Chapter 4

In the back of my closet were three photo albums I could never bear to throw away. I dragged them out and looked for pictures of my old friends. I stopped when I came to my Sweet Sixteen birthday party.

The faces in those pictures reminded me of all I lost that day. I grabbed my glass of wine and took a long sip.


My childhood home in South Tampa was large and sat on a busy highway. We were back from the road a bit so traffic didn’t prove to be a problem except on Fourth of July and Gasparilla, when rednecks drove down from Pasco County to drink Busch Beer and vomit on our flowerbeds. Every year Bernard found several drunks passed out on our front lawn. He'd pour buckets of ice over their heads while Sally screamed at them to get the hell away from her palm trees.

Rare moments when my parents worked as a team.

Sally grew into the role of absent mother; she didn’t start out that way. I remembered accidents as a little girl where she’d hold me and sing songs until I felt better. We would dance around the house to Carol King and watch Disney movies on Sunday nights. As I grew older, she'd stare out the window when I talked or disappear to her room for hours of quiet time. By junior high, she hardly spoke to me at all. Every morning on my way to school, I passed by the kitchen where she smiled sadly with her drink in the air as some kind of silent toast.

I usually mumbled, "Cheers", and kept going.

To occupy herself, Sally threw parties and invited neighborhood friends. The scene never changed: dozens of men, with pastel-colored shirts and white sport coats, snorting enough coke to kill a whale before screwing their friends’ wives in the bushes. I found it strangely entertaining and spied on them with binoculars from an upstairs window. Everything I needed to know about dysfunctional relationships, I learned from watching the idiots at my parents' parties. Once in a while I’d look over the crowd and wonder how many of them knew Bernard was beating Sally.

My best friends knew the truth. I blurted it out while we were addressing invitations to my Sweet Sixteen.

“I wish we could have the party at your house,” I said to Rebekah.

“You have a better pool,” she said.

“Why don’t you want it at your house?” Sarah asked.

“Because Bernard beats Sally almost every weekend,” I said. “And I hate them. I don’t want them ruining this, too.”

Sarah, Rebekah, and Julia stared at me.

“No shit,” Julia said.

“Since when?” Sarah asked.

“Probably since before they got married and had me. I remember Sally getting the shit kicked out of her when I was three.”

“Are you serious?” Julia asked.

“How bad?” Rebekah asked. “Guiding Light bad?”

“Worse,” I said.

There was shocked silence for a moment.

“I’ll pray for you,” Sarah finally whispered.

“What good does that do?” Julia asked. “Does he hit you, Liv?”

I shook my head.

“Not yet,” Rebekah warned as she wiped away some tears. “Listen, you absolutely have to come live with me. I should have demanded it years ago.”

Rebekah liked drama. I had been afraid of this.

“Your father and his violent outbursts have been the talk of this town for forever. That’s why you can’t get anyone decent to set foot inside your house. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it might embarrass you. That man is a time bomb waiting to explode. If you don’t leave now—”

“You’ve been watching too many after-school specials,” I told her.

“My parents adore you and always said they wanted more children,” Rebekah said and I tried not to laugh.

“I’m not what your parents had in mind,” I said.

“Bullshit,” she said, “they’d love to have you. They’ve been talking about adopting a Chinese baby, for Christ’s sake. I mean, come on Liv, you and I are practically like sisters anyway. What if your father comes home one night and freaks out? What if he goes after your mom, sees your bedroom door open or something, and decides that you’re next? What if he grabs a knife and corners you and there’s no way out?”

Rebekah was getting hysterical, creating an entire scene in her head.

“Hey drama queen!” Julia shouted. “You wanna relax?”

“I’m fine,” I assured them. “Bernard hasn’t laid a hand on me since the day I was born. The only time he speaks to me is when I get my report card.”

“What do your parents fight about?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, how does it happen?” Julia asked.

“They fight in the library. Sally storms in while he's working and starts listing all the ways Bernard has disappointed her. The usual bored-wife bullshit. It’s pathetic, like something out of Dear Abby. I don’t even pay attention anymore. Sooner or later, Sally throws something and then Bernard hits her. Once when I was eight, he kicked her lower back and broke two of his toes. Now he keeps his shoes on. When the stupid bitch has had enough, she escapes into the kitchen and pours herself another drink. Bernard calls her names until she passes out by the bar and he falls asleep in the library. It’s a goddamn routine.”

Julia cursed while Sarah crossed herself and Rebekah’s eyes filled with tears again.

“Jesus Christ,” Julia said. “I knew you weren’t the Waltons . . .”

“You don’t feel sorry for your mom?” Sarah asked.

“They enjoy it, Sarah,” I told her. “They wouldn’t know what to do without their weekly encounters. And it’s a great idea, Rebekah, coming to live with you, but there’s no way Bernard or Sally would go for it. What would their friends think? It’s like an unspoken deal between the three of us: I get anything I want and in exchange I must go to school, maintain a certain grade point average, and keep up appearances. For the time being, that’s fine with me.”

“What a way to live,” Sarah said, rubbing my back.

“I used to go into the kitchen after their fights and clean up the mess. I’d help Sally get into bed, refill her drink, and mop up any blood that was spilled. Not anymore, though. I’m so used to it that I can go into the kitchen to get ice cream afterwards, not even see her, and simply step over her body to get to the refrigerator. Sally allows Bernard to hurt her because she values her BMW, social standing, and diamond jewelry more than her dignity.”

“Everyone thinks their parents are full of shit,” Rebekah said, “but you’re for real. No wonder you hate them.”

“What is there to like? He’s an angry man who hates himself and she’s a coward who fears change. So they subject their daughter to displays of remarkable cruelty in their own home. Parents of the year.”

My friends stared at me.

“Where’d you get all that?” Sarah asked.

“I read it somewhere,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re both going straight to hell. All I have to do is make it to my eighteenth birthday, go away to college, and never look back again.”

Those plans went up in smoke a few weeks later.

It was a hell of a party, though. We dressed up as our favorite punk rockers and persuaded Julia’s older brother, the one with the mohawk, to lend us his Cramps, Circle Jerks, and Misfits records. The girls and I sprayed our hair different colors, I chose red sparkles, and we painted our nails green. One of Julia’s sisters came over to do our make-up and we even wore trash bags as dresses.

Sally was terrified her yard would look like a Sex Pistols concert, but she needn’t have worried. The boys looked as harmless as Adam Ant and the girls resembled Madonna more than anything. We spent the day dancing and playing UNO while the adults got wired and stayed out of our way.

Jimmy Preston came as himself. He was seventeen and extremely popular. He showed up in regular jeans and a T-shirt, but I didn’t care. I thought he was the cutest boy in school.

The girls and I stayed away from the pool because we didn’t want to ruin our makeup and the boys stayed away because they didn’t want to ruin their hair. Parties grew more complicated as we grew older. Weirdness began years earlier when someone suggested Spin The Bottle at Sarah’s thirteenth birthday, escalated with Seven Minutes in Heaven when Rebekah became a Bat Mitzvah and reached true awkwardness during Tongue and Twister the year Julia turned fifteen. Games were a big mistake. Half the boys hit on Rebekah while the rest settled for anyone with growing breasts. Boys I had known all my life were suddenly young men coming at me with braces and pimples. It’s a wonder we didn’t all faint from the stress those seemingly innocent games brought on. Normally, I would sit by myself and envision nothing but lonesome teenage years ahead. I figured I was doomed.

As my party slowed down and the last guests were leaving, Jimmy asked me to take a walk. He reached for my hand, holding it with our fingers intertwined just like in the movies, and some light broke through the clouds inside my head. Maybe there was hope for me after all. I ignored his sweaty palms as we slowly walked across the street and stood looking out over the water. As the sun went down, Jimmy leaned in and gave me my first real kiss. It was wet and sloppy and delicious. He must have kissed a dozen girls; I hoped I did as well because I had been practicing on my hand for years. After a minute or two, Jimmy stepped back and wiped his mouth.

“I’ll see ya later,” he said and sauntered off toward his house. He was king of my world.

I walked home in a dream-like trance, trying hard not to burst at the seams. I suddenly felt optimistic, as if I could be like one of those happy-go-lucky girls in Julia’s Seventeen magazines. Maybe high school could be fun with dates and dances, long walks and more kisses. Maybe I was meant to be a normal teenager after all. I couldn’t wait to call my friends. As I walked in the house, I could hear my parents yelling at each other. Their voices were coming from the master bedroom.

“That’s odd,” I said out loud. “They usually fight downstairs.”

Bernard’s voice boomed through the house.

“You are not going to get away with this!” he yelled. “I will not be embarrassed in front of my friends!”

Sally started to yell back, but I turned them off. My parents were out of control and I didn’t want them to stomp on my buzz. I put my hand on my chest to feel the rhythms inside.

One, two, three, I walked into my bathroom and got ready for bed.

Six, seven, eight, the counting kept my mind occupied while I waited for my parents to finish their scene.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I needed to use the goddamn phone. It was one thing for my friends to hear about my parents’ fights from me and quite another for them to actually hear a fight themselves.

As I lay in bed, trying hard to concentrate on fresh memories of Jimmy and my wonderful party, I accidentally heard more of the yelling. Frustrated, I put on Rio by Duran Duran. I turned the volume up and looked out the window, focusing on the spot where Jimmy had kissed me and tried to sing along with the music.

Bernard’s ugliness found its way inside my head.

“Why don’t you go downstairs?” I whispered.

While my stomach turned inside out, I finally gave in and listened to them yell.

“You’re a slut!” Bernard said. “The whole party was laughing at you behind your back!”

“Nobody gives a rat’s ass who I’m flirting with,” Sally sobbed. “You don’t even care! You’re just pissed that I did it in front of your friends!”

“That’s right!” Bernard said.

“Bernard Foster will not be embarrassed!” Sally mocked him.

“You’re damn right!”

“Well, you were tonight! Weren’t you, asshole? I got to you tonight and will continue to get to you by screwing all of your colleagues and telling them how much better they are than you."

"Bernard,” she said with a sigh, “you’re a mediocre lawyer and a mediocre fuck.”

The slapping started; it always did. Only this time something was different. Sally laughed at him.
“Is that all you have?” she yelled.

I stood near the door and felt my heart beating through my chest. Was she hitting him back? As the slaps got harder, Sally began to cry and her yelling muffled. My heart sunk as I left the album playing and went back to bed. I put the pillow over my head and tried to count my heartbeats again, yet I could still hear Bernard taunting with insults as he beat her.

They were too close to my room. How could they do that to me on my birthday?

I cried as my hatred for them grew, longing to be with one of my friends. For a moment I considered running away, but didn’t know where to go. I would die of humiliation if someone saw me running down the street in my nightgown. And what would Bernard do then? He’d say ours was a family problem, although I didn’t have any family to speak of, no grandparents available to counsel and protect me. I didn’t know any cousins, aunts, or uncles either. Bernard and Sally were so vile that no blood relative wanted anything to do with them. I yearned to belong somewhere, but felt stuck inside my house and my head with nowhere to run.

Sally screamed and I sat up in bed again. I bitterly wiped my eyes dry and shook off self-pity.

“Fuck this,” I said out loud without whispering.

I got out of bed and walked down the hall.


“Enough.”

The sound of my voice in an empty apartment surprised Bozack, who had been sleeping on my lap.

I got up and opened a bottle of wine. Searching through my stash of feel-good DVDs, I found When Harry Met Sally, popped it in the machine and sat down.

It was going to be a long night.