Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [12]
These days, though, Michael hasn’t seemed glad about much of anything.
I try breathing from my gut. This attempt at breathing simply reminds me what I’m trying to avoid.
I seize my purse with its cigarettes and both the cordless house phone and my cell, and brave the snap of the November air on the back patio.
The first puff makes my head feel swimmy, and my heart slows down almost immediately.
Hurrah for self-medicating.
Michael’s disapproving stare rises up in my memory. If he only knew what I’ve already given up. But he can’t know, because he wouldn’t love a woman like that. Never again, he said. But that “never again” speech came late, after I already loved him. Otherwise I might have saved us both the eventual agony.
It’s like scratching at a scab to think of this now, our first meeting. But I’m too weary to keep pushing it out of my head. Here at the end, I can’t help but think of the beginning.
I was sick that day. Feverish, pale, shaky. My head throbbed, and my sinuses were so backed up I thought I might suffocate in my own skull.
I had no friends anymore, because they were all drinkers and I was clinging to the fragile threads of a different life. So I dragged myself to the urgent care clinic alone. I actually perked up a bit in the cold, it being January, then. Nearly two years ago.
At the clinic, I saw a little girl curled up on her daddy’s lap, her arm clutching a stuffed cat gone threadbare at its paws and belly. Her hair hung limp and tangled, and she wore Hannah Montana pajamas and bedroom slippers. She had round glasses with pink frames. She was asking, moaning, really: “Daddy? How long?”
Her father was rubbing circles on her back. “Soon, baby. As soon as they can see us.”
“I don’t want to blow up again,” she moaned into his shoulder.
A wincing expression flashed on his face, something with shades of both pain and amusement. “I hope you won’t throw up again, honey. But if it’s going to happen, you tell me and we’ll get you to the bathroom.”
Her dad noticed me looking at her. He met my eyes and tightened his jaw. It was all there, right on his face. I hate that I can’t fix it.
She was too old for peekaboo. I got out my phone, a fancy phone in those days before I completed my belt-tightening. I found a funny video of a monkey scratching his butt, sniffing his own finger, and falling off a tree branch.
I glanced at him, eyebrows up. Do you mind?
He shrugged.
I said to her, “Hey. Wanna see something funny?”
She raised her head a fraction of an inch off his shoulder. I leaned across the aisle separating us and showed her the short video. She smiled. I sat back, and she said, “Can I see it again?”
I sat on the chair next to them and found every G-rated silly video I could.
When they called “Jewel Turner,” her father stood up and scooped her gently onto his shoulder. I stood up as if I belonged with them, forgetting myself. I sat back down, pretending to dust something off my pants.
The father looked back at me over his daughter’s tangled hair, and mouthed, Thank you.
I was next. I didn’t think about them again until I came back to the lobby with a prescription in my fist. Jewel’s daddy was crouched, zipping up her coat. His coffee-dark hair was a mess, I noticed. I also saw a scar along his jawline.
“I hope you feel better soon, kiddo,” I told her, ready to pass out of their lives.
“You, too,” her father said, looking up at me, straightening her coat. “I’m Michael Turner.”
“Casey,” I replied, supplanting my last name instead of my given name, unthinking.
“I can call you and let you know how she’s doing.”
It was so transparent. I blushed, I think, or it might have been the fever.
Then he scooped her up and muttered, walking out the door. “Or not. She’ll be fine, it’s just a virus.”
“Maybe you could just e-mail me an update,” I said, walking with him through the door, and I rattled off my address, which was one of those that was easy to say and remember. I’d picked it brand-new, cutting off old ties in the process.
He disappeared