Deal

A fuzzy mother and daughter story.

 

What Caryn and I do is necessary. We stop answering Jennifer’s questions, because she will stop believing us. The questions about her father will come scattered as time rings long like a chapel bell. It will take a few months, but Jennifer will accept the lie.

            When she thinks her penance for her brother is done, Caryn will fly to Vegas. Or did she say St. Thomas? It’ll be somewhere exotic and out of the way. She won’t have to deal with Daniel’s mess.

            But he’s been dead for ten years and I drag my head away from the bottle to eye the cordless phone.

            Jennifer’s fifteen now and the questions are resurfacing. I try to tell myself that I sent her to Caryn’s because she’s a bad egg. Bad hygiene, bad grades. I suspect drugs too.

Jennifer was too quiet and she left the house cold like nuclear fallout. I’m going nuts. And when the lashes on her wrists wink at me through bangles and tweedy bracelets—

I grab her. I shake her. She screams and I yell at her to get out.

And it all passes like time.

So she’s out all night and doesn’t come back until nine the next morning. Nine, I tell myself. I think that’s the time when they found him in his cell. Rotating slowly. Hanging from the ceiling fan. I ignore her when she walks through the screen door, letting in the Miami light. I get a sick pleasure when I hear her crow of hatred as I know she is in her room. Glaring at the suitcases, stuffed with her things.

I had to buy a canvas bag to fit all those bracelets.

She’s standing behind me. Her breath spitting hot needles into my neck. I pretend to wash the dishes. I’m the parent, she’s the child. I don’t answer to no one.

“Why? Why’d you do that?”

“You’re going to stay with your Aunt Caryn. Maybe she can deal with you,” I spit, but I don’t remember opening my mouth. The words chink out like ice rattling in a glass.

Jennifer frowns, considers. She’s too calm. So was Daniel. It has to be drugs. But even Daniel smiled.

I can’t have her around. She’s too unnatural. I want to be somebody. Just not a mother. Or at least for a little while. I flick the switch to nice.

“Jen-Jen,” I coo, just like she was five again. Just like I was going to tell her that her father died in a car crash in Pennsylvania again. “I want to try to make a better life for us, but I just gotta be on my own right now. Caryn said she’d take you for a little while so we could both get on our feet, right?”

I pause, monitoring her reaction. Nothing.

“Travel agent school is driving me nuts right now,” I say, but it’s not really true. “If I make it, then we’d get discounts on hotels and all sort of things. We could see the whole world if we wanted to.”

Yeah, my beaten subconscious adds. Then we can run away from our problems like everyone in her dad’s family.

Jennifer towers over me, her face cloudy. Daniel was tall too.

“Fine,” she says. She trudges back upstairs and stays there until Caryn shows up two days later. They both say their good-byes, but at the same time they don’t really tell me anything at all. The air pulls like taffy and they’re in Caryn’s rental going down the drive, making a soft left. And I’m alone again.