Outside the Lines (8 page)

Ha. Easy for them to say.

He wished he could fling open the door. He wished he was the kind of father Eden deserved. But he wasn’t. His body felt weighted, pinned against the bed. He couldn’t move. His brain screamed,
Get up!
but his limbs didn’t listen.

Eden knocked again. “Daddy . . . ?” Her voice was fragile, fractured by tears. David could imagine them welling in his daughter’s perfect blue eyes, tipping up over the rims of her eyelids to roll down her freckled cheeks. He’d painted that picture time and again, attempting to trap the sorrow he caused her on the canvas so she would never have to feel it again. Obviously, he had failed.

David pulled the covers over his head, burrowing deep into the musty pillow. He stank, but he didn’t care. His skin felt oily and thick, coated by his own neglect. It was gratifying, somehow, to smell as bad as he felt.

Eden was quiet, but he could feel her still standing outside, waiting for him. She would leave soon, when he didn’t answer her call. But even when she returned to the house he knew he would feel her. Her longing was strong enough to push through any barrier. It wrapped its tentacles around his neck, desperate to extract what he feared he would never be able to give.

“He still won’t answer the door, Momma,” I said when I walked back into the kitchen. My mother was sitting at the table, a stack of bills and her checkbook spread out before her. A pained expression hung on her face, even as she tried to smile at me. Her blond hair was twisted up in a messy bun and the few lines around her eyes seemed to have deepened over the past five days.

“I’m sorry, baby. You know there’s nothing I can do. He’ll come out when he’s ready.”

“He’s not eating.” I set the tray with the soup and crackers I’d brought him down on the counter. The soup had gone cold; a thin skin of fat sat on its surface. I went over to sit by her.

“I know.”

We sat in silence for a moment or two, the only noise the shuffling of the paper in her hands and her almost inaudible sighs.

“It’s cold outside, too,” I said, piping up. “He might freeze to death.”

“Eden!” my mother snapped. “I know! I can’t make him feel better. It’s his choice to hole up like an animal. I can’t make him stop. Believe me, I’ve tried.” I knew this was true. I knew my mother had taken him to countless doctors. They’d also been to five different therapists in the last two years, trying to find one whom my father might respect enough to take their advice. “Quacks,” my father told me. “The lot of ’em.” My mother had tried sweet, gentle conversations and she had screamed at him. She locked him out of the house, refusing to let him back in until he had taken his pills. Nothing she did seemed to work.

I scuffed the toe of my tennis shoe against the floor, making it squeak against the wood. “But you’re his wife,” I said. “If you don’t help him, who will?”

She sighed and dropped her pen to the table. “It’s Saturday, sweetie. Why don’t you go find someone to play with? It might help get your mind off him.”

“I don’t
want
to get my mind off him,” I said. “I want to help him get better.”

“Eden—” my mother began, but I cut her off.

“You don’t love him,” I said accusatorily. I kept my eyes down, staring at the bright red ink on an official-looking envelope that read
final notice
. I knew what that meant. I knew we didn’t have enough money to pay our bills again. My dad needed to get up so he could sell one of his paintings. He’d finished a bunch of them the last time he locked himself in the garage; he’d sell one and everything would be okay. He’d be happy and so would Mom. That’s how it worked. But first, she had to get him out of the garage.

“Of course I love him,” said my mom. “Don’t be silly. But love isn’t all a relationship needs. Marriages are supposed to be a partnership. Each person doing their share. Supporting each other.” She gave me another tired half smile. “Your father and I used to have that, you know. When you were first born. We were always laughing, always hugging. Even though we never had a lot of money, he did so much to make sure all my needs were met.” She paused again. “I wasn’t always like this, sweetie. I used to be such a happy person . . .” Her voice trailed off and a blank, faraway look appeared in her eyes. It scared me.

“Are you going to divorce him?” I asked as a lump the size of a golf ball rose in my throat. I knew lots of kids whose parents were divorced. My friend Tara White had a key she wore on a silver chain around her neck so she could let herself into her house after school. She only saw her father on the weekends, and I couldn’t go over to play unless her mother was home with her, which wasn’t very often. She told me she watched television all afternoon until her mom came home. She said being alone was scary and she missed her father every day. I couldn’t stand the idea of living without my dad. I didn’t understand why my mom wasn’t doing everything in her power to help him get better. He was her husband—it was her
job
.

“I don’t know if we’ll get divorced,” my mom said. I looked up at her with wide eyes. “I don’t want to,” she said, continuing, “but I just don’t know what I can do anymore. He’s not getting better.”

“So what?” I said, challenging her. “Would you leave him if he had cancer and wasn’t getting better? If they cut off his legs and he couldn’t walk?”

“That’s not the same thing. Your dad has a choice. A person with cancer or no legs doesn’t.” She sighed. “Now, can you please go find someone to play with? Maybe Tina is home.”

I slumped back in my seat. Tina Carpenter lived down the street from us, but her mom wouldn’t let her play with me anymore. Not since my dad let us hang our heads out the windows of the car to see what dogs thought the big fuss was about. Mrs. Carpenter saw as my dad drove us up and down the street, our hair blowing back in the wind. Or maybe she heard us, since my dad had encouraged us to howl and bark at an invisible moon. Anyway, Tina told me the next day at school that she wasn’t allowed to come over to our house again. “My mom thinks your dad is kind of weird,” she said. “Sorry.”

Now I shoved back my chair and stood up. “You’re going to make him leave,” I announced to my mother. “I hate you!”

My mother’s blue eyes flashed and she threw her pen down to the table. “You hate me?
Me?
I’m the one putting food in your mouth. I keep this roof over your head. Do you think for one minute your dad would take care of you the way I do if I decided to lock myself away for days at a time? No! You’d be on your own, little girl.”

“No, I wouldn’t!” I said, trying to fight back tears. “He loves me. He’d take care of me just fine. We don’t need you. Maybe you’re the reason he stays out there. Did you ever think of that? Why don’t
you
just go away and leave us alone?”

“Because I can’t!” The flash left my mother’s eyes just as quickly as it had appeared. Her shoulders fell.

My eyes stung as though she had hit me across the face.

“Honey,” she said, seeing my tears. She tried to grab my hand. I took a few steps back, out of her reach, and ran up the stairs to my room.

She probably wishes I was never born,
I thought after I threw myself facedown on my bed. She said it herself; she didn’t stay because she loved me or my dad. She only stayed because she had to. Time would only tell if she would leave me too.

“This better be good,” was Georgia’s greeting when I called her the Saturday morning after my first visit to Hope House. “Like, I-need-to-borrow-one-of-your-kidneys-because-I’m-dying good.”

“Good morning to you, too, sunshine!” I said, smiling into the phone. I sat on my couch, sipping my way through a huge mug of coffee and staring out at the rain. The drizzle from the night before had morphed into showers; the raindrops pelted the metal roof of my house, making it sound like I was inside a tin can. Jasper lay at my feet, whimpering, because I still needed to take him for a walk.

“Late night?” I asked Georgia.

“Mmphm,” she grunted. “What time is it?”

I glanced at the clock on the DVD player on the shelf by the television. “Almost nine o’clock. Want to go get breakfast?”

“Ugh. No.”

“C’mon,” I cajoled. “I’m buying. And grease is good for a hangover.”

Georgia groaned. “I’m not fit for public consumption. Can’t you just come over and cook us something?”

“Nope! I feel like letting someone else do the work this morning. And I want to hear about your date.”

She groaned again. “Oh, all right, fine. You win. Where do you want to go?”

“Where do you think?”

“Luna Park Café?”

“Yep. I’m dying for some cinnamon roll French toast. We can take Jasper for a walk afterward to burn it all off.”

“We’ll have to walk to Portland to burn off those carbs.”

“Carbs schmarbs. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

“You’d better bring me coffee or I might have to shoot you.”

“You don’t own a gun. So throw on some deodorant and get ready to go.”

Georgia and I had met at the same restaurant where I found Jasper. She was working nights as a server to put herself through the last year of her bachelor’s degree in business. Having graduated culinary school, I was a line cook searing steaks or whipping up risotto when a table was done with their appetizer. We first spoke on an exceptionally busy night. Georgia was a new employee, so when she told me to start cooking two filets, I peeked through the stainless steel shelf that guarded the cooks from the waitstaff.

“Are you sure your table is ready for them?” I asked her. I’d seen the apps for that ticket go out less than five minutes before she told me to fire the steaks.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said. “The bastards tore through those mussels like a couple of king crabs. It was disgusting. Like the Discovery Channel or something.” She dropped her chin to her chest and gave me a pointed but friendly look. “Are
you
sure you can cook fast enough to keep up with them?”

I laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

“Fabulous.” She winked at me and sashayed back out toward the dining room, her plush hips swinging in concert with each step. She was short but had one of those glorious hourglass shapes and the kind of cascading dark auburn waves that gave men Victoria’s Secret wet dreams. I could have hated her for this, but her energy was great, easygoing and accessible. I liked her immediately.

Our kitchen manager, Dean, caught our interaction. “That is one hot piece of ass,” he commented to me as he leered at her backside.

“One hot piece of ass whose daddy is an employment lawyer!” Georgia cheerfully called out over her shoulder before the door swung shut behind her.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Can you say ‘sexual harassment’? She has a witness, too.”

“Whatever,” Dean huffed at me, and then went to hide in his office.

It was like that for Georgia, I thought as we sat in a booth at the Luna Park Café, breathing in the luscious scent of garlicky home fries and peppery sausage while we waited for our breakfast to be served. Being attracted to her was a side effect of being a male in her presence. Even hungover she looked gorgeous: Her hair was pulled up in a French twist that somehow managed to appear messy but totally put together. Her skin was creamy and her hazel eyes lit up with every smile. Adding in the cleavage and pouty lips, it was no wonder men were constantly hitting on her. What was best, though, was how unimportant all this was to Georgia, how little she let it infect her ego. “Give me a man who notices my soul instead of my cup size,” she liked to say, “and I’ll introduce you to the man of my dreams.”

“So, tell,” she said, now fortified by the triple Americano I’d brought to her house. “How was the shelter?” I knew better than to talk too much in the car. It was a good idea to wait until the caffeine ran a steady course through her veins.

I shrugged. “Okay, I guess, except the guy who runs the place was a little rude at first.”

She cocked her head. “Aren’t those social-worker-type fellas supposed to be all liberal and easygoing?”

“You’d think so. But he wasn’t okay with putting a picture of my dad anywhere. He was afraid it would freak out his clients. Like he was reporting them to the government or something. He was kind of snippy about it.”

Georgia poured more cream into the huge mug of coffee in front of her and stirred. “Huh. You’re
never
snippy with people at your job, right?”

“Shut up.”

She grinned. “I guess I get what he was worried about. Don’t you?”

“Sure, after he explained it. I think it was just the way he said it that rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Did you want him to rub you the
right
way?” Georgia wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

I laughed, almost spitting out the sip of orange juice I’d just taken. “Georgia! No!”

She sat back and gave me a knowing look. “Ah. So he wasn’t cute?”

“No,” I said, then reconsidered. “Well, yeah, I guess he was decent. In a short-man, I’m-afraid-he-might-have-a-small-pecker kind of way.”

“Oh, come on, now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That’s a total myth. I’ve disproved it several times myself. Height has no more to do with the size of a man’s equipment than the size of his feet.”

I laughed. “That’s right. What was his name again, the one with the size-fifteen shoe?”

Georgia shuddered. “Ugh. Don’t remind me. Tiniest pecker I’ve ever seen.” She held up her pinky finger and waggled it at me. “I gave him a couple merciful faked orgasms and was out the door.”

“How generous of you.” I took another sip of orange juice before setting down my glass. “Why do you care if the guy at the shelter was cute?”

She gave me another wicked grin. “Because he’s the first man you’ve mentioned since the last one. That mama’s boy, Ryan.” Georgia was well aware of my most recent boyfriend’s propensity to live off his mother’s income and insisted on celebrating when I finally broke up with him six months ago. She continued. “There had to be something about him,” she said, referring to Jack.