2019-07-24 - Goodnight Moon

Why does Lilith call him Hank? Dreams remember.

It's late, close to midnight. Hank Winslow is coming in the front door drop down drunk with a stumble. He forgets to lock up the trailer. Immediately, he has a tiny Lily on his leg to turn it into a game, starved for attention. She holds fast, giggles, and turns him into a drunk bronco ride as he stumbles toward the couch, right on his leg to make it even harder. She'd been in the trailer alone ever since kindergarten let out and she walked home to let herself in. (It's like this a lot.) But tonight, she waited, she waited so long because she has something to show him.

She can read a whole book! The teacher said that she's probably the smartest five year old she's ever known and that's probably a big deal because teachers know lots of five year olds, huh! It's on the coffeetable as her father runs into it and she goes flying into de-latch seeing and knowing the hazard before it strikes. (He runs into it a lot.) Lily grabs the book to wave around and runs to jump into a stand on the couch next to where he falls into lay, a hand and arm thrown over his eyes to block light (and child) from his spinning vision.

Little Lily rolls her eyes and drops into sit right on Hank's stomach to make him 'oomph'. He's blotto and not moving other than that. She flips open the book and starts to read Goodnight Moon. She knows he's not listening right now, but if she keeps reading, he'll have to listen.

"In the great green room there was a telly-phone an'a red balloon an'a pitchure of the cow jumpin' over the moon." Big breath. Page flip. "... and there were threeeee little bears sittin' on chairs and two little kittens an'a pair of mitt-ens..." Big breath. Page flip. Stare at Daddy. Keep going. He's listening.

"... an'a little toy-house an'a young mouse an'a comb an'a brush annnnd... a bowl full of mush!" Pause. She has questions. She always has questions. Questions will wake him up. "Daddy, what's mush made outta? Is it like mashed 'tatoes? Like at school lunch?" Pause. "Daaaaaaddy. DADDY!" She pulls his arm off his face and squishes his cheeks with her hands.

"DADDY DADDY DADDY DADDY!" She's yelling now, right in his face, so tiny, so mad now. He's not stirring much beyond a grumble, but eventually he bats her hands away with rubbing swipe over his nose and mouth before slinging the hand back up over his head. Then she does what she saw the guy at the bar do when he was passed out on it. (They went there a lot.) She pops him right in the face with a smack and yells, "HANK! LAST CALL!" She thinks Last Call means something else. She thinks it means OR ELSE!

He moves! His eyes open! Then it's just Lily right there in his face looking pleased with herself. She's calling him Hank from NOW ON because it works better.

His eyes close again like he's trying to ward her off. But eventually, slurred, he says, "Gimme goodnight, Lilypad." He wants to sleep it off and be left alone. Go to bed, kid. But she thinks he wants to hear the end of the book, see. And that makes her happy. He's not a mean daddy. He's just bad at it. It's okay to be bad at things. Teacher says everything is a 'learning opportunity'.

"Good-night room... good-night moon..." Little Lily Rose Winslow takes the time to read goodnight to all the things. "... good-night stars (I like stars) goodnight air! (that word was hard, teacher had to help me)..." The last page. She doesn't know how to read 'noise' right. "Good-night noses everywhere!"

When the little girl with tangles in her hair turns off the lamp, she tells Hank goodnight too. Hank. Not daddy.

How did she eat? Sometimes, he was gone for days. Sometimes there wasn't anything in the house. As you get older, you don't tell people that because at some point, you've learned it's not normal. It's important to pretend everything is normal because if you don't DHS comes with the policeman.

It's dark. Hands are over her eyes. She's walking and it's hard like this. Where are they going?

"Keep your eyes closed, Lilith! You're peeking!"

"I am not, how am I peeking with your hands over my eyes?"

"Why do you think my hands are over your eyes?"

"Shut up."

She has to give Byron that one. Light floods her vision when they stop and his hands pull away. She's looking at a picnic blanket filled with leftovers from the food place where he runs deliveries. They let him keep all that? She's embarrassed suddenly. But she doesn't let on. He's taken such care to hide the fact that he literally wants to make sure she's eating. They've been friends for over five years now and he knows what the inside of her trailer and fridge always looks like. He has turned it into a picnic. He's sneaky like this. It's not because he likes her like... picnic-surprise-likes-her. (Does he like me like that? Y'know. Like THAT?)

They're right behind the trailer. They hear Hank coughing up a lung and see a pitched cigarette go flying and smoking in the grass across the way as he comes around the side to go up front. And the two of them are still, suddenly, like gazelles. Don't draw attention. His steps were drunk. They wait until they hear the TV turn on. Their voices lower. And they sit down and eat and talk about anything and everything and nothing at all.

Byron knows Hank hadn't been home prior to this moment in four days. They don't talk about that.

Why did she clean up his messes?

"Goddamnit, Hank, shut the door. I'm cleaning, Geoff is mowing and that SHIT is blowing right in here!"

(There are parts about this day that Lilith doesn't know or remember. She just sees dark and remembers yelling the things she yelled.)

She's in a mood. Hank knows when he comes in. She's been in a mood ever since she got back last week. He's kind of sober, but it's easier to play drunk around Lily when she's like this. She's less likely to talk and burn his ears off. She'd call it wasted breath. He drops on the couch and slings his head back to stare at the ceiling. He has to tell her the other part of the debt that concerns out of towners. He really doesn't want to. She already went head-toe with Felix about keeping the shop and showed up with those Lilith-guns blazing efficiency. He feels bad about that. That one, he tried to hide until she caught him and put her foot down. His little girl shouldn't be in with criminals. It's his fault.

Sure, he always called her for things, but he thought she really got out of this place, for good. He ruined that for her, Hankstyle. He doesn't want to tell her but these other guys will send guys at any time. He's getting too old for this shit. But Hank decides to sees the bright side because the real side is too hard and he's too goddamn sober right now to really deal with anything. He likes having Lily back and Garrison owes him five shots at the Pourhouse. He's probably going to need to cash in after this conversation.

He tells her. The response is expected. He lets her explode and pretends to be rubbing crud out of an eye.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me, Hank. Six THOUSAND more dollars? What'd you do, flash a fake Rolex from the shop as false collateral on the table to make it look like you had that? Play up that you're a BUSINESS OWNER with stakes to pay? What kind of MORON takes one LOOK at you and decides, HEY! I want to SQUEEZE BLOOD FROM AN IDIOT STONE!?"

Okay, he actually did do that, the ol' Rolex-Folex trick as table collateral, but it was a good underground high stakes game, how else was he supposed to get in? Guys didn't even speak English, really, he pulled it off like a charm. And he could have won, he felt LUCKY last month! His bud Jameson also happened into a lot of good coke that month too, might have made some false confidence, but hell, he COULD have won! Naturally, he tells Lily none of this, her head might explode.

Or she might break his arm like she did before she left town the first time and run out again.

(He always knew what she was. He's a Gray Harbor generational lifer. There's a lot of reasons why he hated being sober. He never talked about them. It was easier to just be a fuck up.)

"I will pull... six thousand dollars cash... and we will drive out there... I will watch you walk that cash to the door of whatever underground poker SHITHEAP you found that was STUPID enough to let you inside... you will go in and give them the money and if you play a SINGLE game with that money while you're in paying them... I swear, Hank, I SWEAR to everything I will leave you swinging in the wind!"

(Lilith remembers saying that. Swinging in the wind. Isn't that how he went in the end?)

Hank sighs. She probably doesn't mean it. He could do a lot with six thousand dollars if he was smart, if he had the Winslow luck. His dad had it. Lilith probably has it too, she just doesn't know how or want to capitalize on it. How'd he end up with such an honest little shit? She was always too good to really be his. He'd think she was someone else's if she didn't have his grandmother's exact eyes and nose. Now he's got her all crooked up and then some. She's just mad. Letting Lilith be mad at him was his way of giving lifetime apology. It's all he had to give. He could take a beating.

Lily's cleaning with a fury. His trailer, his mess. She has her own place above the shop, but she can't leave this place alone. She said it's not suitable living conditions after he let it go to slump and dump while she was gone. It doesn't matter what she says next. Hank's always known she's a good damn girl.

"I don't even know why I didn't just... just let Felix take care of you himself. This is NEVER going to end!"

Hank smiles to himself a little bit. She's right. She always is. She should have let Felix clean him right up with a dirt nap. But she's a Winslow.

Winslows go out on their own terms.