Heartbreaker Read Free Page B

widowed early, childless; he figured, Finders keepers. He trimmed me with scissors and kept the hair in a box on which he wrote Lucy Fur.
    Now when did you hear of a kid having fur? That’s what I call special, he’d say.
    He brought the box out sometimes and let me play with it. The hair felt like a cat’s. I could imagine his fingers straying over me, lifting and cutting. When I smelled the box I smelled ashes.
    *   *   *
    He had to block the front door when a friend stopped by for a beer or to say hello. I’m sorry , he’d say, but she bites , and I would bark, loud. If you wanted to see him you’d have to find him somewhere I wasn’t. Even the porch was off-limits; when the postman came I jabbed at him through the door slot with a pair of scissors.
    But my not-father didn’t complain. He didn’t want to go out. I’ve had enough of drinking and women, he’d say, and turn the television on to his favorite show—the one he’d named me after—while I sat beside him, picking holes in the green velveteen and pulling the stuffing through until the cushion on my side of the couch was empty and I had to sit on the floor.
    *   *   *
    When I was five I took a stick and wrote in the sand, I AM THE SON OF THE DEVIL. We were at the beach. I was not crazy about the waves or the seaweed. He was gathering shells and I pointed at the words with my stick and he turned his head to the side to read them.
    Okay, he said, shaking scallops in his palm. A, you’re a girl. B, do I look like the devil?
    I took the stick again. You , I wrote, and then I drew an equal sign with a slash through it, followed by My dad.
    He sighed. You sore about being adopted?
    I jabbed the stick into the sand and threw myself down on the picnic blanket, my back to him. I could hear him unwrapping the sandwiches he took from his pockets. My stomach growled.
    Come on, he said, reaching around my shoulder with a piece of ham. Even devil spawn has to eat.
    I chomped at his fingers. He burped behind me, wiping his hands in the sand.
    There was no one else on the beach. It was cold and gray. Still, he swam. He pulled me out into the water. I sank. He pulled me back up. My hair gleamed like black oil around my shoulders and he scooped it up in his hands like treasure.
    You are beautiful, he said. I punched him in the arm. He twisted to his knees with a splash, grinning. I wondered sometimes if he was senile. With the water licking his waist he looked up at me.
    Someone lost the lottery the day they lost you, but I won it, he said. Which was wrong. Which didn’t even make sense. But he believed it.
    *   *   *
    I was expelled from school for putting tacks in the rain boots lined up in the coatroom. He said he never liked that stupid school to begin with. It became my job to fix the rotten wood porch, to pull weeds by the fence, to peel potatoes. I did everything wrong, but he still said Good job, Lucy! whenever I presented him with a handful of torn-up violets or showed him the porch pounded too full of nails or the potatoes hacked to pieces. In the evenings, I waited in the kitchen for bugs to crawl past so I could stomp on them with both feet, thinking Kill kill kill .
    Did you get them all? he’d call, and I’d jump in response, making the windows rattle in their loose frames.
    Thatta girl, he’d say.
    *   *   *
    I was seven, smashing a square block against a round hole in a puzzle he’d made as a Christmas present. I hated Christmas presents. After an hour of smashing he grabbed my arm and yelled Lucy, use the other damn block!
    I went rigid; it was the first time he’d yelled at me. The square fell out of my hand. Immediately he knelt beside me, offering the block on his big palm.
    I’m sorry I said damn, he said. Go on doing it your own way.
    I was still for a moment, then pushed all the pieces into their proper