Everything You Are(13)

“My God, Braden, couldn’t you wait one hour for a drink? Out of respect to Lilian, I’d think, if not concern for your daughter. This is exactly why you are not a fit parent. Put that glass down at once, Allie. You are too young to be drinking.”

Allie, rigid with defiance, takes a long swallow, staring at Alexandra over the edge of the glass.

“Mom let me drink wine.”

“Your mother isn’t here . . .” Alexandra catches herself.

“No,” Allie says. “No, she’s not. But my father is. And he likes to drink, right, Braden?”

She crosses to him, a drink in each hand. He smells oak and tannin, his eyes drawn inexorably to the burgundy liquid in the glass. He says nothing but puts his hands behind his back, out of the way of temptation.

“What’s the matter?” Allie challenges. “I thought drinking was your thing. More important than anything else in the world, right?”

She takes another long swallow.

Which is when it really and truly hits him that Lilian is dead, and he’s the only living parent of a teenager who is all fangs and claws. Lil was a good mother. She would have handled this situation decisively and well. Braden doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to do. His parenting experience is limited to small children he could pick up and carry off to time-out or bed.

“This is not a good idea.” It sounds lame even to him.

“Right. And you’ve had so many good ideas in your life.” Allie’s voice drips sarcasm. “Let’s get something straight. The only reason you’re here is because you’re the best of a bunch of intolerable options. No offense, Aunt Alexandra, but I’m not moving to Canada.”

Braden needs a wall to lean on. He needs to be nicely inebriated, lubricated, sloshed, to protect him from his daughter’s venom and the overpowering presence of the cello. He needs it so bad he can taste the wine in his mouth, warming his throat, creating a shield between him and his emotions.

Doubt wells up in equal proportion to his need for a drink. Maybe Allie would be better off with her aunt after all. It’s too late for him to become a parent. Allie doesn’t want him here, not really, in a parental capacity or any other. She just needs a punching bag. Sobriety in the face of this onslaught of reality is a laughable idea.

“Here’s how this will work,” Allie goes on. “You don’t get to tell me what to do or how to do it. You live here to make the authorities happy. I do whatever. And when I turn eighteen, you’re out.”

“Not acceptable,” Alexandra objects. “Clearly. You are not in a state of mind to be making decisions, and you are still a minor. You are coming with me, Allie, and that’s the end of it.”

“I’ll run away,” Allie says, eyes still fixed on Braden. “You’ll never find me. This is harm reduction. Braden knows what that is. They teach it in AA, right?”

Braden’s heart twists and twists again at his daughter’s words, at the sight of her drinking, at the thought that his faulty genetics and personal weaknesses have infected her despite his long absence. Or maybe because of it.

It’s nearly impossible to think, to find any words at all, let alone good ones.

“AA is about total abstinence,” he finally says. “They aren’t much into harm reduction. Drinking is not a good idea for you, especially right now.”

“Oh please. If ever there was a perfect time to drink, this is it.” Allie lifts the glass again.

Before it reaches her lips, Braden’s hand acts without any conscious direction from his brain. As surprised as everybody else in the room, he watches it lift in a smooth arc and strike the glass from her hand. Time stops for an instant, just enough for him to know that the intensity of her hate is about to ratchet up three notches. Her eyes widen, her mouth drops open. The glass catches a rainbow of light before gravity brings the inevitable.

Glass shatters on the floor. Wine sprays out over the carpet and onto the wall. A red stain on Allie’s breast looks like blood.

Braden, observing his fingers carefully so he doesn’t fumble, lifts the other glass from her unresisting hand and carries it to the sink, where he empties it, sets it next to the untouched glass on the counter, and dumps what remains in the bottle down the drain.

“What the hell?” Allie’s voice is closer to tears than rage.

Alexandra’s could cut diamond. “And this is how you plan to parent?”

Braden dredges up a rusty voice of authority. “If I’m going to live here, there will be no alcohol in this house. No alcohol, period, for either you or me. You’re a smart girl, and I’m sure your mother has explained why you, in particular, are at risk.”

Allie still stands, unmoving, in the middle of a dramatic stain that mars Lilian’s once pristine white carpet.

“Mom’s not here.”

“I think we’ve established that.”

Lilian’s absence is loud. She’s not scurrying around blotting up the spill and planning how to get the stain out. She’s not berating or lecturing. She is, simply, not anything.

Alexandra, on the other hand, is overly present and keeping up a stream of unwelcome and unhelpful commentary. “How on earth are you going to get that out? That was new carpet, what, just a year ago, wasn’t it, Allie? Lil was so excited about it, and now look!”