New Zealand

KELSIE
My daddy used to climb through windows, I just used to assume that's how all daddies got into the house. Their shadows fought and I assumed that's how adults talked. We weren't allowed remotes, barbies or cable, and we went to qauker summer camps where they made us watch 'the red balloon'in french every friday, so these were things that were assumed would not happen. Things like this did not happen when your parents had masters and used the pool at Cornell. He threatened to move to New Zealand and I assumed that's where daddies went. A land full of divorced dads eating kiwi and citrus on an island. He went away, then came back again, then went away. And this seemed a natural dance. She cried, then seemed happy, then cried again, then cried more when i caught her crying. That's what mommies did, pretended to be happy.

He didn't move to New Zealand, he stopped climbing through windows, and got a place with his very own door in Rodchester. Which might have as well been New Zealand. He got a job there as an adjunct, teaching future engineers poetry. Slowly mom let us use the remote, and listen to Whitney Houston. She slept more, and snuck cigarettes in the basement. Daddy picked us up on weekends, in a taurus with leather seats. Seats that would burn you in Summertime. And he was forbidden to climb through windows, or set foot on sidewalks, and look her in the eye, so he stopped doing so. And it didn't matter that they had masters degrees and Phd's cause they couldn't talk.
And Daddy got a girlfriend named Carol, who was a social worker and wanted to talk to us about our feelings, once a month, at the Ground Round, and I just wanted to eat popcorn. And Jenny wondered how much Carol would have to pay if they weighed her for a meal. Carol gave us a barbie, which we took the head off, and buried in the basement under the stairs, next to the cigarettes. We named her Zelda, and visited her grave often. and Daddy got tired, tired of us, tired of fighting for us and with us. And Wednesdays and weekends turned to every other weekends, turned to once a month, turned to birthdays. And slowly Rodchester got farther and farther, and the taurus with the leather seats came less,and less and I developed an allergy to kiwis.