Somehow she’s sneaked into the room and found the bottles I’d hidden under the desk when I still had a job. She’s built her own game, lining the bottles, coalescing them together in a triangle, raising one layer on top of another, a glass pyramid glinting guilt and shame. The tennis ball crashes the stack, bottles clatter and shoot across the floor. Stop that right now, I yell from the door, and immediately think of the disappointing look of my wife, if she’d been here.
She looks at me like I’m a menacing intruder. Seeing her crouched on the floor with the milk smear on her face calms me down, the faded pink dress she keeps wanting to wear. This is my collection, I say gently. Together we pick up the bottles, we play a game to arrange them back in the boxes they came in. I write To Recycle in heavy black felt pen on the boxes. I push the boxes to the back of the garage to hide the other boxes of her mother’s things, I build a wall of boxes, lock the garage door. Everything out of sight.
After all that work, I give her an ice pop and reward myself with another Budweiser when she’s in her room. There’s still half a bottle of vodka somewhere under the kitchen sink. A few drinks later my mind is clearer. I feel lighter. I’ve got to pull myself together, maybe take her to Disneyland when I get the life insurance check. Everything is going to be fine.
And then I find her collection of keychains with mini bottles of Coors Light, Corona, Budweiser, Sam Adams, a little bundle in the drawer of her side table. She’s hooked each keychain into a bracelet. Where did you get these? I shake the rings. They rattle like one of her baby toys.
She shrugs. They’re cute, she says, now I can have my collection, just like you. She puckers her mouth. Her dimples remind me of her mother. Found them in the boxes the big bottles came in, she says.
Free tokens for a regular customer. I sit her on my lap. I crunch a mint in my mouth, let the sting burn my tongue, clear my nose so my breath doesn’t betray me when I say to her, drinking is not good for you. God, how do you explain something you can’t even grasp yourself. She says, you never get soda for me, is that why?
While I fumble with words, she pulls the bundle of mini bottles from me, runs her fingers through each plastic bottle, questions me with her wide innocent eyes. I don’t have the heart to explain. I wish her mother were here. I wish she hadn’t died. I wish I weren’t in such a mess. I hold my girl tight, so my hands won’t reach behind the couch for a bottle. I see in her eyes I should cancel my next order of beer.
