FIC: Push (Silent Hill) 2/3
Title: Push (2/3)
Author: skyofisis
Pairing: Gen
Rating: M
Warnings/Triggers: domestic violence, promiscuity, a whole lot of language
Words: 3,975
Part One.
2.
Laura grows. It isn’t easy. James always knew she’d grow to be tall, so some nights she cries, holding her knees and praying for the pain to go away. He rubs her back and shoulders until she gets too old for it.
At 10, she’s mostly outside, playing with the other kids. She likes hopscotch, kickball, and hanging from the monkey bars. It’s always been a quiet neighborhood filled with discreet neighbors and nice kids, and he appreciates how boring and tame it is. He can do boring and routine. He slips into it easily.
Things are peaceable for a while.
One morning a constable comes knocking, saying Mr. Sunderland, open the door, and he puts his finger to his lips and shakes his head at Laura, who’s holding a Barbie to her chest and glimpsing from the window to him, wondering what the plan of action is. When the constable decides they’re not home, he eventually goes away, but James knows he’s only going to be back with more guys and a cruiser to shove him in with his hands behind his back.
James holds Laura’s hand as they tiptoe throughout the house, snatching anything they can carry and then sneaking out through the basement.
Such a shame, James thinks as they put the place in their rear-view mirror. Laura really liked it there.
He can’t really pinpoint where it all began, but things change at some point, and all too easily.
He’s worked his way around temper tantrums, the cold shoulder, crying fits, and even the stupid pranks she loved to swear was all in good fun and didn’t know it would turn all his shirts pink or flood the backyard. What he doesn’t suspect is her sprouting up like a tree at 13 and garnering the attention of so many boys. At first he was terrified. Now he’s just ready to load the shotgun if he finds out so much as one boy is planning to meet up with her somewhere and he wasn’t told about it well in advance.
She’s yelled that she hates him and she’s gonna run away and all that many a time. James just shakes his fatherly head and grounds her. And this works…for a couple of years, at least.
Until high school. Until she’s 16. Until the day he feared finally comes and his power wanes. A shit storm he never anticipated reaches his shore, and the weapon is an unlikely foe, but a formidable one.
Laura makes friends. Which is nice, he supposes. A girl should have lots of friends, shouldn’t she? The only thing that has him a bit disconcerted is the kinds of girls she brings home. One girl, Mona, is what they called in his day “boy-crazy”, but she’s not the same kind of boy-crazy they had in the 60’s. Mona talks about a lot of boys in ways that only their future wives should know them, and she isn’t one to withhold any detail. James doesn’t even mean to press his ear against the door until he hears the word ‘g-strap’. That’s… not what girls talked about when he was growing up. At least, not to his knowledge. Maybe he’s a bit too conservative for the times, but… will Laura really be okay having sleepovers with girls like these?
It’s Saturday night. She was supposed to be back by 9 but now it’s 11:20 and James is pacing and praying for his phone to ring. He’d called three times and left a message each time, threatening to get the cops involved if she insisted on ignoring him (she’s been doing that of late). He rubs his forehead, squinting his eyes closed, not wanting to, not wanting to, but he has to. He can’t do this.
He doesn’t meant to. He doesn’t mean it. He didn’t want it to come to this, but it’s getting to be too much. He doesn’t want to feel this right now. He doesn’t want this anymore.
James walks into the kitchen and flings open the cabinet under the sink where Laura never looks. She tried to take them away from him, finding all his hiding spots and draining them in the sink. He knows it isn’t good, but it’s just for this time. He just needs it to be mellow, to feel okay. Just a little, and he’ll be fine. Just to take the edge off. He won’t go overboard.
Finally, at 12:45, Laura returns, sour faced and with her arms crossed over her chest. She doesn’t smell like a girl should smell. She smells like she’s been somewhere she shouldn’t have been.
“Is that cologne?” James asks.
“Why are you so obsessed with me?” she says with a cruel inflection, “You called, like, a million times.”
“Because I didn’t know where the fuck you were,” he shouts. James crowds her against the wall. “Where were you? Were you out there with Mona and all her boyfriends?”
Laura looks frightened for a moment and then at the mention of Mona she scoffs and laughs harshly. “Mona has a boyfriend. She’s not going around sleeping with all these guys. Where the hell’d you get that idea?”
“Don’t cuss at me, young lady,” James raises his voice again. “And for your information, that’s not what I heard.”
Something strikes Laura then, a realization that her privacy was breached. “You-were you listening in on us or something? Like an old pervert?” Laura lurches forward, fists clenched, catching James off guard and forcing him to step back so she won’t crash into his chest. “You listened in on Mona and me. You sicko! You sick-”
James grabs her forearm and yanks her to him. “You little bitch,” he spits. “I gave you everything. Didn’t I give you everything?”
She squirms but his grip is too tight. “Quit it,” she cries.
“You’re a bad girl.” James breathes on her, and suddenly Laura understands. “And bad girls only go down one road.”
Laura is dragged to her room and shoved in, startled by the loud slam of the door behind her. James pants on the other side. She can practically feel the heat of his exhales through it. “From now on the only places you’ll be hanging out is at school and in your room. Tell all your little sluts they’re not your friends anymore.”
James stalks away, leaving Laura to wonder just where the hell that came from.
At this age, Laura’s all about her girlfriends. She never wants to be at home. James gets used to the loneliness. He knows it pretty well and Laura should be out there living her life. It’s not something he can help. All he can really do is stand back and let her have fun and try not to think about how his life is already over. But when he’s alone he doesn’t like the things he does. Or the places he goes to.
Laura can get snippy with him from time to time, but he lets it all roll off. That only makes her complain and say he’s more boring and needs to get a hobby or get some friends.
Then another change happens, and James doesn’t go a single day without a shot or a swig of something. At first he tells her it’s nerves. She tells him he’s ‘self-medicating’ but he brushes it off as a stupid term she learned from TV and tells her to eat her dinner.
“Do you have to have wine with everything?” Laura asks.
“Don’t make that face. It makes you look ugly,” James swirls the pasta around his fork like a spool, his eyes downcast.
“Why don’t you ever date anyone?”
James drops his fork onto his plate and meets her with hard eyes. “What kind of questions are these? Doesn’t sound like a nice dinner conversation to me.”
“Cos it isn’t,” she carelessly frowns and picks at her food again.
The curfew only lasts for a day or two, after which James briefly apologizes for his “exaggerated” reaction to the situation and admits maybe he should relax. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” he rubs her arms, which she hates. “You can’t worry me like that.”
The soft eyes, the sentimentality, the agreeableness. Laura hates all of it.
She’s heard this all before. He says things like this every time. Laura shrugs him off and closes the door on him, languishing on her bed and popping in her headphones to drown out the burning in her chest and throat.
What’s the point of dumping it? She thinks. The bastard only buys more.
There are other times, too. They just keep piling up. James gets smashed, does something stupid, says he’s sorry the next day. He’s grounded her, sent her to her room, called her a bitch, slut, whore, cunt and anything else that might have applied to her in his whiskey addled brain at the time. Made her cry. It’s sickening even to him but she’s so damn beautiful when she cries and maybe that’s why he does it. He’s heard girls say that guys like to make them cry because they get a kick out of it. Perhaps it’s true. Some men make a girl cry because they think it’s funny to see their eyes get puffy and watch hyperventilate and try to speak at the same time. He sees that, yet it shouldn’t make sense. Laura’s beautiful when she cries but he doesn’t grasp how that can be. He’s supposed to be a father, thoroughly opposed to making any woman cry, much less his own daughter. But there’s something exquisite about her pain. Why is that? He guesses he’s always had it out for everyone after Mary took ill, after that town, after everything, but is it so simple? Mostly he just wants to numb the pain, but witnessing pain is okay too. He likes it.
And when Laura cries… he can’t help it. He smiles.
It’s after the party that James decides that Laura reaching high school age is about the worst damn thing that’s ever happened to him.
Her eyeliner streaks down her face, her cheeks are puffy as he drags her in by her elbow. She wrestles free of him and stomps to her room, slamming the door as hard as she can. James walks up to it and says, “Keep it up,” but the fight is pretty much over, and so is her night. It’s only an empty threat. The wall that separates them is only a temporary solution.
This time, it wasn’t all girls. There were guys there. One of them had his hand up her shirt. And she looked like she was liking it too.
As if dealing with her after hours shenanigans wasn’t enough, he already checked all of his places. Under the sink, in the basement cupboard, in his own room. The bottles are gone. James’ teeth grit.
Laura’s bedroom door slams open. Laura gets up from wiping her reddened face. “What the hell are you doing?” she croaks, her voice still stifled with tearful frustration.
“Where is it,” he says. And it’s not a question. He wants her to say it.
“Where’s what,” she says through her teeth.
James’ gives her a side look and clenches his fists. Laura’s meeting the challenge, head held up, blotchy face on proud display.
“You know… exactly… what I’m talking about.”
“I dumped it,” she smiles. It’s a shoddy, broken one, but Laura doesn’t care. It’s hardened by a humorous acceptance. “That what you wanted to hear?”
His hand crashes against her cheek and she reels, staggering back a bit before stilling again. She holds a hand to her face and focuses on breathing, fighting an onset of emotion. She doesn’t want to give him that. Not tonight. Or any other night hereafter.
The car’s doing 60 and his fingers are itching but he wants just the peace of the open road. After last night, after Laura, he just needs a drive.
His phone rings. Once. Twice. He wants to ignore it, but something presses him to answer. It’d be just his shitty luck that another constable came while he’s out, looking for him. His neighbor Randy, another ex-con familiar with police procedure, says he’ll look out for him. You never know. Or, it could just be the little bitch calling to say the school had an early dismissal and she wants to be picked up. James sighs and flips the little shit open. “Yeah,” he grouses.
“Hello, is this James Sunderland? You were listed on Laura’s emergency contact list.”
“Yeah, I’m her father,” James straightens out the wheel, but his blood is already boiling. She got detention. Or she’s been suspended. No, no, wait. Don’t tell him. She’s been skipping. That’s what he’s preparing himself for.
“Is Mrs. Sunderland there? I’d like to speak with her,” the woman on the other line says.
“Just me,” James drawls, losing his patience already. “What’s wrong? What she do now?”
The woman’s breath hitches, and she lets out a sigh. “Mr. Sunderland, I don’t know the situation at home, but Laura is in desperate need of guidance. Are you aware that she is failing almost every class? She has been skipping classes and causing trouble amongst her peers.”
James licks at his teeth, his eyes narrowed. “Uh huh.”
The woman pauses. He can imagine her face on the other line, and his tone probably gives her all the information she needs on that point, but miraculously, he doesn’t care.
“Mr. Sunderland,” she states, gravely, “Laura was caught in an illicit position on school grounds.”
The front door closes. From the kitchen he hears the soft padding of her feet, the dropping of her book bag on the couch. She’s probably looking around to see where he is, wondering if he really isn’t here. Little thumps approach the living room, then still. He knows she’s looking for him and he wants her to find him. Laura appears in the door frame of the kitchen, squinting her eyes at the darkness. She can make out James’ figure against the oval shadow of the table, see his silhouette and his folded hands.
She scoffs. “You’re drunk again, aren’t you.”
The shadow doesn’t respond, hardly moves. Laura tires of the game he’s playing already. She walks briskly up to him and pulls out a chair, plopping hard down on it and swinging her legs over the top to rest near the emptied shot glass and ash tray.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing.” James says low.
“Oh, I’m sorry. No feet on the table?” she cants her head.
“I wish I could be madder at your feet on the table… rather than what you really did.”
Laura freezes. Her mouth closes and opens again, but not a word is uttered. She folds her arms over herself. After a tense pause, she plays it off, flicking a stray wisp of hair to the side. Her trademark defiance. “What’s the word around the block, muchacho?”
“The word around the block.” James shakes his head and laughs. He should probably rub at his eyes rather than entertain the urge to wrap his hands around her neck, which is what he’d rather do. “Listen.” He slams his fist on the table. “I’m on the road today driving around and I get a call from some bitch from the principle’s office saying you were fucking some kid on school grounds! Sound familiar?”
Laura looks away. Her jaw tightens. Even in the dim light he can see her tense up. Her shoulders bunch up at the sharpness of his voice and her fingers press into her upper arms, cuffing them to her chest. James gets up and flicks the kitchen light on. Laura snaps her eyes shut for a moment and blinks them open, adjusting to the sudden brightness. His expression is stern and his hard eyes bore into her.
“Look at me,” he demands.
Laura blinks some more, and her lips wriggle. It suddenly hits him that she might cry and the only reason he’s actually feeling horrible about it is because he’s sober. Had she come home fifteen to twenty minutes later he might actually have had a buzz going on, and this might all be funny.
“I did.” she says.
“Did what.” he sits back down, his voice a string stretched to snap.
“I did it, okay? I sucked his dick.”
The three days that follow Laura’s suspension is quiet and strained. Nothing punctuates the subdued domesticity but the sounds of the TV and its occasionally flicking channels, or the groan of the faucet or the spurt of the shower head. At first the silence had hurt him but then, he hasn’t really been all that close to Laura to feel the sting of her indifference. After she turned 12 he became old news and she was off, obsessing about boy bands, actors, romantic comedies and most recently that whole Facebook thing that James refuses to understand. He left her to those things as he sat around and drank the years away, and sometimes he wonders if he should even be angry that things are this way between them. She’s only got a few more years with him before she’ll be out on her own. Maybe it’s just too late.
James heaves a gusty sigh and hangs his head low over the sink. He feels it’s probably gonna come back up sometime soon, just like everything else he tries to run from. The drinking, the outbursts, the distance… it scarred them both irreparably. They need to establish some common ground, he decides. They need a fresh start. A second try.
Laura’s lips are pursed and her arms crossed over her breasts, making them bunch up. The tank top she’s wearing is so thin he can even see the lines of her bra. And the bra itself isn’t doing much either because her nipples aren’t exactly hard to discern through her shirt.
They’re at the table again, per his request. He’s trying something new with Laura and he doesn’t have any real confidence that it’ll work, just that he should try and maybe, maybe it could change something. So here goes.
“I know you don’t have any respect for me.” James starts. “You made that perfectly clear.”
Laura almost looks bored. But it’s all a front. Point in fact, he knows she’s just beginning to struggle with how uncomfortable this is. He can see the silent wrestling in her features. She’s never seen him this agreeable or this nice since she was, well, a lot younger. That makes his stomach twist a bit. He feels like a fool. His determination almost falters and he considers the thought of just cutting this short and telling her he’ll get her, oh, he doesn’t know, a pair of shoes or something if she’ll just stay out of trouble. He’ll take her out to the mall or take her to the movies. She probably already does that with her friends, so he’d be poor company in those cases, but it’s a thought.
“I just thought maybe we can start over.”
Her lips curl into a smile. The other defense is rising. The sarcastic bitch mode.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she presses, squinting her eyes at him as if he’s some sort of insect she’s got a mind to swat into a squish of tiny bug guts. “There’s no mending this. I fucking despise you, James.”
“Laura,” he warns, already realizing how fast this is going downhill and tempering his angrier inclinations. “Language.”
“You never stopped me before. You could give a shit.”
“Yeah, well, now I fucking do, so stop it.” he spits.
What an example he’s setting, she must think.
She shakes her head as she slouches back in her chair. “You just don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t get a lot of things,” his voice drops, wavering between calm and desperate again. “But I tried, Laura.”
“Tried what!” she stands from her seat and the chair topples over. “You know what you were doing to me!”
James turns aside, his teeth gritting. “Laura-”
“Stop,” she holds her arms out, as if impeding some invisible force on both sides. “Just stop it, alright? How can you pretend you don’t know? All those times you just-just got fucking hammered and you hit me-”
“You shouldn’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”
“And you threatened me. You said all those things. That you’d break my arm if I touched your stuff again. But I was trying to make you stop.”
“I’m the adult here, Laura.” His voice is shuddering, his fists clenching on his thighs, digging into the denim.
“Fuck you.” She backs away, shaking her head. “I hate you. Leave me alone.” She turns around and runs into her room, slamming the door.
James doesn’t even measure the time it takes to get from the kitchen to her bedroom before his hands, of their own furious accord, are jiggling the knob and he’s shouting for her to come out. Laura’s voice is a muffle he can’t even hear because his temples feel like they’re pressing against his skull.
He wants to hurt her.
He wants to hurt her because it’s all true. It’s all true and he’s tired of being the bad guy and Laura should feel pain too because she doesn’t understand what he’s going through. She knows nothing.
James stomps back to the kitchen, throwing a shelf open and snatching a knife. He goes back to Laura’s room, jimmies the lock, and barrels though. Laura backs up against the wall, yelling something about the cops and calling him a psycho, and flashing images of him in all of those titty bars rush back to him, the way he grabbed at the legs of the dancers, the way he held the girl in his arms and wouldn’t let go even as she cried and threatened him with security.
She’s just like all of those girls. But she’s special. She was the first.
He drops the knife and lunges at her.
At the end she is crumpled up against the floor, holding her stomach. Her hair shrouds her face. She clenches at her abdomen, panting. Her spine is bent and sticking out and he’s reeling because it happened so fast. He slumps down on Laura’s bed, feeling the smooth comforter up against his palms.
He stares at the wall, through the wall, and says nothing.
“Why did you have sex with that boy?” he asks.
“Because I’m a cunt. That’s what cunts do. They get fucked.”
“Why are you acting like this?” he says absently, because he’s just about given up. Laura is smiling, smiling through her bruises. She refuses to rub them, to use the antiseptic and dab at her head. She wears it proudly. As proudly as she can wear nothing and stroke a kid’s cock in her hands. He knows even that terrible bit because she told him. Even through the pain it’s funny to think about. It’s just one big fucking joke. He only wants to start laughing with her. Instead he asks again, “Why are you doing this?”
In mockery, she folds her hands on the table, as he does. She pushes herself in, and takes a good look at James, even though he’s looking away, studying the cabinets rather than her because the thought of Laura and the word cock simultaneously disgusts him and invites him to think about it some more like the fucking pervert he is. The expression that accompanies it is not one he wants her to read.
Laura’s eyes bore into him, unwaveringly. Issuing a challenge.
“Because I want to. You pushed me. And now I’m gonna push you.”
Author: skyofisis
Pairing: Gen
Rating: M
Warnings/Triggers: domestic violence, promiscuity, a whole lot of language
Words: 3,975
Part One.
2.
Laura grows. It isn’t easy. James always knew she’d grow to be tall, so some nights she cries, holding her knees and praying for the pain to go away. He rubs her back and shoulders until she gets too old for it.
At 10, she’s mostly outside, playing with the other kids. She likes hopscotch, kickball, and hanging from the monkey bars. It’s always been a quiet neighborhood filled with discreet neighbors and nice kids, and he appreciates how boring and tame it is. He can do boring and routine. He slips into it easily.
Things are peaceable for a while.
One morning a constable comes knocking, saying Mr. Sunderland, open the door, and he puts his finger to his lips and shakes his head at Laura, who’s holding a Barbie to her chest and glimpsing from the window to him, wondering what the plan of action is. When the constable decides they’re not home, he eventually goes away, but James knows he’s only going to be back with more guys and a cruiser to shove him in with his hands behind his back.
James holds Laura’s hand as they tiptoe throughout the house, snatching anything they can carry and then sneaking out through the basement.
Such a shame, James thinks as they put the place in their rear-view mirror. Laura really liked it there.
He can’t really pinpoint where it all began, but things change at some point, and all too easily.
He’s worked his way around temper tantrums, the cold shoulder, crying fits, and even the stupid pranks she loved to swear was all in good fun and didn’t know it would turn all his shirts pink or flood the backyard. What he doesn’t suspect is her sprouting up like a tree at 13 and garnering the attention of so many boys. At first he was terrified. Now he’s just ready to load the shotgun if he finds out so much as one boy is planning to meet up with her somewhere and he wasn’t told about it well in advance.
She’s yelled that she hates him and she’s gonna run away and all that many a time. James just shakes his fatherly head and grounds her. And this works…for a couple of years, at least.
Until high school. Until she’s 16. Until the day he feared finally comes and his power wanes. A shit storm he never anticipated reaches his shore, and the weapon is an unlikely foe, but a formidable one.
Laura makes friends. Which is nice, he supposes. A girl should have lots of friends, shouldn’t she? The only thing that has him a bit disconcerted is the kinds of girls she brings home. One girl, Mona, is what they called in his day “boy-crazy”, but she’s not the same kind of boy-crazy they had in the 60’s. Mona talks about a lot of boys in ways that only their future wives should know them, and she isn’t one to withhold any detail. James doesn’t even mean to press his ear against the door until he hears the word ‘g-strap’. That’s… not what girls talked about when he was growing up. At least, not to his knowledge. Maybe he’s a bit too conservative for the times, but… will Laura really be okay having sleepovers with girls like these?
It’s Saturday night. She was supposed to be back by 9 but now it’s 11:20 and James is pacing and praying for his phone to ring. He’d called three times and left a message each time, threatening to get the cops involved if she insisted on ignoring him (she’s been doing that of late). He rubs his forehead, squinting his eyes closed, not wanting to, not wanting to, but he has to. He can’t do this.
He doesn’t meant to. He doesn’t mean it. He didn’t want it to come to this, but it’s getting to be too much. He doesn’t want to feel this right now. He doesn’t want this anymore.
James walks into the kitchen and flings open the cabinet under the sink where Laura never looks. She tried to take them away from him, finding all his hiding spots and draining them in the sink. He knows it isn’t good, but it’s just for this time. He just needs it to be mellow, to feel okay. Just a little, and he’ll be fine. Just to take the edge off. He won’t go overboard.
Finally, at 12:45, Laura returns, sour faced and with her arms crossed over her chest. She doesn’t smell like a girl should smell. She smells like she’s been somewhere she shouldn’t have been.
“Is that cologne?” James asks.
“Why are you so obsessed with me?” she says with a cruel inflection, “You called, like, a million times.”
“Because I didn’t know where the fuck you were,” he shouts. James crowds her against the wall. “Where were you? Were you out there with Mona and all her boyfriends?”
Laura looks frightened for a moment and then at the mention of Mona she scoffs and laughs harshly. “Mona has a boyfriend. She’s not going around sleeping with all these guys. Where the hell’d you get that idea?”
“Don’t cuss at me, young lady,” James raises his voice again. “And for your information, that’s not what I heard.”
Something strikes Laura then, a realization that her privacy was breached. “You-were you listening in on us or something? Like an old pervert?” Laura lurches forward, fists clenched, catching James off guard and forcing him to step back so she won’t crash into his chest. “You listened in on Mona and me. You sicko! You sick-”
James grabs her forearm and yanks her to him. “You little bitch,” he spits. “I gave you everything. Didn’t I give you everything?”
She squirms but his grip is too tight. “Quit it,” she cries.
“You’re a bad girl.” James breathes on her, and suddenly Laura understands. “And bad girls only go down one road.”
Laura is dragged to her room and shoved in, startled by the loud slam of the door behind her. James pants on the other side. She can practically feel the heat of his exhales through it. “From now on the only places you’ll be hanging out is at school and in your room. Tell all your little sluts they’re not your friends anymore.”
James stalks away, leaving Laura to wonder just where the hell that came from.
At this age, Laura’s all about her girlfriends. She never wants to be at home. James gets used to the loneliness. He knows it pretty well and Laura should be out there living her life. It’s not something he can help. All he can really do is stand back and let her have fun and try not to think about how his life is already over. But when he’s alone he doesn’t like the things he does. Or the places he goes to.
Laura can get snippy with him from time to time, but he lets it all roll off. That only makes her complain and say he’s more boring and needs to get a hobby or get some friends.
Then another change happens, and James doesn’t go a single day without a shot or a swig of something. At first he tells her it’s nerves. She tells him he’s ‘self-medicating’ but he brushes it off as a stupid term she learned from TV and tells her to eat her dinner.
“Do you have to have wine with everything?” Laura asks.
“Don’t make that face. It makes you look ugly,” James swirls the pasta around his fork like a spool, his eyes downcast.
“Why don’t you ever date anyone?”
James drops his fork onto his plate and meets her with hard eyes. “What kind of questions are these? Doesn’t sound like a nice dinner conversation to me.”
“Cos it isn’t,” she carelessly frowns and picks at her food again.
The curfew only lasts for a day or two, after which James briefly apologizes for his “exaggerated” reaction to the situation and admits maybe he should relax. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” he rubs her arms, which she hates. “You can’t worry me like that.”
The soft eyes, the sentimentality, the agreeableness. Laura hates all of it.
She’s heard this all before. He says things like this every time. Laura shrugs him off and closes the door on him, languishing on her bed and popping in her headphones to drown out the burning in her chest and throat.
What’s the point of dumping it? She thinks. The bastard only buys more.
There are other times, too. They just keep piling up. James gets smashed, does something stupid, says he’s sorry the next day. He’s grounded her, sent her to her room, called her a bitch, slut, whore, cunt and anything else that might have applied to her in his whiskey addled brain at the time. Made her cry. It’s sickening even to him but she’s so damn beautiful when she cries and maybe that’s why he does it. He’s heard girls say that guys like to make them cry because they get a kick out of it. Perhaps it’s true. Some men make a girl cry because they think it’s funny to see their eyes get puffy and watch hyperventilate and try to speak at the same time. He sees that, yet it shouldn’t make sense. Laura’s beautiful when she cries but he doesn’t grasp how that can be. He’s supposed to be a father, thoroughly opposed to making any woman cry, much less his own daughter. But there’s something exquisite about her pain. Why is that? He guesses he’s always had it out for everyone after Mary took ill, after that town, after everything, but is it so simple? Mostly he just wants to numb the pain, but witnessing pain is okay too. He likes it.
And when Laura cries… he can’t help it. He smiles.
It’s after the party that James decides that Laura reaching high school age is about the worst damn thing that’s ever happened to him.
Her eyeliner streaks down her face, her cheeks are puffy as he drags her in by her elbow. She wrestles free of him and stomps to her room, slamming the door as hard as she can. James walks up to it and says, “Keep it up,” but the fight is pretty much over, and so is her night. It’s only an empty threat. The wall that separates them is only a temporary solution.
This time, it wasn’t all girls. There were guys there. One of them had his hand up her shirt. And she looked like she was liking it too.
As if dealing with her after hours shenanigans wasn’t enough, he already checked all of his places. Under the sink, in the basement cupboard, in his own room. The bottles are gone. James’ teeth grit.
Laura’s bedroom door slams open. Laura gets up from wiping her reddened face. “What the hell are you doing?” she croaks, her voice still stifled with tearful frustration.
“Where is it,” he says. And it’s not a question. He wants her to say it.
“Where’s what,” she says through her teeth.
James’ gives her a side look and clenches his fists. Laura’s meeting the challenge, head held up, blotchy face on proud display.
“You know… exactly… what I’m talking about.”
“I dumped it,” she smiles. It’s a shoddy, broken one, but Laura doesn’t care. It’s hardened by a humorous acceptance. “That what you wanted to hear?”
His hand crashes against her cheek and she reels, staggering back a bit before stilling again. She holds a hand to her face and focuses on breathing, fighting an onset of emotion. She doesn’t want to give him that. Not tonight. Or any other night hereafter.
The car’s doing 60 and his fingers are itching but he wants just the peace of the open road. After last night, after Laura, he just needs a drive.
His phone rings. Once. Twice. He wants to ignore it, but something presses him to answer. It’d be just his shitty luck that another constable came while he’s out, looking for him. His neighbor Randy, another ex-con familiar with police procedure, says he’ll look out for him. You never know. Or, it could just be the little bitch calling to say the school had an early dismissal and she wants to be picked up. James sighs and flips the little shit open. “Yeah,” he grouses.
“Hello, is this James Sunderland? You were listed on Laura’s emergency contact list.”
“Yeah, I’m her father,” James straightens out the wheel, but his blood is already boiling. She got detention. Or she’s been suspended. No, no, wait. Don’t tell him. She’s been skipping. That’s what he’s preparing himself for.
“Is Mrs. Sunderland there? I’d like to speak with her,” the woman on the other line says.
“Just me,” James drawls, losing his patience already. “What’s wrong? What she do now?”
The woman’s breath hitches, and she lets out a sigh. “Mr. Sunderland, I don’t know the situation at home, but Laura is in desperate need of guidance. Are you aware that she is failing almost every class? She has been skipping classes and causing trouble amongst her peers.”
James licks at his teeth, his eyes narrowed. “Uh huh.”
The woman pauses. He can imagine her face on the other line, and his tone probably gives her all the information she needs on that point, but miraculously, he doesn’t care.
“Mr. Sunderland,” she states, gravely, “Laura was caught in an illicit position on school grounds.”
The front door closes. From the kitchen he hears the soft padding of her feet, the dropping of her book bag on the couch. She’s probably looking around to see where he is, wondering if he really isn’t here. Little thumps approach the living room, then still. He knows she’s looking for him and he wants her to find him. Laura appears in the door frame of the kitchen, squinting her eyes at the darkness. She can make out James’ figure against the oval shadow of the table, see his silhouette and his folded hands.
She scoffs. “You’re drunk again, aren’t you.”
The shadow doesn’t respond, hardly moves. Laura tires of the game he’s playing already. She walks briskly up to him and pulls out a chair, plopping hard down on it and swinging her legs over the top to rest near the emptied shot glass and ash tray.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing.” James says low.
“Oh, I’m sorry. No feet on the table?” she cants her head.
“I wish I could be madder at your feet on the table… rather than what you really did.”
Laura freezes. Her mouth closes and opens again, but not a word is uttered. She folds her arms over herself. After a tense pause, she plays it off, flicking a stray wisp of hair to the side. Her trademark defiance. “What’s the word around the block, muchacho?”
“The word around the block.” James shakes his head and laughs. He should probably rub at his eyes rather than entertain the urge to wrap his hands around her neck, which is what he’d rather do. “Listen.” He slams his fist on the table. “I’m on the road today driving around and I get a call from some bitch from the principle’s office saying you were fucking some kid on school grounds! Sound familiar?”
Laura looks away. Her jaw tightens. Even in the dim light he can see her tense up. Her shoulders bunch up at the sharpness of his voice and her fingers press into her upper arms, cuffing them to her chest. James gets up and flicks the kitchen light on. Laura snaps her eyes shut for a moment and blinks them open, adjusting to the sudden brightness. His expression is stern and his hard eyes bore into her.
“Look at me,” he demands.
Laura blinks some more, and her lips wriggle. It suddenly hits him that she might cry and the only reason he’s actually feeling horrible about it is because he’s sober. Had she come home fifteen to twenty minutes later he might actually have had a buzz going on, and this might all be funny.
“I did.” she says.
“Did what.” he sits back down, his voice a string stretched to snap.
“I did it, okay? I sucked his dick.”
The three days that follow Laura’s suspension is quiet and strained. Nothing punctuates the subdued domesticity but the sounds of the TV and its occasionally flicking channels, or the groan of the faucet or the spurt of the shower head. At first the silence had hurt him but then, he hasn’t really been all that close to Laura to feel the sting of her indifference. After she turned 12 he became old news and she was off, obsessing about boy bands, actors, romantic comedies and most recently that whole Facebook thing that James refuses to understand. He left her to those things as he sat around and drank the years away, and sometimes he wonders if he should even be angry that things are this way between them. She’s only got a few more years with him before she’ll be out on her own. Maybe it’s just too late.
James heaves a gusty sigh and hangs his head low over the sink. He feels it’s probably gonna come back up sometime soon, just like everything else he tries to run from. The drinking, the outbursts, the distance… it scarred them both irreparably. They need to establish some common ground, he decides. They need a fresh start. A second try.
Laura’s lips are pursed and her arms crossed over her breasts, making them bunch up. The tank top she’s wearing is so thin he can even see the lines of her bra. And the bra itself isn’t doing much either because her nipples aren’t exactly hard to discern through her shirt.
They’re at the table again, per his request. He’s trying something new with Laura and he doesn’t have any real confidence that it’ll work, just that he should try and maybe, maybe it could change something. So here goes.
“I know you don’t have any respect for me.” James starts. “You made that perfectly clear.”
Laura almost looks bored. But it’s all a front. Point in fact, he knows she’s just beginning to struggle with how uncomfortable this is. He can see the silent wrestling in her features. She’s never seen him this agreeable or this nice since she was, well, a lot younger. That makes his stomach twist a bit. He feels like a fool. His determination almost falters and he considers the thought of just cutting this short and telling her he’ll get her, oh, he doesn’t know, a pair of shoes or something if she’ll just stay out of trouble. He’ll take her out to the mall or take her to the movies. She probably already does that with her friends, so he’d be poor company in those cases, but it’s a thought.
“I just thought maybe we can start over.”
Her lips curl into a smile. The other defense is rising. The sarcastic bitch mode.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she presses, squinting her eyes at him as if he’s some sort of insect she’s got a mind to swat into a squish of tiny bug guts. “There’s no mending this. I fucking despise you, James.”
“Laura,” he warns, already realizing how fast this is going downhill and tempering his angrier inclinations. “Language.”
“You never stopped me before. You could give a shit.”
“Yeah, well, now I fucking do, so stop it.” he spits.
What an example he’s setting, she must think.
She shakes her head as she slouches back in her chair. “You just don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t get a lot of things,” his voice drops, wavering between calm and desperate again. “But I tried, Laura.”
“Tried what!” she stands from her seat and the chair topples over. “You know what you were doing to me!”
James turns aside, his teeth gritting. “Laura-”
“Stop,” she holds her arms out, as if impeding some invisible force on both sides. “Just stop it, alright? How can you pretend you don’t know? All those times you just-just got fucking hammered and you hit me-”
“You shouldn’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”
“And you threatened me. You said all those things. That you’d break my arm if I touched your stuff again. But I was trying to make you stop.”
“I’m the adult here, Laura.” His voice is shuddering, his fists clenching on his thighs, digging into the denim.
“Fuck you.” She backs away, shaking her head. “I hate you. Leave me alone.” She turns around and runs into her room, slamming the door.
James doesn’t even measure the time it takes to get from the kitchen to her bedroom before his hands, of their own furious accord, are jiggling the knob and he’s shouting for her to come out. Laura’s voice is a muffle he can’t even hear because his temples feel like they’re pressing against his skull.
He wants to hurt her.
He wants to hurt her because it’s all true. It’s all true and he’s tired of being the bad guy and Laura should feel pain too because she doesn’t understand what he’s going through. She knows nothing.
James stomps back to the kitchen, throwing a shelf open and snatching a knife. He goes back to Laura’s room, jimmies the lock, and barrels though. Laura backs up against the wall, yelling something about the cops and calling him a psycho, and flashing images of him in all of those titty bars rush back to him, the way he grabbed at the legs of the dancers, the way he held the girl in his arms and wouldn’t let go even as she cried and threatened him with security.
She’s just like all of those girls. But she’s special. She was the first.
He drops the knife and lunges at her.
At the end she is crumpled up against the floor, holding her stomach. Her hair shrouds her face. She clenches at her abdomen, panting. Her spine is bent and sticking out and he’s reeling because it happened so fast. He slumps down on Laura’s bed, feeling the smooth comforter up against his palms.
He stares at the wall, through the wall, and says nothing.
“Why did you have sex with that boy?” he asks.
“Because I’m a cunt. That’s what cunts do. They get fucked.”
“Why are you acting like this?” he says absently, because he’s just about given up. Laura is smiling, smiling through her bruises. She refuses to rub them, to use the antiseptic and dab at her head. She wears it proudly. As proudly as she can wear nothing and stroke a kid’s cock in her hands. He knows even that terrible bit because she told him. Even through the pain it’s funny to think about. It’s just one big fucking joke. He only wants to start laughing with her. Instead he asks again, “Why are you doing this?”
In mockery, she folds her hands on the table, as he does. She pushes herself in, and takes a good look at James, even though he’s looking away, studying the cabinets rather than her because the thought of Laura and the word cock simultaneously disgusts him and invites him to think about it some more like the fucking pervert he is. The expression that accompanies it is not one he wants her to read.
Laura’s eyes bore into him, unwaveringly. Issuing a challenge.
“Because I want to. You pushed me. And now I’m gonna push you.”