Page 70 of Real Forever
She turned her head away from him and he walked to the bathroom to retrieve his clothes with his head slung.
This is what you deserve.
29
Madison
Madison crankedthe volume up in Lauren’s SUV and sang along at the top of her lungs. She was cruising down 170N, a well-worn gravel road running east out of town, and winding around several small creeks and sloughs. It was one of her favorite drives.
A long drive usually helped her to clear her mind, and today, she needed it more than ever. Jake, Lauren, Maisie… no vehicle, no home of her own, a job going nowhere. Madison felt like her life was avalanching around her. Burying her in wet, heavy snow.
“What the fuck am I doing?” she asked out loud, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than she needed to. This drifty, floaty, lost-ness had been Madison’s safe and cozy little corner for years. But now, nothing about it felt safe anymore. Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes and cranked a u-turned in the middle of the road. Back to town. Back to the last place she’d felt safe.
She turned the keys to shut off the ignition and stared out the window at the big white two-story house she and Lauren had grown up in. The porch where they had played Barbies together and the soaring pine tree where the tire swing their father had made for them still hung. She remembered feeling so safe here. Feeling like nothing could ever hurt her or Lauren as long as their dad was there.
Once, when Madison was about seven years old, she came home from school crying because a boy at school, Josh, had called her a lard ass. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew enough to know it was mean. When she told her father what had happened, he put her in the truck and drove straight to Josh’s house. They walked up to the front door together, and she watched, flooded with a mix of fear and excitement, as her father rang the doorbell.
When Josh’s mother answered the door, Madison’s father explained what had happened and asked to speak to Josh. Josh was called down from his bedroom, and when he approached the door to see the girl he’d been mean to standing beside a large, tattooed, bearded, angry man, all the color drained from his face. Madison’s father may have looked like a big, scruffy beast, but he had an ooey, gooey center. Particularly when it came to his girls.
Mr. Avery had squatted down to speak to Josh eye to eye, man to man. “Josh, I understand you called my daughter, Madison, a lard ass today at school. Is that correct?” he had said.
Josh swallowed and nodded meekly.
“I see. And you believe it’s appropriate for you to be making comments about the bums of seven-year-old girls?”
Josh peeked up at his mother, who was standing with her arms crossed and stern embarrassment on her face.
“I… I…”
“Josh, please stop mumbling and listen to me. If you ever call either of my daughters a name again, if you touch them, laugh at them, or even look at them in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable, you can expect me to show up at your door. And I will not be the nice, calm, friendly man I was today. Do you understand me?”
Josh nodded, his eyes peeled open in fear. Madison had giggled with pleasure at seeing Josh embarrassed the way he had embarrassed her. She stared up at her dad in awe. He was larger than life. Her own personal superhero.
She thought back to something the grief counselor Agatha forced her to go to had mentioned once.Maybe I need to go talk to Dad.She started the vehicle back up and pulled away from their home.
After dusting some snow and pine needles off the headstone, she sat down on the cold ground in front of it. Pulling her hood tighter around her face, she glanced around the small cemetery. She was alone. The wind, the sun sparkling off the snow, and her. She took a deep, shaky breath.
“Hi, Dad.” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head a little at her own awkwardness. She didn’t come to the cemetery often because she didn’t feel close to him here. Or at least, it’s what she told herself and Agatha when she’d pry. She spent most of her life trying to keep a tight lid on the unbearably heavy sadness that bubbled up in her chest whenever she thought too much about her dad. Being here made it so much harder.
“I don’t really know how to do this, but Agatha made me go see this weird old lady to talk after you died. Her office smelled like weed and she wore crocs with these long hippie dresses, so I don’t know if I should give too much weight to anything she said. But she told me I should try to talk to you when I felt like I needed you. And I need you right now, Dad.” The tears rolling down Madison’s face froze against her cheeks before making it to her jaw.
“Everything is a mess right now. And I don’t know if I’m helping or if I’m the one making things worse. I don’t know where to go without having you to talk to. You always knew what to say and what I should do. And I really don’t know what to do right now.”
She wiped her running nose on the back of her mitten.
“I don’t even know where to start.” She sighed and looked to the sky. It was clear and cold and perfectly blue. “Lauren is in a lot of trouble. And I know you’d have gotten her out of it if you were here, but you’re not. I’m trying my best to help her, but it’s not enough. And Jake—that’s the guy I’ve been seeing. You’d like him, even though he’s pretty different from you. He’s the same in all the ways that count, though. We broke up last night, and I don’t know if I was right to break it off if our priorities aren’t the same, or if I was wrong to expect too much of him. I’m lost, Dad. And I’ve been lost since you left. I’m just here. Still working at Agatha’s. Living in Laur’s basement. Just going through the motions. Is this what it’s going to be like forever now? People tell me I need to let you go. To move on. I don’t know what letting go means, though.”
The tears were coming harder and faster and Madison’s body shook with deep sobs coming all the way from the bottom of her chest.
“Dad, why didn’t Mom love me? I know what you told us when we were kids—she was sick. But that’s bullshit and I know it. I know you were trying to be kind and trying not to burden us with the truth. But I need the truth. Moms are supposed to love their babies. Why did I make her want to leave? Why wasn’t I enough for her? I was only a baby. And why did you have to die? Trying to deal with this without you is impossible. I need someone to love me like you did, but no one does and I don’t think anyone ever will. I don’t know what the point is anymore, and I don’t want to be here if it means being alone and afraid forever.”
She dropped her face into her mittens and cried. For everything she had lost and everything she never had to begin with. She cried until her eyelashes were heavy with ice and her throat was raw.
Sitting back up, she scanned the cemetery once more. It sat empty, still, and silent. Just as it had. Just as it always did.
* * *
The house wasquiet when Madison got home. She hung Lauren’s keys on the hook beside the coat closet and tiptoed to the fridge. There was a box of leftover pizza, ham and pineapple. Madison took it to the dining table and grabbed a slice, eating it cold and straight from the box.
