A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [79]
In contrast to his own catting around, Mal had raised Rita as a protective father with great intelligence. Rita had developed into Rita, and that was what he had prayed for.
Rita was a constant child, quietly off with her poetry, quite sweet, and quite charitable about her father’s wicked ways, for he also was a source of her growth.
Mal knew, almost from the beginning, how she had ached for Quinn from the time they first had come to Troublesome Mesa. It was something a father could do poor little about. Watching Rita progress and develop, and after Quinn broke up with Greer Little, perhaps he would notice her. Their age difference was not that awesome, but the years of separation put them on different plateaus.
She’s fully grown, Mal thought, and the homecoming fiesta is over and Siobhan and Dan are off to Florence. Well? What about it, Quinn? How many hearts were broken during your hitch in the Corps?
“What was Rita,” Quinn said, “sixteen or seventeen when I left?”
“She’s not seventeen anymore, Quinn. When you hooked up with Greer, Rita grieved as only a teenager could.”
“Oh, come on, Mal. I never gave her an improper look.”
“Yes,” Mal said, “and I felt very good about that. Even a roustabout artist can have lionesque protective instincts about his only daughter. Rita was always a holy light to me. She tried to model for me a couple of times, but she was too beautiful to ruin in stone or oil.”
“Why are you suddenly telling me this?” Quinn asked.
“She made a loud noise by her absence.”
“I missed her, too,” Quinn said. “I’ve loved Rita all my life but never thought of her as more than a little sister.”
“Exactly the point,” Mal retorted. “Rita is terrified that you’ll reject her as a woman.”
Quinn wanted to argue, but Mal’s pronouncement had too much sting to it, too many years of wisdom.
“Do you want to see the Quinn O’Connell shrine in her room?” Mal led him by the arm and opened her door. The walls were adorned with photographs of Quinn the ball player, Quinn the rodeo rider, Quinn the Marine. There was a torn football jersey hanging off a rafter, a scrapbook.
“How do you feel about this, Mal?”
“You can’t tell a person to change the longings of her heart. But now, well, you are back to stay, and I believe Rita wants to come back to stay and to write. I would like to see this part of her life resolved. In the drawers there are short stories and poems. Rita trying to prove to you and me that she is worthy of our love. That’s why little girls twist themselves in pretzels in ballet class, to win their father’s approval. That’s why big girls write erotic poetry, to win their lover.”
“And me, Quinn Patrick O’Connell?”
“Don’t you know how much I love you, amigo?” Mal said. “It has been no pleasure knowing her secret and having to remain silent all these years. Will you stand up and tell her now?”
Mal’s words chilled him. He was frightened. “Suppose I don’t…can’t love her that way?” Quinn asked.
“You’d have to be crazy not to love Rita, but it’s your heart, man, just tell her the truth.”
Quinn stared at her photographs and blended them with his own memories of a quiet little sloeeyed, raven silk-haired being, tickled by him but hardly laughing to show him the stuff she was made of. Even in her early teens she had been scrumptious, classically round, voluptuous in a bikini.
“I’ve done something dreadful,” Mal said. “I knew she kept a drawer of secret poetry, and I went in without permission.” He opened the drawer and handed Quinn a paper. “She wrote this when she was sixteen.”
Our first night together after dark
you never caught me
following at reaching distance behind you
on your way home from the river.
Had you looked back
you would have seen the same child
whose spare, uncharted body
you would instinctively shield with yours
against the sudden loss of passing time.
Twice you paused,
as if between movements of a symphony
the secret panicked crackling leaves
under my feet
and artless rhythm in the audience of your forest.
An aspen tree