Lily King: Father of the Rain

“Sweetie pie, when did you get back?” Mrs. Tabor says, quickly putting her head through a terry-cloth dress before coming over to me.

“Today.”

She hugs me. She’s cold from the pool and water from her hair drips down my neck. Her black hair is no straighter wet than dry and hits the small of her back in a straight line. She is normally pale but now her skin is like copper. She must have spent a lot of time beside my pool this summer.

“Well,” she says, looking down the driveway, then at the house. I wait for her to start asking me questions — she was always so full of questions for me when I went over to Patrick’s house. “Your dad will be sorry he missed you.”

“Where is he?”

“Radio Shack. Isn’t that where he went?” she asks Patrick, who nods. “Can you come back later?”

There’s something strange about the way she’s standing, I feel like if I try to take a step closer to the house, she will tackle me. I glance at the garage to see if my father’s car is gone; it is.

“Hey.” Patrick hits me on the arm. “I gotta show you what we got for the pool.”

His mother starts to say something and stops herself. I follow Patrick into the poolhouse. It’s mostly the same, except for some of the towels hanging on the hooks. Patrick leads me to a new little cabinet next to the bar and tells me to open it. Inside is a stereo with a turntable, an eight-track, and a radio. He pushes ON and music blasts inside and out. He points to some yellow speakers in the trees beside the pool. “They’re waterproof,” he says. “For rain. Oh, and I gotta show you something else, too. It’s so cool.”

“Stay out in the sunshine. Don’t go indoors,” Mrs. Tabor calls as we pass her chaise on the way to the house. “Patrick, are you listening to me?” But Patrick keeps on moving, and by the time we reach the back steps she’s lain back down again.

The kitchen table is gone. The only furniture in the kitchen now is a red leather armchair I’ve never seen before. They’ve moved the table into the pantry and covered it with an orange and brown tablecloth that’s not ours. In the living room there are two new lamps (my mother took the blue and white Chinese ones) that have shiny black bases and silver shades with a kind of veiny green mold design. In the den, where the yellow flowered couch and chairs used to be, are two baby blue recliners. On the mantelpiece is a photograph in Lucite of two old people I don’t know.

Patrick heads up the stairs possessively and into my parents’ room. Same bed, missing dresser, new chair with ottoman. Weird geometric sheets on the unmade bed. He sits on my father’s side of the bed and opens the thin drawer of the bedside table. He lifts up a black plastic thing shaped like a small egg with the top cut off and a bright red button there instead. A cord runs out of the other end.

“If you push this, the police will come.”

“What?”

“It’s called a panic button. Gardiner — I mean, your dad — wired the whole house. Downstairs there’s a box and when you go out you turn it on and if anyone crosses any threshhold anywhere in the house a signal goes off downtown at the police station and they have to come in two minutes or they get fired. Isn’t that so cool?” He’s sitting on a gold velour robe.

In the drawer with the panic button are several old watches, receipts, white golf tees, one cuff link, and a silver fountain pen my mother gave him for his fortieth birthday. I used to play in this drawer on weekend afternoons while my father napped and a ballgame flashed on the TV at the foot of the bed. He slept so deeply I could thread the golf tees through the circles of hair on his chest and he wouldn’t wake up. Sometimes I fell asleep beside him. The drawer, this whole side of the room, holds the smell of him, which is humid and spicy.

In the drawer are two new things: a tube of something called KY Jelly and the note my mother left on the kitchen table on the morning of June 25th. It’s crumpled and in the back but I know what it is. If I were alone I’d pull it out and read it, but I don’t want Patrick to know it’s there, though he probably already does.

I get up and go down the hallway to my room. The door is shut. Patrick whispers something to me, but he’s too far away to hear and I really don’t want to listen to him anymore. I open the door. My beds have been replaced by a double bed I don’t recognize, and in the bed is a little girl. I’m not sure how I forgot that Patrick had a little sister, but I did. She lies on her side in a deep sleep, a short pigtail sticking up above her ear, two hands curled under her chin.

“Mom will kill me if she wakes up,” Patrick says behind me, so I shut the door.

It is afternoon in somebody else’s house. I don’t know what to do now.

“We’re not living here,” he says. “I mean, not really.”

We just stand there in the dark hallway.

“We thought you were coming back next week. School doesn’t start until a week from Wednesday, you know. Why are you shaking?”

I hold my hand out flat. I’m shaking like I have a disease. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s get out in the sun.”

We go down the back stairs and out onto the porch.

“He’s back,” Patrick says, pointing.

My father is in his chair at the pool in his bathing trunks. He’s sitting sideways to us, talking to Mrs. Tabor. She glances over but he doesn’t. I walk all the way across the grass to the concrete squares around the pool before he looks up. He fakes surprise. “Well, hello there!” He fakes friendliness. I know it’s fake because I’ve heard that voice when he talks to the neighbors he hates. He hates Mr. Seeley for building his garage so close to our property line, and he hates the Fitzpatricks for having so many children. He hates the old Vance sisters down the hill for feeding our dogs and Mr. Pratt across the street for playing taps at sunset. He grumbles about them, swears about them, and makes fun of the way they walk or talk or laugh. But whenever he sees one of them, at the post office or the gas station, he always says, “Well, hello there!” in that same fake friendly voice.

I hug him tight but his arms are loose around me.

“You come up for a swim? The pool’s nice today.” He reaches for his drink and I notice his hand is shaking like mine.

“No, I didn’t bring a suit. I just—”

“Why not? The pool’s nice today,” he says again, just before sipping.

“I don’t know. I haven’t unpacked yet,” I say, then regret mentioning anything about being away. At the same time I want him to know that I came up here first thing. “We just got back an hour ago.” I realize this isn’t true. It’s been more like three hours by now.

“Oh, really? I thought I saw the convertible downtown this morning.”

Now he’s lying. We drove in well past noon. I shake my head, but I don’t have it in me to fight.

He’s glaring at Mrs. Tabor. I know that look, too. It means, Can you believe this little shit? Sweat has popped out on his nose.

“I missed you,” I say.

“Oh yeah?”

“Gardiner,” Mrs. Tabor says.

“I missed you, too.”

Our eyes catch briefly. His are a yellowy green. My throat aches from not crying.

“Why don’t you go help your dad finish unloading the car?” Mrs. Tabor says.

We walk across the stiff healthy grass together. He lights a cigarette with his lighter, a heavy silver rectangle that makes a wonderful shlink when he flips it closed. The familiarity of that sound, of everything about him, hurts. The driveway is hot, the way-back of the station wagon hotter. I have to get on my knees inside to reach the last two bags. The smell of the dogs reminds me that I haven’t seen the puppy.