by Emilia Finn
“I guess we’re eating here.” I accept my scoop, and reach into my pocket for my wallet, only for Brooke to wave her wristwatch over the card machine until it beeps.
“You…” I stare between her and the girl who’s already done with us as she goes to clean in the back. “What? You did not just pay!”
“It’s ice cream.” She takes her cone from the holder and stares right into my fucking eyes as she slides her tongue from the bottom to the top.
I’m certain she doesn’t mean what my brain insists she means, but my imagination races ahead the way it did when I read nudie magazines after Karla left. I was young, healthy, and needed relief, and I had absolutely no chance or inclination to find that relief with another human. So I bought filthy magazines, and let my mind get me over the line.
Kinda pathetic, I know. But a desperate man does what he needs to do.
“Brooke. You don’t pay for me and my daughter to eat. That’s not cool.”
“But you were just about to pay for mine?” She scoffs and steps around me to head in Lyss’ direction. “The patriarchal society died a long time ago. At least as far as I’m concerned. If you’d paid, I wouldn’t have made a big deal about it. I got it this time, so I expect you to eat your ice cream and hush.” She arrives at the booth and stops with a wide grin. “Can I sit with you?”
“Sure!” Lyss shuffles further in, and slaps her hand against the cracking vinyl seat.
“Brooke, it’s not… it doesn’t…” I arrive at the booth and frown. “I’m not saying I have a problem with women voting, driving, or working. But paying for a meal when a man is standing right there…” I shake my head. “That’s not okay.”
“You gonna teach your daughter to rely on a man and his wallet?” She lifts a brow and smirks as I slide into the booth across from them. “Really? That’s the lesson you wanna teach her?”
“No. I will teach my daughter to rely on no one. She will earn and have her own money, but when she’s out, if the guy doesn’t pay, then he ain’t worth her time.”
“That’s a seriously confusing standard.” She licks a little more of her dessert, and winks for a giggling Lyss. “So she’s to have the means, but to clutch that purse tight and demand a man prove himself?”
“Exactly.” I point my spoon and glower for my daughter, who thinks this is humorous. “Damn friggin straight.”
Brooke laughs and kills my appetite in an instant when her melodic laughter sends bolts of electricity straight through my stomach. “My daddy taught me lessons like that too. Ya know, be independent, be strong, be assertive, and don’t waste your time on jerks.” She points her ice cream. “The fact you’re making this into a big deal would prove you’ve passed the first hurdle. I took the choice out of your hands, but you’re not letting it go easily. Guess that makes you worth my time.”
I narrow my eyes – in suspicion, confusion, frustration – and dig my spoon into my dessert. “Don’t buy my food again. Makes me feel small.” I lift a hand, my thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. “No man wants to feel small.”
She’s entertained by me, which is… confusing. Is it annoying? Or do I want to smile?
I legitimately don’t know.
“Alright, big chief. Eat up anyway, because it’s rude to waste.” She looks to Lyss. “How was school today?”
“It was good. Miss Parker taught us a counting song.”
“No way! Did you know Miss Parker was my kindergarten teacher too?”
“No way!” Lyss parrots back. “Did you know Vincent Van Gogh died in France?”
Red-faced, Brooke laughs and completely ignores me as she eats and chatters. “I’m not sure I knew that, but I guess I do now. Can you believe I was actually thinking about Vincent Van Gogh recently? I was thinking about famous artists and college educations, and he popped into my mind. Did he go to college?” She looks to me, then back to Lyss. “That’s an actual question. I don’t know the answer.”
“I don’t know,” Lyss murmurs. “But I can ask Miss Parker tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Oh!” Lyss throws a dramatic hand up to smack her forehead. “I’ll ask her Monday! I’ll find out for you, Miss Brooke.”
“That would be so cool if you did. What have you been up to outside of school? I see you in your yard in the afternoons.”
“I see you too. Did you know I’m writing a book?”
And so I simply sit back and let my daughter ask the questions so I don’t have to.
“No way! I used to write books when I was your age too. It’s fun, huh?”
Wide-eyed and bobble-headed, Lyss nods. “It’s so much fun. What’s your characters’ names?” Her voice turns to a whisper. “Is it Clancy? Because I’m using that name.”
“No.” Laughing, Brooke cleans the side of her cone as her ice cream begins to melt. “I haven’t used that name before. But don’t be mad if you find other books with similar names. Someone else might’ve used Clancy, and that’s okay too. It doesn’t mean your Clancy isn’t special, and it doesn’t mean their Clancy isn’t special. I bet there are a lot of girls in the world who share the name Brooke.”
“But you’re special too?” Lyss turns in her seat so she doesn’t have to fold her neck around, but still uncomfortable, she merely stands and plops her butt on the table. “I like your name, Miss Brooke. It’s pretty.”
“Aww, thank y—”
“Alyssa. Butt on the chair.”
Like she’d forgotten I was here, Brooke’s gaze comes to me. She grins, then turns back to Lyss and lifts a brow in wait.
“Alyssa Walker. Listen to my words.”
“I’m not gonna fall, Daddy.” She doesn’t even look to me. “I promise I’m not gonna fall.”
“You can’t promise, because accidents are accidents, and they happen when we don’t expect them.”
“But, Daddy, look.” My girl, who never talks back, spreads her arms wide and spills a little melted sorbet onto her delicate wrist. “Look how big it is. The table is huge, and the chair is huge and right there. I can’t fall. There’s nowhere to fall to.”
“Alyssa… Don’t make me get mad at you. Three… two…”
“Ugh!” She plops back to the chair and spills more of her sorbet. Glowering with a heavy brow and eyes that wish to set me on fire, she pouts and hunches her shoulders. But she’s sitting on the chair again, so there’s that.
“What would have happened at ‘one’?” Brooke whispers. She looks from Lyss to me. “Pop on the butt? A thousand years in your room? Oh god, not a long talk about being responsible?”
My lips twitch with the ghost of a smile as Lyss continues to pout. “You’re not helping me here, just so you know. And if I got to ‘one,’ we would have left our dessert and company right here, we’d have gone home, gone to bed, and then…”
Brooke waits on pins and needles. “And then what?”
“We would have hugged it out. Because there’s a reason she’s acting out. It’s probably because she’s not feeling heard, so we’d go home, hug, and listen to each other. But,” I add for Lyss, who dares a peek up at her new best friend, “she’d still miss out on the sorbet and the friends she had to leave behind. That’s punishment for popping off and being cheeky.”
“Are you ever cheeky?” Brooke’s gaze goes back to my daughter, her head turning so long, blonde hair falls over her shoulder and dangles over her chest. “I’ve never seen you in any way except perfect. Perfect manners, perfect jokes, perfect everything.”
“She can definitely be cheeky,” I answer, since I already see the halo my daughter wants to paint over her head. “Like how she asked you for chocolate ice cream. She didn’t mess up. She was being cheeky.”
“That was a little mischievous, wasn’t it?” Brooke slides her tongue along her dessert and grins for my girl.
It’s not that Lyss doesn’t like chocolate, it’s that it messes with her body. So Brooke’s punishment hits its target.
; “I can’t believe you almost got the chocolate one. I’m going to have to be on my guard around you, huh?” Finally, Brooke’s eyes come to me – not playful, not teasing – as she swallows her ice cream. “Would contact affect her? Like if my ice cream dribbled onto her leg?”
I nod. “Her skin would flare up where you dropped it.”
“But it won’t do permanent damage or anything, right?”
I set my spoon back into my cup and place the cup on the table. “That ice cream, dripped onto her leg, would make her leg itchy. She’d scratch herself raw, probably end up with hives from anxiety, but that’s as bad as it’d be. If she ate it, she’d be sick for days. Poop and vomit, she’d be miserable. She’d also miss out on school, then we’d have to talk about making good choices.”
“And that’s the same with all of her allergens: the wheat, the milk, all of that stuff?”
I nod. “To varying degrees. Yes.”
“And if she ate ice cream with peanuts in it?”
Despite the fact I tell people upfront about my daughter’s allergies, I actually try to be discreet about it as she grows older. Nobody wants to be known by their disability or medical history. My girl wants to be Lyssa, the cheeky six-year-old with insane reading capabilities and the quick wit I’m not ashamed to admit she got from me. Whenever I speak like this in front of her now, she tends to retreat, to huddle in and make herself invisible. No one wants to be talked about. So I turn to Lyss and let her speak for herself.
“What would happen, baby? Can you tell Miss Brooke about yourself?”
Taken aback, Brooke flips her gaze to Lyss.
“If I eat bad things I’m not supposed to, I get tummy aches, like Daddy said. But if I touch peanuts, I can’t breathe anymore. I get a needle, and then we go to the hospital.”
“A needle?”
I pull a pen from my pocket and spin it between my fingers. The main tube is a light gray, so light it’s almost white. The cap on the end, a bright, shocking orange.
When Brooke’s fingers twitch, I slide the pen across the table, and watch as she picks it up to study.
“You carry these all the time?”
I look to Lyss.
She nods. “We carry two, just in case the first one is messed up.” She reaches out and helps position it for Brooke. “‘Blue to the sky,’” she points toward the blue at the end of the pen. Then the orange cap. “‘Orange to the thigh.’ That’s how you remember.”
“Blue to the sky,” Brooke repeats, “orange to the thigh.” She leans back in her seat, studies her thighs, then Lyss’. “Does it hurt?”
Lyss shrugs. “Don’t remember.”
I chime in, “I suspect, when your throat is closing up, and you’re moments from…” I shrug and stop myself before I say ‘death,’ “It’s the better option. A little sting seems like a small price to pay.”
Considering, Brooke places the pen back on the table and slides it toward me. Then she looks back to Lyss. “So… the rest are annoying, they make you itchy and a little sick. But the peanuts are bad. Super, super bad?”
She nods. “Super, super bad. The others are survivable.”
“Jesus.” Brooke dumps her half-eaten ice cream in my cup and runs a hand through her hair. “She’s six and discussing her mortality.”
“My daughter is very smart, and exceptionally mature for her age. She still behaves like a regular six-year-old sometimes.” I look to Lyss and wink to help bring her smile back. “Like when she sits on tables. Or laughs at the other kids on the estate when they try to skateboard on the halfpipe. But when it comes to this…” I spin the pen in slow circles. “We’ve discussed it almost every single day of her life. You know what’s funny and what’s serious, don’t you, baby?”
My girl finishes her sorbet with an enthusiastic nod, tosses her spoon into the little pink cup, and slides in closer to Brooke – who still looks like she’s processing something devastating. Which, in a way, she is. I had to process this shit six years ago, when our healthy baby quickly grew sick.
“I know when it’s important, and when it’s not,” Lyss adds. “Like, peanuts are important. Sitting on tables is not.”
I drop my eyes and study my doubled serve of dessert with a chuckle. “Touché, I suppose. The table thing wasn’t actually important in the end.”
“Wanna go for a walk?” Alight with a new idea, Brooke lifts her eyes and catches mine. “What time does Lyss–” She pauses. Changes tack. Looks to Lyss. “What time do you go to bed?”
“Seven o’clock on a school night,” she announces with pride. “Maybe seven-thirty, if all the Mrs. Kincaids are still serving dinner.”
Brooke’s lips twitch with a smile.
“But it’s the weekend now, so I get to stay up until eight.”
“Eight?” Wide-eyed, faux fascination. “Eight! I had to be in bed by seven-thirty, even when it was the weekend.”
“What time do you go to bed now, Miss Brooke?”
“Six-thirty,” she answers without pause. “I get sleepy. But then I get up early. I like the early hours.”
“Come on.” I push my ice cream aside and slide out of the perpetually sticky booth.
My hand itches to help Brooke up, though god knows she’s capable. I step back, giving her plenty of room, and then step in when Lyss stands on the chair again and throws herself into my arms. She didn’t even touch the floor, and yet, her shoes light up.
“We can go for a quick walk, but then it’s bedtime.”
“Let’s head toward the lake. It’s really pretty over that way at night.”
I set Lyss on her feet, and grin when the lights in her shoes go crazy. But then she’s gone, dashing through the shop and into the evening breeze. It’s not hot, but it’s not cold, either. It’s just… there. Comfortable, and moving enough to blow Brooke’s blonde locks around her face every now and again.
The street is all but deserted, and though a couple of cars – mine, and Brooke’s – sit parked in the designated slots, none amble along the street as we cross. Lyss races ahead of us, something I would normally be nervous about, since it’s nighttime, but those shoes – best twelve bucks I ever spent.
“How old are you, Brooke?”
She laughs, like she knew it was coming. But she walks beside me, breathes in calm, exhales something I’m not sure I want to dissect. “I’m twenty. Twenty-one at my next birthday. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four in a month.”
She nods, considers. “You were so young when Lyss was born.”
“I was seventeen when we found out about her.” I chuckle. “I can honestly say that day near about killed me from shock.”
Tucking her hair back, her chest bounces with muted laughter. “Seventeen and a daddy. That’s crazy. I wasn’t ready to stop being my parents’ baby when I was seventeen. I couldn’t imagine having to take care of one of my own.”
“It was an adjustment.”
“Ya know,” she turns to me, but continues walking forward, “and I don’t mean to spout off about the cliché stuff, but it’s just not that usual for a teen dad to stick. Teen moms? Happens every damn day. But the dad? It’s almost like society forgets there were two people in that bed.”
I shrug and keep my eyes peeled to Lyss’ back as she runs ahead. “It would be a lie if I said I didn’t think about ways out back then. I’m not proud of it, and now that I have her, now that I know her, I’m grateful she’s mine. But I was seventeen, I had scholarships, and parties, and friends. I had all sorts of shit I wanted to do, and none of them included patting a baby to sleep every night.”
I lift a hand, rotate it on my wrist. “Pretty sure I developed carpal tunnel from tapping her butt for eight hours every single night for years.”
“She didn’t like to sleep?”
I chuckle. “Not on her own. On me?” I nod. “It was her happy place. Put her on my chest, let her lay her ear on my heart, and she was out in seconds. She stayed out all night long. But all of the
nurses, the social workers, the grandparents,” I add with a little bitterness, “they like to judge dads. Especially young dads. I couldn’t possibly be smart enough to figure it out on my own. They demanded she be able to sleep alone, to self-regulate, to self-soothe and all that shit. They demanded it.” And because Lyss is far enough away, I add, “They made my life a fucking misery. We were already tired, already so crazy overworked, and fuck them for taking away the way we slept simply because they felt they could insert themselves between a father and his daughter.”
I let out a snort and shake my head. “It’s not like I wasn’t aware of the dangers – the hospital makes you read the pamphlets on SIDS and stuff before discharge. I wasn’t stupid, and my age didn’t define me. Eventually, despite the pamphlets, a father has to make a choice that fits his situation. My decision was to let her sleep on me. At least then, we both slept. But of course they judged me for that, they told me it was wrong, and they fucked with my head. ‘If she falls, you’ll be in big trouble.’ They threw around the big words; abuse, neglect, CPS, though I doubt they’d have done the same if it was Karla who had stuck. They’d have rallied around her, helped the struggling, single mom, and waxed on about how I’m just another deadbeat. But reverse the situation, and I was barely tolerated. Everyone thought they knew better, and no way in hell was Karla vilified for leaving. That was probably my fault too.”
Frowning, but listening to every single word of the rant I had no clue I’d been bottling up, Brooke matches her pace with mine, and digs her hands into her pocket so her elbow bumps mine. “I’m sorry that happened to you. All of those busybodies more concerned with being right, being heard, then they were about the health and happiness of a young family.”
“It’s not like that anymore.”
I walk a little faster when Lyss rounds a corner and disappears from sight. Ten seconds of no visual is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat, but then Brooke and I round the corner, and the light-up shoes show me what I need to see.
In the darkness, a gentle hand wraps around my wrist for just a second. A fast caress, a sign of solidarity. Then it’s gone again.