Page 27 of Carver
God. She should be pissed that I’ve treated her sister like shit. I’ve never heard Ginny or Donna raise their voice, but if anything would give them a reason, it would be something like this. They could at least go on a lengthy rant about my diabolical behavior or my ostrich head syndrome, stuck so far down into the damn sand.
They could leave the ass kicking for Kenton and Gabriel.
If I was Kenton, I’d be devastated if someone treated my daughter that way, and if it was my sister, I know that I’d want vengeance. The thing about this family, is that they know how to feel their emotions. If they’re angry, they just let themselves be angry. They feel it, they breathe, and they let it go. I don’t know if it’s because they’re so highly educated themselves, butsomewhere along the way, Kenton and Donna taught their children the real deal stuff that they truly needed to go places in life. Not the bullshit you learn in a classroom that you forget the next hour and never use again.
“Will you sit down with us and talk?” Donna asks. I clearly have an option to say no, but she’s so warm and hopeful that I can’t.
As soon as I nod, Ginny brings the highchair from the corner of the kitchen over to the red Formica table. She gets half a cookie for Elowen and breaks it up onto a little blue plastic plate then adds a matching sippy cup with milk. As soon as Bronte settles Elowen into her chair, Donna has a bib in place.
The three of them work like a team, picking up where the other left off.
Could I take over for them if Bronte moved to Hart? Would I be able to do these things for my daughter? Feed her? Hold her? Put her to bed and get her up in the morning? Play with her, teach her, listen to her so that she can impart all the things I seem to have forgotten?
It’s not an if. It’s a when.
Iwilldo these things.
Wewillbe a family.
Visions of it fill my head while I sit down, Dravin beside me, Bronte pulling up a chair to my right. Ginny and Donna bracket the highchair, helping Elowen when she needs it. I never fully knew if I wanted kids, mostly because of my own upbringing. I was terrified of being my father, so I was terrified of ever becoming one. I knew I’d rather die than become him, but nothing is ever certain, is it?
Watching my daughter cram handfuls of cookie into her mouth that she squishes first, smearing chocolate everywhere, happy as if the whole world has been set at her feet, I know that one thing is beyond a certainty.
I would do anything for her.Anything.
I can’t comprehend the path my father chose, but whatever it was in his head that led to his destruction, I don’t have it in mine. Not to the same degree. That darkness had its time. It lost. It took me a fuck of a long time to tear my head out from out my own ass and come through it, but I’m out of it now and there is no going back.
I can see other little babies running around, Ellie as a big sister, Bronte with her hands wrapped around her bump, a house full of laughter.
It stays in the back of my mind while Ginny and Donna ask me polite questions, mostly about sculpting, my business, and the surgery I just had. I don’t feel like they’re prying or giving me the inquisition because they have doubts about my ability to take care of Bronte and Elowen, or because they’re trying to trap me into a web of regret and misery over the past. It’s so clear from every word, every question, every facial expression and gesture, just how much they missed me.
Later, Bronte puts her hand on top of mine on the table. The big brown teapot is empty, our mugs drained, the plate of cookies that Donna put on the table, gone.
“Ellie usually has a nap before dinner. Would you like to help me clean her up and settle her down?”
Elowen is sitting on her grandma’s lap now. She doesn’t look tired.
“Sometimes, she chooses not to sleep. She just has a rest while I read her a story, and that’s nice too. Just a break from all the action,” Bronte explains.
“Dinner has been all over the place with harvest season, but we try and keep her schedule consistent,” Donna says, getting up with Elowen. “Kenton and Gabriel promised to be back early today because they knew you were coming and wanted to stop at your place. They should be back in an hour, so I’m going to get dinner started while Ellie naps.”
Elowen shakes her head. Donna nods emphatically and kisses Elowen’s cheeks before she sets her in Bronte’s arms.
Dravin isn’t uncomfortable. He doesn’t mind sitting in the background, listening to me answer questions, rejoining a family that I’ve been absent for far too long from.
“Can I help you with anything?” he asks Donna. He’s so large in the chair that it looks like he’s hovering on nothing but air.
Donna usually handles her own kitchen, but she’s not about to let a guest sit idle and feel awkward either. “Certainly. I’ve got a mountain of potatoes that need peeling.”
“It’s a lucky thing I know my way around a knife or a peeler.”
“I call dessert.” Ginny crosses her arms stubbornly. “I like the fun parts of cooking. Not boring things like roasts and vegetables. Pies and cakes are so much more fun.”
“It’s a lucky thing that we’re a team. No one will starve on our watch.”
I’ve seen the spreads that this family sets out. It’s like a feast every night, especially during harvest time. Dinners might be late or early or all over the place, or sometimes packed up and taken out to the fields,
Bronte’s had the same room since she moved here as a kid. This farmhouse was built with care, and added onto over the years, before Kenton and Donna took it over. There are three bedrooms upstairs and two on the main floor.
