The Opposite of Love

by Sarah Lynn Scheerger

  The day-to-day hard physical labor of the roofing had torn up his back and arm muscles over and over again. Sometimes, he ached so bad it felt like someone had put his entire body into a vise and squeezed. And yet, he liked this kind of pain. The soreness made him feel real. And the increased definition of the muscles beneath his newly tanned skin didn’t hurt either. He came home so worn out that all he wanted to do was lie down on Walter’s couch and watch reruns of The Simpsons.

  At least every other night, Lex came over so that she and Walter could hit a meeting. She usually slipped in carrying a bag of takeout. Thai and Indian seemed to be her favorites. Both foods Chase had never even smelled, let alone tasted, before meeting Lex. If someone had ever told Chase that his father would wind up dating this serene little yoga-teaching, pad Thai–eating pixie, Chase would have laughed.

  Chase kept waiting to see the old Walter, but all he got were pieces of the old mixed with the new. Like the time Walter was irritated with a roofing assistant who spoke no English. He started to cuss him out, to work himself up—veins sticking out in his neck. But then Walter stepped away, muttering to himself. Made a phone call to his sponsor and came back to try again.

  Or the time Walter stormed around the house because someone used the last of the soap without telling him. Not pounding anyone or throwing anything. Just yelling and stomping around like a little kid. But those things were like single grains of sand on a beach—they were nothing. Before, Walter had been an out-of-control monster, terrorizing his wife and kids. And now he was just a roofer with a temper. Go figure.

  Every other night when Walter and Lex traipsed off to seek their higher power, Chase lounged around, enjoying his privacy. Tonight Chase grabbed a soda from the fridge and set himself up on the computer. Walter’s television and computer faced each other in the living room, so Chase could channel surf while he Internet surfed. The only thing that would have made the setup more perfect (besides a hot Rose Parsimmon on his lap) would have been a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Chase resolved to get himself some.

  Daniel instant-messaged Chase every couple of days, and called about once a week. In typical Daniel Stein style, he sent gossip-filled updates, funny YouTube videos, random Buddhist sayings, and the occasional political cartoon. And inevitably, every once in a while the discussion turned to Rose. Chase had been trying so hard not to obsess about her, but she’d been popping into his dreams, uninvited, nearly every night.

  Chase: Her parents probably have her locked up in that house. There should be a law against that. Isn’t it child abuse or something?

  Daniel: Yeah, well, so is beating your kid, and we all know how often parents get arrested for that.

  Chase: Ouch. Point taken. Besides, I bet they’d just say they were keeping her in for her own good, or some crap like that. I wonder if I should contact her. I haven’t since I left. I figured she wouldn’t want to hear from me.

  Daniel: Who knows? Who knows if she even gets her messages? Becca’s been trying to get hold of her. I keep telling her to forget about it already, but you know my sister. She gets obsessed.

  Chase: Walter keeps talking about letting go of the things you can’t control. He’d say we can’t control Rose, so we need to let it go.

  Daniel: Yeah, right. Try telling that to Becca.

  Chase IMed Daniel back and forth for another hour, but his heart wasn’t in it. His heart stayed stuck on Rose. Missing her seemed like a deep, dark abyss of churning water. Once he allowed himself to think about her, he’d be pulled under by the current and unable to get back up. You’re just like all the rest … Don’t you ever freaking touch me. Her eyes flashed before him then, the hate burning through her pupils.

  Chase set down his soda. It suddenly tasted sour. He leaned his head back against the swivel chair. He had pushed her. Why? What was wrong with him? Did he inherit a bad temper from Walter just like he’d inherited his height and his eyes?

  Chase remembered the quote Daniel had emailed last week: “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind.” Had Walter magically rid himself of a big, old bag of resentments?

  Chase tried to figure out who he resented, who he had to forgive. Walter—for hurting them, Candy—for not protecting them, Rose for being so damn self-destructive, and last year’s English teacher for assigning books to read over the summer. Suddenly, like a blast of cold air, Chase realized who he resented the most. Himself.

  Slowly Chase typed in Rose’s email address with plunk-plunk fingers. I am thinking of you. He felt like his fingers were marching into battle. I’m sorry for the way we left things. I want a do-over. What do you say? As he pressed Send, he wondered if Rose even had access to the Internet. With her parents, he couldn’t be sure.

  42

  ROSE

  Rose would have bet every Prozac capsule in the bathroom cabinet that Nala understood her better than any human ever would. Too bad she didn’t have any funky Alice in Wonderland pills to take her to a far-off land crazier than her own.

  They think I’m nuts. Certifiable, in fact. Nala tilted her head just slightly to the left, watching Rose, then curled up in her lap. Rose could hear the Parsimmons talking in worried tones from the living room. They seemed to think that just because she’d stopped talking for the last three months, she somehow couldn’t hear now either. They didn’t even bother to lower their voices. Hello, people. I still have ears.

  Mr. P. hemmed and hawed for a minute, revving up his vocal engine. “I wonder if it was a mistake to keep her out of school. I’ve never seen her this bad.”

  “I know it’s hard to watch her this way,” Mrs. P. said softly. “But you have to remember that it’s for her own safety that we keep her here. And your health. She’s liable to give you a heart attack with all the chaos she creates.”

  My own safety? What, I’m going to set fire to myself or walk in front of a train?

  “I just worry about her all alone every day. She’s been wearing that gray Nike sweatshirt for weeks. I think it’s from that boy Chase or Chuck, or whatever his name was. But now it’s August and a hundred degrees out there, and she doesn’t even seem to care.”

  “Maybe we should call Dr. Gutman and have him up her meds again.”

  Bring it on! Rose wanted to taunt—that is, if she had been talking.

  Nala pawed at her gently, her claws catching on Rose’s Nike sweatshirt, like she was trying to tell her something.

  What? I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why I don’t just disappear. I could run away. I’ve done it before. Rose didn’t say the words out loud to Nala on the off chance the Parsimmons might overhear. Didn’t seem to matter, though. Nala seemed to get what she was thinking about even without words. Well, maybe I will. And this time, if I leave, I’m never coming back.

  A flash of anger raced through her chest. It was time to take control of the situation and make some decisions herself. Stroking Nala’s back, Rose repeated to herself, I’ll end things here one way or another.

  43

  CHASE

  In between watching Walter chop green peppers and grate mozzarella cheese, Chase threw out bits of conversation like seasoning. “Somehow, I never pictured you cooking a three-course vegetarian meal.”

  “Somehow, I never pictured you just standing there watching me cook a three-course vegetarian meal. Come on, get your hands dirty,” Walter said, holding out an onion to Chase with a lopsided grin. Lex had informed Walter that all she wanted for her birthday was a home-cooked vegetarian meal.

  “Oh, thanks. Give me the onion. You just don’t want me to see you cry.”

  “Right as rain,” Walter tossed out jovially, not bothering to look back. “Come on, now. Haven’t we ever cooked together before?”

  Chase heaved himself up from the kitchen stool. “Are you kidding me? First of all, the most I ever saw you cook was
boiling macaroni or barbecuing hot dogs. And second of all, cooking together or doing anything together would mean we actually talked to each other. I don’t think you and I had conversations longer than two minutes, max. And third of all, most of our conversations were you lecturing to me or yelling at me, not a back-and-forth kind of thing.”

  “That’s how you remember it?”

  “That’s how it was.” Chase took a breath, feeling braver by the minute. “I don’t know what happened to you, but you’re completely different.”

  Walter turned away from the counter and looked straight at Chase. “I guess I wasn’t a very good father.”

  “You were mostly a shitty father.” Never before would Chase have dared to say such a thing to his dad, let alone say it when there were knives anywhere within reach.

  “Mostly?” Walter asked seriously. “That means I did something right?”

  “It’s all relative, no pun intended.” Chase leaned back onto the stool for support, the onion still in his hand. Suddenly, he felt hot both inside and out. “You beat me like a dog. You scared me shitless. I watched you break my mother’s arm more than once. There were times I thought you were going to kill one of us.”

  “I don’t remember very much of that,” Walter said, looking a little sad. “The drinking was so constant back then that I lost days at a time. I blacked out.”

  “I don’t want to knock this recovery thing. But it’s bullshit to put it all off on that. You did those things to us. You did. Maybe the alcohol helped, but you did it.” Chase could feel his blood rushing to his face and angry tears building up behind his eyes.

  “That’s fair, I guess.” Walter looked cornered, but resigned. “All I can say is that your childhood and my childhood were not that different. My pop drank like a fish and came after us as long as he could stand. I left home when I was about your age, and I never looked back.” His eyelids seemed heavy.

  “As much as I hated him, he was the only father I knew. I suppose I told myself I was teaching you to be a man. But a part of me knew I was out of control. When your mom was pregnant with Daisy, I got after her real bad one time … ” His voice broke.

  “I remember.”

  “And I–I guess I sort of woke up for a minute and realized I was turning into my father and I tried to pull it together, honest I did.”

  “I remember that too.”

  “My thinking was all backward and upside down, Chase. I guess I kind of got high off it, off the adrenaline, or something. I can’t explain it. Shit. I don’t even understand it myself.” Walter ran his fingers through his hair, forgetting the bits of chopped green pepper on his hands, which now decorated his shaggy waves.

  “I hated you for it.” Chase wished he was cutting the onion, because his eyes were tearing up.

  “I hated me for it too.” Walter probably wished he’d held on to the onion himself, because his eyes were also full with tears. He waited for a moment, breathing heavily. “Do you still hate me for it?”

  That Chase had to think about. “Yes and no.” He sighed carefully. His chest felt tight. “I hate you for putting us all through that. I hate you for leaving us and for not helping us out with money. But I don’t hate the person you are now. I don’t really understand who you are now, but I don’t hate you.”

  “I hear you.” Walter brushed his hands together to clean them off. “I made so many mistakes I can’t even count them. But I can’t change them either. All I can do is try better from here on out. I beat myself up about them for a long time after I left you guys. But that only made me want to drink more. When I finally got involved with the twelve-step program, I met other people in my situation, and I felt like I got to start with a clean slate. Now, I’m just trying my best every day. It’s not easy, because I think I’m a rage-aholic just like I’m an alcoholic. I have to constantly work to keep it in check.”

  Chase heard himself say, “I hit my mother.” The words hung heavily in the air.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t ever want to be you—the old you.”

  “I don’t want you to be me either. Half the time, I don’t want to be me myself.”

  Chase turned around then, because it was too hard to look Walter in the face. He braced his upper body against the counter, leaning his head down toward it. “Why did you contact me? Why did you want to share custody after all that time?”

  “I was ready. It was time. I wanted to try to repair things.”

  Chase whipped around, his face wet. “Bullshit. It was because of the child support.”

  Walter stepped suddenly closer and Chase instinctively shrank back. Walter stopped short. “It was time, is all. I wasn’t ready before.” Walter lifted his hands helplessly and dropped them down, like he didn’t know what to do with them. “I had to be ready. Otherwise, what was the point? I’d just be right back where I started.”

  “But I wasn’t going to come! I was going to stay with my girlfriend—and you were going to let me.”

  “I know. Just because I was ready to try to repair things with you, doesn’t mean you were ready to repair things with me. I get that.” Walter turned back toward the counter and picked up the chopping knife. He hunched his shoulders. “Where I come from, we don’t say things like I love you. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel those things. I just can’t say them.”

  Walter worked in silence for a while, his back still facing Chase. The room seemed like it was spinning, for all the water in Chase’s eyes. He stood there like a fool until Walter sniffled. “Cut that onion, already, why don’t you? I can’t have Lex walking in on us all weepy and shit.”

  So Chase did.

  44

  ROSE

  Rose had never seen so many cans of tuna fish in her life. Stacked one on top of another in the pantry, like the Parsimmons were preparing a tuna-fish survival kit for the next big earthquake. Rose stood there, mouth open for a moment, until she heard Mr. P. scrape his chair against the kitchen floor behind her.

  He cleared his throat. “They were on sale,” he explained. “And I, uh, noticed you’ve been eating a lot of tuna fish in your room.” Rose whirled around and eyed him, trying to figure out what he meant. He couldn’t possibly know about Nala, hidden in her room, could he?

  Uncomfortable silence. “I like tuna fish myself,” he added. “Good source of lean protein. Good for my cholesterol.” He patted himself on the chest, and it was so corny that Rose almost groaned.

  Rose grabbed a can and headed for the can opener, thankful she’d remembered to close her bedroom door. Nala had never ventured from her room, even the couple of times Rose had forgotten to close the door or shut her in the closet. It was almost as though Nala knew to be afraid.

  Rose spun the can around the blade to open it, tipped it over the sink to pour out the tuna juice, and spooned out the wet tuna. As she carried the plastic plate to her room, aware of the concerned heat from Mr. P.’s eyes on her back, little bits of her plan peppered her thoughts.

  1. She would not stay at the Parsimmons’ forever.

  2. She would not stay silent forever.

  3. She would not stay depressed forever.

  4. She would not allow them to keep her from her real mother forever.

  5. She would do whatever it took to escape. Whatever it took.

  Granted, the plan was more like a wish list than an actual step-by-step strategy, but it made her feel like she was doing something. Even with the plan as inspiration, many days were lost to the darkness of sleep, so Rose knew she must still be depressed. There was one thing she knew for sure. An exit strategy was a necessity.

  As strict as the Parsimmons were and had always been, they were stupidly naïve about the Internet. They had no idea how to set up parental blocks on the computer and were too proud to ask anyone for help. Not that Rose was visiting porn sites or anything like that. Just that she was rese
arching for her plan, a plan she wanted the Parsimmons to know nothing about.

  Logging on to the Internet made Rose feel more connected to the world. Even though she didn’t respond to any emails or instant messages, she read them daily, often several times. Most were from Becca, with a smattering from Chase, and a bunch of spam.

  At first it seemed like Becca was trying to apologize or connect in some way, but since Rose never responded, now Becca just sent jokes. And an e-card too, for her birthday mid-September. Sweet sixteen came and went with about as much excitement as a trip to the dentist.

  How many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb? Sent at 2:55 p.m. No response from Rose, although it was fun trying to figure it out.

  Maybe … a hundred because they just sit there waiting for the lightbulb to talk about its feelings, and any idiot knows a lightbulb doesn’t talk. Or have feelings.

  Maybe … two. One to listen, and one to nickel-and-dime you for every second on the couch.

  Maybe … zero. A shrink couldn’t figure out how to change a lightbulb any better than he could figure out how to change a juvenile delinquent like Rose. The lightbulb would go unchanged.

  Give up? Okay here’s the answer: Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change. Get it? Sent at 10:28 p.m. I miss you, Rose. I thought you’d like that one. Here’s to all the Parsimmons’ money you’ve wasted by sitting like a lump in a shrink’s office. Ha! Some shrink probably bought his wife a pair of new boobs for all of that.

  That image made Rose smile, as she thought of old, saggy Dr. Gutman, the psychiatrist, with an old, saggy Mrs. Gutman, sitting there with big, old perky boobs, kind of like a cross between a Barbie doll and the nanny from 101 Dalmatians.

  For the last month Chase had been emailing her as well, sometimes with sappy Buddhist crap he must have lifted either from Daniel Stein or from Hallmark cards. Just seeing his name on the screen tugged at her heart, but she pushed it away. Of course she didn’t respond to either of their emails. If she let either Chase or Becca back into her world, she’d only hurt them worse when she did what she had to do.