I feel like I’ve stepped into another dimension where my worst nightmares are par for the course.
“I guess that’s ok,” I say.
“Especially since all you let him take was his recliner,” Cassie says. “He doesn’t even have a bed.”
I want to say that sleeping in someone else’s bed isn’t a problem for him, but she doesn’t know why we split up. Besides, that isn’t the whole story anyway, so saying it wouldn’t be fair. But not saying anything leaves her to choose sides, to make uninformed decisions, to flail around her own life trying to figure out why things changed.
“So, he really did rent a new place,” I say, setting my things on the table by the door and closing it slowly behind me. He said he had, but I figured it was just a ploy.
I thought he wanted us to get back together. Perhaps he took my shutting the office door on him as my answer.
“All I know is he moved out of his friend’s house and has a new apartment,” she says, going into the kitchen and leaving me in the living room.
I sneak in after her.
“What did he say?” I ask. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.” She pulls out a box of Lucky Charms and some milk. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Will he be living there by himself?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’m asking what I’m asking.
“I’ll be there,” she says and stuffs her mouth with cereal.
I thought I was worried about some other woman, but this is worse.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “You mean for the weekend? Right?”
“I don’t know,” she says between bites. “We’ll see how it goes.”
I am so still that I stop breathing.
“You wanted to take time for yourself, right?” she asks. It’s her voice, but they’re Jack’s words. “You should do that. Me and Dad will be fine on our own. If you want to kiss some young guy you don’t even know, it’s not our place to stop you.”
She stares at me while she eats her Lucky Charms. I guess I was wrong about Jack wanting me to reconsider. Jack knows that she will challenge me with his words. He wants me to yell at her and drive her away.
“Sure,” I say, infuriated and sick to my stomach. “You can stay with Dad this weekend.”
“Great,” she says. “I might go ahead and take some things over to his place. Did you let him take enough dishes and things for me too, or should I pack those?”
I’m on a high-wire tightrope being heckled by someone who thinks I like it up here.
“I’m not in charge of your father,” I say. “He makes his own decisions. He’s the one who decided to leave, Cassie.”
She stands up abruptly from the table.
“No, he didn’t,” she says, her anger suddenly spilling over her cheeks in wet streaks. “I heard you tell him to get out. You did this. You did it. I heard him say he didn’t want to go. I heard it, Mother.”
She stands there with her hands on her bikini-clad hips, waiting for me to respond. Daring me to.
“Cassie,” I say, hating this for her. “You don’t know the whole story, sweetie. I don’t want things to be like this either, but they are.”
“You know what else I heard?” she asks and I’m fearful. “I heard Dad crying out here that night when he was sleeping on the couch. Did you hear that? Did you even care?”
My foot slips off the tightrope.
“Guilty people cry too, Cassie,” I say, knowing I’m about to go too far. “And your father’s got a lot of room to talk about kissing other people.”
She looks at me and then down at the floor. I know she knows what I mean, and I hate that I’m going back on my agreement with Jack to keep the details private—but I’m not the one who threw the first stone here. I’m just lobbing them back is all.
“I love you, Cassie,” I say. “I’m sorry about this. I really am.”
“Whatever,” she says and pulls out her phone. She taps a message to someone and her phone chirps a reply. “Dad will be right over. I’ll get my things and wait for him out front.”
She stalks off to her bedroom. In a few minutes she comes back out, dressed, and carrying a duffel bag packed so tight it won’t even zip closed.
8
I imagine posting on Facebook: Today we are burying my father’s ashes.
What?
Aren’t you supposed to sprinkle them over the ocean or something?
This was your mother’s idea, I take it?
I pick up Cassie from school, promising to take her shopping later if she agrees not to make a fuss. Mostly, I’m just thankful that she came home after the weekend with Jack.
“Which includes not rolling your eyes,” I say to her as we park the car in the small lot outside the iron gates. Why do cemeteries have such security measures anyway? Are they trying to keep people out or in?
Cassie exhales purposefully and rolls her eyes.
“Will Uncle Ray be here?” she asks.
“Supposedly,” I say and kill the engine. I turn toward her before she can pull the door handle. “Your Uncle Ray is good guy. I don’t want you to make assumptions based on what you know about him.”
“How could I?” she asks, her face set to challenge whatever I say. “No one talks about him, so I don’t know anything at all.”
“Well,” I say, searching for an excuse, “you were really young when he went to prison.”
“He existed before he went to prison, you know,” she says.
Yeah, he did.
“Ray usually chose to keep a low profile,” I say, deciding there’s nothing I can explain right now. “He could have come around. He didn’t.”
“Did you ever stop to wonder why?” she says, as if she knows.
“Always,” I answer, not trying to be snotty, but not appreciating the tone I’m getting from my teenage daughter
