Settle Road
by Morgan Rose-Marie
A couple of weeks after we moved into a house that was flat, my father left it. He left us too, but I didn’t know what that meant then.
A couple weeks after my father left, we finally did too. We emptied the flat house that never held much of anything and that had never felt like home—never had a chance to. My mother returned us to the first place I remembered living, the small village of Mariemont.
My grandparents had bought a perfectly square brick house to rent to Mom. It sat at the very edge of town, on the very end of a street called Settle, and that’s what I hoped we’d be able to do there. But months passed, and I learned divorce wasn’t something that happened. It was always happening, happening, happening.
Mom went back to working nights at the hospital like she did the last time we lived in this town when I was just a baby. She scheduled her shifts for the weekends my sisters and I spent with Da since the court decided they should split time this way.
Da also picked us up on Wednesday nights for short evening visits. Because our new home was not a house he’d ever lived in, he didn’t come inside for these visits. Instead, he took us to get pizza at Mios, where we played games on the butcher-paper tablecloths, or dinner at Frisch’s Big Boy, where we colored the disposable playmats. Then we went to the park.
I assumed Da would eventually figure out something better to do with us. He’d invented The Evil Cloud game and The Chin, after all. His eyes were still hazel, his chin still stubbly, his grin still higher on one side than the other. He spoke to me the same way, in a child-like tone, and said the same words he always had. He had been gone for a while, but he had also come back, so he’d come back to himself. I just had to wait.
Da’s own apartment was too far away to drive to on Wednesday nights, so one evening he took us to Sarah’s. After his denial that she was anything more than a colleague, this choice seemed like an unspoken admission. I was curious what she’d think when she saw me, what she’d say, what she’d do. But she wasn’t home. I was disappointed and, at the same time, relieved. I was safe from something, though I wasn’t sure what exactly I was afraid of.
I investigated the small living room to try to get an idea of who she was. There were no pictures on the walls. No knickknacks on the tables. Every surface was bare, the modest furniture unremarkable. From what I could tell, if I were to check out the apartment next door, it would all look the same. She was absent in so many ways.
Still, in the short galley kitchen where we made tuna salad for dinner, I accidentally learned one thing about Sarah. My meal tasted dry and bland, so I mixed in more mayonnaise, hoping this would fix it. It did not. I tried a bite, and the fish was softer but also an empty kind of sour. I added spoonful after spoonful of mayonnaise, tasting along the way, until the mixture was soupy and remarkably still flavorless.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of the disaster until the blue of the jar’s label caught my eye. It was all wrong. I read: Miracle Whip.
“What is this?” I asked, holding it up for Da to see.
“It’s a healthier kind of mayonnaise.”
“It does not taste good.”
“It has less fat.”
I realized then how I’d ruined my tuna, each of my attempts to fix it making it worse. “Where’s the regular kind?”
“There isn’t any. This is better.”
I shook my head, not sure I even believed that Da believed what he was saying. His coworkers called him “Junk-Food Johnny,” and I had only just learned “Da Cookies” were actually called Oreos.
I opted to throw my tuna-flavored bowl of Miracle Whip away. Eating no dinner at all was better than choking down this concoction. Maybe the best Da could really do was take us out to eat and to the park. Maybe I was waiting for someone to come back who was truly gone.
I woke up to the face of Medusa. With green skin and glowing eyes, she resembled the creature in a picture book Mom had to read to us called, “Go Away, Big Green Monster!” I didn’t meet her gaze. Not because I feared her piercing stare turning me to stone, but because I was transfixed by her hair of writhing snakes. They didn’t scare me. They disgusted me.
The thick girth of the snake’s bodies where thin strands of hair should be made my fingers jump. I reached out and grabbed hold of one and pulled it loose. The snake detached from her skull with the sound of smacking lips. I discarded the creature whose corpse ended abruptly in strange flatness. On Medusa’s head, hair sprouted from the spot, as though the strands were contained fully grown within the snake’s body. I pulled another. And another, until there were no snakes left. I’d pulled them all.
Panic launched me from my bed and to the bathroom. Brushing my hair back, I could see the bald patch above my right ear hadn’t grown any bigger. I leaned in toward the mirror, tilting my head so I could better see my scalp. I touched my skin with my index finger.
On the edge of the circle of balded skin, I found a hair that was too thick. I gripped it lightly and ran it between my forefinger and thumb a few times until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I plucked it out. I felt again, finding another hair that was rough, and removed it. Over and over again. There was always another strand that irritated. Then my finger came away stained red.
This wasn’t a dream. I recoiled my fingers and pressed my palm to my head. Blood was supposed to stay inside. What if it didn’t stop? I couldn’t fit a band-aid to my scalp. I ran back to bed and slept on my left side, hoping I wouldn’t bleed out before morning.
Upon waking up, the first thing I did was find Mom standing at the base of the steps. I didn’t want her to know about my bald spot, but I needed her to assure me I wouldn’t die. I pulled my hair back to show her the fresh scab and tried to sound calm when I asked, “Will this be okay?”
For a moment, I thought everything was fine, that I would live and could go eat my breakfast and read the back of the cereal box while I did it. Then Mom gasped. And fine was just a memory from years and years ago.
“What have you done?”
What had I done? I was about to protest that I hadn’t done anything, but I didn’t know how to explain that something inside me made me do it—something that wasn’t me. This didn’t even make sense to me, so I just started crying.
“Will it grow back?” I asked.
“It might grow back red and curly.”
I cried harder, not understanding this was a lie. “Don’t tell Da,” I begged. She promised and again I believed.
The next time Da came to pick me up for visitation, the first thing he asked was, “How is your hair?”
Da got flaky about visits a few months in. I’d sit on the step where our front walk met the sidewalk, watching for his Pontiac to turn the corner onto Settle.
When pickup time came and went, Mom was sent scrambling through the house. She grabbed the phone, dialing Da to see if he still planned on coming, pacing the house while it rang, checking out the front door just in case.
“I have to leave for work!” She announced while she waited for him to pick up and we waited for him to show up. He didn’t do either.
Mom dialed another number, trying to find a sitter to watch us for the night. Her hair got messier and her voice higher with each call. Finally, when it was clear no one could come on such short notice, she called in sick to work.
“Why didn’t he come?” I asked after she arranged to stay home.
“I don’t know.” She threw up her hands and let them drop so they made a clapping sound against her thighs.
I thought of all the potential reasons. He had car trouble. Or worse, he got in a car wreck and was injured. Or maybe it was because last weekend I complained too much about having to go to church. Maybe it was because I snuck half my scalloped potatoes onto my sister’s plate and the rest I stuffed in my mouth and then spit out in the toilet after excusing myself to the bathroom. Maybe it was because I’d asked to go to the bookstore, then asked to get a book there. Or because I wanted to play on his laptop for too long. I was always asking for things, always wanting. Maybe it was finally too much.
Later we learned he had a business trip.
Soon, missing became a routine. I came to dread the waiting.
“Why doesn’t he just call?” I asked.
“I wish I knew,” Mom said.
“Can’t you ask him?”
“I have. Many times.”
“And what did he say?”
“The trips are last minute.”
On Fridays we just waited and hoped. I learned you can’t call in sick forever—the only thing you can be forever is gone. After a few no-shows, Mom quit her job and went to work as an assistant at Granddad’s dentistry so she could be home when we were—and when Da wasn’t.
I began therapy with my Beanie Baby donkey, Lefty, complete with a hand-crafted bridle made of string. My therapist had white hair and a face like Einstein’s, but his office felt more like a living room than a clinic. Rather than reclining on a futon, I sat on the floor in front of his fireplace. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. When I spoke, mine was quieter. But neither of us said much. Instead of talking, we drew.
He sketched two hills separated by a valley in the middle. A Billy goat perched on each peak. The story he told didn’t have a troll or a bridge or even a plot, so I didn’t think it really counted as a story, but in its telling I realized the point of the exercise. The picture and story were an analogy for my family—my parents on either side and me in the middle. It felt pedantic even if I didn’t have that word for it then.
I decided to make up a story that had no connection to my situation and drew mice.
When the therapist asked for my story, I explained the mice’s parents were dead, and one mouse was left to care for its younger mice siblings, venturing out from the safety of the burrow in search of food.
When I finally met Sarah, I caught myself right before I said, “You look like Mom.” Her long blond hair was pulled back in a half-ponytail, just like I’d seen Mom’s in an old picture from college. I wondered if Da noticed this.
Da didn’t introduce her. When we walked into his apartment, she was just there. I guessed I’d heard her name enough that it was obvious, though he didn’t say, “This is my girlfriend,” either. Maybe that was supposed to be obvious too. I wondered if they lived together. If she lived here now, but I knew he’d never say. It was as if history didn’t exist for them.
I got why he lied about Sarah before he left. Now, it made no sense to me. He’d made his choice, and she was standing right in front of me. This seemed like the moment to stop pretending if ever there was one.
Sarah didn’t say, “Hi,” just sort of nodded at me. She didn’t smile, and I got the sense that she wasn’t thrilled to be here. Or maybe she wasn’t thrilled that I was here. That makes two of us, I thought.
I wanted to ask her what she thought of kids, of Da having kids, of me specifically—a kid of a woman she’d met once, of a woman whose husband she’d crossed a line with. I wondered if she thought about Mom or me at all. I guessed not, though.
It would take me a while longer to believe the same was true of Da. I didn’t yet understand how the interests of adults could compete with the interests of their kids—and, in the case of such conflict, that the kids’ interests wouldn’t automatically win.
I left the silent living room occupied by the silent adults and walked into the kitchen to look at the fridge. There, Da had posted a printout of the weekend schedule. I reviewed it line by line, the days divided into hours, each one filled, every meal planned. It was as if he was counting down the time we had to share like I was. I wasn’t surprised to see that I’d be eating tuna and canned pears. I made a mental note to check the mayonnaise jar and then began the wait for the weekend to end.
I worried about Mom being alone. One night she ordered us pizza for dinner, and I noticed the delivery guy appeared to be an eligible young man. After she’d tipped him and closed the door, I asked, “Did you think he was cute?”
She laughed, but I was being serious.
“Are you interested in him?”
She was not, which I thought was too bad. I told her I didn’t want her to be lonely. Mom assured me she was not lonely. “I have you guys.”
I’d seen how upset she was after Da left, so I didn’t fully believe her. I also wanted to ask her how she felt when we were gone, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t give me the answer I suspected I knew.
As we got ready for bed that night, I found a paperback on the shelf that had a satyr on the cover and handed it to Mom.
“My second-grade teacher gave me this on my last day before we moved.”
“The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is one of my favorites.”
“You know it?” I was surprised. Then I added, “My teacher said the same thing.”
Mom smiled and opened the door to Narnia. Once through, I saw no reason to leave and couldn’t understand why the Pevensie children ever did. Each night I waited for the next chapter, wanting to learn more about this fantastical land that rightfully belonged to Aslan, the lion. The world was falling apart. A witch had taken over—brought a winter that never left. Still, all that was going to be fixed by these four kids. They would save the realm and then rule it better.
Toward the end, I was shocked when Mom read of Aslan surrendering himself to the White Witch. Her evil entourage shaved his mane to humiliate him, and then they killed him on the stone table where he put up no fight. How could that be? Through my tears, I asked Mom why Aslan let it happen, why he went willingly to slaughter in the first place, knowing what they planned to do to him? She told me to wait and see.
The next night Mom read, Aslan returned. The stone table broke in two and he rose from it. He’d known how it would go all along. He’d seen further into the future than anyone. His leaving wasn’t the end. He was always going to come back. I discovered in C.S. Lewis’s novel a story I wanted so badly to believe in. Aslan disappeared but always returned, died on a stone table but came back even then. This was how things were supposed to end—they weren’t supposed to end at all.
A few years after moving in, we would leave Settle. My mother would remarry and we would move to a house across from a wooded park. On a sunny day that my memory tries to color overcast, Da would arrive to pick me up for visitation and I would refuse to get in his Pontiac.
When the police came, they told me to get in Da’s car, and I did.
That drive to his apartment was the last one I made.
A few years before this, before Settle, before Da left, before the flat house that never held much—not even us for long—we moved into the last house that felt like home for our family. Of course, none of us knew that. It wasn’t decided yet.
This house expanded like a pair of lungs under water. Its size took my breath away. Everywhere around me there was space to play and transform. I imagined running on all fours through this place pretending to be whatever animal felt right that day—so many possible me’s and plenty of room for all of them. I could be anything and everything here, I was sure of it.
In our very own backyard, Da applied his engineering skills to assemble a swing set. I watched him construct the metal structure with its bands of red and blue paint. After he finished, he put his hand on the leg of the set and proudly announced it was ready for use. I rushed over to test the swings.
“Push me.” I grabbed hold of the rubber-covered chains hanging on either side and hopped into the seat.
Da walked around behind me as I got the swing started. Then he gave me a shove, shouting, “Weee!” in the child-like voice he used when he spoke to me.
Higher and higher, I flew with each push, sticking out my legs as I crested. I heard the theme song to my favorite cartoon Underdog: “Speed of lightning/ roar of thunder!” I was sailing through the sky. Da sent me up and little people below called, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane!” But, no, it was just little ol’ me. I could feel the wind whipping my cape behind me as I broke through the clouds and into a brand-new world where anything was possible.
And then the swing set stuttered. I felt it before I saw it. The shift from weightlessness to weighted as I swung toward the ground reverberated through the metal structure. My stomach stayed in the air as the rest of me flew backwards. My eyes bugged as one leg of the set lurched off the ground.
“It’s moving,” I said, swinging past Da. He sent me forward again, and my head craned to watch the leg. It settled back down into the grass. But as I came down, it lifted again. I pointed at it. “It’s off the ground!”
“You’re fine,” Da assured me. I didn’t feel fine. Over and over again, a diagonal pair of the set’s legs skipped like jumping rope.
“What if it falls over?”
“It won’t. I built it!” Da laughed, sending me skyward. I saw he believed in his words, his work, in this thing he’d created. He didn’t see the danger I saw. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said nothing else about it.
I kept swinging, but it had stopped being fun. As Da pushed me up and up and up, I looked at the great expanse of sky above me and this new house that had seemed so full of promise. Instead of flying through it with my superhero cape trailing, I was falling up into it. This was what Shel Silverstein had warned about. This was a world where anything was possible.
As I swung downward, I hung my leg and dragged the toe of my shoe along the dirt to slow me, hoping to ground myself without letting him see.
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