The Great Alone

When Dad looked at her, Leni saw what she saw so rarely in his eyes: love. Tattered, tired, shaved small by bad choices, but love just the same. And regret.

“Sorry, Red. I can’t do it. Not even for you.”

NINETEEN

Evening.

The sound of a chain saw whirring, sputtering, going silent.

Leni stood at the window staring out at the yard. It was seven o’clock: the dinner hour, a break in this season’s long workday. Any minute now, Dad would come back into the cabin, bringing tension in with him. The remnants of Leni’s three-person graduation party—carrot cake and strawberry akutaq, a kind of ice cream made from snow and Crisco and fruit—lay on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Mama said, coming up to stand beside her. “I know how badly you wanted to go to the party. I’m sure you considered sneaking out. I would have at your age.”

Leni scooped out a spoonful of akutaq. Usually, she loved it. Not tonight. “I planned a dozen ways to do it.”

“And?”

“They all end the same way: with you alone in a room full of his fists.”

Mama lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke. “This … wall of his. He’s not giving up on it. We’re going to have to be more careful.”

“More careful?” Leni turned to her. “We think about every single thing we say. We disappear in an instant. We pretend we don’t need anything or anyone except him and this place. And none of it is enough, Mama. We can’t be good enough to keep him from losing it.”

Leni saw how difficult this conversation was for her mother; she wished she could do what she’d always done. Pretend it would get better, that he’d get better, pretend it hadn’t been on purpose or it wouldn’t happen again. Pretend.

But things were different now.

“I got into the University of Alaska at Anchorage, Mama.”

“Oh, my God, that’s great!” Mama said. A smile lit up her face and then faded. “But we can’t afford—”

“Tom Walker and Large Marge and Thelma and Ms. Rhodes are paying for it.”

“Money isn’t the only issue.”

“No,” Leni said, not looking away. “It’s not.”

“We will have to plan this carefully,” Mama said. “Your dad can never know Tom is paying. Never.”

“It doesn’t matter. Dad won’t let me go. You know he won’t.”

“Yes, he will,” Mama said in a firmer voice than Leni had heard from her in years. “I’ll make him.”

Leni cast out the dream, let the hook of it sail over blue, blue water and splash down. College. Matthew. A new life.

Yeah. Right. “You’ll make him,” she said dully.

“I can see why you have no faith in me.”

Leni’s hold on resentment lessened. “That’s not it, Mama. How can I leave you here alone with him?”

Mama gave her a sad, tired smile. “There will be no talk of that. None. You’re the chick. I’m the mama bird. Either you take flight on your own or I shove you out of the nest. It’s your choice. Either way, you’re going off to college with your boy.”

“You think it’s possible?” Leni let the amorphous dream turn solid enough that she could hold it in her hands, look at it from different angles.

“When do classes start?”

“Right after Labor Day.”