Heart Bones

by Hoover, Colleen

  He pretends to be bummed.

  I pretend to be apologetic and busy.

  Sorry, Brian, but a monthly child support check makes you responsible; it doesn’t make you a father.

  There’s a sudden pounding on the door that startles me enough that I let out a yelp. I spin around and see the landlord through the living room window. Normally, I wouldn’t open up for Gary Shelby, but I’m not really in a position to ignore him. He knows I’m awake. I had to use his phone to call the police. Plus, I kind of need to figure out what to do about this couch. I don’t want it inside this house anymore.

  When I open the door, Gary hands me an envelope as he pushes his way inside to get out of the rain.

  “What’s this?” I ask him.

  “Eviction notice.”

  If this were anyone but Gary Shelby, I’d be surprised.

  “She literally just died. You couldn’t wait a week?”

  “She’s three months late on rent, and I don’t rent to teenagers. I’ll either need a new lease with someone over the age of twenty-one, or you’re gonna have to move out.”

  “My father pays her for the rent. How are we three months behind?”

  “Your mother said he stopped sending her checks a few months ago. Mr. Renaldo’s been looking for a bigger place, so I’m thinking I might let them switch to—”

  “You’re an asshole, Gary Shelby.”

  Gary shrugs. “It’s business. I’ve already sent her two notices. I’m sure you have somewhere else to go. You can’t just stay here by yourself, you’re only sixteen.”

  “I turned nineteen last week.”

  “Either way, you gotta be twenty-one. Terms of the lease. That and actually paying the rent.”

  I’m sure there’s some sort of eviction process that has to go through the courts before he could actually force me out the door, but it’s pointless to fight when I don’t even want to live here anymore.

  “How long do I have?”

  “I’ll give you the week.”

  The week? I have twenty-seven dollars to my name and absolutely nowhere to go.

  “Can I have two months? I leave for college in August.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t already three months behind. But that’s three months on top of two months and I can’t afford to give anybody almost half a year of free rent.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” I mutter under my breath.

  “We covered that already.”

  I go through a mental list of potential friends that I could possibly stay with for the next two months, but Natalie left for college the day after we graduated to get a head start on summer classes. The rest of my friends either dropped out and are on their path to becoming the next Janean, or they have families I already know wouldn’t allow it.

  There’s Becca, but she’s got that sleazy stepfather. I’d rather live with Gary than be near that man.

  I’m down to my last resort.

  “I need to use your phone.”

  “It’s getting late,” he says. “You can use it tomorrow.”

  I push past him and walk down the steps. “You should have waited until tomorrow to tell me I’m homeless, then, Gary!”

  I walk in the rain, straight to his house. Gary is the only one left in this trailer park who still has a landline, and since most of us here are too poor to have cell phones, everybody uses Gary’s phone. At least they do if they’re caught up on their rent and aren’t trying to avoid him.

  It’s been almost a year since the last time I called my father, but I have his number memorized. It’s the same cell number he’s had for eight years now. He calls me at work about once a month, but most of the time I avoid his call. There’s not much conversation that can be had with a man I barely know, so I’d rather not speak to him than spew lies like, “Mom’s good. School’s good. Work’s good. Life’s good.”

  I swallow my thick, compacted pride and dial his number. I expect it to go to voicemail, but my father answers on the second ring.

  “This is Brian Grim.” His voice is scratchy. I woke him up.

  I clear my throat. “Um. Hey, Dad.”

  “Beyah?” He sounds way more awake and worried now that he knows it’s me. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

  Janean died is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to get it out. He barely knew my mother. It’s been so long since he’s been to Kentucky, the last time he laid eyes on her, she was still kind of pretty and didn’t look like a shallow, stumbling skeleton.

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” I say.

  It’s too weird telling him she died over the phone. I’ll wait and tell him in person.

  “Why are you calling so late? What’s wrong?”

  “I work late shift and it’s hard for me to get to a phone.”

  “That’s why I mailed you the cell phone.”

  He mailed me a cell phone? I don’t even bother inquiring about that. I’m sure my mother sold it for some of the stuff that’s sitting frozen in her veins right now.

  “Listen,” I say. “I know it’s been a while, but I was wondering if I could come visit before I start college classes.”

  “Of course,” he says without hesitation. “Name the day and I’ll buy a plane ticket.”

  I look over at Gary. He’s just a few feet away, staring at my breasts, so I turn away from him. “I was hoping I could come tomorrow.”

  There’s a pause, and I hear movement on the other end, like he’s crawling out of bed. “Tomorrow? Are you sure you’re alright, Beyah?”

  I let my head fall back and I close my eyes while I lie to him again. “Yeah. Janean just...I need a break. And I miss you.”

  I don’t miss him. I barely know him. But whatever will get me a flight out of here the fastest.

  I can hear typing coming from my father’s end, like he’s on a computer. He starts muttering times and names of airlines. “I can get you on a United flight to Houston tomorrow morning. You’d need to be at the airport in five hours. How many days do you want to stay?”

  “Houston? Why Houston?”

  “I live in Texas now. Have for a year and a half.”

  That’s probably something a daughter should know about her father. At least he still has the same cell phone number.

  “Oh. Yeah, I forgot.” I grip the back of my neck. “Can you just buy a one-way ticket for now? I’m not sure how long I want to stay. Maybe a few weeks.”

  “Yeah, I’ll buy it now. Just find a United agent at the airport in the morning and they’ll print your boarding pass. I’ll meet you at baggage claim when you land.”

  “Thanks.” I end the call before he can say anything else. When I turn around, Gary throws a thumb in the direction of the front door.

  “I can give you a ride to the airport,” he says. “It’ll cost ya, though.” He grins, and the way his lips curl up makes my stomach churn. When Gary Shelby offers to do a favor for a woman, it isn’t in exchange for money.

  And if I’m going to be exchanging favors with someone for a ride to the airport, I’d rather it be Dakota than Gary Shelby.

  I’m used to Dakota. As much as I despise him, he’s been dependable.

  I pick up the phone again and dial Dakota’s number. My father said I need to be at the airport in five hours, but if I wait until Dakota is asleep, he may not answer the phone. I want to get there while I still have the opportunity.

  I’m relieved when Dakota answers the call. He sounds half-asleep when he says, “Yeah?”

  “Hey. I need a favor.”

  There’s a moment of silence before Dakota says, “Really, Beyah? It’s the middle of the night.”

  He doesn’t even ask what I need, or if everything is okay. He’s immediately annoyed with me. I should have put an end to whatever this is between us as soon as it started.

  I clear my throat. “I need a ride to the airport.”

  I can hear Dakota sigh like I’m a nuisance to him. I know I’m not. I may not be more than a transaction to h
im, but it’s a transaction he can’t seem to get enough of.

  I hear the creak of his bed like he’s sitting up. “I don’t have any money.”

  “I’m not—I’m not calling you for that. I need a ride to the airport. Please.”

  Dakota groans, and then says, “Give me half an hour.” He hangs up. So do I.

  I walk past Gary and make sure to slam his screen door as I leave his house.

  Over the years, I’ve learned not to trust men. Most of the ones I’ve interacted with are like Gary Shelby. Buzz is okay, but I can’t ignore that he created Dakota. And Dakota is just a better looking, younger Gary Shelby.

  I hear people talk about good men, but I’m starting to think that’s a myth. I thought Dakota was one of the good ones. Most of them just appear to be Dakotas on the outside, but beneath all those layers of epidermis and subcutaneous tissue, there’s a sickness running through their veins.

  When I’m back inside my own house, I look around my bedroom, wondering if there’s anything I even want to take with me. I don’t have much that’s worth packing, so I grab a few changes of clothes, my hairbrush and my toothbrush. I stuff my clothes in plastic sacks before putting them in my backpack so they don’t get wet in case I get stuck in the rain.

  Before I head out the front door to wait on Dakota, I take the painting of Mother Teresa off the wall. I try to shove it in my backpack, but it won’t fit. I grab another plastic sack and put the painting in it, then carry it with me out of the house.

  TWO

  One dead mother, one layover in Orlando and several hours of weather delays later, I’m here.

  In Texas.

  As soon as I step off the plane and into the jet bridge, I can feel the late afternoon heat melting and sizzling my skin like I’m made of butter.

  I walk lifeless, hopeless, following signs for baggage claim to meet the father I’m half made of, yet somehow wholly unaccustomed to.

  I have no negative experiences of him in my memories. In fact, the times I did spend with my father in the summer are some of my only good childhood memories.

  My negative feelings toward him come from all the experiences I didn’t have with him. The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me what little effort he’s made to be a part of my life. I sometimes wonder how different I would be had I spent more time with him than Janean.

  Would I have still turned out to be the same untrusting, skeptical human I’ve become had I experienced more good times than bad?

  Maybe so. Or maybe not. Sometimes I believe personalities are shaped more by damage than kindness.

  Kindness doesn’t sink as deep into your skin as the damage does. The damage stains your soul so bad, you can’t scrub it off. It stays there forever, and I feel like people can see all my damage just by looking at me.

  Things might have been different for me if damage and kindness had held equal weight in my past, but sadly, they don’t. I could count the kindness shown to me on both hands. I couldn’t count the damage done to me even if I used the hands of every person in this airport.

  It’s taken me a while to become immune to the damage. To build up that wall that protects me and my heart from people like my mother. From guys like Dakota.

  I am made of steel now. Come at me, world. You can’t damage the impermeable.

  When I turn the corner and see my father through the glass that separates the secured side of the airport from the unsecured, I pause. I look at his legs.

  Both of them.

  I graduated from high school just two weeks ago, and while I certainly didn’t expect him to show up to my graduation, I kind of held out a small sliver of hope that he would. But a week before I graduated, he left me a message at work and told me he broke his leg and couldn’t make the flight out to Kentucky.

  Neither of his legs look broken from here.

  I’m immediately grateful that I am impermeable because this lie is probably something that would have otherwise damaged me.

  He’s next to baggage claim with no crutches in sight. He’s pacing back and forth without a limp or even a hitch in his step. I’m no doctor, but I would think a broken leg takes more than a few weeks to heal. And even if it did heal in that short amount of time, surely there would be residual physical limitations.

  I already regret coming here and he hasn’t even laid eyes on me yet.

  Everything has happened so fast in the last twenty-four hours, I haven’t had a chance for it all to catch up to me. My mother is dead, I’ll never step foot in Kentucky again, and I have to spend the next several weeks with a man I’ve spent less than two hundred days with since I was born.

  But I’ll cope.

  It’s what I do.

  I walk through the exit and into the baggage claim area just as my father looks up. He stops pacing, but his hands are shoved inside the pockets of his jeans and they stay there for a moment. There’s a nervousness to him and I kind of like that. I want him to be intimidated by his lack of involvement in my life.

  I want the upper hand this summer. I can’t imagine living with a man who thinks he’ll be able to make up for lost time by over-parenting me. I’d actually prefer it if we just coexisted in his home and didn’t speak until it was time for me to leave for college in August.

  We walk toward each other. He took the first step so I make sure and take the last. We don’t hug because I’m holding my backpack, my purse, and the plastic sack that contains Mother Teresa. I’m not a hugger. All that touching and squeezing and smiling is not on my reunion agenda.

  We awkwardly nod at each other and it’s obvious we’re strangers who share nothing but a dismal last name and some DNA.

  “Wow,” he says, shaking his head as he takes me in. “You’re grown up. And beautiful. And so tall…and…”

  I force a smile. “You look…older.”

  His black hair is sprinkled with salty strands, and his face is fuller. He’s always been handsome, but most little girls think their fathers are handsome. Now that I’m an adult, I can see that he is actually a handsome man.

  Even deadbeat dads can be good-looking, I guess.

  There is something else different about him in a way that has nothing to do with aging. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know that I like it.

  He gestures toward the baggage carousel. “How many bags do you have?”

  “Three.”

  The lie comes out of my mouth immediately. Sometimes I impress myself with how easily fabrications come to me. Another coping mechanism I learned living with Janean. “Three big red suitcases. I thought I might stay a few weeks, so I brought everything.”

  The buzzer sounds and the carousel begins to turn. My father walks over to where the luggage begins spilling out of the conveyor belt. I pull the strap of my backpack up onto my shoulder—the backpack that contains everything I brought with me.

  I don’t even own a suitcase, much less three red ones. But maybe if he thinks the airport lost my luggage, he’ll offer to replace my nonexistent belongings.

  I know that pretending to lose nonexistent luggage is deceitful. But his leg isn’t broken, so that makes us even.

  A lie for a lie.

  We wait for several minutes in complete awkwardness for luggage I know isn’t coming.

  I tell him I need to freshen up and spend at least ten minutes in the bathroom. I changed out of my work uniform before I got on the plane. I put on one of the sundresses that had been wrinkled up in my backpack. Sitting around all day in airports and in a cramped airplane seat has made it even more wrinkled.

  I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I don’t look much like my father at all. I have my mother’s dull, lifeless brown hair and my father’s green eyes. I also have my father’s mouth. My mother had thin, almost invisible lips, so at least my dad gave me something other than his last name.

  Even though pieces of me resemble pieces of them, I’ve never felt like I’ve belonged to either one of them. It’s as if I adopted myself when I was a kid and
have been on my own since then. This visit with my father feels just like that…a visit. I don’t feel like I’m coming home. I don’t even feel like I just left home.

  Home still feels like a mythical place I’ve been searching for my whole life.

  By the time I make it out of the bathroom, all the other passengers have gone and my father is at a counter filling out a form for my missing luggage.

  “It shows there were no bags checked with this ticket,” the agent says to my father. “Do you have the receipt? Sometimes they stick them on the back of the ticket.”

  He looks at me. I shrug innocently. “I was running late, so Mom checked them for me after they handed me my ticket.”

  I walk away from the counter, pretending to be interested in a sign posted on the wall. The agent tells my father they’ll be in touch if they find the bags.

  My father walks over to me and points at the door. “Car is this way.”

  The airport is ten miles behind us. His GPS says his home is sixty-three miles ahead of us. His car smells like aftershave and salt.

  “After you’re settled in, Sara can run you to the store to get whatever you need.”

  “Who’s Sara?”

  My father looks over at me like he isn’t sure if I’m joking or not.

  “Sara. Alana’s daughter.”

  “Alana?”

  He glances back at the road and I see a tiny shift in his jaw as it tightens. “My wife? I sent you an invitation to the wedding last summer. You said you couldn’t take off work.”

  Oh. That Alana. I know nothing about her other than what was printed on the invitation.

  “I didn’t realize she had a daughter.”

  “Yeah, well. We haven’t really spoken much this year.” He says this like he’s harboring some resentment of his own.

  I hope I’m misinterpreting his tone, because I’m not sure how he could be resentful of me in any way, shape, or form. He’s the parent. I’m just a product of his poor choices and lack of contraception.

  “There’s a lot to catch you up on,” he adds.

  Oh, he has no idea.

  “Does Sara have siblings?” I ask. I pray she doesn’t. The thought of spending the summer with more than just my father is already a shock to my system. I can’t handle more voltage.