A War Like Ours Read online

  I struggled harder. “Let me go!” And then I broke down and uttered a word I hadn’t spoken like I meant it in a long while. “Please.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then he shucked off his hands and released me. I collided with the wall on my side, trying to catch my breath. James looked somewhat shocked, but I couldn’t be sure. My energy had been drained.

  I heard the door open. “Daddy?” Katie’s small voice came through it.

  He looked away from me and walked toward Katie. I didn’t have it in me to turn around. All I wanted was to get away from here and crawl back to where I came from. I heard their voices in the background. My blood was still rushing. Katie tried to come inside, but James stopped her.

  When I could, I turned on my back and shifted my eyes to glance at them. Katie looked happy that he was awake now. James picked her up in his arms with a wince and told her to be careful of the broken glass on the floor. I’d forgotten about the shattered bottle. His movements were gentle, so in contrast with his earlier actions. He carried Katie farther into the cottage, without looking at me.

  She called my name. “Will you help me draw later? Please?”

  James paused but didn’t turn around. Maybe he couldn’t bear to look at me. I couldn’t bear to look at me either after what I said. Right now, I wanted to obey James’ wish of staying away from Katie.

  But before I could say anything, he answered for me. “Madison is busy, Katie. She can’t help you today.”

  Katie whined and said something that I didn’t pay attention to. My eyes landed on James as he finally turned around, facing me. I forgot everything as his eyes moved, shifted, leapt over my face. Mine must’ve done the same. He tore his eyes away then and walked inside the bedroom.

  On stumbling legs, I exited his cottage and made my way to the reception house. I was blind to the world around me as I walked, and somehow, I found myself inside an empty bathroom stall at the reception house. I sat down on the toilet seat and dropped my head in my hands. My arms beat rhythmically where James had lodged his fingers in, as if they had grown a heart of their own.

  I rocked back and forth, back and forth until my brain was tricked into falling asleep. My brain was dumb like that. I folded my arms around myself, huddling, shrinking into myself. Mom, I whispered in my head. Back and forth. Back and forth until the drowsiness triggered the story inside my head that I’d told myself a million times in the last four years.

  It was called A Crime of Passion…

  Once upon a time there was a very beautiful woman. Her name was Alice. Every guy in town loved her. But she loved only one boy. His name was Michael, and he never noticed her. But on one drunken night at a high school party, they came together, and nine months later a baby was born. Her name was Maddy.

  The boy didn’t care and left for college. Alice had to fend for herself. Her father was a drunk who could barely stay awake. She picked up a job as a waitress at a local diner, where she searched for a man. A man who would love her, take care of her and her daughter, a man who would put an end to her dead-end, loveless life. She was a romantic, you know. She saw goodness everywhere.

  As Maddy grew up, she saw how futile her mom’s wishes were. But Alice never listened to her. Maddy was helpless. She couldn’t do anything besides watch her mother’s heart and bones get broken over and over.

  Anyway, years later, Alice finally got her wish. She met a man named Scott. She fell in love with him, as usual.“It’s happening, Maddy. It’s finally happening!” Mother smiled. “He’ll take us out of here, you’ll see. He’s a good man, my Scott. He’ll love me so much, you’ll see.”

  Scott was a trucker, travelled between towns, and he seemed to love Alice very much. After initial reluctance, Maddy believed that her mom got what she deserved—a loving husband. Scott never seemed to pay much attention to Maddy, but that was okay with her as long as her mom was happy.

  But like every story, this one turned sour, too. A year into the marriage Scott began drinking heavily. Alice began fighting with him. Scott cheated on Alice. Alice threw things around. He would rough Alice up a bit. Alice would throw more things around. Maddy would try to stop them from killing each other, but she was only seventeen. She couldn’t do much. She was helpless once again, watching her mom get pushed around.

  Then one day when Alice was seven months pregnant, Scott came home drunk out of his mind, smelling of cheap perfume. Alice knew he’d been with another woman. That was the night they fought the hardest. She threw the coffee pot at him. He dodged but stumbled. She charged—more like waddled—at him. He kept backing away, but Maddy could see the fire in his eyes, the drunkenness. Before she could do anything, Alice’s swollen feet caught on the scratched wooden leg of the kitchen table. Her arms flailed about, looking for something to hold onto in the air, and her ungainly body trembled before diving straight for the cheap linoleum floor. All Scott and Maddy could do was watch her fall on her pregnant belly and pass out. Alice was rushed to the hospital, where she died eleven long hours later, along with her unborn baby. It was a girl.

  At the age of seventeen, Maddy was motherless and alone. Scott had disappeared into the night, probably to drown himself in the same cheap liquor that had caused her mom’s death.

  Days later, on the night of the funeral, Maddy heard someone puttering around in the empty kitchen, jerking her awake from her sleepless musings. Finally, Scott was back. Gripped with reckless curiosity, Maddy walked out of her room and found Scott spilling milk on the counter. How was it that he was alive when her mom and her unborn sister were dead? Shouldn’t he be punished for his crimes? Anger swirled inside her until it became a tornado. She must have made a noise because Scott turned and then stared at her with dazed eyes.

  Maddy had never seen that look before. Something triggered inside her—an uneasiness, a sense of inevitable doom. But before she could think anything of it, Scott lunged at her. She screamed. He slapped her, and then, with gentle fingers, he stroked her heated cheek and shushed her. Maddy struggled against Scott, but he was stronger in his drunken haze. He tore at the scooped neckline of her nightgown. He snapped the white, pearly buttons off it, spilling them on the kitchen floor. They bounced and then rolled out of sight.

  Scott whispered, “I always loved this gown on you, Alice.”

  Maddy’s fear turned her into a stone. Scott thought she was Alice.

  She was nearly identical to her mother, and that night, she had been wearing Alice’s nightgown to feel closer to her.

  Scott put his foul-smelling mouth on her in an attempt to kiss her. Maddy screamed and kicked and clawed but couldn’t free herself. His eyes were wild and shining, awake but asleep, aware but drugged. He pushed Maddy, and she tumbled down. In the next second, Scott was upon her.

  He pressed his weight down on Maddy, and said “Don’t fight with me, Alice. I know you love me, too.” With every excruciating second, he kept repeating, I love you, Alice. I love you. I’m sorry. Don’t leave me, Alice.

  He chanted it like it would somehow save his life or maybe bring Alice back from the dead. And indeed, his desperate words had some magical power. Because as he repeated them, Maddy seemed to believe she really was her mother. She was Alice, dead, a ghost. She was scared but became fearless. She was in pain, but the pain didn’t matter anymore.

  Maddy closed her eyes and imagined her mother smiling. Look, Mom. You got what you wanted. There’s a man who loves you with everything, just like you always dreamed. He loves you so much that he sees you everywhere. You’re happy now, aren’t you?

  Seconds passed, maybe even hours. Maddy had no concept of time until Scott finished. She shifted her gaze and stared at the subway tiles of the kitchen walls. She felt tears travel from the corners of her eyes down to her ears before disappearing in her hair.

  When breathing became difficult, she managed to dislodge Scott’s dead weight and stand up on numb legs. With an odd calmness she showered, changed clothes, packed a small duffle bag
, stole money from her mother’s secret stash and walked out of that house forever. She took a bus to Hedge Lake where Alice’s sister, and her only living relative, Alana lived.

  As she walked to the bus stop, she realized Maddy was dead. But that was okay because her mom was finally happy…

  ****

  Back at home, I swallowed Julia’s love in the form of two pills. Instant oblivion. But even as I burrowed myself under the covers, smoky thoughts whirled inside my head. My mom’s laughter tinkled in my ears. I wondered what it would feel like to be loved like that, with such abandon and ferocity.

  Love that destroyed everything.

  Love that felt like a war.

  Chapter Six

  James

  I carried a wiggling Katie inside the bedroom as the front door clicked shut, alerting me to Madison’s departure. Her brown eyes flashed in front of me—defiant, provocative, but then vulnerable and afraid. My heart drummed against my chest, bruising it. Remnants of otherworldly excitement tingled in my veins. What pushed me to react in that manner? My hard cock and guilt were at a war.

  I was jolted back into the moment when Katie kicked her legs out, hitting my knees, causing me to put her down. “Daddy, please, I wanna play with Madison.”

  “Katie, I told you Madison has work to do. She can’t play with you today.” I was close to exploding out of my skin. I felt tight, inflexible. What happened last night? When did I decide to drink? All I remembered was the cutting.

  Katie skipped on her feet, restless. “But can’t she take a break? For me? She was going to help me draw for Mommy.”

  Her chin wobbled, making my heart contract. The gray of her eyes turned liquid, heralding her tears. On shaking legs, I bent down, needing to make her smile again.

  “What if I helped you draw for Mommy?” My voice scraped my throat as it came out. This was worse. Way worse than lying.

  “Really? Yay! That’s awesome.” Katie clapped. “We’ll make the ocean, and then we can make a shark. Oh, and the octopus. We can color it purple.” She giggled. “I’m gonna go get my stuff.”

  “Katie, wait.” I stopped her. “Sweetheart, I…I’m sorry. I scared you this morning. I… It won’t happen again, okay? I’ll never leave you. You’ll never be alone.”

  “Did you get sick, Daddy?”

  “I…ah, yes, in a way. But I promise you that I’ll never get sick that way. You’re the most important thing in my life, and I, uh, I love you.”

  There. I said it.

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  Her easy acceptance of my love both pained and humbled me.

  “I love Mommy, too. Do you miss her?”

  “Yes. Very much,” I said, eyes burning.

  A memory surfaced from long ago when Katie had just been born. Nat used to be very tired in those days, but still, she’d made a small hat for Katie; she was an excellent knitter. I remembered it being crooked, and Nat got upset and shut herself in our bedroom, crying over the fact that she was an inadequate mother, that Katie was a mistake. Such self-doubts always made her pick fights with me.

  “You know what, when you were just a baby Mommy made you a hat,” I told Katie, wanting to share the good parts with her. “I don’t think you remember it. It was blue, and it said Mommy loves you. When we get back home, do you want to look for it?”

  “Yes. Do you think we still have it?”

  “Yes.” I rubbed her shoulders. “I think we can find it somewhere. Now, go get your drawing materials, and I’ll go take a shower, okay?”

  “Oh, you should. You smell really bad, Daddy.” Shaking her head, she wrinkled her nose.

  For some reason, her blatant distaste and her sage expression brought out a smile, albeit a sad one.

  After I showered, I swept up the broken glass from the floor. I was about to throw the shards in the trash when sunrays filtering in through the kitchen window caught at them. The shards became tiny prisms, bursting into seven colors. The bands of light radiating off them moved as I breathed. I stared at one in the center. It was bigger than the others, thin and concave, shaped like an uneven triangle. I pocketed that piece and threw the rest away, my skin itching.

  Several minutes later, we found ourselves situated on the couch, sketchbook and crayons covering every inch of the coffee table. Katie sat on the edge of the couch, bent over the drawing sheet. She handed me a box of crayons and instructed me to color alongside her. “Okay, Daddy, just follow what I’m doing. And then when you get good at it, I’ll give you a new sheet of your own.”

  A surprised chuckle escaped me. I had no idea my daughter was bossy, like Nat. Katie swiveled her head and caught me smiling. Her forehead bunched up in a displeased frown, and my smile dropped. “I understand.”

  She dipped her head in a nod and began coloring. I pursed my lips to stop myself from smiling again. Reaching over with trembling hands, I picked up the blue crayon. It seemed too heavy in my palms, a burden of my own making.

  “Daddy, start coloring.” Katie nudged my leg.

  Sighing, I nodded. “Sorry.”

  I brought the stick of color down to the paper, over the colorless waves of the water, made the first blue stroke. The more I drew, the more peaceful I felt. This was oddly…satisfying.

  Katie hardly paid attention as she kept at her work, softly humming, bobbing her head. Along with her hummed song, crayons softly scratching over paper filled the silence of the cottage. Before long the colorless picture in front of me took on a life of its own, and I realized it was a replica of the lakeside camp that Nat and Katie had gone to last year. As usual, I lived vicariously through the photographs they showed me, never taking part in the actual trip.

  The picture had a cottage at the brink of a lake and woods. They had gone with several of Katie’s and Nat’s friends. A fire was lit with all of them sitting around it.

  When they came back from the trip, Katie spent days talking about it, recounting events and the names of her new best friends. I remembered every tiny detail, but even then, I found myself commenting, “That is one long nose.” I pointed to a stick figure of a little girl in pigtails.

  Katie’s eyes widened as she launched into her story. “That’s Melanie. When she was little, like baby-little, her brother would pull her nose all the time. Then one day he pulled it so hard that her nose grew and grew and grew. So now she has this long, pointed nose.” She paused to take a breath, and then continued at a rapid-fire speed, “Daddy, do you know that she can smell a hot dog from ten miles away?”

  I pretended to give it a thought and cleared my throat. “I can certainly see that.”

  After that, Katie told me about every single person in the picture, and I listened to her with rapt attention. Even though I knew about the long nose, the crooked teeth, and the biggest fish they had captured, I absorbed her bubbly voice and enchanting chuckles.

  Somewhere in the midst of her stories, she started yawning. She blinked her droopy eyes, and her voice turned small and slurred. “Daddy, I’m sleepy.” It came out, Daddy, ‘m shleepy.

  Could this be due to her lack of sleep last night?

  The nightmares.

  I had forgotten about them until now. I had been so drunk that I might not have heard if Katie had cried out in her sleep. Had she? Would she even remember if she had?

  I put my arms around her, heaved her into my lap, and stood up, drawings forgotten. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

  “Okay,” she mumbled, nuzzling her nose against my chest.

  Walking to the bedroom, I deposited her on the bed and covered her with her purple fuzzy blanket. Katie opened her eyes, red-rimmed with sleep. “Melanie isn’t my best friend anymore. She stole my magic marker.”

  I caressed her hair with tired fingers. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll get you another one. Close your eyes. Go to sleep now.”

  Katie closed her eyes, digging her nose into the pillow, and mumbled, “Madison is my new best friend now. She told me a joke about…” She
drifted off then.

  My heart slammed in my ribs at Madison’s name. Why was it so hard to escape that woman?

  I kissed Katie’s forehead with my cold, trembling lips. “I’m sorry, baby. So, so sorry. I wish it were me instead of Nat.”

  Leaving Katie to sleep, I went to the kitchen and emptied the last two bottles of whiskey into the sink.

  ****

  The next morning, Katie and I walked over to the reception house. She had not stopped talking about Madison ever since she woke up. After yesterday, I was angrier at myself than at Madison. Every word out of her mouth was right. It was me who should’ve died. I spent most of last night bleeding away my guilt.

  The reception area was clean and sharp, as usual. The lady behind the desk was the same one, Lily. She grinned at me, and her eyes swept up and down my body, and if possible, her smile grew wider. Over the past days, I had noticed her throwing uncanny smiles my way. For reasons unknown, they made me a bit…uncomfortable, flushed as if she was perusing me or checking me out.

  “Hey, guys,” Lily called out. “How you doing today?”

  “Hey, Lily,” Katie chirped as she walked up to her desk with me following her. “I’m going to my finger-painting class. I’m gonna make a beach.”

  “Wow, sounds awesome. I’d do anything to get out on the beach right now. Make sure to draw a picture of me, too—without my bloated tummy.” Laughing, she turned her attention on me. “And how are you? What are your plans?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe work out, I think.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Work out, huh?” Her eyes moved up and down my body again, making me feel awkward. “I can totally see that. Maybe I can come and watch you sometime.”

  Taking a step back, I wiped my hands on my thighs. “I don’t think it’ll be very interesting.”

  She leaned over her desk. “Are you kidding me? Watching you will be more than interesting. It’ll be…you know, like candy watching.”