If I Fix You

by Abigail Johnson

  “Aren’t you going to yell at me? What I did was really stupid.”

  Claire didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “I’m guessing your dad is going to yell at you plenty.”

  The vein in Dad’s forehead that throbbed whenever he got mad was likely to rip right out when he found out about this. Or maybe not. He wasn’t acting at all like I’d thought he would, so what did I know?

  I pulled the keys from the ignition and slid my forehead along the steering wheel, turning enough to watch the smoke thinning around the still propped-up hood. I shut my eyes and winced as though in physical pain. The engine. Dead. I’d killed my dream car, and I didn’t have any more time to fix it again, if that was even possible.

  Because she could come back at any time. And Dad wasn’t going to fight for me.

  “He told me today that it’s true. What she said.” I didn’t need to be any more specific. Claire understood.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  “That’s why he sent me to the shop. I told him we should leave, move somewhere she couldn’t find us and instead he gave me his keys and sent me away.”

  “Could she do that? Take you from him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  I fought not to roll my eyes. “I feel like my car, Claire. How do you think?”

  “I mean about your dad. Does it matter to you?”

  I wanted to be able to answer immediately, like a reflex, something I didn’t even have to think about. But the right words didn’t race out of my mouth, loud and confident. “I don’t want it to.”

  Claire squeezed my hand. “Then it doesn’t have to.”

  I looked at her and understood what she was telling me even as I was snapping at her.

  “How is today different from yesterday?” she asked.

  I shrugged and gestured at the thinning smoke still drifting from my car. “I’m not getting rid of my bike anytime soon.”

  Claire pinched the skin on the back of my hand.

  “Hey!” I yanked it back.

  “What is fundamentally different about your life today?”

  I rubbed my hand. “I found out that my dad isn’t—” I broke off when Claire tried to pinch me again. “Stop. What are you doing?”

  “You’re not answering the question.”

  “You keep pinching me like a five-year-old.”

  “Nothing is different.”

  “Everything is different.” I pinched her back.

  “Is it? Was he your biological father yesterday? Were you his biological daughter? Did he love you more before? Do you love him less today? Does knowing any of this make you want to go live with your mom?” Claire kept ticking the questions off on her left hand.

  When she started in on the right hand, I stopped her. “Okay, okay.”

  “It doesn’t have to be different unless you let it. I mean, look at your dad. He knew, right? He’s always known, and it didn’t matter to him, so don’t let it matter to you.”

  I drew in a deep breath through my nose, looking at Claire and willing my heart and my head to embrace what she was saying. I wanted the anxiety and dread to stop curdling in my stomach. I wanted her words to demolish the fear and bitterness that tainted the future as I saw it. I wanted to stay with Dad and the shop and for everything to go back to the way it was before Mom came back. I wanted her to stay gone.

  And then I realized that waiting wasn’t going to get me any of those things.

  “You’re right.” I twisted around and grabbed my bag from the backseat. I pulled out my phone and sat back.

  “Are you calling your dad?”

  “No. I’m calling her.”

  “Your mom? You’re calling your mom?” For a second I thought Claire might start pinching me again—with both hands—but she sat perfectly still.

  “I’m not going to do this anymore—flinch every time the phone rings or there’s a knock at the door. I can’t sit here waiting and dreading every moment like it might be the last. Dad isn’t going to fight.” That admission was like a car crashing into my heart. “But I have to.”

  I found Mom’s number in my contacts list. When she’d added it that day in my garage I’d never thought I’d use it. “It’s ringing.”

  Claire looked torn between tearing the phone out of my hands and moving closer so that she could hear better. Instead she pulled out her own phone and composed a text to her cousin to pick her up ASAP. She showed it to me before sending, giving me the option of meeting Mom alone or with her as backup. I reached out and pushed Send on Claire’s phone just as Mom answered on mine.

  CHAPTER 38

  The park where Claire’s cousin dropped me off to meet Mom was deserted that late at night. I left the Spitfire where it had died—I’d have to deal with it later when I called Dad. The streetlights in Claire’s neighborhood—our old neighborhood—provided enough light for me to see my mother when she arrived. She was wearing jeans and one of my old tank tops. With her hair pulled into a messy-but-totally-chic bun and barely any makeup, she looked impossibly young. The wary expression on her face only added to that impression.

  She lowered herself onto the bench next to me like she expected me to attack her. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or do. My mouth was dry and it felt like a wire was pulled tight between my temples. My hands curled under the wood of the bench as I stared at the merry-go-round. I remembered this park. I drove past it all the time, but I hadn’t set foot in it in years, not since we moved.

  “This is a little unusual.” Mom looked around the empty playground, still but for a swing softly creaking in the breeze. “But I’m glad you called. I wanted to talk more last time after—”

  “We’re not going to talk about what you told me.” My hands gripped the bench harder and I started blinking too fast. “I don’t care about any of that, so it doesn’t matter. Don’t—don’t bring it up again.”

  A car drove by. Then another.

  “No, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to dictate the conversation this time. I’m done feeling guilty,” she went on. “I’ve forgiven myself and that’s all that matters. I decided all that when I left, so as much as I know you want me to, I can’t apologize for any of my choices. That’s something you’re going to have to get past. I’m getting there. Jeff is helping, the therapist I’ve been seeing is helping, and having you back is going to help even more.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Your dad, he’ll be fine on his own. I’m the one who needs you. Not him.”

  “No.” I shook my head, because what she wanted was impossible. “I won’t make things better for you, I promise. I will ruin anything good, because if you take me from Dad I’ll have nothing left.” I was still wearing my coveralls and I fisted the loose material above my knee, turning my knuckles white before releasing it. “Look.” I held my hand out to her. I hadn’t scrubbed my hands before leaving the shop with Claire, so my nails were edged with black and the creases in my knuckles and palms were marked with dark crisscrossing lines. “You don’t want this. You don’t.”

  Something happened when she looked at my hand. Her shoulders shook and her face crumbled. It wasn’t pretty or dignified or calculating or any of the things I associated her with. It made me want to shrink away. And run.

  “You used to cry when your hands got dirty. You don’t even remember, do you? If you fell outside, even if you weren’t hurt, you’d hold your little palms up and these big fat tears would start. You wouldn’t stop until we washed your hands.” As she spoke, she continued to gather herself until her face smoothed completely, everything back to picture-perfect except for the iron grip she kept on her purse. “You weren’t even four when he started taking you to the shop. You’d cry when he’d put you down, when he’d pick you up with grease on his hands, w
hen he’d wash your hands in the slop sink. You hated it. You hated the noise and the smell. But he took you with him every week. It was months before you stopped crying when your hands got dirty.”

  I didn’t remember any of that. I’d always loved working in the shop, handing Dad tools, rolling tires that were bigger than I was. It was better than any playground.

  Her eyes lost their focus for a second before locking on me. “You have no idea, you really don’t. And I never wanted you to. Because I love you.”

  I was losing. I could feel it. And the reality snuffed out my resolve so completely that I shivered in the warm night air. I was little more than ashes and she was an inferno.

  “I hope you never know what it feels like to pay for a single—” she swallowed “—mistake every day of your life, to see it in his eyes and feel it in his touch. He said he forgave me, but he lied. Every day he punished me. Every day. He couldn’t love me anymore, but that wasn’t enough, so he took your love too. I’d bring you home dolls and he’d replace them with cars. He coached your soccer team, but I couldn’t put you in ballet. I never had a chance with you. And I felt so guilty all the time that I couldn’t object—he made sure of that. So now I’m making sure of this.”

  She swept her eyes over me then around the park. “I know you’re upset with me for leaving, and I can see now that I handled that situation badly, but I’ve been so alone for so long.”

  I sucked in a breath when she tried to take my hand, and she froze midair.

  “Jill, he took you from me. You weren’t his, so he made sure you weren’t mine either. But it was another lie.” She lifted a hand to stroke my head. “If you could only see the way he looked at you at first. He wouldn’t touch you as a baby, did you know that? I loved you, and he couldn’t stand to—”

  Ripping away, I shot to my feet with a cry that made my knees want to buckle. “No.” My voice was so low that I felt it rumble in my chest. I brushed away the tear that slipped down my cheek and clenched my teeth to keep any others back. I met her eyes, hating that my chin quivered. “No,” I said again, and my insides, my bones, everything that held me together, failed. Inside something forever broke. “Why aren’t you better?” It wasn’t even a question, it was an accusation. “I wanted you to be better, even tonight I wanted it.” I clamped my teeth down on the side of my tongue, harder and harder until the throbbing that filled my head dulled the one in my heart. “Why can’t you love me? And not this— Don’t,” I broke off when she stood and reached for me. “This isn’t love. I don’t know how you could think it was. You’re hurting me. And you’re doing it to help you. That’s wrong. Mom, that’s wrong.”

  “I’m not trying to hurt you, I love you. If you just listen—”

  “But you are!” I shook my head, mouth opening and closing, with tears slipping down my face. She couldn’t hear it, but I did. There was an accent when Mom talked about love, like it was a language she hadn’t fully learned and I knew now she never would.

  “I don’t know what more you want from me, I really don’t.”

  I started forcing my teeth together, wondering if it was possible to bite down hard enough to crack them. She didn’t know? She didn’t know? “I tried to hate you when you left. I couldn’t understand how you could do that to Dad, to me. Everything. It was horrible walking in on you with Sean. And not just because I love him, but because you would do that to Dad.” I pressed a hand flat against my stomach and half hunched over. I was going to be sick. “And then you tell me he’s not mine and he hated me and—” I had to bite down harder, biting until it reached my heart. And it didn’t help. I couldn’t replace or distract from the hurt.

  Because it wasn’t a hurt. That word was inadequate, it was deficient. Hurt was when you scraped your knee, when you got your finger slammed in a car door. Hurt was pain. It wasn’t a searing, freezing silent scream, an endless falling.

  I stepped away, needing to put distance between us, with her crying like she was the one who’d been sliced up and stitched back together. Tears and snot and great heaving breaths. Wave after wave of agony crashed over me until I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe when she reached for my hands and squeezed.

  I took strength from that gesture, but not in the way she wanted. I slipped my hands free and rubbed both my eyes dry, needing them clear when I looked at her. “But I can’t hate you, and the only reason is because of Dad.”

  Her crying stopped, instantly, and it was only how ugly it had been that made me believe it had been real to begin with.

  “He wouldn’t let me. And not because of him, because of me. It would have been so easy for him to trash you to me. I wanted him to, but he never did, not once, not when you deserve it so much more than he knows. Even now he keeps trying to get me to give you another chance. Because he would rather suffer than see me hurt. That’s love. And it’s the exact opposite of what you’ve done.”

  Lips trembling, she lifted her chin. “I do love you. I’m trying to show you that I love you and I always have.”

  My voice shook like this was the last thing I’d ever say to her. “I don’t know what kind of legal rights you think you have over Dad, but I’m asking you not to pursue them. I am begging you.” And then I had to look at her. I had to. I looked at the diamond on her left hand, the way she kept rearranging the grip on her purse. She plucked at the strap, turning it first one way then the next. It was exactly the kind of thing I did when I was uncomfortable. And then I finally said it, the only thing I had to stop her, and I had no idea if it would be enough.

  “If you love me at all, prove it. Mom, stop hurting me.”

  Her whole body lifted up on a sob that she caught in her hand. A second later she hugged me tight, clutching me like she’d never ever let me go.

  And then she did.

  CHAPTER 39

  When it was just me and an empty park, when Mom left with an “I’m sorry” so insubstantial, hearing it might have been a trick I played on myself, I wandered over to the swing set she used to push me on.

  I barely fit. The thick chain links dug into my hips as I swung back and forth. When it started to hurt, I got off and sat down on the merry-go-round. I was still sitting there when he showed up.

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

  When I glanced up at his approach, when our eyes met, something like relief, only warmer, filled me.

  My feet were trailing lazy patterns through the shredded tire mulch that covered the playground. “They didn’t have this when we were little. Kind of takes the fun out of it if you can’t get hurt when you fall.”

  “I don’t know.” Sean reached down and plucked a domino-sized piece of tire from the ground. “It’s not exactly soft. Want me to shove you off the slide and see if it hurts?”

  When I didn’t give him so much as a pity laugh, Sean let the piece fall back to the ground.

  “Claire?” Not that I needed to ask. Of course she’d called him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you watching the whole time?” With my feet pressed into the ground, I moved the merry-go-round, back and forth, back and forth, to keep my brain as numb as my heart.

  “No. Claire called me ten minutes ago. She figured your mom would have left by then.

  “What are we doing, Jill?”

  “Sitting.” Even though I was sitting, it was like the ground shifted underneath me, tilted just off center so everywhere I looked was crooked.

  “At the park by your old house? At night?” He brushed my cheek with his thumb. My tears were gone, but there was no hiding they’d been there.

  Sean bent down in front of me. I wanted to take his hand and tug him next to me, rest my head on his shoulder and listen to his voice and the way his laugh colored his words when he told a joke, let everything else fade away in the warm night air.

  But I couldn’t. I was
caught in this swinging between wanting and desperately not wanting him to tell me what had happened the night he almost kissed my mom. The night he maybe did, and I just didn’t know.

  The back and forth was making me physically ill. When I stayed silent, Sean leaned back. I couldn’t look at him when he started to speak.

  “What you said this morning. Is that what you really think? What you’ve been thinking all this time?”

  You almost kissed my mom.

  He waited for me to look at him. I didn’t open my mouth, but I didn’t have to. Sean’s face lost all expression then. And when he started talking again, his voice was little more than breath.

  He told me what I already knew. He was alone with my mom, my very unhappy mom, the night she left. It was innocent enough at first. She always flirted. He said he didn’t. He made sure I understood that fact. Like it mattered somehow.

  It didn’t.

  She’d asked him a lot of questions, and it was like his answers didn’t matter. What did he think of her new dress? Her new necklace? Did he notice that she’d highlighted her hair?

  Apparently my dad never noticed anything.

  He’d told her about the text I’d sent explaining that I’d be late to meet him at the house.

  And she’d wanted to see.

  She’d sat on the arm of his chair and leaned in to see his phone, but then she’d stayed there, leaned closer.

  I pulled my legs up, wrapping my arms around them as tightly as possible. I found a seam on the merry-go-round and dug my thumbnail underneath it.

  Then she’d wanted to know what he thought of her perfume. She’d swept her hair behind one shoulder and bared her neck.

  I tried to stop listening.

  I knew that she’d started toying with the button on his shirt.

  I didn’t know that she’d told him that when my dad worked late, it was usually hours before he got home.

  The merry-go-round shifted and Sean was sitting next to me.

  He said my name twice, refusing to continue until I looked at him.