice one. A harping, bitching—”

“You want to throw stones, from behind all that glass?”

“At least I can see straight enough to hit something.”

“Oh, please, what are you, twelve?”

“No, I’m a grown-ass man who lives—”

“Just stop! I can’t—”

I would turn the dial of my iPod up and stare up at my bedroom ceiling, waiting for the sound of broken glass or a slammed door to signify that one or both of them had stormed off.

Zelda was less affected by these scenes, or at least she seemed less desperate to flee them. She would even lurk at the top of the stairs, eavesdropping.

“What’s a bookie?” she whispered to me, trying to piece together the clues of what was driving our parents apart, what exactly they were fighting about. Unfortunately, if she lurked too close, she was likely to be in the way of a hurried egress, usually Marlon’s. One time, she stood behind the living room door, her ear pressed to it, so that when Marlon slammed his way out of the room, the door caught her cheek. Even though I was upstairs, reading, I could hear after the smack of the door that terrifying lull before the cry, that silence of someone who has really been hurt. I flung my book aside and raced downstairs to find the three of them, Marlon pink-faced and standing before a screaming Nadine.

“You don’t give a fuck who you hurt, not even your own children—”

“Goddamnit, I didn’t mean to hurt her! She was just underfoot!” Marlon reached out for Zelda, who flinched from his touch and glared furiously at him, sobbing. “Zaza, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“I don’t care what you meant!” Zelda shrieked. “That is so not the point! What is the matter with you?” She glowered at Nadine with equal fury and ran for the deck, slipping out the screen door in tears. Marlon started to go after her, but I stopped him.

“Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to be around you. Either of you.” I was shaking; normally I would do anything to avoid this sort of conflict, but the sound of Zelda’s wails had pushed me to the edge, and I was furious with both of my parents. Why couldn’t they just do this somewhere else and leave us out of it? I followed Zelda outside, heading down the hill, guessing which direction she had gone.

She was sitting in the grass, not so far from the house and staring out at the lake. Her eyes were red and she was still sniffling, but she seemed more angry than hurt, which was a good sign. I so rarely saw her vulnerable. I sat next to her.

“Let me see,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she sniffed, then gave an ironic snort. “At school, they’ll think I’m being abused.”

“You should tell them you are.” I giggled.

“I wouldn’t know which of them to blame.” Zelda glanced back toward the house.

“Good point.” I gently touched her cheekbone; it was already turning a purple-blue color. She flinched but let me carefully poke at it. “You’ll be fine. A bruise.”

“They can’t go on like this.”

“I know.”

“What will we do?” Zelda asked, and for once, she sounded scared, unsure. She wasn’t looking at me. There was no sarcasm, no mockery in her voice. Which meant that it was my job to supply it.

“Let’s run away. I’ll steal their credit cards, you pack a bag,” I said, nudging her.

“They probably won’t even notice we’re gone.”

“They’ll notice the money is gone, once they run out of wine.”

Zelda snorted again. “Could take a while for that to happen,” she said, looking eloquently at our surroundings, at the grid of grapes that stretched across the hill.

“Good—then maybe they won’t notice before we’re legal adults. Let’s do it.” I elbowed her again, and she finally turned her head to look at me.