The Hollywood Daughter by Kate Alcott

Author:Kate Alcott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

The first thing I saw when I walked in from school a week later was my mother sitting at the dining-room table—pounding it with her fist, pulling at her hair, tearing pieces of paper in two, throwing them on the table, as her voice spiraled into a wail. “I knew it would happen,” she said in a strangled, despairing voice.

I rushed to her, frightened. “Mother—”

“Look at these,” she said, sobbing. “Read these dirty little notes, just read them.” She shoved one into my hand.

I was shaking now, having a hard time focusing, but I smoothed the paper out. It looked like a letter, a letter written in bright-lavender ink with lavish curlicues and flourishes. I stared at it, held fast by three words. My darling Gabriel…

“You see? You see? What did I tell you?”

Tell me? What was she saying? She was pulling at her hair again, so hard it frightened me. I picked up another piece of paper, then another. They were all to my father—how could that be?—imploring letters. I saw the word “divorce,” and my brain at first scrambled in confusion. Then I put them down; tears were blurring the lines. I didn’t need to read any more. I knew what “My darling Gabriel” meant: my father was having an affair.

I tried to release Mother’s grip on a chunk of her hair, tried to soothe. “Please don’t cry,” I begged. I was sobbing now, too.

“It’s been waiting to happen—”

Father suddenly burst through the front door and strode over to Mother. She pushed him away.

He gave me a quick glance. “Jesse, will you leave us, please?” he said. It wasn’t a request.

I grabbed my books and headed for my bedroom, where I threw myself on the bed, unsure if I wanted to cover my head and hear nothing or stand by the door and listen. How many times had I strained to hear their private conversations, always dreading something?

“God is punishing me,” I heard Mother wail.

“Vannie, I won’t leave you.” My father’s voice.

She kept crying; I heard her chair scrape back, then a crash; maybe it fell over.

“Vannie, calm down,” my father kept repeating. “I would never leave you.” I heard him open the hall closet door. “Here, put on your coat, we’ll go talk,” he said.

The front door opened and closed; the house was silent. They had left. They had forgotten me.

I lay there for a long time, dozing intermittently, afraid to come out of my room. I didn’t want to see those letters again.

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