Daughter of Darkness

  “It’s nothing, Marla. Ava is overreacting. He’s just some college boy I met when I was with her at UCLA the other day,” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could. “I made the mistake of telling her I thought he was good-looking, and you know how Ava gets when you mention a boy is good-looking.”

  “As good-looking as you thought Mark Daniels was?” Marla asked. I glanced at her. Already, at her age, she could look as mean and angry as Ava.

  “He’s different,” I said.

  “Oh, you can tell the difference now? That’s a relief. I won’t have my life at risk because of your romantic notions,” she said. She not only looked more like Ava now, she also sounded more like her.

  Why was Ava having more of an influence on Marla than I was having? I was the one with whom she spent most of her time. After school, she was usually in my room, not Ava’s. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so flippant with her when she started asking me more questions. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to get her to go to Ava. I wondered if she thought I didn’t like her or want her around me. Now that I thought about it, she had been avoiding me more and more in the house. These suspicions were about to be elevated.

  After a few moments of silence between us, Marla suddenly said, “Don’t look for me after school today.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Ava is coming for me.”

  “When?”

  “Before the final period. She has permission to sign me out, you know. Daddy made sure of that.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “She didn’t say exactly. She just thinks we should spend more time together.”

  I was silent. Why was Ava doing this now? Were things going to move this quickly?

  “You know,” Marla said, almost as if she had developed the ability to listen in on my thoughts, “she’ll be leaving us sooner than we think.”

  I turned to her.

  “In fact, we’ll all be leaving Los Angeles,” she continued.

  “How do you know this?”

  “A little bird told me. How do you think?”

  “No, really, Marla. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I heard Mrs. Fennel and Daddy talking this morning.”

  “Daddy didn’t come down this morning.”

  “No,” she said. “You have that wrong. Daddy didn’t come home until this morning.”

  “Oh. What did they say?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be the one telling you this. Maybe you should go to Ava,” she said spitefully.

  “I never told you to go to Ava with your questions unless I really didn’t know the answers, Marla. Don’t be a little bitch.”

  She laughed. “I heard Daddy say the arrangements were being completed. He thought maybe another two months or so at the most, and most likely sooner. That’s what I heard.”

  “You’re sure? He said another two months or so at the most?”

  She shrugged. “We’ll have a family meeting, and he’ll tell us everything when he’s ready to tell us. But you know what I think now?”

  “What?”

  “I think Ava will be leaving before we move.” She smiled. “And then you’ll be my big sister. That’s why she wants to spend more time with me.”

  Another two months or so? That meant possibly two more hunts before we left.

  Was that my heart thumping, or had we gotten a flat tire?

  The commotion that had begun in my mind didn’t stop all morning. I don’t think I heard more than a few words my teachers spoke. I know I did poorly on a quiz in math. I couldn’t stop thinking about Buddy. He had such a trusting smile, such innocence in his eyes.

  Even when I sat eating my lunch in the noisy cafeteria, I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking about Buddy. I opened my purse and found his phone number. For a while, I just sat there looking at it. It felt hot in my fingers, as hot as the greeting cards Ava claimed lovers sent each other. The scribbled numbers were a way of connecting myself to him, resurrecting his face, his smile, and his trusting eyes. I had not come as close to kissing any boy as I had come to kissing him that night at Dante’s Inferno. His lips haunted me now.

  When I rose and walked out of the cafeteria and out of the building, I knew that what I was about to do could be the beginning of the end for me as far as my family went. Ava’s recitation of Mrs. Fennel’s warnings about love replayed in my mind. “Men and women of high intelligence will do the most foolish things in pursuit of passion. Because their passion is so all-consuming, they will want to possess the object of that passion. It will drive them to sell out their own family…”

  I took out my cell phone. Was I terribly afraid? Yes, so frightened my fingers wouldn’t work the tiny buttons. I had to sit on a bench and take deep breaths to try again. Slowly, I brought the phone to my ear and listened as the call went through. It rang twice, and I flipped the phone closed.

  I can’t do this, I thought. Once I do this, Daddy will hate me forever. I can’t.

  I stood up to go back inside the building, but my feet felt glued to the ground. There was a tumultuous battle going on inside me, my heart against my mind.

  Why call him? my mind was asking. What can you say? Where do you expect it to lead, anyway? A date? It would be like playing with fire. You would be teasing him, giving him hope that something could come of a relationship.

  I didn’t trust Ava. I had nightmares about what she might do, regardless of the restrictions Daddy placed on her. I could call Buddy to warn him.

  But how? Would he believe what you told him if you dared to tell him? You’d be betraying your family, betraying Daddy.

  But what if you don’t tell him anything? I thought. What if one night, you heard Ava’s car drive up and you saw Buddy Gilroy step out of it? Would you just watch in silence, or would you cry out? And what would you cry out? “Run”? “Watch out for my daddy”? What?

  Wouldn’t it be better to avoid that scene, and what better way is there to avoid it than to go to him, to warn him ahead of time?

  I sat on the bench again, but before I could decide, my cell phone rang. It was not outside the realm of my thinking to imagine that Ava or even Daddy knew I had tried to call Buddy. I let it ring again, and then I flipped it open and said, “Hello.”

  “Who is this?” I heard. “Huh? You called me, but I couldn’t answer it in time. Is this Elsa?”

  “Elsa?” I asked.

  He laughed.

  Who was Elsa? Then I remembered. That was Ava’s phony name the night we went to Dante’s Inferno. He must have given her his cell-phone number, too. Otherwise, why would he even think it was Ava calling him? She wasn’t lying to me, then. She had come on to him, and she had him infatuated with her. I felt like hanging up and really trying to forget him, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  “No,” I said. “It’s Lorelei.”

  “Lorelei? Really?” The excitement in his voice encouraged me.

  “Yes, although I guess you were expecting someone else.”

  “No, no. I wasn’t expecting anyone else. What a great surprise. Please. Where are you? When can I see you?” His eagerness made me smile.

  “What makes you think I want to see you?” I teased.

  “Hey, when a prayer is answered, I never question it,” he said.

  I looked at my watch. Since Ava was picking up Marla, I didn’t have to return directly home after school. If I left early and Marla found out, she would surely tell Ava. No, I had to tolerate the rest of the school day, although it was going to be as useless for me as the morning had been.

  “I’ll meet you at three-thirty on the Santa Monica Pier,” I said.

  “Three-thirty?”

  “Is that all right?”

  “I’ve got to cut a class, but that’s fine. I hate the class anyway,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  Another thought occurred to me. “Really, Buddy, was Elsa supposed to call you today?”

  “Sometime soon,” he said. “Why?”

  “
If she calls, please don’t mention I called you or that you’re seeing me.”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s very important. If you do mention it, I’ll never be able to see you again.”

  “Okay. How’s this? Elsa who?”

  I smiled to myself. That was the reaction from him that Ava had expected if my name was ever mentioned.

  “Great. See you then,” I said, and hung up before I could change my mind.

  What had I done? At least four times before the school day ended, I paused to step outside and call him again to cancel, but every time, I resisted. When the final bell rang, I hung back so that Ava and Marla would leave the parking lot before I appeared. I stood by the doorway and watched Marla get into Ava’s car. As soon as they pulled away, I hurried out to my car. Just as my fingers had trembled when I had gone to insert the keys to Daddy’s desk drawers, they trembled again. When the car started, I sat back for a moment and took deep breaths.

  Every teenage girl in that school behind me surely had done something in defiance of her parents, whether it was drinking alcohol, smoking pot, going places that were forbidden with other girls or boys who were forbidden, or merely staying out too late. There was probably a list of defiant acts that would fill a few shelves in the school library. No matter what act she committed, the first thing she had to have felt was fear. I wasn’t thinking of those girls who were so bad, so defiant, that they couldn’t care less if they were caught. The girls I was thinking of were more like me, girls who had made promises, who had been obedient and responsible, girls who were always trusted. In their hearts, they dreaded being discovered and seeing that look of deep disappointment on their parents’ faces. After all, these were the only people in the world who loved them more than they loved their own lives.

  What bound a family together, especially one like ours, if it wasn’t trust and promises? You could betray your teachers, your school, and your friends, even your country, and it wouldn’t come close to the depth of disappointment after you betrayed your own family. Every breath you took, every ounce of nourishment you consumed, was a family gift. Once you broke that tie, you truly drifted at the mercy of impish winds and capricious fate. Who cared if you were injured or hurt? Who suffered disappointments with you and helped you recover? Who was there to share your success with as much joy? Who was capable of being as proud of you?

  Schoolgirls like myself would risk their parents’ anger and disappointment because deep in their hearts, they believed that no matter how deeply they had hurt their parents, there was always going to be a reservoir of forgiveness. I recalled a line in a poem we had read in English class last year, Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man.” In it he wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

  Where else would such a thing be true?

  For the girls like me who risked their parents’ wrath, there was always that thought, that hope to cushion the danger, and wasn’t it the danger itself, the excitement of defiance, that usually won out in the end and got them to light that joint, take that ride, be with that forbidden boy?

  The great difference was that I had no cushion. For me, home was not someplace where I would have to be taken in. I was a trapeze artist without a net, a skydiver with no second parachute, a first-time swimmer with no nearby dock or shore, no lifeguard, no rope, nothing to save me from sinking into the dark depth awaiting with open arms and gleeful smile.

  No, I thought as I drove out of the parking lot, I am not simply another defiant teenager. I wasn’t taking this risk to enjoy the accompanying rush of excitement and adrenaline. I wasn’t charging forward with a shield on which was inscribed “Life’s unfair. I resent all unreasonable restrictions and rules.”

  And when I thought more deeply, questioned myself more closely, I also had to admit that I wasn’t doing this simply because I was attracted to a handsome, sincere young man. It was greater than him, greater than both of us. There was something in me that wasn’t in Brianna and Ava and Marla. It wasn’t something I could neatly wrap in the word conscience, either. Neither Daddy nor Mrs. Fennel ever had mentioned God in a positive way in our house. There was never any talk of prayer or its power. I couldn’t recall Daddy driving us past a church or a synagogue or even a mosque and not smiling disdainfully. If any of us mentioned anything whatsoever to do with any religion, Daddy would say, “Smoke and mirrors. More people are killed in the name of religion than anything else.”

  “What do we believe in, then, Daddy?” I once asked. It was at holiday time, and all the other children were preparing for services and celebrations.

  “Believe only in yourself,” Daddy replied. “Believe only in your own power.”

  And although he didn’t come right out and say it, he clearly implied that we should believe in him because from him came our power.

  No, neither conscience nor fear of punishments for doing something evil was what gave me the strength to make that phone call and drive off. Surely, my need to find another kind of love was part of it, but what I couldn’t understand or identify yet was that part of me that now didn’t fear being different from Brianna and Ava and Marla. In fact, it was drawing me in stronger ways. If anything, this was the most frightening thing of all, because if I wasn’t truly my daddy’s daughter, then who was I?

  And what would happen to me?

  Somewhere out there lay the answer, I thought as I looked west toward the Pacific, where I could see the clouds moving up from the horizon. As on most afternoons in Los Angeles, the marine layer had burned off, and a soft blue sky ceiling joined forces with warm breezes to put more energy into the legs of the joggers, more light in the smiles of the tourists who were already bright with the excitement that accompanied something special and new, and even more hope in the faces of the homeless I saw camped out along Ocean Boulevard. It helped me relax a little, too.

  I found a place to park and walked out to the pier. There was already a good-size crowd enjoying the Ferris wheel and games. I overheard a variety of languages from Chinese to Russian being spoken. Young children were charging forward in all directions, only to be pulled back by a parent’s words. They were like human yo-yos, because they’d start in a new direction almost immediately. It brought a smile to my face and then memories of Daddy bringing us here and to other fun parks. We were always well behaved and proud to walk with him, to be seen beside him, to share some of the admiration we saw in the faces of other people.

  “It’s important that you are out here,” he said. “It’s important that you feel the ebb and flow of human emotions and energy, that you, like me, draw your own essence from it. It’s like dipping a cup into a cool stream and then, after you drink, feeling revived and alive and immortal.”

  His words mesmerized us. We soaked in the glow of his smile and, like kittens, purred in his arms. Daddy could explain anything, could meet any challenge, and could keep us forever safe. Anyone looking at us could read the words on our lips. We are his daughters. We are the Patios. Step away. Don’t touch. Just enjoy what you see.

  “Hey,” I heard, and broke free of my reminiscences. Buddy was right behind me.

  “I thought you might not find me easily in this crowd,” I said as he approached. He was wearing a light blue jacket, a darker blue shirt, and jeans, and he looked spry in his bone-white sneakers. I hadn’t noticed before, but his light brown hair was long and floated over his eyes. He swept it back.

  “Are you kidding? You would stand out in any crowd,” he said. He looked around. “And it is kind of crowded here. Want to take a walk on the beach?”

  “Okay,” I said. He reached for my hand, and we started off the pier.

  “So, what made you decide to make this my lucky day?” he asked.

  I nearly laughed aloud, thinking, You have no idea how true that might be. “How do you know it’s your lucky day?”

  “Hey,” he said, leaning closer to lower his voice, “don’t you see those envious guys w
atching us?”

  I looked around. Once I had dreamed of drawing attention the way Brianna and Ava did. Had my dream come true? They certainly never revealed being as self-conscious about it as I was as we stepped off the sidewalk and onto the sand. I paused to slip off my shoes, and he did the same. The sand was warm, but not so warm that we couldn’t walk barefoot, and as we drew closer to the water, it cooled.

  “Where do you go to high school?” Buddy asked.

  “It’s a private school in Bel Air.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “It is.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  “I have only my father,” I said. “My mother died when I was born.”

  “Oh, sorry. What does he do?”

  “He buys and sells very expensive things all over the world.”

  “Jewelry?”

  “Anything expensive.”

  “Elsa is really your sister, then, right? This business about blood relation was just some nonsense.”

  “Yes, she’s my sister.”

  “Is there just you and Elsa?”

  “No. I have a younger sister, too.”

  “Oh, your father remarried?”

  “No.”

  “But how did you get a younger sister?”

  “He didn’t marry her mother. She deserted him after my younger sister was born.”

  “Oh. Sounds like your father’s had it rough.”

  “Yes. That’s also why he’s so protective of us.”

  “Sure. I understand. Well, you and Elsa don’t look that much alike, you know.” He leaned in toward me again to whisper, “You’re much better-looking.”

  “Flattery will get you anywhere,” I said. I remembered that line from a movie I had watched with Marla.

  “With you, I’ll settle for anywhere,” he replied. We walked quietly for a while, and then he took off his jacket and spread it on the sand. “My lady,” he said, offering it to sit on.

  I did, and he sat beside me. We looked out at the waves. Two California brown pelicans were circling over the water to our right. Suddenly, one swooped down and came up with a small fish.