Now She's Gone: A Novel

by Kim Corum

  What the hell was she talking about? What problem?

  “One of my earliest memories? Dr. Sweeny told me to start with something like that. That’s easy. I remember my daddy leaving and me running out after him, thinking he was just going to the store. Me wanting to go with him. I was about seven? Eight? Really young, nonetheless. And he wasn’t just going to the store. He was going for good.

  My mother. Damn her anyway. I know she tried and all that, but, hell, she was so miserable, especially over my father. She later told me, ‘Your daddy was no good. A drunk and a womanizer. The only good thing about him is you.’

  Like that’s supposed to make me feel better or something? Whatever. I’ve always felt she ran him off. I know they fought a lot and he was pretty much a bum, but he was so good to us. He was so funny and he always gave me anything I wanted and it didn’t matter what, he’d find a way to get it for me. And she tore him away from me. That’s what she did.

  Not that I really hold grudges over it. Maybe I do. It just hurts and once he was gone, she was bound and determined to make him stay gone. And I looked for him everywhere. I tried to find him. I never gave up. The last time I saw him was in his casket. Cirrhosis of the liver.

  Maybe I shouldn’t start with all the bad stuff, though that’s the shit that drives me crazy.

  I didn’t have it that bad growing up. Mom worked her ass off to make sure we had a place to stay and food. She wasn’t like Daddy, though. She never gave me extra shit. We had to save the money ‘just in case something happens.’ She was always worried about something happening. Whatever that meant. I’ve always been of the opinion that she’s a little paranoid.

  My best friend’s name was Kelsey and she was really cool. I remember her being so interested in boys, even from a very young age. She couldn’t wait to get her period, either. Then after she got it, she wished it away. That’s Kelsey in a nutshell.

  My childhood was as normal as it could be being raised by a single parent. The days just seemed to blend into one another. One day, another day, gone. Next day same. Our small town in Tennessee was just a boring little place. Nothing much happened. Ever.

  There was one day I’ll never forget. It was May 1st. I was twelve years old then. Kelsey and I were standing around the playground at school with some other girls discussing babies. We were dying to figure it all out. None of us really knew anything about it and how it actually worked stumped us. Well, we had to find out about it somehow, didn’t we? We sure didn’t have any sex education and most of our mothers ran from the room if we even mentioned sex. It was a deep, dark secret. When I asked Mom about it one day, you know, just making conversation she said, ‘Where did you get that idea? No one does that anymore!’

  Anymore? Alright then, Mother. Of course, I never tried to talk to her about it again. But, then again, because she was being so hush-hush about it by denying its very existence, it actually made it all the more enticing.

  I remember the boys kept kicking a soccer ball in our general direction and one of us would bend down and throw it back or kick it back to them, most times without even looking at them. A few times they’d run over and ask for it. This makes me smile. Those boys wanted our attention so bad! And we just couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think I even liked boys at that point.

  The teacher—Ms. O’Connor—came up and asked us what we were doing ‘congregated’ over there. And that’s what she had said, too. ‘Congregated.’ Like we were in church or something. If she only knew what we’d been talking about, she would have prayed for our souls.

  We shrugged and she told us we could go inside and do some cut-outs for her. I didn’t want to go in but the other girls did, so I started to follow them but my shoe was untied. I bent down to tie it and glanced over at the fence that surrounded the school. My heart did a flip-flop. My daddy was standing there smiling at me! It had been at least five years since I’d seen him last, but I knew it was him. I could tell because he always wore a cowboy hat. I think he wore that same hat every day until the day he died. It was white straw and bent into shape. Standing there, he looked so handsome. Mom says he and I are just alike. I think that’s one reason she and I don’t get along for the most part.

  He gave me a little wave. I started to wave back but Kelsey pulled me up and told me we had to go.

  Like an idiot, I told my mom about seeing him.

  She said, ‘You can’t go thinking every bum on the street is your daddy!’

  ‘But he was! I know it was him!’

  She got really perturbed. ‘Cassandra, how can you think that? I told you not to talk to strangers!’

  I got really pissed off. She was so cruel when it came to my dad. I said, ‘He’s not a stranger, he’s my daddy and you won’t let me see him!’

  ‘The way I see it, young miss, he didn’t want you when you was a baby and he don’t want you now.’

  ‘You ran him off!’ I screamed.

  ‘You’re damn right I did! I can barely raise one kid, let alone two, one of which is a grown man!’

  ‘Maybe he wants to say he’s sorry.’

  She lit a cigarette. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Maybe he wants to be my daddy now.’

  ‘Now?! Now he wants to be your daddy! What about five years ago!?’

  I burst into tears. I wanted him in my life more than anything. I had to have him. She must have realized she was upsetting me because she calmed down and her tone changed.

  She said, ‘Baby, you don’t know him like I do.’

  ‘Because you won’t let me!’

  ‘He is a drunk, Cassandra! A drunken horrible excuse for a man!’

  ‘Don’t you talk about him like that!’

  I ran out of the room and she sat there puffing on her damn cigarette.

  The next day, he was waiting for me after school. Kelsey and I had walked out together to get on the bus and there he was.

  ‘Cassandra?’ he called to me.

  I stopped in my tracks. It was him. It was really him! When I saw him, I just lit up inside. I always had this feeling he would try to find me and once he did, everything in my life would be right again. I wanted him home with me and Mom. I wanted us to be a family. All the other kids had a family and I wanted one, too.

  ‘Daddy?’

  He grinned and nodded. ‘How have you been, Dragon?’

  He always called me Dragon because when I was a baby, I would roar when I was hungry or upset. My roaring never bothered him, he said. He thought it was cute. ‘This big old sound coming from this little bitty baby.’

  We stayed there and talked to him for the longest time. The bus left us but we didn’t care. My daddy was such charming man that he made everything seem less important. And I hated riding the damn bus. All the boys would stick their hands between the seats so they could touch my ass. I once slapped the shit out of one of them for doing that and the little bastard never tried it again. It was almost funny. He looked so shocked and was like, How could you do that! And I was like, How could you do that!

  Back to Daddy. I’ll never forget this.

  He said, ‘And then I asked that man how much it was worth to him and he says to me, How about twenty dollars?’

  Using sleight of hand, he pulled a twenty out of my ear and handed it to me. I was so impressed.

  He continued, ‘So, I told him if it was worth one, it was worth two.’

  He then pulled a twenty out of Kelsey’s ear. We giggled. I just absolutely beamed at him. Then I heard her. I’d forgotten about her. I guess she got worried when I didn’t get off the bus and of course, the school was the first logical place to look for me.

  Our old, junky car pulled up and Mom got out and stomped over to us. My eyes were big as saucers. I just knew she was going to beat the shit out of me. She did that sometimes, especially when she was mad. And today, she was mad as a hornet. Or a wet hen. Where the hell do these sayings come from?

  Anyway.

  She screeched, ‘What did I t
ell you, Cassandra!’

  She grabbed for me, but I side-stepped her, which pissed her off even more.

  ‘Come here!’ she yelled as she grabbed for me.

  Daddy said, ‘Nice to see you again, Lizzie.’

  Boy that pissed her off even more. To have him speak to her after all the shit he put her through! How dare he?

  She got right in his face and yelled, ‘You bastard! I told you to stay away from her! How could you do this?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Liz! She’s my kid!’

  ‘She’s your kid? Huh? Well, why don’t you do something for her instead of living like a bum!’

  ‘Lizzie, come on—’

  He tried to put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked around and slapped him right across the face. It looked like it hurt. The imprint of her hand was on his right cheek.

  ‘That’s for all those nights I cried myself to sleep!’

  He looked so ashamed.

  She turned to me and pointed in my face, ‘You get your ass in that that car, young miss, and I mean right now! You too, Kelsey!’

  I defiantly stood by his side and refused to move. Mom grabbed for me but I grabbed onto his arm and wouldn’t let her tear me away from him. Daddy put his other arm around me as Mom tried to pull us apart.

  She finally gave up and hissed, ‘You still gambling?’

  ‘Gotta eat.’

  ‘You still boozing?’

  He looked uncomfortable but refused to let her get the best of him and said, ‘What’s it to you?’

  She was so pissed off, she snorted. I winced. She looked so unattractive when she did that.

  ‘You still whoring around?’ she hissed. ‘Why don’t you tell your daughter about that?’

  He looked embarrassed.

  ‘You’re only here to cause trouble. I know you better than you think. We’re doing fine. A lot better without you here.’

  He looked at his shoes. And he moved away from me. I could feel it. It’s like something shifted between us, like a bond had been broken. I still feel it when I think of this.

  ‘Come on, Cassandra!’ she hissed.

  ‘No!’ I screamed as she reached over and grabbed me and this time she pulled me away from him. I screamed and sobbed all the way to the car as he stood there and looked at his shoes. I think he wiped at his eyes. He knew then he’d never be part of my life. She would never let him.

  Later she told me, ‘Tomorrow you’ll feel better and forget about him, just like I did. It’s for your own good, baby. That man doesn’t know how to love anybody but himself.’

  That was the last time I saw him alive. I hope she’s happy.”

  I stared at the notebook. She’d never told me that. She only laughingly referred to her father as a sperm donor. I remembered when he died. She’d gotten a phone call from her friend Kelsey. I came home to see her on the floor, curled in a little ball, sobbing. She’d cried for what seemed like hours.

  She still had that twenty dollar bill. She carried it around with her wherever she went. Once I asked her about it and all she said, “It’s just special to me. The first money I ever earned.” She didn’t tell me it was the only thing she’d ever gotten from her father and she couldn’t part with it because somehow that twenty dollar bill tied them together.

  Wayne

  “Dear Diary,

  God, I just hate the way that sounds. It’s one of those words like ‘period.’ It just comes out of your mouth bad. I think I will switch it to ‘Hello, you’ or something. That sounds better.

  Anyway. School dance. A song I really liked but can’t remember the name of was playing in the background and Kelsey and I were sitting on the bleachers bored out of our skulls. I don’t why I remember this, but we were discussing The Karate Kid.

  It was funny. We both had on these ultra-tight designer jeans and these little button-up tops with fluffy sleeves. We were stylin’! I will never forget those jeans. I had to save my baby sitting money for eons to buy them but they were worth every dime. All the boys checked out my ass in those jeans.

  We were both sixteen, almost seventeen, and thought we were the shit. Some of the boys did too, but, of course, none the boys we wanted to think we were the shit thought we were the shit. You know, the ‘popular’ boys with the letter jackets and the slicked back hair. The jocks wouldn’t give us a second look because we weren’t cheerleaders or some such shit.

  The other boys thought we were pretty cool. Or so I like to imagine.

  The other boys… Ah, yes. (I can feel a good memory coming on.) The other boys liked us. It was the other boys who worked on their parents’ dairy farms before and after school and drove these huge four-wheel drive pick-ups that were always mud-splattered. The ones who wore cowboy boots to dances and never tried out for any of the sports teams. The boys in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) who dressed for events in their little blue jackets with the yellow patches all over them.

  Ah, the boys who had those awesome rippling shoulder muscles and that sun-bleached hair. The boys whose skin was so tight and tanned it made them look like Greek gods.

  Wayne was one of those boys.

  I didn’t even know he had a crush on me until the dance. All I know is Kelsey excused herself to the bathroom and suddenly he was sitting next to me, trying not to look at me. I ignored him and popped my gum.

  Then he said, ‘Uh, Sandy, do you want to…uh, dance?’

  ‘Nah.’

  He looked crushed. Not that I gave a shit. I was not looking to hook up with Wayne Eberhart. He was from this big German looking family. A big, big guy. I sometimes think that’s why I fell for Bruce so hard because he’s big, like Wayne was.”

  I stopped reading and considered that. I decided to take it as a compliment.

  “So, he’s sitting there like a bump on a log and I know he’s not going to leave me the hell alone until I dance with him, so I get up, hold out my hand and say, ‘One dance. And if you try to cop a feel, you’re gonna regret it.’

  Well, you’d think I’d just told him he’d won the lottery. He jumped up and we danced, even though it was awkward as hell. He was a big guy and had two left feet. He kept stomping his big old brogan feet all over mine until I pushed him off me and told him I’d had enough.

  He made me so sad when he said, ‘One day you will like me, Sandy.’

  I ignored my feelings and said, ‘Oh, and when will that be, Wayne?’ The poor guy just dropped his head and wouldn’t look at me. I felt bad, so I said, ‘I like you, Wayne, but not like that.’

  And I scoffed as if to say, ‘No one would ever like you like that.’ I was just so not nice to him.

  ‘I know, Sandy. I won’t bother you again.’

  And that just broke my heart. He walked out of the gym with his head down and I could have burst into tears. I suddenly felt like my mother, hating all men for no reason other than I thought I should. I was tired of feeling like that, too.

  I ran after him. He was nowhere to be seen. I ran to the parking lot and he was getting into his Ford pick-up. I waved at him to wait. He did. I told him I was sorry and he asked me if I wanted to go for a drive.

  I grinned and said, ‘Let me find Kelsey.’

  He grinned back and I went back inside and found her. She did not want to come with us.

  ‘Wayne Eberhart,’ she said as if I’d just told her we had a date with someone totally undesirable. ‘He always smells like cow shit!’

  ‘He doesn’t tonight,’ I said. ‘Now come with me!’

  So, we went driving around with Wayne and had a really good time. I sat in the middle next to him and I remember trying to keep our legs from touching. It didn’t always work because he took us on all these pig trails and our legs would touch, or, rather, bump, whenever he ran over a rut in the road. And there were a lot of damned ruts in the road. His leg seemed so much larger than mine. So much more strong.

  We had a lot of fun. Well, Kelsey and I did. I guess he did, too. He just sat there and grinned most of the time
and even once said, ‘All the guys at school will be mad at me, driving around with two of the prettiest girls in school.’

  His compliment made us beam with pride. We always thought we were the prettiest and we were just glad someone else thought so, too. Our assumptions were confirmed.

  It was getting late when he took us back. My mom was waiting in the parking lot, so I told him to drive around back and Kelsey and I ducked down in the seat so she couldn’t see us. She would have killed me if she knew I’d been driving around with Wayne or anyone else. We said goodnight, hopped out, went back into the gym and then walked out like we’d been in there the whole time. That was the first time I had tried to pull anything over on my mother and when it worked, it made me want to do it more.

  Later, Kelsey told me, ‘You know, that Wayne Eberhart isn’t too bad a looking guy.’

  So I decided to give him a try.”

  I stopped reading and thought, Yup. That’s Sandy. Give him a try.

  “Hey, you!

  Yeah, that’s better. I guess. It still sounds a little stupid. ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.’ (Crack me up!) ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Sandy…’ I think I read that book a million times.

  Hell, I’ll just go with it. If anyone ever reads this—”

  I suddenly felt guilty as hell. It didn’t stop me from reading, though. It should have but it didn’t.

  “—then they can give the obligatory eye roll and that will be fine with me. Who would read it? Who would want to?”

  Oh, shit, guilt. No. Yes. I put the journal down and stared at it. Oh, fuck it. It wasn’t like she was coming home. It wasn’t like she cared about me anymore. I could read the damn thing if I wanted to. She wasn’t around, was she? No. And if she ever found out, so be it. She gave me no choice in the matter.

  I picked it back up.

  “Oh, Dr. Sweeney wanted to read my journal. But I decided not to see her anymore. She seems nice but this journal thing is helping me more than sitting in her office for an hour. Besides, I couldn’t get the nerve to tell her why I was really there. I don’t even know what it is. It’s just this little thing that comes up every once in a while to torture me. I live through it and hope it doesn’t return. It always does.”