Pestilence

7

Howie stayed up as late as he could with his daughter. He tried speaking to her several times, asking about school, but she replied with one-word answers. They simply had nothing in common anymore other than blood.

Writing her off would have been easy. It should have been easy. But it wasn’t. As he sat on the couch next to her, he looked at her profile and saw himself. On an almost-biochemical level, it seemed, he wanted her approval, and her admiration. But he couldn’t have it, and that ate him up inside. He thought that maybe being a parent was just a means of punishment for the things you did to your parents and that he somehow deserved this for not being a good enough son.

“I’m gonna hit the sack,” he said at around ten o’clock.

“Sure,” she said, not taking her eyes off the television.

As he was heading upstairs, he heard her take out her cell phone and call someone. She spoke a few words softly that Howie couldn’t hear, but he did make out two sentences.

“I don’t like it here. I want to come home.”

The words stung Howie more than he would’ve thought they would. He stood looking at her, and he pictured the young toddler that would run up to him, throw her arms around his neck, and kiss him hard. She would wrap her legs around his chest, and he would pick her up and pretend that she was falling. Then she would laugh her sweet laugh. Those times seemed like someone else’s life.

He went upstairs and lay down in the dark after opening his balcony doors. A breeze was coming through, and he heard the ocean outside. A slit of moon hung in the black sky. He picked up his phone and texted Brandi.

How is it?

Everyone’s pretentious and hitting on me. How’s your daughter?

She hates me. I’ll take the pretention any day.

Why don’t you bring her down here?

Maybe another time.

Suit yourself. Can’t wait for our trip. Bought something new;)

That’s-

Howie’s phone suddenly stopped working and he couldn’t send the text. He chalked it up to just one of those things that happens when technology is involved.

He reread her last text and grinned to himself. Then he placed the phone on the nightstand before taking in a deep breath and trying to relax enough to drift off to sleep. His eyes darted open, and he got up, got dressed, and went downstairs.

“Jessica, we’re going somewhere.”

“Where?”

“It’s an art showing. You’ll love it. Come on.”

“Can’t I just stay here?”

“No, come on, get on your shoes. Let’s go.”

Once they were out the door, Howie chose the convertible, thinking Jessica might enjoy the warm night air. Instead, she folded her arms and ducked low so that it didn’t touch her.

“How’s David?” he asked after several minutes of silence.

“Good.”

“He treat you guys well?”

“Yeah. He takes us everywhere.”

“Like where?”

“To the movies and to Angels games, surfing.”

“He seems like a good guy.”

“He is.”

They arrived at the gallery on the edge of Malibu next to the Pacific Coast Highway, and he couldn’t find parking, so they had to park at a restaurant. Walking back to the gallery, Howie tried to hold her hand to cross the street, but she didn’t take it. He had forgotten that she was old enough to cross the street on her own.

The gallery was impressively decorated with garlands, and the dim lighting made nearly everyone appear more pleasing to the eye than they were. At least fifty people were perusing the artwork, the majority of which were photographs of things found on the street. At the entrance, a video of a subway car in New York was playing.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

“I want you to meet someone.”

Rounding a corner, Howie saw his girlfriend in the middle of a group of people wearing what appeared to be Chinese peasant clothing. They even had the communist hammer and sickle embroidered on their jackets. He walked up to her and waited until she noticed him.

“Hey,” she said, smiling widely. She came over and kissed him on the cheek. “I thought you weren’t coming?”

“Changed my mind. Thought it’d be best to get out of the house. This is Jessica.”

Brandi smiled a wide, fake smile. “Hi. Your dad tells me you’re staying with him this weekend?”

“Yup.”

“Well, I’m glad you came down here. Do you like art, Jessica?”

“Yeah. I’ll let you know when I see some.”

Brandi’s face looked as though someone had pissed in her drink, and though he tried not to, Howie couldn’t help but grin.

“So show us around,” he said.

“Sure.” Brandi smiled, stepping between the two of them before taking Howie’s arm.

For twenty minutes, they went from photograph to photograph to crappy painting and weird video. Howie tolerated it because of the simple fact that Brandi was a knockout, and it couldn’t hurt him later to score points. But Jessica was rolling her eyes and grunting as if she were so frustrated she might have a meltdown.

At one point, they met the artist, a thin woman with a butch haircut and men’s glasses, and Jessica asked her if she had dropped her camera in New York and then decided to keep the pictures.

After Brandi had shown them around, Howie could tell she wanted to mingle and introduce him to everybody, which he definitely was not in the mood for, so he said goodnight and forcefully took Jessica’s hand as they walked outside.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “She’s a friend of mine.”

“She’s an idiot.”

“She was polite to you, and you responded with nothing but rudeness. Who’s the idiot?”

Jessica glanced away, her face contorting in anger. “Why do you even have me come over? You don’t like it.”

“Jessica,” he said, kneeling down, “I love having you over.”

“No you don’t. I heard you talking to Mom once on the phone, and you told her there was no reason for me to come over.”

He thought back and wondered if he’d really said it. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Let’s just go.”

When they got back to the house, she went straight to her bedroom that he kept for her and slammed the door. Howie felt as if he were living with her mother again, and it brought back bad memories.

He got a beer and then went out to the hot tub, where he stripped down to his boxers and got in. Leaning his head back against the side, he gazed at the stars and wondered if anybody was staring back at him.

He thought to the early years, the time when he and Kaila were dirt poor and happy. They were living in a studio apartment where the heater wouldn’t turn off during the summers, so they had to soak towels in cold water and use them as blankets. The walls were so thin that he heard every one of his neighbors use the bathroom, burp, and even the crunch of their breakfast cereal when the TV wasn’t on.

But he and Kaila had dreams. At night, they would lie awake and talk about all the things they would do once they made it. If they hung on until Howie graduated and got that first job, they would make it.

Eventually, they made it, but somewhere along the way, they lost each other. The divorce wasn’t messy. Howie gave her everything she wanted. He didn’t fight for custody, and he even sold his Porsche that he loved and gave the money to her. He wanted out and was willing to pay any price.

He wondered if he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should have brought Jessica to live with him? Her mother shipped her off to boarding school while she and David went off on vacations. She had two stepbrothers, but from what Kaila had told him, they were happy, but didn’t really pay attention to Jessica. She was also hyper-intelligent and was in the gifted program at her school, which didn’t help her win any friends. She was, as far as Howie could tell, almost entirely alone.

“Hey.”

He looked over to see Sandy on the balcony next door. “Hey.”

“I don’t see you out here that much, drinking. Something happen?”

“That obvious, huh?”

She went inside and a moment later was out on the beach in front of his balcony. She climbed the steps and sat on the edge of the hot tub, a glass of wine in her hand. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“My daughter hates me. Same old.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve talked to her. It’s a defense mechanism. She thinks you don’t care about her, and her defense is to convince herself she doesn’t need you.”

“I think she doesn’t need me.”

“Please. You’re Daddy. Fathers are larger than life to their daughters.”

He exhaled and took a sip of his beer. “What did you do tonight?”

“Just watched movies by myself. I was hoping you were home and we could watch one together.”

“Now, what the hell is a girl like you doing home alone on a Friday night?”

She shrugged and placed her wine glass down. “Sitting in the hot tub with you.”

Sandy slipped off the clothing she was wearing and stepped into the hot tub, then slid over to Howie. They kissed as some teenagers lit a bonfire farther down the beach.