Hope and Other Punch Lines(22)

And yet, he’s right. I look around and see that I’m surrounded by so much wonderful mundane joy. Life is good, for the most part, which is why we are all greedy about wanting more of it.

“So can you drive?” he asks again.

“Sure,” I say, and smile, which somehow makes him smile even bigger.

“Thank you,” he says. “For doing this.”

“You didn’t really leave me much choice.”

“I know. But still. Thank you.”

“Your earnestness is making me uncomfortable,” I say.

“It’s also deeply uncool. Can I stop now?”

I shrug.

“Stopping,” he says.

And then he lightly kicks my foot, again the dumb flip-flops—just because I’m aware of my flaws doesn’t mean I have the power to fix them—and runs away.



* * *



—

Later, in arts and crafts, while we’re making bracelets on picnic tables, Julia comes and sits down on the bench next to me.

“Sorry about your car,” she says. “I don’t usually drink like that.”

“No worries. There wasn’t much to clean up,” I say, and string an A-B-B-I onto a pink thread and hold up my wrist for her to tie it.

“There’s another party this weekend. This time at Moss’s house, if you want to go,” Julia says.

“Moss?”

“The Rangers’ counselor?”

I try to picture him but come up blank.

“Redheaded dude who looks like Ron Weasley?”

“Oh, that Moss.” I have no idea who she’s talking about, but there’s no need for her to know that. “Right. I’m in,” I say, and then, because I can’t help myself, I ask: “Are you only inviting me because you threw up in my car?”

Julia smiles this weird cryptic smile she has, the one that makes it seem like she keeps all of her best thoughts to herself, and then she spins my bracelet around so that the A-B-B-I makes a whole revolution around my wrist.

Like that’s an answer.





Here is a complete list of everything I know about my father:

His name was Jason Michael Stern and he was born on February 16, 1968. According to his gravestone, he was a “beloved son, husband, and father,” though I’m not sure that tells me much. You have to be a major dick not to make the “beloved” cut after dying in a national tragedy.

He ate pickle sandwiches. Random, I know, but my mom threw me this bone once when I was six. I’ve hoarded this morsel for years, the way I imagine some people collect emergency kits in their basements. Like it will come in handy later for reasons yet unknown.

My mom has always been stingy about my dad. As if he is a zero-sum game, not a dead person. Jack says his mom does this too, though his dad is alive and well with a new wife and three kids in Orlando. Jack’s mom will only talk about him after three glasses of merlot, and even then she won’t talk about him directly. Instead, she takes out her phone calculator and figures out how much he owes her in child support. Which is a long way of saying that Jack thinks it’s not that my mom doesn’t want to share, it’s that she’s still too broken to discuss him.

I don’t buy that theory. My mother was a badass single mom for most of my life. She worked her butt off to give me everything I’ve ever wanted or needed and has never once complained, no matter how much wine she has consumed. When I was a shithead in the second grade and I begged for name-brand clothes even though I knew money was tight, she found a way to buy them for me. When she’d cook dinner, she’d always have me eat first, and only years later did I realize that she wanted to make sure I had filled up before she took her share.

I think my dad is where she finally drew the line. She wanted to keep one thing for herself.

Other known details:

My father, like me, was an only child, and his parents died in a car accident when he was a teenager. He majored in political science at the University of Michigan, was Phi Beta Kappa, and then worked as a trader. Based on the files in the basement, he was a superproud nerd.

He liked to do rabbit ears over my mom’s head in pictures and dress up in ridiculous costumes for Halloween.

In what I think is the second-to-last picture ever taken of him, dated September 9, 2001, he’s hugging my mom right after they’ve learned that I’d need open heart surgery. He looks unshaven and tired and bone-deep sad.

Last potentially relevant fact: when we buried him, the box was empty.





Noah buys me Twizzlers and Skittles and Oreos and a Slurpee and he doesn’t complain when the bill comes to thirty dollars. He whips out a credit card and swipes and signs like this is money well spent, and we gather our goodies and get back into my car.

“What’s her name?” he asks, making himself comfortable in the passenger seat. He puts his knees up on the dash, like he’s been here before. Like he’s my regular copilot.

“Who?”

“Your Prius. I assume you named your car, no?” He rips open the Twizzlers and hands me one. “All good cars should have a name.”

“Do you anthropomorphize all appliances or just motor vehicles?” I ask.

“My electric toothbrush is named Stan,” he says with a shrug, and I can’t help it. I laugh. “So, for your car, how about Betty White?” He taps his Converse to the song playing on the radio—something Top 40 that I would have been too embarrassed to leave on had Cat or Ramona or Kylie been in my car. Some of the few perks of my new life: I own the radio and my Netflix queue and my choice of nail polish.