10. Vandal
VANDAL
The shower is ice-cold, but I don’t have time for the water to warm up. And I’m brushing my teeth while trying to smear shampoo on my head at the same time.
Because I’m pretty sure that the last thing Daisy and Elsie need is to see me drunk and just a little bit high again. And I’m mad. Because I tried to do the whole quitting thing yesterday. I lasted four torturous hours before I convinced myself that one more wouldn’t matter.
But of course, one became two, and two became three, and before I knew it, it was this morning and I was hungover.
The red eyes, I can’t do anything about, but at least my body is clean enough.
“I’ve put an outfit on the bed,” Havoc says, sticking his head in the bathroom. “Might save you thirty seconds in getting out there.”
Yeah, I’m naked. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me in this state. We’re just…brothers. In every way that counts. Seen him naked plenty times. In the school locker room, on rides to Sturgis in communal showers, or when he’s gotten so drunk, I’ve had to put him to bed.
“Thanks,” I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste bubbles. My heart has been racing since the minute Havoc knocked on the door. “What are we at?”
He glances at his watch. “Five minutes and seven, eight, nine seconds.”
“Go and make sure she’s okay,” I say before spitting my toothpaste down the drain and tossing my toothbrush into my sink.
It takes another thirty seconds to rinse all the soap off my body and hair.
Another thirty to run a towel over my body as fast as I can.
I spare a glance at the way my wounds are healing.
Hair is sprouting up over the scar that runs from ear to ear.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Van?” Havoc asks.
I wipe my face on the towel. “What does that mean?”
“I say this with love, man, but this is the worst possible time in your life to be hooking up with anyone, let alone someone with a kid.”
“Fuck you,” I say, even as my brain processes the fact he’s right. “And I’m not hooking up with her.”
“You don’t just ride off to a woman’s house in the middle of the night because a kid called.”
I raise an eyebrow at him, and we have a standoff for a second.
“Fine,” he says. “I get it. You would. But I saw the way you looked at her in the bar. You like her.”
“What I’d like is for you to get the fuck out of here so I can get dressed.”
Havoc huffs a laugh at that. “Dude, you’re rolling on pills right now. Being a functioning drunk. If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were the last person who should be around a kid you care about. I mean, any kid. You know that firsthand.”
My dad was a drunk. A hard one. He was angry, unreliable, and a liar. He left and came back over and over like a yo-yo. He died when I was seven. Mom found him on the dirt driveway to our trailer. He’d had a heart attack on the walk home from the bar late one night.
The comparison to my father rankles.
But Havoc isn’t alone in his thoughts. I’ve seen it in her eyes on the few occasions she’s visited me here. There’s a fear I’m going to turn into him, and a nervousness that I’m going to put her through the same hoops my father did.
Havoc walks over to me. Him fully dressed.
Me, naked. He grips my biceps, his fingers digging into muscle.
“You got a lot of work in front of you, Gid,” he says, using the short form of my real name, Gideon, for once.
“And to do it will require you to be selfish.” He shakes his head and furrows his brow as he tries to find the words.
“You got two options here. You don’t do the work and spend time with her now, but then she gets this side of you, and Elsie’s gonna have to wonder which version of her father figure she’s gonna get tonight.
Or you tell her you can’t do this right now because you need to work on you, but she’ll be your first call when you’re through this, and she’ll get the best of you.
And I’m telling you, if you gave me the choice to not have you in my life for a while but then have you back, or see you every day from now on but you stay as you are… I know which I’d choose.”
He releases my arms without letting me answer, and then I hear the door slam.
In the minute it takes to pull on clothes over still-damp skin, I think about what Havoc said. And then in the fifteen seconds it takes to roughly rub the towel over my hair, I decide he’s wrong. I can do both.
I may look like shit, but I sure as hell don’t smell like it.
When I walk into the clubhouse, I see the two of them before they see me. Elsie is holding a glass of milk and has a milk moustache that makes the kid even cuter than normal. And Daisy is sitting in a chair across from Maren, smiling at something she said.
I get what Havoc said. Fuck, I even feel it myself. But wouldn’t it be the kind of blessing you can only dream about for this to be my life, to have a lovely wife and kid to come home to, and them to be there for me every day?
I mean, I barely know them.
But something tells me I’m meant to.
As I start walking toward them, Elsie sees me first. She puts her milk down, grabs a piece of paper, and runs across the clubhouse. “Vandal,” she yells as she throws herself at me.
I’m not sure what the etiquette is, but something tells me to crouch and grab her and tug her up into my arms. So I do.
She smells like sunscreen and fresh air. “I brought you a picture to say thank you.”
I know there are plenty of brothers in the bar giving me looks. New woman in town, and the loser who lost the fight is bringing her and her daughter around. But I block the stares and look down at the picture.
“It’s us when you came over, but I drew us all at the table because I want you to come have dinner with us one night, but Momma says you’re probably busy. And she said a bad word driving over here. And Jodie, my friend, wasn’t at camp today because she was sick. And my sneakers hurt.”
“Woah,” I say, looking at Elsie, who is practically nose to nose with me. “That’s a lot of intel to share with me at once. Let’s look at the picture first.”
She points to my chest in real life, at my cut that still has the gold star on it. “I even drew your star for being brave.”
Should I worry about what my brothers think, that I only pass a toddler or whatever you call a five-year-old’s bar on bravery? Probably. But it twists my gut with fondness just as much now as it did before.
“I like it.” What I don’t like are the red eyes when everyone else’s are in gray pencil. The bright red cheeks from drinking too much alcohol.
I hate that this precious little girl is only seeing the worst of me, while trying to draw the best. Havoc was right.
She deserves the best of me. But the thought of going without painkillers and alcohol makes something deep in my bones vibrate.
Not sure how I’ll sleep without it. How I’ll function without it.
Can’t even stand the thought of suffering the hundred pent-up hangovers I keep washing down with more booze catching up with me.
The scales are that evenly balanced: Daisy and Elsie stand on one side, and the booze and painkillers stand on the other.
“I love it, Elsie. Don’t know that anyone has ever drawn me a picture, let alone one as good as this.” I take in the little triangle bodies and circular heads and the two-dimensional chairs with missing legs and decide it belongs in one of those fancy museums. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
She cups her hand and whispers in my ear. “Momma drove by three times before she stopped.”
When I look over to Daisy, she’s…enigmatic. Maybe she’s happy. Maybe she’s curious. Maybe she’s scared. You could never tell from the neutral expression on her face.
I don’t like it.
I want the smile.
“You think she couldn’t see the place?” I ask.
Elsie giggles. “No, silly. It’s bigger than the moon.”
“Okay, the clubhouse is big, but it’s not that big.”
“How do you know? It’s smaller than a nickel in the sky.”
I try to think of things from her perspective, and I’m sure the concept of the real distance from the earth to the moon is beyond a five-year-old’s comprehension.
“Should we walk over to your momma?” I ask.
Elsie shakes her head and wraps her hands around my neck tight, same way she did when I was at their place five days ago.
“No. Because she’ll make us leave. Or she’ll say only two more minutes, Elsie.
” She pulls exaggerated facial expressions meant to mimic Daisy, and I can’t help but laugh as I reach down for her foot.
“So, what’s the deal with your sneakers?”
She sighs. “They’re too tight, but Momma says we need to wait until she gets paid to get some new ones because I’m growing too fast.”
Havoc grew faster than me when we were kids. Used to annoy the shit out of me. I only surpassed him in height and build when I turned seventeen. But up until then, he’d give me any of the clothes and sneakers he grew out of, otherwise I have no clue what I’d have worn.
We were both raised by single moms, but Havoc’s dad would appear like clockwork on the last Friday of every month and take him to Miami or Fort Lauderdale for the weekend.
Havoc hated it. He’s not a city guy. But his dad would hook him up with clothes and shoes and things, and Havoc was mercenary enough to suck up the forty-eight hours to get what he wanted.
I remember his mom once saying that if he were as generous with his child support payments as he was with those monthly trips, they’d have a much better life.
Still, I benefited from his visits too by proxy. But I know what it feels like when shit doesn’t fit right and your mom can’t afford to fix it.
“What size are you?” I ask, thinking I’ll grab her a pair.
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Hmm. There goes my plan to order her a pair for now. Because I feel like if I ask Daisy, she’ll blow me off.
I walk us toward Daisy, and Maren says something to her that makes her smile.
“Hey,” Havoc says. “You got a second human growing out of the side of your head, Vandal.”
Elsie wraps her hands tighter around my neck. “It’s me. Elsie,” she says, but she sounds a lot less certain than she does when talking to me.
Maren whispers something to Daisy, and Daisy nods before Maren stands. “Hey, Elsie. I was just thinking how I feel like a Coke float. You want one?”
She fidgets in my arms for a second. “What’s that?”
“It’s cola with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top,” Maren says.
She looks at Daisy, eyes wide. “Can I have one please, Momma?”
Daisy nods, and it clicks that Maren was asking Daisy if it was okay before she even offered. “Yes, you can. But use your manners.”
“Yes, please,” Elsie says, wiggling out of my arms.
Maren offers Elsie her hand, and Elsie takes it. “Havoc’s coming with us because he likes them too,” Maren says.
“He is?” Elsie says nervously.
Havoc looks up at Maren suddenly. “I do?”
“Yes,” Maren says, tipping her head between me and Daisy with wide eyes.
“Oh, yeah, sure. Fine. I do.” He stands and offers his hand to Elsie. She looks at it with suspicion and presses her closed fist to her chest.
“Got it. You only like Vandal,” he says as he dramatically pouts at her.
Elsie looks to me for reassurance, and she couldn’t have done more damage to my heart if she’d taken a knife to it.
“First, you don’t have to hold anyone’s hand you don’t want to,” I say. “But if you want to but you’re a bit scared or nervous, Havoc is my very best friend in the world, and I know he won’t hurt you.”
She glances up at him. “You promise?”
Havoc draws a cross over his heart. “I swear.”
Elsie looks at his hand and tentatively reaches for it. “Did you know Jodie wasn’t at camp today because she was sick?”
“Don’t even know who Jodie is, let alone know she went to the same camp as you. What’s wrong with her?” Havoc asks as the three of them walk off together.
Then it’s just the two of us.
I tug out the chair opposite Daisy. “It’s good to see you.”
It’s good to see you? Jesus.
“Daisy really wanted to bring you the picture.”
I rub my hand over my chin. “Heard you drove by the place three times before pulling over.”
She winces at that. “Damn, she noticed.”
“And you swore.”
Daisy threads a hand through her curls. They spring back when she lets the hair go. “Not my finest hour.”
I lean forward, placing my elbows on the little round table, bringing me closer to her. “You nervous about coming here?”
Daisy gestures around the room, and while I’d forgotten anyone else was here, the room crashes back in at full tilt. The music. The drinking. The smoke.
“Maren offered to take Elsie outside once she had her Coke float, and it’s taking awareness in every bone in my body to not run after her and take her out of here.”
I stand at that and offer her my hand. “Come on. Let me show you around. Maybe if you knew the place a little better, it wouldn’t worry you so much.”
She pauses for a second, one longer than I feel comfortable with given I know Sunny and Ridge are watching at the bar. Then she reaches for it and puts her hand in mine.
“So this is the bar,” I say.
The corner of her mouth twitches in a smile. “I can see that.”
For the first time in a while, I’m able to take my eyes off all the bottles on the wall, because there’s someone here with the power to hold my attention instead.