Me, Myself, and I

pieces

It had been thirty minutes since my resurgence into Delcoph, New York. I had a list. People. Apologies. Actions. Only after did I remember I wouldn't be able to read said list, let alone write one. I explained the images in my head, how I imagined it all going down. Make it feel impulsive so I'd actually get it done.

I started with the text messages. Telling Valerie I was okay. Telling Austin I hadn't roped Ben into a bank heist. An apology to Leah and Joey, wishing them best of luck next year. Good luck next year to Brooke. I made my way down my contact list, scrolled back to the top.

We met at the park, sat on a bench with a safe amount of distance between us.

"Alex I—"

"God, I messed up. I so messed up. You're so smart. I never said that enough. Are you okay? Where did you go? Did you end up—"

I stepped back. "You were right, Alex. There was nothing waiting for me in Idaho. But I don't expect the entirety of Delcoph to wait for me to catch up with the rest of society."

"I don't know what any of that means, but I am so happy you're okay."

"That means we should break up."

His turn to lengthen the distance. "What?"

"We want different things, Alex, the kinds of different things we can really only get if we are with different people. You want someone who's smart and hardworking and satisfied with reliance and I...The difference between you and me is you know exactly what you want, and I haven't the slightest clue.

"I can tell you what I don't want. I'm really good at that. I can explain and explain and explain. I don't want this, anymore. I know that much. I don't want someone else. I don't want anyone. I want to understand me and my head. I can't do that with you. I just can't. And I can't hold you back anymore."

He pinched his nose, met my eyes. "You make it sound like we were some high school fling that went on too long." I didn't have an answer for that one. I realized my hands were still in his. "I can change, Jewels. We can make this work."

I let him hold them a bit longer before dropping them to my sides. "Just because we can, doesn't mean we should."

My hands in his again. Me pulling them back again.

"I'll miss you, Alex. I will."

And I walked. Walked and walked. Back home, my true home, the one floor two bedroom house on (so and so) street. The one with no pictures because everyone who mattered was under the same roof. The one with the dirty burnt pans and trays and cracked plates and soggy cake batter.

Dad wasn't home.

I wandered about the house, pulling out the recipe box from beneath my bed. For once I was grateful for the coded handwriting, tiny letters and random capitals in the middle of sentences. One of my high school notebooks covered it. We had the same types of swirls and gestures and big dots on the eyes and tiny crosses on the "t"'s. All of these recipes. Burnt and disrespected at my hands.

We have one photo album. Only a couple of pictures, one of Max, one with Margaret. Lots of me, one in front of an alphabet poster, one in my room, in kindergarten holding up a painting. Things I'd forgotten about, things that I could only remember through a picture.

I slid the first few recipe cards into the clear plastic. Again and again until my precious box was empty with the exception of a couple of school notebooks. My stomach gnawed at me, and I made my way into the kitchen, dropping the scrapbook on the table, and started up a pot of coffee. I glared at the recipe cards once more. Imagined tasting chocolate chip cookies the way she had made them, but now a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I knew how much flour to put in a batch. I knew what the batter looked like after the perfect amount of milk. I closed the book again, pulled out ingredients, eying up approximate measurements, leaving all the spoons and cups in hiding in the drawers. For once the calming effect returned, and I forgot where I was, who these were for. The oven beeped to end its preheat, and I slid the tray in, setting the timer. I sat back at the table to flip through more photographs when the front door swished open.

Dad's arms squeezed me in, and I hugged him back as if it could be my last time doing so.

"Did you see her?" he said, setting down stacks of documents onto the table. I nodded. "H-how did it go?"

His eyes were wide behind his glasses, taking in the world around him. I flipped to the next page in the photo album, where Margaret held me up beside some Disney World statue of Dumbo. We wore silver tiaras, faces caked in frosting-like makeup. I smiled and turned the page. Dad and I in a similar position, except in that photograph I had tried to grab his glasses into my tiny fists. Terror and laughter on his face, insane curiosity on mine, slightly blurry due to a cackling camera-woman.

I wasn't sure what he wanted to hear. That she missed him, maybe? Or that she was happy? I had done enough lying to him, and to myself.

"Well, she never left."

"What do you mean?"

Did he not know? "She's living in our house."

He raised his brow. "What?"

"She is good, isn't she?" I flipped to the next page of the photo album, slipping in another recipe card. "She's in Idaho. She's living in the old house. Has the place done up like we never left. Well, except for my room."

"I'm so sorry."

I laughed. "You're apologizing for her?"

"No. I'm sorry because I know my daughter, and a part of me knew that I'd just push you to go find answers on your own the more I hid them from you." He bit his lip. "I hope the trip wasn't a total waste."

"Oh, it was. But I think it was important." I knew what I didn't want to become. Knowing what I didn't want seemed more important than anything. "Did you know that Mom has dyslexia?" I said. He frowned, flipping back to her photograph. "Call it a hunch."

His eyes traced back to another time. "Never would've guessed it. She was always at the top of her class."

"I'm not asking if she was stupid. She's too sociopathic to be stupid. I'm asking if she has dyslexia."

"I honestly don't know, Julia. Your mother is an absolute enigma to me."

"But you helped her anyway." And she scrounged up his cash to buy the house back.

He put his hands in his pockets, meandered towards the window. "I don't really have a good excuse. Just helping out someone who needed it, doing my job. I don't know what I really hoped would come from sending a few checks. Something selfish, I gather. Something very self-serving and imaginative, something—"

"Something impossible."

"Yes. An impossible that made sense in my head. That still does."

I flipped ahead a few more pages. Freshman in high school. Pretty sure that was my last year in Idaho. I squeezed Dad's hand. "We don't have to forget about her. Or him. I don't think that's what we're supposed to do. And, we can forgive, one day, I guess. But that doesn't mean we have to forget."

"So this must be how my patients feel." He smiled. "Do I ever feel stupid." He flipped to the next page again, then paused. "Have you been baking?"

The oven chimed in respond. I sprinted over, pulled out the tray, stared at the cooling, cooked dough. Golden brown, perfect number of chips separating the batter.

Dad watched me. "I've been researching dyslexia. Talked to the specialist who administered the first est again. She said it happens more often than you'd think, missing its early warning signs. She said it's easier than it should be to attribute strugglings to something else, completely missing the root of the problem. It's up to you, though. I'm sorry if it ever didn't feel that way."

"Have a cookie, Dad."

"Is it poisoned?"

He smiled, took a bite. For once it did not lead to a grimace. He grabbed another one.