Outside the Lines: A Novel

Three weeks after my father emerged from hibernation in his studio, part of me wished he had never come out. His sadness took on an angry edge I hadn’t seen before, and though it was directed at my mother and not at me, I still felt it. It took up all the air in the room.

“Are you watching, Lydia?” my father asked each morning, standing in front of the kitchen sink while my mother and I ate breakfast. He placed the pill on his tongue with an exaggerated motion. “Thsee?” he lisped, and then swallowed, chasing it down with an entire glass of milk.

“Yes, David,” my mom said. She wasn’t looking at him. “I see.”

This was pretty much the extent of their daily interaction. They hardly even looked at each other. Mom left for work, I went to school, and Dad did who-knows-what all day while we were gone. As far as I knew, he never left the house. I worried about him as I sat in class, absentmindedly twirling a piece of my hair, wondering if he was safe, unsure if he’d be there when I came home. One day, Mr. Pitcher caught me. He always called on the person he knew was spacing out. This was not the first time it had happened to me.

“Eden, can you come up here and work out the answer to number eight on the board, please?”

Staring at the complicated mess of numbers on the chalkboard, my face immediately flamed. It was a new way to divide, and I had no idea how to do it. I threw a glance over to Tina Carpenter, who still hung out with me while we were at school even though her mom wouldn’t let her come over because of my dad. We ate lunch together, and occasionally I even went over to her house to play. It wasn’t her fault her mom was so mean. She tucked her curly red bob behind one ear and rolled her brown eyes, as if to tell me she didn’t understand how to work the problem, either. Of course, she had probably been paying attention.

“Eden?” Mr. Pitcher said.

Slowly, I slid out from behind my desk and took deliberate steps toward the front of the class. As I brushed past Eric Callahan, a chubby boy who regularly picked his nose and stole other kids’ lunch money, he put his hand over his mouth, pretended to sneeze, and spat out the words, “Your dad’s a freak.”

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. “What did you just say?”

He turned his round, freckled face toward me and reached up to brush his mop of blond hair out of his beady blue eyes. “I said, ‘Your dad’s a freak.’”

“That’s enough, Eric,” Mr. Pitcher said. “One more outburst like that and you’re going to the office.” He sighed. “Eden, let’s just work the problem, okay?”

My blood felt hot. My skin crackled with anger and before I could stop it, my arm shot out from my side, fist clenched. Eric’s nose erupted.

“Ow, ow, ow!” he cried, rocking back and forth in his seat, cupping both hands over his nose and mouth.

“Eden West!” Mr. Pitcher shouted. He stomped over and pulled me away from Eric’s seat. “What were you thinking?”

Tears burned in my eyes as I continued to stare at Eric. “I was thinking he’s a jerk.” Half of the class laughed, the other half was dead silent. I was usually one of the quiet kids.

Mr. Pitcher held my arm and steered me toward the door. “To the office. Now.” He turned and stepped back toward Eric, who whimpered like a baby while blood dripped down.

An hour later, my mother came to get me. The secretary in the office told me she was going to call my dad, but I stopped her by saying he was sick. The last thing I needed was for him to come to the school and make a scene in front of everyone. He’d done that before, when I didn’t get picked for a part in a holiday play. Too shy to get up in front of that many people, I hadn’t even auditioned in the first place, but that didn’t matter to my dad.

“It’s an injustice!” he yelled as he stood in the hallway near my locker, wearing paint-splattered turquoise sweatpants and an orange sweater. “My daughter’s a star!”

“Daddy, don’t,” I pled quietly. My classmates stopped in their tracks and their eyes burned into me. But he didn’t listen, pulling at his hair and continuing on his rant about sexual discrimination and social crimes until the vice principal came to escort him out of the building. I stayed home pretending to be sick for three days after that, too embarrassed to show my face.

Now, after a brief meeting with the head principal, who explained that if I had another physical outburst I’d be suspended, Mom drove me home. “I don’t understand why you’d react like that,” she said. “It’s just not like you.”

I shrugged, looking out the window and sinking down as far as possible in my seat. I didn’t want to talk about what Eric had said. My mother knew—Mr. Pitcher had told her—but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. The shame I felt burned in my belly. I hated that everyone knew about my father’s problems. In that moment, more than anything else, I wanted him to be someone else. To wear a suit and a tie and go to a job that he complained about while he watched football on Sunday afternoons with a beer in his hand. A father who mowed the lawn and knew how to work on our car when it broke. I wanted him to be normal.

“Are you working on a painting, Daddy?” I asked him later that afternoon after Mom had gone back to work and I’d spent a few hours in my room, losing myself in a book. I was rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, hoping Frances Nolan might give me some kind of help on how to deal with an unstable father whom she couldn’t help but adore.

He was sitting on our couch watching Oprah. His fingers rested loosely around the neck of a pint of vodka. He wasn’t supposed to drink with his medication. I wondered if he was fooling us in the mornings. If he’d found a way to hide the pill under his tongue without us noticing. He’d done it before.

“No,” he said. His eyes rested at half-mast. “I’m finished painting.” He lifted the vodka bottle up and waggled it at me. “Between us, right, Bug?”

If I didn’t answer him, did I have to keep his secret? Where did he get the alcohol if he wasn’t leaving the house? His friend Rick, probably. I’d seen Rick bring my father little baggies full of what looked like lawn clippings, which Tara White had explained to me was actually drugs. I felt sick thinking my dad was lying to us again.

“Do you want me to help you take some of your new paintings to the gallery?” My chin trembled as I spoke. “Maybe someone will want to buy one again.” About six months prior, the Wild Orchid Gallery in Bellevue had purchased a series of sunset watercolors my father had done. They talked to him about doing a show, but according to my mom, he got flaky when he went off his meds and they lost interest.

“They don’t want any more of my work,” he said. “Nobody does. It’s pointless. It’s all pointless. They’re all out to get me, anyway. They hate all the great artists. Why should I be any different?” He took a swig from the bottle.

I went and sat next to him on the couch. “They don’t hate you. They can’t. Your paintings are too pretty. Can I see the new ones? The ones you did in January?”

“They’ll be worth more when I’m gone.” He stared at me, but there was nothing of him in his eyes. No liveliness, no knowing wink. Was this the meds, or was he just drunk? I didn’t know how to tell.

My stomach flip-flopped at his words. “Don’t say that.”

“I can’t help it if it’s true.”

I tried a different approach. “Will you come see the tulips in the Garden of Eden? They’re all blossoming now. The hyacinths, too. They smell so yummy.”

He blinked a couple of times. “What?”

“The garden we planted,” I said with a lump rising in my throat. “Remember? You said if we waited, the good part would come and it did. It’s out front.”

“Oh, right.” He sighed and turned his attention back to the TV. “I’m too tired. Maybe another day.”

I stayed upstairs until my mom came home later in the evening. She knocked before coming into my room, where I lay on my bed, trying to figure out my math homework without making my brain explode. Multiplication was a language I just didn’t know how to speak.

“Hi,” I said, taking in her tired eyes and slumped shoulders. “How was your day?”

She gave me a little frown. “Other than picking my daughter up at school for fighting, it was fine. Busy trying to get everything ready for taxes.” She sat down on the edge of my bed and circled her hand over my back. “How are you? Any better?”

I shrugged. She was only being nice about what I’d done to Eric because she knew what he had said.

“Uh-oh. Are you still upset about that silly boy? You can’t let ignorant people get to you, sweetie. And that’s what he is. Ignorant.”

I shook my head but didn’t answer her. I didn’t want her to see me cry. Again.

She sighed and continued to rub my back. “You’re worried about Dad, I know. I am too. He won’t go see the doctor, sweetie. He needs his meds adjusted so he’s not such a zombie.”

I didn’t know if I should tell her about the vodka. “He’s so mad,” I said. “He didn’t even want to go look at our garden. And he’s not painting.” I felt the tears squeeze out and drop onto my worksheet. “I know he has new paintings in his studio, Mom. I saw them. Can’t we sell them for him? So you don’t have to worry so much about the bills?” I wanted to help my mother. I wanted to do anything to make sure she wouldn’t want to leave me, too.

“You are very sweet to think of that, but he locked the door and hid the key. I don’t want to break it down. He already doesn’t trust me after the last time I did that.” Last year, after my dad had locked himself in the garage for over a week, threatening to drink paint thinner, my mom had used a crowbar to pop the lock off the garage so the medics could take him to the hospital. He came back a month later, utterly blank and lethargic. All he did was stare into space.

Now my mom leaned down and lifted up my chin so I was forced to make eye contact with her. “We’ll be okay, Eden. I’ll do whatever I need to.”

“Like put him in the hospital again?” My lower lip quivered as I spoke.

“He might need to be there. It might be better for him . . .”

“Maybe I could ask him to go to the doctor so he can get his medicine fixed. Maybe he’d listen to me.”

She pulled her hand away from my chin and wiped my tears across my cheeks with her thumbs. “He doesn’t listen to anyone, sweetie. He can’t. That’s part of what’s wrong with his brain when he gets like this. It doesn’t let him hear things, even if they’re the right things. Does that make sense?”

“No.”

“I wish I knew how to explain it better, but I just don’t. It’s hard for me to understand, too.” She straightened and stood up. “Frozen pizza okay for dinner?”

“Can we have it hot instead of frozen?” I asked.

She rewarded me with a laugh. “Oh, you want it fancy tonight, huh?” She ruffled my hair. “You’re a smarty-pants. But I love you to pieces.”

Later, after we ate in a silence that my mother tried to fill by asking me silly questions about school and the books I was reading, I went back upstairs. But instead of going in my room, I sat at the top of the stairway, tucked behind the railing. My parents were talking in the dining room.

“You’re scaring her,” my mother said. “You have to get it together, David.”

“Why is it me who always has to ‘get it together’?” my father answered. “Why can’t you?”

“You’re not making sense. I can’t talk to you about this until you get your meds straightened out. If you’re actually taking them.”

“Oh, first you want me on my meds, and now that I’m on them you’re not happy, either? You know what I think? I think it’s you who has the mental illness.” His words slurred. He was definitely drunk. “Not me. You. You’re completely fucked-up.”

“I’m not going to do this anymore, David. I can’t. Not with you like this. I’m responsible for everything. The bills, the shopping, the house, helping Eden with her homework. I might as well be a single parent.”

I heard a chair screech across the wood floor, most likely my dad pushing it back from the table. “Fucking be a single parent, then! What the fuck do I care? Abandon me. That’s fine. Just like everyone else. Just like my parents, just like the galleries. No one wants me. I’m not worth a fucking thing.”

“Oh, poor David,” my mother said. Her tone was soaked in venom. “The tortured artist. What about his tortured wife? Or his child? Does anyone give a shit about them?”

“Not me.” I heard my father’s lumbering footsteps and I scrambled to hide around the corner to make sure he didn’t catch me listening. My heartbeat pounded inside my head.

“No, of course not you!” My mom was yelling now. “It’s never you! It’s always someone else’s fault. Your medication or your doctors. God forbid you actually tell yourself the truth.”

“And what’s that?” my dad yelled back at her. “Tell me, oh great and powerful Lydia! Don’t hold back! Give it to me straight!”

“You’re out of your fucking mind! That’s the truth!”

“Fuck you!” my father screamed. There was a terrible crash, strong enough to make the wall I was leaning against shudder. The sound of breaking glass and clattering metal made me race down the stairs and into the dining room. My father had upended the table. Shards of porcelain and glass lay all around my mother’s feet. He’d been aiming for her. She was standing in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, her right hand pressed flat against her chest. Her face was flushed bright pink and she was breathing hard, her blond hair loose and wild around her head. My father was slumped to his knees on the floor; his head was in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry.”

“Eden, I want you to go back upstairs,” my mother said. Her voice trembled. “Now.”

“Are you okay, Momma?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I just need you to go upstairs.”

My father looked up to me with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it, Bug. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I took a couple of steps toward him. He began to sob.

“Eden!” my mother shouted. “Don’t! You’ll cut yourself!”

I looked down at my bare feet. She was right. “I love you, Daddy,” I said. My throat flooded with tears. “It’ll be okay, I promise. Everything will be all right.” I recited the words he’d said to me countless times over the years, when I’d fallen and scraped my knee or had a fight with my best friend. In that moment I realized how empty they were. How pointless it was to say them. I couldn’t make my father promises any more than he could make them to me.

I ran up to my room and climbed under the covers. My sobs came hard and fast, racking my body until I was too exhausted to stay awake. I fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of chasing after a shadowy figure. Every time it came within my reach, each time I thought I might have caught up, it slipped away.

It was still dark when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. My eyes were so swollen they barely cooperated when I tried to get them to open. I had to blink several times before I saw my father standing over me.

“Daddy? Are you okay?”

“Shh,” he said, hushing me. “Yes, I am. I’m so sorry, Bug, for making things so hard for you.”

I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at him. The moonlight shone through my window enough for me to see that he was freshly showered, but his eyes were as puffy as mine felt. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. Your mother was right about one thing. I need to take responsibility for myself. I’m a mess, Eden.”

“If maybe you’d go to the doctor, he could get your medicine all worked out,” I said. “And then you would be okay.” I didn’t want to point out that I was pretty sure he hadn’t been taking it in the first place. At least, not for long.

“I can’t take the medicine. It makes me crazier than I am without it. What happened tonight wasn’t me. It was the medication. I’m going to find another way to get better. Do you want to come?”

“You’re leaving?” A panicky beat pounded in my chest.

“Yes. I’m going to take my paintings on the road. We’ll go to galleries all up and down the coast until we have enough money to come back. I’ve already loaded up the car. What do you say, baby? I need my wingman. Just like selling lemons at our lemonade stand. It’ll be you and me.”

“But . . . what about Mom?”

“Mom will be fine. She’s good at taking care of things, right? So she’ll take care of herself. And you can call her. When we have enough money so she doesn’t have to worry about working anymore, we’ll come back and we can be a family again.”

I tried to imagine what that would be like. Enough money for my mom to never have to work. How happy that would make her. My mind shot off rapid-fire thoughts. I was afraid to leave. But I couldn’t let my dad go. I didn’t know what to do.

“Do we have to go right now?” I asked. “Can’t we wait until morning and talk with her?”

“No, it can’t wait. She’s finally sleeping and I’m leaving.” He turned toward the door. “I understand if you don’t want to come, baby. I’m used to no one believing in me.”

With that pronouncement, he left. I listened for his steps on the stairs, but he must’ve tiptoed because I didn’t hear them. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was a little stunned that with all the crying I’d done the night before more tears were already streaming down my face. I didn’t want my father to become like the shadow in my dream. If I let him go now, I might never see him again. I realized I was still in my clothes—I had fallen asleep in them.

Before I knew it, I had slipped on my Keds and was running as quietly but as fast as I could down the stairs and out the door. I grabbed my jacket and my backpack on the way out and raced to my father’s car. He sat in the driver’s seat, his hands placed squarely at ten and two. The motor was already running. He’d been waiting for me.

I jumped into the front seat and he looked over to smile at me. It was then I noticed his left hand wasn’t just holding the steering wheel, but also a prescription bottle. His window was open and he held the bottle outside. The lid was off. He poured the full bottle of tiny white pills onto the street, right where my mother could find them.

“Ready for an adventure?” he asked, and I nodded my head, too afraid of what might happen if I told my daddy no.