River’s End

call Aunt Jamie bad names, or Uncle David say in a rough voice, Watch your step, Sam. Just watch your step. This isn ‘t going to help you.
    Finally, Aunt Jamie had said they had to go and had carried her out to the car. She’d waved over her aunt’s shoulder, but Daddy hadn’t waved back. He’d just stared, and his hands had stayed in fists at his sides.
    She hadn’t been allowed to go back to the beach house and watch the waves again. But it had started before that. Weeks before the beach house, more weeks before the monster came.
    It had all happened after the night Daddy had come into her room and awakened her. He’d paced her room, whispering to himself. It was a hard sound, but when she’d stirred in the big bed with its white lace canopy she hadn’t been afraid. Because it was Daddy. Even when the moonlight spilled through the windows onto his face, and his face looked mean and his eyes too shiny, he was still her daddy. Love and excitement had bounced in her heart.
    He’d wound up the music box on her dresser, the one with the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio that played “When You Wish upon a Star.”
    She sat up in bed and smiled sleepily. “Hi, Daddy. Tell me a story.”
    “I’ll tell you a story.” He’d turned his head and stared at his daughter, the small bundle of tousled blond hair and big brown eyes. But he’d only seen his own fury. “
    I’ll tell you a goddamn story, Livvy my love. About a beautiful whore who learns how to lie and cheat.”
    “Where did the horse live, Daddy?”
    “What horse?”
    “The beautiful one.”
    He’d turned around then, and his lips had peeled back in a snarl. “You don’t listen!
    You don’t listen any more than she does. I said whore goddamn it!”
    Olivia’s stomach jumped at his shout, and there was a funny metal sting in her mouth she didn’t recognize as fear. It was her first real taste of it. “What’s a whore?”
    “Your mother. Your fucking mother’s a whore.” He swept his arm over the dresser, sending the music box and a dozen little treasures crashing to the floor. In bed, Olivia curled up and began to cry.
    He was shouting at her, saying he was sorry. Stop that crying right now! He’d buy her a new music box. When he’d come over to pick her up, he’d smelled funny, like a room did after a grown-up party and before Rosa cleaned.
    Then Mama came rushing in. Her hair was long and loose, her nightgown glowing white in the moonlight.
    “Sam, for God’s sake, what are you doing? There, Livvy, there, baby, don’t cry. Daddy’s sorry.”
    The vicious resentment all but smothered him as he looked at the two golden heads close together. The shock of realizing his fists were clenched, that they wanted, yearned to pound, nearly snapped him back. “I told her I was sorry.”
    But when he started forward, intending to apologize yet again, his wife’s head snapped up. In the dark, her eyes gleamed with a fierceness that bordered on hate. “
    Stay away from her.” And the vicious threat in her mother’s voice had Olivia wailing.
    “Don’t you tell me to stay away from my own daughter. I’m sick and tired, sick and damn tired of orders from you, Julie.”
    “You’re stoned again. I won’t have you near her when you’ve been using.”
    Then all Olivia could hear were the terrible shouts, more crashing, the sound of her mother crying out in pain. To escape she crawled out of bed and into her closet to bury herself among her mountain of stuffed toys.
    Later, she learned that her mother had managed to lock him out of the room, to call the police on her Mickey Mouse phone. But that night, all she knew was that Mama had crawled into the closet with her, held her close and promised everything would be all right.
    That’s when Daddy had gone away.
    Memories of that night could sneak into her dreams. When they did, and she woke, Olivia would creep out of bed and into her mother’s room down the hall. Just to make sure she was there. Just to see if maybe Daddy had come home because he was all better again.
    Sometimes they were in a hotel instead, or another house. Her mother’s work meant she had to travel. After her father got sick, Olivia always, always went with her. People said her mother was a star, and it made Olivia giggle. She knew stars were the little lights up in heaven, and her mother was right here.
    Her mother made movies, and lots and lots of people came to see her pretend to be somebody else. Daddy made movies, too, and