Chapter Eighteen

Something pulls me from sleep. Alan’s bedroom is dark and I am alone. Where is Alan? Then I hear the sound of raised voices in the apartment. I reach for Alan’s t-shirt and pull on a pair of panties.

I freeze at the terrace doors. Oh god! Jack is here and they are arguing.

“You have the nerve to pull my daughter into your fucked up life and you think it’s going to be OK?”

Alan’s face is calm, emotionless, but I can see how angry and hurt he is.

“You’ve got it wrong, Jack. I’m willing to explain if you’re willing to listen.”

Jack’s expression is intense and harshly dismissive. “What can you possibly say that will change anything you’ve done? In three weeks you have made a complete nightmare of my daughter’s life. Will it undo dragging her through the rag sheets? Whatever you think you can say or do isn’t going to change any of the shit you’ve done.”

“I appreciate—”

Jack cuts him off. “I was you. You can’t bullshit someone who has been where you are.”

I step out onto the patio. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I scream at the top of my voice.

Jack points a finger at me. He’s never done that before. I’ve never seen my dad so angry. “Go pack your things. Be ready to go when I am finished here.”

I twist away from the hand that tries to take hold of me. “No!”

“No?!”

“Whether I go home is my decision and it has nothing to do with you.”

Jack stares. “I’m done discussing this. Pack your things. We’re going back to the apartment. We are flying home tomorrow.”

“You are a little late, Jack. I’m eighteen. I don’t have to go anywhere with you,” the very angry girl inside me screams.

“Yes you do, Chrissie. We are leaving.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live as if everything is normal because it’s not.”

In frustration, I push the hair back from my face, and then I hear a sudden silence that sounds loud in my ears. Before I can react, Jack grabs my arm and drags me near a light.

The color drains from Jack’s face. “What is this? Chrissie, what happened to you?”

I forgot my Tiffany bracelet in Linda Rowan’s car. I shake my arm out of my father’s grasp. “It’s nothing. It’s old. I’ve had it since I was thirteen.”

He looks confused, dismayed, disoriented. “I don’t understand.” He sinks weakly on the edge of a table and I can see that he’s not sure what he’s seeing or perhaps he’s just trying to lie to himself. “I don’t understand. How did that happen? How could you injure yourself badly enough to do that without me knowing?”

Alan’s eyes are a strange mix of fury and sympathy. “You don’t know your daughter at all. Your daughter did that to herself with candle wax. She burns herself,” Alan yells, unleashing truth into the room in a voice loud enough to shake the New York Skyline.

“I don’t understand. Why would you do that, Chrissie? Why?” Jack is shaking and horrified, and he moves to take me into his arms, but I back away to the safety of Alan.

“Because you hate me,” I scream.

Everything about Jack freezes all at once. “I don’t hate you. How can you say that?”

“You never talk to me. You avoid me. You left me in school for eight fucking years just so you didn’t have to see me. Why, Daddy? Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t avoid you. And we talk all the time.”

“When was the last time you ever noticed anything about me? I’m a pretty messed up girl. Did you even notice, Jack? Three weeks with Alan and he knows every messed up part of my fucked up life. Eighteen years with you and you know nothing. You don’t want to know me and you sure as hell don’t want me close to you.”

“You’ve lost me, Chrissie.”

“I lost you ten years ago.”

Jack steps toward me, close, but doesn’t touch me. He is despondent. “I don’t know why you are so angry, but whatever you think I’ve done wrong it’s not because I don’t love you.”

“Then why do you avoid me?”

“I don’t.”

“You left me in that school for eight fucking years. You made me someone else’s problem just so you didn’t have to be near me.”

Jack’s eyes are frantic and desperate. “No. Never. I didn’t know that’s how you felt, but you’ve got it wrong, Chrissie. All wrong. I’m here, baby girl. And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.”

Uncertainty fills my head. “I don’t think I have it wrong. I think you blame me and you hate me for it.”

Jack rakes a desperate hand through his hair. “I don’t hate you. I don’t understand what you are talking about. Blame you for what? What could I possibly blame you for?”

I stare at him and the little girl in me starts to shake and hurt. “You stopped being my dad when Sammy died. We dropped him in the ground and never spoke of it, and we really haven’t spoken since.”

I feel it. All the words bubbling up. I can’t stop this.

“I am so tired of hating you,” I sob.

Jack is crying. I’ve made him cry. It should please me, please me that he might hurt even in a small way, as I do, but it makes my internal mess even messier.

I sink against the terrace wall. Alan crosses the patio and eases down behind me, a barrier between me and the cold concrete. His warm arms are rocking me, his lips are in my hair, and I am back in that night. I can’t stop it.

“It’s going to be OK, Chrissie. Just talk, baby. Jack is listening. Your father is listening.”

The words bubble up. I can’t stop them and I am back in that night again.

* * *

It is late. Maria lets me stay up late. I think she likes to keep me near her. She is always watching and she is always close. She doesn’t play with me very well, but I like that she stays close.

We are in the kitchen and I am watching her wash the foil she used to cover my meal last night. Why does she do that? Why does she wash the foil and add it to the giant ball beneath the sink? I hate that she saves my food and gives it to me a second day. The bowls of cereal are the worst. The charms get soggy in the milk. I don’t want to eat it, but Maria expects me to, so I force down the soggy charms and she smiles.

I like Maria. I don’t understand what she says, but I like her. She is thin, dark haired, and gentle like Mommy. I don’t know what it is about her face, but she has that look that Mommy had before Mommy left. Sammy calls it haunted. No, I think Maria is just sad, so I do as she tells me, pointing and talking to me in fast words I don’t understand, so she will smile and look less sad.

The foil ball is very large. When is it finished? What do we do with it when it’s finished? I smile. Maria smiles. The foil is put away for another day.

I hear the front door open. The voices. I know the sound. Sammy. I spring from the counter before Maria can stop me and race down the hall.

I know Maria is right behind me, but I am faster. I am into Sammy’s arms before she can stop me. I laugh as I’m tossed into the air and then lowered for a kiss from my brother.

“What are you doing still awake, baby girl.” He says it in a growl. He is only joking. I smile. Sammy looks good. I think he is well again. That’s what Jack calls it because he thinks I don’t understand about the drugs. He thinks I don’t know that Sammy has problems. But we are very close. My brother and me, even though he is ten years older. He talks to me and he lets me talk to him.

Sammy looks good tonight. I laugh. “Toss me again.”

Into the air. He catches me. His friends are in the living room, and quickly the tidy quiet has changed. The music is blaring. Vince has opened the bar. There is laughter, music, and people everywhere in the room.

I stare up at Sammy. “Where did you come from?”

Sammy laughs. “New York this time, squirt.” He makes a pouty face. “I’m here only one night, and then we’re off to San Francisco.”

I hate that he is leaving so soon. Everyone comes and goes except Maria and me. Even Mommy left, but I know that that was different.