Tempting Daddy by Ava Sinclair
Chapter Two
Carmen
“Take them out, Carmen! Do you want it to be ruined?”
I’m nearly thrown off balance as my mother pushes me aside to open the oven, pulling the pie out with an urgency usually reserved for firemen trying to save children from a blaze. The crust is golden and not even nearly burnt, but her hands flutter with anxiety as she pulls off the oven mitts.
“You have to be more careful,” she says.
As she moves to put the pie on the cooling rack, I turn back to the potatoes I was mashing when she yelled at me. I can already feel her behind me again, watching and fretting as if I’ll screw this up, too.
I hear a grunt and glance through the kitchen door into the living room. My father is leaned back in his recliner, his feet crossed at the swollen ankles, his double chins resting on his chest above his crossed arms. The pundit on the flat screen television over the fireplace is railing against progressives. My father bellows in agreement, then demands my mother bring him a beer.
She groans in frustration, obviously worrying that I’ll botch potato mashing while she retrieves a beverage my father could easily fetch for himself. I don’t say anything, though. The sentiment, like so many others that have resurfaced over the last few weeks, is stuffed down into what feels like a growing lump in my chest.
My mother hasn’t long left the room when I hear my father’s raised voice. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but a moment later, she scampers back into the kitchen with him thudding behind her. His face is ruddy with anger.
“A cold beer, Laura. Cold. That’s what a man wants after a hard day’s work. Is it too much damn trouble to get the one from the back of the fridge?” He slams the unacceptable beer on the counter, sending liquid sloshing from its open tab onto the freshly baked pie. I shoot a look at my mother, who glances at me and looks away. Having retrieved his beer, my father stands and turns to me, his piggish eyes narrowed.
“Take off that apron, Carmen.”
When I was younger, I’d look to my mother for protection against my father. By five, any hope that she’d intercede on my behalf had died. Even now she turns to inspect the mashed potatoes, divorcing herself from my situation.
“Are you deaf, girl?”
I flinch and hate myself for it.
“No,” I say, and reach behind me to untie the white chef’s apron. Underneath is a midnight blue dress I’ve selected for this evening. It has a slightly scooped neck and a fitted bodice that hugs my breasts without being too tight. The hem drops to just above my knee. I’ve paired it with short heels.
“And you think that’s appropriate to wear when the priest comes to call, do you?”
I’d think my father was joking if he joked, but he’s sneering as he pops the top on his beer. “Tight dress. You look like a whore.”
I don’t flinch this time, but blink rapidly to keep tears of anger from clouding my vision. He’s staring into my eyes, and I know he’s looking for those tears. My father likes to make my mother cry. He likes to make me cry, too. I haven’t cried since I’ve returned home, and I’m not about to shed tears over his insinuation that I’d try to tempt an old man like Father Morris. There’s only one old lecher in this house tonight, and I’m looking at him.
“Go change,” my mother says. She’s moved to the cooling rack, where she’s discreetly dabbing droplets of beer off the top of the pumpkin pie.
“Yes, Mother,” I say.
Even from the stairs, I can hear my father scolding my mother for perceived interference. I pause at the landing to look at photos I passed thousands of times in my childhood. I study one of my mother on her wedding day. She looks like a child bride, and in a way she was. She was barely eighteen when she married my father, a widower pushing fifty. A picture of his late first wife, Mary, hangs beside my parents’ wedding photo. Another photo of her sits on the downstairs sideboard along with a smattering of other family photos. For years, I listened to my father deride my mother with comparisons to his dead wife. As the second wife, my mother was able to give him the only thing Mary could not—a child. But apparently, she failed at that, too. My father had wanted a son, and never let either of us forget it.
Upstairs, I shut the door to my room, wishing I could just stay here through dinner. I don’t want to work at the church any more than I wanted to come home, but my father is insistent. The best I can hope is that Father Morris won’t like me. I haven’t seen him since I left. I open the closet and feel a catch in my throat as my eyes fall on the maroon sweater I wore when the dorm room got too cold. Fletcher Hall was old, and the radiators worked about half the time in the winter, but it was the first place I felt at home and I thanked God every single day for the opportunity to finally be away from my father.
I’d been a good student in high school, taking advantage of early college. I graduated with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. My father had been opposed to my getting any further education and had only relented when one of his customers—who also happened to be my high school principal— said it would be a waste given that I’d gotten a two-year scholarship to a good girls’ school.
My plan had been to get a job and continue working part time towards my master’s degree after graduation, but jobs for someone with a bachelor’s degree in psychology were non-existent. I could not afford life outside the dorm, not on waitressing pay. I had no choice but to go crawling back to my father for help. His answer? Move back home. I remember the satisfaction on his face as he compared our situations. He’d eschewed higher education, he said, and look at him—the successful owner of a furniture company. And here I was with a degree coming home like a stray cat.
A stray cat. In the yard below, one walks along the back fence, its tail curled like a question mark over its back. I envy it; at least a cat can come and go as it pleases.
I turn back to the closet, looking for something dowdy enough to pass my father’s muster. I decide on the dress I wore to my great-aunt’s funeral, a shin-length drab gray dress with a dropped waist and white lace collar. I’d brushed and curled my black hair into soft, stylish waves. Now, in defiance I pull it back into a simple ponytail that I fasten with a black barrette before wiping what subtle make-up I’d applied from my face.
The image in the mirror could pass for a teen rather than a woman about to approach her twenty-first year. There’s no hint of the smiling student whose picture is taped to my mirror. I miss her.
Downstairs the doorbell rings. My mother is calling to me almost frantically to get the door, but my father answers that he will do it before yelling at me to get downstairs and help my mother, which is what I was doing before he ordered me up to change.
I dread the evening and what it holds. My father is never so pretentious as when a priest comes to dinner. He thinks himself a pious man and points to his success as an example of God’s favor. He hints at his gifts to the church. Apparently, I am to be the latest one given to the priest as a secretary. I haven’t prayed since I’ve been home, but I do now. I pray for God to take me away from this situation, but even as I do, I know not to expect an answer. If God loved me, he’d have not returned me to this hell of a home.
I exit the room, hearing the sounds of my mother and father greeting our guest. My feet feel leaden as I force myself to descend the staircase. At the landing I pause and look down into the foyer. As I do, the priest looks up. But it isn’t Father Morris. This is a different priest, a much younger man with dark hair and dark eyes that fix so intently on me that they take my breath away.
