Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,82
a half earlier had left him with a lot of spare time in the most desperate, lonely way. They’d known each other since kindergarten. As husband and wife, she towered over him, especially with the inches her teased hair added, because he stood only slightly over five feet tall. When I was Mia’s age and stayed with them, Grandpa never missed a chance to show me off to his friends, telling people about the tape recordings he had of me singing “Popeye the Sailor Man” and offering to play them.
He moved out of the house after Grandma died. It was the only house I’d known him to live in, besides the trailer they’d had, and it felt strange to know that it was gone. For a while after that, he rented a room from a woman in town. I remember visiting, seeing the knickknacks I’d grown up admiring and playing with, and thinking how strange it felt to see him there, barely able to afford a single room. He still worked as a real estate agent, but the recession had slowed business drastically, and it hadn’t recovered. He started sleeping in the storage room at his office. My inability to help him brought a deep guilt for me, especially after he’d taken us in once during a fight with Travis. I wished so much I could somehow help.
Every time I saw him, he tried to give me some family heirloom or coloring book with my mother’s name scrawled in the front. Sometimes I’d take a few to appease him and then leave them in my car to donate. I didn’t have room for any of that stuff. Grandpa would still insist I take them, telling me their stories: “Your great-great-great-grandma sold her wedding ring to buy that sewing machine,” he’d say. I couldn’t keep any of those heirlooms or give them the space they deserved to live in. I didn’t have room in my life to cherish them.
* * *
Travis returned my call while I pumped gas. He didn’t want any details; he just wanted to know where to come pick us up. I’d almost forgotten that I’d left a message on his phone. I felt like he’d want to know what happened. Maybe I wanted him to know. His voice sounded rushed, and I heard a diesel engine in the background.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Mia stared at me through the window. I twitched my nose at her, trying to smile, and pressed my finger to the glass. She touched the glass with her finger from the other side.
“I’m hooking my parents’ truck up to the trailer,” he said, breathing heavily. I wondered if he thought he’d come pick up our smashed car.
“No, Travis,” I said. “We’re fine. Everything’s taken care of.” I hung up before he could tell I was lying. I was too vulnerable to see him. I knew, even with my whole body still trembling with shock, that if Travis came to rescue us, to help put everything back in order, I’d risk wanting to be with him again. I’d spent all this time trying to make it on my own. Despite having called him, I didn’t want to go running back to his arms again.
On the way home, it started to pour rain. I asked Grandpa to stop at Walmart and to wait with Mia in the car while I went into the store. I hurried inside with my head down, avoiding eye contact. I imagined that anyone who looked in my direction recognized me as that girl with the daughter she’d almost killed on the shoulder of Highway 20. I wanted, more than usual, to scream in the middle of a Walmart, to the point of it being so near uncontrollable it scared me. I couldn’t stop hearing the sound of the windows exploding. The sound repeated itself, so loud that I shut my eyes and clenched my jaw to keep silent.
“Where are the fucking mermaid dolls?” I realized I said out loud when a little girl and her mother looked at me. The dolls were sold out; the space where they had hung was empty. But beneath it was the upgraded version: a bigger doll, with more hair, and a button you pushed to hear her speak, for $19.99. I grabbed it. I would juggle the bills later. There was no way I wasn’t going to retrieve my daughter’s fucking doll that afternoon.
When we pulled up to the studio, rain continued to