Originally, in a story of mine that’s more dysfunctional than my family, my two characters Vincent and Jenny were father and daughter but never knew of each other’s existence until just before Jenny’s tenth birthday. I’m no longer keeping up with that narrative because there’s too many loose ends that tying up would distract from the main show. So I’ve called this plot bunny a side quest and made it a story in of itself- a story that I want to put in the attic, and let it collect dust and nostalgia. Here’s Part One of what turned out:
Lynchburg Medical Institute. He recognized this white palid hell. It was where monsters forcibly sterilized his mother and aunt. His hands clenched. The double doors were both locked.
A mail slip lid slid open on the left door, revealing a talking pair of eyes.
“Visiting? Policy is our guests call 24 hours in advance but we’re not busy today.” The nurse crooned.
“Did a- Ms. Rosalyn Carter call you last night or the night before?”
“Not that I know of.” the lady said idly. “Shall I check for you?”
“No, I’m simply here for our daughter Ms. Jenny Carter,” he said in a rote pace.
“I’ll be right back. What’s your name?”
“Vincent- Carter.” Vincent Beverly lied.
“Oh! just remembered- Could you show me your driver’s licence Mr. Carter?”
He tried to subtly convenience his finger over the incriminating spot.
She opened the door. He had never been so happy that a stranger needed glasses.
“I’ll be right back.” She reiterated. The reflective tile was a dark, hollow white. The lobby had a glass case cubicle the receptionist entered, made a sound-proof telephone call, hung up, sat down, and ate from a soundproof bag of potato chips.
A man made an obnoxious guffah on the other side of the door. There was a shimmering brass bolt over it- the only thing with color in the lobby. The door’s hinges were so tight a paperclip couldn’t fit through.
Whenever her mouth moved her spectacles would slightly hop off of her bobbing nose. She briskly returned to the booth and made another call, then laughed a laugh that could be heard behind the sound proof glass. She laughed her glasses off.
“I just called the head doctor in residence and told him to release her to you. I also asked him about the results, and he said her neurosis was ‘subliminally existent.’ Whoo-ee that's a new one! That Rowland is such a geezer!”
Vincent retreated to a chair and collapsed, recovered himself then asked. “Is there any point I can come in and see her?”
“Now just you wait uno minuto sir, we’ll get your daughter, you just need to sign some paperwork and we’ll have to call Ms. Carter.” She wagged a pencil in the air. Her side to side rhythm of pencil and head matched. “It’s up to her, exceptionally” she added. “Whether to accept your ‘custody battle’- oh I hate fights.” She also added. “And looking at your desperate face you’d make a nasty, nasty fight.”
He wanted to throw a chair. Who had told her? Something Rosalyn probably said that was in that file. He wanted a copy.
The floor’s fluorescent light reflection winked at him in a way that made him nearly bash it. Things just had to be this way, sometimes the way you’re required to win a fight, to beat a dragon is to wait for it to fall asleep and uncoil it's complicated serpentine complications until it reveals a single fatal target. Let the spider crawl on your skin to slap it clean.
The floor smelled like chlorine and bananas- and mildew. The lady ate a bag of peanuts. The ugly floor winked at him again but he tried to think about signing paperwork for whatever academy he would send her to. He thought of how she would decorate her room in the apartment. He wondered about all the things she didn’t know and he would have to teach her like recipes, equations, street signs, and constellations.
What if she really was mentally ill? At barely ten years old? And what kind of mental illness was it?
The floor stopped winking underneath the feet of hospital shoes. He stood up. She didn’t have any luggage with her, just a stuffed horse and a cherry red satchel. She stood on her tiptoes and rocked back from the point to the heels. Other than that she didn’t move. He took his hat slowly off like a catholic man. Jenny walked, sat down in one of the lobby chairs, and looked at the floor.
“So, you’re Jenny Carter, glad to meet you”
She shrugged like a kid who had been told they’re a day older.
“I’m Vincent, I- I accidentally, well I… I’m your… Father.”
She squinted at him weakly. Her lips parted in a way to pronounce some word beneath an upturned nose but she bit her lip and the word retreated back down her throat in a reserved yawn.
To be emotionally delicate he offered her a firm handshake.
The spontaneous beginning made them a pair of zoo tigers artificially introduced. They softly shook hands.
When she got up, she tiptoed back to her room to get her everyday clothes, She rose and fell up and down, like a skip that didn’t dare leave the ground. She then tiptoed behind him out of the hospital- sneaking out of her enclosure. She wore a knit leaf green petticoat.
Outside of the entry veranda at the top of the hill she halted. She stared at the forest. He stopped walking and wondered what held her back. She had scrawny and saggy muscles flabbing from her otherwise skinny limbs. Her black hair was oily and matted. What alarmed him more was her breath and her eyes. Her tiny hunched chest spasmed and shuddered asthmatically. Her irises flicked back and forth over the receding valley. Her wide eyes with dark bags underneath grabbed, snatched those beautiful green trees, the bushy oaks, the fuzzy douglas firs, the vermillion douglas firs deeply nourishingly bluish green. She took a big breath through her mouth and reposed.
“It’s lovely outside.”
“Jenny.”
“Yes sir?”
“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to take you to New York.”
She overlapped her own thoughts out loud as she processed. “Why- What’s in New Yor- I know the Statue of Liber- ‘s there anything else there?”
“Lights, movies, parks, zoos, bands, all kinds of things.”
“Alright!” She started down the hill, her bobbing a little higher.
“By the way I sent your Mom some of the comics I made. Did you ever read them?”
“I read all of them!” She spoke with giddy enchantment. “They’re awesome!”
“Oh shi- sheesh, ah,” He grinned meekly. “That means a lot.”
"Wait, you’re the guy who- You made the X-ana comics?” She pronounced the ‘x’ like ‘ks’ She ran to him and shouted “You’re the coolest person ever! You’re my Dad!”
She whooped all the way down the hill to the car.