Something Maybe Magnificent, page 21
“He’s really nice,” I added, for good measure.
“You shouldn’t have gone to his house,” Mom said.
“Your mother’s right,” Kyle said.
I wanted so badly to say, Who asked you? or This is an A and B conversation, so C your way out. That might have been marginally better than what I actually said, which was, “Good thing you’re not my dad.”
Mom narrowed her eyes at me. “That was uncalled for, Victoria.”
No. It wasn’t. He butted in where he wasn’t wanted. Where he didn’t belong. Kyle has no say over what I can and cannot do.
He wasn’t even supposed to be here cooking. He was supposed to be out getting the regular Wednesday night pizza.
Anger blazed up my face.
Kyle seemed to think the whole thing was funny. He chuckled a little. “It’s true,” he said. “I’m not.”
My chest squeezed. Why did he have to be so nice all the time? I wanted him to fight back.
I glared at him, but he was staring into the pot he was stirring like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen in ages.
“Why are you so…” Mom didn’t finish her sentence, but I thought I could probably finish it for her.
Awful? Mean? Rotten to the core?
I don’t know, Mom.
My nose burned, and I blinked hard. I hate crying in front of people, even Mom. And maybe that’s what made me say, “I wish I could have visited Dad this summer.”
You hurt, and you want someone else to hurt too. Isn’t that the way it goes?
But Mom didn’t look hurt. She looked at me like she felt sorry for me.
“I wish you could have too,” she said. Her eyes softened a little.
That’s not how I meant it. My throat felt much tighter when I said, “So I could get a vacation from you.” The words came out loud and squeezed up like something had strangled them into submission. Which I sort of did.
Mom did look hurt then.
I decided to dig the knife in a little deeper. “I wish I could live with him. It would be better than here.”
I turned and walked straight-backed to my room. Mom’s eyes burned two holes all the way through me. You could practically smell the smoke.
Or maybe it was the smell of her heart, burning to dust.
See how it feels, Mom?
I’m a terrible daughter, I know.
July 18, 9:29 p.m.
I haven’t written anything new because I’m ignoring the world.
Including Mom. And Kyle. And Maggie. And Jack.
Even Eli. (I’ve been running in the other direction.)
I pretend like no one exists but me.
It’s the loneliest feeling in the world. But victory doesn’t come without sacrifice, right?
You do what you have to do to save your family.
July 19, 1:07 p.m.
Just when you think the worst has happened, another worst comes to knock the old one from its pedestal.
I should know this after last summer. Life is never bad enough that it can’t get worse.
And today it got worse.
Today Kyle brought his dog, Artemis.
Such a stupid name for a dog. I tried not to hold it against him. (The dog, that is.)
Kyle finished Artemis’s pen yesterday, and I guess he told Mom he’d be bringing Artemis to the house today. She didn’t bother to tell us. Maybe she forgot. Or maybe she knew how we—specifically, how I—would react.
Memaw was sitting at the kitchen table (she came down yesterday), Jack was stuffing his third cream horn into his mouth, Mom was somewhere in her bedroom, Maggie was destroying our room looking for her missing sandals, and I was thinking about having another cream horn before Jack ate them all, when I heard the familiar sound of Kyle’s truck.
I tried not to sigh my frustration, but it was hard. How long has it been since we’ve had a Saturday without Kyle around to ruin it?
I know that’s not a nice thing to say, but sometimes you just want to hang out with your family (even though you’re ignoring them). You know?
I was headed to my room when King started barking. Not his happy bark. His danger bark.
“Uh-oh,” Jack said. He was looking out the front door, hand on the knob like he’d thought about opening it but wasn’t sure he should.
“What?” I said. Forget about ignoring. The word “uh-oh” has an almost immediate physical effect on me. This stretchy band of heat moves from my stomach in both directions—up to my chest and face, down to my legs and toes. A stretchy band of ice cold follows it. My right arm goes numb, followed by my left, followed by my breath practically stopping. My vision spots at the edges, like a tunnel collapsing in on itself, and my heartbeat moves to my head. It’s very disorienting.
But somehow I still managed to make it to the front door.
It seemed to happen in slow motion: Kyle’s hands spread out, trying to calm down King, who stood barking at the invader barking back in the bed of Kyle’s truck. He took a step toward King, and maybe that was the mistake. His dog leaped out of the bed and headed straight for King’s throat, a blur of white and one brown spot on the left belly.
I’m pretty sure I screamed.
I’m pretty sure Jack opened the door.
I’m pretty sure Maggie was the one who yelled, “Don’t let him kill King!”
The words rang out in my head. Don’t let him kill King, don’t let him kill King, don’t let him kill King.
Jack grabbed my arm, probably to keep me on the porch, but how could I stay there when Kyle’s dog was ripping at King’s throat, when Kyle was doing nothing about it? When every second counted?
I’m pretty sure I screamed, “Get your stupid dog off him!”
I’m pretty sure Mom screamed at me to stop.
I’m pretty sure Kyle pushed me away from the fighting dogs only so I could spring back toward them.
“You’ll get hurt, Victoria!” Kyle shouted. “Stay away!”
But what were we supposed to do? Let Artemis kill King? We’d had King since we moved here. We loved King. We couldn’t imagine life without King.
Or at least I couldn’t.
I lunged back toward the fighting dogs. Artemis still had King pinned to the ground, teeth clamped down on our sweet black dog’s throat. Kyle pushed me away again.
“He’s going to kill him!” I shouted. “Do something!”
Kyle kept his distance from the wrestling dogs but kept whistling for his dog to let King go. Artemis was not listening. Duh. Artemis is the goddess of the hunt. Maybe Kyle should’ve named him Hades. He was dragging King into the underworld.
“Do something!” My voice must have held the force of the underworld, because Kyle finally moved. He stuck his foot into the mass of gnashing teeth and shoved Artemis from King, and before Artemis could make another lunge for King, Kyle scooped him up, bounded toward the enclosed pen, and locked Artemis inside.
It was a brave thing to do. I’d see that later. But all I could see in the moment was how Kyle had brought his stupid hunting dog to our house, and of course he’d picked a fight with King because he was stupid and bred for hunting and probably had never met another dog before, only dangerous wild hogs.
Artemis crashed against the pen like some demented dog (Stephen King’s Cujo comes to mind—Jack told me all about Cujo, no matter how loudly I protested). I wondered if Artemis might break right through the pen.
Jack knelt on the ground next to King. There was a little blood, but not as much as you’d expect.
“He’ll be okay,” Kyle said. “We’ll get him patched up.”
What, was he a veterinarian, too? If he knew so much about dogs, why’d he bring another male to our house? Dogs are territorial. You have to introduce them to each other in stages. I think. I don’t know much about dogs, if I’m being honest.
What I do know is that a wave of heat swept over me, and it carried an anger so enormous I turned away from my injured dog and stomped toward Kyle, like a sea storm ready to destroy.
And I think I might have destroyed more than I wanted to.
“Look what you did!” I shouted at Kyle. His blue eyes got round and large. He held up his hands, like he was trying to stop the storm of me. “Look what you did!” My words stomped me closer. I lifted my fist. “Why can’t you just go away?”
And then I punched him.
I’ve never punched anyone in my life.
I never knew it could hurt so much. Or maybe it only hurt because I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway.
My fist connected with Kyle’s shoulder, and he flinched and backed away. I expected to see anger in his eyes. I thought maybe he’d lift his hand, smack me across the cheek like Dad did last summer. I thought he’d at least say something.
But all he did was turn away. All he did was lift his dog from the pen and put him in the truck this time, instead of the bed. All he did was back out, roll down his window, and say, “I’m sorry, Connie. I can’t…” He didn’t finish what he couldn’t. “They don’t want me here, and…” He also didn’t finish that part.
“Kyle, wait,” Mom said. But Kyle just held up a hand and said, “Take King to the vet. I’ll pay for whatever he needs.”
It was a cowardly thing to say. He should have taken King to the vet. I wanted to scream that after him. But instead I watched Kyle drive away. We all did.
King stood up and barked at Kyle. His voice sounded raspy, but at least he was still strong enough to bark.
I couldn’t look at Mom. I didn’t want to see her cry. If she was crying. But I heard her go back into the house without a word, followed by either Maggie or Memaw, followed by whoever was still left.
Jack stayed by King’s side.
And there, at the end of the driveway, was Eli.
He saw almost everything.
July 19, 1:23 p.m.
I had to end the last entry where I did, because it took some time to process. Eli saw everything.
I could tell Eli didn’t know what to say. Neither did I.
I tried to convince myself he wasn’t looking at me like I’m a terrible person. I tried to convince myself I’m not a terrible person.
After a long, awkward pause, Eli said, “What happened?”
I guess it was a good sign that he’d asked the question, since it gave me an opportunity to tell my side of the story. You don’t always get to tell your side of the story.
But I wasn’t sure if my side of the story was worth telling.
I hit Kyle. I made him go away.
I hit Kyle. I’ve never hit anyone in my life.
Maybe I needed someone to help me feel better about my sorry self, because I said, “His dog almost killed our dog.”
“Okay,” Eli said. He didn’t offer anything else, like he was waiting for me to say more, like a dog trying to kill your beloved dog isn’t a good excuse for punching the dog’s owner in the shoulder.
“He thought they could live together peacefully, but that’s not how it works,” I said.
“It can,” Eli said. “They can learn how to live together. They can learn how to love each other. With enough time.”
“This yard doesn’t belong to him,” I said. “And he thought it did.”
“It’s not hard to learn how to share space,” Eli said. I got the feeling he knew we were talking about more than the dogs.
“Sometimes it is,” I said. “Sometimes you just want everything to stay exactly the way it is, because it was fine before another dog came along.”
Eli sighed.
And after another long, uncomfortable silence he said, “You know, Victoria, I’ve been running just about every day with you, for weeks. And I feel like I don’t know you at all.”
Welcome to the club.
“You know me as well as anybody,” I said.
Eli didn’t seem to hear me. He kept right on going. “You don’t let anybody in.” He pointed down the road in the direction Kyle’s truck had disappeared. “He could have been a good dad to you.”
“He’d never be my dad,” I mumbled under my breath, and I was glad Eli kept going like he hadn’t heard that, either.
“But now you’ll never know.” He looked at me. I looked at the ground. “It’s like you have all these walls, you know?”
No. I don’t know.
Except I sort of do.
“Maybe I’m tired of trying to climb them.”
I looked up just in time to see Eli walk away. I couldn’t find my voice soon enough to stop him. There wasn’t anything I could say anyway.
I thought about taking off on a run, but Kyle had disappeared in one direction and Eli in the other, and the possibility of seeing either one of them again, right then, was enough to make my face flame so hot I thought it might melt off. The only other choice was the road to the canal, and the last time I ran that, I’d hurdled over three snakes. And run for my life from a murder of crows.
It was too hot to stay outside, so the only place left was the house.
The Walk of Shame took me past Jack, who glared at me like I’d just single-handedly destroyed the entire planet; Maggie, who barely spared me a glance and at least didn’t try to slice off my head with her eyes; and Mom’s empty chair at the table.
That one was the worst.
Memaw stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, like she was waiting for me. I thought I might at least have one ally. But even though she held her arms out to me, she looked like she was disappointed too.
What have I done?
July 21, 2:34 p.m.
Jack and Maggie ignored me for the rest of the weekend. And when I say they ignored me, I mean they acted like I didn’t even exist, except once when I asked Maggie where the rest of the cream horns went and she said Jack ate them, and then she slapped her hand over her mouth like she wasn’t supposed to be talking to me.
Who told her not to talk to me? Jack?
King’s okay. The vet said he could hardly find the scratches from King’s fight with Artemis. At least that’s a little good news.
Mom went to work on Sunday without saying goodbye (to any of us, not just me), and when she came back home, she only talked to Memaw before going to bed. I haven’t seen her eat anything since yesterday morning.
Memaw left today, and when she did, she didn’t ask me to go with her, like she did the last few times. I would have said yes. But she didn’t even ask.
Maybe she doesn’t want someone as mean as me around.
I don’t even have Eli anymore. I went out for a run yesterday morning and this morning, and even though I made sure to wear the brightest shirts I have (a fluorescent orange one and a pink one) and I ran past his house at least four times (I thought more than that would seem too desperate), he didn’t come join me.
I got what I wanted, but now I’m all alone in the world.
And that’s definitely not what I wanted.
I WANT: A POEM
I want peace and quiet and time alone
I want people around and good conversation and laughter and love
I want to be seen and remembered
I want to be invisible and forgotten
I want answers to all the questions
I want to know there are still questions to ask that haven’t been answered
I want to know who I am
I want to forget myself
I want everything to stay the same
I want everything to change
I want to prop my feet up and read all day
I want to lace up my shoes and run/walk/explore all day
I want to have adventures
I want a predictable life
I want Mom to say, No one will ever take your place in my heart
I want to say, I don’t think I have room in my heart for another dad
I want to say, I take it all back
I want to say, This is better in the long run, you’ll see
I want to live with Dad
I want to be whole
I want to feel bad
I want to feel better
I want to go with Memaw
I want to stay here
I want to apologize
I want to shout, I’m not the least bit sorry!
I want everything
But maybe I really want nothing
July 22, 4:19 p.m.
I don’t really want to live with Dad. You know that better than anyone. Remember all the things he did last summer? The things he said? I’m still trying to cut free from the bramble of his words. I don’t need another summer of bruises. Or a lifetime of them.
The worst days here don’t even come close to the worst days there. I do have some bruises, though.
At least I did it to myself this time.
I deserve the (metaphorical) bruises. Maybe.
Do I?
I did what I did for the good of everybody. Have Maggie and Jack even considered that when—if, I guess, since Kyle hasn’t come by in three days, which is a record for him—Mom marries Kyle, everything will change? And it might not be for the better, either.
Besides, what if Kyle does the same thing to Mom that Dad did? He’s been married once already. Who knows the story there?
I can’t let Mom get hurt like that again. I can’t let Jack and Maggie get hurt like that again.
They deserve better.
I’ve done the right thing.
Haven’t I?
July 24, 11:01 p.m.
A phone call came today.
I only heard one side of the conversation, but even if I hadn’t heard that side (Mom’s sigh, her “I understand. I’m sorry. I love you”), I would’ve known who it was from the way she trudged around the house like she carried three worlds on her shoulders.
I was pretty sure Kyle wasn’t coming back. And I was pretty sure it was all my fault.
That was even before Memaw showed up—on a Thursday, no less. She doesn’t usually come until the weekends, because we don’t get the channel that plays her favorite show, EastEnders.
