by Nikki Roman
“Laugh just liked you used to when you were little… remember the claw?” He gives me a sideways smile.
“The Claw?”
“The Clawww!” He growls, curling his fingers. I shift in my seat and press my back into the door. I giggle as he tries to reach me while still holding onto the steering wheel. He stretches his arm and catches me in the side, tickling me until I figure out that by crawling into the backseat I can escape him.
“I wouldn’t go back there, might be bugs or who knows what,” he says, the claw fishing for me as I move from side to side.
“I like bugs,” I say. “Flowers don’t mind insects.”
“I forgot about that flower… I forgot a lot of things about you. Things that I never got the chance to forget because I wasn’t even there to remember them.”
“Well, you are now,” I say, swiping his hat off his head.
“Give me that!” He chuckles, his hand blindly searching for it. I put it on my head and grin at him.
Without warning, he tears up.
“Okay, I’ll give it back, sheesh don’t cry,” I say taking it off.
“It’s not that,” he says. “I had a flash back of a time when I put this same hat on you and you were swimming in it… it fits you now.”
“You wore this hat on that night…” I say, putting it back on my head.
He nods, a fleeting melancholic expression on his face.
I rest my head on the edge of his seat and stare absent-mindedly out the window. I hope I fell asleep in Spencer’s arms, because when I wake from this beautiful dream I’m going to be devastated, and his thumbs are the only ones capable of wiping away tears that stain with a bad memory.
Chapter 22
There’s a trampoline and swing set in the backyard, but what really has my attention is a small wooded area on the outskirts of the property. A narrow creek trickling in the middle it, ebbing over rocks deliberately placed; percolating around a torn T-shirt once red, faded pink.
It reminds me of a crime scene, the T-shirt having belonged to a homicide victim; evidence to be zipped up in labeled plastic baggies. The creek taped off with caution tape- yellow plastic wrapping over tree limbs and weaving through the swing set. I see the wheel of tape bounce against the surface of the trampoline, unraveling.
“Well, that’s odd,” Dad says, picking the shirt out of the creek. The back end, slimy and green like the underside of the rocks at the bottom of the creek, pinched between his forefinger and thumb at a distance. “Must be from the owner.” He drops it back in the creek with a plop and a splash. “Come on, sweet pea, I want to show you something.”
My eyes linger on the shirt as we walk away.
“Wait,” he stops short. “This isn’t going to overwhelm you, is it?”
“How can I be sure if I don’t know what it is?”
“Okay, I’ll show it to you but you don’t have to get on it.”
“Is it a pony?”
He steers me around the trampoline to a storage room below the landlord’s own two-story apartment. Inside are a couple of jumbo coolers, jumper cables, and old work tables, but against the left wall along with some hung up rusting tools, is a 1990 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Thin, red flames curl around the gas tank. The bike is a dolphin-grey, the metal sparkling in the sunlight that has broken its way through a single window covered in a thick layer of dust.
“Can we ride it, Daddy? Can we take it to the beach?” I ask, and I can barely keep myself from fiercely clapping my hands and jumping up and down like a three year old.
“And get ice cream from Dairy Queen.” He winks.
Wheeling the bike around to the front of the apartment, he parks it beside his truck. “Let me get my riding jacket on and I’ll be ready to go,” he says. “Stay here and watch Harley for me.”
“You named it Harley?” I ask, as he enters the apartment, returning in a brown leather jacket that looks and smells like it is made of beef jerky.
“It seemed to fit,” he says, sounding undecided on the name.
I swing my leg over the motorcycle and settle on the back. At first I keep my hands clutched around the edge of my seat but as the bike starts up and jerks forward, my arms end up around Dad’s torso. I see him smile in the right mirror and feel his head nod as I rest mine against his neck.
“Take us to the moon,” I whisper in his ear as we take off down Fairweather Lane. The sun will leave the sky soon, the moon taking over for the night shift. Stars will sprinkle the sky like metallic confetti and light us home just as they used to when I was little.
“So,” Dad says and I barely hear him above the roar of Harley. “Why aren’t you with your mother?”
“Because I’m with you,” I say sidestepping the question.
“What did she do, Bailey?”
“I can’t tell you, I just can’t.”
“Why can’t you tell me?” he asks, his voice sweet as molasses, sucking me in.
“I tried to—” I start. “I did something…”
“I don’t care what you did. I want to know what your mom did,” he says, his sweet voice roughening around the edges and losing me.
“She hit me.”
“She slapped you?”
“In the head with a frying pan,” I say, “twice.”
We are coming around a bend; Dad slows the bike to around fifteen miles an hour and turns sharply as if he’s angry at the turn and means to slice into it with the bike’s front tire.
I see his face change in the mirror, first angry then terrified. My eyes brim with tears; I have ruined what could have been a wonderful night. Even in her absence, Mom has spoiled everything.
Dad takes a quick look at me in the mirror and, saying nothing, puts his eyes back on the road. His silence will kill me long before we reach Fort Myers Beach. To lose the sound of his voice a second time is too much to bear, so I try my best to clear the silence that I so often welcome with open arms.
“Daddy, please say something. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, only I am to blame for this,” he says.
I invite the silence back. Mom, the blameless angel. Mom, the innocent bystander. Her hand not attached to her body, her words not attached to her mouth, her actions all a ghost playing tricks on the living.
“It’s never Mom’s fault. She never has to take responsibility for what she’s done. You don’t know how many times her ‘drugs’ and ‘alcohol’ have slapped me till I bruised, or hit me till I bled… please, Daddy, I beg you, don’t let Mom slip free this time.” Tears return to my eyes, joining hands at the edge of my lids, forming a pact prepared to leap onto my cheeks—a suicide mission. “Daddy, say something…” I choke back my tears.
“What can I say?”
Say you will fix me. Say that you can repair me like a broken toy, all it will take is a screwdriver and glue. Say the truth—there are just some things that can’t be fixed. Say anything to slaughter the silence, rebuke its invitation.
I lean back, gripping the seat again. I turn my head to the side and will myself to suffer the rest of the ride in silence; after all, I’m the one who invited it. We drive past beachside shops where mannequins hold surfboards under the crooks of their arms in display windows. Glass elevators look out over bathing suits and sand toys.
Orange bubblegum balls, a picture of an alligator printed on the packaging. The sand strainers and molded plastic shapes- crabs, lobsters and castles that never actually work because the sand has to be just right. That perfect combination of water and dry sand that makes it stick together but not harden like cement, forever entombing it in the mold. My childhood is sand in my hair, seashells clenched in my sweaty little fists, and bruises from a fresh beating that fade into my sun-kissed skin.
•••
The bike rolls to a stop. Dad gets off and takes a handful of quarters out of his back pocket. Taking my time, I ease myself off, scared of knocking the bike over. By the time I’ve unglued myself from
the bike, Dad has already finished feeding quarters into the parking meter. He wipes his hand on his jeans, sweaty from holding the coins, and offers it to me.
It might look odd—a teenaged girl holding her father’s hand as they trample in the sand together—but I couldn’t give a flying goose what others think. All I know is that my hand fits perfectly inside of his like the final piece to a puzzle.
“You know, I bet this sand would feel mighty good between our toes.” Dad grins. He pauses and takes off his boots. Tying the laces together, he swings them over his shoulder. I pull mine off too and wear them on my shoulder the same way. We share a smile and he takes my hand again.
“Steel toed?” I ask.
“You never know when you might have to fight.”
And smash heads like pumpkins.
The Dairy Queen is straight ahead, the shadow of the pier looming over it. Dad holds open the door for me and my bare feet shuffle against the wet, sandy concrete. He looks at me and says, “Cup or cone?”
“Cup.”
“Two cups of Vanilla please,” he says, putting down three crumpled dollar bills on the counter. Smoothing over the money, a woman manning the cash register hands Dad a receipt and walks away to fill our order.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Dad says.
I’ve changed more than you care to know. I swallow my words and nod.
The woman hands us our cups of ice cream and we take them to the beach, strolling near the shoreline as we lick it off red plastic spoons. I find a small green shovel lying abandoned in the sand. I pick it up, flick the sand off and stick the handle into my waistband.
“What are you going to do with that?” Dad asks.
“Build a castle, dig a moat…the possibilities are endless.”
We come to a part of the beach where sandbars intersperse the deep ocean and small children stand on the patches of sand as far as thirty feet out, stools in the water. Shallow pools, warm from having absorbed the sun’s heat during the day are left behind by children who have dug them into the sand and filled them with pails of water stolen from the ocean. I wade through one of these pools, kicking the water up and splashing my legs.
Dad finishes his ice cream, takes the empty cup from my hands, and stacks it in his. Thank you, I smile.
“Hey, Flower, don’t you think we should get going back the other way? Before it gets too dark. Wouldn’t want to get lost on the beach,” he says.
Actually, I would love nothing more than to get lost on the beach with you.
“Yeah,” I say.
We turn around and head back, strolling along the shoreline again, the cold waves lapping at our feet. On the way, Dad spots a picture in the sand, a stick figure couple, in love, with a heart drawn above their heads. “Give me that shovel you found,” he says.
Dad gets on his knees and draws a heart around himself. He writes my name in the middle of it, sweeping, elegant letters. At least as elegant as one can write in the sand with a toy shovel. “That’s my heart for you, Angel Cakes.”
It’s cheesy, so cheesy that I can’t help the giggle that escapes my lips. And then, I’m crying. Falling to my knees and grabbing fistfuls of sand. I can’t look up as my dad wraps his arms around me. “You love me?” I ask, terrified of what will be his answer.
“I don’t know what happened when I left, Bailey,” he says, “but not a single day went by in prison that I did not dream of my beautiful little girl.” He wipes at my tears with his thumbs. “Someday you will understand why I had to do what I did. And I pray someday you can forgive me for not being there when you needed me most. All I can promise is that I’m not going anywhere now, not unless your hand is in mine.”
I pick up the shovel and stick it back in my waistband. Dad gives me his hands and helps me up; he doesn’t let go. “I love you, you beautiful crazy flower. I’ve never stopped loving you, and I never will.”
My knees shake. This love is different—it can’t be compared to Spencer’s or Clad’s. It’s a love that I always knew existed but feared I would never get the chance to feel again. “I have to tell you about Mom,” I say. “But I need light to do it. Can we go under the pier?”
“Of course, anywhere you want.”
I look back over my shoulder at the heart wrapped around my name, my father’s heart wrapped around me. And I face forward for the first time in forever, unafraid of the past that once haunted me.
Chapter 23
A heart in the sand, a cup of vanilla ice cream, and a promise to never let go—that’s all it took to fix a broken doll. But, like most dolls secrets had been whispered in my ears, collected in my heart, stories I could not contain.
“When did it start?”
“Three days after you left,” I say.
The sky is black and white now, the colors lying on top of each other, refusing to mix like oil and water. The moon, its own entity perched in a corner of the sky.
I draw flames in the sand. A stick figure Mom, a stick figure Bailey. Tiny squares falling into the flames. “She burned my pictures?” Dad asks.
I bring my hand over the drawing, flattening the sand out. This is how I am able to tell my story. At some point I will have to speak, but the drawings will pull the words out.
I draw another stick Bailey and Mommy. Bailey is in a box, her room. Mommy is on the couch, her bed. The couch would end up in Cape Coral, only to be hoisted into a moving truck eleven years later and brought back to Fort Myers. I draw a bottle with skull and crossbones on it. I draw pills.
Dad looks at it all, very confused. I will have to talk now.
“After you left, I learned two very important things about mother: One, if she smelled like the bottom of a vodka bottle or the inside of an ashtray, I was to stay out of her way. Two, if she picked up anything while in that state of intoxication, duck, she’s probably aiming for your head.”
I swipe the sand flat again. I carve into the flat surface a stick Mommy, stick Bailey, and then I do my best to carve a broom in Mommy’s hand. I erase the smile on stick Bailey’s face and replace it with a frown. I add two vertical eyebrows to Mommy’s face, giving her a look of evil, happiness.
“I cried for you every night in my sleep. I had nightmares of you bloodied and Jack lying dead with his head against a parking block. On the fourth night of this, Mom decided she’d had enough. She shook me awake and slapped me in the face. ‘He’s gone, Bailey, and he’s never coming back! So stop crying for him, you little bitch!’ She screamed at me.
“I didn’t sleep after that. I just breathed heavily under my blankets, dying inside at the idea of never seeing you again, except for in my nightmares. The next morning, Mom made me pancakes and let me watch Barney on TV, even though she absolutely could not stand the singing purple dinosaur.”
The drawing sits before us; it doesn’t make sense yet, but it’s about to.
“I left the maple syrup open on its side, dripping off the coffee table and onto the expensive rug you bought Mommy for Christmas one year. The one with geometric squares, like that famous painting done in red, yellow, and blue… do you remember?”
Dad nods, his eyes wet. He tried to sink back into the darkness so I would not see his face but I am not fooled.
“The syrup dripped on the rug for an hour or so as I sat and watched Barney, eating my stack of pancakes. When the show was over, Mom came out of her room…I think she despised it that much she couldn’t even bear to listen to it. The first thing she set eyes on was the coffee table, with the nearly empty bottle of maple syrup lying on its side. Mom could’ve melted it with the fire in her eyes. I gulped, but not on pancakes—sour saliva.
“Mom drew closer to me and that’s when I smelled it, that ashtray-vodka smell that clung to her like a ‘do not disturb’ sign. I sat bolt upright and scooted farther away from her. I knew Mom was angry, perhaps angrier than the night before, and as I accidently put down my hand in the puddle of Maple Syrup, I wondered how many pancakes it would take to make up for what
she was about to do.”
“Stop!” Dad says, his hands up in surrender, tears sliding over his cheeks, dark spots on the sand where they drip.
I’m not crying. I’m not the least bit moved. In fact, I am smiling; a wicked, victorious smile. I can’t hide from Mom, but I can hide behind my words. My story is poetic, it is descriptive and heart-wrenching, and my dad cannot stand to hear it portrayed in this way. All the fluff, the drawings, he doesn’t understand it’s the only way I can ever let him know of the secrets stored inside me. Any other way would make me explode like an aerosol can too close to fire.
“I can stop if you want me to,” I say. It is a lie.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m being selfish. You shouldn’t have to hide your pain from me. Please, go on.”
I skip over parts. I pull the story together and come right to the part that I know will stab at my dad’s heart the deepest.
The drawing in the sand, I point to it. “I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun before, but it was not nearly as frightening as looking at the end of a broomstick in my mother’s hands. The broom had a splintering wooden handle and she slapped me across the cheek with…”
“Bailey, you can stop.” Dad’s hand is on mine now. I squeeze tears from my eyes and take a big breath in; it’s too raw, too sore. Where is the poetic prose I had hid behind?
“She beat me so many times, the end of the broom is where it starts and the bottom of a frying pan is where I hope it ends,” I manage to choke out between sobs.
“It doesn’t,” Dad shakes his head, his shoulders heaving up and down as he cries, “it ends with a father’s love.”
He reaches across space for me, my knees drag against the sand, smearing my drawing and distorting Mom’s face. He holds me tight against his chest and I breathe in his musky smell. Irish Spring body wash.
I try to control my body as it convulses against his. He squeezes tighter to calm me. I pull my face out of his warm, dark embrace and look out at the waves coming ashore, crashing around the pillars holding up the pier, spraying us with cold saltwater. The surface of the ocean is orange from the reflection of the street lights that skirt the sides of the pier.