All That's Left of Me

by Janis Thomas

  “How did you know we were here?” The answer comes to me as soon as the question leaves my lips. “You followed us?” His jaw twitches. A giveaway. Bad enough he followed us from our home, but he spied on us in 7 For All Mankind without making his presence known. “You need help, Owen. Seriously.”

  He ignores me and takes a step forward. I turn to Katie. Her eyes are round with alarm, and I force myself to speak calmly and casually. “Go back into the fitting room, Katie. Lock the door, okay, honey? Everything’s fine, I promise.” She nods quickly and does as she’s told.

  “Wait, no!” Owen says, rushing toward the cubicle. I step into his path and he nearly knocks me down. “Katie! Katie! I just want to talk to you. You look so grown-up.”

  “For God’s sake, are you drunk?”

  He wheels on me, his eyes full of venom. “I told you I’ve been sober for a year!”

  “And I don’t believe you!” I retort. Some of the doors to the other fitting rooms have opened a crack, and I can guess that several patrons of the store are equally horrified and entertained by the impromptu matinee unfolding before them.

  A Roxy employee hurries toward us from the floor. She is young, stick thin, and aggravated by the disturbance. “Is there a problem here?”

  I give her a look—What do you think?—then grab Owen’s arm. He jerks it out of my grasp.

  “I have to insist that you take this outside,” the woman says sternly, as though she will bodily remove us from the premises. She couldn’t bodily remove a toddler from the premises.

  Owen pounds on the fitting room door.

  “Mom?” Katie cries from within.

  “Get away from her, Owen. I’m going to call the police.”

  “Go ahead,” he rails. “Just go ahead and call the fucking cops, Emma. She’s my daughter, you bitch!” He draws his hand back and swings at me. I see his palm come toward me as if in slow motion, but I can’t move fast enough to evade the hit. An instant later, fiery pain explodes in my head as his palm connects with my cheekbone.

  I’m down, my legs splayed awkwardly on the floor. Through a soupy haze I hear the employee’s voice. “Yes, nine-one-one, I have an emergency.”

  “I’m going,” Owen says. His shadowy figure crosses my line of sight. “I love you, Katie,” he calls out. “Please remember that. I just want to be a part of your life.”

  The employee hovers over me, a shadowy gray blob, then her features slowly come back into focus. She reaches down and I grab her hand, and she lifts me to my feet with surprising strength.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, still holding her cell phone against her ear.

  I nod. “Hang up,” I instruct her. “Cancel nine-one-one.”

  She shakes her head, and I squeeze her hand in response. Hard. My voice is quiet. “I don’t want to put my daughter through a police report. Please cancel nine-one-one.”

  The woman speaks into her phone, then hangs up.

  “Mom?” comes Katie’s frightened voice.

  “It’s okay, honey. He’s gone.”

  The woman gives me a meaningful look. “I’ll get you some ice.”

  “Thank you.”

  Katie comes out of the fitting room and falls into my arms without noticing my burning cheek. I hold her close, desperately trying to stop her tremors along with my own.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I manage to salvage the shopping expedition. My first instinct is to undo the damage, subtract Owen’s appearance from the equation. Make a wish. I might. But I still have to get through the rest of the day and turn things around for Katie. If I don’t, she’ll withdraw from me, relive the scene in Roxy repeatedly, blame herself, blame me. Who knows how her father’s invasion of our day will affect her psyche?

  I also consider that if I erase Owen from today, tomorrow morning I will awaken with the same conundrum I’ve faced for the last month. Katie’s memory will be safe. She will have enjoyed the day shopping with her mom. My memory will not be pure. A new made-up memory will bloom, but it will be blemished by the old reality.

  I’ve been deleting from my life things I find objectionable, unfulfilling, things that make me unhappy. Do I really want to avoid communicating with my daughter, even if the subject matter is difficult and the reason for the communication is a jackass I detest?

  I resolve to confront the situation head-on with Katie. I’ll decide whether to delete my ex-husband’s intrusion later.

  She no longer wants the dress she was wearing when Owen showed up. In fact, she doesn’t want anything from Roxy. We carry our 7 For All Mankind bags to the food court in the center plaza of the outlets and splurge on fried food. At first, she only plays with her french fries, dipping them in the ketchup and making patterns on the wax container. I apologize to her for her father’s behavior and tell her that it’s not her fault. She is disbelieving. How could it not be her fault when she is at the center of the conflict, the golden prize being vied for? Her eyes dart to my cheek, which is red, but, thanks to the Roxy employee’s ice pack, not swollen.

  I touch my fingertip to my cheekbone and experience a phantom flashback. I no longer have palpable memories of my former boss’s attack. I remember only because I wrote about it in my journal, back when it was yet to be obscured by overlapping memories of Richard’s nonexistence. I now recall the attack as one might recall a passage in a book she read a very long time ago. No substance, no emotional impact. Owen’s slap, although far less potent than my boss’s assault, seems far more intense.

  “He hit you,” Katie says. Her bottom lip trembles.

  I drop my hand to the table and snag an onion ring, roll it between my fingers.

  “I think it was a reflex, honey. I don’t think he meant to hit me. He never hit me when we were married. He was very upset.” It feels strange to defend Owen, but better to defend him than to further distress Katie.

  “Upset because of me.”

  I shake my head. “No, Katie. About you, not because of you. He wants to be a part of your life. I don’t think it’s a good idea for your sake, but I understand why he wants it. You are beauty and light and joy, all the things he doesn’t have. All the things he isn’t. He thinks that contact with you will give him those things and make his life better. And it would.” I smile at her. “How could it not? But it won’t make your life better. And that’s all I care about.”

  I think back to the days of shared custody, when I was forced to relinquish my daughter to Owen’s care. His rights included two weekends a month, every other holiday, and a week of summer vacation. He was not reliable then. More than half the time, when his weekend approached, I would receive a phone call that included some ridiculous excuse for why he couldn’t take her. She never stayed a full week with him during summer. He always had someplace to be or a friend coming into town or a job offer he couldn’t refuse because he “needed the bread.” Stories, all. He was unable to stay sober for an entire seven days.

  The last time he took her for a weekend, a little over a year ago, he picked her up on Friday after school. She wasn’t supposed to return until Sunday, but on Saturday morning his truck appeared at the curb without warning. I reached the front porch just in time to see her bolt from the front seat, her eyes swollen with tears, her face a mask of anguish.

  She rushed past me without a word and locked herself in her room, wouldn’t come out until Sunday night and refused to tell me what happened. I tried to talk to her, I tried to coax her, bribe her, bully her into confiding in me. She wouldn’t. I could only ascertain from her sparse words that Owen hadn’t touched her inappropriately, but that was as much as she would allow. When I confronted Owen about it, he feigned ignorance, blamed her menstrual cycle and told me to go to hell.

  Colin and I retained a lawyer that Monday.

  I have a faint recollection of losing my bid for full custody, but that was BW. Before wishes.

  At last, Katie takes a bite of a fry, then chews thoughtfully. “Why did you marry him, Mom?”

  Two
months ago, when Katie and I were for all intents and purposes estranged, I would have dismissed the question. She never would have asked in the first place. But even before that boy, when we were playing the role of mother and daughter well enough to fool everyone including ourselves, I realize that I would still have avoided her inquiry. Sidestepped. Changed the subject rather than confide in her the truth.

  “I thought he was what I needed,” I confess. “I was very much in love with another man who broke my heart. Your father was as different from him as two people could be. I took that as a good sign and talked myself into loving him. Your dad was different, too. He didn’t drink too much or use back then. That business started after we got married. I’m not sure why. The pressures of marriage, fatherhood. Some people buckle under the strain. But your dad was a good guy before. And I don’t regret him. I have you because of him.”

  She nods thoughtfully. “What was his name? The man you were in love with.”

  My reflex is to say it doesn’t matter, that he’s in the past, that I never think of him. “Dante,” I tell her.

  “Do you know where he is now? What he’s doing?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Have you looked him up on Facebook? Is he on it?”

  “Katie, it doesn’t matter what Dante is doing or where he is. I’m married to Colin.”

  To a teenager, everything is high drama. Her eyes shine with the idea of intrigue and lost love and being reunited. “I’m just saying, you should look him up. Not to run away with him or anything. Just to, you know . . .”

  “Life is complicated enough,” I tell her. Especially now.

  She takes another fry, dabs it in ketchup, then sets it down. “He says he’s been sober for a year. My dad, I mean.”

  “He does say that.”

  “You don’t believe him.”

  I shrug noncommittally. “I don’t know, honey.”

  Her voice is quiet. “Do you think it would help him if I had contact with him?”

  I try to squash the bubble of resentment that rises within me. I want to give her an unbiased answer, not one that’s akin to the roar of a lioness protecting her cub. I buy myself a moment by taking a bite of onion ring.

  “Help him stay sober?” I ask. “That’s what you’re talking about?” She nods. I take a deep breath and let out a sigh. “I don’t know. Again, I don’t know. Your father loves you, Katie. He does. But if he thinks of you as a talisman, a good-luck charm that will keep him from drinking or using . . . that’s a lot of pressure to put on you, don’t you think?”

  “He loves me.”

  “Yes. He loved me, too. But not enough. Not more than he loved drinking or using. He loves that most of all.”

  “I don’t love him.” She bites her lower lip as tears threaten, and I realize that this declaration is a guilty secret she’s been keeping. She looks at me for absolution. I smile gently and take her hand across the scarred Formica table.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to love him. It’s not mandatory, just because he’s your biological father. He’s an ass.”

  A slow grin spreads across her face and she giggles. “You said ass.”

  I open my mouth in mock surprise. “So did you!”

  We laugh together. It feels good.

  A moment passes, and I glance at my cell phone to check the time. “What do you say we hit Justice, just for fun?”

  “Okay. Sounds good. But let’s finish the fries and onion rings first.” She pops a fry into her mouth even though they are long cold. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Two words filled with meaning. A connection born of that terrible incident with Owen in Roxy.

  Before we leave the table, my decision is made. I will be making no wishes tonight.

  But I still don’t know what to do about Josh.

  At the dinner table, he hangs his head as though he’s lost his best friend.

  He has. You took her from him.

  After spending the rest of the day at the outlets, Katie and I decided to pick up Chinese takeout as a special treat. On the way home, we stopped at a local restaurant that makes a special egg foo yong (with no chokeables) for Josh. Several open cartons of steaming, aromatic Asian food sit in the center of the kitchen table.

  Katie offers to feed Josh, but I want to do it myself. Penance. The mere act of spooning egg foo yong into my son’s mouth is hardly enough to atone for my sins.

  “You two had a successful day,” Colin comments as he piles shrimp lo mein onto his plate. “I’m surprised you didn’t have to hire a moving van for all your bags.”

  “It was great,” Katie says. “Except for the Owen thing, it was perfect.”

  I should have instructed her not to bring up my ex-husband, but following such an open and honest dialogue, I felt it would be inappropriate to ask my daughter to lie.

  Colin straightens in his chair. “What’s this now?”

  Katie gives me a worried glance. I smile to reassure her.

  “Owen showed up at the outlets,” I say calmly.

  “Showed up?” Colin repeats, his mouth set in a thin line. “What exactly does that mean? How did he know you were there?”

  “Why don’t we talk about this after dinner?” I suggest. I bring the spoon to Josh’s lips, but he refuses to open his mouth.

  “Emma, tell me what happened,” Colin demands.

  “Come on, Josh,” I entreat my son. “Take a bite. You’ve hardly eaten anything.”

  “Aye ’ot h’gee.” I’m not hungry.

  “But you love egg foo yong.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Emma . . .”

  I glare at Colin. “Owen showed up at the outlets, made a scene, then left. That’s it. End of story.”

  “How did he know you were there?”

  “I guess he followed us.”

  “How can you be so calm about this? First he shows up at your office, then he follows you and Katie? We have to do something. We need to take out a restraining order against him.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.” I absently swipe at my cheek. The red outline of Owen’s hand has faded, thankfully, but the skin is still tender.

  “Mom handled it great, Colin.”

  Colin snaps his head toward Katie. “That’s not the point. The man is pernicious.”

  “Pernicious,” Katie says. “Total SAT word.”

  “Cawee isideuh hah, eei, wikeh,” Josh says quietly. Causing insidious harm, evil, wicked. I turn toward him. His head is down, but he’s looking at me. When our eyes meet, he quickly drops his gaze.

  “Owen isn’t evil, Colin.”

  “No, he’s just an addict and an alcoholic.” Colin’s tone is full of disdain and superiority. In his mind, my ex-husband has never been a threat. Colin may be a failed author, now supported by his wife, but by comparison, he is a champion and Owen is a loser. Colin exists in the gray area—he himself is a study in shades of gray. But when it comes to Owen, there is only black and white.

  “Enough,” I say. “Let’s enjoy dinner, okay? We can talk about this later.”

  Colin harrumphs, then starts to shovel food into his mouth.

  Katie regales Colin with her clothing purchases, and he pretends to be interested. I turn my attention to Josh and prepare him a fresh spoonful of the egg foo yong. Again, he refuses it. I set the spoon down and lean into him.

  “What is it? What’s wrong, my sweet boy?”

  Josh’s cheeks go red. “Aye ’ot a boee!” he explodes. “Kay? Aye ’ot a boee!” I’m not a boy, okay? I’m not a boy!

  I sit back, stunned. Katie falls silent, and Colin stops chewing. We’re unaccustomed to such an outburst from my son.

  The thought comes to me again. He knows. He knows something.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I know you’re not a boy.” I reach out to touch his cheek. He recoils from my touch. I pull my hand away, stung by his rejection.

  “Someone had a little too much Xbox today,” Colin says, and I want to yell at him to shut up. He has
no idea what his son is going through. Neither do I, really. But I can guess because I have more information.

  “I think that fighting game makes him irritable. It does.”

  “I’ doe’t,” Josh counters. It doesn’t.

  “You could have fooled me, the way you just spoke to your mom.”

  “Soee.” Sorry.

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  “Em, it’s not okay,” Colin corrects me. “Josh, do as your mother says. Eat some more of your food. And no video games after dinner.”

  “Wyee?” Josh asks.

  Ironic that Colin is taking away the Xbox as punishment when he allowed Josh to play the damn machine all day.

  “You’ve had enough. Plus, it’s shower night tonight.”

  “Josh had a shower last night,” I say. Colin gives me a confused look.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  I turn to Josh. He stares at me accusingly. I look away.

  “He didn’t? I thought he did.”

  “Alice only bathes him Wednesdays, as per her contract.” Colin rolls his eyes as though my mental capacity is in question. “Remember?”

  I’ve never met Alice. How could I remember? “Right. Sorry. I got my days mixed up.”

  “Again,” Colin says pointedly. I’ve used that excuse many times in the last two months.

  “Aye doe wah a showeh.” I don’t want a shower.

  “You have to have a shower. You smell.”

  “Colin.”

  Colin tsks. “He’s fifteen. He smells. Just like every other fifteen-year-old boy.”

  “I’ll make it quick, okay?” I tell Josh.

  “Aye doe wah y’ t’ d’ i, Maah.” I don’t want you to do it, Mom. Angry.

  I clench my teeth to keep my emotions in check.

  “Okay.”

  Colin sighs dramatically. “I want to get some more work done.”

  “You had the whole day.”

  “And I’m at a critical part. I would think you’d want me to strike while the iron’s hot. You do want me to finish, right? Aren’t you always nagging at me to finish?”

  I lean in to Josh. “We’ll make it quick tonight. No shower. Just washcloth.”

  Josh is not mollified. He stretches his head back, his usual grimace twisted farther into an ugly frown. “I wah mo’ ecksbah.” I want more Xbox.