Hick - Andrea Portes [36]
I have a secret daydream that I see my dad. I play it over and over and over again. Do you know how long it lasts? How long does love last? How can it be that she gets to go on snickering, chortling through her days and nights, while he sits, sinking slow down into the rocks, seeing the world like looking up from the bottom of a fishbowl. Looking up through the water, the light refracting, unfocused, from somewhere above, a blur of something that used to be.
I know he’ll never get up.
“Luli?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think your mom’s gonna be looking for you?”
That’s a new thought. I never looked at it like that. I never imagined Tammy would miss me. I know how she sees me. I make her feel guilty. I remind her that she’s supposed to be in love with my dad. I remind her that she got old. I remind her that I’m the one left. I’m the one that made it.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“Cause I don’t want any trouble, not that kind, not like I kidnapped you or something or made you do something against your will . . .”
The road tumbles by beneath us.
“Do you have any more of that stuff in that vial or whatever?”
Glenda looks at me, wary.
“Sure, kid, have at it.”
I keep staring at the road, not sure what to make of my new dark mood. Maybe I could just let it pass or pretend it’s not there or sweep it under the rug like my expert mama. Maybe I could just open this door and tumble out underneath the wheels and that would be that, finally, for good.
It’s not just that he’s stuck somewhere, my dad, or dead in a ditch, covered in dirt, with a sad song playing in the background. it’s not even that I’ll never see him again. it’s that even if I did see him, even if my best dream came true and I walked into some red shoebox bar with Elvis crooning behind and there he was, clinking his 7 & 7, even if he looked up at me, remembered me and even smiled, even if all that happened . . . it would still mean more to me, a thousand times more, than it ever would to him.
I’m that kid he had, accidental and unimportant, like dropping your keys on the way out the door. I’m something that happened that doesn’t really matter much now, some dwarf version of the woman he loves who can’t love him back. And when he looks at me, he thinks of her, all moonlight and memory. He thinks of the first time she saw him, the first time she looked back at him and from somewhere, the corner of her eye or the middle of her mouth, let him see her sparkle. She knows how to make herself sparkle.
And he’ll think about how in that moment, behind the bar, two blocks over, the train went running over the tracks, hustling to get to the next hick town, and how he felt like the tracks were inside him, running through him, as his heart raced and she tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder and sparkled bright. She liked to let him look at her like that. She liked to twinkle her eyes and watch him swoon.
But if I did that, if I tried to put a twinkle in my eye and giggle and sprinkle sparkle dust, it would be like yelling in a forest, lost and who cares anyways.
That’s the difference.
So it’s not that he’s dead and dramatic and weighty and meaningful. it’s not that. it’s that he doesn’t care, pure and simple. it’s that he made me and watched me grow and taught me how to talk and what to say and don’t say too much, that he did all that, but that to him it was like having a pet, some fuzzy broken thing you found whining through the window in winter and decided to take under your wing.
Except now that she’s gone, now that that house and that memory and that time and that window, now that all these things are crumpled up like an old newspaper, who cares about some fuzzy broken thing you took a shine to in sparklier days? Back then you would’ve saved a dying rat if it cried pathetic enough, looking up at you with those beady little eyes.