The Lateral

Chapter 1

“I t wasn’t my fault!”

Those were not the words that I needed to hear this morning.

“I didn’t do it!”

Nope, not those either. I blinked and tried to come to alertness. “What? What’s happening?” I slurred.

“Ember, I swear, it wasn’t me!”

It had to have been bad if she was using my name. Mostly, she’d been ignoring me and when she did have to get my attention, she said something like “hey, you” to avoid having to let the two syllables pass her lips. I got up fast, rubbed my eyes hard to force them open, and went out into the front room where Meadow had her back pushed up against the front door. Was she holding it closed? Was she trying to keep someone out?

“What’s going on?” I asked, and that was when the pounding started.

“I know you’re in there,” a man said from the other side of the wood panel. Before, I hadn’t thought of it as thin, but now I could definitely tell that our whole house was less than sturdy. For one thing, his voice had sounded so loud that he could have been in the room with us. Also, the door and its frame shook when he knocked. The window next to it shook. The dishes in the sink rattled.

I was also rattled, after too little sleep and this as my wake-up call. I stared at Meadow and tried to understand why someone was breaking in. “Who is that?” I asked in confusion. “What is—”

“Open the goddamn door,” the man’s voice said, but there was no way that would happen.

“I’m calling the police!” I yelled back through it, but I didn’t sound half as loud or tough as he had.

“Good. We can all talk about what that girl did to my truck.”

After that statement, there was silence on my porch and I stared at Meadow, who frowned at the floor. “What did you do to his truck?” I whispered.

And the man had ears like a fricking bat! “She carved the word ‘cock’ into the door and started to draw a picture to illustrate,” he answered, and my mouth dropped open.

“Meadow!” I said, horrified.

She kept staring at the rug, a little one I’d put there to help her remember to take off her shoes or at least to wipe them when she came in. So far, that hadn’t worked. “He deserved it!” she told me, but then remembered that she hadn’t done those things, anyway. “And it wasn’t me!” she added loudly.

“I’m calling the police myself,” the man said, and I walked to the door.

“Move,” I told her, and she grudgingly stepped away so I could open it.

All I saw there was shirt. Plaid, acres of plaid, filled my eyes. I moved my gaze up, then up more. Then up more. I finally saw the face of a man who was plenty aggravated.

“That’s her,” he said, pointing over my shoulder.

“Screw you!” she shot back immediately.

His frown was so vicious and frightening that I automatically put up my hands, as if I would have been able to fight him off. “Why the hell did you do that?” he asked Meadow, and now she swore at him, using words that I’d heard directed my way in the past. They were really ugly, truly upsetting words.

“She’s very unhappy,” I explained to the man, and he looked down at me. Way, way down.

“You know, I don’t care why she did it. You have to pay for the damage,” he said. His voice reminded me of road construction, of all the deep, gravelly, rumbling noises that the big machines made as they worked. And he was just about as large as one of those machines, too. He filled the doorway from side to side and top to bottom, and I feared a little bit for our porch as he stood on it.

“We can resolve this,” I quickly answered. “If she really did—”

“She really did,” he told me. “I came out of the store and saw her standing there with the rock in her hand, scratching it. She was just starting on the balls.”

“Meadow!” I said again, turning to her in anguish. She was drawing testicles? She was twelve! But I thought of myself at twelve…I had known a lot, too.

“I followed her here,” he continued, and moved slightly so that I could see the truck sitting in the dirt patch that we called a driveway. It was parked behind the car that I’d left there when I’d gotten in from work, dragged my feet to the house, and collapsed into my bed. Unlike mine, his vehicle looked brand-new. Besides what I could see of some marks on the door, it was shiny, clean, and beautiful.

“That’s a lovely truck,” I said. “It’s gorgeous.”

He had opened his mouth to say something back but then he shut it and stared at me.

“I’ll come take a look at the damage,” I offered. He shifted slightly so that there was enough room for me to squeeze past and onto the porch, which did hold our combined weight. I walked down one step and a few paces on the path to his sparkling truck. Then I stared in dismay at what was carved into the driver’s door: it was definitely the word “cock” and that was definitely the beginning of a penis next to it. Since Meadow had been interrupted, it looked more like a banana. She had scratched nice and deep, too, so that the silver of the body beneath the paint sparkled a little in the December sunshine.

“Wait,” I said. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday,” he answered. “What the hell difference does that make? Do you see what she did?”

“What’s the date?” I pressed.

“The seventeenth.”

“Oh, good,” I breathed. I still had several days until Christmas and I felt lucky, because there was a lot I needed to do to prepare.

“Lady, do you see this?” He walked over and pounded on the car door with his fist but more gently than he’d applied it to the door of my house. That was also lucky, because he probably would have made a serious dent in the panel. Speaking of fruit, his fist looked to be about the size of a cantaloupe.

“Yes, I do see it. It’s really unattractive and unfortunate,” I said. “I’m very sorry she did that.”

“Who is she, your…” His blue eyes narrowed as he looked me over. “No, she can’t be your daughter. Is she your sister? Go get your parents,” he ordered me.

“I’m the parent,” I told him. Maybe I looked a little young, but certainly not young enough to still live with a mom and a dad. When did most people move out, after high school? But he seemed slightly older and maybe it had been a while since he’d had to judge the age of—

“What are you going to do about this, parent?” he growled at me.

“I’ll make it right,” I said. Was it possible to paint a car yourself? Probably not.

“Yeah, you will make it right. You’ll pay,” he told me, and I nodded although I felt a sinking feeling. It wasn’t like Meadow and I were going to starve, but it also wasn’t like we were rolling in money, either. I’d been saving for the holiday because there was so much that she needed and so much that I wanted to give her.

But this would have to come first. “I will pay,” I promised. “I can tell you that I’m honestly aghast. Just aghast.”

He stared at me. “I don’t care what you are.”

“He deserved it!” Meadow yelled from the porch.

“What the hell did I do to you?” the man bellowed back, and I started retreating, reversing my steps until I was next to her. Our thin door would hold him off for a moment or two but not for very long, and I looked at the long, strong columns of his legs and figured that he’d catch us if we ran.

Meadow wasn’t scared, though. She started telling him something that wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to anyone but me, and maybe also the counselor at her middle school. Some people got new trucks, she angrily accused. Other people got new winter coats, new clothes, new backpacks! Some people got everything and nothing was fair, she concluded furiously, and I filled in the rest. Other people got everything, and she got dirt thrown in her face. She was angry at them and at the whole world, and she’d taken it out on that stunning vehicle.

“You know why I have this new truck?” he asked her. “It’s because I worked hard for it. I drove it for less than a week and you did this.” He didn’t have to yell like she’d done, because his speaking volume was already where mine was when I was at the club and trying to make myself heard over the sounds of the music and the cheering.

I turned to look at Meadow. “Can you imagine?” I asked her. “Can you imagine if we had something so nice and a stranger came and ruined it for us?”

“Like Halloween?” she suggested and I nodded, but I winced, too.

“Exactly like that,” I said, thinking about smashed pumpkins and a dent in my own car door. “Do you remember how sad we were?”

“You were. I didn’t give a shit,” she said.

“You talk to your mother like that?” the man barked out at her. “Have some respect!”

“She’s not my mother!” Meadow yelled. She stomped away and slammed the front door behind her. I hoped that she wasn’t going to carve up anything inside, because we rented the little house and while the furniture was ours, it was going to have to last. I didn’t want to be looking at a pair of testicles on the top of the coffee table for the next twenty years.

“I’m not her bio mom,” I confirmed with the man. “I’m taking care of her because there wasn’t anyone else.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you and let you off the hook?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “Because frankly, lady, I don’t give a shit. You let that hellion run around—”

“Good grief, you’re right! It’s not vacation yet!” I exclaimed. “She should be at school! Oh, no.” There were probably a bunch of robotic messages on my phone from the attendance office saying exactly that. They would call me in for another meeting, and I would have to beg them not to escalate this.

“You have to keep better track of your kid.”

“I know,” I agreed. “I do. I’m so sorry.”

“This is a working vehicle, not some pretty-boy showpiece. I can’t have it out of commission getting fixed,” he said. “I have animals—”

“You do?” I clasped my hands together in happiness. “That’s perfect.”

“What is?”

“She loves animals,” I said. “I’m talking about Meadow, the girl who put the banana on your door.”

“We both know it’s not a banana.”

“This would be an amazing solution,” I continued. “I’ve been looking for ways to help her connect and I think it would great for her to be around horses or cows, or goats, or whatever kinds there are. And you know, service for others makes us feel so much better about ourselves. It will be such a boost for her self-worth.”

He stared at me, and another frown started to gather on his face, just like dark clouds above Lake Michigan as a storm approached. I had recently witnessed that for the first time and it was scary but darkly beautiful. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“She could work off the cost of the repairs by helping you on your farm,” I explained. “It would be a win-win.”

“What would make you think that I need help? And if I did, why would I ask someone like her?”

“She’s actually a wonderful girl,” I assured him. “She’s smart and kind-hearted. Right now, that must be difficult to see.”

“Yeah, it is,” he answered. “It’s pretty fucking hard for me to see the inner beauty of the kid who just carved a picture of a dick into my new truck.”

“Really, it looks more like a piece of fruit,” I assured him. “Without the balls, and if that word wasn’t there—”

“I’ll be back and you’ll pay up. You’ll pay with money, American currency, and not happy wishes and good feelings.” He looked for a moment at his ruined door before he opened it, but then he swiveled and pointed at me instead of getting in and driving away.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Ember Easley,” I said, and spelled it so that he didn’t think it was Amber. Everyone thought it was Amber. “That’s my real name,” I added, because everyone had questions about that, too. When he requested my phone number, I recited it for him, but he didn’t put any of my information into his own phone. I wondered why he’d bothered to ask, since he apparently wasn’t interested in remembering it.

“Who are you?” I inquired in return. Instead of answering, he only looked at me. “Your name?” I simplified, making my voice louder and clearer. He got such a weird expression on his face—was he confused? Oh, the poor man. “Did you forget?” I asked sympathetically.

“What?”

He didn’t seem that old, but the barback in the place where I worked had already gone through a stroke. He wasn’t too old, either, but he’d lived hard, and maybe this man had as well. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “We can figure it out. Do you carry a wallet?” And now, I felt even worse. Meadow had scratched obscene graffiti on the property of someone with a brain injury!

“I don’t need my wallet to know who I am,” he said. “My name is Jake Koval.” And then he paused, and we looked at each other again. He seemed to be waiting.

Well, it was a relief to know that he was lucid. “It’s nice to meet you,” I told him, and he stared at me for another moment before he got into the truck with the ugly word and the fruit on the door.

He rolled down the window. “Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.

“I’m going to have to go inside,” I said. “I’m freezing.” We both examined what I was wearing, which was only a sweatshirt and some old boxer shorts, but no coat and no shoes, either. The cold made me cough.

He shook his head. “I mean, don’t think that you two can run off in the night and get away from me,” he said. “I’ll find you.” He backed up his big truck and with a spray of gravel and dust, he drove down the road toward the town. I watched him disappear over the crest of a little hill and I stood for another moment, thinking about what I should do next. But I really was freezing, and I really needed to talk to Meadow, so I went in.

She had retreated into the bathroom and locked the door. “Meadow?” I asked through it. I knew perfectly well that this one was about as soundproof as a piece of toilet paper, but she didn’t answer me.

I kept trying. “How come you did that to the guy’s car?” I asked. It would help her to discuss this, and I could almost feel the anger vibrating from her. I definitely heard her crashing around some bottles and water splashing a lot. “Meadow? Why? Why did you say that he deserved it?”

“Do you seriously not know who he is?”

“He said that his name is Jake Kovacz,” I answered. “I think he’s a farmer.” Judging solely by the looks of him, his profession also could have been “strongman competitor” or just “giant for hire.”

“No, his name is Jake Koval , and he’s a Woodsmen!”

I guessed you could keep animals in the woods, but it was a little weird that she knew where he lived. “Were you following him or something?” I wondered.

The door slid open fast and hard, and I heard a thud inside the wall that told me it had gone off its track again. Shoot, that was hard to fix. “He’s a football player!” she yelled. “He plays professional football. Everyone knows that!” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize that it was his truck.”

“Oh, the football guy,” I said, nodding as if I had also been in on it. “Yeah, he plays for the Woodchucks.”

“The Woodsmen ,” she corrected me again. “Don’t you know anything? You’re so stupid! Why do I have to live with you when you’re so stupid? I should be with Mom or Grandma!”

“Well, unfortunately you can’t be with them right now,” I started to explain, and it had to have been the hundredth or thousandth time we’d been through it. She knew the reasons as well as I did, since she’d lived them.

But she didn’t want to hear me so instead of listening, she screamed. It was a shriek of pure rage and she tried to slide the door shut, but it was definitely off the track inside the wall. So she ran out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, where the door swung the normal way. She slammed it hard enough that everything in the house rattled again, just like it had when that big John Koval pounded his fist on it.

I sat down on the couch and sighed. This morning hadn’t gone the way I’d wanted it to, but there were a lot more hours in the day and there was a chance that things could go a lot better. A business in town had a help-wanted sign in its window and I’d filled out an application; maybe they would call and say yes, we would be thrilled to hire you to sell our crap to tourists, Ember! And we’ll pay you so well and provide amazing benefits! Also, there was a car raffle, a giveaway at the big dealership near here called Whitby Automotive. I’d put my name in about a thousand times, so the odds were good that I might win. Maybe the next email I’d receive would be from them saying congratulations, and would you like to take the cash equivalent instead of the vehicle? And I’d say yes, yes I would, even though my new job selling crap to tourists pays so great that I don’t even need the extra money.

But when I glanced at my phone, I didn’t have any good news like that. Instead, I saw that I did have a lot of unread emails and missed robocalls from Meadow’s school. I looked toward her door, thinking that a good parent would tell her that she had to go right now, that skipping class was not acceptable in my household. And by the way, she’d have a terrible life if she didn’t get a good education. We were driving to school and I would march her into the building myself!

That was probably what a good parent would have done. But instead, I emailed the attendance guy and said that I’d forgotten to tell them that Meadow was sick today. Oops, I was really sorry and in the future, I’d be better with staying in touch about stuff like that. I sent it quickly with my eyes closed because I didn’t like to lie but really, I felt I didn’t have much choice here. The option was to break into her bedroom and physically carry her to the car, and that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t built like Jesse Kovar, after all…that made me think about the banana on his truck, and I felt sorry about that, too.

I let her stay in her room for a few more minutes while I started some breakfast, and then I knocked on her door a whole lot more gently than the big guy had. “Meadow?” I called. She didn’t answer but again, I could hear through it. From the sound of things, she was on her bed and I bet that she was hugging her stuffed bunny. She hadn’t had a lot of possessions to bring over here, but there had been a few items that she’d clung to.

“I’m making breakfast,” I said. I had put waffles into the toaster and I knew she liked them. I could already smell that they were cooking and maybe the aroma would waft under this door so that she would get hungry. I heard her shift on the bed; the frame creaked whenever she moved during the night, too.

But so far, there was no answer, so I tried again. “It’s getting really close to Christmas,” I announced. “We don’t have a tree yet and I thought that I would go get one today. And some ornaments, too.” What else did you put on a tree? “And lights,” I added.

I heard the mattress make the big squeak that always woke me when she got up. No, not always…because I’d slept through it today. I had also slept through the two alarms I’d set, and that was why Meadow had gone off to vandalize cars instead of meeting the school bus like she was supposed to. That was my fault, and tomorrow, I would set three alarms. In movies, they rigged up pails of water, too—could I do that? It was an interesting idea.

Her bedroom door opened a crack and although she kept her face mostly in the shadow, I could tell that her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying again. “We used to have a star,” she said.

“What?”

The door opened a little farther. “We used to have a star for the top of the tree,” Meadow announced. “We had a star and my mom put it on every year.”

“Really?”

“Do you think I’m lying?” she asked angrily.

Unfortunately I did, because I knew her mom. But I could have been wrong—maybe Christal had kept up with holiday traditions, and that would have been so lovely for her daughter. “I wish we had that star,” I said. “We can shop for something similar.”

“I want the same one!” Meadow told me. “They didn’t let me pack anything and I would have gotten it.”

“I’m sorry. I also wish I’d been there to help you that day,” I said. “Can you draw a picture so that I have a better idea of what it looks like?”

I watched her hesitate, considering. “Ok,” she finally answered, and the door opened all the way. It was a win! I smiled and tried to put my arm around her, but she shook it off. She kept going toward the kitchen, though, where she ate the waffles, and then on our way to buy the Christmas tree, she showed me something.

“It was like this,” she said, and held up her sketch book. “See?”

I looked more closely when we got to the first traffic light, which took a while to reach because where we lived, there wasn’t enough traffic to need one. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” I told her. “Can I have that page?”

I wanted to find her star.

But there were other things to do, too. First, I had to keep getting Meadow up for school and that was hard because my bucket plan, the one to pour water on my head to wake me up in the morning, had been unsuccessful. It turned out that building something like that necessitated more parts and skills than I seemed to possess. Second, I had to keep going to work, and business hadn’t slowed around the holidays. If anything, it had picked up, which was great for tips but made me tired. I usually tried to nap in between when she woke up at the break of dawn and when the bus dropped her back off in the afternoon, but it seemed like there was always something to do. And then I got home so late…yeah, I was tired.

And then last, there was Jeffrey Koven and his vandalized vehicle. I had put that out of my thoughts but he did show up again in his gorgeous truck and parked it behind my car. It looked like a dad with a baby, or maybe that my petite hatchback would get eaten. Anyway, due to putting him out of my mind, I hadn’t expected him to pound on the door again. Meadow was at school (a win!) so it was only me in the house, and I’d been trying to clean and also to make things more festive as a surprise for when she got off the bus. So far, my effort to find that star hadn’t borne fruit or stars, either, but I could do other things to make a nice holiday.

Boom, boom, boom! The house shook and I jumped to my feet, but then I knew that it was only Jonathan Kovlar because I saw his big vehicle through the window. I ran to answer before he did any damage and when I opened the door, he didn’t seem angry. Maybe he always knocked that way.

“I had the truck repaired and I have the invoice for the work,” he stated.

“I saw that the banana is gone and I’m so glad. It looks amazing,” I said, and shivered. “Gee whiz, it’s freezing.” It had snowed the night before which was so pretty, but also very hard for me to drive in. I was used to streets that were plowed a little bit better and maybe with some more salt on them, but our road wasn’t very well-traveled and the county didn’t bother with it.

“That was no banana.” He thrust a piece of paper toward me. “Here.”

“Don’t you want to come in? It’s so cold,” I said, but when I looked him over, he really didn’t seem very affected by it. He wasn’t even wearing a coat, and I was wearing one inside. I also wore a hat, because when Meadow wasn’t there, I saved on the heat.

I moved back and waved my arm and he glared at me for a moment before taking one huge step through the doorway. “Mother of all fucks…what’s happening in here?” he asked.

“I’m decorating,” I explained. “I’m trying to make this a memorable Christmas for Meadow.”

He turned his head and took it all in. “Memorable,” he echoed. “It’s something.”

I glanced around too and saw the scene through his eyes. “It’s a lot,” I agreed. I had covered the tabletops, the refrigerator, and the cabinets. I’d covered the doors and most of the walls, too. It was because I’d gotten a deal on a huge roll of paper, so I’d been able to tape it up everywhere and I’d drawn holiday-themed pictures on all of it. There were big, bold designs in bright colors, and I’d splurged on a lot of good glitter so that was also everywhere. It was all over me, for sure. So far, I hadn’t put anything on the ceiling—but I was thinking about it. “It’s a lot, and that will make it memorable. I was cleaning, too.”

He looked around. “This is clean?”

“It’s hard with so much glitter,” I explained. “Would you like to sit down?”

“No. Here’s the invoice.” He held out the paper again and I squinted at it.

“I need my glasses. Just a minute, please.” They were next to my bed and as I left my room to rejoin him, I noticed that I’d deposited a glitter trail behind myself.

Jeremiah Kobalt was standing in the exact same place and with the invoice still extended in front of him. “I couldn’t drive around like that so I had it fixed before I got my payment,” he said. “But I will get my payment.”

“You will,” I promised, and took the paper from his huge hand. He had white scars on his knuckles and they were big and thick, like they might have been broken. Maybe one of his animals had stepped on him by mistake.

Then I looked down at the numbers. “What is this?” I asked. “This is the invoice for the scratch? Are you sure?”

“It wasn’t just a scratch. They had to repaint the whole door,” he answered. “She went down to the metal. That meant more work, which meant more money.”

I took off my glasses and then put them back on to make sure that I was seeing it right. “This much?”

“That much,” he agreed. “Pay me now or we’ll go through lawyers. You and the kid admitted that she did it and that you were the responsible party. Remember?”

I looked up at him and nodded. “I remember,” I said. “I need to sit down.”

I did that on the couch and a small, sparkling cloud burst up as I plopped onto the cushion. It settled gently around me and I thought how pretty it was.

“You’ll never get rid of that glitter,” Joshua…no that wasn’t right. I looked more closely at the invoice.

“Jake Koval,” I stated, and he stared.

“Yeah?”

“That’s your name,” I told him.

His hands went to his hips and his eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you up to? I know you know who I am, and I’m not playing games. You’re not getting something out of me.”

“What would I get?” I asked. “Are you sure this amount is right?”

He ignored my first question. “So this is going to turn into an argument?”

I looked up at him. From down here on the couch, it was like staring up to the top of Mount Rushmore, which I had seen once. It was breathtaking, and I had the same feeling when I looked at Jake Koval. It was his size, yes, but also that he looked so…stony. It was like his face had been carved out of rock, with a big, strong jaw and a nose and cheekbones that were sharp and prominent. He also had blue eyes, and they absolutely glared. The presidents on Mount Rushmore had looked a lot less threatening. I hadn’t been able to see the backs of their heads, but I didn’t think that any of them had long hair, either. This guy did but it was restrained in a thick ponytail.

“I don’t want to argue,” I said. “I just can’t believe this is so expensive. I’m going to give you the money but I was thinking about Christmas.”

He laughed. The sound didn’t make me think he’d heard something amusing, though. It sounded almost as angry as when Meadow screamed. “I knew it,” he said scornfully. “‘Oh, it’s Christmas, do I really have to pay for the damage my daughter caused?’ Yeah, you do,” he growled out.

I nodded and went into my bedroom again, and then I put the chair onto the dresser, climbed onto the bed, onto the dresser, and then onto the chair. I removed the vent cover in the ceiling, leaving a hole that hadn’t yet worked to blow hot air like I thought it was supposed to, and I got the box that I stored up there. Carefully, I climbed back down and then counted out the money I owed him.

“You keep this much in cash in the house?” he asked as I returned to the living room and handed it to him.

“I get tips,” I said and watched as he also counted it. “It’s all there.”

“You want a receipt?”

“No, that’s ok.” I watched, sadly, as he took out his wallet and put the thick stack of bills inside it. “I’m glad your truck is all better and I’m sorry this happened. I’m going to do my best to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

“Well…” He looked at me for a moment with a scary frown before he said, “Good.”

“It was nice to have met you,” I told him.

“Really?” He shook his head, and without another word, he walked out into the cold, slamming the door behind himself. I sat down on my glittery couch and sighed.

But maybe I would win that car in the raffle, because they hadn’t picked a name yet. Things could brighten up today. They definitely could.