Finding Cupid

Chapter 10

POV: Alice

            “Alice,” my dad slurred. I had caught him finding solace at the bottom of a bottle of vodka, but he had been too far gone to register that he should be embarrassed by his behavior. “C’mere, baby. Let me tell you about your mother.”

            “Daddy, you’re drunk. You need to sleep it off – you have work tomorrow! Your boss called and he said that if you’re out again, he’s going to have to lay you off. Please, Daddy!” I begged him from a few feet away. My dad wasn’t a violent drunk, but he reeked of alcohol and I had grown to detest the smell. I was just a kid, eleven and three quarters, but I was used to dealing with a drunken father. My dad often found that the best way to silence his demons was to drown them in liquor.

            “No,” he whined. “I want to talk to you, Jelly Bean. You’re almost twelve. It’s important that you know about things.”

            I couldn’t resist my father when he called me by my childhood nickname. He had started to call me Jelly Bean when I was a baby because I once shoplifted a bag of Jelly Beans without knowing that I was doing it. He thought it was the funniest thing, so he started to call me his little Jelly Bean thief. Jelly Bean was something he used to call me before he discovered the allure of intoxication; it reminded me of better times, of times before our heat would go off because my father was too drunk to remember to pay the bills. I sat down next to him at the kitchen table, a shoddy structure that I had helped my dad build when we only had enough money to buy some nails and to chop down the biggest tree in our backyard.

            “Jelly Bean, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t love your mother when I first met her. I didn’t even know her,” he admitted, his voice slow and his words mixed together. He sounded like syrup. I couldn’t say that I was surprised. He never really talked about my mom, so I always just assumed she wasn’t someone that he had been really attached too. Once, I saw him crying over a silvery dress, but I thought that was more because of nostalgia for times when he didn’t have a daughter to look after. “But I had seen her a few times at a bar that some friends and I liked to go to. I didn’t think much of it at first – she was stunning, but she was always with a different man, and she always looked bored, so I assumed that she wouldn’t be interested.”

            “Daddy,” I tried to interrupt, remembering that the water bill needed to be paid within the next forty-eight hours or we would be without hot water again. He held up a hand.

            “I was in college at the time, in med school. I was going to be a doctor. I used to be smart, kiddo, before your mother happened. I don’t even know how she happened, Alice, to be honest. One second I was laughing with a friend and the next we were pressed together on the dance floor. She was beautiful, Alice. Oh God was she beautiful. You look like her… you are so much like her. So smart and beautiful. You have her dark hair and her grey eyes. It hurts to look at you sometimes.” I flinched at his words. I knew it was difficult for him, but I wasn’t expecting him to sound so… weak. Even though my dad drank a lot, he was a strong man. He was Superman. He took care of me the best that he could and when things got tough he would do whatever he could to make it better. We lived in a small town in Minnesota where everyone knew everyone, so it was hard to escape from his reputation, but he did the best that he could. “I told you that I had only been with your mother for one night, right kiddo?” I nodded. “Alright. I’ll stick to that. We spent one night together. Her name was Athena—“

            “Like the goddess from Percy Jackson?” I asked.

            “Just like her,” he nodded. Maybe all the emotions were getting to him, but his words sounded heavier. He didn’t sound quite as drunk, just sad. “Your mother looked like a model. She was tall, even taller than me, with long legs and she was paler than the moon, kiddo, and I could have sworn that I loved her because she was so beautiful. Anyway, we spent that night together. You know what… um… well, you know how babies are made, right?” I nodded because he had told me once when he was drunk and also because we had learned about it in health class. “Well, even after that, she stayed. We stayed up all night talking, and then we went to breakfast – she wore a pair of my boxer shorts and one of my button downs, but she still looked like a million bucks. Somehow, kiddo, she made me love her. I don’t even understand it, but she made me fall for her.”