by Keri Peardon
vampire.
Scott held out his hand to her and tried to smile, while blinking back tears. She was so much bigger. His little girl wasn’t little anymore.
“Hey, baby,” he said, his voice falsely cheerful.
“Hey,” she said, sounding more glum. She finally reached him and put her hand in his, although she didn’t offer him anything more—no hug or kiss.
Scott glanced up at Janet. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem,” she said with a smile.
“You can leave the door open.”
“Alright,” she said, before moving away.
Clarice watched her go. Scott hoped that she might feel a bit more comfortable knowing the door was open. She wasn’t locked in, unable to escape.
“So, how was school today?” Scott asked, still trying to sound upbeat.
“Fine.”
He lead her around the stairs, to the corner his makeshift apartment occupied. “What did you learn?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Stuff.”
Ugh. Wasn’t this lack of enthusiasm and inability to speak in anything other than monosyllables not supposed to start until she was a teenager?
Clarice looked around the basement—her eyes scanning over the bare brick walls and dirt floor, finally coming to rest on the secondhand furniture set on a couple of pieces of old carpet. “Is this where you live?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m going to turn it into a nice apartment, though.”
Scott pulled out a chair at the table for her. The dinette set had been a hasty, last-minute find at the Goodwill store. He wanted her to have a place to do her homework and eat supper.
“I’m going to build a bedroom and bathroom for you,” he said, hoping against hope that she would be interested in a place being created just for her, rather than repelled by the fact that he expected her to stay in an old, musty-smelling basement.
“Um, okay,” she replied. She reluctantly took off her backpack and slid into the chair. She looked like she was ready to bolt out of it at any minute.
Scott hastily pulled a book off his banged-up bookcase and showed it to her. “See, this is how to turn a big, empty space into a nice place to live.” He flipped through Josie’s book on loft apartments, and specifically showed Clarice the picture of a little girl’s room with lavender-painted brick walls and bright lights.
Clarice looked a little more animated. “That’s pretty.”
“When I have your room built, you can decorate it any way you want. The bathroom too.”
“Really?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Absolutely. Pink and purple and flowers everywhere, if you want. Butterflies, horses—the whole nine yards.”
She giggled a little, and Scott took a seat beside her—leaving a little space between them. “You’ve gotten so big since I last saw you.”
“Mama says I’m growing like a weed.”
“You are,” Scott agreed.
“I had to get new shoes, um, a couple of weeks ago. My old ones didn’t fit.” She stuck a foot a little closer to Scott, showing him her white and purple tennis shoes. “I wanted the ones with lights in them, but they didn’t have any in my size. I’m already wearing women’s shoes,” she added, almost proudly.
Scott chuckled. “I think you get your feet from me; mine grew fast, too, when I was your age.”
“I… I brought you something…” she said, suddenly nervous. She carefully avoiding looking at him.
“What?”
She unzipped her backpack and dug into it. At last she pulled out a picture frame and handed it to Scott. Curious, he took it.
He was momentarily stunned. It was a picture of him and Clarice and Blondie on the beach. Clarice was just a little thing—wearing a blue bathing suit with neon green polka dots and ruffles. She had stopped working on her sand castle to smile up at the camera. Scott was sitting beside her—his eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses—smiling happily, his arm draped around an equally happy-looking Blondie.
He remembered when it was taken. They had gone to the beach somewhere in Alabama—Gulf Shores, maybe? Clarice had been about five.
How shockingly normal it seemed. Him, lying out on the beach, in the sun, with his daughter and his dog—a wife snapping the picture. The typical American family living the American dream.
“Mama… threw away the other pictures,” Clarice whispered, sounding guilty—or ashamed.
“What other pictures?” Scott asked, looking at her.
“The ones with you in them,” she replied, her voice still hushed, as if her mother might overhear. “I… I took that one out of the garbage when she wasn’t looking, and I hid it in my bedroom. But then I was afraid she’d find it, so I took it to school and put it in my desk.”
Tears were dripping out of Scott’s eyes before he knew it. Inside, his hatred for his ex-wife warred with his overwhelming desire to cry for his child’s suffering—and his own.
He finally managed a weak smile. “We’ll take more pictures. We’ll go do stuff and take more pictures.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice barely audible. She looked close to tears herself.
He handed the picture back to her, but she didn’t take it. “I… brought that for you… if you want it. You don’t have to take it,” she hurried to add.
Scott was surprised. “I… would love to have this. But are you sure you don’t want to keep it?”
She shook her head. “I… it’s for you.”
Scott knew she was not giving up her precious picture carelessly. Despite the fact that she was only nine years old, she already understood that someone else’s needs could be greater than her own. Thank God she wasn’t taking after Maggie.
Scott slid down to one knee beside her and gave her a hug. For just a moment she was a bit perfunctory, then she squeezed him very tightly.
“I’ve missed you, baby girl,” Scott whispered.
“I’ve missed you, too, Daddy.”
Episode 13:Dadding
Scott insisted that Clarice start on her homework immediately. She wrinkled her nose in response.
“Mama doesn’t make me start it until after dinner.”
“Yes, but I have to go to work in a little while, and I won’t be able to help you with it then. You can watch TV while I’m working.”
Clarice looked less than thrilled, but she pulled her books and papers out of her backpack anyways.
Scott, on the other hand, was almost tingling with excitement. This was real dad territory. Any man could throw a check at his ex-wife; only a dad could actually do the hands-on work that raising a child required.
Once Clarice had everything out of her bag and stacked into subjects, though, Scott’s face fell. “Is all of this your homework?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re supposed to have it all done in one night?”
“Yeah.”
“This is crazy.”
Clarice smiled a little. “Yeah, we all think so.”
Scott tried to remember if he had homework when he was in fourth grade—maybe a little, but he was pretty sure he didn’t start having it regularly until fifth grade. Certainly he never had the piles that Clarice had.
“What do you do all day?” Scott wondered aloud. “When I was your age, we did this stuff in class.”
“We do stuff like this in class, too. This is, like, review, I guess. It’s pretty boring.”
“What kind of grades do you make?”
“A’s. I stay on the honor roll,” she said proudly.
Scott’s mind was racing. What was the going cost of private school these days? He’d have to look it up. And start saving.
Despite their mutual misgivings about the workload, they gamely tackled it. Clarice had no problems answering the questions, but like most children her age, her mind started to wander after about ten minutes. Scott had similar problems with concentration himself, so he quickly applied the skills he had learned in college. He set the timer on his
phone for fifteen minutes and he would keep Clarice focused on her task until the timer went off. Then they would take a break for a few minutes.
They played tag in the big open space and spent some time online looking at pictures of bedrooms and comforter sets. Clarice seemed to like everything she looked at, so Scott sent all the pictures to the upstairs printer and warned her that she needed to have them narrowed down to the top three by next Tuesday.
They were just a few questions away from the end when the alarm on Scott’s phone went off.
“The sun has set,” his phone said.
Clarice looked at the phone, lying next to them on the table. “What’s that?”
“It’s just letting me know it’s okay to go outside.”
“My counselor made me read a book about vampires.”
“Counselor? What counselor?”
“At school.”
“You see the counselor at school?”
“Yeah.” She looked down. “If your parents get divorced, they make you see the counselor.”
“Have… you been seeing the counselor for two years?” Scott wondered if Clarice had been severely scarred by his sudden and unexpected departure.
“Not all the time. I mean, I was more at first, but not so much now. It’s not like I need to see her,” she was quick to add, “but she just wants to see how I’m doing, you know.”
“And what sort of book did she have you read?”
“Um, it was… I think it was My Parents Are Vampires.”
Scott was surprised. “What was it about?”
“Like… how vampires can’t be in the sun and stuff. And they drink blood. But other than that, they’re still normal people.”
Scott wondered if Maggie knew Clarice had been assigned such a book; surely she wouldn’t have approved.
“That sounds about right,” Scott told her. “I’m still pretty normal. As normal as I ever was,” he added with a teasing grin.
Clarice grinned too, then looked more serious. “So, do you really drink blood?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you get it?”
“From the store. It comes in a bottle, just like cokes.” There was no need to tell her that he frequently drank from his secretary.
“What’s it taste like?”
“Kind of like…. Well, it’s hard to describe, really. But it tastes a lot better to me than it would to you.”
“So… do you like it?”
“I like it well enough. I’d rather eat regular food though. …Speaking of which, finish up these last three problems, and I’ll take you somewhere for dinner.”
Clarice eagerly tackled her final three math problems. Scott helped her put her papers in her folder, then she put everything neatly in her backpack.
“That was pretty fast,” Clarice replied.
“Now aren’t you glad I helped you?”
“Yeah,” she said with a smile.
He grabbed his car keys and lead Clarice upstairs. The front lobby was dark but for the weak, dwindling sunlight coming through the front windows. But they met Josie coming in as they were going out.
“Evening, Scott,” she said cheerfully.
“Josie, this is my daughter, Clarice,” he said proudly.
Josie smiled warmly at Clarice. “Hello, Clarice. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Clarice just shyly smiled and half-hid behind Scott.
“Clarice, this is my assistant, Josie.”
“Hi,” she whispered.
“We’re going out for dinner,” Scott said to Josie. “Do I have anything on the schedule early?”
“Let me see,” Josie said, flipping on lights as she headed for her desk. She had to wait a few minutes for her computer to boot up.
“You know, I can sync the calendar on the computer to your phone,” she offered.
“That’s probably not a bad idea.”
“Just give me your phone when you get back; it shouldn’t take me long.” She studied the computer screen. “You have someone coming in at 6:30.”
“Okay, we’ll just grab some fast food real quick.”
“Alright.”
“What would you like to eat?” Scott asked, as he opened the car door for Clarice.
“Um, a Happy Meal?” she asked hopefully.
“One Happy Meal it is,” Scott replied magnanimously. Clarice beamed.
“Josie is really pretty,”
