by Alyssa Day
"Probably Uncle Mike, again."
Since I was already standing, I motioned to my father. "We may as well go in the living room and be comfortable."
He drained the last of his beer, as though he needed liquid courage to face me with whatever story he was going to tell—although how any story could make up for how he'd blown up my life, I had no idea—and then followed me into the living room.
I sat on a chair and left the couch for him. I couldn’t bear to sit any closer to him when every inch of me was buzzing with vulnerability and the anticipation of more hurt to come.
"Why did you leave?"
He laughed, or at least he made it sound something like a laugh, but there were mountains of built-up pain behind it.
"Sure. Let’s start off with an easy question, why don’t we?"
He scrubbed his face with the back of his hands, and the gesture caught me off guard. It was one I used myself, frequently enough to know that not everybody did.
My eyes that looked exactly like my mother's and nothing like his. But there was something in his smile…
A curve of his lips that I saw in my mirror every day.
"I left because I fell off the edge of the world when your mother died," he finally said, his voice hoarse. "You look so much like her. This beautiful red hair, and your deep, ocean-blue eyes."
He smiled, but there was real anguish in it. "She was my life, Tess. She was my entire reason for existing. She saved me from the worst sides of my soul, and when she died—when she died, there was nothing left of me to give to you."
I hadn’t expected the slashing burn of pain that seared through me at his words. I'd thought, after so long, that I’d be immune to letting him hurt me again.
I’d been wrong.
I clutched a pillow so tightly it was a wonder it didn't explode in a cloud of stuffing, then tossed it to the floor. "So, she was your everything. That means I was your nothing. Well, at least we cleared that up. You can go now."
"No! No, you were not nothing to me. You were never nothing to me." He sat perfectly still, but his eyes were storms of pain and, maybe, regret. I tried not to care.
"But I was weak, and I didn’t know how to go on without your mother. Demons that had haunted me for so long came flooding back. I started drinking…" He shook his head. "The Irishman stereotype. It’s pathetic. I was pathetic. I couldn’t take care of you the way you deserved, and I knew Mike and Ruby would. I left you, so you could have a better—"
My hands tightened on Lou, who'd climbed into my lap for comfort, mine or hers, until she made a squeaking noise and jumped down to the floor. I was so furious I was shaking. "Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare say that you abandoned me for my own good. So I’d have a better life. Don’t you dare try to pretend that there was some selfless martyr instinct at work. You were selfish, and you left me—just after my mother died. How can I ever forgive that?"
"I don’t expect you to ever forgive me, Tess." His voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. "I can never deserve your forgiveness. Or any forgiveness from Mike and Ruby. Or from your mother, who would’ve come back from Heaven herself to be with you, if she could’ve found a way."
My mother. The thought of her brought another sharp stabbing pain. If I loved someone, they left me. This was the lesson my parents had taught me. If I hadn’t had Mike and Ruby, and their selfless, constant love, I could’ve grown up to be defined by that lesson.
Broken.
Shattered.
Instead, I had a good life. I needed to focus on that and not on the useless apologies of the man sitting on my couch.
"Okay. Sure. You say you don’t deserve forgiveness. Is that your way of avoiding apologizing?" My voice sounded light. And disinterested. When, inside, my emotions were anything but.
But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me bleed.
"I don’t— I didn’t, did I?" In a movement too quick for me to avoid, he was up off the couch and kneeling at my feet. "I am so sorry, my baby girl. You’re beautiful and smart and strong, and you deserve so much better than me. I’m sorry, whether you can ever forgive me or not."
He reached out as if to take my hands and I flinched away. "Don’t do that to me, too. Don’t make me see your death. I think you’ve hurt me enough."
His eyes widened, as if he’d forgotten, which I understood. A lot of people did, once they got to know me. It’s just that it was something I could never forget. I could never casually touch a hand or an arm or even a baby. I could never know when the curse, or the gift, or the talent —whatever I chose to call it—would show up and flatten me with knowledge that humans had never been meant to possess.
He stood and moved back to his spot on the couch, where he clasped his hands between his knees and looked down at the floor. "I can’t be here long. I just wanted a chance to reach out before… Before I went away. On a trip. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and I don’t know where you’ll be when I get back, but I just wanted a chance to see you. To tell you I’m so sorry, Tess."
He blew out a long, explosive breath. "I won’t bother you again."
And then, before I could even form the words to answer him, he was gone.
Leaving me alone with decades of pain, hundreds of unanswered questions, and one slightly bedraggled stuffed duck.
8
"I was not prepared for the Doltar."
Junior Schwarzendreiven nodded, hitching up his belt again beneath his enormous belly. "Nobody is ever prepared for the Doltar."
After my dad had left the night before, I'd canceled on Molly, sent Jack home, and spent a long night tossing and turning, trying to shut my brain off. At around three in the morning, I gave up and had a Tylenol PM, which at least let me sleep, but nightmares of giant stuffed ducks riding in clown cars chased me around my dreams until I gave up at six, showered, filled up my super-sized travel mug of coffee, and headed into the shop. Then I spent a couple of hours doing paperwork and cleaning—the clown shoe scuff marks were easy to clean up, thankfully—and then opened an hour early at nine, to make up for the afternoon off.
Needless to say, none of this had prepared me for Junior and the Doltar.
I'd known Junior since I was a kid. He was maybe in his mid-eighties, about six feet tall and five feet across, or at least that's how he'd looked to me and Molly when he came into our elementary school to tell us about ventriloquists and put on a show with one of his dummies.
Junior was a bit shrunken these days from how larger-than-life he'd seemed to be to us then. He'd long since retired from doing shows around the country, and he'd become the premiere builder and restorer of ventriloquist dummies in the world.
Yes, we have a lot of people with unusual professions in Dead End.
"What, exactly, is it?" I walked around the machine, which looked like a phone booth with a scary guy wearing a turban inside. Junior had rolled it in on a handcart, and it had barely cleared my door. The cabinet itself must be a few inches over six feet high, and it looked heavy, too.
"Have you heard of the Zoltar machine?"
"Ohhhh. Sure. The fortune-telling machine. I've seen a couple at antique shows Jeremiah and I went to in Atlanta. Is this the dollar store knockoff version?"
He made a face. "Not exactly that. It's very similar to the Zoltar, but the inventor, for whatever reason, made it so it only gives bad-news fortunes. Her girlfriend told her she was a dolt for doing that, or so the story goes, and left her. So the inventor, sad and alone, named the machine the Doltar and tried to sell it. It never really caught on."
"I'm not surprised," I said, examining the gorgeous painted designs on the wooden cabinet. The top half was glass on both sides and the front, so you could look your fill of the creepy upper half of the mannequin, which was dressed in a seriously ugly yellow and green turban and silk pajama outfit. He (Doltar, not Junior) had a handlebar mustache that extended a good six inches from each side of his face.
"Not only is it kind of scary
-looking, I bet the Zoltar company sued them for copyright infringement or stealing their idea or something." I leaned forward to get a closer look and then jumped back, startled, when Doltar lit up like a Christmas tree. His turban glowed, his eyes lit up, and his crystal ball turned purple. Then his arms started moving in a stilted fashion, one waving up and down and the other circling his crystal ball, and his head jerkily moved left and right, as if seeking out a victim.
"That's some battery it must have going on, to do all that."
When Junior didn't answer, I looked up to see that he'd backed all the way across the room to the door. He looked pale and like he was in imminent danger of swallowing his tongue. "I don't—I don't—Tess," he finally managed to get out. "That's just it. Doltar doesn't have batteries. And, as you can see, it's not plugged in."
He pointed to the curl of electric cord tucked in between the cabinet and the cart.
"It must have a backup battery, Mr. Schwarzendreiven," I told him, dropping down to the floor in a crouch to see how to open the bottom panels of the cabinet. "Machines don't just light up and start moving with no power source."
"That's just it," Junior hissed at me, one hand on the door and the other clutching the front of his UCF KNIGHTS FOOTBALL T-shirt. "It doesn't. I think it's … possessed."
I shot up so fast I hit my head on the slight overhang at the midpoint of the cabinet. "Ouch! It's not possessed, Junior. It has a battery. We just have to figure out how to find it."
His red face drooped. "I thought you of all people would believe me, Tess. Because of your … your …"
I knew what he meant, but sometimes I was just not in the mood to help people out when they were, basically, calling me a freak. Instead, I folded my arms and stared at him, daring him to finish that sentence.
Junior had the grace to look sheepish, and he cleared his throat. "Anyway, I'd like to sell it. Will you buy it?"
I sighed. This was my week for unusual items. What I wouldn't give for a few of the normal "take my old TV, please" conversations. Even a lawn mower or two. But ukuleles and Doltars were out of my usual range.
"Let me look it up and see what I can offer you. Would you like some coffee while you wait?"
Doltar, who had calmed down while I was looking for his battery, lit up again. This time, he turned his head toward Junior, opened his animatronic mouth, and spoke. "You will die from a coffee overdose at a young age."
Junior gasped. "Did you hear that? Did you? He foretold my death!"
I rolled my eyes. "Mr. Schwarzendreiven. You are, pardon me for saying it, long past a young age. So it can't be about you."
"Maybe—"
"No," I said firmly. "It wasn't even looking at me. It's just a glitch. Let me figure this out."
"I'm going to Mellie's to get donuts. I'll be back later," Junior babbled. "Or, just call me. Yeah, call me. I'll … later, Tess. I'll see you later."
"But what about your—"
He was out the door before I could finish my sentence. I shook my head and patted the side of the cabinet. "About fifty years off on that one, Doltar. Now calm down and let me figure you out."
Doltar turned his … its … creepy head to me and opened its mouth. "You will live a life of great oddness."
I laughed. "Oh, Doltar. You have no idea, my friend."
Then I pulled out my laptop and wandered down the rabbit hole of internet research on arcade games.
"Did you know you may be based on a real-life fortune teller from India in the 1920s?"
Doltar didn't answer.
I tried not to feel snubbed.
"This is why pawnshop owners are great at trivia games, by the way," I told him. "And, not for nothing, but you are way easier to talk to than most men."
"Which man are you talking to now?"
I was way too accustomed to Jack's stealthy entrances to let him see me startle these days—it just encouraged him.
I pointed at the Doltar. "The Doltar."
"The what?"
"The Doltar." I told him the history.
"That's kind of weird."
"Weird seems to be my word of the week. Anyway, I like Doltar. He lights up when I talk to him, which is flattering—"
Jack's lazy smile was way too sexy for this early in the morning. "I light up when you talk to me, Tess."
"Only if it's about food. Hey, since you're here, see if you can figure out how to get to its batteries. It's not plugged in, but it still keeps lighting up and doing its thing. It scared poor Mr. Schwarzendreiven so badly that he ran out of here to go get emergency donuts."
Jack paused. "Is he coming back?"
I narrowed my eyes. "See? Food. And you lit right up."
"Okay, okay. I'm looking. Hey, Doltar, where are your batteries?"
The Doltar lit up again and swiveled its head to look at Jack. Instead of talking, though, this time a card slid out of a slot next to the slot for depositing money.
"What does it say?"
Jack shot me a look. "I'm not reading it."
"Chicken!"
"Hey. It's a fortune from a creepy looking mutant fortune teller. I've had enough oddness in my life already without that."
"Fine." I rounded the counter and marched over to Doltar. "If you're afraid to read it, I will. The cooler the cards and fortunes are, the more money I can get for it. People love that stuff."
I reached for the card, which promptly slid back into the machine before I could grab it.
"Not yours," Doltar intoned.
"Okay," I admitted. "That's a little creepy."
Jack gave Doltar his fiercest rebel-leader scowl.
Doltar was unmoved.
In fact, I almost thought I could see his ridiculous mustache quiver with amusement, but that was probably insomnia-induced psychosis.
"Jack?"
Jack sighed. "Fine. Doltar, give me a fortune."
Doltar lit up again, and another card, or maybe the same one, slid out of the slot. This time Jack snatched it before it could disappear again.
"What does it say?"
Jack laughed. "It says BEWARE THE POULTRY."
I blinked. "What in the heck could that mean?"
Then I whirled around to stare at my door. I'd had an unfortunate incident with a live goat a while back, so it was not out of the realm of possibility that someone could show up with a flock of chickens.
In a shocking development, not a single chicken walked in the door.
"Well. That's odd, all right. You should make a fortune on this thing," Jack told me, clearly fighting a grin. "And I promise to help you fight off any feral chickens who invade the shop."
"Whatever. I'm going to go make some more coffee. Want some?"
"No. I'm going to grab my tool bag out of the truck and see if I can find that battery pack for you."
For a moment, I felt guilty that Jack helped me out so much when he had a business—and a life—of his own. But then I put that aside. That's what friends do, and I'd do the same for him.
Well, maybe not the feral chickens.
A girl has to draw the line somewhere.
9
While I waited for the coffee to brew, I finally called my family back. Aunt Ruby picked up on the first ring, shouted for Uncle Mike, and put me on speaker.
I was in serious trouble when they put me on speaker. I retaliated like a real adult and put them on speaker, too.
"We were just on our way out the door to come corner you in the shop," she chided. "We know you always hide from emotional turmoil by burying yourself in work."
I gently banged my head against the wall.
Three times.
"I don’t—what are you talking about? What emotional turmoil have I hidden from by working?"
"Remember that boy who stole your lunch? You reorganized all the books on our bookshelves by author, genre, and size."
I stared at the phone. "Aunt Ruby. I was ten years old. When does the statute of limitations run out on bringing that up? And he was a j
erk! I should have punched him. There were fresh-baked cookies in that lunch!"
Uncle Mike's deep voice came on, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh. "Hey. I would have punched him over cookies. I thought you were very restrained at the time."
"I remember. You took me out for ice cream and then taught me how to throw a left hook out in the barn." I smiled at the memory. Uncle Mike had been my rock, and Aunt Ruby had been my soft place. Caught between them, I'd had a wonderful childhood, and I'd always known how much I was loved.
"You did what?" Aunt Ruby's voice rose. "Mike! A Southern lady does not punch boys over cookies."
"She finds other ways to get even," I said, grinning.
Jack walked into the room. "This is kind of weird. I mean, not rising to Dead End weird, maybe, but, still. There are no batteries in the Doltar."
"The what?" Uncle Mike asked.
"Oh, hey, Mr. Callahan."
"Jack. Don’t you have your own job to get to?"
"Uncle Mike! Jack is helping me figure out the Doltar. Try to be nice." I explained about the Doltar.
"Now that I have to see," he said. "I'm on my way over."
"Oh, no, you're not," Aunt Ruby said. "We're going shopping for supplies, since Tess and Jack are coming to dinner tonight, so we can talk about the T-H-O-M-A-S situation."
I closed my eyes and groaned.
"What was that, dear?"
Jack's eyes gleamed with amusement. "I think she said that she actually does know how to spell, ma'am."
"Oh, I know, it's just habit."
"Aunt Ruby. I learned to spell when I was four. When do you think you'll get out of that habit?"
"Well, we have Shelley now."
"Shelley is nine years old—"
"Almost ten! Her birthday is next month. We have to plan a party," Aunt Ruby said. She loved parties.
"Almost ten years old and just won a history fair. I'm betting she knows how to spell, too. When does she get back from science camp? I miss her."
"Sunday. School starts Monday. So, what time will you be here for dinner?"
I sighed. I could never win this kind of conversation. I should know better. "What time do you want us?"