Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

weekend with and Momma’d said nobody you know; but some way she’d smiled, not at Lisette but to herself, some unfathomable look like the expression of the face of one about to step into mid-air—step off the diving board, or into the (empty) elevator shaft—made Lisette think suddenly— Daddy?
    She knew that her mother was still in contact with her father. Some way she knew this, though Momma would not have told her. Even after the divorce which had been a nasty divorce, they’d been in contact.
    That was because—(as Daddy had explained to her)—she would always be his daughter.
    All else might be changed, like where Daddy lived, and if Daddy and Mommy were married—but not that. Not ever.
    So Lisette persisted asking her mother was it Daddy she was going away with, was it Daddy, was it ?—nagging at Momma until Momma laughed saying Hell no! No way I’m seeing that asshole again.
    But something in the way her mother laughed, some slide of her eyes like she was excited, and feeling good about it, and reckless-seeming, like she’d been drinking though Lisette didn’t think she had been, just then—something made Lisette think Daddy!
    Lisette mumbled she wasn’t sure—when she’d seen her mother last.
    “I guess—maybe—Saturday . . .”
    It hadn’t been Saturday. More like Thursday. But she was thinking—with a part of her mind almost calmly thinking—that there might be some New Jersey state law, an adult parent could not leave an underage child alone and unsupervised for more than a day or two—maybe even a single day—and she did not want her mother to get into trouble.
    Sure she hated Momma sometimes, she was pissed at Momma lots of times but she did not want Momma to get into trouble with the cops.
    They were staring at her now guiltily faltering, fumbling, “—could’ve been, like, just yesterday—or—day before—”
    Her heart thumped in her chest like a crazed sparrow throwing itself against a window like she’d seen in a garage once, the little brown bird trapped inside the garage up by the ceiling beating its wings and exhausting itself.
    Yvette Mueller was in trouble with the law—was that it?
    In trouble with the law— again ?
    Christmas before last Lisette’s mother had been ticketed for DWI— driving while intoxicated —and for failing to have her auto registration and insurance in the car.
    Earlier, when Lisette was a little girl, there’d been some other charges, too. Whatever came of these, Lisette never knew.
    The only court Lisette had been in, with her mother, was Ocean County Family Court. Here, the judge had awarded custody to Yvette Mueller and visitation privileges to Duane Mueller. If something happened to Yvette Mueller now, Lisette would be removed from their rented house and placed in a foster home. It wasn’t possible for Lisette to live with her father who was now a sergeant in the U.S. Army and last she’d heard was about to be deployed to Iraq for the third time.
    Deployed was a strange word—a strange sound. De-ployed .
    Daddy hadn’t meant to hurt her, she knew. Even Momma believed this which was why she hadn’t called 911. And when the doctor at the ER asked Lisette how her face had been so bruised, the temporal bone broken, her nose and eye socket broken, she’d said it was an accident on the stairs, she’d been running, and she fell.
    Which was true. She’d been running, and she fell. And Daddy shouting behind her, swiping with his fists—not meaning to hit her, or to hurt her. But he’d been pissed.
    And all the things Daddy said afterward were what you wanted to hear, what made you cry, you wanted so badly to hear. Though knowing even as you were hearing them that Daddy was going away soon again— de-ployed. And so it would not matter whether the things that Daddy promised were true or not-so-true.
    “And your father? Have you seen your father, Lisette? How recently have you seen your father?”
    So she could wear dark-purple-tinted