by Megan Hart
“What are you trying to make, a robot?” Marian had meant it as a joke, but seeing the look on Briella’s face, she sobered. “Is that it?”
“It wasn’t going to be a robot,” Briella said disdainfully.
Not for the first time, Marian was reminded of how little she could relate to her own daughter. So instead, she fell back on something she did understand. She put her hands on her hips and gave Briella a stern look.
“Did you do the rest of your homework before you started on your project?”
Briella sighed and kicked a small foot against the leg of the rickety desk so that the entire setup shook. “Yeah. It was all stupid. The teacher is stupid, too.”
“I’ve told you about calling people stupid. And I thought you liked Mrs. Jackson,” Marian said, feeling like she was losing this battle before it had even begun.
Again, she was reminded of Tommy and how single-mindedly obnoxious he could be. But Briella was still a kid, Marian’s kid as a matter of fact, and there was still plenty of time to make sure Briella didn’t end up like her father as an adult. Marian tried again.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you bring your snack into the kitchen with me while I cook dinner, and you can tell me about your bird project. Then, when you’re finished, you can get back to it. Sometimes, taking a break on something that’s frustrating you can help you get a fresh perspective.”
Dean would be up in about an hour, hungry for what would be his breakfast. Marian had a package of chicken thighs thawing in the sink. She was going to use up the last of the boxed potato flakes and do an oven bake. She wouldn’t be able to get to the store until next week, after payday.… With her mind stuck on dinner and the chores and a thousand other things, she didn’t notice at first that the kid hadn’t budged.
“Briella. Let’s go.”
At first it looked as though Briella was going to protest, but then she nodded and hopped off the chair. Marian took the plate with its smears of peanut butter all around the rim – how had she managed to make such a mess in so short a time? Both of them went into the kitchen. Marian set the plate on the table.
“Briella,” she said again, this time to turn the girl’s attention from the window next to the back door, overlooking the yard.
Her daughter turned with a gap-toothed grin. “He’s out there, Mama. I saw him on the way home from school today, but now he’s in the backyard!”
“Who?” For a second, Marian’s heart froze with visions of a white van and a man offering ice cream to little girls.
“The raven from near my school. His wife raven got killed. She was dead by the garbage cans. I gave him a treat from my backpack, and he followed me home,” Briella said in that tone she’d taken on lately. As though Marian was dumber than a dog’s foot.
If that was in fact how Briella talked to the other kids at school, no wonder they didn’t like her anymore, Marian thought, then immediately felt guilty. Childhood was hard enough without even your mother not being on your side. She looked out the window, tweaking aside the faded yellow curtains that had belonged to her mom’s Scandinavian grandmother. Her fingers skated on the soft material, tugging at the hem. The backyard, little more than patchy grass and a fire pit ringed with battered metal lawn chairs, edged up to the pine forest and the mountain beyond. She didn’t see any birds, much less a raven.
Briella didn’t seem to notice that the bird, if one had been there at all, was gone. She turned, beaming, to the table and slid into her seat. “I’m going to name him Onyx.”
Chapter Two
This was that sweet, brief stretch of the morning between the time Briella left for school and Dean arrived home from work that was all Marian’s. She’d never been an early riser by nature, but that had all changed after having her daughter. Briella hadn’t slept through the night until she was almost three, and even now would get up on her own around five thirty in the morning, no matter what time she’d gone to bed. And that could be late. With Dean leaving for work by ten p.m., sometimes a little earlier if he had to stop along the way, Marian had fallen into the habit of letting her daughter stay up long past what most parents would consider a proper bedtime, rather than fighting with her to stay in bed when she clearly wasn’t ready to sleep.
This particular morning had dawned with the fresh, sweet hint of autumn in the coolness. Sure, in September it could still be eighty degrees by the afternoon, and Marian would be sweating and cursing the fact they didn’t have central air, but for now she could sit on the back stoop with the single cigarette she allowed herself every morning, her mug of coffee, and nothing else but the silence.
She drank, wincing at the bitterness of the black coffee. She’d run out of creamer a couple days ago and thought it might be a good time to wean herself off it. Flavored creamers were full of junk and chemicals, and they cost a fortune. It was hard to justify that indulgence when she was also trying to save for a laptop.
Briella’s comments about being poor still stung. Maybe it was time Marian talked to Dean about going back to work. Briella was in school all day. Dean was usually still asleep when she got off the bus, but at ten, wasn’t she old enough to manage herself until Marian got home?
Marian had quit her job at the dentist’s office when she and Dean got married. Briella had been two, and it made sense to stay home rather than keep paying for daycare. They’d talked about having another baby, so staying home made even more sense, but two more losses had ended those conversations.
Dean had said he wanted to take care of them both. He always had and still did. Marian had no complaints about that. The past couple of years had been leaner than they both liked, but their bills were always paid, and they never went hungry. Still, Marian could surely pick up some hours here or there, no more than part-time. It would ease the pinch, give them some money toward a new computer and other things Briella was going to need. College. It would be here before they knew it.
A job would also get her out of the house. Dean used a white noise machine and a floor fan to block out sounds so that he could sleep, but even so, she still tiptoed around while he was sleeping to make sure she didn’t wake him. There were days, stuck in the silence all day, when Marian thought she was going to lose her mind.
Marian drew deep on the smoke, letting it sear the back of her throat. Her eyes stung. Moments later, the head rush tickled the spot between her eyes. She’d been a heavy smoker before Briella but had quit the minute she found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t taken it up again until a couple years ago, and now restricted herself to that single cigarette per day so she could keep her tolerance low and still get the buzz. She’d promised herself the first time it took more than one to get her there—
“Holy shit,” Marian yelped as a black shape dive-bombed past her and flew toward the wild tangle of tall green pokeweed and the deer feeder on the edge of the woods.
Her hair, which had been pulled into a messy topknot, now had several curls tickling her cheek from the force of the bird nearly clipping her ear. Marian pushed it away from her face and stood, shading her eyes to watch the black-winged shape strut around the edges of the wooden trough. It squawked loudly as though it were scolding her, then dove into the pokeweed to strip the purple berries off the stems and gobble them down.
Marian put a hand to her heart, which was thumpa-thumping, and stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray she kept on the back porch railing. There wasn’t any food in the feeder. Dean would fill it later in the fall to bring the deer in so he could make noises like he planned to shoot them for venison, not that he ever did. The bird flapped. It looked like it had the wingspan of a turkey buzzard, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? Ravens didn’t get that big. Did they? Marian tried to remember some of the facts Briella had been spouting about birds, but couldn’t think of any.
“Hey, babe.”
Marian shrieked, twisting and grabbing the wrought iron
railing. “Holy hell, Dean. You scared the shit out of me!”
Dean, dark green eyes twinkling, shook his head with a chuckle. “I already know you smoke.”
“Not because…no. I mean, I was, but…” Marian burst into a flurry of giggles and waved a hand toward the deer feeder. “That bird scared me.”
He looked past her. “What bird?”
“It’s at the feeder.” Marian looked, but it had gone. Probably flew off into the woods, which was where birds belonged, as far as she was concerned. Not shitting all over her house and dive-bombing her when she was just trying to grab a smoke. “Well, it was there a minute ago.”
“Okay, Tippi Hedren. Are you going to come inside and have something to eat with me?” Dean reached for her hand and tugged Marian up against him as they backed through the doorway and into the kitchen. He nudged the door closed with the toe of his boot. “And I don’t mean whatever it is you had on the stovetop when I got home.”
All thoughts of the bird flew out of her mind as Marian lifted her face to Dean’s for a long, slow kiss. She linked her fingers behind his neck, loving the brush of his thick black hair against her knuckles. He was going gray at the temples, but the rest of his hair was dark as pitch and bristly as a boot brush, such a contrast to her own natural curls. He rubbed his prickling beard against her cheek, then lower, against her throat, until she giggled and pushed out of his grip.
“What’s got into you today?” she asked.
Dean grinned and shrugged. “Can’t a guy come home from work raring to get some from his sexy-as-hell old lady?”
“Oh, sure.” Marian rolled her eyes and gestured at her worn T-shirt and sweatpants. A job, she thought, would give her an excuse to wear real clothes. “All this. So sexy.”
He kissed her again, a little harder this time. The laundry and floor mopping could wait until he was asleep, she thought as she gave herself up to his embrace. He’d just started to lead her down the hallway to their bedroom when the phone rang. Neither of them tried to answer it, and the machine picked up. When the caller started leaving a message, though, Marian pulled from Dean’s grasp with a groan.
“It’s the school,” she said. “Shit, it’s the nurse.”
Chapter Three
The car ride home from school was tense and quiet. Marian glanced a few times in the rearview mirror, but Briella stared steadfastly out of her window and didn’t meet her mother’s gaze. The bandage on her forehead had been clean when they left the nurse’s office, but now sported a pinprick of crimson.
“We could stop for ice cream, if you want?” Marian offered in a light tone of voice.
Briella shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not hungry. My belly hurts.” Briella made a face without pulling her gaze from the window.
“How bad? If you’re going to throw up—”
“I’m not. It just hurts.”
The school nurse had told Marian she didn’t think there was anything more than a simple bump to worry about, but to watch for dizziness, nausea, sleepiness. So far, Briella just seemed grumpy. Still, the school had seemed to think it was important enough to send her home, so Marian was at least a little worried.
“You want to talk about what happened, Bean?”
“No.”
Silence for the rest of the car ride, until they pulled into the driveway. Marian turned the car off and twisted in her seat to look back at her daughter. “Dean’s sleeping, so you have to be quiet, okay?”
“I know.” Briella looked at her, then, with a frown. “Can I watch TV?”
When Marian was a kid, the television had been on around the clock, a constant background hum of noise and distraction for her and her older brother, Desmond. Her dad still kept it on all the time, even when he wasn’t watching, maybe especially then, to cover up the quiet her mother’s death had left behind. Briella hadn’t grown up in a world with Saturday morning cartoons and Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and late-night infomercials. She got all her media content via streaming, on demand, parental control locked. She’d never been much of a television watcher, preferring to read or scribble in her notebook.
“My head hurts,” Briella said when Marian didn’t answer, like she knew what her mother was thinking. “I just want to lie down and not think too hard about anything.”
“Sure, kiddo. Of course. I’ll make some lunch and you can just get comfy on the couch, okay?” Marian wanted to hug her, but she couldn’t reach across the backseat to do it. She settled for reaching so Briella could squeeze her fingers. “Just keep the volume low.”
As it turned out, Dean wasn’t asleep when they got inside. He looked tired enough, eyes heavy-lidded and the scruff of his beard standing out even more thickly than it had an hour or so ago when he got home. He greeted them both with a smile from his seat at the kitchen table.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Heard you had a little accident at school.”
Briella nodded and hung back behind Marian for a few seconds. “Yeah.”
“She’s going to lie down on the couch for a bit and watch some TV.” Marian kissed the top of his head. “Did you eat anything? I can make you something.”
Briella disappeared into the living room, and Dean snagged Marian’s wrist when she started to move toward the fridge. He tugged her closer to put his hands on her hips. She looked down at him, her hands on his shoulders.
“What happened?” he asked in a low voice.
“Apparently a bunch of the kids were playing outside at morning recess, and Briella was taking a turn on the monkey bars when she slipped off and fell.” Marian hesitated. “The nurse said that the kids aren’t supposed to go on top of the monkey bars, but a few of them might have been up there and that’s why she fell. I asked her if she thought any of the kids had pushed Briella, but she said all the kids on the playground swore nobody had.”
“What’s the kid say?” Dean settled her on his knee, a big hand tucked between her thighs.
She rested her cheek on the top of his head. “She wouldn’t talk about it. The nurse said the playground monitors didn’t see anything, either.”
“You think it’s more of what happened last year?” Dean sounded concerned.
A quick glance toward the hallway showed they were still alone. Marian could hear the drone of the TV. She shrugged and threaded her fingers through his hair, pulling until he looked up at her.
“The teachers this year were all made aware of the problems from last year, and they’re supposed to be monitoring it,” she said. “Briella hasn’t mentioned any bullying, and the girls from last year who gave her such a hard time aren’t in her class this year.”
Dean frowned. “Doesn’t mean they weren’t on the playground.”
“I don’t know.” Marian’s mouth twisted. “We can’t just accuse anyone of pushing her, Dean. Especially if she says she fell.”
The pack of mean girls who’d stopped being friendly to Briella because they said she was ‘weird’ had made her kid’s life miserable for months before Marian found out anything about it. The school counselor hadn’t been any help, and because there’d been only exclusion and no active bullying that anyone could prove, nothing much had been done. You can’t make people like you if they don’t, Marian remembered now with a frown and a pang in her heart.
“You want me to call the guidance counselor again?”
She shook her head. “Let’s just see what Briella says about it. It really could have been an accident. She’s clumsy, you know?”
There’d been a brief period of time, right before Dean, when Marian had been certain the pediatrician was going to call protective services on her. Bumps, bruises. Not only had she been prone to throwing herself to the ground in tantrums, she’d also had a healthy sense of inhibition. The kid had leaped from the top of the stairs once, convinced she could fly, and split ope
n her eyebrow. She still bore a scar.
“Do you think she’d tell you the truth?” Dean nuzzled her throat for a second. “She was pretty adamant last year that those girls were still her friends, even when we found out they weren’t.”
The shit had hit the fan when Marian discovered that Briella hadn’t been invited to Pamela Morgan’s birthday party. The girls had been in the same classes since preschool. Marian and her mother had been friendly but not friends, and the awkward conversation between them when Marian called her, convinced the invitation had been lost instead of simply not offered, still made Marian cringe when she thought about it. Cringe and also fume.
“I don’t know.” Marian sighed. “Shit. I was really hoping this year would turn things around for her. She doesn’t seem as bored in school. They’re pulling her out of class half a day three times a week instead of only once to do that gifted stuff.”
“Which only makes her stand out more as being weird.”
Marian’s nose wrinkled. “Smart doesn’t have to equal weird, Dean.”
“Yeah, but…” He trailed off, wisely unwilling to say aloud what she knew he had to be thinking.
The kid was simply hard to like.
“She’ll grow out of it. All of it,” Marian said.
“Sure, baby. Of course.” Dean yawned so wide his jaw popped. “I really got to get to sleep.”
She slid off his lap. “Of course. You didn’t have to stay up until we got home.”
“Sure I did. Needed to make sure everything was okay.”
Marian cupped Dean’s face in her hands, tipping it up so she could look into his eyes. “You’re a good dad. You know that, right?”
“Sure.” He laughed and cut his gaze, maybe embarrassed with the praise. He shrugged and added in a much lower voice, “She doesn’t even call me Dad.”
