Something Of A Kind

by Wheeler, Miranda

  The world had either become very still, or shifted poles entirely. She wasn't sure whether to be angry at his implications and rebel in disbelief, or let herself shatter and cry. She felt numb in her concentration, far away but listening close.

  At an extensive pause, she broke through the wall with a whispered prompt. "Why?" He sighed, squinting at the ground. He never had enough words. This man was her flesh and blood, but he had no idea who Alyson Glass was beyond the teen with his last name. He debated whether or not she was old enough to understand a break up, but left her in the cold to half-raise herself. He disliked her glorification of Vanessa, but a mother was all she had. It suddenly wasn't difficult to understand the pain in her mother's eyes when Aly spoke of her dreams of his return as a child, a full-family home with the wholeness she saw in Francesca and Giovanni amongst Lauren and Vincent.

  The guilt felt like a stain, a shameful scar, memories that marked her imperfection. At nine years old, she had caught her mother sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floors of Aly's bedroom, tears rolling down pink cheeks as she uncovered her secrets. A box that once held a floral comforter had been slide from beneath the depths of her twin bed. The evidence was beneath the tightly packed cover of a childhood blanket, a baby blue fleece covered in stars and clouds, yellowing with age.

  A mustard bug catcher, stickers of butterflies covering cracks in the transparent plastic. Inside, a size-medium child's tee shirt was rolled and packed. The loopy script of "Always Grandeur in Ashland, Alaska" was centered above a cartoon mountain, a small, colorless insignia on the white shirt. Red and blue marker covered the back, imprints of signatures from the last day of third grade. Aside from dollarstore wildlife documentaries and children’s versions of Jack London classics, significantly below her reading level, it was the only gift she received in her father's clumsy everyother-Christmas routine.

  No birthdays, never an overnight. Packages and irregular halfhour visits without warning during dinner hours after staying a weekend with his aging parents in Glens Falls. He asked about school and watched television, only speaking with Vanessa after Aly was shooed from the room. Her mother called her in for a goodbye before he slipped off to Albany International, merely a few words. Not once had she braved more than a handshake. Not once had he offered an encouraging embrace.

  The father she had waited on for years sat before her, shifting uneasily, searching for the words to explain to a child. She wanted to correct him, inform him of her rapid and painful shove into adulthood, the bitter spiral downward into self-parentification and shaken independence. She had curves, she had scars, she read Dickens and Orwell and Bronte. She had been shattered, exposed, and stripped of flesh, a girl utterly motherless. She was forced into a town where she didn't belong, and falling in love with a boy she should never have met. She had a New York state driver's license and knew the bitter taste of disease. She buried her parents.

  Aly didn't live with her father; Aly lived with Gregory Michael Glass. Because of a name on a paper certificate, but not because he had anything to offer. His words didn't mean anything, and she was tired of feeding into the masochistic fantasies of her childhood. There were no dreams of Daddy, no hopes for an epiphany of how worthy she could be, or how much Aly hoped her mother secretly needed him as much as she did.

  He doesn't deserve to break me apart. Not from mom, not from Noah. "Am I an infection or a child, Greg?" she demanded finally, exasperated. She couldn't watch him stand and pace and sit again. She knew he was drawing blanks.

  The first man too empty to lie. "A chi-" he blurted, stopping. He stared at her, considering the exhaustion and muted frustration on her face. She wondered if he could see that she was strong. The level stare in her eyes held no emotion, and she struggled to stay unaffected. He added suspiciously, "What did you call me?"

  "What did you want me to call you?" There were plenty of words she had it mind, but like Greg, she wasn't in the business of telling anyone what they needed to hear.

  "That's disrespectful," he said, sounding unsure of himself. "Something like that," she agreed, observing the hot red mark burning down the center of his forehead. He couldn't meet her gaze. She wouldn't make him.

  "Alyson, you're under my roof. I'm with you constantly. I'm standing right here. I'm obviously listening," he pleaded, desperately.

  She smiled at the thought of pointing upwards at the cove lights and the waterlogged, tiled ceiling and muttering, ‘Office's roof.' Still, she felt the taught weakness. "Yes, I see that."

  "Don't be sarcastic," he snapped. "Look, why I'm trying to say is you have my attention."

  "That's all, then?" "Damn it!" he yelled, turning heads and luring alarmed stares. Lowering his voice, he leaned down to her seated eye level, shaking his finger in her face as though she was a misbehaving toddler. He dropped a file on her lap, scattering pictures across her knees. "This acting out, these false reports. It needs to stop right now. What the hell are you doing, Alyson?"

  She clenched her jaw, her eyes squinting into an angry glare.

  "I'm not a child. I'm not attempting to entertain you and whatever sick fancy you have with that animal. I told you what happened. I was with my friends, completely independent from you and thoughts of you and your sick need to mess with people, and we saw something. The next day we returned and we found evidence. I reported it. I offered what we had to the proper authority on oddities in the woods. That's what people do when they discover something they can't identify." Her voice was dark, a tone deeper, angered. She curled each syllable in her mouth, a foreign menace, speaking each selected word with the cold execution of scolding.

  He stood back and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking deep breaths and swallowing repeatedly. "This is my job. My life's work. I know that doesn't mean anything to you, but it's my everything. This is a cut-throat field, and if you insist you’re not a child, then you should comprehend how negative it is to be made a fool by one."

  "You're making a fool of yourself," she snapped, scooping photographs back into the manila folder and waving it in front of his face. "This is the evidence that you actually have. Pure proof that you aren't a completely lunatic, and because you're so arrogant, you won't even consider it."

  "Of course I consider it!" Greg spat, ripping it from her hands. "Don't you think it's a little odd that you have been in Alaska less than a week and you have found more 'evidence' than most of our organization in as long as you've been alive? Or how about the fact that trained scientists, Ph. D. level field biologists, have deduced it as a hoax. Even our internist thinks it's fake. In science, there's something called too good to be true, you ever heard of it? Maybe next time you and whatever the hell you call friends pull something you won't go so overboard. Maybe try a little more vague, huh? Leave something to the damn imagination."

  "Noah, Luke, and Owen are all natives from this res and-"

  "Res? Res? You have their slang now? That isn’t even factitiously accurate-" "Shut up for one second," she demanded. "Their ancestors have been reporting this stuff for over a century. An elder actually told us where it would be. Somewhere, according to you, you don't even go because it's unlikely."

  "You've been hanging out with Locklear, huh? That's really funny, no seriously, you have me laughing." Throwing the folder into the trash, he splattered yogurt and used tissues. "Did he happen to tell you that his brothers were caught altering the results of a quarantined investigation?"

  She paused, attempting to gauge the legitimacy of his words. She felt her lips move slowly, unable to slam a response. Her words stumbled as she replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "We have them on motion-signaled cameras, Alyson. The elders and the organization have been trying to mend ties for months because of what those boys did. We've been working with those ancestors for decades. You've known that child for less than a week, and the boy already has you out of your mind. I'm not the one 'messing' with people, Alyson. Three teenage boys? They probably think it's
the funniest damn thing in the world. The Locklears are a bunch of hooligan drunks, and Noah's no exception. You see this? The chances of it not being completely planted are nonexistent. It looks exactly like the other crap. I'm shocked you didn't see this. Considering you obviously know everything if you're going to come in here and tell people three and four times your age how to do their job. Do you understand what seasoned professionals mean? A damn long time. I-"

  He continued to speak, his voice low, angered, and controlling. Blood pounded in her ears as he reached across her, snatching a remote from the top of a stack of Forbes and flicking on a flatscreen. He scrolled through a standard black and white menu, pulling up a file slideshow almost identical to hers. Each slide was a punch in the stomach, and by the time he started the video she struggled to breath. She turned away, a thousand doubts rushing into her throbbing head. He stopped, confused at the tears brimming her lids, and seemed confused.

  "I..." Greg paused, scrutinizing her, "I didn't realize you were so convinced. I am sorry. I'm pulling the files. No one needs to know about this. You're a minor, so it's relatively unaffiliated.I shouldn’t think it will affect lifelong credibility, although any further reports… well, that I can’t say."

  He moved passed her, retreating like a kicked dog that won the fight, down a curving hallway. In his wake overwhelming waves of Pinesol flooded her burning nose. He left the images of faux print casts and profile silhouettes labeled ‘John Locklear’ scrolling.

  Of course it was too easy. Him, me. Us. Always laughing. She suddenly wanted to blame Noah, to pin the humiliation and lies on his head. Everything was always so funny, so easy. Was she a joke? Was that ease calculation?

  No. She couldn't deal with it. She knew in the core of her chest she hated Greg. For leaving her, for stringing her along, for snapping her in half when she made herself strong enough to break. For shaming her, for weaseling inside her head, for trying to make himself a martyr in the face of her pain.

  Aly longed for her mother, an embrace, the perfect words to heal her wounds. To have a lock of hair tucked behind her ear, a joke that harrowed and weakened sorrow, or shared dreams of wandering the whimsy of Paris.

  Her mother's choices to condemn Greg's passions as ridiculous weren't unfathomable. Despite the separation, despite her overworked absence, despite allowing Aly to idolize the figure of the vacant father, despite dying when she was needed most, Aly desperately loved her.

  She knew what her mother would do. She would weed doubts into Greg's doubts. Aly would lay in the grave she dug herself until Vanessa lifted her out, a spineless rag doll, and dusted her off. She would help Aly into her coat like she couldn't find the arm holes, smear away tears that smeared mascara, and dare her to find the truth.

  A dare made the brave. Aly rose from her chair, breaking into a run for the lobby doors. As though she were still in Kingsley, she expected the buzzing stickiness of a hot night to greet her. Instead, the pressure of a temperature drop followed her into the street. The sky was nearly black without city lights, instead bathing Ashland with the glow of the moon and the stars.

  Tears still falling, pain and loneliness swelling and clenching in her chest, she slowed to a stop. Adjusting eyes grasped for her target along the road, scrutinizing the shaded storefronts. With the cool ground more solid with each step, she was walking.

  In the distance, she could see the flicker of Yazzie's fluorescents.

  CHAPTER 14 | NOAH Noah preferred his family interactions limited to checking in on his sister, avoiding his brothers, and appeasing his mother with as much marginal distance as possible. Mary-Agnes had problems, but she rarely hurt anyone unless Andrew or John crossed her. Her issues were more sad than terrifying. She was sweet at heart, even dazed and self-loathing, her actions expressed in trying to make Isaac cheerful and Mark laugh. Behind the issues, she was a mother

  – his, theirs, and messed up – but still a mother. It was his father that he wanted no closer than arm’s length.

  Noah wanted to spend the night like he spent any other. There were chores, then scavenging for dinner when the kitchen emptied, and a late-night shower. After, he would lay in bed with blaring headphones trying to decipher the world of Alyson Glass or sit on the widow’s walk and play guitar until someone complained or he couldn’t see the hand before his face.

  He never fought for the television. He never asked for anything. He was out of their business and he was out of theirs. The silent covenant had been working just fine. By zipping his lip, making sure everything was secure, and begrudgingly avoiding Tony under Lee’s repeated demands, he remained off his father’s radar – and so did Aly.

  Over his shoulder, Noah watched his footing. On and off drizzling had made traveling across the sloping cement a dicey task in general – but the dark made it an easy fall. Backing down the driveway, he dragged the massive trashcans with him. Shakes of adrenaline were only beginning to fade. He was still trying to calm down after the fight.

  Luke and Owen had snitched like a pair of rats. The second they walked in Hunt’s door, Rolland dragged everything out of them. How he spent his days with Alyson Glass, sharing the hush-hush legends from the sacred no-one-cares middle-of-nowhere and blowing his paycheck on gas so he could pick her up like a convict they'd made him. How he had admitted, yes, the researcher’s daughter was his girlfriend, and yes, he did take her into the woods and intentionally provoke the beast of the woods.

  It was in the open, sprayed across the table. His actions, his desires, his recklessness– it was all warped around the girl in the boots, the something he’d desperately protected from the elder’s claws. His association was distorted into a perversion. Skeletons burst from the closet, femurs and phalanges thrown in his father’s face. Everything he had done was dropped into the worst possible light, using visceral words that stroked Lee’s ego while dramatizing Noah into a family-shaming liar.

  Noah never understood how Owen’s father could make them belly-up so fast. Besides a taut face and nasty bark, the guy was weak. Skinny and long-haired with the constant odor of marijuana and liquor, he catered to his wife’s prescription consumption as though it wasn’t killing her – like she didn’t drag so-called-mutualfriend men home when he was working late on the roads or passed out somewhere, like she didn’t beat on Owen, who in following Rolland’s footsteps refused to run or defend himself against the woman in spite of being as big as a Viking-Gladiator-Pirate.

  Rolland was just like Lee – an addict with self-gratifying tunnelvision. Their so-called accomplishments of disciplining their offspring, working in misery, and participating in morbid spouseenabling wiped their sins clean, revering them to all of Ashland – justification by association, never questioned.

  It was sickening, the cycle. John, Andrew, Isaac, and maybe even Mark… they would all become Lees, just like Lee and had become Grandfather Yazzie. Noah knew he never would, just like he knew he could never let Sarah become Aunt Maria – or worse, MaryAgnes. At least Maria had fought to break free. He didn’t know if the poison was in the alcohol, the gene-pool, or just Ashland. Noah felt it when Lee spat in his face. It radiated from the man as he threw Noah into a booth, screaming and shaking with accusations. His father’s words shredded the walls he brought up around him. He almost lost it on the spot.

  His father said Noah’s greatest disgrace is that he denied nothing, shameless. Lee was right. Noah refused to feel that it was wrong, refused to say so, refused to appease a man who he had no respect for. After landing a fist in his stomach, his father stumbled – gripping the sides of a table to catch himself. Afterwards, he pointed to the door, demanding Noah get out of sight until after everyone was sleeping. Punishment would follow in the morning.

  When the bastard was sober enough to think. Noah felt the anger rising again, flooding his lungs, welling in his chest. He stopped, wiping his hands on his jeans and lifting his shirt. It was as contused as Aly’s leg, swollen and dark. The sight was a reminder of the throbbing nausea tha
t followed the fist, knocking the wind out of him.

  He wondered why he had stifled the urge to grab the old man’s wrist and kick him to the ground. At first, he was sure it’d make it worse. His brothers would come after him or Lee would be too drunk to retreat. It was something else that stopped him, though.

  Noah hated getting violent, feeling like he could see himself as Lee, dominating and brutal. Still, sometimes he felt it in every nerve, the rage overwhelming. He wanted to let go. For a second, he imagined himself beating the man to oblivion – a luxury he couldn't afford. Realizing he was getting himself worked up again, he shook himself, taking a deep breath of night.

  I'm not like them. I won't be that guy. Grinding his teeth, he grabbed the trashcans, circling the house to the parking lot. As he reached the curb, an awful sound made him jump. The whimper was heartbreaking. Almost sure he had imagined it, he turned slowly, wiping his hands against each other to free the residue left on the bin’s lid from the rains.

  He frowned, confused and concerned. Aly stood in front of him; bad leg bent slightly, her arms were crossed. She trembled, her eyes filled with tears. From the audible quiver in her breath, he knew she was trying to stay calm.

  She said softly, “Tell me it’s not true.” His first thought that it was over. She had found something – something she couldn’t understand was scaring her away. Part of him knew it would happen. He’d prayed the thought was a reflex, just him trying to stop himself from getting hurt – like he was protecting himself, trying not to get hopes up– the subconscious failsafe for the abuser’s son. The universe was righting itself, starting with his secrets aired out for Lee, following with the end of the best summer of his life.

  Girls like that don’t happen to poor kids with drunkard parents.

  “Wait…” he blinked, internalizing his panic attack. “What?” “Were you messing with me?” she whispered, voice cracking. She swallowed, eyelids fluttering as though the tears would go away. Instead, they spilled. “Today, yesterday, Friday – the campfire, the tunnels, the rock, the trails… It was all a joke. You guys were screwing with me?”