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Huck: “You gonna tell me about the other half?”
Dandelion: “My mom and dad were stereotypical high school sweethearts who loved each other. At least that’s what I thought. Then when I was about thirteen my dad cheated on my mom, and I mean really cheated on her. He obliterated my mom’s heart like shrapnel. Everyone got hit.”
Huck: “Sounds rough.”
Dandelion: “That’s not even the worst part.”
Huck: “Of course not.”
Dandelion: “We were waiting, at least I thought we were. Because they used to fight like that a lot. He would leave, she would cry, and then he would come back. So when they divorced, I kept waiting for him to come back, like he always did. When my mom showed up with a new guy I was like ‘woah, what the fuck are you doing here? My dad is going to be right back.’”
Huck: “How did your mom react?”
I paused at Huck’s question. I hadn’t told anyone about my mom and dad’s divorce, not even Effie. Of course Effie knew about the divorce in general. She’d been my rock during the whole ordeal and had helped me cope. She and I had rented movies and shopped, distracting ourselves like any good teenagers would, but we never talked.
I never gave voice to the concerns in my head. I didn’t want to, because that would mean admitting my father had faults. It would mean admitting that my father wasn’t infallible like every daughter wants to believe. It would mean admitting that he was human like everyone else, and it would mean admitting that he was a pretty shitty human, too.
Huck was a stranger behind the screen. He didn’t know Nami DeGrace and he definitely didn’t know my family. I could finally air my burdens without consequence. When I typed out my response, the catharsis I felt was palpable.
Conversation with Huck
Dandelion: “It wasn’t fair to her, which I realize now, because my dad was out gallivanting with his latest woman, while my mom was just trying to repair her shattered heart. It was at least three years after the divorce when my mom brought home Tony, too, so it wasn’t like he just showed up. I was the one still waiting.”
Huck: “How are you and your mom now?”
Dandelion: “Oh my mom got in a car accident with my dad the one time they were together after the divorce. They died instantly.”
Huck: “Shit.”
Dandelion: “Yeah. I laugh about it when I think how long I waited for him to come home and then when he came home, they both died. Kind of ridiculous.”
Huck: “Dandelion?
Dandelion: “Yes?”
Huck: “My number is 555-0813. I think it’s time we move our relationship past Secrets.”
The catharsis I had previously felt dried up and shriveled. My gut once again returned to its normal twisted state. I signed out without saying goodbye and stared at my screensaver for a good ten minutes. Huck was supposed to stay behind the screen. He was supposed to stay anonymous.
A number changed that. A number was decidedly intimate. I knew all of this, but I still found myself punching the digits into my phone.
Even though I didn’t see Tony, I still kept an eye on him. After the rape, I changed everything. My number was different, my address was different; I relocated and basically went off the grid. I had wanted Tony to have as little to do with me as possible, because at the time the media was flaming anyone who knew me. Sometimes I wondered if that was why Effie left me. Maybe the media made it too hard for her to be friends with me.
Tony tried calling me and coming for me. I knew because my previous landlord complained.
“You keep having people come see you,” she said, always sounding irritated. “You don’t live here. You tell him stop coming.” The one silver lining of the whole goddamn thing was that I didn’t have to deal with Linda any more. Linda, the worst landlady in the history of landladies. Linda, the slumlord of South Salt Lake.
One time, my drain was clogged so I called Linda, as she was my landlady. In lieu of hiring a licensed plumber, Linda hired someone off the street. Naturally, this person made the problem worse. Linda the Slumlord tried to pin the problem on me and tried to make me pay for the now broken bath tub. That did not go over well.
Despite my place being cleaner than when I moved in, I didn’t get the security deposit back. Whatever, it was worth it to be rid of her.
Anyway, once a month I drove by Tony’s just to see how he was doing. I sat outside his house like the stalker I’d become and watched him. He lived in the same house he had bought with my mother just two months before she died in the car crash. He kept the garden nice, he took care of the lawn, and he’d never remarried.
Every Sunday Tony tended to the garden. In the summertime I used to watch him water sunflowers. Sunflowers were my mom’s favorite plants. Every week Tony filled up a can and watered sunflowers, and every week I wondered what went through his head. If it had been me, if I had to view a giant flower reminder of my mom, I’d rip it out of the ground. I’d make sure anything remotely looking like a sunflower was destroyed. Yet Tony did the opposite. He watered so it grew bigger and bigger.
Now it was December, and the pale snow had suffocated the sunflowers under its crisp blanket. When Tony came out there was nothing for him to water. Still, he walked around the garden, looking at the frozen ground as if a flower was going to burst through any moment.
I exhaled and typed out a text. “What do you think you’re doing?”
