Ed Gorman - Short Stories, Volume 1

“Visiting hours are over. You’ve got fifteen seconds to say goodbye and then inmates have to start filing over to the door.”

“I miss you so much hon,” Ma says and throws her arms around Dad.

He hugs Ma but over his shoulder he’s looking at Sis. She is standing up. She has her head down again.

Dad looks so sad, so sad.

“I’d like to know just who the hell you think you are treatin’ your own father that way,” Ma says on the way back to town.

The rain and the fog are real bad now so I have to concentrate on my driving. On the opposite side of the road cars appear quickly in the fog and then vanish. It’s almost unreal.

The wipers are slapping loud and everything smells damp — the rubber of the car and the vinyl seat covers and the ashtray from Ma’s menthol cigarettes. Damp.

“You hear me young lady?” Ma says.

Sis is in the backseat again alone. Staring out the window. At the fog I guess.

“Come on Ma, she hugged him,” I say.

“Yeah when I practically had to twist her arm to do it.” Ma shakes her head. “Her own flesh and blood.”

Sometimes I want to get really mad and let it out but I know it would just hurt Ma to remind her what Dad was doing to Ellen those years after he came out of prison the first time. I know for a fact he was doing it because I walked in on them one day little eleven-year-old Ellen was there on the bed underneath my naked dad, staring off as he grunted and moved around inside her, staring off just the way she does now.

Staring off.

Ma knew about it all along of course but she wouldn’t do anything about it. Wouldn’t admit it probably not even to herself. In psychology, which I took last year at the junior college, that’s called denial. I even brought it up a couple times but she just said I had a filthy mind and don’t ever say nothing like that again.

Which is why I broke into that store that night and left Dad’s billfold behind. Because I knew they’d arrest him and then he couldn’t force Ellen into the bed anymore. Not that I blame Dad entirely. Prison makes you crazy no doubt about it and he was in there four years the first time. But even so I love Sis too much.

“Own flesh and blood,” Ma says again lighting up one of her menthols and shaking her head.

I look into the rearview mirror at Sis’s eyes. “Wish I could make you smile,” I say to her. “Wish I could make you smile.”

But she just stares out the window.

She hasn’t smiled for a long time of course.

Not for a long time.