Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,63
so that you can pay for the fancy jeans Angel wants to wear so she can fit in, for Dylan’s band trips. So you can save for their college educations and your own retirement. So you can own a real house.” Dad points at me with his plastic fork. “The way I raised you. The way your kids deserve to be raised.”
“I work hard.”
“Of course you do. But you also married an unstable woman who couldn’t hold down a job and kept having kids with her while she ran up debt.”
“Nice way to talk about your grandchildren.”
“I love my grandchildren. That’s why I’m doing this.”
“Threatening me?”
“Telling you that I’m charging you the market rate for rent in that house, and letting you buy your own car, and letting you figure out yourself how to pay for your own life. Unless you go to grad school for a decent job. In which case you’ll have all the help in the world.”
“Blackmail, now. With my children in the middle.”
“It’s your children I’m thinking of. I’m not going to subsidize your fantasy world any longer. I always said reporters don’t make enough money, and if you ever could, you certainly can’t now.”
“Unbelievable.”
“I’d think you’d jump at the chance.”
“So I just found out I got fired, and we’re going to fetch my runaway son, and this is when you decide to dump this on me?”
“Giving you time to think about it. You know, you could be an engineer. Your math grades were always excellent.”
“Fuck you.”
His mustache twitches. I think he might actually be smiling.
I throw down the burger. It slides apart, spilling condiments all over the tray. “Fine. Raise my rent. I’ll drop off the Honda this weekend. We’ll figure it out ourselves. I am done.”
If only I could storm off and slam a door.
Instead I reassemble my sandwich, and then discover I have no appetite for it anymore. In fact, I feel ill.
Dad is still eating his salad, so I’m forced to sit there, listening to the tinny speakers in Wendy’s play “White Christmas.”
A young couple comes in then, hanging on each other and laughing. The boy is thin and tall, with piercings. The girl’s cheeks are pink with cold, and her dark blond hair trails out from under a funny-looking knit hat. She’s got her arms wrapped around the boy underneath his unzipped jacket. They’re both white on one side of them with wind-whipped snow.
They gaze at each other as their giggles subside, then their faces meet and they plunge into a romantic kiss, the kind that happens in movies over a violin crescendo.
The fast food workers hoot their approval.
My dad snorts his disgust.
I stare down at my half-eaten meal and think about how much that girl looks like Casey, and wonder what she’s doing right this minute.
Chapter 27
Casey
It’s like we’re sister-wives!” giggles Mallory, as she chops up some vegetables.
I’m dropping spaghetti into a pot while the girls set the table, and try to laugh gamely because the girls are here.
I imagine having Michael to myself. The freedom and money to dash out for dinner just because we feel like it, having sex whenever we want, loudly if we want. Sleeping in until noon on Saturday, eating bagels in bed. Choosing a home together that would be ours, and always just ours. Starting fresh with our baby. Growing into a family gradually, and with care.
It’s impossible; Michael and his kids are a package deal. It’s like my daydreams as a kid where I could fly. My mom tells me I once thought I could grow into flying, like it was something grown-ups got like breasts or a beard. I was just little, but I do remember the crushing sensation of a collapsing dream when my mom told me, having to stifle her laughter when she realized I was in earnest, that I would never fly.
I steal a glance at Mallory and allow myself to savor the resentment I usually choke down and ignore. If she were a normal, stable person, she could have the kids, which is the natural order of things, and we’d get them every other weekend and the rest of the time be a normal couple.
But it’s not her fault, Michael says. With her history. She’s unwell.
At the table, Jewel giggles over a joke Angel has just told, and I remember my journal and then I’m swimming in shame. How could I wish them away, even part of the time?