[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“It might help,” Alice said gently.“You know anything you tell me will never go any further.”I stared at Cocoa, her soft fur haloed by the lamplight.My stomach churned with an old fear.Would telling Alice make me less afraid? “I don’t know if I can tell you,” I whispered.“I’ve never told anyone.”Her hand squeezed mine and held on.“Then maybe it’s time you did.”10Some memories are like heirlooms, tucked carefully away and taken out to be admired only on special occasions.Others are hidden in dark corners, never to be considered, like bloody clothes locked in a trunk in some distant corner of the attic.And then one day, perhaps while moving, you find the trunk and the clothes and the awfulness of a particular moment overwhelms you.You want to stuff everything back into the trunk and never look at it again.But maybe Alice was right.Maybe the thing to do was to air out the clothes and throw them away.“I dreamed I was a little girl again,” I said.“I was about eleven, I guess.Brian Garrity’s dog had puppies.”“I remember the Garritys’ dog,” Alice said.“A golden retriever, right?”I nodded.“The neighbor’s mutt dug under the fence and mated with her, so the puppies were mutts.Brian said I could have one.I was so excited—I wanted one so badly.” A new wave of tears overflowed.I didn’t bother to wipe them away.“Your dad…” Alice’s voice trailed away.She cleared her throat and tried again.“Was he mad when you brought the dog home?”I nodded.“But I promised to look after it.To make sure it didn’t give him any trouble.”Her hand squeezed tighter.“What happened?”“I named her Goldie.We had her three days.”I squeezed my arms across my chest, rocking back and forth against the pain.Alice waited, her hand stroking Cocoa’s soft fur over and over again.The pup closed her eyes and went to sleep.I took another deep breath, determined to get through this.“On the fourth day, she peed in his house slippers.I begged him not to be mad at her.I promised to use my allowance to buy him a new pair of slippers, but he wouldn’t listen.”The words came in a rush now, awful and so real, like the dream I had just had.I was eleven again, on my knees before my father, my face buried in the soft fur of the pup’s neck.My father loomed over us, his face all hard lines and gray shadows.He tore the dog from me and dragged us both into the backyard.I could hear Frannie yelling, was dimly aware of my mother standing in the doorway, holding Frannie back.I screamed and crawled toward my father and the dog.He never once looked at me.The gun went off and I choked on my sobs, blacking out and falling on my face in the dirt.It was Frannie who brought me to, Frannie who took me inside and washed my face, who gave me half of one of mother’s tranquilizers and sat by my bed, holding my hand until I fell asleep.Later, Frannie showed me the grave she had dug, in a secluded corner of our side yard where our parents never went.She’d planted flowers all around it, and told me she’d said a prayer, so she was sure Goldie was in heaven.Then, eyes burning with a passion I’d never seen in her before, she told me she was just as sure that one day our father would go to hell for what he’d done.Even now it bothered me how much comfort I’d found in those words.“I knew your father wasn’t a nice man,” Alice said after I’d told her everything, “but I never knew how awful he was.It’s a wonder you survived to be so normal.”I would have laughed if I had had any emotion left in me.“How normal is it when you’re afraid to get too attached to anything?” I said.“Frannie and I learned to hide our affection for anything.It didn’t matter if it was a toy or a dress or a person.He’d find a way to take them from us.When Frannie was seventeen, Walt Peebles invited her to the senior prom.She saved the money she made working at Weisman’s and bought the most beautiful dress to wear.Then she hid it under her mattress so Father wouldn’t find it.”“And did he find it?”I nodded.“Then he stood over her and made her cut it up with a pair of sewing scissors.She was devastated.” The Frannie in those days had been a different girl, dark and despairing.“She told Walt she couldn’t go with him to the prom, but she didn’t tell him why.I think he guessed some of it, though.He showed up the night of the prom with a new dress he bought for her, and insisted on taking her.” I smiled at the memory.“I thought it was the most romantic thing a man had ever done [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]