20. Robert
twenty
Robert
“Daddy, let’s go in there!” Corinne shouted excitedly, jumping and pointing at an antique store. She was eyeing the vintage dresses in the window, which I could already tell I’d be walking out with.
“Corinne, we’re here for dishware,” I told her, half sternly, looking down the sidewalk at the rest of the stores at the outdoor mall.
My daughter pouted, knowing that it always worked on me, and I sighed while rolling my eyes. She started walking inside confidently, aware that she’d won before I even took a step.
“Look, there’s dishware here,” Corinne teased, running her fingers along a few China plates on display.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” I told her, allowing her to grab my hand and pull me deeper into the store through the narrow aisles that just begged for someone to run into something priceless and send it smashing to the floor.
“Ooh, what about these?” She held up some ceramic cookware with gold leaf and sage green flowers painted onto them. The set of six had scalloped edges and were, admittedly, beautiful. I tried to discreetly check the tags and saw that they were worth quite a few lines of families shopping for Thanksgiving dinner.
“Sure, those are pretty. We can get those and get out of here,” I told her, antsy in the close quarters of the store. I glanced over at the woman working the counter. She was staring me down over the rims of her narrow, cat eyeglasses.
“Wait, what about these?” Corinne held up some pink stoneware with handles on the side.
“Rin-Rin, we’re not taking them home, you know that, right? We’re going to leave them at the food bank.”
“So? They should still be pretty.”
“I guess you’re right,” I relented, smiling and taking them from her hands. “They should still be pretty.”
“Thank you, Daddy.” She smiled her sweet smile, and even as I smiled back, the thought was at the back of my head that she was going to really have me around her finger in her teenage years.
I went to the front to pay for the items, anxious to get out of the store, when I glanced over at Corinne and saw her standing in front of a vanity.
She sat down on the bench in front of the little mirror, and I started to snap at her to not touch things when the store clerk saw me open my mouth and interrupted, “She can sit there, it’s okay. It’s sturdy. Antique things always are. People used to really work at their craft, not like now. Now, everything seems to be made of plywood. Do you know some car bumpers are made of Styrofoam?”
Her voice was harsh and shrill, and I could tell that she’d been holding that one in for a while.
Nodding politely, I left my things at the counter and walked over to Corinne, touching her lightly on the back. “Let’s go home, baby girl. We have groceries at home to put in these. Plus, we should wash them first.”
“Okay,” she said obediently, but she didn’t move. “Did you know Mommy had one of these? It was just like this.”
I looked over her shoulder and saw that she was eyeing a boar bristle hair brush with an ivory handle. She wasn’t touching it, just admiring it. Her hands were flat on the tabletop, her thumbs an inch away from the brush, as though she were afraid of it.
The memories of her mother flashed through my head, of her brushing her hair with it, the way it would frizz out at the ends when she did until she ran oil through her curls to calm them.
“How did you know that?” I asked her warily. Quinn had died when Corinne was just a baby. She didn’t have any memories of her mother.
“I saw her in a picture in your room. I know I’m not supposed to be in your room, but I was just in there looking for you, I swear. You have a picture of her with one of those on your nightstand.” She told me like she felt guilty for knowing it, and I patted her shoulder, emotion creeping into my throat.
I swallowed those feelings down and told her, “Fine, we can get that, too. And that mirror,” I said, pointing at a handheld mirror that matched the brush. “She had one like that, too, to go with it.”
Corinne whipped around in the chair and hugged me around the middle tightly, her face pressed up against my stomach.
I settled my hand on the top of her head, running my fingers across her hair for just a moment before saying, “Okay, come on, come on, let’s go.”
After the woman packed up her mirror and brush in a little brown bag with pink gift paper poking out of the top, we headed back to the car, my arms full of what felt like fifty pounds of ceramic and stone.
As we slipped into our seats, Corinne said, “Daddy, I feel bad.”
“What? Why? Seatbelt,” I told her firmly, as I put my own seatbelt on, looking in the rearview mirror to meet her eyes.
I knew she hated sitting in the back because she felt like it was babyish, but she was still under twelve, and I wanted to keep her safe for as long as possible. She put her seatbelt on, and I put the car in reverse to back out.
“I just wish every little girl could have fancy brushes and mirrors.”
I looked at her for a second in the rearview mirror, amazed that I had raised such an empathetic little girl despite my disdain for most people. I loved Jeremy and Corinne, and they were all I needed. But Corinne had a love for everyone that spilled out of her.
Sighing, I pulled the car back into the parking spot.
“What are you doing? Aren’t we going home?” Corinne asked.
“No, we’re going to buy toys for all the little girls and boys at the food bank on Thanksgiving.”
Corinne gasped and squealed, unbuckling her seatbelt to lunge forward and hug me from the backseat, almost choking me against the headrest. “Thank you, thank you!”
“You’re too good for your own good, Corinne Hastings,” I told her, patting her hands. “Now get out of the car and pick what store to spend all my money in.”
She laughed, clapping, and opened the car door, sprinting out of the car.
It was sometimes so scary that I had to raise her alone, but in moments like this, it was easy to think how lucky I was to get to raise her. She was such a sweet girl, even if I didn’t understand how she’d gotten that way.
How was so much of her mother in her when she had no memories of her? Would I have to look back at Quinn for the rest of my life? What would happen when she got older and looked even more like her? How would I stomach it?
I shook the dark thoughts from my mind and got out of the car to follow her.