by Aubrey Watts
“Exactly.” I nodded and stepped toward the window, trailing my fingertips over the glass and drawing figures in the moisture.
My father arrived a few hours later with an armful of groceries and cooking supplies despite my mother’s insistence that we just get take out. He stood in our kitchen as though he never left, alternating between different pots and pans as Sinatra’s Christmas album played quietly in the background.
The spread was outstanding.
It was all there: perfectly moist turkey, sweet potato casserole, homemade cranberry sauce, stuffing I helped him prepare with stale sourdough bread, and for desert, apple crumble and pumpkin pie.
He even brought over a bottle of my mothers favorite wine, Pinot Noir, as a sort of truce, and she smiled at him when he set it on the table although it never quite reached her eyes. “Should you be drinking this?” she asked skeptically, furrowing her brows.
He poured two glasses and handed one to her. “Wine isn’t my drink of choice, Lilith. You know that.”
After some small talk, we gathered around the table and ate until we couldn’t anymore, and when we were done, we entered the living room to watch Luna open her birthday presents. She was born at the tail end of November and celebrating her birthday during Thanksgiving had become a family tradition for us in and of itself.
Luna unwrapped my gift first. It was a velvet baby doll dress I noticed her taking a liking to at the mall. As soon as she pulled it from the box, her face lit right up. “I love it!” she exclaimed, trailing her fingernails over the fabric and meeting eyes with me.
I stood up and pulled her into a hug, ruffling her hair. “I knew you would.”
My mother’s gift was next. Luna lifted a small box covered in newspaper and began to unwrap it, emptying the contents of it out onto the floor. Dozens of cassette tapes spilled forward. “Yes!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
My mother smiled from her armchair and took a slow drink of her wine. “It’s the whole set,” she said with a nod. “Just like you wanted.”
“What are they?” My father asked, picking one up and holding it up to the light. “Music?”
“They’re books on tape,” Luna clarified curtly. “Mom got me a cassette player awhile ago.”
“Oh…” He met my gaze and I shrugged. I didn’t understand Luna’s quirks anymore than he did. “Cool.”
His gift was up next and it was clear why Luna had saved it for last. It was the largest one in the pile and when you’re twelve, that kind of thing is still pretty damn exciting. She lifted the box slightly off the ground and gave it a light shake.
“Be careful,” my mother spoke up. “It could be fragile.”
My father smiled. “Go on,” he instructed with a nod. “Open it up. See what’s inside.”
Luna tore into the box without another word, tossing the shiny wrapping paper over her shoulder. “Wow,” she said, looking up at us as she reached inside. My father stood up to help her and together, they gingerly lifted the object and set it on the carpet.
It was a dollhouse. And not just any dollhouse. This one was a refurbished antique, with every nook and cranny crafted with a purpose. Regardless, I knew my sister and the look on her face told me that she would be impressed…if she were seven.
“Do you like it?” My father asked, trailing a calloused finger over the wooden roof. “I have a friend who is really into woodwork. He made it just for you…”
My mother rolled her eyes and started to say something but I gave her a stern look and she closed her lips.
“…But I found all the little knick knacks as thrift stores. And I painted it. You still like the color pink, don’t you?” My father’s eyes grazed the black nail polish on Luna’s fingernails and he swallowed hard.
“Yes,” I interrupted, speaking for her. “She does. It’s a really great gift.”
“Yeah,” Luna added, continuing the charade for my sake and wrapping her arms around him. “I love it.”
“Really?” He smiled down at her and reached for his glass on the coffee table, swallowing down the last of his Pinot Noir.
I blinked, once, then twice, then a third time. It had been awhile since I had seen him but even longer since I had seen him like this. He was still weathered, with a face that had aged under the weight of bad decisions, but for once he also seemed healthy. And most importantly of all…
Alive.
I took a drink of apple cider and wiped my mouth with my sleeve.
Maybe rehab was good to him this time.
“How are Jeff and Fiona?” he spoke up, meeting eyes with my mother.
She shrugged into her palm and brushed her bangs out of her face. “They’re fine. Visiting family back in Boston for the Holidays. How is Veronica?”
“Veronica?” My father frowned and shook his head. “I haven’t seen Veronica in…”
“Gosh, I don’t even know how long.”
A comfortable silence settled over the room.
Luna sat cross-legged on the floor and examined her gifts, my mother and father made small talk, and I focused on Sinatra’s rendition of Jingle Bells as I dug into the last slice of pumpkin pie.
For one brief, all too fleeting moment, we almost looked like a family. But it wouldn’t take long for the façade to crumble.
One week before Christmas, I was sitting in my bedroom watching a movie when the phone rang. A few minutes later, my mother appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat to get my attention, taking a seat on the end of my bed when I looked up at her.
“You loved this movie when you were a kid,” she said with a soft laugh, nodding at the television, “sometimes you’d watch it on a loop. It drove me nuts.”
She studied my face for a response.
“Yeah,” I said after awhile, keeping my eyes trained on Rudolph’s glowing red nose. She wasn’t usually the nostalgic type. “I remember...”
She started to say something but thought better of it, exhaling a deep breath. I glanced up at her. She looked weird. Like she wanted to say something important but couldn’t muster up the courage, which was rare for her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, feeling suddenly uneasy, “you look like you need to barf.”
She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Where’s your sister?” she asked, eyeing Luna’s empty bed. Minx was asleep beneath it.
“She went last minute Christmas shopping with Fiona and Jeff…”
“Oh,” she said softly, rubbing her neck, “right. Any idea when they’ll be back?”
I shook my head and sat up. “I don’t know,” I answered, furrowing my brows. “What’s wrong? You’re starting to freak me out.”
She sighed and wiped the scrunched up piece of Kleenex in her palm over her cheek. “That was the coroners office on the phone,” she whispered, clenching her jaw.
My stomach twisted in a knot and the room spun around me. Her words barely reached my ears. The only sound I could focus on was the soft hum of music from the TV. She reached out to me but I snatched my hand from hers. “What are you saying?” I demanded.
She shook her head. There was a brief lapse of silence while she searched for the right words. “I’m just going to say it,” she spoke up after a few minutes. “There was an accident. Your father drove into incoming traffic on the 518. He was hit by an oncoming semi…”
Her words vibrated in my head long after they were spoken.
“He’s dead,” she said, as though she couldn’t quite wrap her head around it herself. Her lip trembled. “They…they’re going to send the sheriff over to talk to us in the morning…”
Concern radiated off of her. I couldn’t stand it any longer. “No!” I shook my head and jumped to my feet. “You’re lying. He’s fine!”
“Venus…”
She studied me carefully, as though she was expecting me to explode like this. A full minute passed before either one of us moved. A cheerful sequence unfolded on the screen in front of us, clashing against the h
orrendous reality that had become our lives.
“I’m telling the truth V,” she said, breaking the silence.
I snorted and my eyes began to well with tears but I clenched my jaw and pushed them back. “V? You haven’t called me that since I was five.”
She sighed and pulled a pack of menthols from her apron that looked distinctively like my own, pressing one between her lips and lighting it. I only ever saw her smoke a handful of times.
“Just get out!” I demanded, holding open the door for her. “I don’t want to be around you. I want to be alone.”
She nodded and stood up, hesitating in the doorway with her back turned away from me. “I’m going to go call the mall…maybe they can page Jeff…”
“Just go,” I urged, studying my feet. “Please.”
She nodded and stepped out into the hall. I slammed the door after her and locked it, collapsing to the floor as the movie credits began to roll. A framed picture on my bedside table caught my eye. I blinked back my tears and picked it up.
It was of my father and I at the pumpkin patch. I was sitting in his lap with a pumpkin in mine and we were both smiling, his dark eyes sparkling above bright white teeth. I couldn’t have been much older than six when it was taken.
I looked out the window. It was pouring outside. Raindrops hissed against the glass and thunder clapped somewhere in the distance. I set the picture back on the table and fished for a cigarette between my mattress, only to come up empty handed. Damn my mother for confiscating them when I needed one the most.
The funeral was three days later on an equally gloomy and depressing Tuesday. Not that I was complaining. Nice weather would have felt condescending.
I stood stone faced beside Luna, who crossed her arms over her chest and refused to express any emotion as our fathers casket was lowered into the ground. On the other side of us, my mother leaned against Jeff and cried fat crocodile tears into a scrunched up handkerchief. Fiona was not in attendance. Her mother’s death had made her impartial towards funerals.
I shifted on my feet and clenched my fists until my knuckles ached. There was nothing about the ceremony that my father would have liked. He wouldn’t have wanted us standing around in the rain mourning him. But I had come to grips with the fact that funerals were for the living, not for the dead.
Still, the worst part about his death was that it wasn’t unexpected. We all knew this day would come. It was just a matter of when. It was true what they said, after all; when you live on the edge you die on the edge.
At least he didn’t kill anyone else in the process.
A tear snaked its way down my cheek and found shelter on my lips. I licked it away and closed my eyes for a brief moment, feeling Luna squeeze my hand.
When I reopened my eyes, my fathers coffin was snug in the dirt and the pastor my mother had sought out was wrapping up his eulogy. Did alcoholics go to heaven or were they handled the same way suicides were?
I couldn’t be sure.
It wasn’t like our family was ever that religious.
Thunder rumbled and the rain began to fall even harder. Jeff opened the large umbrella in his hands and held it over our heads as people began to pay us their respects and shuffle towards their vehicles.
When everyone but our family was gone, Luna looked over at me with a question lingering behind her bloodshot eyes. She looked far older than her age and we both were drenched. Jeff and my mother had taken the umbrella and were walking up the hill towards our car.
I reached over and pulled her into a tight hug—and we stood that way for what felt like an eternity—the soft thump of our heart beats merging into one as the rain covered us in a cold blanket. When we got home, we dragged the dollhouse out into the backyard with Fiona’s help, drenched it in gasoline, and lit a match.
Chapter 7
—
“Don’t you talk about him,” I whispered, pushing the bleak memory of my father’s death into the back of my head. I cursed myself for signing that stupid contract. She didn’t know anything about me—not really—and if she didn’t have another contrived book to write about me I wouldn’t have been here.
She sighed and sat back in her chair, her oval face tinged with displeasure. “I just want to know why do you do this,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You know.” She waved her pen at me. “If you would just—”
“Oh god.” I snorted. “Here we go.”
“I’m saying,” she said, flipping my file closed, “off the record here, as your mother, you are letting a good thing slip between your fingers. Stephen is good for you. You are good for each other.”
I hated the satisfied look she got on her face every time she got into one of her spiels. What did she know anyway? For all her otherworldly knowledge about men—she had never even been with one for longer than five years—and that included my father and Jeff.
“Shouldn’t I be the one deciding that?” I retorted. “Besides you’re hardly someone who should be dishing out relationship advice…”
A dejected look flashed across her face and she sat up straighter. “You’re getting defensive. Obviously I’ve struck a chord…”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I just don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I did,” she argued, taking a sip of her lukewarm coffee. “Being noncommittal isn’t a good trait.”
“I’ve been with one man mother,” I reminded her, “we’re hardly even in the same league.”
“That’s right,” she bit back, “fixate on my shortcomings as a means of distracting from your own.”
“What?” I shook my head. “God do you even hear yourself sometimes?”
I looked up at the clock and stood up, pulling my cross body purse over my head. “Look,” I said, waving a hand at her. “This has been fun but can I go now?”
She rolled her eyes and stood up, sashaying for the door and holding it open for me. She was probably the only woman in the world capable of making Manolo Blahnik's appear comfortable. “Next week then,” she said, flipping through the calendar on her phone, “I have a free slot on Tuesday at 5 p.m.—should I be expecting Stephen as well?”
“I’ll ask him,” I sighed, unwrapping a piece of gum and sliding it between my teeth, “I’m glad you can work me in.”
“Oh Venus…” She reached out to me and pulled on my jacket, attempting to smooth the wrinkles in it and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I could read her expression without even trying. That was the problem with having shrinks for parents. They knew exactly how to look at you to get inside your head. They could say so much without saying anything at all. “You remind me of myself sometimes,” she finished.
“Oh god.” I grimaced and pulled away from her. “Please don’t ever compare us to each other. We’re nothing alike.”
She sighed and crossed her arms over her perfectly ironed dress, which was not so ironically the same exact shade of red as her lipstick. “You’re right,” she said, holding up her hands.
I raised an eyebrow at her and popped my gum against my front teeth, keeping my eyes focused on hers. Her expression softened and she cleared her throat.
“You’re every bit the tragedy your father was.
T H E N
The appointment was on a depressingly beautiful Friday afternoon. I was silent the entire way there and the entire way home and Stephen kept his tail planted firmly between his legs and focused on the road. We didn’t talk about it at dinner, which was take-out Chinese that I promptly threw up. We didn’t talk about it as we were brushing our teeth and changing into our pajamas. And we didn’t talk about it once we were in bed.
I dreamt about a young girl with my unruly hair and Stephens’s eyes and I awoke in a cold sweat, stumbling into the bathroom as a sharp pain seared its way through my lower abdomen.
“Damn it,” I whispered, looking down between my legs.
Crimson dripped onto the white linoleum. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper an
d balled it up, using my foot to rub it up as I removed my underwear and tossed them into the trash. The woman at the clinic warned me about this but in a haze, I had forgotten to put on a panty liner.
When I looked up Stephen was standing in the doorway with an expression on his face that shifted back and fourth between shock and horror. “I’m sorry,” he gawked, breaking the stillness, “I shouldn’t have made you…”
“No.” I shook my head. I wasn’t about to give him the meek satisfaction of taking credit for this. “God, don’t even say it. You didn’t.”
He stretched out his arms to me and attempted to pull me to his chest but I wouldn’t let him. The words I had been storing inside of myself since we arrived home poured out of my mouth like foam. “You just never asked me what I wanted.”
He frowned and held me at an arms length, brushing his fingertips over the wetness on my cheeks. Was I crying? I hadn’t noticed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, clenching his jaw and looking away from me.
A dam inside me broke and I lashed out at him, pounding a balled up fist against his chest. “You never once asked me if I wanted our baby!” I yelled, although it came out as more of a shriek.
My thighs stuck together beneath my nightgown as I stumbled past him. I grabbed a suitcase from the closet and began to fling his things inside of it; a change of clothes, his toiletries, anything he might need for a few days away.
When I turned around he was standing right behind me, his expression tinged with something I couldn’t quite decipher. “Where are you going?” he asked.
I shoved the suitcase at him and shook my head. “Nowhere,” I said evenly. “You are.”
He frowned and tried to pull me to him but I slapped his hands away. “Venus, come on…”
“Leave!” I demanded, pushing him towards the door. “I don’t want to see you for awhile.”
He nodded and pulled his jacket from the closet, sliding his arms through it and reaching for his suitcase. I heard the front door slam shut a few seconds later and collapsed in bed, pulling my knees against my chest as I sobbed.