Something Of A Kind (20 page)

Maggie had stopped pacing. Both stared.

 

I guess I’ve effectively name-dropped.

“Those kind of tests…” Adam faltered. “That’s asking our
limited budget to dish over hundreds, sometimes thousands, of
dollars. It’s asking a lot.”

“There’s lie detectors and image specialists,” she pressed. “Why
don’t you have that on-staff if you’re such an authority?”

 

“How would you know about any of that?” Maggie demanded.

“My mom worked late shifts before she died. When your options
are between N.C.I.S. or Paid Programming, you make difficult
choices. I’m also well-versed with the Cooking Network, now can
we get on with it?”

“Right,” Adam muttered.

 

Aly couldn’t tell if he was uncomfortable with the big D, or
moving off topic. He seemed uncomfortable with her in general.

“That’s why you’re with Gregory?” Maggie blurted. Her jaw
was in danger of hitting the floor. Aly bit her lip, looking at her
hands. She didn’t want to know what her father had been claiming.

“Yeah,” she sneered, unable to make contact. Pain was eating at
her chest. “Want a DNA test too? Unless, of course, that would
bleed the bank.”

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Adam sighed, pitching the
bridge of his nose.

Aly wasn’t sure who he was placating, but silence wedged into
the conversation. The tapping of Maggie’s heels as she resumed
pacing bounced off the walls. She realized it had never been an
interview, but an interrogation. With her patience thinning, Aly
smirked at the thought of making it a crime scene.

“Do you even believe they’re out there?” she asked finally,
shooing the elephant from the room. They exchanged glances,
surprise carved into their faces.

Adam said, “We know they exist. What we don’t know is if your
experience is legitimate.”

“Rowley told me all about your technology when I was outside.
I know that if you wanted to, you could stop wasting your time
looking for a confession and utilize the photographs.”

“You do realize that claiming to know a lot about this is draining
your credibility down to nothing, right?” Maggie spat.

 

“Do you realize insinuating I’m a know-itall isn’t going to make
me say I’m lying, right?” Aly retorted, anger welling in her chest.

“Your father is the head of this sector, and you’re a child –
his
child. What foundation do you have for these claims? Why are you
pushing this? I’m trying to keep you from embarrassing Greg,”
Maggie demanded.

“Why does this have anything to do with my father?” Aly hissed.
“He doesn’t own more than a thought in my entire day.”

 

“You’re lucky, then. I-”

“There’s no basis for you to decide he affects anything about me
or influences any part of me,” Aly continued, seething. “Whatever
your obsessive personal vendetta, it’s unwarranted. I’m here to assist
with a research project on an animal, and you’re acting like I’ve
personally crossed you. It’s totally juvenile.”

“You’re just like him,” Maggie stammered, disbelieving.

Aly knew her mother would have a thousand clever things to say
at that moment, but she had run dry. If Noah was at her side, she
would feel safe. But Noah was home, doing his duty to the family
that existed in his life long before she did, and like with everyone
else, she had asked a lot. Instead of Noah’s comfort or Vanessa’s
guidance, Aly went from a blind-spot to snow-blind, from inside to
locked in, every edge rough, every end loose, every side vulnerable.

Aly offered, “What use do I hav
e of him? What point would
there be to make here? He’s a stranger. He’s made it clear I’m
nothing to him.”

“I believe that,” Maggie swallowed.

 

“I’ll bet you do.”

 

Maggie shrunk back. Adam froze.

Aly felt the seam
– whichever piece it was inside the woman that
was unraveling. Her father had left a mark on Doctor Margaret
Stone. She thought of Vanessa.

That makes three of us.

 

“Manipulative,” Maggie whispered. “I can only imagine what
your mother was like.”

Aly didn’t care if the woman wanted to drag her fa
ther through a
field of glass or spit a thousand venomous insults in her face, but the
doctor had approached one of two people she had no right to touch.

Past tense.

 

Your mother was.
Maggie had found her way into Aly, beneath her skin, – charring
her wounds, blackening her lips. Her calm disintegrated to ash.

 

It hurt.

 

“You know nothing of my mother,” Aly enlightened, eyes
narrowed, voice low. “You are nothing compared to my mother.”

 

“So you think,” Maggie said.

 

“He loved her,” Aly lied.
The last one hurt them both.
~

After the interview, a small blonde man with a shuffling gait
retrieved her from the room. After having her sign an official
witness transcript on his clipboard, he led her to Greg’s office. Her
hands were folded behind her back as she analyzed his space,
moving around the room.

A flat screen was placed between tall bookshelves that covered
the room, except for a large window with the panels to a heating and
cooling system and a vertical column of framed awards, degrees,
and diplomas. He had a curved desk in the center, his chair stationed
in the elbow. One end was weighted down with papers, a printer,
pencil stands, an adjustable lamp – while the other was barren,
except for his laptop and his gangly arms. There were no pictures.

This place looks like it belongs to a CEO. No wonder he’s
always here.

 

“So,” she mused, “Any other haphazard teenage daughters I
don’t know about?”

 

He scratched his head, brow furrowing. “Not that I’m aware of.
Why are you asking?”

“I just figured, considering Docto
r-Margaret-Whatever acts like
you broke her heart, called her fat, kicked her dog, and lit her house
on fire.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Most people don’t find that kind of
imagination charming.”

Aly shrugged. “I’m not most people. So, what’d you do?
Abandon her and your unborn child in your rent-due apartment with
only a message saying ‘you’ll figure it out, looks like we made our
choices’? Or just deport her grandparents and leave her in the woods
for the New‘Squatcher-HazeWeek?”

“That’s a lot. I mean, you're being a little… intense.” He
scratched his beard, carefully selecting his words.

He stood as he spoke, gesturing for her to follow him. As they
left the room, he shut the lights off and locked the door. Ignoring
everyone who nodded or stared whenthey passed, he didn’t stop
until they sat along the chairs in the front lobby. Suspicious, Aly sat.

Quietly, he continued, “I'm not exactly sure what your mother
has said.”

 

“You left us. What was there to say? She said you worked, but I
was her job – notexactly profound, but fair enough.”

 

“Alyson, she had the opportunity to come with me. She didn't
want to.”

 

She blinked. “What?”

 

He sat, removing his cap and rubbing its red impression on his
forehead.

“I was researching at a local university. Just before
she was
impregnated with it, I transferred to Albany, and was commuting. I
don't know if you're really old enough to understand this now, but
that distance... it drove a wedge, and when I got a major opportunity
just outside of Ketchikan, she didn't want to come. She hated my
work. She thought I was ridiculous. Vanessa told me to go.”

Impregnated with it.

There it was. Years of abandonment, desperate for a proper
father to return and complete a hole-ridden family, and that's what
she was. An it, something impregnated. He spoke like it was a dirty
word, a foreign cuss that didn't sit well in his mouth. He never
considered leaving a child, or a wife. He ran across the world, and
thinks he was left by a woman who didn't respect him.

The world had either become very still, or shifted poles entirely.
She wasn't sure whether to be angry at his implications and rebel in
disbelief, or let herself
shatter and cry. She
felt
numb in her
concentration, far away but listening close.

At an extensive pause, she broke through the wall
with a
whispered prompt. "Why?"

He sighed, squinting at the ground. He never had enough words.
This man was her flesh and blood, but he had no idea who Alyson
Glass was beyond the teen with his last name. He debated whether
or not she was old enough to understand a break up, but left her in
the cold to half-raise herself. He
disliked her glorification of
Vanessa, but a mother was all she had. It suddenly wasn't difficult to
understand the pain in her mother's eyes when Aly spoke of her
dreams of his return as a
child, a
full-family
home with the
wholeness she saw in Francesca and Giovanni amongst Lauren and
Vincent.

The guilt felt like a stain, a shameful scar, memories that marked
her imperfection. At nine years old, she had caught her mother
sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floors of Aly's bedroom, tears
rolling down pink cheeks as she uncovered her secrets. A box that
once held a floral comforter had been slide from beneath the depths
of her twin bed. The evidence was beneath the tightly packed cover
of a childhood blanket, a baby blue fleece covered in stars and
clouds, yellowing with age.

A mustard bug catcher, stickers of butterflies covering cracks in
the transparent plastic. Inside, a size-medium child's tee shirt was
rolled and packed. The
loopy
script of
"Always Grandeur
in
Ashland, Alaska" was centered above a cartoon mountain, a small,
colorless insignia on the white shirt. Red and blue marker covered
the back, imprints of signatures from the last day of third grade.
Aside
from
dollarstore wildlife documentaries and children’s
versions of Jack London classics, significantly below her reading
level, it was the only gift she received in her father's clumsy everyother-Christmas routine.

No birthdays, never an overnight. Packages and irregular halfhour visits without warning during dinner hours after staying a
weekend with his aging parents in Glens Falls. He asked about
school and watched television, only speaking with Vanessa after Aly
was shooed from the room. Her mother called her in for a goodbye
before he slipped off to Albany International, merely a few words.
Not once had she braved more than a handshake. Not once had he
offered an encouraging embrace.

The father she had waited on for years sat before her, shifting
uneasily, searching for the words to explain to a child. She wanted to
correct him, inform him
of
her rapid and painful shove
into
adulthood, the bitter spiral downward into self-parentification and
shaken independence. She had curves, she had scars, she read
Dickens and Orwell and Bronte. She had been shattered, exposed,
and stripped of flesh, a girl utterly motherless. She was forced into a
town where she didn't belong, and falling in love with a boy she
should never have met. She had a New York state driver's license
and knew the bitter taste of disease. She buried her parents.

Aly didn't live with her father; Aly lived with Gregory Michael
Glass. Because of a name on a paper certificate, but not because he
had anything to offer. His words didn't mean anything, and she was
tired of feeding into the masochistic fantasies of her childhood.
There were no dreams of Daddy, no hopes for an epiphany of how
worthy she could be, or how much Aly hoped her mother secretly
needed him as much as she did.

He doesn't deserve to break me apart. Not from mom, not from
Noah.

"Am I an infection or a child, Greg?" she demanded finally,
exasperated. She couldn't watch him stand and pace and sit again.
She knew he was drawing blanks.

The first man too empty to lie.

"A chi-" he blurted, stopping. He stared at her, considering the
exhaustion and muted frustration on her face. She wondered if he
could see that she was strong. The level stare in her eyes held no
emotion,
and
she
struggled
to
stay
unaffected.
He
added
suspiciously, "What did you call me?"

"What did you want me to call you?" There were plenty of
words she had it mind, but like Greg, she wasn't in the business of
telling anyone what they needed to hear.

"That's disrespectful," he said, sounding unsure of himself.

"Something like that," she agreed, observing the hot red mark
burning down the center of his forehead. He couldn't meet her gaze.
She wouldn't make him.

"Alyson, you're under my roof. I'm with you constantly. I'm
standing
right
here.
I'm
obviously
listening,"
he
pleaded,
desperately.

She smiled at the thought of pointing upwards at the cove lights
and the waterlogged, tiled ceiling and muttering, ‘Office's roof.'
Still, she felt the taught weakness. "Yes, I see that."

"Don't be sarcastic," he snapped. "Look, why I'm trying to say is
you have my attention."

 

"That's all, then?"

"Damn it!" he yelled, turning heads and luring alarmed stares.
Lowering his voice, he leaned down to her seated eye level, shaking
his finger in her face as though she was a misbehaving toddler. He
dropped a file on her lap, scattering pictures across her knees. "This
acting out, these false reports. It needs to stop right now. What the
hell are you doing, Alyson?"
She clenched her jaw, her eyes squinting into an angry glare.

"I'm not a
child. I'm not attempting
to entertain you and
whatever sick fancy you have with that animal. I told you what
happened. I was with my friends, completely independent from you
and thoughts of you and your sick need to mess with people, and we
saw something. The next day we returned and we found evidence. I
reported it. I offered what we had to the proper authority on oddities
in the woods. That's what people do when they discover something
they can't identify." Her voice was dark, a tone deeper, angered. She
curled each syllable in her mouth, a foreign menace, speaking each
selected word with the cold execution of scolding.