The Great Alone

Leni ignored him.

“Say something.”

“Leni,” Mama said. “Please.”

Dad shoved back from the table and stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

Mama sank into her chair. Leni could see how tired her mother was, how her hands trembled. “You have to stop this, Leni. It’s upsetting him.”

“So?”

“Leni … you’ll be gone soon. He’ll let you go to college now. He feels terrible about what happened. We can get him to agree. You can leave. Just like you wanted. All you have to do is—”

“No,” she said more forcefully than she meant to, and she saw the effect her shouting had on Mama, how she instinctively shrank back.

Leni wanted to care that she was frightening her mother, but she couldn’t hold on to that caring. Mama had chosen to dig for treasure through the dirt of Dad’s toxic, porous love, but not Leni. Not anymore.

She knew what her silence was doing to him, how it angered him. Each hour she didn’t speak to him, he became more agitated and irritable. More dangerous. She didn’t care.

“He loves you,” Mama said.

“Ha.”

“You’re lighting a fuse, Leni. You know that.”

Leni couldn’t tell Mama how angry she was, the sharp, tiny teeth that gnawed at her all the time, shredding a little more of her away every time she looked at her father. She pushed back from the table and went to the loft to write to Matthew, trying not to think about her mother sitting down there all alone.

* * *

Dear Matthew,

I am trying not to lose hope, but you know how hard it has always been for me. Hope, I mean. It’s been four days since I last saw you. It feels like forever.

It’s funny, now that hope has become so slippery and unreliable, I realize that all those years, when I was a kid thinking I didn’t believe in hope, I was actually living on it. Mama fed me a steady diet of he’s trying and I lapped it up like a terrier. Every day I believed her. When he smiled at me or gave me a sweater or asked me how my day was, I thought, See? He cares. Even after I saw him hit her for the first time, I still let her define the world for me.

Now it is all gone.

Maybe he’s sick. Maybe Vietnam broke him. And maybe those are all excuses set at the feet of a man who is just rotting from the inside.

I don’t know anymore and as much as I try, I can’t care.

I have no hope left for him. The only hope I can hold on to is for you. For us.

I’m still here.

TWENTY-THREE

Dear Admissions Director:

University of Alaska, Anchorage.

I am very sorry to say that I will not be able to attend classes at the University this quarter.

I am hopeful—although doubtful—that winter quarter will see a change in my circumstances.

I will be forever grateful for my acceptance and hope that another lucky student can take my spot.

Sincerely,