Chapter Ten

         Gazing down the street, she remembered how the evening had
begun.  She had been eating dinner.  They’d been at home; herself, her
little sister, her mom, and her dad.
         Dad, of course, was having dinner not at the dinner table, but
at the T.V. tray.  It was set up in front of his lounge chair, the big
overstuffed number that they sold late at night on T.V. with half-hour
infomercials.  Dad’s lounge chair was close enough to the table so he
could reach out and swat either child, if the child proved unruly.  At
the same time his chair was oriented toward the altar set up at the end
of the room.  On this altar were its two essential components:  a
television, and a T.V. Guide.
         She had tried eating quietly.  (And, of course, quickly.) 
She’d even tried talking to her mother a little.  Naturally, this hadn’t
produced much, in the way of family cheer and harmony.  That’s because
somewhere around age 12 her mother had realized that her daughter was,
in fact, the prettier of them.  This had created a residual jealousy in
her mother; one her mother was unconscious of, but acted upon on a daily
basis.
         As for her father, he was his usual disgruntled self.  His job
required him to be nice to people.  By the time he got home, he was sick
of being a sycophant, and ready to explode, to vindicate his need for
male dominance.  It was usually herself, the older daughter, who
provided this relief (albeit, not voluntarily).
         “Oh, no, Mrs. Thompson!  I’m not the head of the household. 
I’m the maid!” the gay maid said to the visitor at the door.  His voice,
sissified and high, came from the television.  It was a standard line on
the show, Fuller House.  It always got a laugh.  
         “Ho!  Ho!  Ho!  Goddam faggot!” Her dad laughed from his lounge
chair.  Then he glanced at his daughter.  He examined her mode of
eating, through squinting, jealous eyes, and determined that she was
eating quickly, to escape from the dinner table.  “I’m sick of your
little attitude, over there,” he warned her.  “You’d better straighten
up or else!”
         “I’m sorry, dad,” she answered.  
         “I mean it!” he shouted.  His anger, she realized, now emanated
from the fact that she had called him ‘dad,’ instead of ‘daddy.’  It was
an uncomfortable reminder to him that she was getting older.
         “Parents!  Is your child is safe?  Tonight at Ten:  ‘The Boy
Next Door, Sex Offender!’”
         “Goddam perverts!” Her father chimed, from his lounge chair. 
He was staring at the T.V. again.  He scooped up a forkful of mashed
potatoes and put it in his mouth.
         “Oh, please!  I don’t want to have to watch this,” she
remembered saying.  If she was doomed to sit at the dinner table, and
eat slowly, the least they ought to offer her was some choice in what
the family watched on T.V., she thought.
         “Shuttup, I said!” she remembered her father yelling.
         “Daddy, I want to watch--” her little sister had asked.
         “Shuttup!  Both of you!” her father hollared.  “Children are to
be seen, and not heard!”  She remembered how her father had vented
himself without first troubling to swallow his mashed potatoes.  “In
fact,” he continued, still without the benefit of swallowing, “Given all
the goddam perverts around, children are to be neither seen nor heard! 
Eat your goddam dinner!  Both of you!”
         “Hello, I’m Molly Snoop,” a voice, laced with concern,
announced from the T.V.  “Tonight on KBAR, we re-air a special report we
first did last fall.  There are thousands of young men in American
neighborhoods who are not the innocents they seem.  Many of them have
been convicted of sexual offenses and one of them could be living near
you.  Is your child safe?  Tonight, how parents can take action to
ensure--”
         There was a knock at the door.
         “I’ll get it!” She remembered yelling.  Her little sister,
equally eager for a break from Dad’s Dominion, yelled the same thing. 
She ran from the room.  Her little sister followed, but was slower.
         “Goddam it!” her father yelled.  He tried to reach out and grab
her, but she was too quick.  Unfortunately, her little sister was
slower.  She remembered her dad grabbing her sister, and, given the
force with which he grabbed her, her sister immediately began crying.
         At the door, she felt her pulse quicken.  It was him.  Tod. 
Her boyfriend.
         “It’s happening,” he whispered to her.  She remembered how the
porch light had lit up his blonde hair.
         “Really?” she remembered asking.
         “Yes,” he said.  They embraced, quickly.  Then she turned and
led him into her house.  She ought to, she thought, try at least to say
goodbye.
         She went into the dining room.  The T.V. was still blaring from
the far wall.  Her boyfriend was with her.
         “Goddam it, I told you I want YOU to answer the door, not
them!” her dad was yelling at her mother.  The instant he saw her
boyfriend, he redirected his fire:  “What?  I thought I told you I never
wanted to see you again!” he shouted at her boyfriend.  
         “She’s leaving,” she remembered her boyfriend saying.  He had
said it quietly.  They were both trying to avoid antagonizing her
father.
         “What?” he’d shouted.
         “She’s leaving,” Tod said again, still quiet, still controlled,
not wanting to upset the order of the family dinner.
         “GodDAMMIT!” she remembered her dad yelling.  He leaped up.  He
paid no mind to the fact that the T.V. tray was positioned over his
lap.  His tray, his plate, and his food tumbled to the floor.  He
stepped into his mashed potatoes as he approached her boyfriend.
         Tod was on the skinny side.  Handsome, but skinny.  He had long
hair, which her father, with his crewcut, hated.  Actually her father
had himself had long hair when he was a teenager, but since joining the
Dockworker’s Union he’d shaved it to a (balding) crewcut.  She
remembered her father grabbing Tod by his hair.  He spun Tod around.  He
slammed Tod into the wall.  Fortunately Tod hit the wall with his
forehead, his head leaning forward, and didn’t break his nose.  When her
father pulled Tod back to shove him into the wall again, Tod yanked out
of his vest the prize he’d gotten from the liberated armory.
         It was a gun.  A pistol.  He pointed it at her father but
didn’t have time to just threaten the man with it.  He pulled the
trigger, just before her father, still holding Tod by the hair, slammed
him into the wall again.
         It wasn’t a laser pistol, but the old-fashioned kind, almost a
museum piece.  It shot bullets.  Tod pulled its trigger three times in
succession.
         She remembered not remembering, until a few seconds later, when
the noise and powder-smell of the smoke had subsided.  She gaped down at
her father, lying on their rug in a pool of his own blood.  Her little
sister screamed, endlessly, as did her mother.
         Tod didn’t scream.  He simply stared.
         She remembered him apologizing to her afterward:  “I’m sorry,
Lees (short for Lisa).  I didn’t mean to shoot your pop.”
         “It’s okay,” she remembered saying to him.
         She sat and stared down the street.  She saw an overturned car,
burning.  She saw smashed-in storefronts.  The night was late now.  She
had her little sister beside her, huddling under a small jacket.  The
moon stared down at them; a cold beacon in the night sky.
         “Lees, I wanna go home!” her sister said to her in a nervous,
high-pitched voice.  She turned and looked down at her sister.  
         “We can’t,” she said.  She paused.  She thought for a moment. 
Was it still there?  No, she didn’t think it was.  Rioters had moved in
shortly after she had left home with Tod, her little sister trailing
along behind them, her mother, in shock, screaming over her father’s
dead body, inside their house.
         Home was probably a charred ruin by now, given what the looters
had done to the neighborhoods she’d seen since then.  Perhaps that was
best.  With luck, her mother would have escaped.  Her father, dead
inside the house, would have been cremated by the flames.
         A car came rolling up the street.  It stopped.  She looked at
it.  It wasn’t too bad of a car, she thought, except for the fact that
the driver’s side window had been smashed, and an alarm was shrieking
from under the car’s hood.
         Tod leaned out of the driver’s side window.
         “Hey, I got a car!  No payments, either!” Tod grinned to her.  
         “Oh, I wanna drive it!” her little sister said.
         “You can sit on my lap,” she told her sister.
         “Get in!” Tod said.  “It’s got a quarter tank of gas.  If we
can find a service station that’s open, we can drive forever!”
         She got into the front seat beside Tod.  Her little sister
perched on her lap.
         “I wanna go to Disneyland!” her little sister said.
         “Cool,” Tod replied.  He looked at her.  “You wanna go to
Disneyland too?”
         “Okay,” she said, softly.