Something of a Kind - By Miranda Wheeler Page 0,56
that didn't sit well in his mouth. He never considered leaving a child, or a wife. He ran across the world, and thinks he was left by a woman who didn't respect him.
The world had either become very still, or shifted poles entirely. She wasn't sure whether to be angry at his implications and rebel in disbelief, or let herself shatter and cry. She felt numb in her concentration, far away but listening close.
At an extensive pause, she broke through the wall with a whispered prompt. "Why?"
He sighed, squinting at the ground. He never had enough words. This man was her flesh and blood, but he had no idea who Alyson Glass was beyond the teen with his last name. He debated whether or not she was old enough to understand a break up, but left her in the cold to half-raise herself. He disliked her glorification of Vanessa, but a mother was all she had. It suddenly wasn't difficult to understand the pain in her mother's eyes when Aly spoke of her dreams of his return as a child, a full-family home with the wholeness she saw in Francesca and Giovanni amongst Lauren and Vincent.
The guilt felt like a stain, a shameful scar, memories that marked her imperfection. At nine years old, she had caught her mother sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floors of Aly's bedroom, tears rolling down pink cheeks as she uncovered her secrets. A box that once held a floral comforter had been slide from beneath the depths of her twin bed. The evidence was beneath the tightly packed cover of a childhood blanket, a baby blue fleece covered in stars and clouds, yellowing with age.
A mustard bug catcher, stickers of butterflies covering cracks in the transparent plastic. Inside, a size-medium child's tee shirt was rolled and packed. The loopy script of "Always Grandeur in Ashland, Alaska" was centered above a cartoon mountain, a small, colorless insignia on the white shirt. Red and blue marker covered the back, imprints of signatures from the last day of third grade. Aside from dollarstore wildlife documentaries and children’s versions of Jack London classics, significantly below her reading level, it was the only gift she received in her father's clumsy everyother-Christmas routine.
No birthdays, never an overnight. Packages and irregular halfhour visits without warning during dinner hours after staying a weekend with his aging parents in Glens Falls. He asked about school and watched television, only speaking with Vanessa after Aly was shooed from the room. Her mother called her in for a goodbye before he slipped off to Albany International, merely a few words. Not once had she braved more than a handshake. Not once had he offered an encouraging embrace.
The father she had waited on for years sat before her, shifting uneasily, searching for the words to explain to a child. She wanted to correct him, inform him of her rapid and painful shove into adulthood, the bitter spiral downward into self-parentification and shaken independence. She had curves, she had scars, she read Dickens and Orwell and Bronte. She had been shattered, exposed, and stripped of flesh, a girl utterly motherless. She was forced into a town where she didn't belong, and falling in love with a boy she should never have met. She had a New York state driver's license and knew the bitter taste of disease. She buried her parents.
Aly didn't live with her father; Aly lived with Gregory Michael Glass. Because of a name on a paper certificate, but not because he had anything to offer. His words didn't mean anything, and she was tired of feeding into the masochistic fantasies of her childhood. There were no dreams of Daddy, no hopes for an epiphany of how worthy she could be, or how much Aly hoped her mother secretly needed him as much as she did.
He doesn't deserve to break me apart. Not from mom, not from Noah.
"Am I an infection or a child, Greg?" she demanded finally, exasperated. She couldn't watch him stand and pace and sit again. She knew he was drawing blanks.
The first man too empty to lie.
"A chi-" he blurted, stopping. He stared at her, considering the exhaustion and muted frustration on her face. She wondered if he could see that she was strong. The level stare in her eyes held no emotion, and she struggled to stay unaffected. He added suspiciously, "What did you call me?"
"What did you want me to call you?" There were plenty of words she had it