Chapter 10
CRICKET POPPINS
Heath
Friday, one week after finding Cricket in the shower in the mother-in-law house, which is something I shouldn’t still be thinking about, I get home after a morning spent staining a deck for a client in town to find Lavender and Cricket huddled next to the rotting latticework beneath the main house’s sunporch.
“They can’t see us here,” Lav’s saying to Cricket, who can’t see me, because she’s facing the other way.
“Are you sure?” Cricket replies. She’s also looking the other way, but as she starts to look at Lav, her head jerks toward me instead, like she noticed me in her peripheral vision.
We make eye contact, and her face goes a mottled red.
“They can’t see us, Cricket,” Lav says. “We should attack now!”
Lav leaps to her feet.
Cricket lands on her ass, back against the rotting boards, which creak but don’t shatter.
“I’ve got you, you mangy dragons,” Lav yells.
She’s brandishing a foam sword, slicing and dicing the air, and I suddenly realize she didn’t meow at me once yesterday.
This morning either.
“Cricket, keep up! You think I can take on seventy jillion-hundred dragons myself?”
“I’m feeling my age in my bones today,” Cricket calls back. “I’m coming. I’m just slow.”
Lav harumphs. “You sound like Ms. Emerson.”
And then my daughter goes back to slashing and kicking and yelling at the dragons.
Working out all of that six-year-old energy.
Huh.
Maybe that’s why bedtime was easier last night.
“I don’t know who Ms. Emerson is, but I hope Lav doesn’t have her again this year,” Cricket says to me.
I offer her a hand.
She hesitates, then puts her hand in mine and lets me pull her up.
A low buzz radiates from my palm through the bones in my arm, up to my shoulder.
Stop it, I order myself.
“Ms. Emerson was last year’s teacher,” I say. “Came out of retirement when they needed a long-term sub. Wasn’t the best fit.”
Cricket winces.
“Cricket! They’re winning! Who do I have to talk to to get some help around here?”
“Excuse me, I have to go slay dragons,” Cricket says to me.
She takes three steps, trips, catches herself, and then manages to reach Lav’s side, where she dances around, brandishing an invisible weapon, kicking and slashing and chopping with almost as much coordination as my six-year-old has.
I start to smile, realize what I’m doing, and growl softly to myself.
Mabel says Cricket’s looking for a new job and talking to friends back home about possibilities for new living arrangements.
She’s not staying much longer.
That is what I should smile about.
And the plumber should finally be here today to look at the mother-in-law house, which is also something I should smile about.
Progress.
Yep.
It’s all about progress and people finding ways to live their best lives.
Nothing at all about how I keep wanting to go downstairs and ask her if she’s doing better.
Or that I feel like she’s one more thing on my list of responsibilities.
Or how I saw her smiling in the garden last night while Lav and I were walking Fluffy and thought she was the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen.
Fuck me, I have issues.
“We did it, Cricket! We beat the dragons!”
Lav high-fives Cricket, and then they do a complicated handshake that involves gestures that make me think of butterfly wings and prancing unicorns.
I want to tell Cricket to not let Lav get too attached, but even when I try to go a week without coming over to the main house, Lav sneaks over here anyway.
She’s seen women come and go for most of what she can remember of her life.
My problem is mine, not my daughter’s.
She’s learning healthy ways to say goodbye to people while also having people she can depend on.
This is good for her.
“I have two spots for us in a class on making balloon animals this afternoon,” I announce.
“Daddy!” Lav flies at me like she’s just now seeing me—probably is, she’s pretty focused when she’s in her imagination—and I catch her and lift her for a hug.
She’s filthy.
Good sign she had fun this morning.
Also not the best for going into town. Class is inside the library. If it were in the park, we could go dirty. If it’s in the library, I need to clean her up or risk having a few single moms ask me if I need help.
“You have lunch?” I ask my daughter.
“Elizabeth made me grilled cheese and apples with dragon heart sauce.” She puts her hands on either side of my face and makes me bend my head down to take a kiss on my nose.
“What goes in dragon heart sauce?” I ask.
“Dragon hearts, Daddy.”
“What else?”
“Strawberries and pears and marshmallow fluff.”
“Huh.”
“It’s my extra-secret special respisee.”
I love that she still can’t say recipe.
It’s one lingering pronunciation that first grade didn’t steal from her, the way they took peter butter sammich from me.
Freaking Ms. Emerson.
“You told Elizabeth how to make your secret dragon heart sauce?” I ask Lav.
“If she tells anyone, a dragon gets to set her house on fire.”
Times like this, I wish I could homeschool her.
So that she can explore dragons and talk about them setting houses on fire and we can work through what that really means to her, instead of knowing that if she says stuff like this at school—and she has—that I’ll get a call from the principal.
A six-year-old pretending to slay dragons isn’t practicing to be an arsonist when she grows up, which the principal knows, but Lav always manages to take it a step farther than the other kids.
Ava would’ve freaked out at calls from the principal.
And there’s the guilt seeping in at how much easier parts of this parenting gig are when I’m doing it solo.
I hug Lav tight, then set her down. “You ready to go get changed and learn to make balloon animals?”
“Can Cricket take me?”
“Oh, no, Cricket’s not ready to leave the house yet,” Cricket says quickly before I can answer.
Lav wrinkles her nose. “Do you need to change? I think you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Cricket shoots a look at me, then shifts it to Lav, then back to me. “I meant I can’t leave…here.”
“Why?”
“Because Cricket has things she needs to do here,” I say instead of giving her the real answer.
Mabel texted the group chat this morning that Cricket’s video is making the rounds again.
Going viral.
Again.
Cricket didn’t ask why her video is suddenly back at the top of the trending list, which is good.
We all agree she’s not ready to hear about the Cheeky Beaver channel and how her video has had a resurgence in popularity every time the fucker running the channel has posted a new video.
Lav juts her chin out. “Cricket doesn’t have any chores. I heard Samantha say so.”
“It’s not always about chores. Sometimes grown-ups have to do things to take care of themselves. Like a lot of our friends here do.”
“But it’s balloon animals.”
“I did a lifestyle segment on kid birthday parties once and learned how to make balloon animals,” Cricket says. “It’s okay. Your dad should learn instead.”
Lavender squints at me. “Do you already know how to make balloon animals?”
“Some,” I reply. “Always happy to learn more.”
“You know how to make balloon animals?”
“Some. Because I took a class once. Just like you can take a class today.”
“You can teach me and Cricket can teach me and then we don’t have to leave either. I need to take care of myself.”
“I have to spend more time in the garden,” Cricket says. “But thank you for thinking of me.”
Lav turns her squint on Cricket. “You have to garden?”
“I do. It’s what I have to do for me next.”
“Grown-ups are so complicated. I’m never growing up.”
“That’s a fantastic goal,” Cricket says.
No, it’s not.
The idea of being responsible for a six-year-old forever—no.
Today’s been a good day.
I adore the crap out of my daughter.
But parenting is still so fucking much work.
“Did you grow up?” Lav asks Cricket.
“Depends on who you ask,” Cricket replies.
That.
That’s why I have to keep having patience with Lav.
Why I have to let her run wild and fight dragons and draw whiskers on her own face with permanent marker.
So that when she grows up, she’ll know I loved her unconditionally with everything I had to give.
So she never questions her worth.
So she never thinks I’ll judge her for her shortcomings the way Cricket’s parents clearly have.
No matter what anyone else thinks or would have thought of the way I’m raising my daughter.
“Good luck with that then,” Lav says like she’s sixteen instead of six.
Being around this many adults all the time—she picks things up.
Cricket smiles at her. “If I can slay dragons, I can do anything, right?”
“Darn tootin’,” my daughter replies. “Daddy, can I ride on your shoulders? This day has taken it out of me.”
She’s too big, but I do it anyway.
Because it matters.
“You’re a really good dad,” Cricket says softly.
The compliment hits me in the gut.
But I merely say a brief thanks, and then Lav and I are off.
Gotta keep trying to be as good of a dad as they all think I am.