“So how the hell are you better if you’re still using?”
“I can handle it,” she says. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this town is fucking depressing. I needed something. Honestly, I don’t know how you’re even surviving. I know Cliff sent you off somewhere to recover, but here?”
I’m having a hard time looking at her. My gaze fixes on the closed apartment door, at the splotches of yellow on the doorstep. Madison’s abandoned dandelions. “I have family here.”
She scoffs. “You hate your family.”
“I hate my father. That doesn’t mean I hate my family.”
“So, whatever, family.” She uses air quotes when she says that word, waving toward the apartment. “Is that who that was?”
“That was my daughter.”
“Your daughter.”
I can feel her gaze, piercing, judging. So damn angry. I don’t even have to look at her to know she’s fuming about that.
“I told you I was a father.”
“You told me you knocked up that girl from back home, that she kept the kid.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re a father,” she says. “So, what, while I was off suffering in some hellhole, you’ve been here, playing house?”
“I’m not playing anything. I got clean so I could be a part of her life.”
Serena lets out a bitter laugh. “No, Johnny, you did it because they made you.”
“They made me go to rehab, but that’s not why I’m still clean.”
She shakes her head, running her hands through her hair—still dyed dark for the movie. “I just… I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this isn’t the you I know.”
I shake my head. Even if I tried to explain it, she wouldn’t understand. “Look, I don’t want to get into this with you. Tell me what you’re really doing here, Ser.”
“I told you—I miss you. And since we’ve had some time apart, I thought maybe you’d miss me, too. Maybe we could give things a try. Maybe—”
“It would never work.”
“It could,” she insists.
“It wouldn’t.”
She looks hurt by that. “We were good together.”
“No, we weren’t,” I say. “We’ve been over this before. It was a fucking mess. When we got high, it was fine, but the moment we came down, we couldn’t even stand to be in the same room.”
“That’s not true,” she says. “I’m here right now.”
“You’re high.”
“Oh, fuck you! So, I’m high. That doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about you.”
“It does,” I say. “It has everything to do with it.”
She glares at me.
This conversation isn’t going anywhere.
It never does. We’ve had this same argument half a dozen times this past year, ever since I stopped using. She doesn’t understand why things had to change, why I started treating her differently.
But she and I have a history that isn’t healthy. She’s part of the cycle I had to break. I was numbing myself, killing myself, but it wasn’t just the drugs and alcohol I’d been indulging in. Thousands of dollars in psychiatry bills taught me the real problem was my behavior. Go the same places as before, with the same people as before, and you end up doing the same shit you always did.
So I cut it all off. All of it. Even the sex.
Sober and celibate, everything felt different.
“Are you fucking that woman, Johnny?” Serena asks, her voice scathing. She’s losing her high. “Did you come here and start fucking again? Fucking her?”
“That’s none of your business.”
SMACK.
Stinging rips through my cheek as she slaps me, hard, my head jarring. I take a step back, moving away from her.
“I’m not doing this with you,” I say as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Call Cliff. He’s probably worried.”
I start to walk away, to head for the apartment, when she calls out to me, her voice cracking. “Wait, Johnny. Please.”
“Take care of yourself, Serena.”
I stall in front of the apartment and look down at the discarded dandelions, ripped to pieces. Sighing, I glance behind me and find the parking lot empty, Serena gone.
I feel like an asshole.
I can’t get anything right.
Strolling over to the patch of grass, I pluck a single dandelion from the ground. I’m grateful to find the apartment unlocked. Kennedy lingers right inside and eyes me warily.
I glance around.
I don’t see Madison.
“She’s in her room,” Kennedy says.
I head that way, finding her sitting on the edge of her bed, swinging her legs as she picks off the polish on her little fingernails. I stall when I glance in the trashcan beside the desk in her room. Usually full of paper from discarded drawings, I see a familiar doll on top. Maryanne. She threw her away.
I pull the doll out, carrying it as I crouch down in front of Madison. I hold the dandelion out. “I know your flowers got messed up, so I picked you another one.”
She takes it carefully. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say. “Do you want to tell me what made you upset?”
She shrugs.
“Did you have fun tonight?”
She nods.
“I had fun, too. You looked pretty in your dress.”
She smiles, staring at the dandelion.
She won’t look at me.
Sighing, I sit down on the floor. “I know this whole thing must be confusing. I wasn’t around, but now I am, and I’m Breezeo, but I’m also your dad. You see me kiss your mom, but Breezeo kisses Maryanne. And then it looks like Maryanne shows up and hugs me in front of your mom. Hard to keep up with what’s real, huh?”
She nods.
“Well, like Breezeo, Maryanne’s a story. The woman outside, her name is Serena. I work with her. I’m not going to be kissing her like I kiss your mom. When I kiss your mom, it’s real.”
She meets my gaze.
“So I don’t think you should take it out on poor Maryanne.” I shake the doll at her. “Breezeo loves her, just like I love your mom.”
She takes the doll. “Does Mommy love you?”
“She did.”
“But not no more?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But it’s not her fault. I took her love for granted.”
“What’s that mean? Taking her love for granite?”
I smile at her mix up. “It means I didn’t show her how much I loved her, like I should’ve.”
“You can do it now,” Madison says. “Just pick her more flowers and tell her she’s pretty, and then she can love you.”
If only it were that simple.
“I’ll have to remember that,” I say, getting to my feet and ruffling her hair before turning to leave. I make it a few steps before she calls out to me.
“Wait, Daddy!” she says, springing to her feet and running over, grabbing my arm to tug me down to her level. I crouch down again, surprised when she presses her lips to my still-stinging cheek. “You almost forgot your kisses!”
Clifford Caldwell, it turns out, is an inconsiderate, egotistical jerk.