Word Prompt: Spirit
Plot Generator—Idea Completion: Mind your own business.
Something True
Spirit
This Fall
The house is silent. She listens for the hum of their old refrigerator, but even it seems to be taking a break. Beer bottles litter the coffee table. She can imagine the clunk of bottle meeting wood as her dad finished them one by one. What else had he done? Had he been sitting there in his chair drinking in the dark? Was the TV on? Music? Was it just his thoughts and memories keeping him company?
Her feet squish in her wet shoes as she ascends the stairs. Holding her clothes to her chest, she peeks into her parents' room. She sees her dad sleeping. Snoring.
She remembers standing in this very spot as a little girl. Woken from a nightmare, she'd come for comfort but stopped short at the sound of her father's deep, sleepy voice.
"Come here," he'd said, and her mother had rolled into his embrace.
Bella had returned to her room to deal with her shadowy demons in the darkness all on her own.
He survived the night, she thinks now as she tiptoes away and into her room, unable to help the creaking of the floor.
But just because a person survives that doesn't mean they're okay. Survival means breathing, a beating heart. There is much more to living than that.
She asks herself why she had to get involved, why she said anything to her mother. As her mother had insinuated, was breaking her father's heart worth telling the truth? Was it worth clearing Bella of guilt and lies?
Now that he knows, she doesn't feel any less guilty or like any less of a liar.
She pulls chalk from her drawer, adding another line to the base of her wall. It won't be long until her college acceptance letters start coming in. She'll be away from all of this soon after that.
She traces over some of the lines on the wall with her finger. The first one she made. The second. When she'd sent her applications in, she'd chosen English as her major. Even if she isn't very good at it, even if she has a lot to learn and a career worth anything might be tough, she's thinking of switching her major to Art.
Maybe she could work in an art gallery, or teach drawing, or teach art history.
She puts her chalk away and dusts her hands off on Edward's sweats.
Her phone is sitting on her nightstand. She checks her messages: one from her mother wondering where Bella was, and two from Rose: Your mom called asking if you were with me. I told her you were. Call me. And later: Where are you? If I lied for you and you're really hurt or lost somewhere I'm going to kill myself.
She sends Rose a text: I'm okay. Thanks for covering.
She thinks about what Rose was covering up for, how close Bella and Edward were when she awoke, her bare leg touching his.
She showers, this time combing out her hair, and by they time she gets downstairs, the beer bottles are cleared out and her dad is sitting in the living room. He shoots to his feet when he spots her.
"Hi, Dad." She doesn't know what else to say. She pushes hair off her face and looks away.
"Rose brought you home early."
"I wasn't with Rose," she says, tired of lies. "I was at her brother's cottage." She's still unable to look at her father. "I didn't plan to go there." She shrugs. "It's close by."
She wonders what might have happened if Edward hadn't been there. Where would she have stayed? Would she have come home? And then what? Would she have still jumped into the lake?
Feeling her dad's gaze on her, she fidgets with her hands. She slides them into her back pockets. She thinks about going back upstairs. But hiding, that isn't why she came home.
"He has a puppy. Biter. Well, Thelonious. He's a sweet dog." She has no idea what she's saying. She looks at her dad then.
While she knows he slept because she witnessed it, he doesn't appear to have slept in weeks. The rings under his eyes are so big and deep they pass under his cheekbone. His thumb and forefinger slide down either side of his mustache. But he seems to be breathing okay while Bella feels a bit like she's under water again.
"Bella..."
"She's gone?"
He nods once.
"For good?"
He nods again. "She volunteered to go. I took her up on it."
"I'm sorry-" they say simultaneously.
"You're sorry?" her dad says. "For what, baby girl?"
She almost starts crying at that. Her eyes fill. "For not telling you." Some tears fall. The walls are closing in on her. This room is too small for a conversation like this. "I've known. Since I was ten. I should've- I wish I would've-"
He rushes to her, enveloping her in his arms. They both cry when he hugs her. He's squeezing tight over her shoulders and her arms wrap around his back. The flannel shirt her tears are wetting is rough against her cheek but she doesn't care. His breath shudders and it's the only sound he makes.
"I'm sorry, Daddy."
"You don't apologize. All right? None of that."
"But I-
"You should never have known because it should never have happened."
As they hug, Bella's struck with the memory of the small bear wearing a police uniform her dad had given her for her eighth or ninth birthday.
"He picked it out himself," her mother had said, wrapping her hand around his fingers as if she were proud.
She wants to go search for that bear; she knows she still has it somewhere. She wants to go back and be the little girl who slept with it.
Her dad's embrace tightens. "I don't understand how she could be so careless with you."
He releases her, takes a breath, wipes his eyes from the outer corners to the inner corners. "You hungry?'
"No." She probably should be, but in this moment she doesn't think she'll ever be hungry again.
"You want to sit down?"
They round the end table, Bella's dad returning to his chair. Bella sits on the sofa.
She still doesn't know what to say. She's never opened up to her dad, never had a serious eye-to-eye talk with him. He's told her how proud he is of her with a kiss to her head, he's teased her about being so pretty, he's told her she's the smartest girl in the world, but they've never really talked about anything real. Maybe because, until now, Bella has avoided it.
He leans forward and picks up Bella's hand. "It's possible to throw so much of your time and energy into keeping the world around your family safe that you neglect those who drive your work the most."
"What do you mean?"
"I've been very... dedicated to my job, my duty. Maybe if I'd shown my family a similar dedication..."
"Is that what she said? Was that her reason?"
"She didn't give me a reason. But the signs are all there. I see them now, plain as day."
"But she could've told you she wasn't happy or whatever. Were you supposed to read her mind?"
"I think I must've known on some level. When she looked at me with that grim face and sat down, saying 'Charlie, I need to tell you something,' I knew immediately it was a confession, and I knew what the confession was."
"How?"
"There was fear in her eyes, but that's not all I saw. There was also regret, sorrow, and hope. I know the look of a confession when I see one. Fear of having to come forward and fear of what lies ahead. Regret for either your transgressions, or having been caught. Sorrow, because admitting what you've done not only shows others a side to yourself you'd like to keep buried, it also forces you to confront yourself. And hope that the confession might somehow absolve you. It rarely does."
Through his explanation, he's been talking with his hands, gestures that emphasized his thoughts, and Bella noticed he was still wearing his wedding ring.
"Would you take her back?" She regrets the question as soon as it's out of her mouth. She wasn't prepared for the look that came over his face when she asked it. She has to learn that some things are just not meant for her to know. She had seen the sadness in his eyes when she first came downstairs, but that was the post sadness, this is sadness at its start. She wants to apologize for asking, and again for how mixed up she is in his unhappiness.
In the next second, his expression changes: anger, determination. "Not if she got down on her knees and begged every day for the rest of her life. Any chance she might have stood was shot to hell the minute she involved you."
On the coffee table is a tall, lopsided vase glazed deep blue and gold, and a matching ashtray. They were made by her mother when she took a pottery class. And then there are the refinished kitchen cabinets, the painted door, the new curtains hung just last week. Bella realizes that whether or not the ring is on her dad's finger doesn't mean anything. Her mother's presence is all over this house, and inside them, in their memories. And even, though it's hard to admit, in their hearts.
Her dad moves next to her on the sofa and puts his arm around her. She leans against him.
"She spent a lot of time avoiding eye contact with me," he says. "When she spoke with me, she often looked at my lips instead of my eyes. I never considered that too much before."
Bella thinks about the things that people consider after it's too late to do anything about them.
"You said you've known since you were ten?" He's looking down at her with a frown, his throat squishing up at this angle so it looks like he has a double chin. "That was the year you had all that trouble in math. The fractions."
Bella remembers. She had to go to summer school just so she could pass to the sixth grade. She never thought that could have been connected to her mother's infidelity, but now she considers it. It was the only year she had such trouble in math. The first and the last.
In the late afternoon her dad makes grilled cheese sandwiches, insisting they both eat. As they sit opposite each other, they don't talk about who's missing, who will always be missing from this table from now on.
Bella talks to him about her drawings then runs up to her room for her sketchpad. Her dad turns the pages slowly, commenting on every one of them.
"I'm changing my major." She pulls out a kitchen chair. "From English to Art."
Her dad looks up from the sketchbook. He squeezes the backs of her fingers the way she has seen her mother squeeze his fingers. "Do what makes you happy."
Upstairs she finds her bear along with other stuffed animals in a plastic tub at the top of her closet. She lays them all out on her bed like she used to do when she was half the age she is now. The police bear goes last, sitting in front of the rest. They look so innocent on her bed. They haven't changed a bit in all these years. They're not faded or dusty.
She puts the box, now empty, at the top of her closet, and then she pulls out the other box, the cardboard box, the box that held her mother's black dress and the library books. At the bottom, under her contest essay and her English journal, is the afghan.
She tugs it out, opens it up and spreads it over her bed, careful not to cover up the animals. She had chosen greens and browns, the colors of the forest.
She studies her bed, all that will surround her the next time she lies in it. Her dad has none of this. He'll be falling asleep and waking up alone every day now.
She folds the blanket up neatly and carries it downstairs. Her dad has just finished the dishes.
"I made this," she says.
He turns off the faucet and turns to her. "You made that?"
"I want you to have it." She pushes it toward him. "It can go on your bed."
He accepts it without taking his eyes off her. "You're something else, you know that?"
He smiles, wraps an arm around her, and kisses her head. Pressing a hand to her face to keep her close to his chest, he says a low and quiet, "I love you."