Hob Broun - Odditorium

“ Pauvre Papa ,” Tildy murmured. “I can’t even say you’ve got me.”

The sound of her own voice, fluttery and tight, drove her outside for some air. The sun was low on the western horizon now cluttered with water towers and power lines, and the undersides of clouds were tinted orange. She turned, looked toward the scrub behind the house and felt rising within her like bile an urge to take off and run, fighting through brambles and sumac till her legs gave out and she dropped, spent but clear of the area. That instinct for flight that always surged over her when the proceedings turned hard.

In the spring of her tenth-grade year, Tildy was engrossed by the remarkable universe of Photoplay and Modern Screen . Lucien berated her for reading such trash and burned her first issues. She learned to be more careful, would trek to a clearing in the woods where she could browse undisturbed through styling tips from Sandra Dee’s hairdresser.

Auditions were announced for the school’s traditional year-end musical, Annie Get Your Gun and Tildy set her heart on the title role. At night she pressed her forehead against conjoined fists and prayed for the first time since Harlene had died. Trying once more to conjure up the godly image that had comforted her as a child — balding, white-bearded giant in a blue bathrobe — she promised that if He allowed her to get the part, she would accompany her father to Mass each Sunday for the next six months. But when Lucien on the night before the audition learned of his Clothilde’s intention to star in this show, he exploded, bellowing that he would never permit her to frolic around in some scanty costume for a roomful of people. She told him he could go straight to hell. And all the next day, while she cursed and thumped, Lucien kept her locked away in her room.

It was this final gag on the insatiable faith he had tried to instill in her — chasing off friends, confiscating her lipstick and nail polish — that caused her to run away from home, just as her father had done in 1925, heading out right before first light carrying only a couple of crumpled bills.

A mile or two up the road by a house with only a porch light burning, Tildy helped herself to a station wagon with a full tank of gas and the keys inside. She drove nonstop to the outskirts of Biloxi, Mississippi, where the radiator line burst. Leaving the car smoking on the shoulder, she walked into town, to the promenade along the Gulf. Tildy bought her first pack of cigarettes, Lucky Strikes; dangling her legs over the seawall, she taught herself to inhale and spit like a man. Later she frittered away a handful of quarters at a booth where you could win a five-inch lock knife by popping balloons with darts. Finally the gaptooth boy running it slipped her one of the knives on the house.

“I don’t need any favors,” Tildy said sullenly.

“But I like you,” he said. Wayne. His name was stitched over the pocket of his shirt. “Death From Above” was tattooed on his upper arm. “That’s some sweet face. You know, if your hair was a little bit lighter, you’d look just like the White Rock girl.”

Tildy allowed him to drape his arm over her shoulders as they walked to a nearby café. Wayne bought her shrimp-in-a-basket and a big lemonade and sat there watching her eat.

“Man, oh man,” he said. “Look like you ain’t had no food in a week.”

She told Wayne that she’d been studying dance up in New York, but was forced to leave town due to a broken heart. An English movie director. A possessive bastard.

“Dancin’ school, huh?” Wayne nodded and sucked his lips. “You maybe interested in makin’ some dough?”

From the sickroom came a low trilling growl like an animal in heat and then Lucien’s voice, robust as it had ever been.

“Where that girl … Clothilde!”

She scrambled down the hall on cold feet.

“ Viens, Clothilde … viens ici. ” He beckoned urgently to her. His skin was terribly white, taut, and the bones of his pelvis seemed about to burst through.

“Take it easy. I’ll put the sheet back over you.”

Lucien heaved to one side and grasped at her breasts. Just what kind of connection was he making?

“I’m with you, Papa.” He was squeezing her painfully. “It’s all right. Lie back now.”

“ Pas long temps . They take me out there and no coming back. There are things you must hear now, so come. Give your attention.”

“A few minutes. But it’s late, we should both be asleep.”

Lucien buzzed his lips. “I know how late. So I am telling you … Ecoutes , my girl. Sit by me and hold this hand. We must speak of your mother, no keeping from you any longer what was done…. Always I have my suspicions. All the time I am writing to the police about footprints I see by that lake. You remember the lake?”

She remembered. Water a perfect shade of blue. The ripple of skatebugs. The way Harlene bobbed gently in the water so that until the moment she turned over, Tildy thought she was doing the dog paddle in her clothes.

“There was a great crime on that day. That holy day. I speak with a man who knows of the enemy.”

“At the hospital? Your roommate?”

“We live as allies. We share food together. One day I tell him of your mama and how we find her floating there. I see how his face goes tight at this. Bien sur , this man can tell me. I look for him every day, me, until he will surrender this truth. The truth as I have always known it…. In the college at Baton Rouge there were professors who know of my fight. They are Bolsheviks. Juifs, tu comprends ? They see how I am exposing them and their plans and the order comes from Moscow I must be destroyed. The assassin is a man named Klein, but he is a coward. He follow me for many weeks, afraid to get close. You remember the fire at work that killed my foreman? No, you were too little, ma Clothilde , but this was Klein. There is rage at his failure. Now Klein himself is in danger. So it was that on that day he finds your mama alone, his time for attack has come. He set on her like an animal and crushed her throat in his hands.”

“Enough, Papa. You’ve said enough now.”

Lucien lifted her hand from the mattress. “You must be strong before this evil. Now it is in you. You have heard it from my lips and must swear to carry out the vengeance.”

Tildy’s upper body sagged in glum exasperation. “Forget it. You don’t need any visions now. It’s long over.” And silently: It’s your own death you should be thinking about.

“There is no limit in God’s sight. Pledge to me.”

Tildy looked at this frail chump of a man in raw lamplight who by his madness had denied her access to basic implements of living, who had deposited in her a charged nugget of himself, magnetized for fakery and sorrow. She realized that all he really meant to say was: Can you do me a favor?

“Sure. I promise. I swear.”

“ Bien . It is done.”

He relaxed all at once and she was able to pull free. There were round red marks on the back of her hand. Lucien lay quiet for a few moments, then began to retch. He opened his mouth like a bird and hacked up a twisted rope of mucus that fell across the pillow in a tarry black line. Tildy unfolded his body and wiped him up. He was sweating from every pore.

Hard as she tried, Tildy could not fall asleep. By three o’clock her calf muscles were knotted and she’d been grinding her teeth. The kitchen floor felt gritty under her feet. She drank some water and groped back to the sofa. She masturbated coldly and drowsed finally away with one foot on the floor.

Mrs. Daigle shook her out of it around noon.

“You any better, dear?”