The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 5 - Pretend for a Moment

But clearly he wanted me near, and as we settled in to watch the Ed Sullivan Show, a Sunday evening must, he took my hand quietly. By that age I was already growing tall, and he remarked on that, seeming to forget the letter.

"So should I tell you about the letter now?" I asked him, putting my cup of ice cream on the tea table.

"Oh, what?" he asked, flicking his eyes away from a group of family singers on television.

"I promised I would you tell you what I was writing."

"Oh right," he stroked my hand.

"I overheard what you were talking about with Quinn the other day, about more children? I feel a little strange about it to be honest, but I feel like I would like to have children someday, and I wouldn't mind helping out."

"Oh no, darling, oh no. There will be no children here. Don't think of it. It's alright."

"But I would really like to have my own children someday," I said, naive.

"Oh, well that's," he said, eyes turned back towards the television and its women in pastel skirts, "that's good. That's interesting."

"Is it strange?" I asked.

"Perhaps we should not talk about it. Perhaps it is right that you are talking about it with Laurent. He is," Leis paused, "well he is talking frankly. We will see what he is saying about it, and then we will make discussion. It's better."

"Tell me what you're thinking."

"Oh no, no."

And so when I did get the letter back, I read it to Leis, who acted very uninterested which hurt my feelings. I did not know then that he sometimes acted aloof in order that he would not be pressed for his opinion. He is very good at acting stupid in order to get out things, but he is not stupid at all and has many more opinions than he has care to share them. I caught him staring into the new refrigerator Dasius had had sent down to us from a catalog. He seemed to enjoy opening it in order to cool his face. 

"I've got Laurent's letter back," I said.

"I don't know what you are talking about," he replied, eyes shut.

"He says that if I'm lonely, I should go back to school up north. He thinks I want a baby because I'm lonely."

"Aie pitie de moi, I do not want to talk about children again," he said, have pity on me. "I feel I am having this conversation always. Je merite un peu de tranquillite." I deserve a little peace.

"You're bleeding a bit from the mouth. Have you been coughing?" I asked him.

"Un peu de tranquillite. Un peu! Ah ouais, and my face is hot. If you get on a woman a child, you will suffer. You will not be allowed to be like us. I will not allow it. You will not disobey me. Have sense. You cannot live like them, like other people. You are not like them, and if you try it, you will regret it most terribly. Are you listening? You will not be like other men."

"But I am becoming a man," I said, so young.

"You are not one. When you become one, you will know it. You have made me angry. I am tired. Will you not get from my sight? Have you not bothered me enough these years? Oh, I am angry."

I left his side but felt quite shaken, thinking that we had developed a relationship beyond his annoyance at my presence, and too old to bounce back easily from shame. But this time, on that day, my father was there on the staircase when I slunk past it with my shoulders down, and I saw him there standing as silent as a spectre. He had dark circles around his eyes, and his brown hair was unbrushed. He was wearing a floral dressing gown of a cream color, and when he saw me looking he seemed startled, eyes focusing on mine as if noticing me for the first time in many years. 

"Don't mind me, I'll go," I said. "I know you're feeling sick."

He held his hand out to me and I helped him down the stairs. My memory of him when I was younger is like that, but truly except for a few times, he was and is robust. Sometimes, however, his head hurt him so much that it drained him of all of his energy and made him into a delicate shell of himself, a vessel only for pain, so that when that pain left him he seemed only a wisp. I had no idea that most vampires barely suffer from physical ailments unless they don't care for themselves. I thought that the life planned for me would mean suffering. That is how I thought my life would be, because except for Laurent no one would tell me anything. Why couldn't I have children to comfort me in the way that I had sometimes been able to comfort my father? Why should I have to suffer alone?

"Where is my silly French frog?" Quinn asked me, leaning on me near the front door, blinking slowly, like a cat.

"Cooling his face by the refrigerator."

"So he won't bother us. He will be at that for an hour. Why are you shaking?" he asked me.

"You already know. You always know those things."

"Pretend that we are normal for a moment," he whispered, tucking my hair behind my ears.

"I love you," I told him.

He kissed me, at the corner of my right eye. Already, we were the same height. "A good boy. I would not deny you anything in the world. Don't listen to them. They have forgotten what it is like to live, to want anything but trinkets, to be like you. I haven't forgotten. You will have anything in the world that you want. Don't worry."

"Are you sure?" I asked him.

"Yes. If they try to get in your way, I will kill them all," he said. "Get me my hat, and we will go walking. I think it's evening."

I got his hat and he took my arm, and I walked him through the overgrown field behind the house to the woods, where we sat for some time by the stream, and he put his feet in it, soaking the hem of his dressing gown. While I talked to him about books, he picked some little white flowers and put them in his hair, and smiled at me so that I could see his snaggletooth, and the little pointed teeth that I had never really thought about. They were not really in any way different from my own. I wondered if he had ever killed anyone, and shivered from the cold. I wonder if I could ever bite anyone, as I suspected they did, to break flesh.

"What is your favorite book?" he asked me.

"Tarzan," I said. "I like Chekov, but if we're talking about favorites."

"You should read it to our Leis. He has such a curiosity of books he will never let on about. Lately there is such tension between us, and he has nothing to do here. He is a little stir crazy. Don't let him make you feel bad. He's not a bad person."

"I know that he's not a bad person. Sometimes he's really sweet to me."

"He's very sweet to me, too. We are none of us perfect. Don't let him scare you. I will protect you."

I told him that I believed him, and when we walked back to the house, Leis came running up to us as if we had been missing for days, and took hold of Quinn by the upper arms and said, "Please God, don't leave and take him away. Don't really do it, Quinny. I will do better. Don't do it. For the love of God, I love you both. God, have pity, I am at your feet. Oh I will say nothing ever again. Cut my miserable tongue. Cut it."

"I thought of going," my father said, quietly. "I think of leaving you, and yet you are my master. Will I not return as all children do? Maybe if I take him he will give me strength," and he sounded so bitter.

"Please do not say that I am your master. Please do not say that."

"Go in the house. Let's don't in front of the child."

How could I have any idea as a child that sending me away to boarding school at fifteen, separating me from Quinn, also trapped Quinn there? How could I know anything about it? He could not run away by himself. He did not know how to kill himself. I thought that he had agreed to send me away, and I refused to write to him even though Dasius encouraged me to do it. I refused to talk to either Leis or Quinn for months, and of course that was good for Laurent.