Chapter 7

Our love nest was broken up, though, by the reappearance of a forgotten member of the family. One Saturday afternoon the phone rang. "Is this Tommy?" a man's voice asked, friendly like a salesman.

"Uh ... yeah." I wondered who it was.

"Hey, guy, this is your dad, Jacquot. You probably don't remember me, but I sure remember you. How's it goin'? Say, I need to talk to mom."

I went and told Diana, "There's a man on the phone ... he says he's my dad."

Her lively face froze and drained of color. She shut her eyes in shock. "What could he..." she mumbled. Her hand moved towards her mouth, and her teeth pressed distractedly on the knuckle of her thumb. After a long pause she shook her head to clear it and stood up. "I'll talk to him," she said decisively.

When she closed the door to the living room, I instantly resented it: What were they saying that she didn't want me to hear?

I was sulking in the kitchen when she came out. Her face was pinched and her chin sagged. She looked at me, then past me. "Your father's been in prison ... a long time. He just got out."

"What does he want?" I asked suspiciously.

"I think he wants ... a family."

My stomach clenched with dread. I knew what he wanted: Her! Exactly what I wanted. What if she liked him better than me? She must've liked him quite a lot ... and liked doing it with him. After all, that's how I got here. With the urge to put him in a bad light, I asked, "Why'd he go to prison?"

"Don't know," Diana said. "Maybe he'll tell us tonight."

"Tonight?"

"He's coming to dinner."

The threat spread its tension up to my chest and throat. "You just invited him?" My voice cracked. "You didn't check with me?"

She gave me a sharp, puzzled look. "I thought you'd want to meet him. He's your father!"

"Do you want to see him?" I tried to make it sound like a question, but it was really an accusation.

"Well ... yeah. I'm curious ... what happened to him ... what he's like now." Diana appraised me keenly. As she tilted her head, her thick chestnut hair draped over her shoulder, and she cupped her chin with her small fist. "Tommy, are you jealous?"

My face reddened. "No! It's just that..."

She took both my hands in hers and kissed my cheek, which made it even redder. "Don't worry. I lost interest in Jacquot a long time ago." She gave me a look that wrapped me up with her eyes, and my fear lessened. "He gave me you. That's the only reason he's important to me." She squeezed my hands and shook my arms back and forth. "But we need to see him. You especially. You should know your father."

My father. I used to wonder about him: what he was like, what he was doing now, what he thought about me, why he never tried to see us. I would stare at pictures of him and then at myself in the mirror. I couldn't see much resemblance but I thought maybe I'd look like him when I got older. He looked kind of OK.

Diana had some of his poems. I'd read them a long time ago, thought they were weird, but sort of liked them. I'd even memorized one, "Cascade Mountain Fights Back":

Moonworts fiddleneck maidenhairs in the sphagnum

while pikas chirp revenge on you, armed-toothed narcoleptic lumberjack

in the double-bitted sprawl of the night. The ptarmigan widows

are gathering to bring you in. You're a wanted Man,

the Man of the hour, but it was only an hour,

and now it's over.

They can't kill you—you're dead already.

They can't jail you—you own all the keys.

But they can drive you crazy

with agoraphobias of infinity

and old haphazards of heartbreak to a mescalero beat.

What it meant, I didn't know. Maybe that was why I liked it. I also liked that my dad had written it and that he was out there somewhere writing other weird poems. He was this mysterious figure brooding in the sprawl of the night. I thought he was a jerk for running out on us, but I was still curious about him.

But all that was back then, before mom and I became lovers. Now I couldn't see anything but trouble coming from Jacquot Funk.

"Hey, long time no see. But I know it was my fault. Sorry about that. Thanks for having me over," he said when he came in the apartment that evening. His voice had a hoarseness that sandpapered the edges off his words. Diana shook his hand but kept her arm stretched out far enough to discourage a hug.

I was pleased by how tall he was, about six feet. That meant I'd probably get taller—so far I was only five-eight. His smile showed stained yellow teeth. He had short straight black hair with long sideburns, a droopy mustache, and a little tag of whiskers under his lower lip. His skin was pale, probably from not getting much sun in prison. Although he wasn't old enough to have any gray hair, his face was lined and his mouth turned down. The long blade of his nose was crooked from being broken. His eyes were a clear, hard, brittle blue, and they kept darting around, unable to look into yours for more than a second. "This must be little Tommy," he said. I hated him instantly for the "little," but shook hands with him, trying to give a firm grip. His hand seemed cool. "How's it goin', son?"

"OK."

"Last time I saw you, you were still in diapers. How old you now?"

"Eighteen."

"Well ... that's great ... a great age to be. I remember when I was eighteen..." His voice trailed off and his long thin face turned wistful. "Old enough to know better, but too young to resist, huh?"

"I guess so," I said, thinking about last night with mom.

"Hell ... I just spent half that many years in slam." His smile fell back into a frown. His skinny body was dressed in a denim shirt, thin jeans, canvas belt, and black, clunky shoes. That must be what they give you when you get out of prison.

"What for?" I was hoping it would be murder, something that would really turn mom off.

He gave me a mind-your-own-business look and said, "I'll tell you about it sometime." That sounded like he was planning to stay.

Diana was wearing pale lipstick and a black leotard, maybe out of nostalgia for the old Beat days. She looked great in black; it brought out the red in her hair, which fell to the tips of her breasts. The tightness of the outfit brought out her curves, which made me wonder if she was trying to turn Jacquot on. I had to admit they looked good together, her all in black and him all in blue.

On an impulse I ducked into my room and changed from my white T-shirt to a black one. With my jeans that made me black and blue, a combination of the two of them.

When I came back, Jacquot was talking to Diana. " ... after all that time in a cell, get nervous in new places. I need to know all the ways out."

The door is right there, I told him in my mind, then was sorry to be so mean.

"You mind if I look around ... just so I know where I am, so I don't get claustrophobic?" He tugged on the tuft of whiskers under his lip and gave an apologetic shrug.

"I'll show you around," she said with a cautious but understanding nod. Diana was used to the jitters people have when they're just out of prison.

He's probably casing the place, I wanted to tell her.

We had the upper floor of an old brownstone near downtown Denver with a view of the gold-domed state capitol. With its high ceilings, large windows, refinished wooden floors, bright rugs, and modern furniture, it was the opposite of a prison cell. Jacquot prowled it with lanky, loping strides, thumbs hooked in his jeans, nodding appreciatively, grinning greedily. Every once in a while the side of his face would suddenly tighten in a tic that made him blink his right eye. He gave mom's queen-sized bed—where she and I had screamed last night in naked, incestuous ecstasy—a look that could only be described as goal-oriented. Glancing around the bedroom, he raised his eyebrows and tapped his yellowish teeth together. "Diana ... you did good. What a crib! Hey, you come a long ways from that little pad we had in Five Points."