Dad looked scared of what I was going to say next. I didn’t blame him. I was talking a mile a minute and must have said “Darla” six times. It wasn’t fair. But I needed to know.
So I slowed down.
“Why did Darla say she was a pornographer?” I asked.
“Shit, Cupcake. Where are you reading this stuff?”
“I was meant to read it. She wrote it for me. But she didn’t tell me details. So you have to tell me.”
He sighed and sat down at the kitchen table. “She took a job at that photo lab at the mall because she wanted access to a color processor. The owner worked out a deal with her, you know? She printed what orders were given to her. Some was that kind of stuff, I guess. It wasn’t good for her.”
It wasn’t good for her. Oh well.
“Wilson used to take these calendar shots,” he added. “Not like the stuff you see now.”
“Ew. Mr. Wilson was a pornographer?”
“Can we stop using that word?”
“Okay,” I said. “Mr. Wilson took naked pictures of people? Is that better?”
He looked pained.
“Did he take the ones of Jasmine Blue?”
“How do I know?”
“Oh.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some kind of pervert.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. For all my crying that day, I was still mad at him for never talking about it. Maybe he thought I was over it too, like Ellie did. Maybe he kept the pictures Jasmine gave him because it was nice to be wanted. Because it is, right? Nice to be wanted?
“What?” he asked.
“You weren’t even a little bit flattered that Jasmine wanted you to be—you know.”
“No.”
“So why’d you keep the pictures?”
“Look,” he said. “Your mother and I were soul mates. Monogamous. Not like it’s any of your business, but I never slept with anyone in my life except your mother. Not before, not since.”
“Huh,” I said. And then I felt sad, because it seemed too long for Dad to be without—um—sex. I mean, Darla was dead thirteen years.
But I understood. When someone you love chooses to go that way, a large part of you dies along with them. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was four and I understood it. I was now seventeen and I understood it.
They take you with them.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I just—I don’t want you to think the wrong thing about us, either.”
“So what’s with the tooth?” I asked.
He looked puzzled and then he smiled. “Is that still there? Wow. I forgot all about it.”
“Still there.”
“Number forty-six,” he said, pointing to his jaw where number forty-six usually resides in the human mouth. “She had to get it pulled,” he said. He frowned. “She wasn’t herself after that.”
“Wasn’t herself?”
“The job. The tooth. All of it kinda came down on her. She wasn’t the same.”
“You think that’s what did it?” I asked.
“She was depressed. I told her. She kept saying it was just a phase. That she would solve it.”
We sat there silently.
“She solved it, all right,” I said.
He started to tear up then. This wasn’t something he did. So I joined him, considering I’d had plenty of practice that day already.
We cried. Then we hugged. Then we blew our noses and he made the elephant sound he always makes when he blows his nose and it annoyed me like it does every time. And then we laughed because he knew he’d annoyed me.
“She wouldn’t get help. Escaped into her darkroom. And then the shit hit the fan with those damn pictures.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was the most we’d ever talked about… anything.
“I could have helped her. But she was so mad at me,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“You know when I found her, you were in the living room with her shoes?”
“Her shoes?” I didn’t remember this.
“You were hugging her shoes. And you’d put all your acorns into one of them and you wouldn’t let me have them back.”
“God. I don’t remember that,” I said.
He was crying full force now. I’d never seen him like this. “I relive it every day, you know?”
“I want us to get on with our lives,” I said. “I want you to start painting and stop feeling like it’s some guilty pleasure. It’s not.”
He looked at me while he wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. “All I’ve wanted to do since the day Darla died was move somewhere else. Take back that land.” He pointed toward the commune. “Sell up and get out, you know? California. Or Italy. Or the Virgin Islands. Maine. Vermont. I don’t care where. I can’t function here.” He pointed toward the kitchen to the space where the oven was. “Every day I see her there.”
I stared into his bloodshot, tear-filled eyes.
Transmission from Dad: His father didn’t talk to him much after Darla died. He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. On his deathbed, he said, “Sorry about your girl, son.” His mother hadn’t talked to him in twenty-five years, since she left to be a tree-hugging hippie who traveled with a group called the Skyforce Coalition, who may or may not have believed in the existence of benevolent unicorns. She didn’t know I existed. She didn’t even know Darla was dead.
Now that’s convenient.