Things We Didn't Say (31 page)
Read Things We Didn't Say Online
Authors: Kristina Riggle
He writes notes, listening, nodding. He tells me he would like to interview the older kids, separate from me, separate from each other. I’m relieved he doesn’t ask to talk to Jewel.
But I’m sick that Angel and Dylan have to go through this, even so. At fourteen and sixteen they can act so adult, but they’re not. Not even close.
The officer talks to the kids upstairs while another officer babysits Mallory in the patrol car. I read books to Jewel—she’s perfectly capable of reading to herself, but this is comforting, normal, and childlike—and keep her from looking out the window.
He comes down the stairs, asks me to wait, while he goes outside to confer with his partner, a woman I notice now, with red hair pulled into a low ponytail. Dylan and Angel have the wide-eyed look of kids watching a scary movie who are afraid to look but can’t tear their eyes away.
“Daddy, are they going to arrest you?” Angel asks me, looking out the front window at the police. “Because I told them it’s not your fault.”
Dylan nodded soberly. “I snuck partway down the steps while you were fighting. I saw her hit herself.”
I relax my shoulders. Wish he hadn’t seen that, but it can only help me.
The officer returns.
“I’m not going to arrest anyone today. I’m going to take her out of here, separate you two, basically. We’ll write up a report and include your statements and hers. She may pursue charges, though. Just so you know. As it’s alleged domestic violence, the report will have to be reviewed as a statutory requirement. Also, if you wish to press charges for malicious destruction of property, you can follow up with a detective on Monday.” The officer gives me a card.
I savor the relief that I won’t be hauled away from my children, at least not today.
When they leave at last, my joints feel wobbly, and my eyes won’t stop watering looking at the wreckage she left, and not just in my living room, but in the white faces of my children.
“Kids. Pack an overnight bag. We’re going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa.”
Usually this would be greeted with glee by Jewel, a shrug from Dylan, and rolled eyes from Angel, who gets grilled by my dad on her college plans every time he sees her.
Now, they move numbly, quietly.
I call my parents’ home. My father answers.
“Dad,” I say, my voice breaking like I’m in puberty. “I need to come over.”
D
ylan lines up a ball at the pool table in the downstairs rec room. He says to me, “Do you think that was true? About Jewel?”
I look up the stairway. Jewel is upstairs helping Grandma make cookies still, so it’s safe to talk. “I don’t know. She says weird stuff when she’s like that.”
“I’m an idiot,” Dylan says, missing the shot. The three-ball bounces out of the corner. He says it without emotion, like he’s just reporting the news. I also notice he hasn’t stuttered at all since we walked into Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
“You’re not an idiot,” I tell him. “At least, not all the time.”
“I should’ve known better.”
I chalk up the pool cue. Dylan rolls his eyes. I always use too much chalk. I don’t really like pool, even, but it’s something to do. I blow the dust off and try to line up a shot.
I miss the cue ball entirely when Dylan says, “Why did you read her diary?”
I stand the cue on the floor and lean on it. “I didn’t know it was a diary at first. It was just some random notebook. But then when she wrote that I was acting like a bitch . . .”
“You probably were.”
“Hey!”
“Be real. You’re hard to live with.”
“Oh, and you’re all perfect, running away and starting all this.”
He turns away from me, leaning on the pool table with his back to me. In the dim light from the lamp above the table, I can’t see his face. “I already said I was an idiot.”
“It wasn’t just that, anyway. She was writing about this other guy, and how she wanted a drink so bad. Dad didn’t know that stuff, and he was supposed to marry her. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not tell
Mom.
”
“Shut up.”
“Well? Doesn’t that seem like a bad idea now?”
“She was seeming okay. And she kept asking me about Casey, and what she was acting like around the house. She seemed concerned for us. And look, Casey
loves
you, always listening to your practices, so of course you’ll defend her.”
“Mom’s not that concerned for us. She just hates Casey.”
“Well, whatever, it’s all out there now.”
Dylan turns around. “It’s your shot.”
I line up a shot and sink the cue ball. Dylan picks it up and walks around the table, choosing his shot.
“What’s going to happen?” I ask.
“I dunno. We might have to go to court if Mom presses charges against Dad for supposedly hitting her.”
“Oh, God. He didn’t do it, and you saw her do it to herself.”
“Totally. But what if she says we made it up to take his side?”
“Shit. You know, I think she got Casey drunk on purpose.”
“She’s like a puppetmaster or something.” Dylan finds his shot, sinks the ball, starts to line up another.
“She was talking about us coming to live with her again.”
“In that dinky apartment? Great.”
“No, in a big swanky house in Forest Hills.”
“And how’s she gonna manage that?”
I shrug, not having thought that deeply about it. “I’m sure not sure that’s such a good idea, anyway.”
“Duh. But you said that’s what she wants? She’s going to try and get us back?”
“That’s what she said.”
Dylan looks up from where he’s stretched out across the table. “We could run away.”
“Ha. Smartass.”
Dylan sinks another shot. “It would help if Casey came back.”
I cross my arms and glare at him. “How does that help? And, hello? She thinks I’m a bitch?”
“Which you are. Sometimes, anyway. Dad just lost his job, did you hear that? And he’s dealing with all this crazy stuff. He’ll do better if he’s not alone.”
“He’s got us.”
“Not the same.”
Dylan’s winning anyway, so I go sink into one of the leather chairs at the edge of the room. “She probably hates me forever now, anyway.”
He shrugs. “Bet she won’t, though.”
“How would you know?”
“Because as we found out, she’s not exactly perfect herself. Not much room to judge.”
I let him go ahead and sink all the rest of the balls and stare off into the dark outside the lamplight. For months I’ve been annoyed by Casey looking like a kid, butting into my life, sucking away my dad’s attention, and then all weekend I’ve been stinging over that
bitch
thing . . .
I close my eyes and remember Casey, on the floor, saving Jewel from choking while my mom stood there and gaped like, well, like she was stoned. What if I’d managed to run Casey off earlier?
And then I think of my mom trying to get my dad arrested and tearing apart our living room.
“I’m going upstairs,” I tell Dylan. “I’ve gotta talk to Dad.”
M
y father, silhouetted in the light from the gas fire in his den, taps the edge of his glass, but is otherwise silent.
After we settled the kids down to various activities resembling normalcy, after my dad checked out Jewel’s breathing and peered down her throat to make sure she was fine, after my mom started baking cookies, after I gave him a summary of the brutal events since he dropped us off at the house, my dad and I collapsed into silence near the fire with a drink. Club soda for me.
My earlier bravado in the SUV about not needing his help has evaporated. If I have to be dependent on my father for the rest of my days in order to keep my kids with me, then I’ll hand him my balls on a platter.
“I’m sorry,” my father says, staring into the fire.
“For what?” I ask, assuming he’s going to say something about not having clean sheets on the bed in my old room.
“For trying to run your life. For what I said in the car. Forget it. Take whatever time you need, and I’ll help you. And I’ll do my best to stop making you feel like shit about it.”
I do a double-take, at both the content of his apology and the curse word.
“What brought this on?”
“When you called me, you were on the brink. I could hear it. And then you told me just now what happened, and I saw your kids coming in here looking like shock victims. I’ve been holding you to an impossible standard. All this time I’ve been looking at your surroundings, your bank account, the car you drive . . . A proud man, a foolish man—after that big speech in the restaurant about not needing my help—would have done anything at all to keep from coming back here. But.” He holds up one finger, like he’s giving a lecture. “You knew what was best for your kids was getting them out of that chaos. And you were right. They started relaxing the minute they walked in the door. Dylan stopped stammering. Angel and Jewel smiled. The color came back to their faces.” He pauses, staring still into the fire. I dare not speak and break the spell. “It takes a man to put his kids before himself in everything, all the time.” He winks at me, but his smile is sad, his voice with no mirth. “Here’s to my son, the real man.” He leans over and clinks my glass.
My business is words, but words have left me, utterly.
“Dad.” It’s Angel, looking angelic indeed in the firelight. Her features are soft instead of pulled into a sneer or an eye-roll. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
My father gets up immediately, and gestures to the chair. He bends down and kisses her forehead. Angel looks at me in surprise; physical affection is not generally in his repertoire.
Angel lowers herself into the chair. It engulfs her.
“I’m sorry about reading Casey’s diary and talking about it to Mom,” she begins, picking at her fingernails. “I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.”
“I know you didn’t. It’s not your fault.”
“I think you should know that I think Mom tricked Casey.”
“Tricked how?”
Angel shifts in her seat. “Well . . . I told her about how Casey always used to drink Jack Daniel’s, it was in her diary. And then Mom went out and bought some. She must have, because she went to the store after that. And she brought it out after me and Jewel went to bed. So I think she got Casey drunk.”
I put my head in my hand. Of course she did. “But she didn’t force it down her throat, Angel. And you can’t accidentally drink whiskey and not know it. You and I have talked about peer pressure. It’s still your call in the end. She still made the decision.”
“I guess.”
“Well, didn’t she?”
Angel shrugs. “Sure. But I mean, she was up all night with you, wasn’t she? And all day? Trapped in the house, in a blizzard, with your ex-wife. She was exhausted. And you know how charming Mom can be when she really turns it on.”
“How is it you’re Casey’s advocate all of a sudden?”
Angel sinks lower in the chair, her head almost disappearing within the deep arms. She stretches out her legs, crossed at the ankles. “I feel a little bad, is all. About the diary. And she did save Jewel’s life.”
And the first thing I did was accuse her of letting it happen in the first place.
Angel sits up again, leaning forward now, toward the fire. She’s threading her fingers together and apart, toying with her rings. “It’s just hard. In a year my mom moved out, and she moved in. How could I not feel like she was replacing Mom? And she can’t be my mom, she’s too young. And then when I read her diary I thought . . . wow, she hates me. Just like the bitchy girls at school.”
“She doesn’t hate you. And she can’t replace your mom. Your mom is one of a kind.”
I mean this as a weak joke, but Angel ignores it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning for the joke, but also for everything. “I don’t think I handled that well, moving her in. I thought you’d welcome her, the normalcy, the help around the house.”
“You
welcomed that.”
Her tone is sharp, but she’s right. I did. My dad says I always put my kids first, but in this case he was wrong. I just assumed they wanted the same things I did.
Angel softens her voice. “But you like having her around, don’t you?”
I smile sadly. “Yeah. I do. I did.”
“Did?”
“I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“You sound sad.”
“I am.”
“You could call her?”
“She doesn’t have her phone. The cops found it in your mom’s pocket.”
“Well, you’re a reporter. You can track her down.”
“I’m a
former
reporter at the end of the year. Anyway, you’re thinking of a bloodhound. My specialty is City Commission meetings. Got an ordinance vote you want covered?”
“You know, Dad? Sometimes when I storm up the stairs to my room and slam the door and I yell to leave me alone? And you charge up there anyway?” She whispers now. “Secretly, I’m kind of glad. I know you’ll always be there, even when I sort of don’t want you to be.”
She gets up and heads toward the kitchen, where I hear my mother singing out that cookies are almost ready.
I’m not hungry, though. Instead I go looking for my coat, pulling my car keys out of my pocket as I head for the car.
T
he car quickly becomes too warm, so I reach over and flick off the heat. Michael takes the hint and shuts off the engine.
He pulled in at the Sixth Street Park, facing a bright metal modernist sculpture as tall as a house, and beyond it, the Grand River in its smooth shiny blackness.
I tip my head back on the seat, the aftershock of my hangover and the fresh beer making me want to sleep.
Michael told me right away about Mallory’s freak-out, and Dylan’s defense of me. That bit about Dylan would have made me smile if anything could right now. Michael had been driving, and watching the road, so I guess that’s why he wasn’t looking at me, but now that we’ve stopped, he still hasn’t.