So Much More (17 page)

“
The kids aren’t even Catholic
. Neither are you,” I pronounce in stunned confusion.

“They begin their studies Monday,” Bergman continues as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Monday?” I question. The shock is so heavy I don’t sound like myself. Today is already Friday.

“My flight leaves this evening. I’m picking the children up from school and taking them with me,” Miranda clarifies, sinking the knife in deeper.

“What?” It’s a word released on a punch to the gut, a pained gasp of breath.

Miranda looks at Bergman, who nods, and then returns her gaze to me. “Don’t fight me on this, Seamus.” That was a threat, bold and immoral.

“Why not?” I challenge.

She picks up her cell from the table and looks at it thoughtfully. “It’s hard to parent, even on your limited holiday schedule, from prison.”

“What?” The pounding in my head is all-encompassing, it’s trying to blot out reality, to dampen her words out of existence.

She raises her eyebrows. “There’s enough marijuana in your bottom dresser drawer to put you away for twenty years, my dear. All I need to do is make a call, and the police will have your apartment searched before you can limp out to your piece of shit car.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “You set me up?”

She smiles. It’s broad and bright and toothy, and all I see are rows of shark teeth gleaming razor sharp and deadly back at me.

Anger is rising in me, pure and irrationally dangerous. I picture myself leaning across the table and strangling her with my hands. Delighting in the sensation of life draining out of her beneath my grip. My body is vibrating with an undeniable need to exact retribution. And when the anger is so strong that it’s erased ethics everything goes quiet. Everything goes black.

I wake lying crumpled on the floor like a balled up, discarded piece of trash. Bergman and Miranda are standing over me like royals ruling over a peasant.

“Mr. McIntyre?” Bergman asks.

I side-eye him in response and have the urge to punch them both in the ankles.

“Are you all right, Mr. McIntyre? You passed out. Do you need me to call paramedics?” The amplification of his words hints toward genuine concern.

I heave my body into a sitting position and test out my failing faculties. Everything’s in order though I feel like throwing up again. “Get her out of my sight,” I grind out through gritted teeth.

Miranda leaves the room.

I sign the papers under duress blinking back tears and gather them up into a neat pile. I hold them in my hand and look at Bergman standing across the table from me. “You just handed three precious lives over to the devil herself. I hope your conscience eats you from the inside out, you bastard. This isn’t the last you’ve heard from me. I’ll get them back or die trying.” I throw the papers up into the air and watch them flutter down in a flurry. I look him hard in the eye. “Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing.
Fuck you
.”

I march out stabbing at the ground with my cane.

I drive straight to the kids’ school and park in the lot in a visitor’s space near the front doors. School doesn’t get out for another forty-five minutes, but I’ll be standing here waiting for them.

When they exit, Miranda is standing twenty feet behind me with her arms crossed. It feels like she’s hovering over me. I pull my kids aside and explain to them that they’re going to have to go live with their mother for a while. I break it to them as gently as I can and try to put a positive spin on it despite the words burning like acid on their way out. It kills me to watch their reactions. Kai goes stone-faced. Unblinking. He’s shut down and crawled into his cave where he mulls over things that kids his age shouldn’t have to contemplate. Internalizing them until they’re a cancer on his soul. Rory pins Miranda with a stare that’s contempt. He’s already blaming her with his eyes for an unwelcome future and then he yells, “No!” That’s all he says. And my little girl, she cries. She cries like I’ve never seen her cry.

And my heart shatters for the second time today. It’s blown apart into so many pieces, the shrapnel spread so far and wide, I know what remains will never fit back together again. Puzzles don’t work when you only have half of the pieces. Same goes for hearts.

I hug all three of them at once because I can’t fathom excluding any of them while I hug their sibling alone. I hug them. I kiss them. I tell them all I love them more than anything else in the world, and that’s when my eyes fill up. I’m trying with everything in me to hold back the tears because they’re already scared and sad, and I don’t want to stir up any more heavy emotion in them. But I can’t help it, I feel like Miranda took an ax to the top of my head and split me in two. You would think everything inside me would feel dead, but it’s the opposite. Everything inside me is exposed nerves, all raw, tingling, unmistakable pain and agony. It’s emotional torture.

Her words are like salt poured in an open wound. “Come, children. We need to get to the airport. We have a flight to catch.”

I sniff back the tears and wipe my eyes before I turn to look at her. “Follow me to my house so I can pack their things.”

She shakes her head. It’s hard; I swear there’s no softness in this woman. “We don’t have time. I’ll buy them everything they need when we get home.”

Kira’s face loses all color. I’ve seen joy vanish temporarily from someone’s eyes when a happy moment passes, but I’ve never seen it flushed entirely out of someone before. Kira just lost her innocent joy. It’s gone, snatched away carelessly and thoughtlessly. “I need Pickles.” Trepidation is rising in her voice. “I can’t leave without Pickles.”

Miranda looks at me in confusion. She didn’t just see our daughter lose her innocence. She’s annoyed that her schedule’s being delayed. I explain, “She needs her stuffed cat. She can’t fall asleep without it, Miranda.”

Miranda shakes her head impatiently again. “We don’t have time to get it, Kira.” She says Kira’s name but she’s looking, she’s talking, to me. “We’ll get you another tomorrow.”

Kira screeches in horror, “I don’t want another one! I want Pickles!”

I struggle to kneel down on the ground, afraid I’ll never get up again, take Kira’s tiny hand in mine and kiss the back of it before I rub it to console her. “I’ll mail Pickles to you, darlin’. I’ll make sure you have her first thing in the morning. I promise.”

The tears continue to stream, but she quiets for several seconds as she thinks over my solution. “Okay, Daddy.”

I kiss her hand one more time and echo, “Okay.”

And then I hug my kids again. I kiss my kids again. I tell them I love them again, and then I tell them, “I’m sorry. So much more than sorry.” And I mean it with everything I am.

And then I watch them walk away with their mother.

And I feel myself die inside.

Everything wilts. Emotions, organs, thoughts, memories, hope…it all wilts. Like a leaf wilts due to lack of water or sunlight, they all turn in upon themselves until the edges are curled grotesquely and shriveled into something unrecognizable.

I walk home, partially because I fear driving would put others in danger—I’m enraged—and partially because I want to punish myself. I want my body to be forced into the action it rebels against. I want my muscles to struggle and my legs to protest. I want my head to throb angrily. I need to fight something, to fight someone, and since I’m the only one available, I’ll fight myself.

After checking my dresser drawers and finding them weed-free, I grab Kira’s stuffed cat from the couch and head right back out, down the stairs and to the post office three blocks away. I fall twice, even with my cane. There’s a hole in the knee of my pants, and I could care less. They’re khakis. I only wore them for the court related matters today because they’re conservative and look like something Middle America would wear, which should earn me brownie points in the parental department. It didn’t today, obviously. The palm of my left hand is also bleeding from the run-in with the rough concrete. But I get Pickles into a Priority Express box for overnight delivery five minutes before they close.

And then I walk out and sit on the bench outside. The sun sets before I rise again.

I stop at a convenience store and make an impulse buy that is driven by soul-searing anger, along with a stick of beef jerky, and a cheap bottle of wine. I shove the angry purchase in my pocket and eat the beef jerky, chasing it with swigs of red on the walk back home.

I’m buzzed by the time I round the corner in front of my apartment complex, and I don’t want to go upstairs. I’m too tired, so I sit under the tree, and I nurse the bottle until it’s empty. And then I fall asleep like a proper wino, on the ground under the canopy of Mother Nature. I hope Miranda’s private investigator is still watching because I’m putting on one helluva show tonight. I hoist my hand, middle finger raised, into the air before I let sleep pull me under just in case I have an unwelcome audience.

I’m awakened by the sound of Faith’s scooter pulling up in front of her apartment. When she kills the motor, the world goes quiet. I hear her keys jingle followed by her door opening and closing.

That’s when I struggle to my feet. My head is swimming in alcohol, and my legs don’t just feel numb, they feel like they’re made of lead.
 

Walking to her door is slow.
 

Knocking is clumsy.

She answers in her horrendous Rick’s BBQ t-shirt, and I can’t help but think how beautiful she is before I remember how much I’m supposed to hate her for her part in the
Shit Father of the Year
award I was presented earlier today. “Seamus, what’s wrong?”

“Everything,” I mutter as I stumble my way in. “Close your curtains.”

She shuts the door behind me, draws the curtains closed, and watches me cautiously. Her apartment is a studio, just one room, and there’s nowhere to sit except the futon cushion on the floor that has a blanket and pillow on it. I turn and glare at her remembering why I’m here. “Are you a prostitute?”

She narrows her eyes at me, but the shock I see in them is all the answer I need. It’s innocence. “No. Why would you ask that?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration; anger is rising in me. “Have you ever
been
a prostitute? Ever taken money for sex? I’m begging you to be honest with me right now, Faith. What remains of my sanity depends on it.”

She shakes her head and takes a step so that she’s standing directly in front of me. “No. What’s going on, Seamus?”

I believe her. She’s just another pawn in Miranda’s game. Any ill feelings I felt toward her disappear, but the anger is still bubbling within me, like a volcano preparing to erupt.

I reach out and run my fingertips along her cheek. A light touch and the restraint is physically taxing. Smashing things would relieve stress and anxiety; softness only makes it roil. When I get to her mouth, I switch to my thumb and increase pressure. Her bottom lip drags under my touch.

“Seamus?” she whispers my name. Her chest is rising and falling visibly now, and my mind is too fucked up to tell if it’s fear or lust filling her lungs so purposefully.
 

I lower my forehead until it’s resting against hers. My hand moves to the back of her neck. It’s a gentle movement, caressing the skin there.

Her hands are on my chest now. She’s not pushing me away. She’s fanning her fingers apart and then squeezing them together tightly. It’s the blatant, repetitive motion of someone restraining herself. Stalling until she’s given permission.

“I need to forget it all for a few hours, Faith. Make me forget who I am.”

I see a flash of understanding in her eyes. Sadness emerging. Demons of her own. Empathy. Agreement. She needs this too.

Our lips crush together. There’s desperation in the union that makes kissing impossible. It’s a battle to purge the hurt and assuage it simultaneously. Confusion reigns supreme in the clash. Tenderness is lacking. It’s feasting and biting and sucking.

Buttons are torn from my shirt in an effort to remove it quickly. The swift release of my zipper sounds like a cannon in the silent, small room.

“I hate this shirt. It’s fucking cheesy,” I tell her as I rip it over her head.

“I hate these pants. Khakis are fucking boring,” she counters, as she pulls down my pants and boxers in one swift jerk to my ankles.

There’s a temporary truce in the war as we stand, looking each other up and down. She wasn’t wearing any panties. We’re both naked—physically and emotionally.

“I
hate
her,” I hiss.

“I know,” she says, willingly absorbing the venom.

“I need to get this hate out. I’m so full of it I can’t breathe.” The hate and anger is so intense I swear I can see it, touch it, smell it. It’s driving me insane.
 

“Give me your hate, Seamus,” she whispers. “And I’ll give you mine.”

“Deal,” I say the word against her lips.

And just like that, we’re at each other again. Mouths and hands are greedy. There’s no trading of affection, no taking turns. We’re just two people vying for their own bodily pleasure as if it’s a hazard instead of gratification. Stimulation, touch, is reckless and rough. And though the wine has freed all my inhibitions, I feel like a different person. We’re feeding each other, off of each other. My mouth is moving its way across her chest. Her teeth are skirting the hard edge of my ear. My hands are mapping out her body like they’re memorizing the path to the Promised Land. She’s touched every inch of me from the waist up and currently has a firm grip on me below the belt. Pulling the pin out of a grenade is how this all going to end, one giant, mutual explosion between the two of us.

“I need to lie down.” My legs are unsteady and everything rushing through me isn’t helping.

I grab my pants from the floor and pull my angry purchase, a box of condoms, out of the pocket and tear one end open. Pulling a strip from inside, I let the box fall like an afterthought before moving to her bed on the floor.

I’m on my back when she curls up next to me on the mattress, watching intently as I tear the packet open and sheath myself. When I roll on my side, she presses up against me. Her eyes and fingertips are slowly and affectionately tracing the features of my face. Calling on connection. Urgency is gone. What has been, up to this point, animalistic, just turned intimate. And the intimacy governs my hate, taking control and diluting it with Faith’s innate goodness until all that remains is the need to pour love into this woman. The need to show her how she deserves to be loved.