by Sara Zarr
I read through it again, and in the span of a few seconds the “your sister” went from seeming like a certain kind of hope to making me feel I’d been crushed under a heavy weight. I shoved the letter back at Dixie.
“Don’t be mad at me, Gem,” she said, taking it. “At least I showed you the letter when he said not to.”
That’s what was supposed to substitute for feeling special, feeling loved?
“I shouldn’t have let you see it,” she continued. “I knew I shouldn’t. I got you the burrito. I got you this.” She pulled a Mars bar out of her jacket pocket and flung it on the table. “I wanted you to feel better.”
I scooped up my stuff—including the food, which I’d save for dinner—and took it to our room. I dumped it on my bed without arranging anything in the usual way; it didn’t seem to matter. Mom’s voice came from the hall. “Dix? That you?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Dixie called back.
I knelt on the floor and pulled out my box of cigarettes, got a fresh pack. I took my jacket back to where Dixie was.
“Don’t tell Mom,” she said.
“She already saw the letter, stupid.”
“Don’t tell her what it says. I’m serious.”
Like she could keep anything from Mom. She just didn’t want me to tell because she wanted to be the one to do it, not because she was actually going to keep Dad’s secret.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Nowhere.”
The time Mom kicked Dad out for good, Uncle Ivan, Mom’s little brother, came to Seattle to help make sure it happened. Ivan’s friend Greg was there, too, in case Dad didn’t want to cooperate and they needed more muscle. They packed up Dad’s clothes and things while Dixie and I were at school, and when we got home everything was in one big pile. Greg’s back was to us while he filled a water glass from the kitchen tap. All I remember about him is the back of his head in that moment, bushy red hair around a tiny bald spot that maybe he didn’t know about.
“Take Dixie into your room and do your homework,” Mom said.
I looked at the pile, the edges of jeans and the corners of T-shirts and the small wooden box that I knew was full of guitar picks and ticket stubs from all the shows he’d been to. The corner of it showed from under his beat-up leather jacket.
Dixie also spotted it. “That’s Dad’s special box,” she said, as if only then realizing that the whole pile was Dad’s, and what it meant—that after all the warnings, this was really happening.
Mom nodded and wiped at her face like there were tears there, and Dixie went and put her arms around Mom’s waist. Mom said, “Gem, I asked you to take her, okay?” She pushed Ringo Starr away with her foot, not gently. Uncle Ivan leaned against the wall with the tips of his fingers in his pockets, watching.
In our room I sat on my bed and got out my homework, and Dixie lay on hers and cried. At first I tried comforting her. I said it would be okay.
“No it won’t,” she said.
I tried once more, and she wouldn’t answer. I went to her bed and patted her back. That had worked when she was little. She would feel sad, or upset, and I would try to make her feel better. Like when she didn’t get invited to a certain birthday party in second grade, or the time she lost her favorite doll on the bus. This time, she shoved me away, and I stood up, finally angry, and said, “She told him this would happen.”
“You don’t even care.”
“He’s the one who doesn’t care. If he did, he’d stop.”
I didn’t have to explain what I meant by “stop.” Just: stop.
Dixie sat up. Even with her face red and streaky and with mashed-down hair, she looked like a girl crying on TV. You wanted to put your arm around her. I wanted to. “She can’t kick him out,” Dixie said. “It’s his apartment, too.”
“Then he should come home at night. Then he shouldn’t have a girlfriend. He should have a job and help pay the rent.”
She pulled a pillow over her face and rocked.
“You can cry if you want,” I said. “I have to do my homework.” I turned my back on her.
“I hate you.”
Those words, coming from Dixie, should have stopped meaning much to me, but they always hurt. I sat on my bed and worked on a math problem.
Eventually Dixie fell asleep and I went out into the hall to watch Ivan and Greg and Mom sit around the table, waiting, one or the other of them occasionally whispering something into the smoky room. They’d put Dad’s stuff into boxes that someone must have gone down to the liquor store to get, and the boxes stood in a tower by the door. I scooted closer to the edge of the light and pulled my big sweatshirt over my knees.
Mostly I watched Uncle Ivan. He looked a lot like Mom only with dark hair, almost black, and hazel eyes instead of blue. He got more of the Greek-looking genes than Mom did. There was something about the way he brought his cigarette to his lips, a kind of confident and definite way, the tendons of his hands flexing, that made me wish he was there all the time.
He sensed me in the hall, glanced over, then pushed his chair away from the table. He came and stood over me, his half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. “You should probably go to bed.”
I squashed myself into the carpet harder and shook my head.
He crouched down with his back against the wall. “Gem. You know what? I think this is something you shouldn’t see. I think— How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” he said, incredulous. “Shit. That happened fast.” He took a drag from his cigarette and looked toward where Mom sat. “I think this is something you don’t want to have in your head for the rest of your life.”
Already I had the tower of boxes, Dixie’s crying face, all the fights and everything else that had come before. I didn’t move. “What if it’s the last time I see him?” I whispered.
He put his hand on the back of my head and smoothed my hair. “Yeah? What if it is? You’ll be all right.”
I looked at his profile to see if he meant it, or if he was saying it to me just like I had said to Dixie that it would be okay, because how could either of us know?
A little of his ash had fallen on the carpet. He rubbed it in with his thumb until it disappeared. “If it is the last time, you don’t want this to be how you remember him, okay? You’re going to have enough shit to shovel your way out of down the line. Trust me, I know.”
“Ivan.” Mom had gone to stand by the window; now she turned and gestured. “I think that’s him down on the street.”
Uncle Ivan squeezed my neck, and when he stood, I did, too, and went to our room; I made kissing noises so Ringo would follow me, and closed the door. But still I listened, with my ear pressed to it. In the end, Dad went quietly. He must have seen Greg and Ivan and all his stuff piled up and known there’d be no point in pushing back.
I listened for my name. For him to say my name, or Dixie’s. For him to ask to say good-bye to us, demand it. I listened even as I went back to my bed, listened until I fell asleep, and when I got up in the morning, the tower of boxes, and my dad, were gone. Uncle Ivan was gone, too, back to his job and his life in Idaho.
Mom and Ivan hadn’t found all Dad’s things, though. A few days later I was looking for food and saw, up on a high shelf in the kitchen, a box marked “Wedding Stuff.” I wanted to see what kind of wedding stuff my parents had, but the box was full of cigarettes. Cartons of them, a brand from Mexico called Hacienda, with a man in a red serape, under a yellow sun, on each pack. I took the box to my room and put it under my bed.
Though I guess they were Dad’s, they made me think of Uncle Ivan and how he’d sat with me in the hall and smoothed my hair, smoke curling around us.
I started carrying a pack of the cigarettes in my jacket pocket. Whenever I needed to—like when I felt anxious, or alone—I reached into my pocket and felt for the light, cellophane-wrapped rectangle, its exact corners and slick surface. I’d study the packaging. Hacienda meant something like “h
ome.” If I stared at the man in the serape long enough, I could imagine those were Uncle Ivan’s eyes squinting under the sun, looking right at me, whispering the word in Spanish.
I’d learned to smoke like a real smoker. Anyone watching me light up would think I did it all the time, but I kept it to one a day, mostly in the afternoon, between school and home. I’d told Mr. Bergstrom about it, how at least at first it made me feel close to Uncle Ivan and made me think of my dad, too, like he had personally given the cigarettes to me. “Aside from the fact that you shouldn’t be smoking and I wish you could maybe hold the cigarettes but not light them,” Mr. Bergstrom said, “I’m glad you have the ritual.” He said with that, like with all my rituals, I’d stop when I was ready.
After I read Dad’s letter, I went to my spot in the tiny, neglected park near our house. My bench had a view of a tree stump that people stuffed garbage into and a sliver of the street that ran by the park. I lit a Hacienda and inhaled.
I like my old dreams better, he’d written.
What did that mean? Did it mean us, his family? One thing he’d always say to Mom when he’d screwed up was how they were meant to be, that there was no one for him but her. Or did he mean opening a club?
“GEM.” I closed my eyes and saw it in neon, flashing in the Seattle mist. Inside there’d be a band on stage, my father circulating through the crowd to make sure everyone was happy. My mom . . . doing what? Working the bar? I opened my eyes and took a deep drag.
A club. What a stupid idea for people with no money, who were supposedly trying to stay clean and sober. His old dreams weren’t just old, they were expired and poisonous.
I wondered about my own dreams, if I even had any. I never thought about the future. Not in the way I’d hear kids at school talk sometimes, or how people at my old job did. I’m applying to colleges in California. I want to see London. I’m saving up for an apartment. Those seemed like real dreams or maybe goals. The things my parents talked about sounded more like fantasies.
Anyway, I reminded myself, even if Dad really did start a club, he’d name it after Dixie now.
The damp extinguished my cigarette and I couldn’t get it re-lit; my lighter sparked and sparked but didn’t ignite. Then I remembered the book of matches Mom had given me—I’d been carrying it around as if it actually meant something.
It took me two tries to get a match lit; then I went back to my thoughts.
What he’d written about me in the letter stuck in my head like a bad song. Dixie was his girl, not me. Me, I was a judgmental worrier.
You know how she is.
Fuck him. He didn’t know me and how I was.
Nobody did.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a homeless-looking man approach, half a dozen shirts and coats hanging off him, pants bagging down to his knees. People like that were always wanting to bum a smoke off me, but I didn’t want to share the one thing that felt all mine. Also, why should he think I had more in the world than he did, that I could spare anything?
I took a defiant drag, daring him to ask.
He didn’t. He just sat on the other end of my bench, quiet, pulling his coats around him and staring at the stump. The fact that he didn’t try to talk was almost worse than if he’d asked for something. I looked at him, hoping he’d sense it and turn, see me.
He didn’t move. My eyes stung, a sensation surprising and sharp.
I finished my Hacienda and dug into my pocket. I still had a handful of change from the doughnut shop. I stood in front of the homeless man and opened my hand to offer him the quarter and two dimes in my palm. He looked up at me, his eyes blank and uncurious.
“Here,” I said.
He arranged his coats but didn’t make a move toward my hand.
“It’s money.” Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he couldn’t see what I had.
“I don’t need that.” His voice was hoarse and thin.
The change got heavier and heavier. I couldn’t spare it but I didn’t want it; I wanted him to want it; I wanted to have something that someone, anyone, wanted.
He turned back to the stump. I left the change on the bench and walked away.
5.
DIXIE TOLD Mom all about the letter not long after she’d told me, just like I knew she would.
It happened Monday night. I’d been in bed for an hour without falling sleep, going over my day and all the ways I had been weird at school. Like asking Peter Chin in detention where he got his shoes. They were just sneakers but they looked new and unusual and I honestly didn’t know where people shopped for things like that. He didn’t even answer me.
When Dixie came home from wherever she’d been, I acted like I was asleep. Since Mom worked or went out most nights, Dixie could go anywhere she wanted without Mom ever knowing, as long as Dixie got home first. I heard her changing for bed. She left the door open, and a little bit after that I heard the TV go on in the living room. Then I must have slept some, finally, because the next thing I heard was our front door opening, the bolt being locked, and the sound of keys dropping on the table.
“Hey, baby doll,” Mom said to Dixie. She sounded tired but straight—not high, not tipsy. The rustle of a bag or something. Groceries?
I listened to their voices and could see, in my mind, the way they might be arranging themselves. Maybe Dixie lying on the couch with her feet in Mom’s lap. Or maybe Dixie on the floor, Mom on the couch, rubbing Dixie’s neck the way she liked.
“You do okay in classes and everything today?” Mom asked. “You went, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I don’t love getting calls from school, so keep it together.”
Dixie answered, her voice too low for me to make out.
The murmuring went on. Then Mom said, louder, “Let me see it.”
A stretch of quiet.
Then Mom, even louder: “Are you shitting me?”
Dixie again, her voice ratcheting up, too. “Mom, just—”
“Gem! Get in here!”
I held my breath. I could have kept pretending to be asleep, but there’d have been no point because Mom was coming for me.
“Gem.” Her voice got closer. Her jeans swished in the hallway. She came to my bed, the letter in her hand. “Up.” She pulled the covers off me. “Your dad is trying to sell some bullshit story and we need to talk about it right now.”
I followed her out to the living room. Dixie sat cross-legged on the floor, angry, looking up at me like I’d done something to cause all this. “What?” I said. “You’re the one who showed her the letter.”
“You’ve seen it, too?” Mom asked. “And didn’t say anything to me? I guess I can’t trust either of you girls. Good to know.”
I sat across from Dixie on the floor. There was a pizza box there, too, open, with three slices left of Mom’s favorite—Greek Special. I took a piece and watched Dixie. She was about to cry. I could always tell when she was about to cry.
Mom dropped onto the couch with the letter, rereading.
“This is such shit. I knew this letter would be full of it but I didn’t think he was this stupid. He wants to ‘surprise’ me? What the shit kind of surprise is that? Your deadbeat ex showing up at your door with no warning. Thanks but no thanks.”
“He’s clean,” Dixie said.
Mom laughed. “He might have been when he wrote this. And maybe he actually is done with drugs. But he is far from clean. He’s into something, I guarantee it.” She dropped the letter to the floor; Dixie picked it up and glared at me, her tears spilling.
“What did I do?” I said.
“Nothing. Just keep shoving pizza in your face.”
Mom, aggravated, said to Dixie, “Why are you such a little shit to your sister?”
That surprised Dixie and me both. Dixie looked at her lap and wiped the sleeve of her sweatshirt across her cheek.
“I’m tired of it, Dixie, okay? Give it a rest. I’m tired of every time I turn around you two are in some kind of battle.” She l
ooked from Dixie to me. “You used to get along so good. I don’t know what happened and honestly it’s time to grow up and out of this shit.”
We did grow up. That was the problem.
“I’m telling you girls,” she continued, “that if I had any way to reach your dad I’d call him right now and tell him to stay away from us. I don’t trust him for one second. Neither should you.”
“Why can’t you give him a chance before . . . like . . . judging him?” Dixie asked.
Mom put her hands up to the sides of her head. “Dix. I know him better than you ever will. He hasn’t changed. He’s coming here because he wants something or because he’s really fucked things up back in Austin. I promise you.”
I got another piece of pizza, then Mom slid the box closer to her with her bare foot and took the last one. After a bite, she said, “He’s never setting foot back in this house, and you need to both swear to me you’ll keep your distance from him. He shows up, calls you, anything. You tell me. You tell me everything.”
Dixie was pouting now, arms crossed, and watching us eat. “You can’t keep me from seeing my own father.”
“Go ahead and see him if you want. But ‘keep your distance’ means keep your distance. I’m saying don’t trust him. Don’t let him get close.” She took another bite, then pointed her slice at Dixie. “You especially. You think too much of him.”
“No I don’t,” she muttered.
Mom laughed again. “Why do you think he wrote to you and not Gem? Or me? Because he knows he’s got you wrapped around his finger. Dixie, you’ve got stars in your eyes when it comes to him. Even worse than I did when I met him.”
Dixie got up and stomped off to our room, still holding the letter.
Mom called after her, “Don’t let your guard down. He’ll run you right over.”
I wanted it to feel better, thinking Dad wrote to Dixie because of what Mom said and not because he loved her more. But part of me still wished it was me. I wished I was the one wrapped around his finger.
Mom lowered herself to the floor next to me. “Good pizza, right?”
I nodded.
She stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back. “I shouldn’t have spent the money. But I wanted pizza so bad. You know when you just have to have something?”