Emergency Contact(6)
1. Penny’s mom and dad had met, of all places, in a bowling alley on dates with other people.
2. Her dad had a cute butt (Celeste’s words) because he played baseball in high school.
3. They were inseparable. Until, of course, they weren’t.
4. He was Korean too!
5. His name was Daniel Lee and as far as Penny knew he lived in Oregon or Oklahoma. It could have been Ohio. In any case, it started with an O.
6. In those three states combined there were 315 Daniel Lees. Some were probably white. Or perhaps black.
In the picture, Penny’s parents are at the beach at Port Aransas. They’re kids. Celeste hasn’t visibly changed over the years (Asian don’t raisin) except her face was rounder then, fuller in the cheeks and lips. They’re sitting on a black and yellow Batman beach towel. Daniel Lee has a straw cowboy hat perched on his head but no shirt. Celeste’s wearing a trucker hat that says PORN STAR, a bright red bikini, legs crisscrossed, and she’s grinning behind huge white sunglasses while holding an ICEE. Celeste swears the ICEE must have been a pregnancy craving since blue raspberry usually makes her gag. To Penny, it’s cosmically unfair that her mom’s tummy can be that flat while she’s pregnant, but then it’s hardly fair that her dark-eyed father would skip town two months before Penny was born either.
“He was the funniest guy I’d ever met,” Celeste said when Penny unwrapped the parcel on her eighth birthday. “He asked the best questions.” Penny had been asking a lot of questions for a genealogy assignment. She wanted to know everything (mostly as it related to her)—whether he asked about Penny, if he had another family with brothers and sisters for her to play with, when she could see him. But Penny could tell Celeste hated talking about him. She became withdrawn and went to her room with a headache. So Penny shoved the questions to the back of her brain and never brought him up again. The photo, she kept in a drawer.
Downstairs, Celeste was sniffling in the kitchen, as she’d been when Penny went to bed. Penny suspected a performative aspect to her mom’s crying. Comparable to YouTubers sobbing during heavily edited confessional vlogs, Celeste bawled lustily during the semifinals of reality singing competitions and any movie involving animals. Penny would rather eat a pound of hair than reveal her true emotions. Not to mention how Penny wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop once she got going.
“Mom?”
Celeste glanced up from the wadded tissues in her hands. Her eyes were puffy as if she actually had been crying all night.
“Hi, baby.” She smiled before crumpling again. “Can I please come with you? I could buy you lunch. Help you decorate?”
“I can buy my own lunch,” Penny said. “Plus, you’d have to trail me in your car and drive all the way back by yourself. I’d have to get back in my car and follow you to make sure you got home safe. A vicious cycle.”
Celeste swallowed. “You know, I didn’t know it would hurt this bad?” She seemed genuinely surprised. Celeste’s narrow shoulders quivered like an agitated Chihuahua. Penny sighed and hugged her. She was going to miss her.
Oh, shit. Am I going to cry?
She squeezed her eyes tighter for any reciprocal condensation.
Nope.
“Well, I’m proud of you,” Celeste said, pulling away and smiling bravely.
Penny peered down at her. Celeste seemed small. Feeble really. And damp. In the afternoon light, in jeans and a faded T-shirt that read SLAY HUNTY, Celeste resembled an incoming freshman as much as Penny did.
It was sad that things had gotten so bad between them. When Penny was in grade school, they’d been thick as thieves. Back when the greatest excitement Penny could imagine was having a Starbucks salted caramel mocha for breakfast, Penny thought she was so lucky to have her mom as her best friend. She could stay up late, wear makeup, borrow her mom’s clothes, and dye her hair any color of the rainbow—life was a riot—a never-ending slumber party. In middle school Penny started to see things differently. She no longer texted her mother a thousand times a day for outfit approval or advice. Celeste and Penny became a study in contrasts. Celeste was proud of her well-mannered, studious daughter, teaching her how to forge her name on letters from school and getting Penny her own credit card for “fashion emergencies.” Celeste encouraged Penny to get her hardship driver’s license at fifteen, not because they needed her to but because Celeste thought it would bolster Penny’s popularity to drive her friends around. The harder Celeste tried, the more Penny pulled away. If anything, Penny resented that Celeste had decided somewhere along the way that her daughter could parent herself.
Penny walked to the driveway with her mom trailing her. She turned for a one-armed hug. Imagining herself as part of an animal control unit lassoing a python in a studio apartment, she held Celeste’s gaze with her own the whole time. Then—with no sudden movements—she deftly popped the car door open with her free hand and slid in.
Seat belt fastened, Penny eased out of the driveway and into freedom. Part of her dreaded going to college alone. In the Instagram Stories version, her dad would haul her boxed-up belongings in a big truck. They’d argue about what to play on the way there and he’d give up the aux cord, since he’d miss her so much. As he left, he’d get choked up, handing her fifty dollars while mumbling something about making good time, and Penny would know deep in her heart how much he loved her.