Jude Breaks Free

If you scream and throw a bowl of pasta against the wall, but no one sees or hears you, does your outburst even count?

I'm standing, looking at gross noodles and clumpy tomato sauce oozing down the wall. My chest rumbles and threatens to explode. The wall looks like a serial killer made his mark on my family. I think about the faux massacre and the future true crime specials focused on my “smile that could light up a room.” I’m shocked when tears stream for my fantasy death.

I think about Dad and how he kinda feels dead—like an impostor has worn his skin for the last year. His muffled screams are hoarse now, but I can still hear them through his bedroom door. The sound of empty bottles crashing to his floor echo in the kitchen, and I know he’s wasted again. He’s been locked in his room for seven hours, screaming on the phone at my mom, Lucy.

When I knocked on his door earlier, he sobbed.

“Go away, Jude! Your mother doesn’t give a crap about either of us.”

Dad's histrionics tend toward the extreme, but I haven’t seen my mom in over a year, and I think I agree with him. He’s always had trigger-happy tear ducts, my dad, but the recent steady stream of sorrow makes an uncomfortable heat crawl up my neck.

I miss the “fun, good” Dad. I feel alone, shackled to a prison of someone else’s making. And I don’t know what to do anymore.

The spaghetti frees itself from the wall and falls in a heap by the corner of the stove.

“Screw this,” I say to no one. What sounds like a drowning, insane monkey calls from outside the kitchen window. When Dad and I first moved into our crumbling farmhouse, these maniacal tones scared the hell out of me. I’ve since learned the crazy monkey is actually an owl—a barnyard owl to be exact. Apparently, “hoot hoot” is a song for the lesser owls.

“Hi ya, Ralph,” I say to the window.

There’s an old barn at the edge of our rental property. Dad uses it as a storage shed for his “art.” He used to paint—it was his passion, he says. I've only witnessed his passion for hating my mom and drinking his weight in whiskey and beer, but I believe him, I guess.

For the last sixteen years, we’ve been living off the commission from his last finished piece, sold the year I was born. If he waits until he’s chugged five beers to trudge out there and gaze at his half-done paintings, Dad always forgets to close and lock the door.

Secretly, I’m glad the owl can spread his wings and see the world—even if he never strays far from our property.

One night, before Dad stopped living, we went out before midnight on a hunt for our wisest of birds. Each night, the barnyard owl made his presence known but remained a ghostly shadow over our lives. We couldn't find him anywhere. We ended up making a game of it until we couldn’t feel our fingers or noses and we decided to name our barnyard friend “Ralph.”

Come to think of it, I think it was the last time I heard my dad laugh.

I climb on the cracked kitchen counter and reach for a dusty Christmas cookie tin pushed behind unopened spices on the top shelf of a cabinet. I lose my grasp on the tin, and it bangs to the floor, but the lid remains firmly shut. Shaking, I freeze in place, half-expecting my dad to come stumbling and cursing out of his room. When nothing happens, I gulp down a breath, exhale in an almost-whistle, and climb down.

I shoot Gabe a text and tell him to meet me at the lake. Gabe and I shared our first kiss there, and it’s become our special place. He asked me to be his girlfriend as we stared across the placid water, glistening under a full moon.

The magic of the lake feels like the best space to start our new, grown-up lives.

I grab Dad’s crumpled pack of light cigarettes from atop the fridge. Three years ago, I would hide his smokes or flush them down the toilet. Now, they make me feel edgy. I don’t even cough anymore when I light one up.

I tuck the teddy bear and poinsettia-emblazoned tin under my arm. My life savings sit under the lid—awaiting my investment in my new life. I’d saved four years' worth of mowing Mrs. Kim’s overgrown summer lawn for twenty bucks a week and raking her leaves in the fall for another weekly forty. She yelled at me every time, telling me I never do anything right, but she kept hiring me and paid me all the same. I think complaining is Mrs. Kim's love language.

Plus, I’ve kept the sweaty, crumpled tens my grandma snuck into every birthday card for the past decade. Long after receiving Grandma’s gifts, the bills retain her scent.

When I open the lid to recount my money, a strong waft of Grandma’s juniper perfume curls my tongue and stings my eyes.

Last year, Grandma “kicked the bucket," as my loving mom so graciously put it in her condolences for Dad and me. Her perfume swirls with the coppery tinge of my saved coins and makes me smile at her memory.

Twenty-two hundred dollars!

I feel rich. I don’t know any other kids with this kind of money—not earned, anyway. Gabe’s bringing five thousand from the bank account his parents set up for him, but he didn’t mow any lawns or do anything, really. Gabe’s parents suck and mostly forget he’s there, but at least they suffocate him in money to make up for it.

We figure the money will get us to the Florida Keys—where I’ve wanted to live since first reading Ernest Hemingway in eighth grade. We have enough for first and last month’s rent—we’re responsible. We’d never leave without a plan. Gabe thinks we can lie about our ages and get jobs in one of the tacky beach bars where cloyingly sweet fruit punch and rum concoctions flow freely. Gabe says once we’re hired, nobody will ask questions.

Creeping to the front door, I pull Dad’s flannel jacket from the dozen coats stuffed on the coat tree. I forgo my ski jacket because the way I swim in Dad’s flannel shields me like a security blanket. It matures me, too. I feel like a grown-up. I'm pretty sure I can pass for twenty-one in his thick, plaid coat.

I dip my face under the collar and inhale. It smells like the “good dad”—like mulch and tobacco and cold sweat. My heart caves in.

I think about leaving a note, but that will just muddle up my already messy life. Dad will notice my absence if a note awaits his hungover, bleary-eyed Saturday morning.

A pang of guilt stabs my stomach as I climb into Dad’s rusty, red pick-up truck. I’ve never borrowed it without asking before, but it will be three days before he ends his bender and notices it’s gone.

I hear Ralph sounding his monkey cry in the distance. Thick, surreal air surrounds me. I feel like I’m in one of those dreams where you're on the brink of an adventure, but you can't quite get there before you wake up.

"Where the f are you, Jude?” Gabe’s text demands from my blinking phone screen.

Aw, I love you too, Gabe!

“Be there in 20. Can’t wait.” I pull the pickup’s door shut and wait for his reply.

“Love you forever. This is our life now.” And I spark with a yearning for adventure with Gabe. I like the idea of us as a team. Sure, he’s spoiled and can act like an ass sometimes, but I know he loves me. I know he needs this escape too.

Somewhere overhead, Ralph scolds me.

The car key keeps slipping from my drenched palms, and it takes me three tries to turn the ignition. I try not to think about the knife my dad will feel twisting in his back when he sobers up. Maybe he should’ve thought about his love for me, like, any time ever over the past year. Mom left. I didn’t.

I pull down our dusty gravel driveway without turning on the headlights.

It’s late and I’m tired, but this is my only chance to break free. Cranking my music, I roll down my window and extend my hand.

I feel like I’m flying away. Away from the emptiness of my home existence. Away from chains binding me to my alcoholic husk of a father and a mother who doesn’t give a damn. Away from the plastic people at school and the numbing nothingness of my days there.

I sit at the end of the dirt road leading to my house and look in the rearview—inky black nothingness is all I see, and yet, I hesitate. What will my Dad do when he discovers I’ve left him too?

My phone chimes again, and the lit screen informs me of Gabe’s impatience. It’s only been five minutes, but he’s thinking of “changing his mind.” A gross future plays before my eyes:

Gabe lording his money over me. Gabe sneaking out at the first sign of struggle and getting his mommy and daddy to book him a one-way plane ticket. Waking up alone in a crusty Motel Six with nowhere to go and no one to call.

My throat constricts, and I bark an ugly snot cry. I think about how much I miss my dad, who I see every day. And I wonder why I don’t miss my mom, who I haven’t seen in a year?

I hear Ralph again before I see him. His “who who ha ha” chant is louder than I’ve heard before. I stick my head out of the window and see what looks like a pterodactyl circling overhead. Is that Ralph? The wingspan on this bird must be eight to ten feet, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I feel my stomach constrict.

“Please, let this creature kill me,” I mutter, half-laughing, while my eyes laser-track the bird’s movement.

The bird’s dark silhouette circles closer. I still don’t know what it is, but I’m frozen. The truck's blinker lulls me like a metronome. My phone chimes incessantly. Ten minutes ebb away, and then twenty. I’m mesmerized. Finally, the bird swoops in, and I instinctively duck my head.

When I look back up, I scream. Ralph has planted himself on the ledge of the truck’s open passenger window. He cocks his head to the side and stares at me. His eyes implore me to go home.

“Okay,” I say aloud.

Ralph unfurls his majestic wings and slowly flies away. He turns his head to look at me, and for a moment, our thoughts are in sync:

Running away is the easiest thing to do. Sticking by those you love, even when they push you away, proves the hardest.

“I can’t,” I tell him, feeling a bit silly. But I know I’ve heard him.

I glance at my phone and confirm what I already figured—Gabe’s bailing on me. We had planned to leave before midnight, and it’s 12:30 a.m. Without thinking, I launch the truck into reverse and hear my dreams crunch behind the back wheel along with the gravel.

I turn the headlights off again, and I feel my head bob with every bump and turn in the driveway. I’ve dreamed of this night for a year! I gave up in less than thirty minutes. Inexplicably, Ralph turned me around.

As the house draws nearer, floodlights blind me. Dad never turns the exterior lights on, but in my short escape, he did. I park in front of the garage. My body shakes, and I turn the car off. I wait to climb out until I can control the tremors coursing through my limbs.

“Jude?” I hear Dad’s voice cry. I see his shadow make its way from our front porch. I jump out of the truck and slowly walk toward him.

As I get closer, I can make out his features. His tears spill into his stubbly beard, and he opens his arms to embrace me. I feel my ballooned anger deflate.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

I let him envelop me in a bear hug. The floodlights still blind me, so I nestle my head in his chest. In the distance, Ralph hoots his approval. Dad kisses my forehead and laughs.

“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s get inside. I’ve had a lot of time to think today, and I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

He leads me to the porch, and I feel lighter. I look toward the barn, and I swear I can see Ralph in the shadows, nodding with approval. My escape can wait. For now, I am home.