He probably owned a big house like all the others, kept a Ferrari for the weekends, a full-time driver for his Lincoln Navigator. Probably fucked her in all those places with his circus show, curved dick because all her husband could offer was a three bedroom house in Birmingham, a big Chrysler with rust starting to soak through the wheel wells, and a dick as straight as the I-80 between Wendover and Knolls in Utah.
Shaking my head, I pushed away from the bathroom counter and went downstairs. I refused to think about the laptop as I tidied up the living room, moving old books about grief and loss and death and God (not all in the same book, of course) from this room to the storage shelves in the basement. I made half a dozen trips with the books, then started on some of the other clutter—a footstool that had seen better days, a lamp with a moisture-stained shade, empty picture frames from when I had destroyed or packed all of Karen’s things into the guest bedroom upstairs. Another dozen trips up and down those stairs meant I hadn’t heard Lena enter the house after school. I grabbed the Dyson from the mudroom and got it purring before I finally noticed her.
She was lounging on the sofa, her feet at one end, her head tilted to the side on the other. Watching me like a demon child.
“Fuck,” I nearly shouted, which made her laugh. Yes, definitely a demon child. It was one thing to not hear her enter the house, quite another to find her staring at me like this. I hit the power button. “What are you doing?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same thing, Papa Bear. Where’s all our junk?” She waved across the living room, indicating the lack of usual clutter.
I shrugged, avoiding eye contact. “I needed to clean.” Truthfully, I had. Another moment of staring at Facebook pictures of Karen with Nathan Darien and visualizing his curved dick inside her would’ve resulted in an aneurism.
“You’re so full of shit,” she said, swinging her legs out to the side and sitting straight up on the sofa. She looked green all of a sudden, but when I asked if she had filled her prescription to help with her late-afternoon morning sickness, she rolled her eyes and bolted for the bathroom.
The door closed, and I heard the toilet seat slam into its upward position. But before I could hear those vulgar sounds of my daughter puking her guts out, I hit the vacuum’s power button and drowned her out instead. Perfect timing.
As I vacuumed the rest of the room, I couldn’t help but notice how worn down and old the furniture appeared. I deliberated buying a new leather sofa and loveseat, but that meant dipping into the severance, which I felt was weak enough. And it seemed unlikely they could deliver before my noon-hour date tomorrow. At least, that was what I told myself.
I finished with the vacuum and carried it downstairs, passing the bathroom where Lena had likely barfed up all of the nutrition she had eaten today. The door was open; she had come home, proceeded through her regular routine and snuck downstairs without saying a word. At the bottom stair, I looked around, spotting the television, the VCR that I had used the other day. I could see that the VHS cassette from our wedding day was still inside the machine, which was the least dusty item in the entire basement.
“Lena,” I called out. This place was a fucking mess. Not that I planned on dragging Veronica down here, but this amount of dust would travel through the vents and ruin all of the hard work I had done already. “Lena!”
She came out of the back room in her flannel pants and school T-shirt. She was a pretty girl, her eyes and jawline an echo of her mother’s fierce beauty. My daughter could stop traffic, even in flannels and even after her recent one-on-one with the porcelain throne upstairs.
“You need to clean this place up.”
“Why? You won’t let Joffrey come by. Why does it fucking matter if I’ve got an inch of shit on the floor.”
I engaged her in a staring contest. I didn’t want to bite, take her bait, and let her reel me into an argument. “Where has Jeffrey with an ‘O’ like ‘orgasm’ been, anyway? I haven’t seen that sad jackass since you told me about your…” I rubbed my stomach to convey the intended message. When her face conveyed her intended message, I dropped it. “You know, he was a dickhead, even I could see that.”
She nodded in agreement, but her eyes hinted at heartbreak.
I gave a sideways nod to the television, the VCR, and waved her over as I settled into the sofa, but then switched to the loveseat as I remembered the battery-operated device I had discovered the last time I was down here. “You really need to tidy up, Lena.”
She groaned behind me, leaning against the back of the loveseat as I found the remote and activated the VCR.
“Watch the wedding tape with me, huh?” I felt my heart rate pick up, pounding against my chest. “Let’s see if you recognize anyone. Any of us from way back.” I forced a fake chuckle that aroused the bile in my stomach. I feared what I would find on the tape, the face I had avoided all afternoon with the cleaning and chores.
At last, I felt the sofa move as Lena settled into the seat next to me. Her arm slid behind my back, and she placed her head on my shoulder. Her other hand reached for the remote, and she hit the Play button to get the video started.
And so it began, the bridesmaids marching down that aisle, followed by my bride. I had watched this tape enough times that I could mimic Karen’s facial expressions as she came down the aisle, touching the hands of the people in the aisle seats, making eye contact with those who were a little deeper in the pews. Always the big smile, but a twitch of her lips here and there lent an impression of humility.
How I missed Nathan’s face in the crowd earlier would torment me forever. All of these years! Where he had previously been a random smile and yet another pair of watching eyes, he now seemed to radiate the glow of an outsider.
“Are you okay, Papa Bear?” Lena asked.
I felt her hand on my back, running up my spine, and then I realized I had moved to the front edge of my seat, leaning as far forward as I could without falling onto the floor. Motioning for the remote, I became a little impatient. And when Lena handed it to me like a relay baton, I quickly rewound to the part where Nathan Darien’s smug fucking face appeared. Just a glimpse, the million-dollar smile, the glassy let’s-fuck eyes.
Lena cleared her throat as I paused the screen and examined that face, searching for something that could tip me off to the romance between my bride and this crooked-cocked motherfucker who had possibly impregnated her.
“Who is he?” she asked, her voice quiet and low.
I ignored the question for a few seconds, then…and then I breathed again. I pressed Play and watched Nathan disappear off the edge of the screen as the camera focused once again on Karen and her newly polished smile at having just eye-fucked Nathan Darien without anyone possibly even knowing it.
On our wedding day.
Fuck. My. Life.
“Papa Bear, who was that guy?” she repeated, cozying up to me. “He’s really got you worked up.”
On the screen, Karen stopped next to me, right at the altar. She took my hands and, when our eyes met, the tears appeared. We chuckled at the moment, the emotion, the excitement. Our happiness was so evident on our faces it was difficult not to love her.
We were young, so fucking young.
I glanced over at Lena and admired her youth, her bravery at facing her pregnancy like she was.
She smiled at me.
I smiled back. “I love you,” I told her.
Her smile brightened, but even with the support she conveyed in that simple smile, I couldn’t watch any more of this video without losing what little composure I had left. So I excused myself and walked back upstairs to start tidying up the kitchen.
I started with the microwave and ran the Lysol through it, spraying the filthy interior walls. I reached in with a cloth and wiped the splatter out. Although I doubted Veronica would peek in the microwave, I didn’t want to take my chances.
“Papa Bear,” Lena asked, her voice soft and sailing through the kitchen from behind
me. “Are you okay?”
I glanced back. “I’m great.”
I moved to the toaster oven, which was a lot cleaner than the microwave because Lena was really considerate when it came to emptying out the bottom tray. She had watched her mother set that little appliance on fire a few times already and knew that, with my absentmindedness, I could easily leave a full meal inside the oven and leave for work, only to return home after a long day at the office to a pile of ashes where our house should be.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked her, nodding at her belly, but she knew I meant Joffrey.
Her eyes confessed that she was deliberating my offer, giving it some serious and fair thought. But I hadn’t earned that trust, not yet.
“I’m here when you’re ready,” I told her, turning my back to her and continuing with the toaster. I listened closely, but she hadn’t moved. Nor had she spoken.
I didn’t blame her. This past year since Karen’s confession and death, I had left Lena alone, fatherless as I struggled with the demons and loss and guilt and hate. I blamed myself for the sex toys, the boyfriends, the “Joffreys” that slipped in and out of her life. She’d needed someone to hold her, it should’ve been me, her father, the one man that wanted nothing from her, the one that would love her unconditionally regardless of her past, present, or future.
I moved to the pile of paperwork at the end of the counter, the repository for the bills and bank statements, the offer of legal services for widowers just like me. Most were fed to the shredding machine, but sometimes I didn’t have time and those lucky survivors found a place on top of this pile… which had spiraled out of control.
“He texted me,” she said at last, her voice cracking. I didn’t want to turn around and risk seeing her broken face. “After I pissed blue on the pregnancy test, he abandoned me. But once it was confirmed by…” She let out a long, steady breath that hinted at defeat. “He wanted me to abort. Said if I kept it, I’d lose him. If I wanted to keep him, I had to lose it.”
“I told you,” I said, shuffling through the papers and envelopes like I knew what I was looking at. “He’s a jackass.”
“But I love him, Dad. I love him so bad I can’t sleep. I can’t see myself raising this baby, our baby without him. I can’t close my eyes without seeing his face, I can’t eat without knowing he’ll never be there.” I heard a sniffle.
At last, I had heard enough. I faced her and watched her swipe at her eyes, clearing those tears off her pretty cheeks. As a child, she had loved it when I kissed those tears off her cheeks after Karen had scolded her and bruised her ego. But instead of walking over to her and kissing her like I had when she was a child, I leaned my back against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Dad, it hurts. It hurts so much.” She sobbed out loud, her nose running as she placed her hands on her knees and rocked on her heels. It looked like she might get sick again. “I miss him. I fucking miss him bad!”
“I know,” I said, watching her struggle through the emotion. The tears dripped off her chin and pooled on the floor—I would clean those floors too, run the mop over them before heading to bed. “It hurts when the person you love betrays you, when they say one thing and turn around and do something else, something that contradicts everything they led you to believe.”
She cried harder, leaned farther forward and held her head with her hands, her fingers sliding through her hair and gripping her scalp so tight I saw the whites of her knuckles like they were radioactive balls. And still, I remained against the counter, my arms crossed and my chest on fire at the destruction before me. As much as I wanted to run to her and protect her, I allowed her to break down. Part of me felt I hadn’t earned my way back into her life—I had disappeared for a year, plus I wasn’t even her biological father, I had no rights here.
“Gravity says that when we jump out of a window, we’ll hit the ground,” I told her. “You can’t fight that truth, Lena. What did Jeffrey with an ‘O’ like ‘orgasm’ prove when he fucked you over with that text? He proved that gravity exists.”
“Stop,” she whimpered. “I don’t want to hear this, Dad.”
I watched her, watched the fuel burn in her as she slowed down and dropped to her knees, her breaths coming out in deep, dark pulls. She looked like the demon child from her youth in that moment, but I realized that the truth often did that to people, revealed their true selves.
“When he texted me, my soul died in his words. His cruel, cruel words.” She raised her attention to me and beyond the red, swollen eyes, I saw my baby again, only stronger and smarter and more defiant than ever. “I will never love someone like that again.”
I nodded my understanding. “Then don’t.”
We engaged in something of a staring contest. I let her take the lead, watched her nod and rise to her feet. She had a bit of a bounce in her mannerisms.
“Go clean yourself up,” I said. “Get changed and then let’s go grab some dinner.”
I caught a glimpse of the surprise that flashed across her face—less than half an hour ago, we had been watching my wedding video, now I was looking to take her out for the second night straight when we hadn’t gone out for dinner at all in the year since her mother died.
Without waiting for a response, I turned around and assembled all of those envelopes and papers and shit. I formed a tidy little pile out of them, and made my decision—I would shred every single one of them without looking at what I might be getting rid of.
It meant a fresh start.
Once I heard her footsteps lead out of the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement, I allowed the emotion to erupt from my chest. I covered my mouth with one hand and cried for her. It was the kind of heartbreak that brought her to her knees and reminded me of that day in Karen’s hospital room, the crushing reality that someone else could do this to you, betray you like it meant nothing.
But more than any of that, the pain I felt reminded me of that moment one year ago, that instant when my own spirit died, and I realized that true love does not exist.
Chapter 7
For as long as I could remember, the latest I had ever slept in (well, at least since Karen’s death because life prior to that had fogged like a dream that never existed) was 7:00am. But that morning after my nice dinner with Lena at PF Chang’s at the Somerset Collection, I opened my eyes a little after nine, the sun scratching at my eyelids, annoying me to the point where I had no other choice but to wake up. Along with sleeping late came a mild headache, but it softened at the prospect of seeing Veronica for lunch. She had kept me awake last night, the thought of her, the possibility that she could be interested in me.
Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling and imagined her body on top of mine, straddling me while I lay in this exact position—on my back, her thighs warm against my sides, and her perfect smile radiating down on me with a playful naughtiness. I closed my eyes and reached underneath the sheets, finding my erection and giving it a gentle stroke. It felt nicer than I remembered. I stroked a little quicker, the imaginary smile on Veronica’s imaginary face darkening with hunger.
Oh, fuck.
I saw orange and blue, her eyebrows tightening closer together at the bridge of her nose. She wanted this too, at least she did in my imagination. At first, I imagined her excitement sheathing my dick as I reached down and pressed my thumb to her clit, ignoring that this pleasure came to me by my own hand.
“Hey, Papa Bear,” I heard, but it was too late.
The door creaked. My eyes snapped open.
“Oh, fuck,” Lena said, then screamed, “Oh, fuck!”
I snapped my arm out from underneath the sheets, rolling over to spare her from the sight of her father’s stiffy.
What happened to those elephant feet!
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She turned her back to me, raising her hands to her head like she wanted to rip that image right out of her memory.
I scrambled out of bed, my erection long gone in those tw
o or three seconds since she walked in on me.
I spoke as I hurried to the bathroom. “You’re supposed to be at school!” Karen had taught me that trick. The blame trick. Like it was my fault she fucked another man. To give me the perfect child, the child I couldn’t conceive. My fault Nathan was at our wedding.
“Jesus, Dad!”
“Go to school!” I shouted back.
I heard her leaving the bedroom. Definitely scarred. “I have a spare this morning!” she shouted back at me. “Ugh!”
Right. She had mentioned that last night. At our dinner table, waiting for our food, waiting for something, so we had no choice but to speak, make conversation—how’s the job market? I’ll start tomorrow, how’s school? I have a free period tomorrow morning, can you drive me? Of course. Hand squeeze. The drinks arrived. The conversation ended, the beverages taking priority—so it wasn’t her fault.
“I’ll wait downstairs!” she shouted, then added, “Gross, Dad!”
By the time I finished showering, I hoped my indecency would be forgotten, left alone. But before we even reached the Chrysler, she asked if I could pick up some beef jerky today.
“It’s one of my cravings,” she added, an arrogant smirk on her face.
“Very funny,” I grumbled, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Almost as funny as letting you take the bus to school.”
She giggled.
I wanted to add that it wasn’t quite as funny as the battery operated device that had nearly lodged itself up my ass a couple of days ago when I sat down on her sofa in the basement, but I didn’t want to start that argument. She would yell at me for entering her “private space” while she was at school, and that would invariably lead to how she could never trust me to not go through her personal stuff.
The drive to school was a quiet one, but once we arrived, Lena spoke up. “The cleaning makes sense now. Clean the house… clean the pipes…”
Surviving Goodbye Page 7