Domestic Violets Read online

  With the coast now clear, the dog storms the kitchen with gusto, completing a quick victory lap and then landing at Curtis’s feet. He’s leery of strangers, this little dog, but he’s hopelessly devoted to the people he knows. His weird, curly little tail is wagging in a blur.

  “Well hi there, Hanky Panky.” As he crouches to pet my dog, Curtis has to catch himself on the counter to keep from pitching forward onto the floor.

  “You’re drunk, Dad,” I say.

  “I very well might be. But I’m not afraid to be drunker. In fact, I’m determined.” Hank rolls over, flashing some skin, and my dad laughs.

  I take a long sip of my wine, which is ridiculous on a random weeknight. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe alcohol is exactly what I need—buckets of it.

  “Have you talked to your mother lately? How’s she’s doing?”

  This is my dad’s default question, one asked simply to fill space in a room. Whenever he asks, I consider asking him why he’s so much more interested now than he was during the handful of years they were married three decades ago. But I never do. “Not bad. She’s teaching Catcher in the Rye again this year. I guess her kids love it.”

  Curtis shakes his head. “Well of course they do, Tommy. The only people who can actually get through that self-indulgent tripe without throwing up are teenagers and the criminally insane.”

  Thankfully Anna and Allie arrive to save me from my dad’s lecture on Salinger’s shortcomings. Allie is in Sesame Street pajamas and Anna has changed to shorts and a T-shirt. In her glasses and sensible sleepwear, she’s the bookish version of the sultry harlot I failed only moments ago, and her mere presence embarrasses me.

  Allie crashes into her grandpa’s trousers, wrapping her arms around his legs.

  “Well there’s the prettiest girl in town.”

  “I thought you were a burglar, Grandpa. I got scared because you were either going to take us hostage or shoot us.”

  “Well, you should be scared. I am a burglar.”

  “Burglars wear masks,” she says.

  “I left it in the car. It’s very itchy. I never said I was good at being a burglar.”

  Anna notices the overnight bag on the kitchen table and gives me a look. I shrug just enough to tell her that I have no idea and then she rolls her eyes at my perpetual lack of knowledge. It’s the silent language of marriage.

  My dad sets Allie on one of the stools along our counter and touches the top of her head. “So tell me, Allie. Would you like a glass of wine? Or maybe a cigar? I’m buying.”

  She finds this hilarious, and her laughter fills our little kitchen.

  “It’s very late, sweetie,” says Anna. “How about you go back to bed?”

  “Are you going to be here tomorrow, Grandpa? You should have a sleepover party!”

  “My plan is to go wherever the night takes me, darling,” he says, and then he tips his glass.

  “Allie,” says Anna. She’s stern now.

  Our daughter looks at me, hoping that I’ve got some sort of veto power here, but she quickly resigns herself to defeat and begins a slow march up the stairs.

  “I’ll come tuck you in soon, honey,” I say. “And no spying. Lights out.”

  I can see by her expression that she’ll do whatever she damn well pleases until she hears me coming up the stairs. By now she’s old enough to know that we’re not going to beat her, so she’s pretty much got the run of the place.

  When she’s gone, Curtis turns his attention to the wine, sniffing the rim of his glass like we’re in the south of France. “Is this from one of those little vineyards in Virginia—over in the sticks?”

  “I have no idea, Dad. I bought it at the Giant because I like the picture on the label.”

  He squints at a cartoon kangaroo bounding across the bottle. “You’re right. It’s cute, isn’t?”

  “So, are you just dropping by, Curtis?” asks Anna.

  I could have stood here all night sipping wine without asking him what he was doing here, but my wife has gone and blown it, and for some reason I feel like we’ve just lost a battle of wills. Women don’t understand these things. The bag itself was really just a prop to get one of us to ask him if he’s OK.

  Classic Curtis Violet.

  He sees his opening, of course, and embraces it. “Not exactly. I have some news. A lot of news, as a matter of fact.” He looks out from our kitchen at the rest of our ground floor, assessing things. We still hardly have any furniture, and most of what we do have was put together by me, incompetently, from a box.

  “What is it?” asks Anna.

  “Well, first off, I’m sad to report that Ashley has asked me to move out. Well, to be more clear, she did more than ask. She was pretty adamant about it. You know how she can be.”

  “Oh, Curtis. That’s terrible.”

  “What happened this time, Dad?”

  Anna’s glare is sharp and sudden. Perhaps “this time” wasn’t completely necessary, but it’s late and I’ve had a shitty night.

  He returns to the morose study of our kitchen, touching a shriveling orange that’s sitting on our countertop. “A lot of things, I guess.”

  Anna pours herself a glass of wine, too, and I sip my own, and now we’re both drinking, waiting to see what my father has done now.

  “It’s a little embarrassing. But I’ve become involved with someone else,” he says. “Another woman. I didn’t intend for it to happen. It just did. It was an accident. It’s something I simply couldn’t control.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  Anna touches his shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. The fact that she can be acting both surprised and concerned by this inevitability is worthy of an award from the Screen Actors Guild.

  He frowns, showing a row of deep-set lines above his eyebrows. He’s about to say something, but suddenly he’s gotten distracted. “Anna, dear, my God. What have you done? You look absolutely wonderful.”

  My wife blushes and tugs at the bottom of her old T-shirt. “Oh, shut up,” she says.

  “No, I will not shut up. I’ve never seen you like this. You didn’t have surgery, did you? You’re too young for surgery.”

  “I wish. That’d be a lot easier. The gym, five days a week. It was a New Year’s resolution.” She pats my stomach. “Actually, it was our New Year’s resolution.”

  “Well,” he says, “it seems one of you is more committed than the other. I urge you to keep it up. You’re doing mankind a great service. Look at your calf muscles. I didn’t even know that calves could look like—”

  “What’s your other news, Dad?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “You said you had a lot of news. So far you’ve just told us one thing.”

  “Thank you, Tommy, you’re right. I have some gifts for the two of you.” He sets his wine down and digs around in his overnight bag for a while, finally removing a bright yellow T-shirt. Across the chest it reads, “WWCVD.” Beneath that, “What Would Curtis Violet Do?”

  “What does it mean?” Anna asks.

  “I’m not entirely sure. One of my Advanced Fiction students came up with it. I guess he made dozens of them, and he’s been selling them around campus. Apparently it’s a satire on some religious saying, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ I guess when Republicans or God people are confronted with a challenge or some sort of existential dilemma, they’re supposed to think about what Jesus would do and then use that as a guide. I thought you might like one.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I don’t see how comparing yourself to Jesus could cause any problems.”

  “But that’s not all.” He’s on too much of a roll now to be baited by sarcasm. Next he takes out a thick, hardcover book. There’s a black-and-white picture of a much younger version of my dad on the cover. He’s sitting at his old typewriter, a sweater around his shoulders, looking all square-jawed and WASPy. I’ve seen it many times—it’s The Stories of Curtis Violet.

  “Dad, we’ve got like five copies of that.”
br />   “But look, I’ve signed it for you.”

  On the title page, I see that he’s written: To my son and his beautiful wife—Curtis. Next to his name, he’s drawn his trademark violet, twisting and looping through his messy script.

  “Thanks. But you signed the other ones, too.”

  “Oh, I know, Tommy. But I thought you might like another one. I imagine they’re going to be pretty valuable someday. Maybe you can sell it and buy some furniture.”

  He’s smiling at us in his academic way, and beneath the bloodshot eyes and the patchy growth of hobo beard, I see a familiar arrogance, one I haven’t seen in a while. “OK, Dad, I’ll bite. Why’s that?”

  “I’m no expert, but from what I’ve seen online, signed first editions of Pulitzer Prize winners can bring in a lot of money.”

  Anna gasps into her hands and a chilly path of goose bumps runs up my arms like electricity. “You’re kidding me,” I say.

  “Sonya called this morning. A lovely surprise, at long last.”

  Anna hugs/tackles him laughing and they nearly fall over the kitchen table together. “I thought Nicholas Zuckerman was gonna get it again this year,” I say. “That’s what everyone was saying.”

  With my wife in his arms, Curtis Violet rolls his eyes like he’s smarter than all of us combined. “Don’t be an ass, Tommy. That boring old Jew couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag.”

  It’s easy for me sometimes to forget who my father is, especially when he shows up drunk and reeking of pot. But the world has a way of continuing to remind me.

  “We need another drink,” my wife says. She’s smiling and a little flushed. It reminds me of the first time she met him, back when we’d just started seeing each other. I was so ridiculously in love with her then after six dates that I pretended not to notice how flustered she got when he kissed her hand.

  “I agree,” says Curtis. “I don’t think this one bottle is going to do it, though. What else do we have in here, Tommy? You don’t have any dingo champagne do you? Koala, maybe?”

  Chapter 3

  It’s nearly 1 a.m. by the time I manage to get my dad settled in our office/extra bedroom. We hug, but we’re both a little drunk, and so we almost fall down. “I’ve missed you guys, Tommy,” he says. Alcohol has always brought out the many different sides of Curtis Violet, and tonight he’s sentimental.

  “Where the hell have you been, anyway?” I ask.

  “Here and there,” he says. “New York mostly. But I’m here now. I’ll just stay for a night or so, if that’s OK? Maybe I can spend some time with Allie tomorrow. That might be fun. What kind of things does she like to do?”

  “She’s got school tomorrow.”

  “School? What? She’s like four years old.”

  “Close, Dad. She’s seven.”

  As promised, I look in on Allie before heading to bed. I find her half dozing against a stuffed panda the size of an acoustic guitar. Her reading lamp is on, a picture book across her chest. It’s about a boy who helps a lost penguin get back to the North Pole. It’s one of those books that if you read in a certain mood you’ll end up whimpering in front of your confused daughter like a mental patient. She senses me there at the door and cracks her eyes. “Hi, Daddy.”

  “What are you doing up? It’s tomorrow already.”

  “Is Grandpa still here?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t like his beard. It makes him look like an old man.”

  “I agree.”

  She pauses, thinking for a moment. “How come Ashley doesn’t want to live with him anymore?”

  I suspect she’s been spying after all. “Well, sweetie, your Grandpa Curtis can be . . . an emotionally tiring man. It kinda wears some people down after a while. Especially his wives.”

  “Are they gonna get divorced, do you think? Grandpa’s been divorced a lot, hasn’t he?”

  “I think he’s going for a record.”

  She looks at her hands, playing a silent tune with fingers. “Can I tell you a secret?” she says. “I don’t like Ashley very much. She’s not very nice to me.”

  I pull the covers up over her chest. “Well then, you’re definitely your mother’s daughter.”

  “I’m your daughter, too.”

  “That you are,” I say, turning off her lamp. With just the nightlight in the corner, the room is all shadows. I stand up to leave her, but I’m not sure I want to yet. There are responsibilities outside this little yellow room that I’m not quite ready for.

  “Mommy said that you guys will never get a divorce. She said you love each other too much.”

  “Oh yeah, when did she say that?”

  In the dark I see the whites of her eyes as she thinks. “I don’t know. A while ago.”

  “Well, she’s right. And we love you very much, too.”

  She nods, acknowledging this fact politely. She’s very blasé about our love for her, which I suppose is a good thing. I can tell that she’s trying to come up with something to say, a topic to keep me here. She hates bedtime, and if it were up to her, she’d roam the house all night, a wide-eyed little girl specter fiddling with the television and reading about penguins. “Are you still writing your book, Daddy?” she asks.

  “Shoosh, honey,” I say. “Remember what we said about Daddy’s book, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s a secret book?” she whispers. “It’s a secret from Grandpa.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can hear you typing sometimes after dinner. You’re a fast typer, you know. Does it have pictures in it? Your book?”

  I’m walking backwards, inching away. “No. But maybe you can draw some for me.”

  “Maybe. I’m pretty busy with school though. Are you as good a writer as Grandpa Curtis?”

  “Good night, sweetie.”

  “I bet you are. Probably even better. I bet you’re the best writer in the world.”

  “Hey, thumbs aren’t for sucking, remember?”

  She takes her hand from her mouth and hides it under the covers. “I wasn’t. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Do bedbugs suck blood, like vampires?”

  “Good night,” I say, closing the door behind me.

  In our bedroom, Anna is lying beneath the covers, and I go look out our window at this street, tucked away in Georgetown. It’s a neighborhood that Anna and I would never be able to afford in real life. A few blocks over is the townhouse that John F. Kennedy lived in while he was here for law school. He probably couldn’t have afforded that house on his own, either, at least back then. Thank God for wealthy fathers.

  In our thin little driveway sits my dad’s Porsche, parked at a drunken angle, one tire run up onto the grass. It’s the same silver 911 that he’s had since his third novel, The Time of Their Lives, won the National Book Award. It’s pristine and beautiful and subtle and classic and it elicits a physical response in me, like it always does, glowing in the streetlamps, watching the front of our house with its frog’s eyes. If a car can represent something, this one represents contradiction. For most of his life, my dad has been able to have any woman he wants. In response, he’s gone through as many as possible, betraying each for someone younger and more absurd. Conversely, for most of his life he’s been able to have any car he wants, too. In response, he’s remained married to this, a 1982 Porsche with a tricky clutch.

  I can hardly blame him though. It’s as cool a car now as it was when I was a kid and he’d let me shift gears from the passenger seat as we cruised down the GW Parkway like we were being chased.

  “Maybe you should get one of your own,” Anna says.

  I strip back down to my boxers, and I feel all dreadful and ashamed again. “Maybe someday.”

  For a while we lie together in silence. “The Pulitzer Prize,” I say, because that’s the first non-penis-related thing that comes to mind. Perhaps she was waiting for me to say something, because the moment I do, she rolls on top of me,
her strong legs hugging me from either side. Her finger, more thoughtful than sexual, runs up my chest, stopping firmly on my mouth. “Hush,” she says. Anna’s hair falls, hanging down from the sides of her face. “I ran six miles on the treadmill today, you know.” She takes my hand and sets it on her left thigh, which is smooth and long. Her muscle is grainy and hard just below the skin. “And then I did my abs class. Look.” She slides her T-shirt up, stopping below her breasts, and there’s her bare stomach. “Do you like it?”

  “You know that I think you’re beautiful,” I say. “I think maybe there’s just, I don’t know, something wrong with it.”

  “Or maybe there’s something wrong with this.” She taps my forehead between my eyebrows. I can smell the slightest traces of wine on her breath. She has questions for me, I can see them scrolling across her eyes like a teleprompter, but she doesn’t ask them. She doesn’t ask why things are difficult now when they weren’t before, or if I realize that by tomorrow she won’t be ovulating because that strange biological little window will have closed again.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  She touches my forehead again, more tenderly this time, pushing my hair away. “Sometimes I wish I could see in there. I just wish I knew what you were thinking.”

  I ease her off of me, and she settles back under the covers. No you don’t, I think, and we turn our backs on each other for the night.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning, I’m at work, and, thanks to my dad, I’m hungover.

  Most people would be afraid to research erectile dysfunction at the office—but not this guy. My penis complications are more important right now than the stack of arbitrary tasks piling steadily in my in-box, and I rarely do anything constructive before 10:30 anyway.

  We had a “lunch ’n’ learn” about the proper use of our computers a few weeks ago, during which Janice Stringer from HR reminded us that our online activities can be monitored at any time without our knowledge. But I’m not scared. The team of mouth-breathing goons in IT couldn’t monitor the broad side of barn. I could be buying plutonium from the Libyans on www.jihad.org right now and no one would know the difference as long as I kept staring straight ahead like a good, hardworking employee.