I Cannot Get You Close Enough by Ellen Gilchrist

it?” Ed walked across the room to the sideboard and poured himself a drink from a decanter. “What do you people expect me to do?” He knows all this, I decided. He knew it all before we told him. So does Elise. This is not news to them.
    â€œTell Sheila she can’t take Jessie anywhere,” Daddy said. “We’re glad she comes to see her. Glad she’ll be around so the little girl can know her mother. She just can’t take her off. Do you think Sheila ought to be allowed to go off with Jessie? Take her out of the country?”
    â€œNo.” Ed drank off his drink. “But Daniel raising her is not much better. She ought to come over here and live with Elise and me. We can keep an eye on her. She’s already getting a reputation. Showing her ass all over the country club while Daniel plays golf all day. I don’t like the way she’s being raised.”
    â€œSo you were going to get her from Sheila?” This from Daniel. He was standing now. “Well, goddamn you, you old crook. It’s only out of the goodness of my heart I ever let you see her. I did it to keep peace because you and Dad started together. So you thought Sheila could get her and then you’d take over. Well, I’ll tell you something, Ed. She’s all I have. She’s my little girl, and nobody is going to raise her but me.”
    â€œI’m sorry about all this, Ed,” Daddy said. “Just as sorry as I can be.”
    â€œYou ought to be sorry. If Daniel wasn’t such a goof-off he and Sheila might have made it. He married her and then he went off fucking every woman he saw. You did this to yourself, Daniel. You did it by letting your dick lead you around instead of your head. I would have taken you into my business if you’d acted right. You’d be a rich man now instead of owing everybody in town. Well, I’ve had enough of all of you.” He stood by the sideboard, old mangy lion cornered and his teeth gone. Where had I seen that before? It was Sheila, standing in my living room in her black suit, raging and threatening and pretending to have power. This wasn’t power, it wasn’t even evil. It was the old reptilian brain, old reptile dumbness. Evil is always dumb. How had I forgotten that? Dumb is the animal Ed represents. Big dumb cat with fur on its face. Hoarder, hitter, biter, hater of fish. Of course Sheila grew up to hate anything that lives in water. Anything that lives period, I guess. I stood across the room looking at Ed standing by the sideboard with his thin stringy hair and his back beginning to bend from a lifetime of perceiving enemies and protecting himself from the human race and I knew that no power on earth would ever put Jessie in their power. Jessie’s own glory and light, which she had inherited from Daniel, would keep her safe.
    Daddy moved toward Ed, feeling sorry for him now. “Go on outside,” Dad said. “Wait for me in the car.”
    Ed pushed Daddy aside and went for Daniel again. “I’ll tell you something else, Daniel. No matter what Sheila has done, it’s not a patch to what I hear about you. You get something straight before you leave here. You start acting like a man. You settle down and stop carousing or I’m going after that little girl myself and when I want her you won’t be sending your big sister off to Europe to spy on me.” Ed was on Daniel now, his fingers digging into his arm. “I mean it. You settle down and take raising this little girl seriously. She’s all Elise and I have. I don’t want to hear about her associating with your lowlife girlfriends. Do you hear me?”
    â€œThey aren’t lowlife, Ed. The main one I go with is Dobbins Hobart’s daughter. She works for Merrill Lynch.”
    â€œWell, just remember what I told you.” We all began to move toward the door. Elise scurried before us and opened it. She won’t even call and tell