Theirs to Carry

Ash had a breakdown in the pigeon house last night. 2am, drunk out of her mind, raging and wailing, rattling the wire walls. Her voice might have just woven itself into my dreams if Melissa hadn’t roused me with a three-fingered poke in the back, sharp as a cattle prod. I stumbled outside in my bathrobe, and there Ash was, on her hands and knees, vomiting onto the straw floor.

The Princeling was outside too, also drunk, his fingers laced into the chicken wire, his words on repeat. Baby please, baby please. I paced barefoot in the wet driveway while I dialed up his father. His parents own a string of auto parts stores up and down the west coast, and I’ve seen the dad on TV.

“Eric? Sorry to bother you so late. Yes, it’s Guy, Ashley’s dad. Look, this is a call no parent wants to get.”

Then I stepped into the pigeon house—the birds had all taken refuge in the loft, clucking sanctimoniously—and helped Ash to her feet. Somewhere in the stations of the night, on some sprinklered lawn or at the bottom of a swimming pool, she had parted with her pants and one, just one, shoe. Thank God for oversized sweatshirts. Ash leaned on me, her bare legs folding like a frog’s, unable to stand straight, and I half-dragged, half-carried her into the house.

Melissa and the twins were standing in the doorway, the twins with their hair up and in their long sleep shirts, Snoop Dogg and Hufflepuff House, and Melissa with that look on her face that said what are you going to do about this?

I dragged Ash down the hallway to her bedroom. Behind me I could feel Melissa’s eyes traveling down Ash’s body and stopping pointedly on her unshod foot. 

Shit. The gold Vapor Maxes.               

*

Now it’s noon and we are sitting in my basement office. Ash has dragged her chair up close to the woodstove—it’s cold as hell down here during winter—one foot tucked under her thigh and the other dangling. She has pulled on pajama bottoms, but she is still wearing the hoody from last night. Dried vomit clings to her hair, and pieces of straw and pigeon shit are smeared into the black fabric of the sweatshirt.

She looks at me with a mixture of humiliation and bile, but the latter is contrived. She’s never been any good at defiance.

 She pulls at her sleeves, revealing her slender forearms. She scratches one of them. It wasn’t so long ago that she kept her sleeves down to hide the cutting. Does it itch, I wonder?

“Look Ash,” I say, “I know this isn’t like you.”

“What’s not?” A slight lift of the brow, but her eyes don’t move.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

We are both watching the fire behind the grimy, miniature window of the stove. The oxygen has been turned down and the flames dance in slow motion.

“It’s not just the drinking. But—how much did you have?”

“I don’t know. A bottle of Vodka.”

“The whole thing?”

Shrug.

“It’s not just that. Some of the things you were saying—”

“Like what?” Now she looks at me. 

“Is he treating you ok?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Massive eye roll.

“No, really. Is he?”

“Why? What did I say?”

I reach up and run my hand through my hair. “It just sounded like maybe, like you didn’t want to, but maybe he wanted you to—”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Ok. But there were some other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t remember every word, but—are you doing ok?”

“I’m fine.”

“I know it’s been hard.”

The fire flickers in her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Ash,” I say, “I love you. Melissa and I, the twins, god knows—”

“Dad,” she says. “It’s ok. You don’t have to say anything.”

When she goes back to her room, I pull my chair up to the desk and place my fingers on the keyboard.

I remember exactly what she said.

I’m not happy. I’ve never been happy.

*

It was Melissa’s decision to let the twins keep pigeons. Everyone is urban farming in Ballard these days, but pigeons? The twins insisted, and after Melissa gave in, they were quick to stake out their position. The pigeons are our pets. Not family pets. That was four years ago, not long after the wedding.

Ash’s mom was a dog person. And a God person, too. But we never managed to have our own. Of either. I wanted Ash to have a dog, and for a long time I tried with Melissa. But she has a way of bringing you onto her side, of making you feel like coming around to her point of view was your idea.

But not with Ash. That was the first time Melissa and I put into practice the “one team” approach we learned in therapy. We have to be a united front, Melissa is quick to say.

The irony is that Ash was the one who liked birds. After her mother died, all that spring, Ash would curl up in the big bay window in the living room and watch the birds in the garden. There was one, mostly black, with a few white stripes and a flaming red crest, a pileated woodpecker I think, who used to lodge itself in the flimsy birch tree the people before us had planted and hammer away. It visited us all spring and summer, and then it was gone.

I took Ash to the zoo that summer, thinking she would like to see the birds in the aviary. We ambled through the one-way corridors, a series of haphazardly connected shanties, into the rainforest room. Ash was mildly interested in the puffins, and parrots, and toucans, and turkey vultures, but mostly worried that her koala face paint might run in the humidity.

On the way home, thunderclouds were stacking up like a lead smudge on the horizon, and by the time we pulled into the driveway it was raining cold, engorged droplets. In the kitchen, Ash reminded me that I had failed to make good on my promise of Dippin’ Dots, so I scooped two big bowls of chocolate ice cream, and we sat outside on the patio, under the umbrella, like Noah in his ark, while the deluge pounded the still-warm concrete all around us.

Ash never said a thing about the birds, but for a long time after that, every once in a while, she used to ask, remember that time we ate ice cream in the rain?

*

The therapy has been good for us. Melissa and me. We used to get into these patterns of argument we couldn’t get out of.

Melissa: You don’t like my kids, do you?

Me: It’s not that I don’t like them.

Melissa: You think they’re rude.

Me: I’m not saying that.

And then:

Me: You think I’m a bad parent.

Her: That’s not what I said.

Me: I’m doing the best I can.

Her: You keep saying that.

Zach, our therapist, has helped us find some “off-ramps” for these conversations. The thing about Melissa is she has a big personality. She’s from the East Coast, went to school in Philadelphia, and she came out west for her first job in medical sales, but she’s always seemed bigger than this place. That’s what I fell in love with.

But it hasn’t always been easy for Ash. When Melissa and I were dating, the five of us flew down to Universal Studios for the weekend. A trial run at spending two days together “as a family.” The twins are only a year older than Ash, and Melissa and I thought they would hit it off. But only half a day in, Ash got into an argument with them about something in the gift shop, and somehow, in the commotion, she (accidentally, she still insists) knocked a smoothie out of one of their hands. I was outside scrolling through the pictures on my phone when I heard the tear-laden voices inside. By the time I made it to ground zero, a pink mass of strawberry smoothie was already melting into the carpet, and Melissa’s nails were digging into Ash’s wrist.

Another kid might have pulled me into the dressing room or between the high shelves of Homer Simpson mugs and Welcome to Springfield keychains and said, through clenched teeth, I hate your girlfriend. But, Ash, she cleaned up the mess with a roll of industrial paper towels, apologized as was expected, and burrowed into herself for the rest of the weekend.

We did the studio tour later that day, Melissa and I sitting side-by-side in the front row of the tram and Ash squeezed in with the twins behind us. Melissa slid so close to me on the bench she was almost in my lap, one arm around my neck, her fingers picking through my hair like a lioness. Even then I knew lines were being drawn, territory was being staked out.

I made my choice, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy for Ash. But if you had seen Melissa only the night before the “smoothie incident,” as we were on our way to the airport, you would understand. She had insisted on getting there three hours early, but when we were on the road, crammed into her Volvo wagon with our carry-ons, she made an early exit downtown and glided into an empty parking spot in front of Nordstrom. She announced to the girls that each of them, Ash included, had exactly 90 minutes to go inside and find a new outfit, top to bottom, shoes to earrings, for the trip.

I camped on a purple ottoman outside the dressing room while Melissa stationed herself between the stalls, tugging at hems and throwing different sizes of pants and dresses over the tops of doors, until all three girls were satisfied. It wasn’t until Ash came out in her denim skirt, with the striped top fitted to the new contours of her body, whose slow emergence I had managed to not see, that it occurred to me: Ash was twelve, awkward as hell, her mother had been dead for two years, and in that time I had not purchased for her a single item of clothing.

*

Even so, I’m not sure I was prepared for what was coming, for how the twins made Ash’s life hell, especially in the beginning.

Once, the five of us were playing Monopoly, and Ash was winning. She had that momentum that accumulates toward the end of the game. She’s never been competitive, and I don’t think she would have cared much whether she won or lost, but the twins were out for blood. They ganged up on her, no one would trade with her, and when she refused to surrender Park Place after one of the twins mortgaged half her properties to buy Boardwalk, things got really nasty.

The twins slammed their cards down on the table and threw their money into Ash’s face. Ash just sat there, white as a one-dollar note, covered in pastel bills. As they were walking away, one of the twins turned back to her and said, with deadly precision: No one likes you. No one wants you in this family.

I expected Melissa to do something, and she did. She tore into them right then and there and took their phones away for a week. Say what you want about her not expecting enough of them; when they’ve crossed a line with her they know it.

It used to be that Ash got a break from all this when the twins went to their dad’s every other weekend, before he just dropped out sight. She was a happy kid when they weren’t around, and she and I would do stuff like we used to. Walk to the farmer’s market, ski in the winter, Green Lake in the summer.

But after a while she lost interest. I didn’t see her smile much, about anything. 

*

Ash is seventeen now, and she isn’t easy to shop for. She never has been, really. The first Christmas we spent all together after Melissa and I were married, Ash insisted that she didn’t want anything. When Melissa and I pressed, she finally agreed to a hemp handbag and a donation to the Nature Conservancy. Somewhere in the Brazilian rainforest there are five trees producing oxygen, one in each of our names. I managed to also sneak a hundred dollar bill into her Christmas stocking without the twins or Melissa noticing. When she found it, Ash rolled her eyes at me and tucked it discreetly into the pocket of her pajamas. 

With the twins it’s easy. Gucci flip-flops, Fendi bathing suits—hell, as long as the name is Italian or French and the item is utterly superfluous, they’re happy. But Ash has just never been into that sort of thing.

That’s why the Vapor Maxes were such a big deal. Last Christmas when she made her list, they were right at the top.

Nike Air Vapor Maxes. Gold. (With the “Gold” underlined.)

I didn’t even know they were shoes at all until I went to the Nike Store and asked around. (And by the way, did you know they are still making Air Jordans?) I climbed the glass staircase to the second floor, where the shoes are, and found a young kid in basketball shorts and a Sonics jersey whose nametag (“Brendan”) identified him as someone who worked there, unlike the rest of the kids in basketball shorts and oversized jerseys who were just hanging out. He listened to what I was looking for while he folded a tower of sweatpants, and then he dipped his head and looked at me like, oh snap, good luck with that.

Apparently, they only made a few hundred of these in gold, and most of them were instantly resold on the secondary market. When I found a pair going for $950 on eBay, I almost gave up. But the only other items on Ash’s list were things she could eat. Eventually I found a pair, unopened, ready to ship. From the Ukraine. The shipping was going to cost almost as much as the shoes, but they were listed at only $450.

The kids had retreated to their rooms and Melissa was leaning into the glow of her laptop at the kitchen table, entering last week’s meetings into Salesforce. I added the shoes to my cart, checked the time remaining (“you have 9:59 to complete your purchase”) and slid my phone across the table toward her.

She glanced at the screen without picking it up. Under the sterile LED incandescence, her eyebrows arched in a way that meant, are you really going to do this?

*

I’m proud of Ash. Today she told me to stop calling her boyfriend “the Princeling.” I didn’t mean anything by it. I only called him that because he drives a Tesla (or did, before the DUI) and because of his parents. You know, the auto parts king and queen. His real name is Colton.

This isn’t the first time he’s been a source of family tension. The twins were the first to object to Ash’s texting a boy the same age as them:

Colton is in our grade. Stop snapping with our friends.

You don’t need to flirt with every guy who DMs you.

You probably sent him nudes.

God, you’re such a slut. . . .

You didn’t, did you?

I’ve never gotten used to Ash being talked to this way. Melissa calls it “sister talk,” but I don’t know. I was an only child, and so was Ash before all this. Maybe this is the way sisters talk to each other, but it makes my stomach hurt. The one thing they never tell you about being a parent is how hard it is to watch your kid bleed.

Maybe that’s why she’s in so deep with Colton. It’s some kind of escape. But the truth is she’s becoming a different kid. Until this year, Ash was a stretch pants and gray hoodie and ponytail girl. Now she’s gone blonde, nose ring, dark makeup, weird plaids from Goodwill. She looks like some kind of prep school vampire in hand-me-downs. With gold shoes.

And the drinking. I want to blame it on Colton (who, by the way, has yet to address me by name, first or last) but that’s probably not fair. He seems like he’s burned off a few, but I’m sure Ash is no angel either.

I should probably give him a chance. I think that’s what Ash was trying to tell me today when she said: You’re being kind of judgy.

*

Therapy session today. We are talking about chores.

“The twins don’t lift a finger around the house,” I say.

“School is their job.”

“They don’t even get good grades!”

Zach looks at me significantly. It’s therapy stage direction: Use feeling words.

“It just seems unfair,” I say.

“To whom?” Zach asks.

“To Ash! She does everything. Remember the lentil curry?”

Melissa shrugs. It means no, enlighten me.

“The twins were going out with their friends, and they left the lentils all over the stove. It was all burnt and shit.”

“Ash didn’t have to clean it up.”

“But she did.”

“She was being a martyr. And so are you.”

Now Zach raises an eyebrow at Melissa. Feeling words.

After therapy, we go out for dinner. Melissa is wearing the black dress with the spaghetti straps. Maybe it’s the same one she wore on our first date. When she walked into the bar that first time and I stood to shake her hand (she hugged me instead) and I thought: Jackpot.

She was brash and confident, and I liked that. But there was more too. We were sitting at a window table at a restaurant on Fifth Avenue, downtown. The monorail was rumbling by overhead, and a man rolled up outside our window in a wheelchair. He was wearing a filthy Vietnam-era army jacket, and half a dozen ratty plastic bags were hanging from the chair. I tried to ignore him, but Melissa got up, wove her way outside in heels, and crouched down in front of him on the sidewalk. She didn’t have any money to give him, she just faced him at eye level, listened to his story.

When she came back in, she put on that Philly accent and acted tough. Maybe it was then I knew I was going to marry her.

Now, she reaches across the table for my hand.

“I’m sorry for calling you a martyr. And Ash. I love you both.”

“I know.”

Dessert comes (tiramisu and coffee with cream) and then we are dreaming. The kids will be off to college in a year or two anyway. What will life look like? I hold her hand and play with the ring on her finger, turning it around and around. Remember that place in Sarasota, where we spent our first New Year’s? A boat in the slip. Jazz on the stereo. Out on the patio, both of us reading, your feet in my lap. I’ve always said you had the nicest feet.

*

When we get home, Ash is having another breakdown. She is in her room and she won’t come out.

She’s been in therapy, too. She has a thing called Dissociative Disorder. Her therapist (not Zach) says it’s a kind of anxiety, usually linked to past trauma. For Ash it feels like she’s dreaming, like the real world is a dream too and she doesn’t know which dream world is real. It scares the hell out of her.

I knock and gently open the door. She is sitting on the bed, her knees pulled up to her chest, wrapped up in the purple blanket she’s had since she was a kid. Her eyeliner is smeared. She’s trembling.

I sit on the bed and reach for her hand, but she doesn’t want to be touched.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

There’s a lead weight hanging from my chest, sunk in with fishhooks.

“How was therapy?” Ash asks.

“Fine.”

She nods. Her eyes look like they’ve been propped open with toothpicks. “I had a dream,” she says.

“Oh yeah? What was it?”

“It was the pigeons.” She is chewing her thumbnail. She hasn’t looked at me since I entered the room.

“What about the pigeons?”

“They were pecking out the twins’ eyes.”

We are both silent. I breathe.

“That didn’t really happen, did it?” she asks.

“No,” I say. 

“Good.”

*

Afterwards, I go out to the garage and stand in front of the workbench I’ve promised to straighten up. Dusty drill bits, rolls of duct tape, needle nose, little plastic bags of screws. I stare at the mess for a while, then I go back inside and try to read, but my mind won’t settle on the words. I end up in the bedroom, on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling.

Melissa comes in and lies down beside me. She braids her legs into mine and rests her head on my chest.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she says. All I can see is the back of her head. Her hair is shiny, the brown roots fading into blonde.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

“What’s not?”

She turns her head and gives me one of those looks. You’re being a martyr. “So, she’s a little fucked up. Aren’t we all?”

“That’s the best you can do?”

She puts her head back down on my chest.

“Stop making it about you.” 

*

Once I had a dream. Ash and I were at a wedding or at church or something like that. Some formal affair. A woman in a light blue pantsuit came up to me, someone older, someone I hardly knew, and told me how worried she was about Ash. She was going a bad way, hanging with the wrong crowd. And I remember I just laughed, right in this woman’s face, like laughed out loud. Ash was fine, I was fine, we were all going to be fine.  

*

When Ash is better, she comes out of her room. Melissa is back at the table, on her laptop, and the twins are out. I’m watching Vikings on my iPad.

Ash sits down next to me, still wearing the purple blanket. She pulls her feet up onto the couch cushion.

“Want me to start it over?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

I switch it to the TV, and we watch. After a while, I hand her the remote, get up and open the freezer. The cold air rolls out like dragon breath.

“Ice cream?” I ask. I peer at her all the way across the kitchen, over the back of the couch.

Ash shakes her head, but I scoop enough for two.

I slide back in next to her, and when I’m only a few bites in, she reaches for the bowl. She takes it without looking, eats one spoonful, and hands it back.

Her phone starts buzzing. She taps at the screen. The sound is like fish bubbles. 

“Can Colton come over?” she asks.

Sure. Whatever. Colton can come over.

Next thing I know he’s knocking at the door, and Ash is up to answer it, barefoot, the blanket trailing her. When they come back into the living room, Ash is smiling and she’s leading him by the hand. In his other hand, the gold shoe.

Melissa looks up from her laptop. Asks him where he found it.

It was in the swimming pool after all. He’s taken it and dried it out. And oiled it.

He sits down on the couch next to Ash. He’s a tall kid, lanky, but he’ll fill out. Her hand is in his lap now.

She reaches for the ice cream, balances it on one knee, takes a bite, then hands the bowl to him.

I think about the directions life goes. You can’t go back, you can’t undo a goddamn thing. Whatever you handed them, now it’s theirs to carry.