Chapter Three #2
I open one of the cigarette packs and pull out a lighter from my pocket.
As I light up, I suddenly remember me and Dad on the veranda of the old house, how he passed a cigarette to me and watched as I inhaled and choked.
His version of a PSA to never pick up the habit.
He laughed and kissed my hair, which was dark and wavy like his.
Dad was never close to his parents, so he overcompensated with me. Presents on every occasion, including Bs on my report card, and an embarrassing shower of kisses. I secretly loved it. He was like my best friend. If best friends kissed your forehead and called you beautiful boy.
I imagine him watching me now, and I grind the cigarette into the concrete. I’ll stop, I promise him. At least I’m not vaping like all the other kids. You can’t quit a habit when it’s flavored Berry-gasmic Explosion.
Bullshit, Dad says.
Back at the house, I drop the spare change into Peter’s Godzillasized hand.
“Where’s the receipt?” he asks.
“I tossed it.” I want to say something snarky about a delivery fee, about him being stupid enough to send me out with his money, but I don’t. I turn into my room and barricade the door.
The TV blares. Cops? Could he be any more predictable? I grab my phone and turn on a playlist. I’ve never been good at studying with music on, but I try anyway. For the next ten minutes, I read, not remembering the pages I just read. Finally, I turn off the music and toss my phone across the bed.
I open up my laptop and search through my movies for something mindless.
I settle for Koi … Mil Gaya, because it’s good in a cringy way and I’m feeling nostalgic.
In the movie, a little blue alien named Jadoo heals a brain-damaged kid who goes on to have special powers.
And of course, it’s full of musical numbers and hip-hop dancing. Amazing.
But right before the first song, complete with a dancing-in-the-rain motif, the TV quiets and voices drift in from the living room.
I close my laptop and rest my head beside it, staring at the ceiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I whisper to the sticker constellation above me. “The show has just begun.”
They’re talking about the three-foot glass vase Mom painted. At the bottom are baby birds that slowly transition up the side until they’re adult birds in flight. It’s the only thing in the house that looks expensive. When I told Mom how much I liked it, she said, “It’s yours.”
“That’s something else, Nancy,” Peter says. “That’s really something else. You got some real talent in those hands of yours. Never seen anything like it. Look at how the light hits the little bird there.”
I can almost feel Mom’s pride swelling from behind the door, and she says something I can’t hear.
Peter’s quiet too. I imagine him taking a drag on his cigarette. His sparkling gray eyes becoming storm clouds. And then all I hear is Peter’s voice changing and changing some more.
… think I’m gonna give you studio rent? …
Becca’s watching the bank account like a hawk …
nickel I spend, she’s asking me why … probably your fault anyway …
hand’s shaking … hold a goddamn paintbrush …
losing too much weight, told you that already …
the haircut? Grow it out like you had it when I met you.
All the air’s sucked out of me and I can’t breathe.
Mom’s yelling now, “You have no idea how much pain I’m in!”
“Oh, give me a break,” Peter scoffs, and I know the fuse has been lit.
Mom starts screaming about Peter bringing alcohol into her house. I clench at Peter calling Mom a bitch, and wince at the loud crash, the sound of birds shattering into pieces.
Then silence. Even the silence is deafening.
I jump at the footsteps thundering past my room and out the front door. The door slams, and the soccer trophies on my desk tremble. Seconds later I hear the burbling engine of Peter’s pickup disappearing down the street.
I pull the chair away from the door. “Mom?” I run to the living room and she’s on her knees, picking up shattered pieces of the vase from the floor. There’s a hole in the wall and glass scattered on the orange floral sofa below it.
Mom doesn’t look at me, so I kneel beside her and turn her face, my heart beating hard in my chest.
“He didn’t hit me,” she says in that way, like Peter never would.
He wanted to.
“I got it,” I tell her. She dumps the broken glass into my hands and kisses my forehead before shuffling off to the kitchen.
I pick up one of the larger pieces of glass with a whooping crane still intact, its wings arched in flight. I place the crane on the old splintered coffee table and wonder why he had to break the only beautiful thing we had.
I have a single thought, on repeat. Bring Dad back. Bring Dad back. Bring Dad back.
A new logline comes to me. I try not to forget it. I hold it as carefully as I’m holding the glass.
Logline #134: When kindhearted Nita lets loose a caged bird on the planet of Peril, bad luck falls upon her family.
Are you okay?
Jae. Her voice hovers in the silence as I drop the broken birds into the trash can. A glass splinter digs into my hand and leaves a small, swelling red mark when I pull it out.
Are you okay?
I look up at the ticking clock on the kitchen wall. I can’t be late for my two-hour shift at the diner.
Are you okay?
I rip off my jersey and jump into the shower and try not to think about her dark eyes shining like glass.
I try not to think about the dimples that appear like magic when she talks.
I wonder if I could ever make her smile and how deep her dimples would get.
I wonder what would happen if I touched her, or if I ever should.
Maybe she’d break like everything else.