If I Was Your Girl(2)

“That you?” Dad asked, his voice muffled by the bass rumble of the bus engine. I squinted against the harsh light. He wore a pair of wire-rim sunglasses, and his hair was at least half silver now. Deep lines had formed around his mouth. Mom called these “laugh lines,” so I wasn’t sure how he had gotten them. Only his mouth was as I remembered it: the same thin, horizontal slash.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. The sunglasses made it easier to look him in the face. We both stood rooted in place.

“Hi,” he said after a while. “Put your things in the back.” He opened the wagon’s hatch and got in the car. I deposited my luggage and joined him. I remembered this car; it was at least ten years old, but Dad was good with machines. “You must be hungry.”

“Not really,” I said. I hadn’t been hungry in a while. I hadn’t cried in a while. Mostly I just felt numb.

“You should eat.” He glanced at me as he pulled out of the parking lot. His lenses had become transparent, and behind them, his eyes were a flat, almost grayish brown. “There’s a diner close to the apartment. If we get there now we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

“That’s nice.” Dad had never been social, but a little voice in my head said he didn’t want to be seen with me. I took a deep breath. “Your glasses are cool.”

“Oh?” He shrugged. “Astigmatism got worse. These help.”

“It’s good that you got it treated,” I said, my words as staggered and awkward as I felt. I looked down at my lap.

“You’ve got my eyes, you know. You should take care of yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll take you to the optometrist soon. Need to get your eye looked at after that shiner anyway.”

“Yes, sir.” A billboard rose from the trees to the left, depicting a cartoon soldier firing red, white, and blue sparks from a bazooka. GENERAL BLAMMO’S FIREWORK SHACK. We turned into the sun so his eyes were hidden again, his jaw set in a way I didn’t know how to read. “What did Mom tell you?”

“She was worried about you,” he said. “She said you weren’t safe where you were living.”

“Did she tell you about what happened sophomore year? When I … was in the hospital?”

His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. He stared ahead silently as we passed an old brick building with a tarnished steeple. The sign read NEW HOPE BAPTIST CHURCH. A Walmart loomed behind it.

“We can talk about that later.” He adjusted his glasses and sighed. The lines in his skin seemed to deepen. I wondered how he had aged so much in six years, but then I remembered how much I had changed too.

“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” I watched the patchwork tobacco farms roll by. “It’s just, you never called or wrote.”

“Wasn’t sure what I could say,” he said. “It’s been hard coming to terms with … everything.”

“Have you come to terms now that you’ve seen me?”

“Give me time, kiddo.” His lips puckered as they formed the last word, so unusually informal for him. “I guess I’m just old-fashioned.”

The turn signal clicked in time with my heart as the car slowed. We pulled up in front of the Sartoris Dinner Car, an actual converted railroad car on a cinder-block foundation.

“I understand,” I said. I imagined how I must look to him, and my mind leaped to fill in all the worst things I had ever felt about myself. “My name is Amanda now though, in case you forgot.”

“Okay,” he said. He killed the engine, opened the door, and hesitated. “Okay, Amanda. I can do that.” He walked to the front door in that clockwork way of his, hands in his pockets and elbows pointed at symmetrical angles. I couldn’t help seeing my reflection in the window: a gangly teenage girl with long, brown hair in a cotton shirt and shorts rumpled from travel.

A bell jingled as we entered the empty diner. A sleepy-eyed waitress looked up and smiled. “Hi, Mr. Hardy!”

“Afternoon, Mary Anne,” he said, grinning broadly and waving as he took a seat at the counter. That smile gave me a feeling of vertigo. He had smiled when I was seven and I told him I wanted to try out for Little League. He had smiled when I was nine and I agreed to go hunting with him. I couldn’t remember any other times. “Heard your granny had a stroke. How y’all holding up?”

“She says heaven don’t want her and hell’s afraid she’d take over,” the girl said, pulling a notebook and pen from her apron and walking over. “The physical therapy’s been a bear, though.”

“She can do it if anybody can,” Dad said. He slid his menu to her without looking at it. “Sweet tea and a Caesar salad with chicken, please.”

She nodded. “And who’s this with you?” she asked, turning to me. My eyes flicked from her to Dad.

“I’m Amanda,” I said. She looked like she expected more information, but I had no idea what Dad had told people about his family. What if he told them he had one child, a son? I shakily handed her my menu and said, “I would like a waffle and Diet Coke please, ma’am, thank you.”

“She’s my daughter,” Dad said after a moment, his voice halting and stiff.

“Well, she looks just like you!” We exchanged an uncomfortable look as Mary Anne trotted off to get our drinks.