Tues, Thurs, and Every Other Weekend

         It was the end of another “visit” - this time to the mall. The young girl swung her legs back and forth against the back seat and held fast to a giant chocolate chip cookie as the man slid the car into the driveway and pressed the brake solidly to the floor. The car’s engine whir-whirred with a hypnotic hum while the man angled his body to face the girl. 
         “Are you wondering why Daddy has his own apartment and doesn’t live with you and Mommy anymore?” he asked. The girl reluctantly pulled her eyes away from the cookie to meet her father’s gaze. 
         “Mommy says you have to live on your own for a while, but not always. I keep asking her when you’re going to come home.” 
         “What does she tell you?” 
         “She just says not to worry. I will see you on your days. When are you coming home, Daddy?”  
         The question dragged a deep sigh from the man. He rubbed at his dark moustache while the girl waited. I don’t know? We’ll see. Ask your mother? What phrase could he toss out? 
         When they were together, the father, mother and daughter used to play a game. They placed one hand on top of another, then slid one out from the bottom of a mass of twisted palms and fingers and slapped it back on top. On and on it went until everyone finally collapsed into an exulted heap. The mother still played the game with the father; but lies superseded their hands. One prevarication endlessly shuffled atop another. Now menacing its claim on the assemblage was the mother’s assurance that “Daddy is just going to live away from home for a while.”  
         The man sat quietly chewing on the soft inside of his cheeks until a light turned on from the house, and the girl grew impatient. After weeks of torn envelopes, slammed receivers and loosened door handles, a woman, her boyfriend and their lawyer had made it clear to him that he was never to return home. 
         “Daddy won’t be living with you and Mommy anymore,” the father said. He swallowed hard as he watched the uneaten cookie crumble into pieces on the floor of the car. 
         The girl grabbed his arm and clung to it in desperation. “What do you mean Daddy? What did I do? Did I make you mad?” 
         “No, you’re a good girl. You didn’t do anything bad.”  
         “Don’t you want to come home?” The father’s eyes scanned over the carefully manicured lawn he used to mow every Saturday, the sprinklers he had secured to moisten every blade of grass, the front stoop he and his daughter used to sit on while they peeled and shared an orange picked from one of the four fruit trees in the backyard. Her backyard. He noticed the mother had painted the door above the stoop a deep purple. It glared at him like a fresh bruise against the rays of a drooping sun. 
         “Of course I want to be with you and Mommy. But I can’t.” 
         “Please Daddy! Please come home to stay!”
         “I’m sorry, Goosey. I can’t.” 
         “But why, Daddy?” 
         “That’s a question I can’t answer right now. But I will still see you on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other weekend, like I have been.” 
         The mother flung the door open as soon as she saw them exit the car and head for the front porch. “What happened? Why has she been crying?” On the top step, the girl squeezed her father’s hand and pulled him downwards until his eyes filled with the moon of her face. 
         “I love you Daddy!” 
         “I love you too, Sweetheart. I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
As his daughter turned and ran inside the house, the man rose to meet the woman’s narrowed eyes. 
         “I told her. She knows we won’t be living together.” 
         “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”  
         The fragments of cookie scattered to different sections in the back of the car while the father wearily drove back to his apartment. He left them there, and the girl didn’t comment when he picked her up from daycare that next Tuesday. 
         Thursday, she kicked a large chunk under the passenger seat on their way to McDonald’s. 
         That weekend, the daughter’s flip-flops stomped them to little bits, mixing them with the sand from the beach and the crusted salt off a collection of seashells. 
         And, for a long time, her father just didn’t feel like cleaning up the mess.