Jessie Keane - Stay Dead

So was it wrong?

She didn’t know, and there was no one she could talk to about it. The teachers? Impossible. A friend at school? She no longer had any friends there, she’d drawn away from people, thinking they might guess her dirty secret and be disgusted with her just as she was disgusted with herself.

Her brothers and sister? No, she couldn’t tell them. They would be jealous of the gifts, they wouldn’t understand. Already Sarah was acting strange with her, being cool and offish. She thought that Sarah might know what was going on, and a hot tide of embarrassment flooded her at that thought. Mum, then?

No. Not Mum. Dolly was Mum’s rival for Dad’s affections, she could see that. And somewhere in her heart she relished it, felt a certain twisted, ghastly pride at the feeling. She wished Mum was normal like other mums, that she wasn’t a head case, that she would be here, really here, and shield Dolly from these things that shouldn’t be happening.

So she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. And anyway, this was Dad, and Dad loved her. She soaped his back, and then he caught her arm and took it down the front of his body. He leaned back in the water and pressed her hand to that long white hard thing that loomed out of the soap suds. Horrified, Dolly thought she might scream but instead she cut off from the here and now and thought of the stained-glass angels in the little church near the primary school she had loved so much, of how happy she had been then, when she had been innocent and untouched; before she knew about the man-and-woman thing and everything had turned bad.

Desperately she tried to blank out what he was doing, moving her hand up and down, faster and faster until his whole body stiffened and she thought he must be having a stroke or something. She hoped he was. Then the hard thing went soft, and finally Dad sighed and relaxed and let go of her arm.

‘You’re my special girl, ain’t you?’ he murmured, lying back, eyes closed.

Dolly hugged her arm, which felt bruised. She let the flannel drop into the soap suds with a shudder of horror. Then she turned, and saw Mum standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching them.

Dolly was shamed to her soul by Mum seeing what was happening in front of the fire. Her face, her whole body, burned with embarrassment and guilt that her mother had seen her doing the bad thing with Dad.

What Dolly expected was that Mum would shout and scream, that she would cuff Dolly around the ear, and she deserved that… but none of that happened.

Dolly would never forget the image of that room: the hot fire blazing, her mother standing on the bottom step, staring; and Dad’s head slowly swivelling around as he saw Dolly’s horrified face turned toward where Edie stood.

Sam Farrell stared at his wife, and said nothing. After long, long moments Edie simply turned and went back upstairs. Dad sat back in his bath. And Dolly fled the room.

Dolly thought that after the bath thing Edie would talk to her husband, angry words would be exchanged; but again she was let down. If anything, Mum seemed to withdraw even more, only sometimes Dolly caught her mum staring fixedly at her, saying nothing, just looking at her daughter as if she was looking at a stranger.

Then one Saturday Dad came in from the pub. Mum was in the kitchen in her usual seat, staring at nothing in particular, and the kids were out playing. Dad came in, weaving a little on his feet, slightly drunk, and looked at his wife slumped there. His expression was one of impatience and disgust.

‘Going to sort out the box room,’ he snapped at his wife. Then he turned to Dolly. ‘Come on, Doll, you can give me a hand.’ And he headed for the stairs.

Dolly looked at Mum, but Edie’s eyes remained resolutely on the floor. What was he talking about, the box room? The tiny room was a tip, everything went in there, all the shit in the entire world it seemed, so why was he talking about sorting it out? Dad never bothered himself with stuff like that.

‘I said come on – you deaf?’ Dad snarled at Dolly from the bottom of the stairs.

Confused, Dolly followed him up. But instead of going left to the box room, he went into the bedroom he shared with Mum. Her heart suddenly in her mouth, Dolly hesitated at the door and he took her hand, pulled her inside, shut it. He passed a hand over his face and she thought she saw a flicker of something like despair there before it was gone, quick as a flash, and then he was smiling.

‘You’re my best girl, ain’t you, Doll?’ he said, and his voice was almost whining, almost pleading, as he led her to the bed.

‘What about the box room?’ Dolly blurted out in terror, her face red with shame because she knew what he was going to do, he was going to do the man-and-woman thing to her, she knew it…

And Mum knew it too.

That thought cut into her, sharp as a knife. Mum was sitting downstairs letting him do this, because it kept him away from her.

‘That’ll keep. Lay down there, Dolly, there’s a good girl.’

What could she do? This was wrong, but it was Dad, and she loved him, of course she did. So she lay down on the bed and when he lay down next to her she didn’t bolt for the door. It took willpower not to, but this was her dad. He loved her. She had to keep reminding herself of that, she had to.

Down in the kitchen, Edie heard her daughter’s piercing scream.

‘Oh Christ in heaven,’ she said, and as Dolly screamed again she put her hands over her ears and rocked backward and forward in her chair, crying. ‘Forgive me,’ she moaned. ‘Please forgive me.’

After that first time, it happened again and again – so many times that Dolly lost count, and she tried to count, to think that some day she might reach the end of this, that it might stop. But it didn’t.

Mum knew.

That was the bit that really choked Dolly. Mum knew about this, and she didn’t intervene, didn’t give a monkey’s. She was just relieved that Dad’s attentions were elsewhere. But maybe this was normal? Maybe this was just one of the adult things that Dolly hadn’t previously known about, and which she had to learn? She didn’t know.

Time and again she thought of the angels in the little church, of how stupid and innocent she had been to think that there was beauty in the world. She remembered the sweet-faced old priest with his fine words about God and redemption. But the priest had been wrong, so wrong. There was no beauty. There was nothing in this world except filth and degradation.

Beauty?

What a laugh.

It didn’t exist, not in her world. Nothing worth a flying fuck did.

Mum wouldn’t look her in the face any more, Dolly knew that much. And more and more they carted Edie off to the hospital to get ‘zapped’, as Nigel mockingly called it. Nigel thought Dad could do no wrong, but Mum? He’d grown critical of her, aping his father’s attitude. When Edie got home, it was Dolly who had to put her to bed, clean up the sick, deal with her vague, mad statements. It always took a day or two for Edie to come back to herself, and in between she was lost to them. Not a mother at all, really, just a thing in a bed, babbling nonsense, poor cow. Dolly saw how Edie cringed away from her husband whenever he came near, and she didn’t wonder at it. She felt rage and bitterness toward her mother, no love at all now, but in the cold logical core of herself she could see Edie’s viewpoint. She could see that Edie had chosen to sacrifice her eldest daughter and save herself.