Daddy wake up.
I want to see the
tigers
please
“Daddy wake up!”
A small hand jostling him from his sleep. Adam groaned and pulled the covers tighter over his head. Anything to blot out the morning sun. The mere suggestion of it caused his head to ache. Not just ache, but to throb inside his skull. Incessantly. Punishingly.
And it was a punishment. Metred out for his proclivities the night before. He had drank far too much, stayed up working far too late.
What had he even been working on? He couldn’t remember what it had looked like. Only that he had lost himself to it. He had promised as well. Promised her.
Fucking hell but just give me a god damned minute.
“Daddy pleeeeeeaaase”.
A further jostling, an attempt to pull the covers away from his head. He gripped tighter. He just needed five more fucking minutes. Could she not give him five more fucking minutes? He felt a growl forming in his throat. If she didn’t give him five more minutes she would regret it. He buried his head into his pillow, nothing but his own acrid breath for company. It stand of the earth, of bile and acid reflux. It stand of the malt he had drank the night before.
Oh god, how much of it had I drank?
She eventually won. The covers flying off Adam as he lay curled up in the foetal position in his bed.
“Daddy! You’re awake! I made you this!”
He opened his eyes, wincing. He hadn’t pulled the blinds closed the night before and the sun was already high in the sky. The room was filled with light, the sun seemingly everywhere. It was in the mirror on the wall beside the bed, the chrome bed frame, the short glass beside his bed, still half filled with amber liquid. It hurt to look everywhere. He could see the outline of his daughter and no more. She was hopping from one foot to the other. Excited.
An envelope was thrust in his direction. He made no moves to take it and so it was pushed under his arm.
“I made you it.” She said. Something was in her voice. An inflection that betrayed her excitement as something else.
He tired to respond.
Thank you sweetheart.
“Thnmph ymph” he mumbled, attempting to sit up.
“Are you going to open it?”
In a fucking minute.
He reached out and took hold of the glass, offering it up to his mouth and - despite everything in his body recoiling away from it - took a gulp, finishing what was there. It hit his stomach and the effect was nearly instantaneous. Acid reflux shot up his throat, bile pushing against his teeth. He grimaced and swallowed it back down.
Kill or cure, his father had once said, when Adam had seen him doing something similar at the breakfast table. Many years ago. It had to have been. He had been in the ground since Adam started high school. He hadn’t been missed.
“Are you okay daddy?” Concern etched on Violet’s little face. He was stunned then how suddenly grown up the expression made her look, and a pang of longing mixed with the nausea, as he realised that she wouldn’t be his little girl for ever, or even for much longer. He should stop being so selfish.
Yet I would be on better form if she had just given me five more fucking minutes.
“Sure sweetheart,” he said through a grimace, still with his eyes half shut. “Guess I’m feeling little bit under the weather today.
“Your card will cheer you up, aren’t you going to open it?”
He smiled again, this one feeling a little more natural as his humanity began to seep back through his bones and into his muscles. Sitting up in bed, he patted the far side of him, beckoning her over. She giggled and jumped on to the bed, rolling over his legs.
“Ow! Honey be careful!”
More giggling and then she was beside him.
“Open it,” she breathed. Her breath smelled sweet. Oaty. He guessed she’d gotten herself up and worked her way through a large bowl of cheerios. A slight pang of guilt that he pushed down out of the way. She should be old enough to at least fix her own breakfast now. He wasn’t going to feel guilty about that.
He did as she bid him and opened it. The envelope was old, and had been used before. The two names on the front scribbled out along with the address. Another pang. He wondered where it had come from, and what Violet had thought when she had ran her crayons over it a million times. One name was scored out more heavily than the other, but he tried not to focus on that. Nevertheless, he wasn’t surprised to see that it was his. She had always been such a mummy’s girl.
Fuck, he thought, only stopping from uttering it by the smallest of margins. He was going to take forever to clean this shit up. It went everywhere when he opened it. She could have warned him. She could have, of course, not stuffed the card and envelope with it in the first place. It fell over him like an alcoholics tears. He tried not to log exasperated, but a sigh must have escaped him as Violet had that look on her face again. The one she had a moment ago. The one that he couldn’t place. Later on he would think he knew what it was. Right at that point however, it barely registered, and not in any impactful way. Signs were there, and he had ignored them all.
He smiled again, forcing it through the fence of his hangover. Of his intolerance. He took out the card and passed at the front. She must have done it in school. Probably a class project. HE didn’t think she had the art materials here.
Unless…
“Do you like it?”
She had drawn him - or what he took to be him - standing beside a shorter balloon-headed stick figure with a large crooked smile and a gaudily coloured dress, small stick legs out from the bottom touching the green strip that made of the base of the card. He was standing on her right. On her left seemed to be some kind of animal. What she had been going for eluded him for the longest time until it came to him.
“Still like tigers huh?”
She beamed. “We’re going to see one today?”
That expression again. He suddenly wanted to scream, to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she dropped it from her face.
“Sure are!” He opened the card instead. Her writing was improving. A clear distinction between upper and lowercase, developing into a beautiful flowing script. Her mother, he presumed. Putting in the extra time with her. That was all well and good. She got the easy stuff. She got Violet on holidays. She took the time off, meeting her daughter off the plane that he meticulously took her to, entrusting her with the flight attendants, getting their guarantee she would be looked after during the one hour flight. Amber just had to focus all her time on Violet. She could do that. It was him that had to work around her. Considering the circumstances of this situation developing. How he had been made to feel, and look. The hot coals he had been dragged over. It never ceased to amuse and irritate him in equal measure how it had been him left to look after their daughter for the bulk of the time.
“We can’t take her out of school,” Amber had said during one of their last face to face conversations. During one of the last civil ones that was. Although even then, this conversation had barely managed to stay as such.
“Don’t leave then.”
“I think it’s a bit late for that.” Civility barely spread over open hostility. On both sides.
Adam shrugged. “At the very least, you don’t have to run so far away. I’m not that much of a monster.”
“I’m not running away.” Amber sighed, running one hand through her hair. She had cut it short. Very short. It didn’t suit her. She probably knew that and did it anyway. It was the type of thing she did. There was a time he would have told her, but it wasn’t his place to do so any more. “I’m going to stay with my parents for a bit. Get my head together.”
“In France.”
“It’s where they live. So…yes. France.”
“They must love you.”
She looked confused, only momentarily, before realising that it obviously didn’t pay to reveal any emotions. Not here. Not now. “Of course they do, I’m their daughter.”
Adam nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. It tasted like shit. Her choice of venue. A coffee house franchise. Neutral ground. Four pounds for shit coffee and a shit conversation.
“Uh huh. First sign of trouble, you go to your parents. Your parents love you. You’re their daughter. Your mum, most of all, I bet.”
Amber sighed. “Her school, Adam. She’s so happy there. She hasn’t been this happy before. Everything has clicked for her. She’s made the best friends and I don’t think it’s fair -”
“For you to fuck off to France and ditch her.”
Amber stared across the table. She hadn’t touched her own coffee. The one Adam had bought out of a gesture he had hoped she would refuse. Another four pounds. She had done it on purpose.
The conversation had gone back and forth like that, but ultimately nothing had changed. Ten more minutes and them Amber got up to leave. “Just do me one favour,” she had said, putting on the expensive coat Adam was sure she hadn’t owned before she had moved out.
“Apart from looking after your daughter for you?”
“Your daughter. And yes, apart from looking after our daughter.”
“What.”
“Don’t bring her to the house.”
“Who? I don’t know who you mean.” He stood as well, anger fuelling his rise. This was it. All masks off. Here was the true nature of the conversation. He wasn’t going to let this slide, she didn’t have the right to throw this at him.
By way of reply, she stole one baleful glance at him over her shoulder and left him with nothing more than a lukewarm cup of bitter coffee.
“Do you like it?”
He had drifted off. Thoughts consuming him the way that they did. He didn’t t know how long she had been waiting for a response.
“I love it,” he said, smiling again. He must have been getting better at it, as her expression - that strange expression he didn’t much care for - had given way to something more natural and childlike. She was genuinely happy he liked it. He suddenly wanted to keep this going. “Better than love it,” he added. “I super love it.”
She pecked him on the cheek and threw her arms around his neck. He suddenly felt nauseous again and fought against the bile that threatened to stage a resurgence up his throat.
“Are we going now? Can we go now? The tigers might not be there when we get there.”
“He swung his legs out of bed, ignoring the pain when Violet had rolled over them, and stood, trying o convince himself he felt fine.
“They’ll still be there when we get there, I promise. Just let me have a shower and get dressed, throw a cup of coffee down me then we’ll go okay? You’re not even dressed yet!” He bent over the bed and took her under her arms, convincing himself she wasn’t as heavy as she was, that she hadn’t grown as much as she had. He pulled her too him and growled, baring her teeth at her, causing he to explode into more giggles. “And they won’t have had their tea yet, so they’l be starving.”
She laughed as she pushed him away with one warm and slightly pudgy hand.
“I heard you scream?”
He stopped suddenly. Stepping back from her and leaving her on the bed. The light in the room had changed slightly. The tone had changed, from a warm mid-afternoon bright yellow glow to something more tinged with green. Darker and…stranger.
“Sorry sweetheart, what did you say?”
She looked puzzled now. That expression threatening to return.
“I just asked if there will be ice cream?”
The light returned to normal, and the sudden onset of anxiety washed away from him.
He smiled again, easily. Naturally.
“Oh,” he said, “I reckon they’ll sell ice cream. What’s your favourite?”
She thought for a moment and jumped up to join him in the doorway, grabbing his hand and pulling him through the hall towards the bathroom. The sooner, she figured, he had a shower, the sooner there would be ice cream.
“Rocky road!” She yelled.
He was laughing now. Despite the dizziness.
“Rocky road it is! Rocky road for both of us!”
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