Ottessa Moshfegh - Eileen

Again I tried to knock on the front door, but my father still ignored me. I climbed over the wrought-iron handrail that went up the brick steps and jumped down behind the front bushes and looked through the living room windows. They hadn’t been washed in years. I rubbed a spot through the frost, but there was still a thick layer of dust on the inside. I could barely see in. I caught then a weird vision of my father — pale, naked from the waist up, thin and frail but full of tension, jolting slowly past the living room windows with a bottle in his hand. He seemed to have grown small breasts. And when he turned, I thought I saw long purple bruises up and down his back. How he stayed alive for as long as he did is sheer proof of his stubbornness. I pounded my fist on the thick glass, but he just waved his hand and kept on walking. I ended up sneaking in through a dirty living room window. It was, strangely, unlocked.

I was an adult, I knew that. I had no curfew. There were no official house rules. There were only my father’s arbitrary rages, and once he was in one he would only relax if I agreed to whatever odd, humiliating punishment he came up with. He’d bar me from the kitchen, order me to walk to Lardner’s and back in the rain. The worst crime I could commit in his eyes was to do anything for my own pleasure, anything outside of my daughterly duties. Evidence of a will of my own was seen as the ultimate betrayal. I was his nurse, his aide, his concierge. All he really required, however, was gin. The house was rarely dry — as I’ve said, I was a good girl — but somehow everything I did, my very existence, rubbed him the wrong way. Even my National Geographic magazines gave him cause to bewail my unruliness. “Communist,” he’d call me, flicking at the pages. I knew he was furious that morning. But I wasn’t scared. I stood on the carpet in the foyer, snow sliding off my boots. “Hey,” I called out to him. “Have you seen the keys?”

He emerged from the closet with a golf club, thudded up the steps, and sat on the upstairs landing. When he was truly enraged, he got quiet — the calm before the storm. I knew he would never try to kill me. He wasn’t really capable of that. But he seemed sober that morning, and when he was sober, he was especially mean. I don’t recall exactly what we said to each other while he sat up there, tapping the golf club along the rungs of the banister, but I remember I held my hands over my face, in case he threw the golf club down.

“Dad,” I asked again, “can I have the keys?”

He picked up a book from where they were piled along the hallway walls and threw it down at me. Then he went into my mother’s bedroom and took a pillow off the bed and threw that down, too.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, setting himself on the top step again. He rapped the golf club against the rungs of the banister like a prison guard with a baton against iron bars. “You’re not going anywhere till you read that book. From cover to cover,” he said. “I want to hear every word.” It was a copy of Oliver Twist . I picked it up, turned to the opening page, cleared my throat, but stopped there. A week earlier I would have acquiesced and read a few pages until he got thirsty. That day, though, I just put the book down. I recall looking up at him, still shielding my face with my hands. Through my fingers, to my regret, I caught sight of his gray scrotum peeking out one side of his billowy, yellowed shorts.

“You see the car keys?” I asked. “I’ll be late to work.”

His whole body seemed to blush with rage. The shoes he had on were his worn black oxfords.

“Out all night, nearly crashed the car, sleeping in your own sick, and now you’re worried about getting to work on time.” His voice was eerily measured, grave. “I can hardly look at you, I’m so ashamed. Oliver Twist would be grateful for this home, this nice house. But you, Eileen, you seem to think you can just come and go as you please.” His voice cracked.

“I went out with a girl from work,” I told him. It was a mistake to disclose this, but I suppose I was proud and wanted to rub it in his face.

“A girl from work? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

I refused to defend myself. In the past I’d have begged his forgiveness, done anything to appease him. “I’m sorry!” I would have cried, falling to my knees. I’d gotten good at being dramatic; he was only ever satisfied by complete self-abasement. That morning, however, I wasn’t going to stoop to his level.

“Well,” he said, “who is he? I at least want to meet the boy before you get knocked up and sell your soul to Satan.”

“Please, can I have the keys? I’ll be late.”

“You aren’t going anywhere dressed like that. Now really, Eileen. How dare you? That’s the dress your mother wore to my father’s funeral. You have no respect,” he said, “for me, for your mother, for anyone, and least of all for yourself.” He let go of the golf club, startling himself with the racket it made as it tumbled down the stairs. Then he started shaking. He sat on his hands, bowed his head. “Trash, Eileen, just trash,” he whined. I thought he might start to cry.

“I’ll go get you a bottle,” I said.

“What’s his name, Eileen? Give me the boy’s name.”

“Lee,” I answered, almost without thinking.

“Lee? Just Lee?” He winced, wiggled his head back and forth mocking me.

“Leonard.”

He ground his teeth, jaw pulsing, and rubbed his palms together.

“Now you know,” I said, dropping my hands from my face as though my lie itself could shield me from my father’s wrath. “Keys?”

“Keys are in my robe,” he said. “Come back quick and change. I don’t want anyone to see you in that getup. They’ll think I’m dead.”

I found my father’s robe thrown in the empty fireplace. I got the keys, unearthed my purse from a pile of junk by the front door, put on a coat, and went back out to the car. The vomit was already melting, the edge of the puddle coinciding with the strap of the seat belt. It was awful. The smell transferred to everything I wore and lingered on my coat long after I’d abandoned the Dodge and disappeared a few days later. I had no intention of going to the liquor store, which would have been closed anyway at that early hour. But I had to extricate the front of the car from the snowbank. That took some effort. My father may have saved my life that night, but he clearly didn’t care much for my well-being. He wasn’t capable of much, I knew that. The one time I’d dared to ask him not to pick on me, he burst out laughing, then feigned a heart attack the next morning. When the ambulance arrived, he was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette. He said he felt fine. “She’s on the rag or something,” he told the paramedics. They all shook hands.

Once I got the car out of the snowbank, I drove back to O’Hara’s. If I’d had my wits, I could have taken off then and there. I could have just sped off into the morning, a free woman. Who could stop me? But I couldn’t leave yet. I couldn’t leave Rebecca. I parked in front of the bar and went inside.

It was dark as ever in there, just thin daggers of light needling through the chipping black paint on the window over the door. The smell of stale beer made my stomach churn. Sandy stood behind the bar drinking a glass of water.

“Can I borrow a bottle of gin?” I asked him.

“You’re back,” he said. His smile perturbed me. He looked like a man who’d fondle children. He was a real creep.

“My dad needs a drink,” I said.

“You girls drank all the gin I got last night,” Sandy chuckled. “Would your dad believe that, huh?”

“You have anything else I can borrow?”

“I’ve got gin, dear,” he said, fatherly. He walked behind the bar, ducked and disappeared for a moment, came back up with a bottle of Gordon’s. “And consider it a Christmas gift. To your dad, not you. You deserve much better,” he said. “Have a drink with me first, though,” he said, plunking down two shot glasses, breaking open the bottle with a violent twist, a crack like bones breaking as he twisted the cap. “One drink with me and the rest is yours.” He nudged the glass toward me. I swallowed it quickly. The soapy, burning taste at least seemed to cut through the taste of bile in my mouth. “Good girl,” Sandy called me. When he handed me the bottle, he lifted his other hand to caress my face. I jerked myself away.