Outside the Lines: A Novel

My daddy tried.

He tried like he had always tried after he did something horrible. Except this time he tried harder, because taking me with him in the middle of the night and ending up in jail was, according to my mother, the most horrible thing he’d ever done. He cleaned the house and grocery-shopped and made my mother and me delicious dinners out of simple ingredients. He brought his easel into the house and painted every room, reasoning that if we ever had to move, we could rebuild our memories from his canvases. He went to the doctor with my mom without arguing and came home with a bag full of pill bottles that sounded like a baby’s rattle when he walked by. As far as we knew, he took them.

I wanted to believe he was doing better. I wanted to believe the smiles he showed me were real. But his hands shook and his eyes were dark. The flickering joy I usually saw in them was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I tried to make him laugh. The mask he wore was so thin—as transparent and fragile as tissue paper. I was certain it would crumple and blow away in the next stiff wind.

“Daddy?” I said one afternoon when I got home from school. It was a warm spring day and we were sitting in the sun on the front porch, sipping from cans of root beer and eating celery smeared with peanut butter. He was staring off into space and didn’t respond, so I nudged him. “Daddy?”

He rolled his head slowly around to look at me. “What, Bug? Everything all right?” He wasn’t drunk, but his words were labored. They sounded the way I felt when I had to drag myself out of bed to go to school.

I nodded. “Yes. Everything’s fine. I was just wondering . . .” I didn’t know how to ask all I wanted to know. Is your brain okay? Is the medicine working? Are you drinking and I just don’t know it? Do you still want to leave me? Are you ever going to get well?

“Wondering what?” he asked.

I started again, trying to compress my inquiries into one. “Well, how are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling?” he repeated. He dropped his eyes to the can he held, running his index finger along the rim of its mouth. Mom always yelled at me when I did that; she said I’d slice myself on the can’s sharp edge.

“Yes. You seem kind of sad.”

He sighed. “How could I be sad when I’m sitting next to the prettiest, smartest girl in all the world?”

I smiled. “Daddy. Seriously.”

“I am being serious. That’s an honest question. How is it possible for me to be sad when I have you?” He reached over and swung his arm around my shoulders, hugging me to him. He was so skinny. He cooked, but he barely ate. I was worried. When he took his meds, he usually ate more, not less.

“Look at your garden, Eden,” he said. “It’s still so beautiful.”

I glanced down on the side of the stairs at the Garden of Eden. The tulips and daffodils had faded away, only to be replaced by clusters of vibrant bluebells and towering shocks of orange tiger lilies.

“Should we take Mrs. Worthington a bouquet?” he asked, releasing me from his embrace. “She’s watching us. Maybe she’d like one.”

I looked across the street just in time to see Mrs. Worthington’s curtains swing closed. “No,” I said. “She’s not very nice.”

He bumped me gently with his knee. “Maybe she’s not nice because no one brings her flowers.”

“You told me before she’s not nice because she has a stick up her wrinkly old butt,” I reminded him.

He laughed, but it was a forced sound. “I hope you didn’t tell your mother I said that. She’d have my hide.”

“No,” I said quietly. “I didn’t tell her.” All my father’s secrets felt like stones in my belly. I was sure if I fell over the side of a ship, I’d sink.

“Good.” He patted my leg and stared off into space again. “I’m going to try and sell a painting,” he said after a few minutes. “Maybe two.”

“You are? That’s great, Daddy! Which ones?”

“The ones of you sleeping on the couch.”

“Who are you going to sell them to?”

“The Wild Orchid Gallery.”

“Do you think they’ll want to do a show?” I asked excitedly. A show meant my dad would be working. A show meant he’d be making money.

“No.” His voice was flat.

“Why not?”

“The gallery owner wants something I don’t want to give her.”

“Oh,” I said, and crunched on another celery stick. “Daddy?”

“What, Bug?”

“Are you happy?” I thought this maybe was a better question than asking if he was sad. I thought maybe he’d answer me with something other than another question. I wished he’d just tell me the truth.

My father turned suddenly and took me in his arms, hugging me with such strength I thought I might break. “I don’t know,” he whispered in my ear. “Are you?”

I buried my face into his neck. He smelled of sweat and Old Spice. “I think so,” I said. “I think I might be happy.”

“Okay then,” he answered. “Then I’ll be happy, too.”