Confessions on the 7:45(81)

He came to the table and she sat across from him. She could still smell the vomit, mingling unpleasantly with the bleach.

“You don’t just bring home a sister,” she said. “It’s not like getting a puppy.”

He bowed his head, looking down at his cuticles, which were gnawed and rough. “You are mad.”

“No.”

Yes. She was mad. Not just about the stranger in their home; there were a thousand things. Nothing she could name—just that, lately, she felt like an animal in a cage, pacing. That she was bound to him somehow, without wanting to be. That she could leave him, should leave him. But she couldn’t. She didn’t say any of it.

“You haven’t been yourself,” he said into the silence. “What’s going on?”

“I could say the same to you.”

She got up, put on a kettle for tea—just to get away from him. That stare, those intensely staring eyes and how they saw everything about everyone and knew just how to exploit whatever want, need, fear was lurking beneath the surface.

“It’s your father,” he went on, not turning around to face her. “That whole thing.”

She shrugged, glad he couldn’t see her. She wasn’t sure she could keep the rush of emotion off her face.

“It went well,” she said, her voice going higher than she liked. “Big payout. Just like you said.”

Yes, a big payout. She had a pile of cash, delivered with the promise to never communicate with him again. Then, when she could have gone far from him, never thought about him again, let it all go once and for all—

“You burned him down,” Pop said.

She heard the note of disapproval in his voice. It bothered her, more than it should.

She looked at her watch. She was late for Jason. She was late for Elizabeth; her normie self. Student. Waitress. Ordinary small-town girl. Nothing special. The teakettle started to whistle, and she took it from the stove, poured the hot water into the two mugs she’d retrieved from the cupboard. World’s Best Dad, one of them read. The world was full of little ironies, wasn’t it?

“What if I did?” she said, walking back. She put a cup in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.

Yes. She’d left her father’s life in ashes. He’d moved out of that beautiful house. A messy, public divorce had commenced. His daughters wouldn’t speak to him. Stella hadn’t been his only affair, not by a long shot. There was a whole other family, apparently, another woman, other children. Women he worked with, when the news hit, came forward to tell of his aggression in the work place, his unwelcome advances. A wealthy philanthropist, bastion of the community, revealed as a serial adulterer, a workplace predator. It wasn’t big news. But it was news enough. He’d been removed as CEO of his company, last she heard.

“That’s not how it works,” Pop said softly. “Not how it’s supposed to work.”

“Maybe that’s how it works for me.” She didn’t sit, started gathering her things. “Maybe sometimes it’s about more than money. Sometimes it’s about making people pay for the things they’ve done.”

“Never leave them with nothing left to lose. Didn’t I teach you that much?”

“I have my own way of doing things,” she said. “You’ve never had a bigger score than that. Have you?”

He offered a deferential nod. “The student surpasses the teacher.”

“Is that what we’re talking about? You think I’ve surpassed you. Is that what she is?” She pointed upstairs. “Your new student?”

“Of course not. She’s just someone who needs us right now. In this world, you make a family where you can find it.”

“You just need someone to worship you.”

He shook his head, looked down again, this time at the grain of the wood on the table. “I’ve taken care of you, Pearl. Haven’t I? Good care of you? I’ve loved you like my own child.”

That anger, it boiled over, was a siren. But she stood stock still. She almost never lost her temper.

“Children grow up,” she said quietly.

Pop looked at her as if she’d slapped him.

She went upstairs. She could pack her things, everything that meant anything to her in twenty minutes. She did so. Through the wall, she could hear the stranger still weeping. The sound was low and despairing, toxic sadness, leaking in through her pores.

Fuck. This.

When she got back downstairs, Pop was waiting by the door.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We can be a family.”

“I need space,” she said. “I need to figure out who I am.”

He smiled, expansive, understanding, took her into his arms and held her tight. She found herself sinking into him, almost changing her mind. But then she hardened inside again. He seemed to feel it, released her with a kiss on the forehead.

“Come for Sunday dinner,” he said. “Children may grow up. But they can always come home.”

She walked out the door, opened the trunk of the car she’d bought with her own money and put everything she owned inside. A glance in the rearview showed Pop in the doorway, waving, and the shadow of a girl in an upstairs window.

Her anger subsided; Pearl, Anne, Elizabeth, or whatever her name was now, felt nothing at all.