“Mommy, this year I want to be a killer clown.”

I was sifting through a seemingly endless rack of brightly colored wings of various styles and sizes. Bold, blue and orange butterfly wings, transparent pink fairy wings, and jagged dragonfly wings, green and glittering beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights of the store. I plucked a small pair of feathery angel wings from the rack before glancing downward at my six year old daughter.

Sephy was gazing up at me, her neck craned so that I could see directly up her red, foam-rubber clown nose. She was wearing a black velour top-hat and clutching a plastic knife in her hand, toothily grinning at me like the cat that ate the canary.

“Tch, that’s nice, Seph,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her. “Real nice,” I removed the hat and reached down to ruffle her light brown hair. “Where did Daddy find that stuff?” I asked. If my daughter had ever witnessed the cinematic toilet paper known as Killer Klowns from Outer Space, it certainly hadn’t been in my company. I held up the wings behind her back, mentally evaluating the way they might look when paired with her old ballet recital costume.

“In the aisle with a lot of masks,” she told me, “This is what I want to be.”

No, I thought, that was what Daddy wanted her to be.

“Isn’t it cool? Daddy thinks it is,”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded absently, perusing the wing-rack again. I spotted a similar pair of feather-wings in fire engine red. I slipped the hanger off the rack with my other hand and held up both pairs behind the shoulders of my murderous little clown.

“Hey!” she cried, her fiery green eyes narrowing. Without warning, she thrust out her left hand and jammed the plastic knife directly into my pelvic bone. The blade had retracted, but I flinched at the impact.

“Hey,” I said sharply, dropping to my knees. I tossed the pair of white wings on the floor and yanked the fake weapon from her hand. “Is that how we get what we want?” I asked her, forcing my words through clenched teeth. I thought about the question a moment after I had spoken it, and noticed that while in the process of disciplining, often I spoke as if Sephy and I were one, using words like “we” and “us.”

It made me think of my mother, her dark eyes glassy with disapproval, and her tight, thin-lipped smile. She longed to live through me. I remembered how she had always spoken of us as a united being, as if even my most minute decisions affected her life as directly as my own. She didn’t stop using “we,” or “us,” until my 18^th birthday, the day I told her I was pregnant with Sephy, and severed her stifling, imaginary umbilical cord in one fell swoop. Shortly thereafter, everything became “you,” “the baby,” and “that boy.” She hadn’t used any words implying togetherness in years.

“That boy has too many problems for you, Kira” she had constantly nagged, “You can’t raise a child, go to school, and have a future wearing a stone around your neck like that. No matter how you slice it, Monty is never going to hear you.”

When my mom had offered to pay for Sephy’s schooling if I left Monty, my deaf husband, and moved to Arizona with her, we stopped talking. That was three years ago.

I clutched Sephy’s sticky hands in mine, determined to avoid subjective personal pronouns. “Look at me, Sephy. That hurt Mom—I mean, that hurt me.”

Although I knew she hadn’t meant to hurt me, her method of gaining my attention was a bit too comparable to a scene I remembered from the movie Child’s Play. Sephy fixated on the discarded angel wings at my side, to the spot where a few of the feathers had fallen off and scattered. Her pale cheeks reddened, and she began to sniffle behind that big red nose.

Tears began to slip down her cheeks. “I—I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, her voice loud and shaky. At any moment, the downpour would ensue.

“No, no, no Seph,” I told her, crouching down and rolling my eyes, wishing Monty would show up and take some of the heat off me. “You can’t just cry like this all the time.” It bothered me, the way she refused to throw a tantrum. Sometimes I wanted her to fight with me, but Sephy had the argumentative tendencies of a moody teenager. Whenever I scolded her, she’d hang her head as if the weight of the world were forcing it down, and trudge off to her room, determined to internalize my every word of complaint. I often wondered, if she’s this sullen at six, what happens at thirteen?

“Oooh, she’s in trouble,” I heard a small voice say from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see a little boy tugging at the sleeve of his mother’s tweed jacket, pointing his finger at me to expose the injustice of the situation. The bewildered, wandering eyes of children were all over me. Their mouths dropped open one by one as they stared sympathetically at Sephy.

I was instantly aware that I was the only mother in the Halloween Store crouching down to deliver an eye-level talking-to. Their well-dressed parents followed their eyes and zeroed in on the two of us. It wasn’t until then that I remembered my blonde ponytail was two days past too dirty, and my black track pants were covered in a thin white layer of dog hair. I was still wearing my husband’s green hooded sweatshirt; the one I had spilled my coffee on in the car half an hour ago.

Suddenly, the act of trying to convince my daughter to holler back at me seemed much less important than detracting attention from myself. I stood up straight, pretending not to feel the disapproval emanating from the eyes of mothers who were old enough to be my mother. I gently pried the rubber nose from Sephy’s tear-streaked face. The eyes of the onlookers spoke loudly, their judgmental stares saying that if I were a smart mother, I’d dig through my purse for some Kleenex.

Unfortunately, I had thrust my purse at Monty the moment we walked into the store. I signed to him that this way, I could tell Sephy I didn’t have any money when she began requesting every item that caught her eye.

Purseless and therefore prideless, I pulled down my sleeve and covered my entire right hand with it, offering it to her.

“Go on sweetie,” I sighed, “Blow.” Better to spray Monty’s ratty high school sweatshirt than gunk up that twelve dollar clown nose. I eyed the upturned price tag on the angel wings at my feet and sucked in my breath. After a few quick calculations in my head, I concluded that at best, Monty and I could afford a feather. Two, if Monty had an especially good day at the tattoo parlor.

As my daughter blew a world class phlegm globber into the fabric shielding my palm, I abandoned the red pair. Sephy handed me the white ones, which I reluctantly placed back on the rack with my free hand.

“Thanks, Seph.”  I said, stooping down to thumb the tears from her soft cheeks.

“Sorry, Mommy,” she told me, between gulps that would soon become hiccups if she didn’t calm down.  

“No troubles, bubbles,” I told her, and brushed up her bangs with my fingertips. As I laid a quick kiss on her warm forehead, I tried to wipe the snot on the back of my sweatpants as inconspicuously as possible. “So, where do you suppose your dad’s at?” I asked her, taking her by the hand. This was a loaded question for Sephy. She had a flair for the dramatic, especially when it came to her parent’s relationship.

*

Last summer, we made the mistake of purchasing a VHS copy of Mrs. Doubtfire at a garage sale. Sephy loved it. She watched the film over and over again until the tape wore out, at which time she began randomly throwing harmless objects at Monty and myself, innocently labeling it a “run-by fruiting.” This continued until the morning when she tossed a bouncy ball at a can of strawberry Shasta, spilling it all over the portfolio of wing designs Monty had been slaving over for weeks. Sephy immediately sent herself to her room, her sobs echoing through the walls of our shoddy apartment.

Monty just sat on the sofa, drank what was left from the can of spilt Shasta, and stared blankly at the ruined designs for an entire hour. Occasionally I’d glance up from my Shakespeare text to watch him wringing his callused hands.  Eventually, he got up and left, tossing the book of designs in the trash and slamming the door hard behind him.

When Monty had been gone for six hours, Sephy started to get excited.

“Is Daddy leaving us? Do you two need some time apart? I think I’m going to stay with you, Mom,” she told me, “We could hang out. Get to know each other better, you know?” she placed a hand on my shoulder, rested her head against it, smiling. I grimaced at the ideas Robin Williams had implanted in my daughter’s impressionable mind.

Monty finally returned twenty minutes later, bare-chested, with a Walmart bag in one hand, and his t-shirt in the other.  He tossed the bag to Sephy. She pounced on it and eagerly removed the DVD version of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I signed to him as I spoke, “Your shirt, honey?”  

Sephy sat down on the floor and folded her knees beneath her, mimicking me by tilting her head to the side in confusion. I squinted. We studied the smooth, chiseled ivory canvas of Monty’s chest, trying to see if there were any new additions to his body-art collection.

As far as I could tell, there was nothing new. Just the same two kelly-green flaming shamrocks on either side of his chest, the slobbering blue clown on his right bicep, and a huge, multi-colored tribal gem on the left, which he described as his vision of “The Ultimate Chaos Emerald.” Monty had always loved Sonic the Hedgehog, and was still something of a video game freak. I was not anxiously anticipating the day when Sephy asked me where her name came from-- when I would hang my head in embarrassment and admit that it had been inspired by her father’s love of Final Fantasy.

Monty approached me slowly, his wallet-chain jingling against his low-slung cargo pants. He placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned into me, his dark brown hair tickling the side of my face. He slipped the other hand around my waist and pulled me closer. I felt the rhythm of his heart beating against my chest. He pressed his forehead against mine and I gazed into his eyes, awash with an intensity as green as the Chicago river on St. Patrick’s day.

He kissed me, crushing his lips against my own in such an unexpected expression of tenderness that I almost forgot that we weren’t in high school anymore, almost forgot we were in the presence of a child. I lifted my hands to his shoulders and began to gently run my nails across his back, when I felt something stuck to it. He winced.

“What is it?” I drew back, and nearly tripped over Sephy in the process. She was staring up at us in wonderment from behind her blonde bangs, an amused half-smile on her lips. It was probably the first time she had ever witnessed an ounce of true intimacy between her parents. Later, she told me that she felt like she was watching Days of Our Lives, a daytime favorite of her babysitter’s.

Monty turned around. Reaching his arms behind his back, he peeled the two topmost pieces of tape from a large bandage. It flopped down to reveal encrusted, drying blood in the outline of intricately detailed wings. They spiraled and fanned out, starting at the center of his shoulder blades and extending to the middle of his upper back. At the top of each angel wing, there was a name in Old English font. “Sephy,” on the left, and my name, “Kira,” on the right.

I was speechless for a long moment. Cool tears sprang to my eyes.

“Does this mean,” Sephy asked, unable to contain her disappointment, “That you guys aren’t getting divorced?”

Whenever Monty and I were separated thereafter, she fabricated stories about the deterioration of our relationship.

*

“Dunno where Daddy is. Maybe he’s with Layla,” Sephy said, clasping her palms together beneath her chin. She pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes at me as we passed a row of ugly rubber masks of Bill Clinton, The Incredible Hulk, and Wonder Woman.

“Must be,” I agreed, nodding. I had been listening to Eric Clapton in the car lately, and Monty usually played my CDs for Sephy when he picked her up from daycare. Before I went to bed on Saturday night, I caught him paging through the lyrics insert. Looking sheepish, he signed to me that he was very interested in the song “My Father’s Eyes.”

Three weeks before, when business at the Electric Python started really picking up and Monty was setting up a lot of appointments (no doubt for the bouncing teen beauty queens who needed to get their tramp-stamp before the weather worsened and it became too cold to show off their lower backs,) he was working extremely late into the night. When I complained of his absence, Sephy gleefully told me that she was pretty sure Monty was in love with some girl who wore a “Raspberry Beret,” and that if I wasn’t careful, he was going to start giving her “Diamonds and Pearls.”

She and Monty watched a lot of VH1 Classic together. He loved the Pop-Up videos.

I thought it was funny. I asked her to tell him next time she thought he was falling in love with any girl, (and they all usually had names like Sister Christian, or Lucy in the Sky, or Blue Jean) I was going to run off with a Prince. She smiled, and nodded sagely, like she caught the reference.

We meandered through the aisles, stopping every thirty seconds or so for her to grab a wand, or a package of makeup, or a hat and ask, “Mommy, can I have—“ After awhile, I started to get angry. Not at her—I had long since accepted that children are the epitome of what it means to want, but at Monty, for demanding that we hit up an overpriced novelty store for costumes, when rifling around his parents attic would’ve been a reasonable, cost effective solution to our search.

And son of a bitch, it occurred to me that each time I was prying Sephy away from another display of ostentatious accessories, I was being forced into the repugnant role of wicked step-mother. The way Sephy’s excitement began to lessen with each consecutive denial, the way her cupid’s bow lips drooped into a pout twisted my guts. I felt awful for the both of us. All these beautiful, bright objects being dangled before us, and here I couldn’t even afford to buy her a clown nose, let alone the pair of wings we’d come for.

Monty should’ve been walking with us, doling out an equal number of no’s, which we would follow up with weighty, side-long glances, admitting our collective failure at parenthood.

I walked along, peering through the aisles, occasionally balancing on tip-toe, like an awkward ballerina seeking out my husband’s yellow Ed Hardy cap. As we walked past a rainbow wall entirely devoted to Care Bear costumes, Sephy stopped and squeezed my hand.

“I still wanna be a killer clown, Mommy…but it’s okay if you can’t buy me the costume,” she said softly, “I know tryin’a go to work and school has been really hard on you lately.”

I almost tripped over my own feet.

“What? No, honey,” I felt my face growing hot. I stumbled over my cover-up, and felt a pillowy pressure building up behind my eyes, “I’m doing okay, work’s not…” Not so bad?

The days raced through my brain as I tried to cite an example of at least one good day I’d had in the past month. I sorted through my memory, but found I could only calculate how many tables I had waited, how many orders I’d forgotten, how many half-assed papers I had written and how many tardies I had racked up. “Well, I mean, but school’s all…” What, all right? I had Sephy’s homework to worry about on the evenings that Monty worked late at the shop.

I never had time to sit down and read the rest of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, or Pride and Prejudice for my Literature class, so I rented the films and half-watched them while we worked through her spelling lists together. She sat on my lap as I paged through the Spark Notes and encouraged her to practice reading aloud.

The other two nights and over the weekend, I waitressed at Zorba’s, the cheapest restaurant in town. I drafted my papers on greasy brown paper napkins during smoke breaks and trips to the bathroom. After being on my feet all night, acting as a compliant little goddess serving up dishes of baklava and souvlaki, and stinking gyros stuffed with any variety of dead animal, I would drive across town back to our apartment complex around twelve-thirty. I’d hike up the wobbling staircase clutching a to-go bag, and unlock our door only to find the sink full of dirty dishes, wrinkled laundry piled up beside the loveseat, and the contents of Sephy’s backpack strewn haphazardly across our living room. I’d write “Sephy,” on the to-go bag, plop a juice box into it, and toss it in the refrigerator. Then I’d kick off my shoes and gather her pictures, her workbooks, her colored pencils and character erasers, shoving them into her backpack at light speed, because once I stopped moving, I’d be down for the count. As always, there was Monty, passed out on the loveseat, Gamecube controller clutched tightly in his hands.

Sonic the Hedgehog remained on the screen, tapping his foot and shaking his head impatiently.

I sank to the floor with my back against the loveseat, to fold laundry that I knew I’d have to iron the next day. I sobbed into the downy softness of freshly washed clothing, so I wouldn’t wake Sephy. After awhile, I began to associate the taste of my tears with the scent of detergent.

*

“Everything’s fine, Mommy’s doing A-okay,” I told Sephy. I regretted slipping up and calling myself “Mommy,” but my mouth was racing to catch up with my brain. I felt I was spending my life running on a treadmill, going the distance, but never actually ending up anywhere. Or maybe it was more like an endless yoga session, a test to see how many ways can Kira bend before she breaks? I was only twenty-four, but I was feeling more like forty-two.

Young motherhood hadn’t been in the cards for my future, I had dreams of going to Ely, working with wolves. I had a full scholarship for studies in Animal Science. I was going to be a veterinarian before I settled on an English major, because like every dumb fucking teenager in the history of the world, I was in love.

My head blames my heart all the time.

I had never met an actual deaf person until I met Monty. He was my friend Chris’s younger brother. During my junior year of high school, he acted as Chris’s sober-cab, hauling our group of friends to Denny’s all the time after parties in their parents’ huge carrier van. We got a kick out of him; he drew cartoon pictures on our napkins, and sent us home with hilarious caricatures of our drunken selves.

I saw him around school and we started passing notes between classes. Through those letters, I learned everything there was to know about the mute, mysterious man I was destined to marry.

Monty’s mother had rubella when she was pregnant, sentencing him to a soundless life. So whenever I wrote him, I poured my soul onto the paper, being sure I told him everything that I couldn’t literally show him. After a few weeks, Monty asked me out.

On the note he slipped me, he had drawn an anime depiction of the two of us. He was on his knees, gazing up at me pleadingly, and offering up a bouquet of flowers. I was leaning against the door frame wearing an evening gown, one hand covering my yawning mouth, and the other one thrust in his face, dismissing him. “Prove me wrong,” the note said, “Let me take you to a movie tonight.”

We went to a movie neither of us had any intention of watching, and sat in the back row of the cheap seats, sharing kisses instead of popcorn, and chasing them with a flask full of Skyy Vodka. What I appreciated most about Monty was that he was so nonjudgmental. He was so ready to love me for everything that I was…Or maybe everything I was supposed to have been.  

Pregnancy, of course, lead to marriage. Not that we were crazy about wearing rings and playing house, but mostly because I wasn’t about to raise a baby trapped beneath my mother’s thumb.  Marriage, on Monty’s fluctuating artist salary and my part-time college student status, lead us directly to a run down two-bedroom apartment in the worst part of town. Although I loved Monty, more than I could possibly love anything besides Sephy, sometimes the shitty setting coupled with the unbearable silence was a little more than I could stand.

My schedule didn’t allow for social relationships outside of the home. I barely had enough time to blurt out, “Hi, how’s it going?” in the hallways at community college, much less carry an in-depth conversation with someone. It wasn’t easy, having to pick up the slack everywhere Monty kept dropping off. Most of the time, when I got home, I had no one to talk to but a six year old girl. Sure, she always had plenty to say-- but discussions about Sesame Street characters and how they compared to Muppet Babies usually didn’t help me sleep any better at night. I clutched her hand tightly, as my nose began to tingle and tears welled up in my eyes.

“Damnit.” I stopped in my tracks when we reached another aisle of 80’s character costumes. I saw an adult Jem and the Holograms costume, and tried to ignore the fact that I’d have loved to wear it to a party, tried to ignore the fact that what I really wanted was just to be invited to a party, an event where people would be talking, laughing, and listening to each other. “It’s like we’ve been walking in circles,” I cleared my throat a few times, to avoid bursting into tears in the middle of the store and call more attention to us.

“No, Mommy, this place is just amazingly huge,” Sephy told me, patting my hand reassuringly. “It’s okay, we’ll find Dad.”

I needed to leave. I thought of how much easier it would’ve been if I could just page him and wait in the parking lot. The entire episode was reminding me of everything I’d given up by choosing family over future. I was feeling tiny pangs of resentment for both Sephy and Monty stabbing at my heart, and even more resentment for myself when I realized what kind of person that made me. I wanted nothing more than to escape the vibrant land of costumes and make-believe.

As we turned into the gag-joke aisle, I felt a hand brush up against my butt. I gasped and whipped around, my greasy hair snapping across my cheek as I turned. I raised up Sephy’s arm, probably too high, ready to make a Lifetime Television Movie-worthy scene about how I was somebody’s mother, when I froze.

Monty was grinning at me. Although my view of his face was obstructed by a giant red clown nose, his eyes were smiling. In one hand, he held the top hat Sephy been wearing earlier, and inside of it was the nose and the fake knife. He handed them down to her. She pulled out the toy knife, and I swear she was in Heaven. She laughed and threw her arms around his legs and smiled widely.

“See, Mommy?” she said, happily, “See, we’re all going to be killer clowns!”

Monty laid an awkward kiss on the edge of my lips before he placed an equally red, equally enormous nose over mine. For a second, I literally saw stars.

“I see,” I said, gritting my teeth. It seemed I had adopted my mother’s thin-lipped smile. If I let it fall from my face, I was going to cry, or scream, or both. The black and orange colors dominating the store seemed to close in on me, they melded into each other and began to spin. I couldn’t breathe through my nose with the foam-rubber over it. I felt as if I were suffocating, and Monty and Sephy were laughing. Like it was funny.

I removed the nose and thrust it into Monty’s palm. His eyes widened, and he looked down at Sephy. She paused, mid-giggle, and stared at me.

“Sephy, tell your Daddy to pay for these then. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

I turned and marched toward the exit as fast as my legs would carry me. A gust of cold air and a mist of droplets hit my face as I shoved through the double doors and walked out to the parking lot. I fished into the pouch of Monty’s sweatshirt and found my keys. Climbing into the driver’s seat of our rusty blue Lumina, I nearly gagged at the stench of coffee and cigarettes. Just as I slammed the door, it began to rain. Good thing, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought to have it washed.

I sat there for a long time, hunched over, resting my head against the steering wheel. I closed my eyes and waited, long enough for me to wonder exactly what was taking them so long. I tried willing myself to calm down and remind myself to realize that I loved my family. I counted to ten over and over again, hoping to convince myself that by the end of the next count, I would be considerably less furious, less brutally unhappy.

It wasn’t working. There was something lodged in the back of my throat. I needed to get it out.

After awhile, I heard the back seat and the passenger-side door open. My eyelids snapped open as I heard Monty clicking Sephy’s seatbelt into place. I heard him close her door and then felt him crawl in beside me. I didn’t look at him, because I knew he’d just be staring at me imploringly, silently begging me to see the humor of this situation, but I didn’t want to forgive. I wanted to vent.

I started the car and peeled out of the parking lot so fast the tires squealed. Sephy whimpered, and in the rearview mirror, I could see her hands working hastily. “Mom’s really, really upset. . .” she signed to Monty. I stopped watching and focused on the road. The rain began to beat at the windshield. I smacked my hand down on the wiper switch.

I pulled onto fourth street, driving back to our home sweet dump, steady going 55 in a 30. I wanted a cigarette, but my cigarettes were in my purse, and Monty had my purse. I didn’t intend to take it from him—if I saw his eyes I risked losing my nerve.  

“I can’t believe it,” I said in a low voice, moving my lips as fast as possible, so Monty wouldn’t have time to read them. “Can’t fucking believe it. You knew that my idea for Halloween was to buy Sephy a pair of angel wings, so she could wear her ballet costume from last year. You fucking knew that she would’ve gone for that idea, and thought it was great,” My voice began to rise and waver, in much the way that air does in intense heat, “But then you go ahead and expose her to some shitty, B horror flick and suddenly, suddenly Daddy’s idea is much more exciting, much more important.” My chest tightened, my eyes watered. Sephy began to sob.  I merged onto the highway.

“Mommy, will you look at him? Look at Daddy, please,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. Monty reached over with his left hand, the one he tattooed his wedding band on, and tried to grab mine. I ripped it out of his grasp.

“Don’t fucking touch me. You don’t even help with Sephy! You can see how goddamn busy I am, how badly I want to get this school thing done so I can get a good job, so we at least have a little money, enough so that we won’t embarrass ourselves every time we go to a store and have to put like, five items back after they ring us up.” I was trying to maintain control, but my hands kept fluttering off the wheel. My foot felt leaden, it fell harder on the gas. “Every night I come home and you’re asleep on the couch, buried beneath your sketches, burnt out on video games.” My vocal chords burned, they hadn’t been used this much in weeks. “You’re always at the shop, tattooing little sluts that keep coming back for your magic hands or whatever.” It was all slipping out of me now, in this venomous, oily stream.

I couldn’t believe the things I was saying, but the beauty of venting in this way, quick-and-dirty blurting, meant that I would suffer almost zero repercussion from Monty. In a normal setting, this would completely unravel my world, but we were far from normal.

“Mommy, sto-oop! Daddy’s crying,” Sephy threw her head back and wailed, pleading “Mommy just look at him, please! He loves you, I love you—Daddy just wants to tell you something!” She had unbuckled her seat belt and thrust her hands between us in the front seat. Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw them working fast, like small white doves trying desperately to make peace.

“Put your seatbelt on, Seph!” I screamed. My palms were sweating, the wheel felt slippery. She backed up immediately, and I heard a click. Tears streamed from my eyes. I smelled detergent.

“Monty, I hate that you can’t talk to me,” I laughed once, but it came out as more of a sob. “I don’t know how I, how I ever thought I could keep this up, how I could keep you as a permanent part of my life,” the admittance sent regret coursing through my veins. I wished I hadn’t said it, because I knew I hadn’t meant it. But it was too late; Sephy had already heard every word.

“It’s like living with a fucking ghost. You don’t even write notes anymore,” I stammered between sobs, rubbing at my watery eyes with my sleeves. My vision was blurry. The windshield wipers were on high speed, slamming back and forth across the glass as the rain pelted down on us.

When the windows began to fog, the tail-lights of cars ahead of us appeared to form abstract faces. I swerved into the next lane when their brake lights lit up, glaring at me, judging me, just like the mothers in the store. “Sometimes, I wish I could break both of your hands, just to see if then you’d actually try to communicate with me.”

As soon as the words slipped past my lips, I heard the rustling of a plastic bag. In my peripheral vision, I saw Monty’s face was blotchy, his eyes red with unshed tears. He was clutching a pair of angel wings so hard his knuckles had turned white.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Monty cast the wings at me. They made contact with my shoulder, startling me. I jumped and jerked my hand hard to one side, and they both slipped off the wheel. The car shifted to the right and the Lumina sailed through a giant puddle. The muddy water splashed high, doused the windows with rainwater.

Time slowed.

I heard nothing but the sound of my own blood rushing through my ears once the car veered off the highway, hydroplaning toward the median. We were coming up on a sign too fast. I shut my eyes, but the sign was emblazoned on my brain; No U-turn.

The unintelligible noises pouring from Monty’s mouth brought me back to reality. I clamped my hands down on the wheel, twisted it to the left, and jammed my foot down hard on the brakes.  The car skidded a few feet on the strip and came to a slippery stop, an inch from the yellow pole in the center. We lurched forward and the seatbelt sliced into my chest and stomach.

After a long moment, I shifted into park. We sat there in the median strip, listening to the whirring traffic, the rumbling of semis, the Mac trucks lumbering past us on either side. I heard the swishy sound of rain and tires, and felt my thunderous heart beat resounding through my body.

My hands began to cramp. They were still locked around the steering wheel. There were a few stray feathers on the seat beside me.

In the rear view mirror, Sephy was staring at me, accusing me. Her face was ghostly pale, her nostrils flaring as she breathed, working her throat. She leaned back, open to the overcast sky through the back window.

Monty’s eyes were closed, brows furrowed. He had his right elbow propped on the door handle, chin against his knuckles, and his body was shaking almost imperceptibly. A tear swelled at the corner of his eye and threatened to slither down his cheek, but he brought up his left hand and brushed it away.

I picked at the discarded feathers in my lap, tears dripping down the bridge of my nose. Monty shifted beside me, breath leaking from his lips like a slowly deflating balloon.

I reached out to touch his hand where it rested, limp on the seat between us, and did the only thing I could think of to do.  I traced the grooves of his palm with my fingertips, and began to hum the melody of Clapton’s “My Father’s Eyes.”

After a few measures, he yielded, his slim fingers lacing firmly through my own.

Lisa Marie Nohner is a senior creative writing and literature student. She was born and raised in Rochester Minnesota, a notable contrast to the tiny town of Marshall. She loves writing family-centered fiction and the occasional poem. She is also a member of the English club, as well as a reader for Bare Root Review. Her favorite writers include Neil Gaiman, Jodi Picoult, and V. C. Andrews. The encouragement of her professors and peers, and her desire to create new attitudes and worlds keeps her plugging away at the key board, slaying blank space with boundless enthusiasm.