Chapter Text
I love my dad. I figured I should say that up front. How he feels about me goes without saying, but that’s never stopped him. The problem is even though I respond in kind, voicing these sentiments isn’t enough to make the truth apparent. Not with how cold I seem, how cold I have to be so that all the unstaunched secrets bleeding just under the surface remain hidden, because in order to keep pain contained you have to put it on ice. Circulation returns and pain spreads when the mask of numbness melts away. I can’t stand the thought of anyone seeing through me like that, especially my dad.
It was quiet in the cab of my dad’s red pick-up truck on the ride home from Walgreens the last night before the start of my junior year. The swan song of summer drifted on a light breeze through the driver’s side window as we drove away from the Walgreens parking lot with the setting sun in the rearview mirror. Like always the evening air seemed warmer and sweeter now that the prospect of returning to school was looming near. However, despite the gentle warmth of fading sunlight permeating the car, I kept the thin hems of my long black cardigan’s sleeves scrunched up in my hands.
My dad glanced at me out the corner of his eye as he turned onto the main road. “Well, school starts up again tomorrow. Are you excited about it?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, nudging the bag of school supplies at my feet. “I’m overjoyed.”
“Come on, you’ll get to see a bunch of your classmates that you haven’t seen in months, unless you count the people you talked to at orientation.” Last week at orientation, rather than sticking around and mingling with the other parents, my dad had taken off to go pick up dinner while I picked up my school papers. When he asked me afterwards if I had ventured to socialize with anyone at the event, I told him that I did, though I didn’t go into detail about that particular encounter. “Who knows? You could probably call up somebody tonight to go out and celebrate your last night of freedom.”
“Nobody really makes plans during the last few days of summer,” I said. “We have to cherish what little time we have left to sit around and do nothing.”
My dad half-smiled and shook his head. “You know your mother is going to call tonight and ask if you’ve gotten out of the house at all this week.”
“You could just not answer the phone.”
“She and I agree on a lot of things. It’s nice of you to spend so much of your time looking after the neighbors’ kids, but you really ought to try to make more friends with people your own age. You’re in high school. These are supposed to be the best years of your life, and you’ll miss out if the only people you interact with are your godfather and a couple of nine-year-olds.” He glanced at me again and then fixed his gaze back on the road. “Your mom and I just want you to be happy.”
I sighed and rested my forehead against the window. “I’m doing fine. She’s the one who’s unhappy.”
“She’s your mother,” he said. “It’s her job to worry about you sometimes.”
“It’s more like all the time. I’m always causing her some kind of emotional distress whether it’s because of my lack of friends or my wardrobe.”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to wear a plain t-shirt once in a while. You ought to try having a little variety. Plus, your mom is just worried that wearing a dress over jeans every single day will make other people think you’re weird.”
“Honestly,” I muttered, “I’m pretty sure that ship has already sailed.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you’re weird at all.”
All of the lights were off inside the house when we arrived home. Just a few minutes after we walked inside, the wall-mounted telephone in the kitchen rang. My dad took the phone off the hook and answered. “Hello?” Then he sighed. “Yeah, Lenora’s right here. I’ll put her on.”
My mom is the one who gave me the name Lenora. She disapproved when my dad started calling me “Lenie,” because she thought it sounded too tomboyish. Her apartment in downtown Chicago is about an hour away from our suburban home, but somehow she still manages to be the most attentive mother on the planet.
Bracing myself, I held the phone up to my ear. “Hi, Mom.”
"Hey, honey, how are you doing?” she asked, with her usual initial enthusiasm. “Did you get everything you need for school?”
“Yep,” I answered. “I’m all set.”
“Okay, so this year is going be different, right? You’re going to join a few things and meet some new people?”
While I stood leaning against the pantry with the phone cord wrapped around my arm, my dad busied himself with rinsing off the dishes that we had left to soak in the sink after dinner. I could tell he was trying to surreptitiously listen in on my side of the phone call, but I wasn’t contributing very much to the dialogue. Whenever phone conversations with my mother turn to the subject of my social life, which they often do, she becomes a self-propelled engine geared toward driving my life in a better direction. She means well.
“Just try to open up a little more,” my mom repeated for the millionth time.
“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled. “I’ll try.”
“And you know I’m going be upset if you just say that you’ll try and then nothing changes. Do you remember our deal?”
The deal was that unless I find a group of friends my age sometime before Christmas break this year and start hanging out with them on regular basis, she’s going move me in with her and enroll me at the magnet school downtown. She has given me this ultimatum every year since I started high school.
“Yeah, I remember,” I muttered. “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay, bye. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I hung the phone back on the hook.
I grabbed a towel off of the counter and stood beside my dad at the sink. Admittedly, my dad is the gentle, quiet type, but the subtle reddish tinge in his skin and the intense, stormy quality of his green eyes bring to mind Dennis Quaid in Frequency. He has a way of radiating his emotions like a heat lamp, and it’s impossible not to feel the effects. After handing me a few plates to dry off he turned to me and said, “I hope that you’re going to start listening to your mother and finally do what she’s been asking you to do, at least to give her some peace of mind.”
I rubbed the towel against the plate in a clockwise motion and didn’t answer.
“Something needs to happen soon,” he said, giving me a piercing look. “It’s been years since I’ve seen you go out with friends and have a good time.”
“Most parents have to worry about their kids doing too much of that.”
“Too little isn’t good either.”
I stacked all the clean plates and returned them to the cabinet. Then before I managed to sneak off to my room, he pulled me into one of his tight bear hugs. My dad’s love language is physical contact, and so I tried to hug back as hard as I could.
“I don’t get to talk to you enough,” he said, stepping back and resting both hands on my shoulders. “We need to have a heart to heart once in a while.”
I don’t want you to get frostbite.
After sequestering myself in my bedroom, I switched on the clock radio on my bedside table and turned to an oldies station. I typically leave the radio on while using the sewing machine my mom got me for Christmas when I was thirteen. She probably regrets buying it for me now that I use it to make the dresses that I wear all the time. The floral-printed dress I had set out for tomorrow still needed a few more stiches on the hem, but I decided finish the stitching by hand later once I got back from the park. I needed to go find my kids.
The walk from my house at the end of Woodland Drive to Crystal Lake Park took only about fifteen minutes. A sign advertising Husmann Elementary’s annual fish fry hung outside the gate barricading the old wooden playground. Under the pavilion parents were crowded around the buffet line with their youngsters attached at the hip, but I followed the winding sidewalk away from the crowd towards the edge of the lake. The two-person canopy swing a few yards from the dock had an occupant on the right side. I sat down on the left.
“Hey, Melman,” I said, turning to the middle-aged man next to me. “Nice night, isn’t it?”
My godfather, Joseph Melman, bears a striking resemblance to Robin Williams, except that he has a thinner face and a gentler smile. The way his eyes light up behind his gold-rimmed glasses when he laughs has the same effect on me. He’s the only man I trust besides my dad.
“It’s beautiful,” Melman responded. “Perfect weather for the last night of summer.”
“Did the munchkins get dinner?” I asked. We both glanced over at my nine-year-old neighbors, who were seated precariously on the edge of the docks.
“All I could get them to eat was carrot sticks and tater tots,” he responded. “Dinah told me that she and Sam don’t like fish anymore.”
“She told me last week that she doesn’t like peanut butter anymore either,” I said, smirking. “Then yesterday she asked me to make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
Melman grinned and shook his head. Then he turned to face me. “Are you feeling okay?”
I stared at the lake. “Things are just a little tense at my house.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“My mom keeps threatening to make me move in with her and enroll me in school downtown if I don’t start being more social,” I said, pressing the heel of my hand against my forehead. “I’m a little worried that this is the year she’s finally going to go through with it.”
“Do you think maybe going to a different school would help?”
“There’s nothing wrong with the people at my school. There’s just something wrong with me.” I always regret saying things that make him look at me the way he did then, like he was a bystander witnessing a tragedy that he couldn’t do anything to stop. “You know what I mean. I’m just not that comfortable trying to relate with people my age. It’s a little too much for me.”
“I keep telling you that you need to find someone you can talk to about this stuff,” he said, “whether it’s anxiety or whatever, someone whose job it is to help you deal with that.”
I cringed slightly. “My parents are worried enough about me already. I don’t want to have to tell them that I need psychiatric help.”
“You know that you can always talk with me about anything,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I’m not a trained professional, and there’s not much I can do for you besides listen. I don’t want to keep you from getting help by letting you use me as a substitute shrink.”
“You’re not just a substitute shrink to me. You’re like my own personal Sirius Black.”
“From the Harry Potter series?” Melman asked “Didn’t he die in the fifth book?”
“Yes, but the analogy ends there as long as you don’t go out and battle evil wizards.” I looked over at the pink and gold edges of the retreating horizon. “It’s late. I need to get the kids home before dark.”
Melman nodded and turned his gaze toward the setting sun as well. “Okay. I’m going to stay here a while.” I took his hand and pressed his palm against my face. He knows that I’m not good with hugs, that they make me feel disoriented. “Be safe,” he said as I let go of his hand.
The kids had abandoned their shoes by the railing and were splashing their feet in the water. On the walk towards the docks, I slowed down and watched Dinah and Sam play. Whenever I’m with them I can feel the tug of the magnetic field that holds together the safe haven they find in each other’s company.
Upon noticing my approach, Dinah and Sam stood up and waved their arms like they were marshaling an aircraft. “Hey you two,” I said, stepping onto the cracked wood of the docks. “Did you guys get a ride here with Melman?”
Dinah shook her head. “No, we walked here. Then we called Melman on the payphone.”
I sighed and leaned against the railing. “Haven’t any of your teachers at school ever told you how dangerous it is to go walking around by yourselves like that?”
“No, just you,” Dinah said, smirking. “Besides, the park really isn’t that far away.”
“I’m all for you two getting fresh air and exercise,” I told her, “but not outside of the neighborhood. You could get lost, or kidnapped-”
“Or human trafficked, we know,” she said. “You don’t have to worry so much.”
As his customary way of telling me not to worry, Sam pointed and winked at me like the Buddy Christ statue. Seeing Sam make this gesture never fails to bring a smile to my face. It’s the most animated response I ever get from him. The poor kid sort of shut down after his parents divorced when he was three. Dinah is his sole correspondent, and even with her, a whisper, mere breath bypassing the vocal chords, is the most he can manage.
Over by the pavilion the crowd was beginning to disperse. As doting parents loaded sleepy children into cars, I shepherded Dinah and Sam out the front gate to the sidewalk. On the brief journey home we stopped at the Exxon station a few blocks away from our neighborhood so that the kids could each get some cereal, the kind that comes in those little individualized bowls, and a carton of milk. I waited outside and watched them through the glass, even though they were both still a head shorter than the shelves. Mostly I kept an eye out to make sure no one else got anywhere near them, but at the moment the place was empty except for the cashier.
Seeing as I don’t have that many friends, I’m not accustomed to hearing my named called very often, and so when I heard it from a guy who had apparently just walked up and stood right next to me without me noticing, I jumped a little.
“Hey, Lenora. Whatcha doing here?” the boy asked.
I took a breath and steadied myself. “Hey, Cody.”
When I told my dad that I had conversed with some people at orientation, I didn’t think it was a good idea to mention that the one person I had talked to was a guy, though I knew my mom would be thrilled with that bit of information. However, there were a few details that I didn’t want either of them to know.
The night of orientation I didn’t linger for very long in the crowded school gymnasium after picking up my class schedule and locker combination. The main hall was teeming with students and parents, but I managed to sneak past them to the blue doors separating the crowd from the empty hallways. It was peaceful walking through the vacant corridor with only the dim orange lights in the parking lot illuminating the blank cinderblock walls. I turned down English hall and found the last classroom door on the left was cracked open, and the light was on.
A bright-eyed, sandy-haired kid appeared in the doorway. “Are you here for the IDs?”
You end up overhearing all kinds of things at school when you eat lunch in the back of the gym behind the bleachers. Apparently Scott McKinney, one of the seniors who graduated last year, was selling fake IDs at fifty dollars a pop. Why he had chosen to run this illegal operation on school grounds on the night of orientation was beyond me.
“Yeah,” I said to the boy in the doorway, “ but I don’t have fifty dollars on hand. Can we pay later or on credit or something?”
He stepped out into the hall and closed the door. “I can cover yours if you want,” he whispered. “Scott’s gonna give me a free one for helping him with production and distribution.”
When bombarded with generosity, I find it easier just to accept. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Just for the record, I don’t drink. I just have a musician friend who plays at bars a lot, and I help him with the sound system. I guess I’m the guy to see for help with technical stuff.”
I nodded. We seemed to be having a conversation. “I don’t drink either.”
“What do you need a fake ID for then, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I paused for a minute. There was no way to say it without sounding crazy, which he was bound to think I was at some point. “I need a medical exam, and I’d rather not have to get a parent’s signature for it.” The boy tilted his head and smiled in bemusement. “If I show up at a hospital by myself to get checked out and they see on my driver’s license that I’m a minor, they’ll call my dad.”
“Okay,” he chuckled. “If anybody else asks, just tell them you like sneaking into bars.”
“Alright, I’ll do that.”
The boy surveyed me for a moment. I bit my lip and stared at the crack in the ceiling. If I had a love language it would be eye contact, but receiving that much of it during a lull in the conversation was a little unnerving for me.
“Do you have your driver’s license?” he asked. “We want to make sure we don’t give fake IDs to people who don’t know how to drive.” I reached into my messenger bag and got out my wallet. When I handed him my driver’s license, he held it up to the light. “Nice picture, Lenora,” he said, handing it back to me rather quickly as if he didn’t need to read the license to know my name. “I’m Cody.”
That bright-eyed, sandy-haired kid now stood next to me at the gas station and watched me as I stared nervously through the glass. “You know, it’s not typical to see a girl standing outside a gas station just looking in the window.”
“I’m keeping an eye on my kids,” I said, noticing how that sounded after I said it.
“What? You have kids?” Cody asked.
“Yep, two of ’em,” I answered. “They’re inside getting some milk and cereal.”
Cody shook his head and smiled, “Wow, you’re an enigma aren’t you?” He reached into his jacket. “Here’s your ID. Don’t get yourself into too much trouble now.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, glancing down at the shiny plastic card that said I was twenty-two. Then when I looked up again, I noticed four small hands stretched up just above the shelves and waving frantically. “Hold on. My kids need me.”
I stepped inside and found the aisle that they were on. Dinah tugged on my sleeve and pointed at the shelf to show me that the price had gone up. Then she and Sam both looked up at me with their big brown eyes and feigned sheepish expressions in the hopes of receiving an additional handout. I reached into my messenger bag again for my wallet and felt around the corners of the coin compartment for quarters. Then heard a loud, intentional cough behind me. Cody had followed me inside and was holding up a five-dollar bill.
“Keep the change,” he said.
Dinah ran up and snatched the bill out of his hands. “Thaaank Yooou,” she said, scurrying off to the cash register with Sam in tow.
“That was nice,” I said, handing both of the kids a plastic spoon on the way out the door. “Now I owe you fifty-five dollars.”
Cody shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”
The kids sat on the curb to eat their cereal. Dinah did her best to simultaneously chew her food and ask Cody a slew of questions between each spoon-full. “Do you go to school with Lenie?” she gibbered excitedly. “Are you in the same grade as her? Where’s your car?”
Cody smiled and answered all her questions patiently. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing to a sliver Chevy at the last pump.
Dinah rambled on. “Where do you live? Me and Sam live on Woodland drive. Do you know where Woodland drive is? Lenie lives across the street from us.”
“Okay, you two,” I said, getting up and adjusting my messenger bag. “We gotta get moving. We’re losing daylight.”
Dinah and Sam finished off their cereal and tossed their containers in the garbage. I took their slightly sticky hands and guided the kids toward the road. Behind me I heard Cody say, “Okay, bye. See ya at school, Lenie.” Great, now he was going to start calling me that.
The streetlamps flickered on when we finally made it back to Woodland drive. Sam’s house was our first stop. We walked around the side of the house to his bedroom window. I pushed it open with help from the indent carved into the windowsill and clambered inside first. The house was quiet, but I could hear the TV in the living room. I crept down the hallway to the kitchen and peeked around the corner. Sam’s stepmom Cathy was parked on the couch watching TV. Juniper the cat was sitting by the pantry expectantly, and so I stealthily opened the pantry door and scooped some cat food into her bowl. Back in the hallway, I heard the sound of simulated gunfire. Ethan and Kyle must have been in their room playing a video game.
When I returned to Sam’s room, Sam had already climbed inside, but he was still standing by the window holding onto Dinah’s hand like a lifeline. “Come on, Sam,” I said. “The coast is clear. Cathy’s watching Conan and the twins are playing Halo. Go brush your teeth.”
It’s best for Sam to not linger too long in any other rooms of the house besides his own in order to avoid his stepbrothers’ teenage roughhousing and Cathy’s vindictive remarks. That is unless his dad is home, which isn’t a common occurrence due to how much he has to travel for work. The rest of the time, for Sam, his house is like a walk-in shelter with predatory inhabitants.
“I’ll be fine tonight,” Dinah whispered. “Try to get some sleep.”
Dinah’s house has two stories, and so we had to climb the crosshatch siding to get to her bedroom window. I was the only thing holding her steady while she gripped the rough indent in the windowsill and pushed the window open. Inside there was a white chest of drawers standing near the bedroom door. Against the opposite wall was a queen-sized bed with a periwinkle down comforter and checkered throw pillows. The lack of childish clutter in this room felt a bit unnatural to me. It didn’t seem like a place for a kid to live, just a place for a kid to sleep.
Dinah got on her pajamas and brushed her teeth. I stood by the bathroom counter and reminded her to brush the back ones. Dinah’s mom was working a late shift at IHOP and probably wouldn’t be home until midnight. When they first moved here she used to pay me to babysit Dinah until she realized that I would look after her kid whether I got paid to or not. She’s a perfectly friendly person, but I usually avoid being in same room with her because I get the feeling that she dislikes being reminded of how often she needs someone else to take care of Dinah in her stead. I suppose she prefers to simply pretend she has a very self-sufficient daughter.
I turned the deadbolt lock on Dinah’s bedroom door as she got under the blankets.
“Has your mom brought anyone home lately?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
More often than not Dinah’s mom gets offered a ride home by one of her late night customers. At twenty-eight she’s still a pretty young thing. Contrary to what many assume Dinah’s mom was married when she had her. She tied the knot with her high school boyfriend right after graduation. The guy left when Dinah was two.
“Well, I’m right across the street if you need me,” I said, tucking her in.
“I know. You have been for four years.”
There’s an indent in the windowsill on the outside of my bedroom window as well. The three of us hardly ever use the front door.
After landing onto my narrow, twin-sized mattress, I rolled to the floor in near-darkness only permeated by the automatic nightlight in the corner. Taking off my cardigan, I turned on my bedside table lamp. Then I heard a knock. I pulled my cardigan back on and opened my bedroom door. My dad usually checks on me before going to sleep.
“Hey. How are doing?” he asked.
“I’m fine, Dad,” I muttered.
“Do you have everything ready for tomorrow?”
“Yep. I’ve got it all set out.”
“Well, good night,” he said, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I couldn’t let myself mean it until the door was closed and locked again.