We're not disappointed folks, are we, Daddy?
Not a bit, he agreed, and shifted beneath her again. We're about the most happy folks in the universe, I guess.
Jessie peered into the reflector-box again, forgetting everything except the tiny image which she could now look at without narrowing her eyes down to protective slits behind the heavily tinted Polaroid sunglasses. The dark crescent on the right which had signalled the onset of the eclipse had now become a blazing crescent of sunlight on the left. It was so bright it almost seemed to float over the surface of the reflector-box.
Look out on the lake, Jessie!
She did, and behind the sunglasses her eyes widened. In her rapt examination of the shrinking image in the reflector-box, she had missed what was going on all around her. Pastels had now faded to ancient water-colors. A premature twilight, both entrancing and horrifying to the ten-year-old girl, was slipping across Dark Score Lake. Somewhere in the woods, an old hooty-owl cried out softly, and Jessie felt a sudden hard shudder bend its way through her body On the radio, an Aamco Transmission ad ended and Marvin Gaye began to sing: "Oww, listen everybody, especially you girls, is it right to be left alone when the one you love is never home?"
The owl hooted again in the woods to the north of them. It was a scary-sound, Jessie suddenly realized--a very scary sound. This time when she shivered, Tom slipped an arm around her. Jessie leaned gratefully back against his chest.
It's creepy, Dad.
It won't last long, honey, and you'll probably never see another one. Try not to be too scared to enjoy it.
She looked into her reflector-box. There was nothing there.
" I love too hard, my friends sometimes say ..."
Dad? Daddy? It's gone. Can I--
Yes. Now it's okay. But when I say you have to stop, you have to stop. No arguments, understand?
She understood, all right. She found the idea of retinal bums--burns you apparently didn't even know you were getting until it was too late to do anything about them-a lot scarier than the hooty-owl off in the woods. But there was no way she wasn't going to at least have a peek, now that it was actually here, actually happening. No way.
"But I believe," Marvin sang with the fervor of the converted, "Yes I believe... that a woman should be loved that way ... "
Tom Mahout gave her one of the oven potholders, then three panes of smoked glass in a stack. He was breathing fast, and Jessie suddenly felt sorry for him. The eclipse had probably given him the creeps, too, but of course he was an adult and wasn't supposed to let on. In a lot of ways adults were sad creatures. She thought about turning around to comfort him, then decided that would probably make him feel even worse. Make him feel stupid. Jessie could sympathize. She hated to feel stupid worse than anything. Instead, she held the smoked panes of glass up in front of her, then slowly raised her head from her reflector-box to look through them.
"Now you chicks should all agree," Marvin sang, "this ain't the way it's s'posed to be, So lemme hear ya! Lemme hearya say YEAH YEAH!"
What Jessie saw when she looked through the makeshift viewer--
17
At this point the Jessie handcuffed to the bed in the summer house on the north shore of Kashwakamak Lake, the Jessie who was not ten but thirty-nine and a widow of almost twelve hours, suddenly realized two things: that she was asleep, and that she was not so much dreaming about the day of the eclipse as reliving it. She had gone on awhile thinking it was a dream, only a dream, like her dream of Will's birthday party, where most of the guests had either been dead or people she wouldn't actually meet for years. This new mind-movie had the surreal-but-sensible quality of the earlier one, but that was an untrustworthy yardstick because that whole day had been surreal and dreamlike. First the eclipse, and then her father--
No more, Jessie decided. No more, I'm getting out of this.
She made a convulsive effort to rise out of the dream or recollection or whatever it was. Her mental effort translated into a whole-body twitch, and the handcuff chains jingled mutedly as she twisted violently from side to side. She almost made it; for a moment she was almost out. And she could have made it, would have made it, if she hadn't thought better of it at the last moment. What stopped her was an inarticulate but overwhelming terror of a shape--some waiting shape that might make what had happened that day on the deck seem insignificant by comparison ... if she had to face it, that was.
But maybe I don't have to. Not yet.
And perhaps the urge to hide in sleep wasn't all--there might have been something else, as well. Some part of her that intended to have this out in the open once and for all, no matter what the cost.
She sank back down on the pillow, eyes closed, arms held up and sacrificially spread, her face pale and tight with strain.
"Especially you girls," she whispered into the darkness. "Especially all you girls."
She sank back on the pillow, and the day of the eclipse claimed her again.
18
What Jessie saw through her sunglasses and her home-made filter was so strange and so awesome that at first her mind refused to grasp it. There seemed to be a vast round beauty mark, like the one below the corner of Anne Francis's mouth, hanging there in the afternoon sky.
"If I talk in my sleep... 'cause I haven't seen my baby all week ... "
It was at this point that she first felt her father's hand on the nub of her right breast. It squeezed gently for a moment, drifted across to the left one, then returned to the right again, as if he were making a size comparison. He was breathing very fast now; the respiration in her ear was like a steam engine, and she was again aware of that hard thing pressing against her bottom.
"Can I get a witness?" Marvin Gaye, that auctioneer of soul, was shouting. "Witness, witness?"
Daddy? Are you all right?
She felt a delicate tingle in her breasts again--pleasure and pain, roast turkey with a Nehi glaze and chocolate gravy--but this time she also felt alarm and a kind of startled confusion.
Yes, he said, but his voice sounded almost like the voice of a stranger. Yes, fine, but don't look around. He shifted. The hand which had been on her breasts went somewhere else; the one on her thigh moved up farther, pushing the hem of the sundress ahead of it.
Daddy, what are you doing?
Her question was not exactly fearful; mostly it was curious. Still, there was an undertone of fear there, something like a length of fine red thread. Above her, a furnace of strange light glowed fiercely around the dark circle hanging in the indigo sky.
Do you love me, Punkin?
Yes, sure--
Then don't worry about anything. I'd never hurt you. I want to be sweet to you. Just watch the eclipse and let me be sweet to you.
I'm not sure I want to, Daddy. That sense of confusion was growing deeper, the red thread was fattening. I'm afraid of burning my eyes. Burning my watchamacallums.
"But I believe," Marvin sang, "a woman's a man's best friend... and I'm gonna stick by her... to the very end. "
Don't worry. He was panting now. You have another twenty seconds. At least that. So don't worry. And don't look around.
She heard the snap of elastic, but it was his, not hers; her underpants were where they were supposed to be, although she realized that if she looked down she would be able to see them--that was how far up he had pushed her dress.
Do you love me? he asked again, and although she was gripped by a terrible premonition that the right answer to this question had become the wrong one, she was ten years old and it was still the only answer she had to give. She told him that she did.
"Witness, witness," Marvin pleaded, fading out now.
Her father shifted, pressing the hard thing more firmly against her bottom. Jessie suddenly realized what it was--not the handle of a screwdriver or the tackhammer from the toolbox in the pantry, that was for sure--and the alarm she felt was matched by a momentary spiteful pleasure which had more to do with her mother than with her father.
r /> This is what you get for not sticking up for me, she thought, looking at the dark circle in the sky through the layers of smoked glass, and then: I guess this is what we both get. Her vision suddenly blurred, and the pleasure was gone. Only the mounting sense of alarm was left. Oh jeez, she thought. It's my retinas... it must be my retinas starting to burn.
The hand on her thigh now moved between her legs, slid up until it was stopped by her crotch, and cupped her firmly there. He shouldn't be doing that, she thought. It was the wrong place for his hand. Unless--
He's goosing you, a voice inside suddenly spoke up.
In later years that voice, which she eventually came to think of as that of the Goodwife, frequently filled her with exasperation; it was sometimes the voice of caution, often the voice of blame, and almost always the voice of denial. Unpleasant things, demeaning things, painful things ... they would all go away eventually if you ignored them enthusiastically enough, that was the Goodwife's view. It was a voice apt to stubbornly insist that even the most obvious wrongs were actually rights, parts of a benign plan too large and complex for mere mortals to grasp. There would be times (mostly during her eleventh and twelfth years, when she called that voice Miss Petrie, after her second-grade teacher) when she would actually raise her hands to her ears to try and blot out that quacking, reasonable voice--useless, of course, since it originated on the side of her ears she couldn't get to--but in that moment of dawning dismay while the eclipse darkened the skies over western Maine and reflected stars burned in the depths of Dark Score Lake, that moment when she realized (sort of) what the hand between her legs was up to, she heard only kindness and practicality, and she seized upon what the voice was saying with panicky relief.
It's just a goose, that's all it is, Jessie.
Are you sure? she cried back.
Yes, the voice replied firmly--as the years went by, Jessie would discover that this voice was almost always sure, wrong or right. He means it as a joke, that's all. He doesn't know he's scaring you, so don't open your mouth and spoil a lovely afternoon. This is no big deal.
Don't you believe it, toots! the other voice--the tough voice--responded. Sometimes he behaves as if you're his goddamned girlfriend instead of his daughter, and that's what he's doing right now! He's not goosing you, Jessie! He's fucking you!
She was almost positive that was a lie, almost positive that strange and forbidden schoolyard word referred to an act that could not be accomplished with just a hand, but doubts remained. With sudden dismay she remembered Karen Aucoin telling her not to ever let a boy put his tongue in her mouth, because it could start a baby in her throat. Karen said it sometimes happened that way, but that a woman who had to vomit her baby to get it out almost always died, and usually the baby died, too. I ain't ever going to let a boy French-kiss me, Karen said. I might let one feel me on top, if I really loved him, but I don't ever want a baby in my throat. How would you EAT?
At the time, Jessie had found this concept of pregnancy so crazy it was almost charming--and who but Karen Aucoin, who worried about whether or not the light stayed on when you shut the refrigerator door, could have come up with such a thing? Now, however, the idea shimmered with its own weird logic. Suppose --just suppose--it was true? If you could get a baby from a boy's tongue, if that could happen, then--
And there was that hard thing pressing into her bottom. That thing that wasn't the handle of a screwdriver or her mother's tackhammer.
Jessie tried to squeeze her legs together, a gesture that was ambivalent to her but apparently not to him. He gasped--a painful, scary sound--and pressed his fingers harder against the sensitive mound just beneath the crotch of her underpants. It hurt a little. She stiffened against him and moaned.
It occurred to her much later that her father very likely misinterpreted that sound as passion, and it was probably just as well that he did. Whatever his interpretation, it signalled the climax of this strange interlude. He arched suddenly beneath her, sending her smoothly upward. The movement was both terrifying and strangely pleasurable ... that he should be so strong, that she should be so moved. For one moment she almost understood the nature of the chemicals at work here, dangerous yet compelling, and that control of them might lie within her grasp--if she wanted to control them, that was.
I don't, she thought. I don't want anything to do with it. Whatever it is, it's nasty and horrible and scary.
Then the hard thing pressed against her buttock, the thing that wasn't the handle of a screwdriver or her mother's tackhammer, was spasming, and some liquid was spreading there, soaking a hot spot through her pants.
It's sweat, the voice which would one day belong to the Goodwife said promptly. That's what it is. He sensed you were afraid of him, afraid to be on his lap, and that made him nervous. You ought to be sorry.
Sweat, my eye! the other voice, the one which would one day belong to Ruth, returned. It spoke quietly, forcefully, fearfully. You know what it is, Jessie--it's the stuff you heard Maddy and those other girls talking about the night Maddy had her slumber party, after they thought you were finally asleep. Cindy Lessard called it spunk. She said it was white and that it squirts out of a guy's thing like toothpaste. That's the stuff that makes babies, not French kissing.
For a moment she balanced up there on the stiff lift of his wave, confused and afraid and somehow excited, listening to him snatch one harsh breath after another out of the humid air. Then his hips and thighs slowly relaxed and he lowered her back down.
Don't look at it any longer, Punkin, he said, and although he was still panting, his voice was almost normal again. That scary excitement had gone out of it, and there was no ambivalence about what she felt now: deep simple relief. Whatever had happened--if anything really had--it was over.
Daddy--
Nope, don't argue. Your time is up.
He took the stack of smoked glass panes gently from her hand. At the same time he kissed her neck, even more gently. Jessie stared out at the weird darkness cloaking the lake as he did it. She was faintly aware that the owl was still calling, and that the crickets had been fooled into beginning their evensongs two or three hours early. An afterimage floated in front of her eyes like a round black tattoo surrounded by an irregular halo of green fire and she thought: If I looked at it too long, if I burned my retinas, I'll probably have to look at that for the rest of my life, like what you see after someone shoots off a flashbulb in your eyes.
Why don't you go inside and change into jeans, Punkin ? I guess maybe the sundresswasn't such a good idea, after all.
He spoke in a dull, emotionless voice that seemed to suggest that wearing the sundress had been all her idea (Even if it wasn't, you should have known better, the Miss Petrie voice said instantly), and a new idea suddenly occurred to her: What if he decided he had to tell Mom about what had happened? The possibility was so horrifying that Jessie burst into tears.
I'm sorry, Daddy, she wept, throwing her arms around him and pressing her face into the hollow of his neck, smelling the vague and ghostly aroma of his aftershave or cologne or whatever it was. If I did something wrong, I'm really, really, really sorry.
God, no, he said, but he still spoke in that dull, preoccupied voice, as if trying to decide if he should tell Sally what Jessie had done, or if it could perhaps be swept under the rug. You didn't do anything wrong, Punkin.
Do you still love me? she persisted. It occurred to her that she was mad to ask, mad to risk an answer which might devastate her, but she had to ask. Had to.
Of course, he replied at once. A little more animation came into his voice as he said it, enough to make her understand that he was telling the truth (and oh what a relief that was), but she still suspected things had changed, and all because of something she barely understood. She knew the
(goose it was a goose just a kind of goose)
had had something to do with sex, but she had no idea just how much or how serious it might have been. It probably wasn't what the girls at the slumbe
r party had called "going all the way" (except for the strangely knowledgeable Cindy Lessard; she had called it "deep-sea diving with the long white pole," a term which had struck Jessie as both horrible and hilarious), but the fact that he hadn't put his thing in her thing still might not mean she was safe from being what some of the girls, even at her school, called "pee-gee." What Karen Aucoin had told her last year when they were walking home from school recurred to her, and Jessie tried to shut it out. It almost certainly wasn't true, and he hadn't stuck his tongue in her mouth even if it was.
In her mind she heard her mother's voice, loud and angry: Don't they say it's the squeaky wheel that always gets the grease?
She felt the hot wet spot against her buttocks. It was still spreading. Yes, she thought. I guess that's right. I guess the squeaky wheel does get the grease.
Daddy--
He raised his hand, a gesture he often made at the dinner table when her mother or Maddy (usually her mother) started getting hot under the collar about something. Jessie couldn't remember Daddy ever making this gesture to her, and it reinforced her feeling that something had gone horribly awry here, and that there were apt to be fundamental, unappealable changes as. the result of some terrible error (probably agreeing to wear the sundress) she had made. This idea caused a feeling of sorrow so deep that it felt like invisible fingers working ruthlessly inside her, sifting and winnowing her guts.
In the corner of her eye, she noticed that her father's gym shorts were askew. Something was poking out, something pink, and it sure as hell wasn't the handle of a screwdriver.
Before she could look away, Tom Mahout caught the direction of her glance and quickly adjusted his shorts, causing the pink thing to disappear. His face contracted in a momentary moue of disgust, and Jessie cringed inside again. He had caught her looking, and had mistaken her random glance for unseemly curiosity.
What just happened, he began, then cleared his throat. We need to talk about what just happened, Punkin, but not right this minute. Dash inside and change your clothes, maybe take a quick shower while you're at it. Hurry up so you don't miss the end of the eclipse.