“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I carp, muttering under my breath asshole, so that Maisie can’t hear it, though somehow or other Theo does. Or maybe he doesn’t hear the word so much as he sees it form on my lips.
“What the fuck did you say?” he demands. “What did you fucking call me?” he asks, but I hardly pay any attention to him because already I’m hurrying to lift Maisie from the hot blacktop. I gather her shaking body in my arms as Theo slams on the brake and the car comes to a complete stop. He thrusts the gearshift in Park and steps from the car, towering over Maisie and me on the drive. Maisie clings to me like a baby chimpanzee, fingertips sinking into my skin, confessing, “I’m scared, Daddy,” and though I don’t admit it to her, there’s a part of me that’s scared, too. There’s a threatening look in Theo’s eyes.
“I’m not the asshole,” Theo says, as I lower Maisie into the car and turn back to look him in the eye. Except that I don’t look him in the eye because Theo is a good three inches taller than me and likely another fifty pounds.
From behind I hear Maisie wince, and before I can tell her everything is okay, everything is all right, Theo shoves me against the car and tells me, “You’re the asshole, Solberg. You got that? You’re the asshole. Not me.”
“Not in front of my kid,” I plead, but Theo doesn’t care who’s around to see. His hand forms into a fist and before I can react, he gets me in the lip. Maisie screams out loud, pressing her hands to her eyes so that she can’t see what happens next, which just so happens is a good thing for me because it’s a gut reaction this time when my own hand follows suit, and I jab Theo in the jaw. Three times. With all of my might. He staggers, but comes back at me with a hook and uppercut, putting the weight of his entire body behind the blow so that the car behind me is the only thing that keeps me upright.
He laughs as I wobble, calling me a sissy, a pansy, and I’m about to hit him again when Maisie cries out, professing loudly this time that she’s scared, and Theo retreats a step, saying to me, “We’re not through here. This isn’t done,” before waltzing away, back toward the car, smug as can be, thinking he’s doing me some favor by not beating the life out of me in front of my kid. I’m transported back to ninth grade when some asshole told me to meet him at the flagpole after school so he could beat the crap out of me, and I let him, unable to put up much of a fight. I’ve never been a fighter. I always had guys around like Connor to do it for me, except that this time Connor isn’t here.
Theo laughs arrogantly, sure that he’s won this round, but when his back is turned, I consider tackling him, taking him down with a chop drop or an elbow drop, catching him when he isn’t looking and turning the tide in my favor. It’s the only way I could really win, with a cheap shot or a low blow. I have a vision of him lying facedown on the burning concrete like Maisie just a minute ago, bleeding out, crying uncle.
I start to advance, but as I do, Maisie whispers, “Is he gone, Daddy?” and her words freeze me in my tracks. I can’t move.
This isn’t something Maisie needs to see.
Theo gets in the car and slams the door. He steps on the gas and disappears down the street. “It’s okay,” I tell Maisie, stroking her hair, seeing that her pigtails are all out of whack, the knees of her tights smudged with dirt. “You’re okay. He’s gone.” I peer up and down the street to be sure he’s gone, and like magic, Theo and his black car have disappeared from view, the only sign of him the unmistakable smell of burning rubber that lingers in the air.
“Why did he do that, Daddy?” Maisie asks, her voice shaking, as I secure the straps, wiping the tears from her eyes. I hold tight to Maisie. It was such a close call. Just one more second and Theo would have hit my girl. “Why, Daddy?” she begs with this childlike innocence that reminds me that in Maisie’s world, bad things don’t happen. Bad people don’t exist. Maisie hardly knows Theo. He’s Teddy’s daddy, and yet we don’t let Maisie play with Teddy when Theo is home. Maisie has hardly laid eyes on him, and I plan to keep it that way.
As soon as I get home, I’ll tell Clara what happened, even though it means I’ll have to come clean about my run-in with Teddy. She should know. Maybe it’s time to activate the home security system, too, just in case there’s a psychopath living across the street. Maybe it’s time to put the house on the market and move somewhere new.
Three feet. He was less than three feet from hitting Maisie. I could tell her it was an accident. I could make a story up, how a squirrel had darted into the road and he was trying to avoid it, how he didn’t see Maisie. But I don’t.
He wasn’t going to hit her, I tell myself. It was just a threat. But still…
“He’s a bad man, Maisie,” I say, because for once I can’t think of anything better to say, some way to sugarcoat this situation for Maisie’s delicate ears. I want her to know. I need her to know. Theo is a bad man, and under no circumstances should she ever be around him. I look her straight in the eye. I need to be sure she hears. “He’s a bad man, Maisie,” I say again, point-blank. “That’s why.”
And then I close the door and take one more look up and down the street to be sure Theo isn’t around as we take off for ballet. I don’t need him following me there.
CLARA
As I pull down the quiet residential road on which my mother and father live, I find only one car in the drive: Izzy’s old wreck of a car, a clunker that must be older than she. It has character, as does she, for it’s a gaudy green with fuzzy purple dice hanging from the rearview mirror. The fender is lined with bumper stickers, one for every single day of the week. One reads Free Spirit and another Dead Head. It’s a used car, a hand-me-down, pre-owned or maybe passed on from another generation, with paint that is chipping and a wheel well corroded with a reddish brown, flaky rust.
But what matters most to me has nothing to do with Izzy’s car. My father’s car, which he always keeps parked on the south side of the driveway, isn’t here, and, to me, that’s all that matters.
I park on the street. I leave the children in the car with the windows opened a crack, and take myself to the front door, cutting across the lawn.
I knock, and Izzy answers. She stands before me in something that’s clearly handmade, a skirt and a shirt and an antiquated fashion vest, all in a hodgepodge of patterns: argyle and damask and polka dots. She radiates panache. Izzy smiles and says to me, “Hello, Clara,” and I reply with a curt, “Hi.”