By Audrey-Anna Gamache
Leona is greeted by the static from the television as she creeps into the living room. It is the echo of shattering glass that has awoken her, pulling her from the comfort of her dreams and into the living room, where she finds her father asleep on the couch. The sight of her father sprawling out on the couch is slightly reassuring in its familiarity, a recurrence so constant it is like riding the bus or brushing your teeth. Scattered on the floor beside him, are the remnants of a beer bottle, 99 cents worth of off-brand Bud he had gotten at the local convenient store, what little is left of it leaking out into the light blue carpet.
“Dammit, Dad.” She sighs, pulling her unkempt hair back from her eyes. She leans over to look at his face, careful not to kick the shards of loose glass at her feet. He looks old, Leona thinks. He just celebrated his 36th birthday only a few weeks again, but he looks fucking fifty. Maybe it is the stubble on his chin, coming in patches now that he is losing his hair, or the bags in his cheeks that sink his eyes into their sockets. He looks like a dog, panting with his tongue out, worn out on chasing around the neighborhood cats. Leona wonders if she looks older than she is. She certainly feels older. I feel like a housewife from an old TV commercial, scrubbing their clothes in a barrel, stretching their lips into a smile while serving the ugliest dessert at their kitchen table. She has the urge to get up and look in the mirror then, but she refrains, afraid that her youthful face would have aged while she was sleeping, grown frail and withered from years slaving away to keep house. I’m fifteen, for gods sake, why do I feel so old? But the answer seems obvious, snoring nearby her on the couch.
Since her mother left, it has just been the two of them, wayward voyagers, crashing their boats into the rocky shores of an island free from vegetation. It was easier to think of them as vagabonds, freeing them from the necessity of correspondence. To think of them as family felt like blasphemy to the concept of family, though Leona knew plenty of other families struggled with connection, often resorting to their own vices to fabricate some kind of life. Her father with his alcohol, Leona with her dreams. Dreams of a house with crab apple trees, a job that lets her travel, a warm bed where she can sleep through the night. She dreams of anything that breaks apart this sliding block puzzle of her life. Options are slim when you’ve been dealt a bad hand, and Leona’s hands are calloused and cracked at the knuckles. Life seems like a series of closed doors in a hallway that gets longer the farther you walk down it. She knows the future before it happens. She can see it stretched before her, her New England destiny, reflected in the glass shards of her father’s bottles. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s already too late.
She will scrape by to pass her grades, coming home to feed her father and clean up after his binges, playing the dutiful daughter. The fucking housewives smiling with their ugly jello jiggling at the kitchen table, and a room so silent you don’t even need a knife to cut it. Then one day she will have her big break, working at the dollar mart on Main Street. She will stock the shelves for chunk change, tasting for the first time in her short life, the tiniest slice of freedom. It is there she will meet a boy who is no-good for her. He’ll ride into her life in a green Chevy Silverado that was passed down to him by his father, his one and only inheritance, and he’ll woo her with the prospect of some semblance of connection. She’ll love him because he promises her the Great Big Away, a house with crab apple trees, but a boy like that produces no fruit. He’ll give you kisses, sure, but he’ll knock you up and leave you for one of the pretty girls from high school. One of the ones who can afford to get into college. She will have her baby, and she will love her, like her mother loved her. Before she left. But I’ll be better than my mother, because I won’t leave. That’s the one thing I have on them they can’t take from me. I can always be better.
She knows there will be a time, when her own baby is grown, when her father has passed, when it will be Leona and Leona alone, no longer adrift, serving food to no one, eating only when and what she wants to. She might be old, but she’ll feel young, and her scarred and aching hands will finally heal.
Leona picks up the pieces of glass and throws them in the trash can in the kitchen before returning to the floor with paper towels. She tries her best to scrub the stain out, but the liquid makes the soft carpet curdle, like a head of frizzled hair. Sighing, Leona gets back up and tosses the paper towels in the trash can. Someday I will plant a crab apple tree, and I will watch it grow. She carries herself back into the living room, peering down at her father on the couch. She studies him to make sure he is still breathing. She leans her head down, holding back her mangled hair, and presses her head against his chest. She sighs with relief at the feeling of his ribs moving up and down against her cheek. Satisfied that he hasn’t drunk himself to death quite yet, Leona turns off the television and goes back to bed. She falls asleep to the hum of rain thumping against the trailer’s siding, washing over her hope for the future.
About the Author:
Audrey-Anna Gamache is a writer and filmmaker based in New England. Her work has appeared in Chestnut Review, Underbelly Press, Filling Station, and Chaotic Merge Magazine. When she isn’t writing, she likes watching low budget movies with her cats and scouring flea markets for bizarre knick-knacks. She can be found on X @ScoutyLynch