Ugly Behavior Read Free Page B

hated the way my father had played him—it felt like a direct insult to
me. And it was so typical of my dad. When I was a kid I thought that kind of
behavior meant he thought he was better than everybody else, and I hated him
for it. It took years, but I finally saw that he had the utmost respect for
honesty, integrity, hard work. He just had an unusual intolerance for
everything else.
    “Hey, wait!” Tommy grabbed me and twirled me around. “I came all
this way, your dad likes me, for fuck’s sake, he invited me to stay here, so why
aren’t you talkin ’ to me?”
    I turned my face up, thinking to spit at him, and found myself
swallowing the bitter taste because of the look in his eyes. Because somewhere
along the way, between the time I had escaped him back east and now, he had
changed, he had taken a turn for the worse.
    He pressed his lips so hard against my mouth I could feel his
teeth under the skin, hard and sharp and barely contained. “I love you, Mary,”
he growled from way down in his throat, “I really do.”
    I struggled, but I was too scared to struggle much. He held me
tighter, firmer, and I couldn’t breathe. He growled some more, from somewhere
deeper than his throat, and inside the anger I could hear him crying. And I
still don’t quite understand why, but I kissed him back, even as I tried to
push him away.
    Before I left him that night, after showing him how to turn on the
lantern, how to pump the water with the rusted old handle, where the extra
blankets were, where my father stored the reading materials he’d have no use
for, he called me from the ratty old bunk where we’d been lying together and
said, “Your bedroom’s out on the end, other end of the house from ‘Daddy’s.’”
It wasn’t a question.
    Something about the languid, self-satisfied way he said it chilled
me. “How did you know?”
    “Oh, I wasn’t gonna just waltz right in.
That wouldn’t be too smart, now would it? I’ve been here, three, almost four
days.”
    “How?”
    “He ain’t that smart. Out here by
yourself, you forget how to take care. I got a sleeproll ,
tucked over behind that little hill. Some food, some dusty old binoculars,
that’s all I needed. Didn’t I tell you I used to be a Boy Scout? Merit badges
and everything? I know how to handle myself in places like this.”
    “Oh. Right. I forgot.”
    “Point is, I don’t have to stay out here all night. You leave your
window open, I’ll be there. That old man’ll never
know.”
    “That wouldn’t be a good idea, Tommy.”
    “Let me worry about that, babe.”
    I walked a few more steps in silence, my eyes on the saguaro
raising their arms in pain or surrender. In the dark they always gave me the
creeps. “My window will be closed. And I’ve got a double lock.”
    “But I love yoooou ,” he crooned behind
me, and laughed.

 
 
    We didn’t eat breakfast together out here on my father’s ranch, we
never had. He was usually in the studio before he was even all the way awake.
He said he wanted “a brush in my hand before the last dream wears off.” I’d
learned to respect that, even though it sometimes annoyed me. Why were artists
exempt from everyday human interaction? I remember thinking that if I ever
became a successful artist I’d expect no special considerations. It’s only been
recently that I’ve been able to see the arrogance in my holier-than-thou
attitude.
    I heard a “ thocking ” sound coming from
somewhere behind the house, followed by laughter, a soft, sick squeal. I didn’t
know what it was at first, but it made me scared and anxious almost
immediately. I ran out the back screen door into the morning glare, shading my
eyes until they adjusted, hearing the “ thock ” again,
the squeal.
    The first thing I saw when my eyes calmed down was Tommy in a stained
T-shirt, ball cap, and torn cutoff jeans whacking at stones with an old croquet
mallet, the remains of a set I’d seen lying out there in the sand (Like