The yellow van’s dashboard appeared in Mabel’s mind, and she imagined Daddy-o turning the steering wheel as far left as it could go. A line of his loose smoked almonds slid all the way to one end of the dashboard, then, one after another, the almonds fell to the floor until there were no more. Mabel followed suit, shedding herself of everything that got her down: the bowie knife, the beaded satchel of dimes, a noose, an asteroid, a handful of purple pills, her mother, and Janet Yuri. Her mother and Janet Yuri. Mabel, empty, felt herself rise. She felt herself breathe home until she was out, hovering above the pond, floating warm on her tattered pink cushion, a little levitating lily pad. Mabel looked down at the mercury thumbprint of water, out at the hills that blushed with fall. She could hear Daddy-o laughing, but she couldn’t see him.
“Looks like I got my money’s worth after all!” Daddy-o shouted.
Mabel looked left and right. “Where are you?” she called.
“Up here,” Daddy-o called. “Above you!”
Mabel looked up to see Daddy-o twenty feet higher, flat on his stomach, swimming through the sky. “Looks like you got some work to do.”
Mabel pushed down at her sides to move the air away, but only rose two inches vertically. “I can’t go any higher!”
“We don’t say can’t, Mabel. We say can. That right there’s your problem!”
Mabel opened her mouth to say can, but all that came out was:
“Help!”
“Can!” answered Daddy-o.
“Help!” repeated Mabel.
Daddy-o swam down to Mabel with a grin. “Can’t always seems easier at first, but in the long run, it’s just more work.” He lifted her cushion up over his head on one hand, as if to prove the ease of can. “It’s like I’m delivering a pizza!” Daddy-o cried, as they soared up to where the clouds looked like a dark afternoon rain. “A supreme one!”
Mabel caught herself smiling as they flew out over the country-side. Delivered was exactly how she felt.
That night, Daddy-o dropped Mabel off at home at eleven thirty.
“Christ, Wade.” Mabel’s mother posed in the doorway, furious, her lit cigarette tapped repeatedly of ashes it did not possess. “It’s a fucking school night. What in the hell have you two been doing?”
“Aw, now,” Daddy-o drawled. “We’ve just been fishing.”
“Fishing?” her mother shouted. “For what? For your visitation rights to get yanked?”
Daddy-o flashed his pearlies and gave a shrug that Mabel’s mother knew all too well, the one she’d ultimately left him over. A shrug that insinuated he didn’t know, didn’t care, didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“Don’t tell me he got you wrapped up in his hocus-pocus.” Mabel’s mother said after Daddy-o hightailed it back to the Happy Thicket. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into his BS.”
Mabel imagined her mother on one of Daddy-o’s cushions. She was using it the wrong way, folded in half under her head while she sprawled in the sun, drunk. “I dunno. Maybe he’s on to something,” Mabel suggested.
“More like on something,” her mother said.
“At least he’s happy,” Mabel dared to say. “At least he’s nice.”
Mabel’s mother crushed out a second cigarette and stood, like Janet Yuri had, nearly nose-to-nose with Mabel. “He’s not happy and he’s not nice. He only seems that way. Deep down, he’s miserable and mean. And he knows just how to string you along.”
Mabel thought of the bowie knife and the felt-tip mustache on her mother’s photo. Then she listened as her mother went outside to swear and smoke, then cry and sob. Mabel closed her eyes until she was back above the pond. This time, by herself, she made it almost up to where the clouds looked like rain.
At school on Friday, Janet Yuri watched Mabel the way the Happy Thicket owner watched Daddy-o, with suspicion and ire. In English, she passed Mabel a note. It was a drawing of two stick figures, a man and a girl smiling, oblivious, while an asteroid hurtled toward them. Ignorance is bliss! was written under it in loopy cursive, complete with i’s dotted with daisies.
“Your dad coming to pick you up today?” Janet asked after class.
“What’s it to you?” Mabel answered.
“I want to meet him, is all,” Janet said. “Who wouldn’t want to meet The World’s Happiest Man?”
Mabel frowned, protective. “I’m walking home alone,” she said. “He won’t be here.”
But he was. There, after school, on the fence—once again a snagged autumn leaf clinging hopeful—was Daddy-o, eating a vanilla soft serve with his left hand and dangling a necklace through the chain-link with his right.
“I made you this, Maybe Baby. Made it for you today.”
Janet Yuri stormed Mabel as Mabel stormed the fence. “Get in the van,” Mabel seethed to her father. “Get in the van now.”
But Daddy-o didn’t flinch. He just kept on with his cone, while Mabel snatched the leather necklace from him. It was a choker sporting a small metal oval, likely cut and sanded from an old beer can, an oval that was stamped with the words CAN DO.
“This your dad?” Janet asked.
“I’m her dad,” Daddy-o replied.
“I hear you’re lots of fun to be around,” Janet said.
“That’s what they tell me.” Daddy-o smiled.
“Then why don’t you take me and Mabel to get some of that ice cream?”
“No,” Mabel cried. “Absolutely not.”
“Now, Mabel,” Daddy-o said. “That’s not how we talk to guests.”
“You two can go,” Mabel said. “I will not.” Daddy-o winked and climbed into the yellow van. Janet Yuri scaled the fence and did as well. Daddy-o’s dogged commitment to friendliness suddenly felt like betrayal. Mabel groaned and climbed the chain-link. “Make it fast,” she said, as she got into the van. “I have work to do.”
At the Dairy Queen, Mabel turned hot and silent when Daddy-o produced his beaded pouch of dimes to buy Janet a cone. She knew her father had likely cleaned three toilets to pay for the ice cream. Janet asked for sprinkles.
“So, Mabel tells me you’re never sad. That nothing, not a person, place, or thing can bring you down.”
“Mabel says that, does she?” Daddy-o smiled at Mabel.
“Sure does.” Janet licked her cone. “How come she doesn’t take after you?”
Mabel clenched her jaw. “Stop it, Janet.”
“What do you mean?” Daddy-o said.
Janet tilted her head in false concern. “I’m worried about Mabel. Mabel passes me notes.” Janet reached into her pocket and produced a wad of folded paper. “Like these.”
Mabel reached across the table, but Daddy-o swiped the notes away with cheer. “My girl’s a writer,” he said. “I love me some Mabel.”
Daddy-o opened the first. It was one Janet had drawn of a stick figure girl in a hangman’s noose. The second was of a stick figure girl in a car careening off a cliff. The third was of a girl with x’s for eyes and a knife in her chest. The caption read: What’s the point? Here’s the point!
Janet licked her cone, around and around, with precision. “I find them troubling.”
Daddy-o stared at the three notes as if he were learning to read. “What,” he said softly. “How?”
Mabel, raw and fuming, said nothing. She did not understand how notes that were not hers could make her feel so exposed. Maybe Janet was right. Maybe Mabel was a liar. And maybe Daddy-o—who sat quiet across the table, his face now drained of its Pensacola brown—was too.