Karmen
I couldn’t find a box big enough to fit him in.
Well, that makes me sound like a murderer or something. Nickel, the man in question, is still very much alive, I assure you. I should probably go back a little bit and explain.
My father went to prison when I was thirteen, and I can’t remember my mother. She left before I could even have a memory of her. He always told me we were better off without her. Things were rough for us, but we always had each other. Well, I had my dad. My dad had me and beer. I can’t remember a time I didn’t smell hops on his breath.
I went to my first day of preschool and asked the teacher why her breath didn’t smell like my dad. That ended up with my dad in the principal’s office for an hour and me crying the whole way home while my dad yelled at me. That was the last time I ever mentioned my dad’s drinking to anyone. I was a fast learner and caught on quick. One mess up, and I never made the same mistake again.
The night my dad went to prison, I was at home, like normal, while he was out at the bar three miles down the road. He regularly walked to the bar and stumbled home, but that night, there was a severe storm predicted to blow in, so he decided he would take the truck. That decision changed my life and made me see everything in a whole new light.
I was sprawled out on the living room floor, watching TV, when there was a loud pounding on the front door, and I figured it was my dad. It was normal for him to forget his keys and bang to get inside.
I opened the door to two police officers, with my grandma, Vivian, standing behind them. I only saw my grandma at Christmas. I knew the second I laid eyes on her, something was not right.
It seemed my father had decided to call it a night after drinking almost a twenty-four pack of beer and tried to drive home. In that three-mile drive to the house that had no turns or curves on it, my father had managed to hit a soccer mom in her minivan with her three children in the back. Only one child survived.
The police told me I had to go with my grandma until they figured something out. Meanwhile, she stood behind them, arms crossed over her chest, tapping her foot impatiently. After they were done, my grandma barged between the two police officers and started firing off orders about packing a bag and getting all my stuff ready to go. We weren’t going to stay in the “hell hole” anymore.
While I was packing up my things, completely in shock, I heard my grandma down the hall, bitching and moaning about having to take care of me. I knew then and there that things were never going to be the same.
After she hauled me over to her trailer—that was not much better than the “hell hole” I used to live in—I begged to see my dad. Every day, she told me, and I quote, “I couldn’t see the bastard yet.”
Two weeks after I went to live with Vivian—she hated when I called her Grandma—I finally got to see my dad. After I was searched, I was led to a room with a glass wall and partitions separating small stools that faced the window. I was told to sit on the stool furthest to the left and wait. Vivian sat in the corner, pissed off that the guards said she had to be in there with me, even though I honestly didn’t want her there.
It had taken ten minutes before my father walked through the door. He looked the same as the last time I had seen him, except for the orange jumpsuit he was wearing. He sat down on the other side of the glass and picked up the phone. He motioned his hand for me to do the same. I put the receiver to my ear and held my breath.
“Hey, baby.” He always called me baby. I couldn’t remember him ever using my real name unless he was serious, and serious didn’t often happen with my dad.
“Hi, Daddy,” I whispered.
“Everything going okay over at Vivian’s?”
I nodded but didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t plan for this to happen.” My first thought was, what a stupid saying. Who the hell plans to drink twenty-four beers and then plow a family off the road? There’s probably a very short list of people who plan for something like that.
“It’s okay.” What else was I supposed to say?
“I think I’m going to be in here for a while.”
I nodded again, because it finally hit me. Seeing my father behind a thick glass wall in an orange jumpsuit was hammering it home, that life as I knew it was about to change. A tear I had been holding in streaked down my face and landed on the small ledge in front of me.
“Don’t cry, baby.” His eyes were on me, watching the tears I was so desperately trying to hold in finally run down my cheeks.
“I don’t know what to do, Daddy,” I wheezed out. My tears were coming fast and furious now. I was five seconds away from becoming an emotional, blubbering mess.
“You don’t need to worry. Vivian is going to take care of you. I had the police call her as soon as they could,” he said, trying to reassure me.
I was unable to talk. I tried wiping at the tears, but by the time I whisked them away, new ones were falling, taking their place.
“Karmen,” he sternly said into the phone. I glanced up and found him staring at me. “Handel’s don’t cry, Karmen. Dry your tears. Nothing can be done now but to go on and make the best of the situation we are in.”
I wiped my eyes again, willing the tears to stop. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Kleenex Vivian had pressed into my hand as I walked to the door before. My father’s words rang in my head. He always used to say, “We need to make the best of our situation.” He would always tell me that when we would run out of money or had to find a new place to live.
“I don’t know how to go on, Daddy. Vivian doesn’t want me there,” I hiccupped into the phone.
My dad shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what to tell you, baby. We both have to do things we don’t want to right now. I wish things could be different, but they can’t.”
“I know,” I whispered. I didn’t want my dad to worry about me when he was in prison. I’d have to keep my fears to myself about living with Vivian.
“Go on, I need to talk to your grandma now.” I nodded my understanding. “I love you, Karmen. Please don’t forget that.”
“I love you too, Daddy,” I whispered. I hung up the phone and quickly dashed out of the room before I started crying in front of him again.
After my grandma spoke to him, we went home, where she started making dinner and told me to sit at the kitchen table so we could have a talk.
“We need to get a few things straight, Karmen,” she said, lighting a cigarette and blowing a puff of smoke in my direction. “Your father told me you said I didn’t like you. Is that right?” she asked, staring me down.
I nodded my head yes because there was no point in lying.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Karmen, it’s just that I am well beyond the age of taking care of a teenager. I’m upset with your father, not you.”
“Okay.”
“I think we will get along just fine if we both just stay out of the other one's way. I know you are thirteen years old and more than capable of taking care of yourself. Lord knows you have been taking care of that sorry excuse for a father since you were old enough to talk.”
I didn’t argue with her because she was speaking the truth. I couldn’t remember when my dad and I had switched roles. I had been taking care of him since I could remember.
“All right then, that’s settled. Now, why don’t you run to your room and work on your homework or whatever,” she said, dismissing me with the wave of her hand, as she turned to the fridge.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I slammed my door behind me and leaned against it and slid down.
After I wrapped my arms around my raised knees, I rested my chin on them. I was so angry and upset at my father, but I had no one to talk to about it. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the door.
“It’s not fair,” I said to my barren bedroom.
Vivian had only given me a mattress on the floor to sleep on and a three-drawer dresser.
I had boxes sitting in the corner of things I used to have in my room, but I didn’t want to take them out of the boxes. Taking all my pictures and possessions out of the boxes made this real. As long as I lived out of those boxes, this was all just a bad dream.
I thought about how putting everything in boxes made things better and decided to start putting everything I didn’t want to feel into a box. The first thing I put in my little boxes was my anger with my father.
Opening that box in my head and placing that anger inside and then slamming the lid on top helped. I didn’t have to feel that anger anymore.
Every day, for the past twelve years, I filled my tiny little boxes. Sad because I was all alone? Put it in a box and don’t think about it. An “A” on my math test and Vivian ordering me to go to my room when I tried to tell her? Put it in a box and don’t think about it.
All through my teenage years, I had probably thousands of tiny boxes that I neatly put on a shelf and never thought about again. It even worked well into adulthood. Things always fit nicely into the boxes.
Everything except for Nickel. As much as I tried to shove his gorgeous smile in the box, I could never forget about it.
Almost a year ago, his grandmother was transferred to the nursing home I worked at as an RN. Every week, on Tuesday at nine o’clock, he would come in and visit her like clockwork.
I still remember the day he appeared in her room while I was checking her blood pressure. He waltzed in as if he owned the place, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since. His grandmother was one of my favorite patients. She was sweet but had a smart-ass streak to her.
Every Tuesday, he would hold up a bakery bag and insist on me staying and having a snack with them. He would track me down if he didn’t see me in her room and ask me how my day was going.
He always had a leather vest on that had his name, Nickel, on it and a huge patch on the back that was the insignia of the Fallen Lords. All I knew about the Fallen Lords was that they were a motorcycle club, and they rode bikes everywhere they went. I was seriously oblivious to everything he was.
The only thing I wasn’t oblivious to was his gorgeous smile and dark blue eyes. Whenever he was done talking to me, he always winked and smiled as he walked away. That wink and smile drove me crazy.
That man was everything I didn’t want in my life, and that was the exact reason I needed to find a box big enough to fit him in. I needed to slam the lid down on him and never think of him again.
If only things were that easy.
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