So far, I felt like I’d been nothing but the bad guy, and I was waiting for the love and appreciation. Maybe if she sprinkled a little of that in there from time to time, I wouldn’t feel like such a failure. “Fine, I’ve got it.”
“I expect a drastic change in attitude when I see her again in a few weeks,” she stated.
I wouldn’t get so hopeful. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You better. I’ll see you in a few weeks. Call me if you need anything.”
“Will do,” I said as I walked her to the door. We both knew I wouldn’t call, doing so would only reinforce what she already believed I was, a parental failure.
After she was gone, I took a few deep breaths before doing the inevitable, knocking on the bathroom door. I didn’t want to do it, lord knows there was a storm brewing on the other side of that wall, but something was bugging her, and it was my job to make sure she was okay. As suspected, she didn’t bother answering my knock, so I knocked again. And again.
Five knocks later, I finally got a “GO AWAY, SPENCER!”
It wasn’t what I wanted, obviously, and I had no plans on following her demands, but at least I now knew she was in there and hadn’t dug her way through the floor to escape the prison that she viewed my guardianship to be. I decided to leave her alone, maybe wait her out. I mean, wasn’t like she wouldn’t ever come out of the bathroom; she just wasn’t planning to at that moment.
But waiting her out turned unsuccessful when after almost two hours, she hadn’t even twisted the knob. It was past nine; my schedule was ruined, and it had my nerves on edge. I knocked again. When I heard sniffling, the panic set in because out of the last few years Victoria had lived with me, not once, had she cried.
I couldn’t deal with tears.
I didn’t know what to do with crying.
Picking up my phone, I scrolled through my contact list, searching out my mother’s name. With my finger hovering over my mom’s number, I paused. Unable to do it. Unable to admit defeat at the hands of a twelve-year-old.
This didn’t mean I didn’t need help. I needed so much help that a single raindrop landing on my head would push me under the water I was treading on, drowning me in my own insufficiencies. But that help wasn’t coming from my mother. I looked down the hallway toward the front door and back at the closed bathroom door in front of me a few times, before making my decision.
Leaving Victoria alone, I stomped next door and pounded hard against Mari’s door. Normally, I would walk in. I’m not really sure when that started happening in the last few months of our friendship, but it had. But, it was late, and I didn’t want to scare her.
I heard a rustling on the other side of the door before the door creaked open, and her face appeared. “Why didn’t you just walk in? You do any other time.”
I looked at my watch, trying to steady my heartbeat from the panic of being so off schedule. “It’s late.”
“It’s not even ten.”
I ignored her comment about time; she seemed to be more laid back about it. But time was important, and I hoped one day she learned to appreciate the necessity of a well-kept schedule. “I need your help.”
She leaned her body against her door frame, her red hair coming loose from her ponytail and caressing her cheek. “What’s so important that you stayed up past your bedtime?”
She was mocking me, and I knew it. But I liked that about her; it had become part of our friendship. She may not understand my obsession with time, but she joked and indulged it. “It’s Victoria.”
Her face scrunched up before she asked, “You’re having girlfriend trouble?”
Then it dawned on me that I never told her about Victoria. I probably should have since Victoria was a part of my life, but I wanted so bad to have something for myself. A separate life that didn’t intercept with work and my responsibilities. Something that belonged to me, and me alone.
I was selfish, but it couldn’t go on any longer because I had to intersect the two aspects of my life that I tried to keep separate. “No, she’s twelve.”
She looked confused but didn’t let it distract her from the main concern. “What’s wrong?”
“She came home from her visit with my mother, locked herself in the bathroom, and won’t come out,” I explained.
“Well, she is practically a teenager, Spencer.”
Mari crossed her arms over her chest. I tried not to notice the way the action pushed them out further; it wasn’t the time, after all. “Yes, but it’s been almost two hours, and she refuses to come out, and she’s crying . . . Victoria never cries.”
She gave me a thoughtful look for a moment. “Twelve, huh? Let me grab a few things and meet you there.”
She closed the door in my face and left me standing there a bit confused. She arrived at my apartment five minutes later with a tote in hand. She looked around, giving it an approving look. “You know, I’ve never actually been in your apartment. I like it. The bowl of origami is a nice touch.”
“Those are Victoria’s. The bathroom is this way.” I pointed her down the hall, toward the bathroom, eager to get there but dreading the moment all the same.
I knocked again, trying to be courteous but knowing it was for nothing. She wasn’t going to let me in, she never let me in. “Victoria, open the door!”
“I told you, go away. Leave me alone, Spencer!” came her muffled voice from behind the door, thick with the tears she was shedding, but trying to hide.
“I brought a friend to talk with you. Can you unlock the door? Please?” I was begging at this point, pleading for her to open up, to open up everything, because I was tired and exhausted, and it wasn’t just from losing sleep. It was deep, absorbed into my bones and at this point, I didn’t think there was a way to ever get it out.
My hand went up to knock again, but the feel of Mari’s small hand wrapped around my wrist caused my arm to pause in midair. “I’ve got this. But do you think you could go to the store for a few things?” she asked me, still holding my skin, the warmth burning into my memory.
I nodded slowly, “Sure . . . I think I can do that. Is she okay here with you?’
She gave me a skeptical look, “Do you think I would harm a child?”
“No! That wasn’t what I meant . . . I meant . . . are you sure you’re okay staying and helping her out?”
“She’s important to you?” she asked, her eyes looking genuinely interested.
“The most important thing on this earth, even if she doesn’t know it,” I replied, keeping my voice low so Victoria couldn’t hear our conversation.
“Then she is important to me, too,” Mari stated with a tone of finality. “Go get some paper so I can write the list, okay? I’m going to see if she will let me in.”
I got a notepad from my office desk and a pen from a ceramic cup Victoria had painted for me at one of those paint your own pottery places. She was five then, and still thought I was the ‘World’s Best Uncle.’ Handing the supplies to Mari, I waited for her to finish with the list so I could get whatever supplies she needed to make this right because she had to make it right.
After scribbling a few words, she handed the paper back to me and shooed me away, urging me to leave the apartment, even though I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. Did Victoria need space from me? What could Mari do that I couldn’t do? But even as I thought it, the answer was clear.
A lot of things.
Everything.
In the short time I’d known Mari, I’d learned that she has a bit of magic. Just being around her made me feel lighter and I could only imagine what sort of magic she was working on Victoria this very moment. I forgot time. I. FORGOT. TIME. When she was near, the importance of my schedule seemed less immediate, and I couldn't begin to think of anything more alluring than that.
I pushed my worry aside and concentrated on the list in my hand, searching the aisles for Tylenol, sugar, biscuits, gravy, bananas, and dog food. The list was confusing, to say the lea
st. I couldn’t figure out what exactly these things would do in assisting her with Victoria, but if Mari said she needed them, then I had to trust that she knew what she was doing.
It took me close to forty minutes to find what I needed, wait in line, and pay for my groceries. Those were forty minutes I couldn’t really afford, but my schedule was already so far off course, there was no fixing it anyway. I could only hope tomorrow everything would go back to normal, as normal as possible with the way things were between Victoria and me, and my schedule would be back on track.
I juggled the grocery bag and dog food in one hand as I struggled with my keys to open my apartment door. Once through the door, I used the heel of my shoe to kick it closed behind me. I was just setting the groceries down when Mari came strolling down the hall.
“How is she? Did she stop crying?” I asked instantly, hoping she was able to help.
“Calm down, papa bear. She’s fine. She’s asleep,” Mari replied, her hands up in a gesture meant to soothe me.
I reached into the bag and started unloading my purchase. “But she’s fine?” Mari nodded her agreement. “What happened? What was wrong? Why wouldn’t she let me help? It’s my job to help her when she has a problem, isn’t it? Do you think I’m failing at this?”
“You aren’t failing at this. She’s fine, and she was probably just too embarrassed to talk to you about it.” Mari picked up the biscuits and headed to my fridge, placing them on the top shelf.
“Why would she be embarrassed? You know, when she was little, she used to say I was her best friend. Now? She won’t even look at me without a sneer.” What I probably failed to mention was I could hardly look at her either. But, that wasn’t her fault. It was mine; it was my fault that I was too much of a coward to stare into replicas of his eyes and face the demons that plagued me.
“Girl stuff,” was all she simply said.
I raised one eyebrow in confusion, “What does that even mean?”
She looked directly at me before emphasizing her words, “GIRL STUFF.”
The moment the situation clicked in me, I couldn’t help but grimace. I raked both my palms over my face, suddenly feeling way older than my thirty-four years, and so achingly exhausted I wasn’t sure if I would ever recover. “Shit. She’s just a kid. She’s too young for that.”
“She’s not just a kid. She’s a teenager. A young lady. You can fight it all you want, but it won’t change the facts.”
“What am I supposed to do? I only had a brother, we didn’t deal with this stuff. Do I throw her a party, is that what girls like when they start becoming women?” I nearly gagged on the word women. Victoria would never be a woman, she would always be a little girl in my eyes.
Mari started giggling uncontrollably. “Don’t you dare throw a party, she will murder you in your sleep.”
I failed to see what was so funny about the situation. I hadn’t been in this predicament before; I wasn’t raised around girls. I never had to experience periods, and growing boobs, and whatever else fell under the category of growing into a woman. “What do I do?”
“You answer whatever questions she might have,” she stated simply, acting like it was the most natural answer in the world. It wasn’t. I knew nothing.
“What if I don’t know the answer?” I asked her, honestly scared I was going to screw this up.
“Then you google it. Or find someone who does know the answer.”
I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I also wasn’t sure I had much of an option to skip out on this phase of her life either. All I knew was that I hoped she did come to me with questions, that she put her trust in me enough to help. And if I didn’t know what happened, what came next, maybe we could try to figure it out together.
Pulling the quart of cookie dough ice cream out of my bag, an extra I grabbed that wasn’t on her list, I took two spoons from my drawer and gestured with my head to the couch where Mari followed. Plopping down on my couch, I dug my spoon into the ice cream and shoveled a spoonful into my mouth. Around a mouthful of ice cream, I muttered, “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” she replied as she took the extra spoon and dug into the ice cream. After placing the cold slice of heaven into her mouth, she plopped back onto the cushion.
After sitting on the couch a while, alternating passing the carton around I finally confessed, “Your grocery list confuses me. How was that stuff going to help Victoria?”
“I figured she might need Tylenol for cramps,” Mari told me, and I tried not to wince at the thought of Victoria and cramps and periods and all things girly that I didn’t know how to begin to address.
“Okay . . . but sugar? Biscuits and gravy?” I questioned.
“Look, you’ve been holding out on me. You come over to my place and grub all the time for the last few months since you found out we were neighbors. I walked into your apartment, BAM! Dream kitchen. You’re making me breakfast. It’s only fair. Plus, you borrowed sugar from me the day before yesterday, so I figured you needed it.”
“I’m not a good cook,” I stated.
“It’s a canister of premade biscuits and a pack of gravy you add water to. I’m not expecting much,” she said between spoonfuls of ice cream.
“I get up early.” I was trying to get out of it.
“I don’t usually sleep in, anyway,” she countered.
“I didn’t schedule it in,” I lamely tried.
“Good thing it’s not morning yet, so you have plenty of time to pencil it into the books,” she informed me.
“Fine,” I spat, not angry, but feeling defeated. We sat in silence, each lost in our own thoughts when it finally dawned on me to ask the question she never answered. “Why did you have me buy dog food?”
A slow smile curled the corner of her lips as she brought her feet up to rest onto the couch. “I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”
Chapter Thirteen
MARI
Spencer had a kid. He had a kid. We had been friends for a couple of months, and he never once thought to say, oh hey, by the way, I have a daughter. Can I take her some leftovers? Can she come over and watch a movie with us? Would you mind sharing this ice cream with my girl?
Nothing.
He never mentioned a girlfriend or even an ex-wife. I guess I just assumed he was a single, unattached guy, who apparently didn’t realize the boundary of a closed door, or that someone’s pint-size carton of ice cream wasn’t bought for sharing.
But, he had a daughter.
A beautiful, smart, clever, witty girl, who looked so much like him that there was absolutely no question who her father was. It was uncanny, really, it was. I thought the first time I saw him that his eyes were a complete fluke, beautifully unique, but a fluke none-the-less. But, Victoria’s? Eyes as equally intense and stunning as her father’s, exact replicas. There was no question.
I made it a point to get up early to go over for that breakfast he tried to get out of cooking. I wanted to help buff away the awkwardness that was bound to arise between the pair, given the circumstances of last night. When I knocked on the door, Spencer answered, looking slightly ragged with dark circles under his eyes.
“Morning sunshine!” I perkily greeted, knowing that I was probably annoying him, but not actually caring.
“Morning,” he grumbled, nearly inaudible through the yawn he tried to stifle.
“Breakfast ready?” I asked.
“Not even started.” He gave me a look of aggregation.
“Touchy,” I said as I wandered into the kitchen in search of his coffee pot. “I’m going to start the coffee. It looks like someone here needs it.”
“I wouldn’t bother talking to him before he has had any,” came Victoria’s voice down the hall, sounding rejuvenated after her night’s rest.
Spencer’s eyes rolled upward while his facial features remained unaltered, “It’s not like you bother talking to me much, anyway.” It was a statement more than anything, but I thought maybe it was my time to intervene.
Taking in Spencer’s disheveled hair and crumbled pants and shirt, I decided I would give him a break. I knew he had long work days, and although I did spend a lot of my day writing, my days were way more lenient than his. I pushed him toward the hallway, “How about you shower and I make the food? I’ll leave you the dishes to do tonight.”
I wouldn’t, of course, but he didn’t know that. His head nodded in agreement as he stumbled, still half asleep, down the hall to the bedroom door at the end. Once he was out of sight, Victoria appeared, looking much happier, even if her eyes were still slightly puffy. “Need any help? Spencer doesn’t cook much, he does breakfast okay enough I guess, but usually its cereal and take-out food.”
It was odd that she referred to her father as Spencer, but wasn’t everything about the pair odd in itself? “Sure, do you guys have baking sheets?”
She thought about it for a minute, trying to figure out what I meant, but when I held up the canister of biscuits, she seemed to understand and removed a baking sheet from the bottom drawer. I tossed her the can of biscuits and set the oven to preheat before retrieving a few potatoes from a wire basket that sat on his counter. I figured if I was going to cook breakfast, I might as well go all in and make some skillet potatoes, too.
I washed and chopped the potatoes and an onion and tossed that into a pan, letting the potatoes crisp and cook while I mixed the gravy and brought it to a good thickness. The food was almost finished when a freshly showered Spencer emerged from the hallway.
“It smells amazing, even better since I didn’t have to cook it,” Spencer announced as he pulled a barstool away from the counter and took a seat. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Victoria roll her eyes as she let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you girls need help?”
“I think we got it,” I told him as I scooped the potatoes on the plate.
After setting all the food on the bar, everyone served themselves, then sat and ate in silence. They didn’t talk to each other, they didn’t make eye contact, and as a far as I could tell, they barely coexisted in the same apartment. The air was heavy, stiflingly so, and they didn’t seem to notice. Parallel, these two were completely parallel, and it baffled the hell out of me.
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