11/29/2021 EmbersA short story by Andrea Reitz “She’ll come running back once you break her heart! You are nothing but a worthless high school dropout.” She takes a deep breath before curling her lip and narrowing her dark eyes up at him. “You’ll turn out to be just like your deadbeat daddy.”
Out of all the things that could’ve come out of that wrinkled mouth and beer-stained teeth, that was what hit him the hardest. Like a physical punch to the gut; and she knew it as she spun on her heel to get in her old beat-up Corolla and drive off. His mother-in-law always warned him that one day Mandy would realize what a mistake it was to choose to be with him. But no one warned him it would be Mandy who would break his heart and leave him with the two little girls that now darted back and forth in his tiny two-bedroom apartment. “Hey Eddie, stop tryna look so pretty and let those girls walkin’ up to you in; boss says we need to even it out in here.” Eddie shook himself from his past and snapped back to reality. Eddie’s earpiece cracks to silence as he shifts his stiff body to swing open the thick rusted metal door for the girls in too tight of dresses and too tall of heels. He lets the door close on its own as he settles back into his intimidating stance in front of it, lifeless--or if his daughter, Ava, were to describe him, like a robot. The club was nothin’ special, but a crowd draws a crowd, even a shitty place like this. His boss, Lynn, seemed to figure out that all you really need is some loud trashy music, flashing lights, and some cheap-ass whiskey because if you come to a place like this, you are looking to get drunk and get drunk fast. Lynn hired Eddie mostly for his sheer size, but it’s common knowledge that anyone who has grown up in southeast Philadelphia knows how to throw a good punch. But his 270 lb. body and 6’ 3 height kept the grumbling in the packed line from actually trying anything. Occasionally, Eddie gets the pleasure of physically throwing out anyone Lynn deems disrespecting her rules. Or whatever ones she is in the mood to enforce for the particular night. Finally ending his shift, Eddie locks the door and turns to hand Lynn the ring, of what seemed to have fifty different keys dangling from it. She takes it from him and rifles through her big black purse to pull out a stack of green, sliding her handbag to the crook of her arm. Her long, sharp, plastic hot pink nails separate the paper into seven stacks and distribute them out to the expectant hands, placing the last stack in Eddie’s hands. He quickly stuffs it into his back pocket, already calculating which bill he can finally pay with seventy bucks, give or take. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Eddie makes his way back home. His long strides take him across the old tracks and down two blocks to his apartment, the street lights flickering above him. He fumbled around with the keypad to punch in the apartment’s code, only opening it to a strong stench and a grimy stairwell he, unfortunately, had to climb three flights every night. Finally reaching the damn apartment door out of breath and tired, Eddie opens his red door to a dark silent apartment. As it should be. The two trouble makers knew Eddie would let them get away with more than he should, but bedtime was at nine pm, absolutely no exceptions. “Tomorrow waits for no one,” Eddie always tells them. If parents had to pick a saying to repeat to their children, then that was his. Granted, they had over four hours to break that rule before he would ever get home from the club, but they knew Levi, across the hall, would rat them out to Eddie the next morning. The simple benefits of having a noisy neighbor who wants to stay on Ed’s good side. Slipping off his old scuffed black boots, Eddie quietly steps over various barbie dolls and quietly swears a decent string of curses as he almost gets a good shin slam against a giant dollhouse he gave in and bought the girls for Christmas. The damn thing moves to a different location every night. It wasn’t the drunken slums he dealt with every night that scared him, it was damn Barbie’s magical dream house that he had to remember to fear in the dark. Pulling his black shirt over his head and tossing it to the floor, Eddie then proceeds to face plant into his unmade bed, too tired to care about tugging off his pants as well. Sleep was for the luxurious and that word was not part of Ed’s limited vocabulary, so what feels like only a couple of hours later, the weight of the mattress shifts on either side of him as one small body curls up against his chest and another against his back. He squints his eyes open to find blond frizzy uncombed hair filling his vision. “School,” he grumbles before turning his face to bury it deeper into his pillow. The girls giggle before giving him a kiss on the back of his head and scurrying off to catch the school bus that waited for them one block away. Most parents would walk their kids to the bus in a neighborhood like this, not the other way around, where his girls would remind him that his night job was not the only job he had. But everyone in the neighborhood knew Eddie’s girls. If anyone new cameto the area, Ed made sure they knew him, or let his reputation make its rounds to do that for him. It isn’t hard to recognize little Ava’s crazy puffy blonde hair and freckles that spotted her button nose and rosy cheeks. Everyone knew Ava’s big sister, Emma. Only in fourth grade but damn smarter than most of the residents and Eddie’s idiot buddies. Emma always wears one braid. How she learned to do that herself, Eddie had no clue. Unlike little Ava, Emma has light brown hair like Ed, but the same deep green eyes as her little sister. Same green eyes as their mother. Breathing a heavy sigh to clear away the thought, Eddie pushes off the wrinkled sheets and grabs a semi-less dirty shirt from the cluttered floor before heading to his beat-up old Toyota truck and driving the shaking thing to his second job at the local grocery store. Eddie instantaneously preferred working in the chilly nights outside the club to working customer service during the day. His other boss, Jack knew this, which is why Eddie always found himself working in the back, undisturbed, chucking shipping boxes off trucks and onto carts. As he heads through the slow sliding doors and into the already bustling store, Anesa, one of the checkout clerks, turns to match his pace towards the docks. “You got two on red, I would snatch 'em before someone else does,” she forwarns through a quiet mumble before splitting from his path into the cereal aisle. Ed’s pace shifts as he also changes directions towards the meat department. He snatches up the two rotisserie chickens marked with a big red discounted price. He didn’t have to look to know they were both past their expiration date, which meant Jack would make an associate throw them out by the end of the day. Jack always turns a blind eye to employees who take them home for free instead because, well, damn the regulations. Tucking both containers under one arm, he makes quick strides towards the big metal double doors leading to the dock. Before he can reach it, the damn intercoms crackle to life followed by a raspy voice screeching to inform Eddie that he has a phone call. Tightening his grip on his rotisserie chickens, Eddie again turns his heels to the nearest register to answer the dreaded phone call. Yanking the phone off its hook, Ed gives the receiver a sharp command. “Speak.” “Good afternoon, Mr. Dempsey,” says a fruity voice, utterly oblivious it would seem to his initial response to being summoned. With an impatient silence as her only response, she continues in her calm tone, “We are calling to let you know that your girls have both been sent to the principal's office and we are going to need you to come into discuss some...matters before picking them up and taking them home for the rest of the day.” Silence. The young girl at the register takes a step away from him without openly acknowledging his white fist forming while his other arm kept a death grip on his chickens. “Mr. De-”. Click. He was already making quick, heavy strides back out those sliding doors not really giving two shits about the open stares and gaping mouths. -- Something seemed….different. Rather than his usual inappropriate flirtatious greeting from the elementary principal during the many times he has had to be in her office, Ed huffed his way in only to find muffled bickering of whispers between the principal and what seemed to be her very easily irritated secretary. The principal’s back was to him as he walked into her office. He made his footsteps heavy so as not to startle her. The short curly dark-haired woman who was intensely whispering to the principal finally seemed to notice Eddie. She cleared her throat and silently walked past him in a huff. Just like all the other times, he had been called to the principal’s office for one of his girls–if not both– he was dreading this meeting more than having to work in customer service for eight hours. She finally turns her skinny black heels to make her way to her desk. She gestures her hand to the thick square chair facing her desk, “Please take a seat, Mr. Demsey,” she says sternly as she takes her own, impressively managing to cross her legs in the tight pencil skirt. Eddie sighs, “What do I owe this pleasure?” He forces a grin as he begins to sit on what he didn’t recognize to be a very low chair. He always made it a point to play along or at least be slightly more friendly than usual to stay on her good side. She tucks a strand of auburn hair behind an ear, then grabs a stack of paper and continues to fumble with those papers as she very calmly says that both his daughters manage to start one of the school’s biggest riots and managed to collect payments from it. At least it was to the point, which Eddie doesn’t usually get during these meetings. He makes a point, however, to never apologize. Why would he? He didn’t punch several boys in upper grades that probably deserved it. Nor did he light a match on two stacks of homework assignments. Nor did he place a spider in a teacher's coffee mug. And he definitely does not recall starting a fight club at Eastside Elementary. If the girls didn’t apologize later for it then what they did was probably for a good reason. That didn’t stop him, however, from nodding his head slowly, standing abruptly from his too low of a chair, marching straight out of that damn stuffy room to pluck the two little devils from their small plastic chairs outside the office and make sure they notice his clenched jaw and storming pace out of the building. The drive home was silent. A threatening silence, until Eddie decided when the speaking part would start. He glances at the rearview mirror, catching Em curling a piece of brown hair that escaped from her braid. Ava stared out the window, with her hands clasped together, unsure of what to do with them. Staring back at the empty road, he calmly asks “How much did you make?” Em releases her strand of hair and looks down at her striped leggings. “Almost a hundred,” she quietly mumbles. Eddie's lips tighten to form a straight line before he asks, “How much they find?” She shifts her head to look out the window. “Em?” he says sternly in a low tone. “Only thirty,” she says quietly in response before looking back down at her leggings. She knows exactly how much they took because that is what Em planned for the teachers to find. Ava confirms this by cheerfully adding “She hid the rest in my shoe, Daddy!” He rubs his face; damn kids are makin’ more money in a couple of hours than he does all damn night. --- Tonight was a busy one, as Friday nights always were, so Lynn made it a rule to have two bouncers out on weekend nights. This gave Vince the lucky chance to listen to yet another one of Ed’s single-parent stories while they both sucked on cigarettes. Ed rarely unburdened the stress of parenting to just anyone, and Vince was one of the lucky souls he trusted. Ed trusted Vince because Vince rarely trusted anyone himself and didn’t give a shit enough to gossip. Vince’s quiet gravel voice interrupted Eddie’s thoughts of the conversation in the car earlier. “Second-hand smoke is not good for the girls.” Ed looks down at his cigarette before registering Vince’s warning. “Shit,” he mutters before dropping it on the ground, crushing the butt with his heel. Lynn pops her head out the door, frowning at Ed. “Ya got a phone call” she pauses as she extends her pale arm holding her cell to him. “Sounds like Em,” she says as he takes the glittery pink phone from her hand before she goes back inside to yell at some drunk. “What’s wrong, Em,” he says into the phone, knowing full well that the only reason to call is for emergencies. “You need to come home daddy,” she says with a pause of hesitation. “Mommy is here.” --- Eddie never ran so fast in his life, if he can even recall choosing to run at all. Before taking off, he chucked the bright pink phone at Vince who was thankfully paying attention despite showing any signs. He felt like his heart would jump out of his chest by the time he reached the top of the stairs. But that didn’t stop him from jamming his keys in the rusted knob and thrusting the door open so fast the hinges threatened to rip off. His gaze instantly stopped on the woman sitting on his old stained leather couch and his girls sitting across from her, placing themselves as far away from her as possible. Good. Mandy’s dirty blonde hair was now dyed a cherry red, making her seem older and more mature than the youthful giddy girl he’d dated ten years ago. It made her green eyes seem to glow, mirroring the two little girls sitting across from her. Dark eyeliner lined the tops of her eyelids. And he just stared at her, knowing full well that her gaze shifted from his girls to him. His gaze shifted from her eyes to her lips, a deep red to match her hair, encircled around a cigarette, its embers falling on his couch. This is what jumpstarts his brain. He storms across the room with a clenched jaw, ripping the damn thing from her mouth. “Don’t you know secondhand smoke is not good for the girls,” he says sharply. Eddie stabs the cigarette into the nearest plate on the coffee table, not once taking his hostile glare off of her. Standing straight now, he points to the still-open door. “Get out,” he snaps in a low voice. Her eyes glitter as her red lips curl into a suggestive smile. “Eddie…” she draws out his name like it’s her favorite sweet. This just infuriates him even more. Keeping his glare on her, he tells the girls to go to their room. Their quick and quiet footsteps were their only reaction to his non-suggestive tone. She begins to stand on her tall red heeled boots. “Wait, Eddie,” she says, protesting as her eyes watch the girls scurry away. “I didn’t get enough time to talk to them.” His brows furrow, “And who’s fault is that?!” he says with a threatening quiet tone. Her eyes stay pleading as she shifts her stance against the couch to take a step back from him. He shakes his head, sighing. She was here for money. That’s the only reason she would come back. “Get out,” he says again. Thankfully she listens, but he knows she will be back tomorrow. She never listened that easy. He continued to glare at the couch she sat on until he could no longer hear the clicks of her heels going down the concrete stairs. His damn hands betrayed him, shaking ever so slightly as he fumbled to get a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket. Opening the sliding door to his tiny balcony, Eddie leans against the iron railing. He lights his cigarette, watching the small glowing embers fall away into the wind. Suddenly, two small pairs of arms wrap around each of his legs. Eddie quickly spits out his cigarette and crunches out the embers on the ground. “Read us a story,” Emma quietly says, with her arms tightly hugging his leg. Feeling both of their gazes shifting up to look at him, he nods with a small smile. Closing the door behind them, Eddie glances at the clock on the side of his bed as both girls climb into his bed. 9:12 pm. Striding over to his bookshelf, he selects a worn leather bound book on the top shelf. Just for tonight. He would damn well make sure tomorrow waits for those two precious girls now wrapped in his rumpled sheets. Comments are closed.
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AuthorAll works are submitted by CCHS students. |