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Well, on one fateful day, my wounds began to soak through my bandages. It became so bad that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The blood was dripping onto my salad. My dad continued to chew his lettuce, not noticing or at least compartmentalizing it away. I finally called a nurse who changed the bandages so they were good as new.
I remember thinking, “he can’t ignore this.” A nurse had to take off the bloody bandages right in front of him. She had to redress my arms right in front of him. I even winced a few times. When all was said and done, it had taken at least ten minutes—the whole while he just sat there and chewed his salad.
I looked at him, my teenage self expecting some kind of reassuring words from him. I remember what he said to this day: “The salad is excellent with the vinaigrette.”
I don’t blame my suicide attempt on my dad. I don’t blame anything on my dad. He was a great and loving father—he still is. But, just like most people in the world, he has his own problems to deal with. If anyone were to question how it was possible to have a loving father and yet be on the run from a psychotic ex-boyfriend at the same time, I think I would point them back to that conversation in the hospital.
I itched to turn on my computer or pick up my phone. It’d been a few weeks since the incident with Vic. The one where he basically announced he was a murderer for some top secret government organization. After that I spiraled in to a rabbit hole. I stopped going to work—Bethany was an entirely different issue in itself that I couldn’t begin to process.
I stopped responding to emails.
I stopped responding, period.
Eventua
lly people stopped calling.
I mean, who would believe Vic? Was I supposed to jump from one crazy, nutbag to the next? I kept getting these weird flashbacks from that night of people dressed in black. I remember thinking it was a dream, but after Vic’s confession…
I don’t know. It wouldn’t be my first hallucination. Wouldn’t be the first time I justified my hallucinations for my own personal playground, either. Why can’t I just meet a nice guy who works for a boring company but is interesting and mentally stimulating and also gives really good head? Those exist, I think.
Staring at the chrome face of my computer, I dared it to give me advice. This life I’d landed myself in was far from what I dreamed of as a child. Not too long ago I was a teenager, listening to loud music in my room and feeling too much for my own good. Now I was an adult, still listening to loud music and feeling too much for my own good, but, shit, now I had responsibilities and it seemed like every decision I made somehow affected somebody else.
When the fuck did that happen?
“Lennox!” My father’s voice jilted me back to reality. I looked up at my closed door, expecting the weak knock he’d given so many times during my adolescence. He never barged. He barely knocked. I could be getting jackhammered by some random guy and he’d only give a slight knock to let me know I needed to quit with the moaning.
No knock came. Instead his voice carried through the wood,
“Stop talking with boys and come to dinner!” That was our thing when I was in high school. My father would jokingly tell me to stop talking to boys and I would laugh in response. Now, years later, my father was still yelling that to me from the kitchen.
Funny enough, I was quite the slut back in high school. Now, I don’t like using the term slut. I think it’s derogatory toward women. No one calls men sluts. A man can be with a lot of women without being called deprecating names, but if a woman sleeps with more than two men, she’s a nightwalker.
Having said that, I’m allowed to call myself a slut. Because it’s the only word I have for myself back then. I purposefully threw my body at anyone who would have it.
After my suicide attempt in high school, I lost myself in a crazed, sexual frenzy. Cutting only did so much for me, but sex . . . Sex did something for me. It took away the pain. Amazingly, there were a lot of guys who wanted to take away the pain.
I entered our kitchen, still decorated like when I was growing up: light, orangey looking wood cabinets and laminate flooring accentuated by a hideous floral-patterned wallpaper. Dad never changed a thing after mom died. It’s not like she would have noticed. She never noticed when she was alive.
“This smells delicious,” I said feigning appreciation at the TV dinner my dad had laid out on the table. “You realize it’s not even Thanksgiving yet? Don’t spoil me now.”
“I can’t help it!” My dad grinned, pouring me some juice. “You’re my little girl!”
It’s a day before Thanksgiving and my dad hasn’t planned any type of dinner.
“Oh, Lennox, I didn’t think about it,” My dad said when I asked what we were doing for Thanksgiving. “Why don’t you go to the store and get a turkey and all the other stuff?”
I looked at him like he was crazy. It was a day before Thanksgiving. The only turkeys left were the ones hiding in the attic and that one that gets pardoned by the President every year. I suggested ordering Chinese or some other ethnic food from a restaurant that is always open on Thanksgiving but, somehow, I ended up at the market looking for a goddamn turkey the day before Thanksgiving.
I was browsing the aisles, looking for something to make for our increasingly hopeless dinner, when—
“Lennox.”
Naturally, I jumped. What kind of creepy fuck sneaks up on a person and says their name like that?
It took me two seconds to recognize the voice. Two seconds to remember the kind of creepy shithead that sneaks up behind a person and says only their name like some serial killer in a movie: Vic.
I was anything but pleased to see him. In fact, it was a good thing that I wasn’t on the aisle with turkey carving supplies. I might have had to carve me up some Vic for Thanksgiving.
