Vile Men Read online

  The death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is statistic.

  “That’s totally a Stalin quote,” I say.

  “What?” she asks. “It’s a lyric from a song.”

  “Well, Stalin said it. It’s in one of my books.”

  “Seriously?” she asks.

  I pick up all the books I’ve pulled from Dad’s shelf and I plop them down on the bed beside Zoey. She lifts a coffee table book about Stalin onto her lap and flips through the pages.

  “So, your dad made you read about history when you were a kid?”

  “He didn’t make me,” I say. She stares at me, waits for me to continue but all I feel is insecurity building up inside. “We used to go to the bookstore every weekend. He was mostly interested in the world wars, military sort of stuff.”

  She looks back down and flips through the pictures, Stalin in full uniform, moustached, with a hint of a smile on his lips.

  “That’s kind of cool,” she says. “My mom used to read to me, but it was just like fairy tales and stuff like that. When I got older it just got kind of lame.”

  “Well, you can draw and get the poster board and be in charge of the layout,” I say. “My dad pretty much taught me everything about Joseph Stalin, so there’s no way we can’t get an A on this.”

  She looks up from the page, tucks her long straight locks of black hair behind her ear and smiles. “Okay, cool.”

  Zoey leaves just before Dad comes home in his coveralls, greasy blue and smelling of oil and exhaust fumes. He puts his lunch box on the table and climbs upstairs to shower and change. He returns and sits at his spot at the head of the table, looking so much smaller without the dirty loose-fitting uniform over his small frame.

  Mom sets a trivet on the table and covers it with a hot pan of beef stroganoff out of a box. She used to make real stroganoff with fresh beef and sliced mushrooms, but it’s just not something she does anymore, not with her new job stocking shelves at the drug store.

  “What’s the project on?” Dad asks.

  “Joseph Stalin,” I say.

  “You know I still have those books in the basement…”

  “I got them,” I say.

  “I just hope that Zoey girl doesn’t take advantage of you,” Mom says, picking up my plate, serving for me.

  I sigh. “She won’t, Mom. She’s just quiet. She’s not even that bad.”

  “I’ve always hated the idea of group projects,” she says. “It’s really not fair to the students who actually try to take things seriously. It’s not fair to you if she does nothing and still ends up with your grade.”

  “It’ll be fine, Mom.” I say, picking up my fork, clutching it tight in my hand. “She came over, didn’t she? We worked for like, two hours before Dad came home.”

  “You just need to stand up for yourself, Peyton. I don’t want this ending up like the last time you had one of these group projects.”

  I grip my fork tighter.

  Dad looks up, and shares a look with me before turning back to Mom. “Nothing’s happened yet, Nora,” he says. “Peyton’s a smart girl. She knows what she’s doing.”

  “It’s fine, Dad,” I say, stabbing my fork into the ground beef, breaking it up. My fingers are white and I try to loosen my grasp.

  Mom takes a seat and sighs. Dad reaches out, pats her knee, but she shakes her head and reaches for the serving spoon.

  Mom and Dad argue about all kinds of things before bed. Their voices always sound the same through the wall that separates their room from mine. Dad’s tone radiates a casual calm that can never sway Mom’s frantic emotional-based logic.

  “I was surprised they even got along,” Mom says.

  “You know kids these days. They go through phases.”

  Mom sighs. “I know what girls are like, Daniel,” she says.

  “You’re not giving her enough credit. Peyton’s always been herself.”

  “She has,” Mom says, “but she’s growing up. Some of these girls are a bad influence.”

  I pull away from the wall, limbs tightening as I glance up at the men posted there, men Dad introduced me to, men he said were worth knowing about, men with pasts and stories and allure. I stare up at a photo of a Wilfred Owen, somber and sophisticated and clean-shaven, and I try to picture what his voice might sound like whispering poetics in my ear: Beauty is yours and you have mastery, Wisdom is mine and I have mystery.

  “She could use a few friends, Nora,” Dad says. “She’s not going to dye her hair black just because of some girl.”

  I swallow and shift my gaze to the face of a twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms, so full of charm with his arms crossed in a fitted suit jacket, with a boyish pale face and swept locks of light hair. I picture his skilled composer fingers working over the piano keys, working over me.

  “You just know her so well, don’t you?” Mom asks.

  “Nora, please.”

  “She’s not a little girl,” Mom says. “She’s not going to side with you forever.”

  I fall back in bed and roll onto my side, hand between my legs, pressing my head against my pillow, folding its feathered weight over my ears so I can ignore them like I have so many times before. Still, Dad’s voice penetrates through the wall.

  “She’s a smart girl,” he says.

  “Enjoy it,” Mom says. “I mean it, Daniel. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Zoey opens her binder in class and she shows me all the photos she’s printed. She arranges them over her desk, smiling, eager, excited the same way I used to be.

  “I don’t know why, but all the guys I’m into are like, totally evil,” she says, pushing a photo of Lewis Powell across the desk. It’s the one taken after he was arrested for conspiring to kill the president. He looks so rogue and uncaring, sitting against the cold black wall, hands bound in manacles, a man not worth the admiration, yet I study the photo and I imagine what his chest looks like under his tight sweater.

  “He’s probably my favourite,” Zoey says. “He’s got such a serious gaze.”

  “He used to scare me,” I say, sliding the photo back in her direction. “I don’t really know why—probably just because my dad used to emphasize how bad he was. I mean, he’s only twenty-one here. Apparently he wasn’t all that scared to die when they hung him.”

  “That’s so sexy,” Zoey says, eyes wide, excited. “I mean, what kind of guy would be like that these days?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Not a lot.”

  “Most guys are like total pussies these days,” she says. “At least he could look at death and accept what was coming.”

  I look back at the picture and swallow, thinking of the Stalin quote, thinking of my stuffed rabbit. For some reason I wonder what Zoey’s stuffed bear looked like when she lost it.

  She pushes another picture my way. “What about him?” she asks. “What do you think about him? His name’s Leon something...”

  “Leon Czolgosz,” I say.

  “Leon who?”

  “Czolgosz,” I say, slowing my pronunciation. “He assassinated President William McKinley in 1901. This is his mugshot.”

  “He’s sexy too, in an older guy sort of way.”

  “Even though he actually killed someone?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess it’s bad but it’s also what makes him hot.”

  “Did you do any research last night?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says, gathering the pictures.

  I haven’t either, but I’m not yet willing to admit it.

  There’s a photo of a young Stalin in one of the books from the basement, taken in 1902 when he was twenty-three and smooth-faced, his hair effortlessly tousled in locks I can only imagine slipping my fingers though. He’s in a dark jacket and a checkered shirt, bearing the slightest hint of a smile. I trace down the photo, admiring the slight curve of his lips, admiring his beard, so ruggedly handsome in a modern sort of way, his shadowed jawline and piercing stare barely a suggestion of t
he things he’d eventually be capable of doing.

  I sit back against the bed and slip my hand between my thighs.

  There’s a knock on the door. I flinch and close the book just as Dad enters the room still in his coveralls, grease on his face.

  “How’s your project going?” he asks.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’m just taking notes.”

  He stands there and looks over my bed, smiling when he notices the coffee table book on Stalin. “I remember when we bought this one,” he says, taking a seat on the bed. “It was the day after your seventh birthday.” He flips to the inscription on the first page, purple pencil crayon in my sloppy kid printing: This book belongs to Peyton and Daddy. He holds it up and I force myself to smile.

  “You went through such a war phase,” he says. ““You said that you hated all the stories in your fairy tale books. Your mom used to get so angry. She thought you’d have nightmares about the Holocaust.”

  “Yeah,” I say, forcing myself to laugh.

  “We used to watch all those documentaries, too. Remember?”

  “Uh huh,” I say, shifting when he takes a seat on the bed. Back then he had a different job, one where he came home in a suit and tie and all he had to do was loosen it before reading to me, telling me I was so smart, telling me how lucky a father he was to have a daughter who had the same interests as him. Now he flips through the pages, getting to the one I was just looking at, the page with young Stalin. He puts his finger on the page, smudging Stalin’s young gaze of accusation with his finger.

  “Whoops,” he says, looking down at his hands. “Sometimes I forget about all this.” He rubs the oil on his knees, stands up and glances back at my quilt, where the oil’s black stains from his uniform have transferred with the flowers. “Sorry,” he says. “I can take it to the wash for you.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, wanting him to leave. “It’s fine.”

  He smiles, looking down at the quilt and then back at me. I pull it up around me, waiting until Dad leaves and shuts the door behind him before I pull the book back onto my lap, sweeping my finger over Joseph’s face before I slip my hand back under the blanket.

  “My mom caught me smoking,” Zoey says in class the next day. “I can’t come over after school.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t even really smoking. She found a pack of cigarettes in my backpack. She couldn’t even prove they were mine.”

  “My mom’s like that,” I say. “She always just assumes the worst.”

  “Oh my God,” Zoey says. “Seriously, I just, I can never do anything to impress her. She never even gives me a chance. I tried telling her that I was going to your place to study and do research but she didn’t even believe me. She thinks I’m so horrible, like all I ever do is hang out with people who are bad influences. It’s not even easy to make friends with the right people. And they’re never people she approves of.”

  My fingers slip over my notebook. Mom’s voice rings in my head, the sound of paranoia, the fear of growing up. My heart beats heavy and I slip my fingers between the pages, pulling out the young Stalin picture I scanned for her the night before.

  “Maybe this will lighten the mood,” I say, smiling as I hand her the photo.

  Joseph looks so suave, so handsome. I put him up on the wall, next to the men that Zoey and I spend all our time talking about. I put him next to my pillow and I lay in bed under my sheets, no quilt because it’s in the wash.

  I think about the stains. I think about Joseph Stalin, my lap buried under my sheets, fingers curled under the waist of my jeans while I imagine him leaning over the bank counter in Tiflis, his serious gaze confronting me, telling me that I’m a smart girl, that I know what to do, his hard Russian accent a lure that sinks deep into me, makes each breath hot in my lungs.

  Footsteps sound outside the closed door. The knob turns. The hinges creak and Mom enters the room with my folded floral quilt draped over her arm. Her shriek echoes off the walls and she drops the quilt in the doorway.

  “Get out!” I say.

  She takes a step back, her eyes falling to the floor. She shields her gaze, her mouth gawked, feet frozen behind the quilt she just washed for me. I flinch and adjust the sheets, kicking my stuffed rabbit over the side of my bed.

  “Your friend,” she says. “You said your friend was coming over.”

  “She’s grounded,” I say.

  Mom looks up, takes a breath. Her gaze falls on the wall; on the new men I’ve decided to put there, men I can’t lie about. The heat’s brimmed its way up, flushed my cheeks hot and awful, making me regret whatever desire it was I had to hang them up in the first place.

  Mom’s lips tighten. “You’re supposed to be studying,” she says.

  “Get out,” I say.

  She blinks and her eyes go wide, but I hold my stare because there’s nothing else I can say that will remove the attention I’ve already received.

  “Get out of my room, Mom.”

  She just stands there. I bend down and pick the white rabbit from the floor. I throw it at her just as she turns, pulling the door over the quilt.

  Mom and Dad argue in their room at night. I listen with my ear pressed to the wall.

  “She was looking at those men,” Mom says, her voice slipping into quiet.

  “She’s been hanging those pictures on her wall for years,” Dad says.

  “They’re hanging over her bed, Daniel. She’s fourteen. I know you’ve been ignoring it, that you don’t want to admit what she’s doing.”

  For a moment there is only the sound of my pounding heartbeat in my ears.

  “Daniel,” she says.

  “I don’t see how this is my fault,” he says.

  “You were the one who introduced her to all those men.”

  “That was years ago. I was educating her.”

  “Well, she clearly doesn’t have the same fondness for those memories,” she says.

  There’s a moment of silence and I cup my hands around my ear, straining to hear their voices.

  Mom sighs. “She’s just going to keep distancing herself if you don’t talk to her.”

  “No. I, I can’t. I can’t talk to her about that.”

  “It doesn’t even shock you that she’s got a picture of Joseph Stalin above her bed?”

  No response.

  “I ignored those pictures at first, but Joseph Stalin? That’s who she’s thinks about when she...”

  I swallow, feeling my pulse in my throat, lungs tight in my chest, white heat going to burst.

  “Just talk to her,” Mom says. “Tell her something. She’s supposed to have some kind of influence from you.”

  I rub at my eyes and roll over, shutting off the light, shutting the room in black. Still, I can hear my parents and still I can see the definition of Joseph on the wall. I picture him leaning in close. He tucks my hair behind my ear and whispers, You’re a smart girl, Peyton. You’re such a smart girl, you know that?

  Those words used to make me feel good, used to give me confidence, but with Joseph’s influence, all I feel is the white heat coiling deep down inside of me.

  Stalin had one daughter, Svetlana. There’s a photo of him carrying her in my book. Svetlana’s nine in the photo, but she looks far too old to be carried in his arms. It makes me wonder when she stopped calling him Daddy.

  I remember being nine, the night Dad came home from his office job and said he’d been laid off. That was when they started arguing at night. Back then it was about paying the mortgage, the bills. Mom wasn’t working back then, but that was when she started drifting from job to job, always quitting because she didn’t like something about the work she had to do, always starting another job because she had no other choice.

  The weekend trips to the bookstore ended. Even discount books were too expensive. Dad took me to the library on the weekends he didn’t have to work. We’d ride our bikes there. He’d lock my bike beside his on the rack outside, even though I had my
own lock, even though I was perfectly capable of doing it myself.

  When he got his job at the drive-thru oil change, he started to look tired, so tired, always worn out, with these dark lines on his face he’d try to wash off.

  Those lines just got deeper and more defined the older I got.

  Zoey traces ripples into her agenda, scribbles over the day with black stars and symbols with her pen. “I’m not going to be able to come over,” she says.

  “We haven’t done much work yet,” I say, trying to feign Mom’s tone with my voice.

  “I know,” she says. “I want to. Really. I just, I can’t get her to believe what I tell her. She always thinks that I’m going to go to some guy’s house or something like that. She doesn’t take my word for anything.”

  “I guess it’s different for me,” I say. “My mom complains to my dad about things, mostly.”

  “Doesn’t your dad stand up for you?”

  I look up.

  “Isn’t that what Dads are supposed to do?”

  “Not really,” I say.

  Zoey looks down at her agenda, tightening her grasp around her pen, the tip threatening to blacken the entire page. “I never met my real Dad,” she says. “My step-dad’s an asshole, so it’s not like I really ever talk to him about anything.” She shrugs before looking up at me. “It’s just a weird thought I have sometimes. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like having a guy around that I can like, you know, talk to about things.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal,” I say. “It was better when I was a kid, when we’d go out and get books and stuff.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him to take you again?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s just different.” I hesitate, trying to come up with a reason, thinking of being a kid and sitting on Dad’s lap. The thought just makes my skin crawl now. I think back to when Dad first told me all about Stalin. He showed me all Joseph’s photos and I told him that I thought Stalin looked kind of nice. Then Dad told me the truth.