Outside the Lines (12 page)

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. The nervous flutter in my chest had disappeared. I put my head down and did what I knew best. I cooked.

As it turned out, I didn’t have time to bake a cake since the oven was occupied with scalloped potatoes until it was time to open the doors for dinner. After dicing up the ham, Jack went back to his office for a while, but then returned to the kitchen a few minutes before six. “We should get the food out there,” he said. “I’m sure the guys are chomping at the bit to eat.”

I helped him carry out the first couple of deep-dish pans to the dining room. Four rows of rectangular tables were set up and another one sat by the door, where Rita stood holding a huge pitcher of bright red Kool-Aid. We took the pans over and set them down, and Jack went over to the double doors and unlocked them. “Ready?” he asked.

“Bring ’em on!” Rita said. She motioned for me to stand next to her. “Why don’t you scoop the potatoes into the bowls and I’ll get them their drinks. They’ll get their own coffee over there.”

I looked over to the corner, where three full coffeemakers sat on a small, round table with white paper cups, just as the rush of bodies lined up at the table where the food was set up. The first man in line grabbed a bowl and looked at me with a toothless grin. I grabbed the serving spoon and filled his bowl.

“Hope you enjoy it,” I said with a smile.

“Smells great,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“You are very welcome. How are you tonight?”

“C’mon down, Mickey,” Rita said to the man before he could answer me. “I got some of your favorite fruit punch Kool-Aid here.” She held up a paper cup and he took it. “We have to keep the line moving,” she whispered. “Otherwise they’ll stand there and talk your ear off. We’ll leave the socializing for Jack.”

“But I thought I was supposed to be building relationships—getting to know them?” I whispered.

“Let’s have you sit back a bit tonight and just take it all in. They’ll warm up to you better if you don’t force it, you know? They can be a little cautious of newcomers.”

“Okay,” I said.

And so it went over the next hour, me filling up bowls, smiling and sending the clients down the line to Rita. Jack moved around the room, chatting up different people, men and women alike. “So you guys serve dinner to anyone, but only the men can sleep here?” I asked her.

“Yep,” she said. “Safer that way, you know? Too many bad things can happen in the dark.”

As I worked over the next couple of hours, I watched the clients mingle, sitting together in groups of two or three, a little like the lunchroom in high school. There were those who sat alone, too, but for the most part, people were talking as they would have at one of the dinner parties I catered. The content of the conversations was much different, of course, and as I served them their meal, I found myself listening in with silent fascination.

“Dude, I got ticketed for sleeping in my car!” I heard one man tell another as they sat at a table nearby. By this point, it was toward the end of the evening and we had run out of food. Jack was slowly ushering people into the bunk room or out the door and Rita was already in the kitchen starting to clean up. I couldn’t believe how quickly time had passed.

“You can fight that, man,” his friend said. “There’s a Washington State law that says if you get tired driving, you should pull over and rest. Show up in court and tell ’em that shit and they have to drop the fine. I mean, how they gonna tell if you weren’t driving home from your mama’s?”

“My mama’s dead,” the first man said.

“Well, they don’t know that, now, do they?” The men laughed together, slapping each other on the back the same way I’d seen Bryce and his friends do. It helped, seeing this sense of community, and a little while later, as I drove home from my first night at Hope House, I pictured my father connecting with other people like the men I’d witnessed—building another family of sorts. A family that stuck with him longer than my mother and I had. One that loved him enough to keep him from running away.

Three weeks after my father emerged from hibernation in his studio, part of me wished he had never come out. His sadness took on an angry edge I hadn’t seen before, and though it was directed at my mother and not at me, I still felt it. It took up all the air in the room.

“Are you watching, Lydia?” my father asked each morning, standing in front of the kitchen sink while my mother and I ate breakfast. He placed the pill on his tongue with an exaggerated motion. “Thsee?” he lisped, and then swallowed, chasing it down with an entire glass of milk.

“Yes, David,” my mom said. She wasn’t looking at him. “I see.”

This was pretty much the extent of their daily interaction. They hardly even looked at each other. Mom left for work, I went to school, and Dad did who-knows-what all day while we were gone. As far as I knew, he never left the house. I worried about him as I sat in class, absentmindedly twirling a piece of my hair, wondering if he was safe, unsure if he’d be there when I came home. One day, Mr. Pitcher caught me. He always called on the person he knew was spacing out. This was not the first time it had happened to me.

“Eden, can you come up here and work out the answer to number eight on the board, please?”

Staring at the complicated mess of numbers on the chalkboard, my face immediately flamed. It was a new way to divide, and I had no idea how to do it. I threw a glance over to Tina Carpenter, who still hung out with me while we were at school even though her mom wouldn’t let her come over because of my dad. We ate lunch together, and occasionally I even went over to her house to play. It wasn’t
her
fault her mom was so mean. She tucked her curly red bob behind one ear and rolled her brown eyes, as if to tell me she didn’t understand how to work the problem, either. Of course, she had probably been paying attention.

“Eden?” Mr. Pitcher said.

Slowly, I slid out from behind my desk and took deliberate steps toward the front of the class. As I brushed past Eric Callahan, a chubby boy who regularly picked his nose and stole other kids’ lunch money, he put his hand over his mouth, pretended to sneeze, and spat out the words,
“
Your dad’s a freak.
”

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. “What did you just say?”

He turned his round, freckled face toward me and reached up to brush his mop of blond hair out of his beady blue eyes. “I
said,
‘Your dad’s a
freak
.’”

“That’s enough, Eric,” Mr. Pitcher said. “One more outburst like that and you’re going to the office.” He sighed. “Eden, let’s just work the problem, okay?”

My blood felt hot. My skin crackled with anger and before I could stop it, my arm shot out from my side, fist clenched. Eric’s nose erupted.

“Ow, ow, ow!” he cried, rocking back and forth in his seat, cupping both hands over his nose and mouth.

“Eden West!” Mr. Pitcher shouted. He stomped over and pulled me away from Eric’s seat. “What were you
thinking
?”

Tears burned in my eyes as I continued to stare at Eric. “I was thinking he’s a jerk.” Half of the class laughed, the other half was dead silent. I was usually one of the quiet kids.

Mr. Pitcher held my arm and steered me toward the door. “To the office.
Now
.” He turned and stepped back toward Eric, who whimpered like a baby while blood dripped down.

An hour later, my mother came to get me. The secretary in the office told me she was going to call my dad, but I stopped her by saying he was sick. The last thing I needed was for him to come to the school and make a scene in front of everyone. He’d done that before, when I didn’t get picked for a part in a holiday play. Too shy to get up in front of that many people, I hadn’t even auditioned in the first place, but that didn’t matter to my dad.

“It’s an injustice!” he yelled as he stood in the hallway near my locker, wearing paint-splattered turquoise sweatpants and an orange sweater. “My daughter’s a star!”

“Daddy, don’t,” I pled quietly. My classmates stopped in their tracks and their eyes burned into me. But he didn’t listen, pulling at his hair and continuing on his rant about sexual discrimination and social crimes until the vice principal came to escort him out of the building. I stayed home pretending to be sick for three days after that, too embarrassed to show my face.

Now, after a brief meeting with the head principal, who explained that if I had another physical outburst I’d be suspended, Mom drove me home. “I don’t understand why you’d react like that,” she said. “It’s just not like you.”

I shrugged, looking out the window and sinking down as far as possible in my seat. I didn’t want to talk about what Eric had said. My mother knew—Mr. Pitcher had told her—but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. The shame I felt burned in my belly. I hated that everyone knew about my father’s problems. In that moment, more than anything else, I wanted him to be someone else. To wear a suit and a tie and go to a job that he complained about while he watched football on Sunday afternoons with a beer in his hand. A father who mowed the lawn and knew how to work on our car when it broke. I wanted him to be normal.

“Are you working on a painting, Daddy?” I asked him later that afternoon after Mom had gone back to work and I’d spent a few hours in my room, losing myself in a book. I was rereading
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,
hoping Frances Nolan might give me some kind of help on how to deal with an unstable father whom she couldn’t help but adore.

He was sitting on our couch watching Oprah. His fingers rested loosely around the neck of a pint of vodka. He wasn’t supposed to drink with his medication. I wondered if he was fooling us in the mornings. If he’d found a way to hide the pill under his tongue without us noticing. He’d done it before.

“No,” he said. His eyes rested at half-mast. “I’m finished painting.” He lifted the vodka bottle up and waggled it at me. “Between us, right, Bug?”

If I didn’t answer him, did I have to keep his secret? Where did he get the alcohol if he wasn’t leaving the house? His friend Rick, probably. I’d seen Rick bring my father little baggies full of what looked like lawn clippings, which Tara White had explained to me was actually drugs. I felt sick thinking my dad was lying to us again.

“Do you want me to help you take some of your new paintings to the gallery?” My chin trembled as I spoke. “Maybe someone will want to buy one again.” About six months prior, the Wild Orchid Gallery in Bellevue had purchased a series of sunset watercolors my father had done. They talked to him about doing a show, but according to my mom, he got flaky when he went off his meds and they lost interest.

“They don’t want any more of my work,” he said. “Nobody does. It’s pointless. It’s all pointless. They’re all out to get me, anyway. They hate all the great artists. Why should I be any different?” He took a swig from the bottle.

I went and sat next to him on the couch. “They don’t hate you. They can’t. Your paintings are too pretty. Can I see the new ones? The ones you did in January?”

“They’ll be worth more when I’m gone.” He stared at me, but there was nothing of him in his eyes. No liveliness, no knowing wink. Was this the meds, or was he just drunk? I didn’t know how to tell.

My stomach flip-flopped at his words. “Don’t say that.”

“I can’t help it if it’s true.”

I tried a different approach. “Will you come see the tulips in the Garden of Eden? They’re all blossoming now. The hyacinths, too. They smell so yummy.”

He blinked a couple of times. “What?”

“The garden we planted,” I said with a lump rising in my throat. “Remember? You said if we waited, the good part would come and it did. It’s out front.”

“Oh, right.” He sighed and turned his attention back to the TV. “I’m too tired. Maybe another day.”

I stayed upstairs until my mom came home later in the evening. She knocked before coming into my room, where I lay on my bed, trying to figure out my math homework without making my brain explode. Multiplication was a language I just didn’t know how to speak.

“Hi,” I said, taking in her tired eyes and slumped shoulders. “How was your day?”

She gave me a little frown. “Other than picking my daughter up at school for fighting, it was fine. Busy trying to get everything ready for taxes.” She sat down on the edge of my bed and circled her hand over my back. “How are you? Any better?”

I shrugged. She was only being nice about what I’d done to Eric because she knew what he had said.

“Uh-oh. Are you still upset about that silly boy? You can’t let ignorant people get to you, sweetie. And that’s what he is. Ignorant.”

I shook my head but didn’t answer her. I didn’t want her to see me cry. Again.

She sighed and continued to rub my back. “You’re worried about Dad, I know. I am too. He won’t go see the doctor, sweetie. He needs his meds adjusted so he’s not such a zombie.”

I didn’t know if I should tell her about the vodka. “He’s so mad,” I said. “He didn’t even want to go look at our garden. And he’s not painting.” I felt the tears squeeze out and drop onto my worksheet. “I know he has new paintings in his studio, Mom. I saw them. Can’t we sell them for him? So you don’t have to worry so much about the bills?” I wanted to help my mother. I wanted to do anything to make sure she wouldn’t want to leave me, too.

“You are very sweet to think of that, but he locked the door and hid the key. I don’t want to break it down. He already doesn’t trust me after the last time I did that.” Last year, after my dad had locked himself in the garage for over a week, threatening to drink paint thinner, my mom had used a crowbar to pop the lock off the garage so the medics could take him to the hospital. He came back a month later, utterly blank and lethargic. All he did was stare into space.

Now my mom leaned down and lifted up my chin so I was forced to make eye contact with her. “We’ll be okay, Eden. I’ll do whatever I need to.”