She helped him build a fire. She roasted her hotdog. He put his fish on aluminum foil and roasted them. They heated up a can of beans and shared them, eating straight from the can.
After they cleaned up, they made s’mores.
They sat through it all close together, Izzy leaning against him, one of each of their legs tangled.
They swapped stories. They laughed. They kissed a lot.
It was Izzy who got up first and put the blanket out for them to stare at the stars.
But Johnny didn’t say a word against it.
It was the best day he’d had in a long time.
What made it better was having the understanding it was also the first of many.
Izzy brought him back to the present by sharing, “She was a Mercury in retrograde type of person.”
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“I have no idea. But she did. She always talked about what planets were aligned and what that meant. She used to say things like, ‘Venus is in the Twelfth House!’ That, in particular, meant she’d met some guy she liked. Or, ‘Clearly, Mars is in the Third House.’ This she’d say when Addie or me were acting like know-it-alls.”
Johnny chuckled again, staring at the stars and weaving her hair around his fingers.
“I should look it up, what all that means,” she whispered. “I should translate my mom.”
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
She fell silent.
Johnny did too, staring at the stars, holding hands with Izzy.
“I hate him.” She was still whispering but this one was fierce.
The stars blurred and Johnny felt his body get tight.
“Who, baby?” he asked gently.
“Dad,” she answered. “I hate him.”
He wrapped her hair around his fist like it was him giving her a reassuring hug and started, “Iz—”
“I lied,” she stated.
“Spätzchen,” he murmured.
“We weren’t happy. We were poor. Mom worked hard. She dated guys she liked and thought she could love, but they didn’t want a woman with kids or they just wanted a piece of ass or they drank too much and became jerks. She wanted to find love again. She wanted someone to help out too. She wanted stability, for her, for us. She wanted more. And Addie and me, we had to watch her go through that. Because of him.”
Her tone was low but harsh and when she stopped speaking, Johnny said nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t prompt her.
He just laid there and waited for her to get more out.
She did.
“Addie was right with what she said in my kitchen. I caught on to it before she did. I saw it. What she found in Perry was what Mom saw in Dad. Dad played the guitar and he was really good. He wrote his own songs and those were really good too. Or as good as I knew, being a little kid. They still seemed good. He was a great singer. He had such a beautiful voice. I remember those times. I remember those being the only good times with him. How he’d get. How he’d be all dreamy and lovey and happy. How he’d put his guitar aside and pull Mom in his lap and hold her close and kiss her. Or catch one of us girls and swing us up and tickle us and shout, ‘I make beautiful babies!’ But it wasn’t that he didn’t get the record deal or get discovered and he got frustrated and bitter. He wasn’t even out of his twenties. There wasn’t time for that. It was just how he was. It was just who he was.”
Her fingers in his were getting tight, biting into the webbing, but Johnny just held on.
“I think it was the dreamer part of him,” she declared. “I think she wanted to be there to watch him build his dream. Live it. I think she liked to think she was his muse. That he’d get off the road and come to us and we’d be his sanctuary against life on the road and his adoring fans. That when he was on tour, he’d step up to the mic and say, ‘This is a song I wrote for the love of my life. For Daphne.’ I think she wanted to grow tomatoes and string beads and raise his daughters and walk at his side into awards shows being gorgeous and proud and people would say, ‘Look at her. The serenity. The beauty. No wonder he writes such amazing music.’ I think that was her dream. I think that was the dream he fed her that she swallowed whole. And I think when it didn’t happen, when it turned dark and ugly, it broke her in a way that could never be fixed.”
Johnny let her give this story to him and the stars and said nothing.
“I think she escaped my grandfather,” she continued. “I think my dad was the opposite of him. Free spirit. Romantic. She wanted peace. She wanted adventure. She wanted love. She found hell.”
She found that for certain.
Izzy kept going.
“A couple of years after we left, his mother, my grandmother, she showed at the door. That was the only time in my life I saw my mother be ugly. She opened the door to that woman and poison spewed out. She yelled at Mom. Screamed in her face. ‘What are you doing? How dare you keep his babies away from him? How dare you run away? He’s just troubled! You stand by your man! You never run away!’”
Izzy dragged in a jagged breath and let more of it out.
“Mom got right up in her face and yelled back, ‘Troubled is not hitting your woman in the face with your fist and knocking her down only to kick her in the stomach, you bitch. That isn’t standing by your man. That’s falling for his shit. That’s teaching your queens to be weak and that is not what my queens are gonna learn from me!’ She slammed the door in her face, turned to us and said, ‘If you ever see that woman again you run. You run away as fast as you can. And you find me.’ My grandmother banged on the door and shouted and Mom put us in our room and called the cops. I heard the murmurings. I don’t know what happened but that woman never tried to find us again. She never sent money to help out and she was rich too. We never saw her again. She gave up. And that was it.”
She fell silent and then started again, quieter.
“She cried that night, Mom did. That night my grandmother came and screamed in her face. I heard her. Woke up like I knew she was doing it and laid in the little narrow bed I shared with my sister because Mom couldn’t afford to buy another bed. We were head to feet, the only way we could sleep in it and have room to move. And I listened to her cry. Sob. And I wonder to this day why she was crying. If she missed him. If she was brokenhearted because he’d killed her dream. If she wondered if she’d made the right choice not standing by him. If she thought maybe she should have tried to change him. If she was just angry and that was the way she let it out. Or if she was just tired of it all and she knew we had to pack up and move again the next day and she couldn’t face it, which is what we did.”
“You’ll never know, baby,” he whispered.
“No,” she agreed. “I’ll never know.”
She took in a deep breath and Johnny waited.
Then she gave him more.
“So I hate him. I hate him because of cheap sandals and because he hit my mom in the face with his fist so hard he knocked her down and kicked her after she hit the floor. I hate him because I warmed up soup for my sister and me because Mom couldn’t be there to cook for us and because all we could afford was soup. I hate him that he wasn’t around to bury our dead cat and Mom and me had to do it, tears streaming down our faces. I hate him that he didn’t take pictures of me before my prom, and I hate him that it seems like he doesn’t even care he missed that or my sixteenth birthday or when I won my scholarship or when Addie broke her wrist showing off on that skateboard of her boyfriend’s. I hate him because he broke my mom when she was with him and I hate him because he kept her broke after he was gone.”