“PIRANHAS ARE LIKE SHARKS,” Rusty is telling me. “They have infinity teeth, but they have to replace them a quarter-mouth at a time, so it’s like if—”
She opens her mouth and points at the lower right half of her jaw.
“—ahh eez eef were missing but then they came back even sharper.”
“What do they do while their teeth are missing?” I ask. “Do they get dentures?”
Rusty giggles, still waving her new stuffed piranha around the living room. I think Crystal must have injected sugar straight into her veins or something, because this kid is hyped beyond hyped.
“They just use the other side,” she says. “A school of piranhas can eat a whole person in one minute.”
“Well, I’d imagine that depends on the size of the school and the size of the person,” Seth says from a couch. “It might take them two minutes if it’s a big person and a small school. There’s probably some sort of linear regression—’
“AHHHHH CHOMP!” Rusty shouts, ramming the fish’s mouth into Seth’s leg.
“Nooooooo my knee!” he yells, flailing both arms.
“OM NOM NOM MUNCH MUNCH—’
“—Not my leg, my beautiful leg—”
“—CRUNCH CRUNCH CHOMP—”
“That’s my foot, I need that to walk!”
“GULP. Ahhhhhh.”
Seth’s now slumped over sideways on the couch, moaning softly but dramatically as Rusty grins and giggles, two feet away.
“Best not to question piranhas,” I tell Seth, laughing on the other couch.
“I regret everything,” he says.
“He’s still hungry,” Rusty announces, waving the fish again.
“Your uncle Seth has another leg,” I point out, just as the front door opens again and Daniel comes inside.
He looks pissed, his mouth a straight line, his cheeks flushed the faintest pink, the line of his body rigid and controlled, like he wants to slam the door but closes it gently instead.
“Dad!” Rusty yelps, then skips over to him. “This is Sparkles, he just ate Uncle Seth’s leg.”
She throws both arms around Daniel, stuffed fish flopping in one hand, her face turned against his middle, and I can see his body relax as he hugs her back.
“That wasn’t very nice of him,” Daniel points out.
“I’ll get better,” Seth calls from the couch.
“Well, he’s just a fish and he was hungry,” Rusty says.
“I still think that Sparkles should apologize,” Daniel says, and shoots me a quick, meaningful glance.
My stomach tightens right away, because that was a something has gone awry glance.
“Piranhas have very primitive brains,” Rusty says, detaching from her dad. He ruffles her hair with one hand, not letting go just yet.
“My leg,” Seth moans, and Rusty sighs. Then she pulls away from Daniel and sticks her head over the back of the couch, looking down at Seth.
“Sparkles says he’s sorry,” she informs him.
“Tell Sparkles thank you,” Seth says graciously.
RUSTY TELLS us about her weekend for an hour, then re-tells us about her weekend when Levi and Caleb replace Seth, and then even after I head into the kitchen for some water and find myself discussing undiscovered Amazonian tribes with Eli for thirty minutes, I can hear her telling everyone about her weekend yet again.
Like I said, I think she may have had some sugar.
Finally, it’s her bedtime. Daniel herds her around to everyone, and when it’s my turn she throws her arms around me dramatically and squeezes for a long time. Then, just as quickly, she’s moved on to Eli.
“Can you stay after I get her to bed?” Daniel asks quietly.
I raise one eyebrow, but he smiles and shakes his head.
“Sadly, no,” he says. “I gotta tell you something.”
Then Rusty’s scampering upstairs, he’s hustling after her, and Eli and I go back to debating whether or not there are still undiscovered indigenous tribes anywhere on earth. It’s unclear who’s on which side here, but I can tell it’s definitely a debate.
Though, then again, it might just be because that’s how Eli interacts with the world. He debates it.
Forty-five minutes later, Daniel finally reappears. By now I’m sitting in the living room with just Clara, Caleb, and Seth, all of whom are discussing who’s going to win the current season of The Bachelor.
I’m just listening, having never seen an episode, and Daniel nods toward the kitchen, then disappears. When I come in, he’s pouring himself a glass of whiskey from the sideboard where his mom keeps it, then holds up the bottle.
“Want some?” he asks.
I eye his glass, which is at least three fingers full. Daniel’s not usually much of a drinker, despite owning a brewery, so I wonder what the hell Crystal said to him out there.
“I gotta drive home, but thanks,” I say, and he just nods and corks the bottle, then takes a good long sip.
“I hate her,” he murmurs, almost inaudible, swirling the brown liquid in the glass. “Charlie, I try so fucking hard not to, but I do. I hate her.”
“What happened?” I ask, and he takes another drink.
“She says she knows that we’re faking it,” he says.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND what she wants,” Daniel says, his eyes closed, his head in my lap as we rock gently. It’s thirty minutes later, his whiskey glass is drained, and we’re sitting on the porch swing.
Or, rather, I’m sitting and he’s lying across me, legs splayed off the side as we swing gently through the warm night air. The porch light is off to keep the bugs away, and the only light is from a sliver of moon and the stars above.
“I mean, why try to get custody when she never actually wants to see Rusty?” he asks, rhetorically, his eyes closed. “She’s cancelled so many visits, Charlie.”
“I know,” I say, stroking his hair back from his forehead.
“I think Rusty knows,” he says. “I try not to make a big deal out of it when Crystal cancels, but there’s no way to not tell her. She gets so disappointed, and I feel so fucking awful.”
My left hand is on his chest, and he finds it in one of his, closes his fingers around mine.
“I don’t even want full custody,” he says. “I’d love to split it fifty-fifty. I don’t want to keep her from her mom, I just want Crystal to want to be her mom and I don’t think she ever will.”
“I know,” I say softly.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Once or twice a year for the past five or so years, Daniel’s gotten tipsy after Rusty comes back from a visit and told me all this: how much he hates Crystal, how he wishes she were different, how he’s afraid that he’s screwed his kid up for life.
“I almost married her,” he says. “You want to know the craziest fucking thing, Charlie?”
My heart trips in my chest, takes a moment, beats again. I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t know that, though it makes sense. Sprucevale is small, Southern, conservative; if you knock a girl up, you best marry her.
“You did?” I ask.
“Yeah, and I wondered for years if I should have,” he says. “I swear I heard it a thousand fucking times, do the right thing.”
It hits me like lightning turning sand to glass: he says it and I harden, brittle, afraid that if I breathe, I’ll break.
For years? How many years?
“Maybe it would have been,” he goes on, his eyes still closed. “Maybe if I’d done the right thing like everyone said I should, Rusty would have a dog and a picket fence and a little sister and we’d be doing whatever the fuck happy married couples are supposed to do. I don’t know. Bowl in a league or some shit.”
I swallow. I make myself breathe, brush his hair back again.
“I couldn’t make myself go through with it,” he says. “I looked at rings exactly once and I had to leave the store to puke on the sidewalk outside because I couldn’t stomach the thought of marrying someone I didn’t love.”
I had no idea. We weren’t as close for a little while after he found out about Rusty — he suddenly had a child, I was working two jobs and trying to get my shit together — but he’s never told me this before.
I look down at the ring on my finger, the light inside it moving with the rocking of the porch swing. I know he doesn’t like Crystal. I know he’s never liked Crystal, but I know he loves Rusty and I know his guilt over her is deep and real.
“Do you even like bowling?” I ask. It’s the first thing that pops into my head that I can say out loud.
“No,” he says. “I mean, I don’t hate it, either. I guess I’m neutral on bowling.”
“And picket fences?”
“Maybe if I’d married her, she’d love Rusty,” he says. “Maybe if we’d gotten together, at least lived in the same house, she’d have spent time with her and gotten to know her better, been there when she started walking and talking and reading, sent her off to her first day of school, come to her ballet recitals…”
I lean my head back, silent, try to control my breathing as tears prick my eyes.
I hate Crystal. I hate her. Not just what she’s done to Rusty but for what she’s done to Daniel, for making him twist himself into knots over not marrying her years ago. For making him think that her behavior is his fault. For letting him think that if he’d done something differently, they’d all a perfect, happy family right now.
And I hate her for making me glad that they’re not. I hate her for the small, savage pleasure of knowing that instead of two kids and a loving wife and a dog and a picket fence, Daniel’s drunk and holding my hand right now.
I hate her for making me glad that his happy ending hasn’t happened yet because it means I get him.
“I’m glad I didn’t, though,” he says, after a moment. “Even if it meant she’d have come to ballet recitals. Because I’d be fucking miserable and I wouldn’t be here right now.”
I tap my thumb on his chest as he opens his eyes, deep and blue as the night sky. He taps one finger on the stone in my ring, absentmindedly, watching my face. After a moment he sits up on the swing and puts his arm around me, tilts his head back and I lean against his shoulder.
“And I’m really glad I’m here right now,” he says softly.
