Haley’s POV~
Alright, just look straight ahead. Keep walking. Keep it cool. I am the picture of nonchalance. I’ve never chalanced in my life. Just a little more, just until I round this corner…
There… Am I home free?
I look over my shoulder and see that Willow’s house is no longer in view before jumping up and punching the air. “Hell yes!” I proclaim, loud enough to settle my need for celebration, but not loud enough to reach rabbit ears a good block and a half away.
“Why’re you so happy, mommy?” Phoebe asks, thankfully having missed the kiss. I really don’t need another schoolyard musical number about my totally non-romantic connection with Willow. I mean, friends kiss friends all the time. It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m only smiling so widely because, you know, friendship and such, obviously. “You really liked the stew, didn’t you?” Phoebe infers, innocently.
“Yup, you’re a natural-born chef. Once you get a little older, I’m gonna start having you cook for us more often,” I say, ruffling her hair with my free hand. The warm remnants of today’s feast gently slosh around in a container, weighing down my other arm as we slowly head home.
Once she gets older, assuming she’s still here with me. I remember my confrontation with our mother earlier today and shiver. It’s obvious she doesn’t give a damn about Phoebe, but for whatever reason, she still wants to take her away.
My sister talks the entire way home about her day: meeting with Willow, something about Godzilla, and about cooking. I love getting to see her just be a kid like this, with nothing mattering besides the fun of the day. She deserves way more days like today, and I'm happy to let her gush at length about it all.
Waiting for us outside our aunt's visibly run down home is the woman herself, sitting on the porch. She's smoking, even though she quit years ago. “Phoebe, can you please put the leftovers in the fridge and go play for a bit? Aunt Mel and I have to talk for a minute.”
“Okay, mommy!” She says, unaware of how much that title burns me up, especially today.
Once Phoebe is inside and well out of earshot, Aunt Mel stands up and stomps on the already thoroughly spent cigarette. “I'm guessing by the poorly covered shiner that you know about Helena being back?” I nod in response, and she exhales, palms roughly massaging her temples. “Yeah, she came by here asking about Phoebe a while ago. Told her she was staying at a friend’s house tonight. She’ll be back sometime later.”
“I don’t get it, why does she suddenly want to take Phoebe? Why now?”
Aunt Mel looks at me sideways. “What, she didn’t tell you?”
Thinking back, I really didn’t open up a proper dialogue before defaulting to antagonizing my mother. Can you blame me? “We didn’t say much.”
My aunt sits down on the porch again and pats the slightly rotted wood next to her, bidding me to do the same. “So… Phoebe’s father is back in the picture.”
“What!?”
Chuckling to herself, Mel shakes her head. “Yeah, that was about my reaction too.” No shit. Phoebe and I don't know our fathers. Mine ran for the hills before I was born, and Phoebe's only just hung around to see her first days. From what I remember of that time long ago, there's a reason he and Helena clicked for so long. “Apparently, the guy's changed. At least, that's the story Hel is trying to sell. Supposedly he's been paying child support and everything the past couple of years.”
“To her!?”
Mel snorts. “Also my reaction.” I can feel my blood boiling at the thought of Helena getting money that should have been used for Phoebe and using it for herself. As if she hasn't already done enough. “Anyway, long story short… he went to Helena demanding visitation. So she needs Phoebe on hand to keep collecting.”
Just like that, it all makes sense. Of course, it's money. Of course, Helena doesn't actually give a shit about Phoebe. She's still the same broken person I know her to be… but now she's willing to hurt my sister for a goddamn payday. She won't actually care for her. At best, neglect, at worst… “Is there anything we can do?”
“In the very short term? Sure. We can probably give her the run around for another day or two, but my sister does still have legal custody,” Mel scowls as she speaks, the words no less disgusting to say as they are for me to hear. For all the times Phoebe calls me her mother, I'm not.
A twisted laugh echoes from inside the house. I don't need to see it for myself to know the source, as the voice is painfully familiar. Aunt Mel can't hear her, and neither can Phoebe. She loudly reminds me of her existence from behind the cloth cover in my room. The solution I've kept hidden for years.
The real monster in the mirror.
“You said her father's changed? Changed how?” I ask, admittedly grasping at straws.
The equally desperate woman next to me shrugs. “I don't know. It's just what Helena said. She said he's working downtown, got to be the manager of a restaurant or something.”
"Which one?”
***
“Welcome to Habanero's Bar and Grill, home of the El Polo Loco Moco, a dish described by some as a sinful affront to every god that cares about the wellbeing of chickens. Table for two?” The overly enthusiastic hostess with an unnerving wide smile stares into my very soul as she recites her greeting with practiced perfection. I wonder if the store is legally required to add that disclaimer to every prospective patron, or if they’re just leaning into the whole “we suck, but you’re here and we’re relatively cheap” thing.
I try to match even a tenth of her positivity as I force a smile and nod. “Yes, please, close to the kitchen if possible.” Phoebe bounces up and down, fascinated by the various tchotchkes adorning the walls of the establishment, as I lead her by the hand to our table.
“Wow, mommy, what's that? And that!? Oh, oh, and that one!” My sister's focus bounces from trinket to trinket with exponentially growing excitement. If I swivel my head even a fraction as fast, I'm pretty sure I'd give myself whiplash. Her focus continues ricocheting like a pinball, with excited gasps and exclamation replacing the normal bells and whistles of such a machine. At least, it does until she spots a large bowl of gooey mac and cheese on a table. Her eyes stay glued to that, even as we sit down. “M–mommy?” she addresses me, suddenly much more soft-spoken. “Can I have one of those?”
Half-smiling because I fully expected this, I nod. “We’ll share one.” Clearly not the answer Phoebe was hoping for, but seeing the sheer size of that macaroni Everest, I don’t want to let my sister hurt herself trying to finish the whole thing. Phoebe tries to hit me with the puppy dog eyes, a move that she fortunately doesn’t have a STAB bonus on, not being an actual puppy person. “We can always share a salad instead…”
Immediately she goes from pushing her luck to damage control, shaking her head violently. “No, nope, we can share the mac!” I chuckle at her childish antics, while peeking into the kitchen at every opportunity. So far I’ve only seen a couple servers dashing back and forth.
This was dumb, Phoebe’s dad might not even be working today. Even if he is, what are the odds he’s actually different from the bastard I knew back in the day? This is almost certainly a gigantic waste of time… but I’m desperate. Once someone comes to take our order, I’ll ask if the manager is in, until then I can just wait and–
Nope, there he is.
I’d recognize that mug anywhere. A tall man, wearing a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to show off full tattoo sleeves, strides into view. His obviously dyed black hair is slicked back and doesn’t quite match his salt and pepper goatee, while his lion tail swishes behind him like it always has when he’s annoyed. He’s prepping a tray of soft drinks for one of his servers, eyes leisurely scanning his scant view of the dining room. His gaze passes over me like it does everything else, at least until he registers what he’s seeing. His head snaps back to focus on me, and the drink he was filling at the fountain starts overflowing.
Dropping what he’s doing, he wipes off his hand and walks straight to our table. “How the–”
“Nice to see you too, Marshal,” I greet him plainly as he keeps staring at me like a ghost. “Before you go making an awful assumption, I’m Haley.” I then gesture at my little sister, who is smiling and waving at the dumbfounded man. “And this is Phoebe.”
While his attention had been focused purely on me a moment ago, the second I say Phoebe’s name, I might as well have vanished completely as he looks over to her. It’s a surreal sight, watching someone you thought you knew experiencing a wave of emotions you assumed he was incapable of before. Excitement, fear, confusion, joy, grief I presume is for time lost, and finally… the slightest brimming of tears.
“Mommy, why is the big guy crying?” Phoebe leans in and asks me, trying to whisper but still absolutely loud enough for Marshal to have heard.
“You wouldn’t remember, but he knew us when you were really little, and I think he just misses you a lot,” I answer, getting a nod of understanding from my easily satisfied sister.
“I don’t really remember you, but nice to meet you again, Mr. Marshal,” Phoebe declares cheerfully, not grasping how devastating those words probably are in this situation.
The once loud and proud lion man is shattered, and as he slowly pieces himself together again, we all hear the sound of a camera going off. From just inside the kitchen, two servers with canine features snap a picture of Marshal crying, their faces awed by the scene. This snaps the man back to his senses, and he growls, chasing the pair into the kitchen.
Minutes later, Marshal returns. “Sorry about losing it for a moment, and for the interruption. Those two have made messing with me their favorite pastime. It’s nice to meet you again, Phoebe.” With a smile warmer than any I’ve seen on his face prior, Marshal reaches out and shakes my sister’s hand. “I also hope you don’t mind, but my hostess actually needs a few more drawings to hang in the lobby. Do you like crayons?” Phoebe’s face lights up, and she bounces a bit in her seat. “Could you go draw with her for a few minutes while I talk to your… mommy? If you help her, I’m sure she’ll give you a scoop of ice cream for your trouble.”
With a hasty “Thanks, Mr. Marshal!” Phoebe hops out of the booth and rushes to the hostess stand.
Marshal sits opposite me, a strained smile on his face as he awkwardly clears his throat. “So… you are not the person I expected to bring Phoebe along. I also didn’t expect… well… I never thought your mom would be a role model of yours.”
“She’s not,” I reply, failing to soften the venom in my voice. “I’m not too crazy about you either.” With those words, the large man seems to shrink. “But there are things about the current situation I think you might not be aware of.”
“Seeing as though Phoebe is calling you her mother… I think you might be right.” Not wanting to rehash everything, I give Marshal a quick breakdown of what he’s missed. Helena leaving, Aunt Mel taking us in, none of the child support coming our way, and my fears for Phoebe’s future under the other demon’s thumb. At the end of it all, he sits in silence, seething at what he’s heard. “Yeah… that sounds like fucking Helena.”
“Unfortunately,” I add dryly. “That’s why I came to you directly. I don’t trust her with Phoebe. To be perfectly frank, I don’t trust you with her either.”
Marshal bristles at my comment and nods. “That’s fair.”
Phoebe comes rushing back to us with a big smile and a thoroughly drawn on kids menu. “Look, Mommy, I drew a Godzilla in a chef hat making stew in a stadium!” True to her word, that is in fact what’s drawn on her paper… and a staggering likeness for crayons too… should this worry me? “Are you and Mr. Marshal done talking yet? I’m hungry.”
Before I can ask Phoebe for a bit more time, Marshal turns toward the kitchen. “Nate, Eddy, I know you’re eavesdropping, so get over here.” The twins from earlier step out from behind the kitchen wall, not even attempting to deny the allegation against them. “I take it neither of you has a table right now?”
“No, it’s slow as heck. We’ve just been messing around–” One twin speaks, and the other elbows his ribs at this admission. “I mean… doing side work.”
“Well, you both have a table now. Please take care of our VIP guest here. Get her whatever she wants, it’s on me.”
Something seems to click in both of the young men’s minds simultaneously as they grin from ear to ear. “A VIP guest… yes… only the finest. For Alfonso!” “For Alfonso!” They both finish this declaration in unison and lead Phoebe to a table still within sight, but out of earshot.
“For Alfonso?” I parrot, a bit concerned about the pair taking care of my sister.
“Ugh… We have a wall of autographed celebrity pictures, and they really focused in on Alfonso Ribearo, the cousin from the Paw Prints of Bel Air who always wants a sandwich. They started some kind of strange cult around it? I’m pretty sure it’s all a big joke to annoy me… I hope.” I give him a look of disbelief and he shrugs. “It’s harmless enough… Although last week they used our birthday candles to do some ritual they said would summon a demon… and here you are… wait, they might be onto something.”
I can’t help but chuckle at the awful joke. “You really have changed, haven’t you?”
“That’s the hope.”
“I mean it… before, you would have berated those two.”
The lion man snorts and shakes his head. “On a good day…” His face darkens from amused to pensive. “I am forever burdened by the knowledge of how cruel a person I’m capable of being.” Ditto. “You say you don’t trust me with Phoebe, and I get that. I may not have laid a hand on you, but I know I said awful things, and never stepped in when your mother… yeah.”
Something boils over inside of me as I look this man in the eye. “You didn’t just stand by… you laughed. You laughed like what you were seeing was a goddamn slapstick sketch. I was a kid!”
“I know,” He says, no longer able to meet my eyes with his own. “I know… and I regret that, along with so much else. I’m truly sorry for all that I did, and didn’t do back then.” He takes a deep breath. “I just… I got swept up in it. All of it. I’d love to blame Helena’s influence, but I was a piece of shit long before I met her. You don’t realize what you’re doing, then you wake up one day and look at what you’ve become, look at the hurt you’ve caused. From there, you can either face it and try to be better, or refuse to reflect and treat life like a game of limbo, all fun and games as you go lower and lower. You already know I chose the latter.”
A shameful amount of what he’s saying rings true for me as well. “So what changed?” I ask, eager for some hopefully sage wisdom I can apply to my own situation.
Marshal looks over at Phoebe’s table while his two server employees light a candelabra and present her with a huge bowl of macaroni while singing a lively operatic tune, the lyrics of which I think they’ve substituted for types of pasta? “Your sister was born. I held her in the hospital that day, and it scared the shit out of me. I was in no way prepared. There was this tiny person, fresh to the world, who didn’t know a thing about the place she’d arrived… and she was going to depend on me and your mother to live and to learn. I couldn’t face it, so I ran. I spent the worst year of my life proving to myself again and again that I was worthless. Every day, I vindicated my decision with a parade of mistakes. I kept digging deeper until I hit my limit. Since I was unwilling to go further, the only direction I had left, was to start trying to drag myself out of where I was. The hilarious part being how with every successful step, I realized that I’d robbed myself of starting sooner, and having less ground to cover. To realize I was capable of being better became the hardest thing to accept, because it just made everything in my past so much more unforgivable.”
Marshal pauses, and I don't know what to say to fill the silence. He's saying all the right things. Even someone as cynical as myself is inclined to believe in the vision of a new man in front of me. I just wish I could see something to let me know for certain that this guy truly would be the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, beggars can't be choosers, and I truly believe that nothing could be worse than the devil I know.
“How about now… are you prepared?” I ask, looking him dead in the eyes.
“Prepared for what?”
It takes me a minute to slowly force the words through. It's painful, like slowly regurgitating glass. Once I say this, I'm truly resigning myself to something I don't know I have the strength to follow through on. “If I can force Helena's hand… custody goes to you. Are you prepared?”
Looking over at Phoebe once more, the man shakes his head. “I wasn’t expecting–” He pauses for a beat and looks back at me. “I don’t know, but I can try.” It’s the best, honest answer he can give.
***
After our initial meeting, I brought Marshal back to Mel’s place, and we all had a long talk about Phoebe’s future. My sister took a little while to fully understand that Marshal was her father, but even once she did, she was fully against any plan that took her away from our home. So we came up with a compromise, visitation at first with me present. From there, Marshal wants to have some time together, just the two of them, provided everyone is comfortable with that. Who’s to say where things will go from there, but it’s leagues better than the alternative.
The only hurdle left was the highest, and for that, I had to face my lowest.
Sitting on my worn out mattress, I wait for Libby and Willow. I asked the two of them to come over. Part of the reason, is that I want to practice showing my hand to people I know won’t judge me, before I confront Helena with it all. Yet, I think another part of me also just wants them to see. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the compulsion to show the most vulnerable pieces of myself to people that matter to me. Maybe deep down I’m testing them, to see if they really do like me and not just their perception of me. Maybe I just want other witnesses. Who’s to say?
Willow arrives first, but I’m pretty sure she picks up on my somber mood instantly. She enters, uncharacteristically quiet, and sits next to me. I can feel her eyes on me as we wait, but I just don’t have it in me to look anywhere but at the cloth covering the mirror in my room, as it looms silently just ahead. I don’t know how long the two of us sit there before Libby arrives, but at some point Willow’s hand lightly covers my own, and I'm not about to refuse that mercy.
“What’s going on?” Libby asks, cutting right through the tension without a moment’s hesitation.
My eyes finally manage to release themselves from my obsessive glare as I look over at the duo. “Mo… Helena, wants to take Phoebe. I can’t let that happen.” I hesitate, like I knew I would. “But I know how to stop her… I hope.”
“Stop her how?” Libby asks, arms crossed over her chest, no doubt expecting my usual one dimensional tactic of conflict resolution.
I shake my head at the implication. “Not what you’re thinking. There’s… I’ve been… Ever since…” Every preamble and justification fails to fully launch as I try to explain myself. I’ll need words for Helena, but for now, I know the easiest way to handle this. Standing up, I step forward and grab the cloth cover, flecks of dust spring forth from it and circle the air like a swarm of flies on carrion. I stop just shy of tearing it away from the mirror. “This won’t be easy to look at.”
Willow’s hand, that I abandoned as I stood, touches my arm. “This is obviously difficult for you… you don’t have to show us.”
“I want… No, I need to,” I respond, forcing an obviously strained and meaningless smile. “As long as you two are okay seeing something wildly unpleasant.”
Neither of them responds, yet neither leaves. They both look right at the sheet my hand has gripped as I quickly tear it away.