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“Vic thinks I’m too compassionate to ever hurt our kids, but then Vic doesn’t completely understand mental illness. Part of him still thinks you can control it.”
I laughed. “Well I hope that’s not true. Then that would mean my daddy really wanted to do all that messed up stuff to me.”
Lennox threw the trash bag down and slunk on to the couch, officially giving up any pretense that we were cleaning. “You don’t talk much about your dad.”
I shrugged. “Not much to talk about. How are you going to stop yourself from having kids?” I asked, trying to switch the subject from me and Daddy.
Lenny sighed. “Well I have an appointment to tie my tubes next week. I haven’t told—”
“Is the shower over already?” Like clockwork Vic walked into the apartment. The living room looked like a battlefield. Ribbons and torn wrapping paper littered the floor like the shell casings of an old war while the unopened presents sat as ghosts of the party.
“Margaret went into labor early,” Lennox explained. “So Zoe and Lissie had to run to the hospital to meet her.”
As Lennox and Vic talked, that familiar ache in my belly sounded. I’d thought I could handle the baby shower and everything that went with it, but at the mention of Zoe and Lissie’s new baby, I felt like crumbling. Even months later, it was still too soon.
“What were you two talking about?” Vic asked casually as he unloaded groceries.
“Tying my tubes,” Lennox said just as casually. Vic stopped unloading, his hand still inside the grocery bag.
“What?” Vic’s voice edged on dangerous.
Lennox twerked her mouth, not quite smiling but not quite frowning. “I made an appointment for next week.” I looked around at the strewn ribbons and half-eaten pieces of cake, feeling like the last remaining soldier in the battlefield. I knew if I didn’t leave soon I might become another casualty of this war.
“What are you talking about, Lennox?” Vic asked, his voice too low and too calm.
Lennox sighed, frustrated. “I’m talking about what I’ve been trying to talk to you about for months now. I’m not having kids. Ever.”
I stood up slowly, trying to extract myself from the room. As I rose from the couch, I knocked over a bottle of bubbly apple cider. The glass fell to the ground and the contents spilled on the nice wooden floor. I froze, expecting everyone to scramble to clean it up, but they were too far gone in their war to notice one casualty.
I reached for a napkin to clean up the mess.
“You think this is a decision you can make unilaterally?” Vic boomed.
I quickly mopped up the mess, my napkin sopping and my hands now sticky. Vic and Lennox were oblivious to my existence, but I could hear every jagged word they threw at each other and the edges cut me as well.
“You have no fucking clue, Vic!” Lennox threw her hands in the air. “No fucking clue how hard this was for me!”
I tossed the napkin on an empty plate and made a beeline for the door.
“I would if you opened up to me once in a while!” Vic rounded on Lennox, coming at her like two missiles meeting in the sky.
“I try but you don’t want to hear it!” Lennox closed the distance, shoving Vic in the chest. “I don’t trust myself with kids and I certainly don’t trust you to pick up the slack!”
I jiggled the doorknob desperately. Of course the door would be stuck right now. It felt like a mob of zombies was after me and the door was my ticket to safety. It wasn’t a mob of zombies though, it was Lennox and Vic fighting. Their words stung my back like a hive of wasps.
“What the hell does that mean, Lennox?”
“It means you blew up over the dishes being left in the sink last week—”
“Oh come on—”
“And I will not let children be subjected to our fucked up life. If you can’t even control your anger over—”
I slammed the door behind me. A big sigh escaped me, feeling like I’d just escaped a volcanic eruption or something. I pushed off the wooden door, leaving Vic and Lenny’s suffocated shouts behind.
I walked home, grateful for the fresh air. Somehow it always smelled like the ocean here. I didn’t know if it was because I was used to my hometown, which either smelled like broken dreams or an amalgam of dry heat and Mama’s burnt casserole, but here it smelled fresh and clean and happy. Really, it actually smelled happy.
It made me want to be outside. The sea air hugged my skin and made my usually lifeless brown hair bounce. No one bothered me, either. I was used to the prying eyes of my town. Everyone always stared at me. Here people smiled and said “good morning” but they didn’t stare. Back home, people stared. They let their mind be known with their eyes and, usually, their mind wasn’t pretty.
