30 EVIE #2
“Temper, temper on this one!” My father was making a joke, but Carter had a full three inches in height over him, and I could tell he was unnerved.
My father had always seemed to tower over me, but for the first time in my life, I realized that it had been an illusion, as he suddenly seemed to be smaller.
“What do you know, anyway?” He looked Carter up and down. “Not much, I’m guessing, by the looks of you.”
Carter’s jaw clenched. “Go.”
“Now, step aside, son. Let’s go get some lunch, Evie. Come on—we’ll catch up.”
My eyes were filled with tears, and I looked down, quiet. My father ruined everything. Nothing would be the same now that he knew where I was. He’d always want something.
“I can’t today, Dad. Sorry. Maybe next time,” I said quietly. I went to my bag and pulled out a few bills from my wallet, hoping it would be enough to get him to leave for a little while. “Here’s a bit to help with gas. Maybe we’ll catch up tomorrow. Okay?”
He looked at me, then back to Carter, who wasn’t backing down, and then seeming to think better of it, gingerly stepped around him.
He walked over to me, and I could smell the stale cigarette smoke on him that permeated every fabric of my childhood.
Instinctively, I made myself smaller, hoping he would just leave. I reached out and gave him the cash.
“That’s good of you, kiddo. I’ll come back next time I’m around. There’s a job in Jersey that’ll pay me a few bucks. And we might get a gig while we’re there. I’ll come up here, take you out for something nice.”
I nodded somberly. “Okay, Dad.”
“Don’t be a stranger, kiddo. I’ll see you soon.” He gave a sidelong look at Carter and then finally was on his way. Just as he was going, he turned. “Hey, you should know. I’m sober now. Two months.” He seemed bashful and proud at the same time.
I smiled a little, hopeful that it would stick this time for his sake. “That’s really wonderful, Dad.” And I meant it. “Really.”
His face softened, and he looked at me again. “You really do look good, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
I stood where I was for a moment, sad and trembling, and watched him leave, while tears began to spill down my cheeks.
I didn’t look at Carter. I didn’t want to look at anyone.
I picked up the keys from where I’d dropped them, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.
But when I looked up through the window, I saw Carter talking to my father by his truck. After a few words, he drove away.
I heard the door open and a moment later, Carter joined me where I sat on the sofa.
“What did you say to him?” I asked, still not able to fully meet his eyes.
He didn’t answer at first. “I just made sure he wouldn’t be coming back for a while.”
“He’ll always come back.” He stole the light from whatever good I had in my life.
“Ev, you’re going to have to tell me what that was all about.”
“You have to get to Pittsburgh.”
He pulled me close. “We have a little longer.”
I’m eight years old and it’s after ten o’clock at night and I have school in the morning.
I’m already in bed but can’t sleep when I hear my father walk in.
I hear the tinny sound of the television coming from the living room—I leave it on for company—and a moment later, the sound of him kicking off his boots.
At his stumbling arrival, there’s the familiar pressure in my gut, coupled oddly with a sense of relief because at least I’m not alone in the trailer anymore.
“Hey, Ev, you still up?” he calls. I want to be asleep, but I’m not, so with some reluctance, I get up.
As I pad down the narrow hall, I notice just a split second too late a toy Barbie car I’ve left on the kitchen floor.
He kicks it out of the way with a force that slams it into the wall, scattering it into pieces.
I wince and then quickly run to it. “I’m sorry.
I meant to pick it up, but I forgot. I’m sorry.
” I bend over to retrieve the broken pieces of the treasured toy that had been a gift from a friend’s mom and try not to cry. Maybe I can fix it.
“I told you to keep your crap in your own room,” he says. “I don’t need kids’ junk laying everywhere.” I nod and make myself small against the wall, as I often do. Maybe if he doesn’t see me, if I’m less trouble, he’ll love me more.
I’d made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich earlier, packed and ready in the refrigerator for school lunch the next day, and I watch as he reaches in and opens it, gobbling it in three bites.
The last of the bread. My stomach growls.
He sways a bit, and I can smell the alcohol on him.
“I’ll go to the store tomorrow,” he says then, as if realizing I’m still there.
“Okay,” I say, though we both know he won’t.
I’ve been telling Carter stories like these.
I had been reluctant and quiet, but once I started talking, they just poured out.
He had that effect on me. I told him about the way I’d learned to cook simple things from around the house when I was little—using the chair as a stool to boil water for macaroni and cheese.
Learned to wash clothes and sheets in the bathtub when he didn’t get to the Laundromat.
Aside from the few rough patches like mine, I lived in a nice town, with a good school that was my favorite place to be.
Teachers watched over me. Checked in on me from time to time with an encouraging word.
I met your dad and Kate in middle school.
They became like family and lived in comfortable homes with good parents who always just happened to have leftovers around to give me.
And then later, your dad and I started dating—winning Best Couple in the yearbook and all.
With the help of his parents, both attorneys, I’d become legally emancipated at the age of sixteen so that I would be able to make arrangements for college and scholarships and financial aid without needing to depend on my father’s signatures and all the necessary documents.
I might as well have done it when I was eight, if anyone had let me.
I told Carter all of this. I told him a few good things too—like the time my dad surprised me with a Christmas tree and we decorated it with colored lights and icicles.
And the Shirley Temples the bartenders would sometimes make me when he took me along to a bar for a gig and the way his friends’ girlfriends would do my hair and make a fuss over me.
I didn’t tell him about the time when I was ten and my father somehow thought it was okay to go away for a week and leave me home alone and that while he was gone, a storm hit and the power went out in the middle of the night.
I’d been afraid of the dark ever since and learned to fall asleep with the coming of the dawn.
Or how I’d had to lie about where he was sometimes so no one would report him to Child Protective Services.
And that eventually, when I was fourteen and old enough to get a job at the local Dairy Queen after school, how I began to support us both.
He took almost every dollar I made. Though Carter had probably figured that part out on his own, I’d imagine.
“It makes more sense now,” he said a little later, while gently sliding my bracelet up and down my arm as I sat leaning against him with my legs curled beneath me.
“What does?”
“Why you told me you swore you would never date a musician.” He stared off into the distance. He used to do this thing where he sort of pursed his lips as a kind of punctuation to his thoughts. Funny how clearly I can still see him doing that.
“It was all he cared about. His band. It wasn’t his full-time job—he worked for the town doing road work and plowing snow—but music was what he wanted to do.
It was all he talked about. He was always bitter and used to blame me.
Said he could’ve been big if it hadn’t been for my mother getting pregnant and sticking him with me—if he’d only been able to get out on the road more.
Stuff like that.” He used to hang pictures of cities on the wall by the phone in the kitchen.
All the places he said he’d take me when he made it big.
Before I knew better, I would nod and smile in response because he looked happy in those moments, and I would imagine us having fun somewhere wonderful in the future.
We never went anywhere, of course. But it was a nice thought for a while.
Truth was, he wasn’t a great musician to begin with, and the band was just average noise, but even after everything, I would never betray my father by saying such a thing out loud.
Carter listened patiently that day, as if he had nowhere else to be.
We spent the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon talking.
But I think that was when we started making choices that weren’t always the best—our lives coming to revolve completely around the addiction we had to each other.
We were in each other’s veins. He nearly missed the show in Pittsburgh that night. He made it only in the nick of time.
Carter had his history. I had mine. And now we both knew each other’s skeletons. That day was also the first time he heard me talk about your dad.