A War Like Ours Read online

  “Yeah, I’m pretty terrorizing,” I murmured, fishing out a tube of burn ointment from my pocket. I put it under the schedule and slid it across the desk toward Lily. She was still busy with her phone, and I was thankful for it. I didn’t want her to see what I was doing while I was doing it.

  The cloak and dagger stuff let me pretend I wasn’t playing nursemaid again for anyone. Not after my mom. Not after caring for her for years, bandaging her wounds, wiping the vomit and piss off her only so she could go back to the men who abused her in the first place.

  Nope. After my mom, I didn’t want to care about anyone. But I wondered why it bothered me to see Lily hurt when I claimed I didn’t care.

  I was dead; dead shouldn’t feel things. Why did I?

  After leaving Lily at the desk, I walked over to the ladies’ room, and the smell of bleach and urine assaulted my nose. Bleach alerted that it’d just been cleaned, but no matter how many times and how thoroughly a public bathroom was cleaned out, the reek of urine always lingered.

  After changing into my uniform in one of the cubicles, I stepped out, deposited my bag on the marble-topped counter and splashed water on my face.

  The door burst open, and a little girl with a black ponytail and pink shorts came in running. She looked up, and I saw her pert little nose and wide gray eyes. She was a cute little thing, but my gaze settled on her lips, which were smothered in red lipstick. It looked odd on her young face, abnormal.

  She smiled at me. “Hi.”

  Something about her made me smile back. “Hi to you, too.”

  Why did she have lipstick on her face? It looked wrong, misplaced, somehow. She couldn’t be any more than four or five. Was she playing grown-up or something, using her mom’s make-up? Girls tended to do that, didn’t they? But it didn’t feel right.

  The girl didn’t close the door of the cubicle she went into all the way, and I saw her struggle with the buttons of her shorts. She was hopping, shifting on her feet. My gaze swiveled to the door, hoping to see her mom come in any second, but it didn’t happen.

  “Do you need help with that?” I spoke to the girl in the mirror.

  She looked up with her big silver eyes as she tugged on the button. “Yeah. Please.”

  I went to her and dropped down on my knees to work on her button. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s at the ocean, with the fish,” she said excitedly, then wiggled her nose as she looked around. “It stinks.”

  I snorted out a surprised laugh. Usually, people couldn’t smell the faint odor. I was glad she did. “Yup, it does.”

  She made a face. “Yuck.”

  “Your lips look nice. Whose lipstick is that?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  Her eyes shone. “My mommy’s. I got it from her bag. My daddy shouted at me for using it. I cried, and then he hugged me, but I told him I won’t wipe it off ’cause I wanna be pretty like her. He was upset, but he said okay.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn’t know what else to say or think, except at least the dad was smart. “You’re all set,” I said when I finished with her jammed button.

  “Thank you,” she said sweetly.

  “You’re welcome.” I smiled and got out of the stall, thinking about her mother.

  What kind of a mother left her daughter during a vacation? Anger—sudden and unwarranted—at her mom stunned me, followed by a tinge of pity for her dad. Huh. Pity for a man. Maybe the world was coming to an end.

  The girl opened the door an inch and stood biting her lips. “I don’t know how to flush. And can you do the button for me again? Please?”

  “Sure.”

  I helped her flush, fastened her button, and then ushered her to the sink. She stood on her toes to reach the tap, so I heaved her up and sat her down on the counter, her short legs dangling.

  “So what’s your mom doing at the ocean?”

  She splashed water on my wrist and giggled. “She went to study the water and the fish. She’s a scientist. I wanna be a scientist too when I grow up. My dad makes medicines for people who have cancer.” She flicked her wrist again and splashed more water on my hand, giggling. “I don’t like his job very much. His clothes stink of hospital, plus he never comes home for dinner. I can’t miss dinner though. I love food too much. I’ll feed fish like my mommy.”

  She was about to splash more water on me when I took charge and threw some on her. She laughed, and it hit me that I’d seen that smile, heard that laughter somewhere. It was long back, in another life when I’d still been a kid.

  When she was done, she smelled her palms. “Ooh! It smells nice. Like roses.”

  I’d never noticed that, but I nodded. “Yeah, it does.” I tore a piece of paper towel and wiped her hands for her. “What’s your name?”

  “Katie. What’s yours?” She smiled, and I noticed she had a smudge of lipstick on the tip of her nose.

  I wet my finger and rubbed it out. “Madison.”

  I threw away the towel in the trashcan under the sink and scanned Katie’s face, the misplaced lipstick and the overgrown bangs, and found myself wondering about her. I liked her. Maybe kids weren’t so bad after all. Who knew?

  “I’m gonna go. My daddy’s waiting outside with my flower. Bye, Madison.”

  Well, that was a peculiar thing to say. I picked up my bag as she ran out the door, and I headed out after her.

  Katie had just collided with the leg of a tall man, leaning against the opposite wall. She stretched her hands up. “Smell them, Daddy.”

  The man bent, slowly, with difficulty, like his body was rusted. He sniffed her hands and nodded. The black curls on his head brushed against his navy blue T-shirt. “Good.”

  His voice sounded scratchy, cobwebby.

  Katie turned, as if sensing me behind her, and pointed toward me. “Madison helped me with the button, and I couldn’t reach the water so she washed my hands, too.”

  The man looked up and noticed me for the first time. “Thank you,” he said on a relieved breath. Then, as if I didn’t know what he was talking about, he added, “For helping her.”

  All my life I wanted to hate my mother for never loving me enough, for not being there for me when I needed her. Not when I had my period and assumed I had cancer because I didn’t fucking know that nature made women bleed. Not when I lost my virginity at thirteen to see if sex would make me fall in love but it only brought me pain and a torn vagina.

  I wanted to hate my mom for putting me on this path of dissatisfaction, restlessness. But I couldn’t; it was not an easy feat to hate a parent. That kind of hate was tainted by love. It wasn’t as satisfying. At least, not for me.

  So I chose to direct the undiluted hatred toward the men. I hated men, loathed them. I thought they were animals. Every time I came in contact with one, I felt disgust spiking in my stomach. It wasn’t anything overt. I was sure it didn’t show on my face, but it was this deep-seated animosity that was as natural as hatred for cockroaches or lizards.

  I waited for the familiar anger to rise inside me, almost looking forward to it. But it never came. I felt stranded. Why didn’t I feel angry at this man when I felt it for his entire sex?

  I nodded at him as an acknowledgment of his “thank you,” and then proceeded to study his face carefully. It was gaunt, his cheeks sunken and marred with sharp lines of bone. His jaw was square and scruffy. The only soft feature on his face was his dimpled chin. The unruly mop of his black hair hung abandoned on his forehead, reaching down to his eyebrows. He looked like an old building that once would’ve been magnificent but now was just a pile of debris from neglect.

  But his most interesting feature was his gray eyes.

  I knew the look in them—sometimes empty, sometimes pained, and other times both, as his were now. I used to wear that look often when the pain had been new. His pain was new as well, a fresh wound—pink and fragile. Poke around with a finger, and it would burst open.

  There was only one place where that agony could possibly
come from. It came from death. When you’d lost the most important person in your life. I knew death very well. Death smelled like coffee and bleach on weekdays and like honeysuckle on Sundays. Death smelled like my mom.

  He stood up straight. “Come on, Katie. Let’s go. It’s time for class.”

  “Where’s my flower?” Katie waved her hand, asking for it.

  He looked like he’d forgotten about it as he lifted the hand that held the flower. It was a pink flower from the dogwood tree. “Here.”

  She whirled around and gave him her back. “No. Put it in my hair, Daddy.”

  He looked at Katie and then at the flower, frowning, unsure. “I don’t… Maybe it’ll be better if you do it yourself.”

  “I don’t know how. Please just do it quick. I don’t wanna be late for class. Stick it in my hair like Mommy does.” She wiggled her back.

  His jaw ticked, almost imperceptible. I might’ve missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention to them from the edge of the restroom. He looked ready to bolt, with the way he stared at Katie’s head and clutched at the flower.

  He swallowed as his thick fingers tugged on the ponytail, causing Katie to whine, “Daddyyyyy.”

  Apologizing, he tried to stick the flower in the meat of her ponytail, his big, callused hands almost covering the entire circle of her head. He managed to put the flower in, but it drooped to the side.

  “Daddy!” Katie whined again.

  He waved his hand in frustration. “Katie, I’m not an expert. I… It’d be better if you did it yourself.”

  “No. Mommy does it every time.”

  “She’s not here.”

  Was there anger in his tone? Did something happen with the wife? Had she just died?

  He pursed his lips and pinched the bridge of his nose—a picture of shame and regret. And defeat. There was something to be said about a grown man being defeated by a measly flower and a little girl. I took pity on him then and moved toward them.

  Without a word, I held out my hand for him to put the flower on. He sighed and placed the abused bloom in the heart of my palm. I pinned it in the thick of Katie’s ponytail and used the rubber band to secure it in place so it wouldn’t droop.

  I patted Katie’s shoulder. “All done.”

  She turned around and touched the flower in her hair. “Yay! Thanks, Madison. See, Daddy, it’s easy.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes. Yes, it is.” His gaze moved to me. “Thank you, again.”

  I shrugged. “Just a flower. And, you know, as Katie said, it’s easy.”

  Nodding, he ducked his head. “Easy things are particularly difficult for me. So I appreciate the help.”

  With that, he ushered Katie down the hallway toward the back of the reception house, and I watched their retreating backs. I wondered what death smelled like to him. I wondered about the way he’d bleed if I poked his wound with my fingers.

  Remembering that I had to manage or co-manage a class, I followed after them, rounded the corner, and came into an open space filled with children and adults. The room had a loft-style open floor plan—one half was taken up by the play area for kids, with sliding doors on the left, overlooking the rows of trees and the water, while the other contained the gym. Beyond the glass walls that separated the two halves, I spied people running on treadmills, thumping their feet on the belted road.

  I was working with Carly today. She was one of the finger-painting instructors here at the resort. Usually, we worked well together. She told me where to put things, and I did that. Rest of the time, I stared into the space, waiting for the class to be over.

  But today, my eyes focused on Katie who sat on the floor with other children, drawing sheet and colors spread in front of her.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t forget the ocean thing. Was it a euphemism for death? I scoffed. Parents. Children were a lot stronger than people gave them credit for. They had shiny, resilient spirits, mostly because they hadn’t been scraped against life one too many times yet. They could handle more than we could imagine.

  I walked over and dropped down to sit beside her. “Hey, what’re you making?”

  She looked up at me from her drawing. “I’m making fish and water and a boat. My mommy’s on the biggest boat ever. I am making her hundreds of thousands of drawings so she can pick her favorite when she comes back.”

  “Wow, that’s a pretty big number.”

  She pointed to her painting with blue-tipped fingers. “Do you like this one?”

  Blue lines zig-zagged at the bottom of the page, and on it sat the black outline of a boat, red and yellow outlines of fish meshed with the waves. There was a sudden lump in my throat, jagged and digging. “Yes. It’s…beautiful.”

  Katie beamed and asked me to help her color the boat. I was stunned. None of the kids had ever asked me for anything. I was the weird little lady in the corner. I refused, ready to bolt. I couldn’t help her; I didn’t know how, but she insisted and I agreed, though I knew I’d mess up her drawing. I picked up the blue crayon and started working on one side. Katie dipped her fingers in the blue watercolor and pressed them in between the waves to fill out the blank spaces.

  We worked side by side for a while before I broke the silence. “Your mom… When did she leave for the ocean?”

  “She left sooo long back.” She held up her hand, spread her color-smudged fingers wide and said with a sad voice, “Like these many days ago.”

  The lump in my throat grew, and I looked at the drawing. “Where is this ocean? I bet you talk to her every day, right?”

  “She’s in Florida. Mommy told me Florida has Atlantic Ocean. It’s huge. She said there’s going to be so many fish in there that she’d be busy feeding them. So she might not be able to call very much.” She frowned. “She hasn’t even called once. I feel so mad. I cried today, too, but then Daddy hugged me, and it was all okay.” She bit her lips and whispered, “Do you think she’s forgotten me?”

  Her sad words echoed in my heart, knocking against the thick walls until I heard my own voice, small and childish, Doesn’t Mom love me anymore? I shook my head to shoo the thought away. “No, I don’t think she has. I’m sure she’s just busy.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “But when she comes back and sees all this, I bet she won’t be able to pick just one favorite.”

  “Really?” Katie brightened up.

  “Hey, wanna hear a joke?”

  Katie grinned and nodded.

  I channeled my inner Lily and smiled. “Why can’t pirates finish their alphabets?” At her curious expression, I went on, “Because they got stuck at the C.”

  Katie appeared confused, but then she broke into a giggle. “That was awesome. Do you have more?”

  I regaled her with Lily’s recycled jokes, and every time Katie laughed, I heard the lost sounds of my own laughter from long back. I felt light and heavy at the same time.

  After a while, I left Katie to her drawing and walked toward the long table in the back. My gaze fell on Katie’s dad on the other side of the glass partition. He was in the gym, in a corner, a black punching bag hanging from the ceiling in front of him. He was in the process of tying up the boxing gloves. I paused mid-stride and stared at him once again. I never pegged him for a boxer. Well, what did I know? I only just met the guy.

  The muscles in his back bunched and shifted as he grabbed the bag with his hands and studied it, maybe memorizing the scratches on the faded fabric.

  Hit it. There was this sudden anticipation inside me, this charged thing in my stomach that wanted to see him hit that bag. I wanted him to hit it, punch it, batter it with violent force. A force that I could feel through the thick glass.

  He breathed deep and stepped back. The charge inside me surged, licking its way up my chest. He swung his arm back and took his first punch. Nothing major happened, unfortunately. The bag just rocked in its place. I felt dissatisfied. I wanted more. More violence. More ferocity. The human inside me thirsted for the dark thrill. Lose control.
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  After a few seconds, he swung a punch again. This one more forceful, less controlled. Then he swung again and again without stopping. His lips pulled back, baring his teeth. His face contorted with the force of his hits. I wasn’t close enough to hear the sounds of it, but I could imagine him releasing an oomph.

  His punches were frantic, unpracticed now, like he didn’t care for the art of it, but only the release it gave him. He skipped on his feet. His shoulders rolled, and sweat jumped off him.

  He was breathtaking.

  I grew heated and pressed my palm on my stomach. It was quivering, vibrating, and I realized I really could feel his ferocity through the space separating us. It felt strange, not unpleasant, but very strange. Nothing had grabbed my attention like this in so long.

  With his every punch, I thought about his story. About his wife.

  Oh, and what the fuck was his name?

  Chapter Two

  James

  I was eight when I came to believe that magic existed. Magic of lying. It was a Saturday, and I sat in the kitchen eating Froot Loops. My mother came in just as I was finishing my cereal, her hair tied up in a severe bun and horn-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, ready to spend her day in the study, grading papers. She stood looking at me with blank eyes, and I knew something was up. Usually, she barely ever looked at me.

  “Wh-what’s wrong, Mommy?” I asked. Her lifeless eyes burned with anger at the word Mommy, and I stuttered, “S-sorry, M-mother.”

  “Your father is gone,” she said, with a stern tone.

  “Gone where?”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s not coming back. It’s just you and me from now on,” she said impatiently and leaned over to pluck an apple from the fruit bowl, dismissing me.

  I was confused, questions screaming in my brain. Why, how, when?

  My mother bit into the apple, sat on the chair, and read the newspaper in front of her.

  A knot inside my chest tightened and loosened at the same time. I picked up my empty bowl of cereal and hurled it at my mother with a scream. It hit her forehead with a thump before falling and shattering on the floor. She jerked, her face tight with pain, eyes wide in astonishment. I was ashamed. I didn’t know what had come over me. I had always been a very shy, quiet kid, never making trouble, never acting out. In fact, I would spend my time reading up in my room.