It took mere seconds for me to reach Elliott’s side, and only a few more before Brooks reached mine. Blinking back tears, I pulled Elliott from the chair and into my arms, holding him close. “It’s okay, honey. Mama’s right here.”
Brooks pulled Elliott’s empty chair away from the table and guided me into it, which I greatly appreciated because my legs suddenly felt unsteady.
Once I was seated, I held Elliott tightly in my arms, rubbing his back and murmuring, “Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now.”
Elliott lifted his head from my shoulder and looked at Brooks. “My army guy was bwave. He didn’t hide. He runned across the counter to catch the bad man, but then he falled down and I couldn’t find him. I wooked everywhere.”
“I think you’re the one who’s brave,” Brooks said.
Elliott adjusted his glasses. “I would wike to work on my picture now.” He climbed off my lap and as soon as I stood, he sat back down in the chair, selected a crayon, and resumed coloring.
“Are you all right, buddy?” I asked.
“I’m hungry, Mama.”
Clearly he did not want to talk about it anymore, and it would do no good to push him. “Okay. Dinner’s almost ready.”
I flipped the chicken, and when it was done, I spread marinara on the bottom of a casserole dish. After topping the chicken with thick slices of fresh mozzarella, I put the dish in the oven to melt the cheese.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Brooks. I drained the pasta and started plating the meal. All I had left to do was set the chicken on top of the spaghetti and toss the salad I’d made earlier.
“Yes,” he said. “It smells wonderful. My dad and I have been living on takeout and pizza. My mom gets so tired at night. She’s more alert in the morning and early afternoon, so I try to spend time with her then. It’s kind of depressing in the evening because she mostly sleeps. My dad doesn’t know what to do with himself. Neither do I. We eat crappy food and watch TV.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this is on both of you. Is your dad alone tonight?”
“One of his closest friends was going to take him out for something to eat. He hasn’t been out of the house in a long time. The night nurse is there, so my mom is in good hands.”
Brooks must have wanted to get out of the house, too. It thrilled me that he’d come to mine.
The oven timer buzzed. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s eat.”
Brooks got up and refilled our empty wineglasses during the meal. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so relaxed or so happy.
“I wike Wed Zeppwin,” Elliott said—suddenly, enthusiastically, and apropos of nothing. “Me and Shane wisten to Wed Zeppwin in the car.”
“Led Zeppelin. Really,” Brooks said, trying to keep a straight face.
“There’s no way to predict what will come out of that cute little mouth,” I said, taking another sip of wine. “Other than it will probably be random and adorable.”
Brooks nodded and let a small laugh escape. “I see what you mean. What else do you like, Elliott?”
“Chocwate. And fwied chicken.”
“I like chocolate and fried chicken,” Brooks said. “And I like Led Zeppelin. You have good taste, Elliott.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you like cool things.”
Elliott smiled and took another drink of his milk, looking adoringly at Brooks and me, as if he was having every bit as much fun as I was having, which squeezed my heart in a bittersweet way.
I wish I could give this to him every night.
“I’m full, Mama,” Elliott said.
I glanced at my watch, surprised to see that it was almost seven. “Can you put on your pajamas?”
“I will put them on all by myself.”
Elliott left the room, but Brooks and I remained at the table.
“This was really good,” Brooks said. “You’re a great cook.”
His words pleased me. It was an old-fashioned way of thinking, but I liked cooking for a man, especially when he told me how much he’d enjoyed it. “Thanks. I’m glad you liked it. You’re welcome to stay for a while. I’ll put Elliott to bed soon.” I stood and began clearing the dishes.
I didn’t want him to go. I’d spent so many nights alone since my grandmother had died that I craved adult company, and so far this evening was the most enjoyable one I’d had in a very long time. I only hoped my desperation didn’t show on my face.
“Are you sure?” he said, helping me carry the rest of the dishes to the sink. “You probably have to get up really early for work tomorrow.”
“As long as I’m in bed by ten, I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, then. I’ll stay.”
When Elliott returned wearing his Spider-Man pajamas, I got him settled on the couch and strapped on his mask.
“What is that?” Brooks asked.
“It’s a nebulizer. For his asthma. He has to have a breathing treatment every night before bed.”
Elliott looked at Brooks and pulled the mask to the side. “I’m a dwagon.”
“Put that back on,” I said, pointing my finger at him. “The medicine comes out in little puffs, like smoke. When he was first diagnosed, the doctor told Elliott that he would turn into a dragon for fifteen minutes every night while he took his medicine. They even have masks shaped like dragons, but so far we’re doing okay just pretending.”
“Nice tactic,” Brooks said.
Fifteen minutes later, I clicked off the nebulizer and removed the mask from Elliott’s face. “All done,” I said.
“I’m not a dwagon anymore. I’m Ewiott now.”
Brooks laughed.
I smoothed Elliott’s hair. “Thanks for clearing that up. Bedtime, okay?” I repeated myself when Elliott pretended he hadn’t heard me. “Okay?”
“’Kay,” he muttered.
“Let’s go brush your teeth and then I’ll read.”
“Good night, Elliott,” Brooks said.
“Good night, Bwooks.”
After I put Elliott to bed, I opened another bottle of wine and refilled our wineglasses.
“Thanks,” Brooks said. He leaned forward. “Elliott said something earlier, when he was reenacting what happened the night your grandmother died. Did you catch it?”
I sat down in the chair across from where Brooks was sitting on the couch. “Yes. He said something like ‘The bad man said tell me.’ And then he said my grandmother said no. He’s never mentioned that before.”
“It immediately made me think that whoever did this came with a specific goal in mind. There was something he wanted, and your grandmother didn’t want to give it to him.”
“I don’t know what it could have been. I saved all my grandmother’s personal items. Would you like to see them?”
“Yes.”
Brooks followed me into my bedroom and waited while I retrieved a box from the top of my closet. I dumped out the contents on my bed. “This is the only box that had personal items.”
“What was in the other boxes?”
“Photo albums. Also her life-insurance policy and other financial records. Canceled checks and bank statements, mostly.”
Brooks sat down on the edge of the bed and started sifting through my grandmother’s things. He picked up the pearls and looked at me questioningly.
“They’re not real,” I said. “Too smooth and the color is wrong.”
He ran his fingers over the earrings and put them back in the box. “Was she sentimental?” Brooks asked. “She didn’t seem to have many keepsakes.”
“Not really. She didn’t save a lot of things. My grandmother always treasured family more than she did anything else. I suppose it’s because she’d lost so many people. Elliott and I were the things she valued most.”
I began putting my grandmother’s meager possessions back in the box, and when I was done I said, “It’s not that I want a lot of material things, because I don’t, but I want the kind of life you can’t possib
ly fit into a single box. If something should ever happen to me and people have to go through my things, I want there to be so many memories left behind that it takes a truck to move them all.”
“Before she got too sick, my mom watched all our old home movies,” Brooks said. “My dad had them transferred onto DVDs and she played every disc at least twice. It made me realize that memories shouldn’t be something we only appreciate when we’re running out of time to make more of them.”
Brooks and I were sitting on my bed, which didn’t seem strange when we were looking through the box but now felt strangely intimate, especially after the sentiments we’d each shared.
“That makes me want to cry, Brooks.”
“I know,” he said.
I placed the lid on the box and put it away in my closet.
We went back to the living room.
“Thanks for explaining about platoons to Elliott. I worry that I don’t do enough of that kind of thing with him. It just doesn’t occur to me like it would to a man. I don’t even remember where he got that toy or why he only has one.”
“He seems like a great kid. I’ll be honest, I really can’t wrap my head around your ex-husband not being part of his life.”
“You reap what you sow as a parent. Scott’s lack of participation in Elliott’s life won’t go unnoticed. Someday, if he ever gets clean, he may discover that Elliott doesn’t want anything to do with him. I hope I raise Elliott to be a more forgiving person than that, but ultimately it will be his decision to make.”
“Elliott’s lucky to have a parent like you.”
“I feel like I’m the lucky one. If something had happened to him the night my grandmother died, I don’t know what I would have done. Someday, when he’s grown, I’ll make sure he leaves and finds his own way in the world. Becomes whatever he wants to be. But for now I’m holding him as close as I can.”
“Is there anyone else?” Brooks asked. “Aunts, uncles, cousins?”
“My dad was an only child, but my mom had three siblings. They all had young families of their own and I guess no one was willing to take in another child. My grandmother insisted, once I was old enough to ask questions, that she stepped forward so quickly no one else had time to contemplate it. Knowing my grandmother and the kind of person she was, it’s probably true. Either that or she just didn’t want me to feel bad because no one wanted me. I don’t have much contact with any of my relatives. They’re all scattered across the country and occasionally someone will reach out to me about a family reunion on either my mom or dad’s side, but I’ve never attended. To all of them, I’m a stranger.”
“Your resiliency is amazing.”
“I don’t know if it’s resiliency, necessarily. More like a lack of choices.”
“Even so, it couldn’t have been easy for you, especially when you were younger.”
“There were definitely times when I felt very alone,” I admitted.
I turned on the TV and switched to a satellite radio station playing today’s hits, keeping the volume low. We both took a drink of our wine. “What kind of music do you like?” I asked.
“Gangsta rap, primarily.”
He said it with a straight face, but I burst out laughing. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”
“No,” he said, smiling. “I like a little bit of everything. My iPod holds many widely divergent genres. What about you?”
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “And I’m only telling you this because I’ve had some wine, otherwise I’d probably be too embarrassed.”
“I really can’t wait to hear this,” Brooks said. “Go on.”
“I like songs that tell a story. Like ‘Cat’s In the Cradle’ by Harry Chapin or ‘In the Ghetto’ by Elvis, both of which can bring me to tears, by the way. ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,’ ‘American Pie,’ ‘The River.’ The list goes on and on. Pam teases me relentlessly. She thinks it’s hysterical, especially because no song is too cheesy for me. In the interest of full disclosure, and because you haven’t laughed at me yet, I never change the station when ‘Copacabana’ by Barry Manilow comes on the radio, either.” I smiled at Brooks. “There’s a story there.”
“I would never laugh about your musical preferences, especially not after hearing the thought process behind your choices. And those are not bad songs. Except maybe ‘Copacabana.’”
“That one will probably grow on you,” I said.
He grinned. “No… I don’t think it will.”
“I was named after a song, actually.”
Brooks held up his hand. “Wait. Don’t tell me.” It didn’t take him long. “Your middle name is Jane, isn’t it?”
I nodded, impressed with how quickly he’d figured it out.
“‘Daisy Jane’ by America,” he said.
“You are very well-rounded, musically. Not everyone knows that song.”
“I take it your parents were fans?”
“When I was about five or six, my grandmother told me that my mom played that album over and over when she was pregnant with me. She told my dad that if I was a girl, she wanted to name me Daisy Jane. He loved the idea. My sister’s name was Danielle, so it was a good fit all around, I guess. I went through this phase in high school where I would sit in my room with the door closed, listening to the cassette repeatedly. I pictured my mom doing the same thing and it made me feel close to her. Anyway, I still love those songs.”
“I can see why,” Brooks said.
It was almost nine by then. Brooks’s wineglass was empty, and when I asked him if he’d like a refill I expected him to say something like, “No thanks. I should really get going.” But he didn’t. He said, “I’ll get it.”
When he returned from the kitchen he picked up my glass first. “Would you like some more?”
“Just half a glass, please. I’m pretty close to my limit.”
Brooks poured our wine and sat back down.
“Do you truly believe your ex-husband is responsible for the death of your grandmother?” he asked. “Because that’s another thing I can’t wrap my head around.”
“I believe he had something to do with it. I just don’t think it was as random as it seems.”
“If this is too personal you don’t have to tell me, but did he hurt you? Physically? Is that why you think he’s involved? Because you know he’s capable of violence?”
“When Scott first started using there was a lot of lying. He often made excuses for why money was missing, or why I couldn’t get a hold of him on his phone. Sometimes he would become agitated and shout at me when he needed to get high and didn’t have drugs or the money to buy them. But he never hit me or anything like that. Toward the end, he mostly stopped coming home at all, and I never really knew when I would see him again.”
“So you didn’t fear him?” Brooks asked.
I hesitated.
“Daisy, is there something you want to tell me?” Brooks asked softly.
Maybe it was a sign of how comfortable I felt with him, or maybe it was the wine, but after a moment I started to speak. “Scott showed up at the house around nine thirty one night. Elliott was asleep and I was watching TV and thinking about going to bed when he unlocked the back door and came inside. There was another man with him. I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up, because the minute they walked into the living room, I knew something was wrong. Whether it was intuition or instinct or something else entirely, I just knew.”
“Then what happened?” Brooks said. He used the same gentle and patient tone he’d used earlier with Elliott.
“Scott said he needed money. It was all very matter-of-fact. It was as if he was no longer my husband but rather some junkie who’d wandered in off the street with one goal in mind: to get high. There was no recognition in his eyes. There was no acknowledgment that I was his wife, that this was his home. No awareness that his child was asleep in his crib. He was there for one thing only, and I didn’t want to give it to him. I’d already initiated
divorce proceedings but hadn’t moved out yet because I had hoped that Elliott and I would be able to stay and that Scott would be the one who had to leave. It was only a rental, but I had tried hard to make that house a home, and I didn’t want to go. I’d gotten used to Scott not being around, so when he showed up that night, I got really angry. Why did my husband think it was okay to suddenly appear and ask for money to buy drugs? So I told him no.”
I paused. “But the thing I didn’t fully understand was that Scott didn’t want money, he owed money. And someone was going to pay off that debt.” I could no longer look at Brooks, so I focused on the picture that hung above the couch. Emotionally disengaged, my voice sounded distant, like I was telling Brooks a story about something that had happened to a woman who was not me.
“The man Scott had brought home with him walked up to me. He was skinny, but he was still bigger than me, and very tall. His eyes were dead, and I could smell him. Cigarettes and chemicals and filth. He reached out and ran his finger down the center of my chest. There was no doubt in my mind about what he was going to do to me. I had no way of defending myself, and I couldn’t run because I would have never left Elliott behind.”
“Jesus,” Brooks said.
“I’d hidden some cash in an empty baby shampoo bottle. I said, ‘I’ll give you five hundred dollars, but as soon as I give it to you, you have to leave and you can’t come back.’ I was terrified that he’d take the money but… assault me anyway.”
Brooks clenched and unclenched his hands and then looked away for a moment. “Did they go?”
“Yes. I had no way of knowing how much Scott owed, but meth is cheap and I’m sure there was plenty of money left over. They were probably eager to go on a binge. But before they left, the man leaned in and whispered, ‘I’m not done with you.’ Once they were gone, I had a bit of a breakdown. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop crying, but I managed to call Pam and Shane and they came right over. It was almost ten o’clock by then, but Shane just started loading my stuff into the back of his SUV. I left the furniture behind but took all our clothes and personal items—Elliott’s toys, important papers, photo albums. I knew I wouldn’t be back, so I had to make sure I took everything I needed right then. When it was all packed, I carried Elliott to the car, strapped him into his car seat, and followed Pam and Shane to their house. Elliott and I moved in with my grandmother the next day, and I had Scott served with divorce papers.”