Vic Vaughn is Vicious

In fact, I hate everything these days. My kid is the only thing worth living for. And I’m letting her down.

“Well?” She’s using her snotty-kid voice on me.

“The pet store is closed today.”

“You say that every day!”

“No. You always ask me on Sundays. And it’s always closed on Sundays.”

“Then take me tomorrow.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t, Vivi. Tomorrow I have finals all day.”

“And I have a stupid babysitter! All day! I can’t wait to go to school so I don’t have to be with the stupid babysitters!”

Yeah. Me too, kid. Me too. Because that childcare bill is killing me.

“Tuesday, then,” she says.

“I have work.”

“Wednesday.”

“School.”

“Thursday.” She’s snarling her words at me now. I open my mouth, but she puts up a hand. “Don’t bother. I already know. Work.”

“This is what grownups do, Vivian. I’m not some weirdo, OK? Plenty of moms have to work and go to school. And I know that this life sucks for you right now, but it sucks for me too. Why can’t you just be on my side?”

This is the wrong thing to say. And even though I think these words inside my head like… all the time, I don’t say them out loud. Because it’s not fair.

It’s not anyone’s fault that my father had a heart attack while driving and he and my mom hit a tree and died instantly. It’s not anyone’s fault that he’d just upgraded all the dairy barns and processing equipment a few months before this happened, fully expecting to make his money back in productivity in the next two years, and then didn’t. It’s not anyone’s fault that I couldn’t make the payments because while I do know how to run the milking equipment and keep the cows fed, I never really understood how hard it was to keep a dairy farm profitable.

I sigh.

Because that last one is totally my fault. I was going to school for animal science and then got pregnant by the town tattoo artist. So it’s my fault I dropped out of school and never got my degree so I could learn to run the farm properly. It’s my fault that I have no other skills than being a shitty dairy farmer. And it’s my fault that the only way I can pay for my crappy family housing apartment on campus and still be able to afford Vivi’s daycare is to take out as many student loans as possible and waitress four days a week when I’m not in class.

I lie down on the bed with my crazy-beautiful daughter and hold her close. She’s sniffling. So she’s crying. Over a goldfish. And this is stupid. I can afford a goldfish. It’s what, five bucks for the fish? Maybe ten for the bowl. Five for the rocks, three for the net, and some food…

It adds up.

And it’s sad that I have to add these meager things up.

“OK. Listen. There’s another pet store down south. One that’s open all the time.”

She turns over and looks at me. “There is?”

“Yeah. PetSmart, right? They’re always open. It’s just… our car broke down, Viv. So the downtown one, though they do have crappy hours, it’s just much easier.”

“If it’s so easy, why don’t I have a goldfish?”

“You have a point. But listen. Summer finals are over on Friday. And I’ll have two whole weeks where I don’t have school. So we will go to get your fish next Monday. One week. Does that sound good? Can you live with that? Can you just give me one more week to get through finals? And I promise, things will calm down.”

She pouts again. “I want to go home. I want to go back to the farm.”

“We can’t. We sold it, remember?”

“Why did you sell it? It’s not fair.”

“Because I couldn’t pay the bills, Viv. You know this.”

“I miss my calf and my sheep. I didn’t even get to do the fair this year. And you said I could mutton-bust!”

“I know.” I feel like shit.

“You sold my sheep.”

My God. I am the worst mom ever. And now I want to cry too. But it’s a work day. And I have big tips coming. Sundays at the Pancake House… it’s crazy good. I will make at least two hundred dollars today and that will pay for a lot of next semester’s books, and her school supplies, and new clothes because almost everything she owns is too small.

“We have to go.” I get up.

And so does she.

Because Vivian Lee Lundin is the child of a single mom. And she already knows that life isn’t fair and complaining doesn’t fix anything. Only hard work does that.

Viv and I get off the bus on College Avenue and then cross the street. I do not look over my shoulder at the Sick Boyz tattoo shop. I do not. I do not, I do not, I… look.