Things I Want Back From You: Elizabeth Stix

Read an excerpt from the book.

Migration

Abby suggested a hike. “We’re in a rut,” she said. “And I don’t want to eat another piece of meat in a dark restaurant with you. You come see how I live for a change.”

She did this to Robert periodically: presented him with some simmering frustration, some deep-seated failing of his that she’d probably been talking to her therapist and her mother, Betty, about for years. When she was in college, she’d sent him back a birthday check he had mailed her. The note said, “Thank you for the money. Now please go into a store – any store – and think of me. Imagine what I might want as a gift. Please send that back to me instead.” He sent her a bird feeder. She mailed him a heartfelt note after that one and moved that battered perch from apartment to apartment. The truth is, the only reason he sent her the birdfeeder is because he ordered one for himself and the company had accidentally sent him two. At least he’d had the good sense to shut up about that.

Now, it seemed, he was guilty of taking his daughter out to too many dark restaurants that served too much meat. Which revealed a disinterest and unwillingness to get to know her in her own life. He did know Abby – that was what she’d never understand. He knew her better than she knew herself. He knew how she’d fought against the bottle when he’d tried to feed her, so hungry and angry and not understanding that all she needed to do was relent. She never let anything go. Walk away from suffering, he wanted to tell her. Sometimes there’s nothing there to fight.

So here they were, looping around Lake Anza. He was just back from Spain, writing about the bullfighters in Pamplona. Soon he would be packing for his next gig in Istanbul. But for now he walked behind his daughter, who wore bright blue sport shoes and carried a body-hugging thermos made of thick red fabric strapped to her hip. Her ponytail bobbed out the back of her baseball cap and she talked to him as he followed her on the trail. He couldn’t hear much of what she was saying and got lost in the cadence of her voice. It was like a song, and it mixed in with the wind through the oak trees and the music from the sparkling creek they crossed on a mossy wooden footbridge. He breathed in the sweet afternoon air.

“Have I stunned you into silence?” Abby asked. She was looking over her shoulder. Her face was pink and coated in a light sheen of perspiration.  

Robert smiled back at her. “No. I’m just enjoying the view. You’re right. This is better than a steak. Though I’m not swearing off steak forever,” he added. “Just for one day.”

Abby’s expression didn’t change in an obvious way, yet it turned sour. It sank inward and then rose forth again, hard and knowing. Robert tried to calculate what was happening.  

She turned her head and kept walking. Robert followed in her wake. Her gait was stiffer now.   

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s hard to hear you. I missed the last thing you said.”

Abby soldiered on. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m listening now. Tell me what you said.”

“What was the last thing you heard?” she challenged.

She had been talking about work. About visiting her friend Jessie in Portland. He didn’t know. She’d said the words “nocturnal” at one point and “so pedestrian,” and Robert was struck by their lyricism, by the beauty of words as they flowed from his daughter’s mouth. But that was minutes ago. Hours?  

“I don’t know. Let’s not make a game of chicken out of this, Abby. Tell me what you wanted me to hear.”

“A game of chicken?” she asked, stopping and turning around. “I’m sorry. How is this a game?”

The trees circled all around him as he balanced in his hard-soled shoes. “It’s not a game,” Robert said.

She waited him out for a moment and then started walking again.

Abby spoke quietly. “I don’t want you to go on your trip.” The cut of the air made her words land in Robert’s ear somehow, as if they were talking into tin cans on a string. She sounded like a little girl.

“Why not?”

“I don’t have a good feeling,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

“I’m not going anywhere dangerous. This is a nothing trip. This is a little vacation.”

Her ponytail bobbed with her steps. Robert waited but no more came. “What’s this about?”

“I don’t like it when you travel. I just don’t feel good about it this time.”

He knew he should comfort her, but he couldn’t help but feel pleased with this development. After so many years of being in the doghouse with her at every turn, her fretfulness was an unexpected glory.

“Nothing bad is going to happen to me, honey,” Robert offered. “Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will.”

“That’s provably false.”

Provably false. When had she gotten this vocabulary?

“I’ll tell you exactly how I’m going to die,” he told her. “Abby, stop.”

She stood above him on the trail, her nostrils flaring like a baby bull.

“I will be ninety-five years old. I will go to Sears to buy a pair of track pants and I will have a heart attack in the parking lot. I will die in peace, of old age.” He should have stopped there, but he didn’t. He never knew when to stop. “And no one will remember me.”

Her face crumpled. She turned around. “Fuck you, Dad,” the little voice said. His stomach went queasy. He had as good intentions as anybody. Why did he always cap out at being an asshole?

“That’s not a bad thing, Abby. Nothing lasts forever. Twenty people will read my books. But you’ll remember me.”

Just then a hiker rounded the path behind her with a drooling, panting Rottweiler in the lead.  

“Afternoon,” said a man Robert’s age, wearing what looked like Spandex cycling shorts. The dog jostled around Abby.  

“Afternoon,” Robert said to the man. He said it firmly, a little too loudly, a little old-boy friendly. Really the man’s shorts made Robert want to laugh, made him want to push him down the cliff. The Rottweiler tumbled into Robert’s crotch, sniffing it with abandon. 

“No!” Robert snapped.

Then the dog was gone, the hiker was gone, as quickly as they had been there. A slimy track of drool across Robert’s groin was all that remained. “Great,” he said. He tried to wipe it off. When he looked up, his daughter had walked ahead and was nowhere in sight.

“Abby,” he called, hustling to catch up. “I’m sorry.” But he knew that he was right. Maybe once he had been destined for greatness, had lived his life as if shot from a cannon. Not anymore. They won’t tell stories about me when I’m gone, he thought, but you’ll remember me.

“Abby, wait,” he called again. “Come on.”

There she was. Robert caught a glimpse of her bright blue heel as it flashed up ahead. Then she turned a corner, and he couldn’t see her anymore.