Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(25)

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I remember one summer flying into Newark Airport, my parents picking me up in their gold Dodge Caravan and driving the five hours up I-95 to catch the ferry from Woods Hole to Martha’s Vineyard. Why I didn’t just fly to Boston is a mystery because it would have saved me a car ride with my parents that wasn’t luxurious or alluring on any level—so the only conclusion can be that I was severely dehydrated for their attention. I wanted to be their only focus, and for that five-hour car ride and subsequent forty-five-minute ferry ride, that’s exactly what I got.

I remember us pulling up to one of those McDonald’s rest stops on the way to the ferry, and I was tired and cranky from my overnight flight, and also grossed out that my parents still ate at McDonald’s. They didn’t even have the decency to use the drive-through; they wanted to go in and sit at a table like it was some sort of date night.

“Listen to this, Ritala,” my dad said to my mom. “She’s been in California for less than two years, and she’s already turned against McDonald’s—a perfectly decent establishment. You can’t screw up breakfast, Chels; you just can’t.”

    I remember walking in with them and scowling at the menu, wondering what I would be able to eat. My dad ordered two bacon-and-egg biscuits and ordered me an Egg McMuffin. The guy behind the cashier was a little slow on the uptake, and my dad’s people skills were always a little gruff, unless you were an attractive woman, and then he was always nice. Like Donald Trump.

“Two coffees and one Diet Coke,” he told the guy behind the counter.

The cashier was for some reason confused by the request for a Diet Coke in lieu of the coffee or orange juice that came with each breakfast meal, and it was taking longer than it should have, but I remember my dad’s response.

“Listen, buddy, this isn’t that difficult. It’s breakfast, for Christ’s sake, and you only have three options.” Then he put both of his hands on the counter, cocked his head to the side, and said with complete seriousness and some concern, “Have you had all your testing done?”

“Have you had all your testing done?” was the single most ridiculous line I had heard my father ever say, and I turned on my heels to find the bathroom before I urinated on myself.

When I got back to the table, my mom and dad were sitting there eating their gross biscuits, while my dad separated my egg from the English muffin and placed the egg alone on the paper wrapper. Then he took out a cheap bottle of vodka and put it on the table.

“Here,” he said. “We brought some vodka for the ride, because we never know what kind of mood you’ll be in.” It was ten o’clock in the morning.

    I would never drink the type of vodka my dad would purchase, because he knew nothing about vodka, but I do remember that’s when I started loving my father again. My parents rarely drank, so for them to go to a liquor store and buy alcohol meant they had been paying attention after all. Separating my carbs from protein was the icing on the cake. They were back.

I lay down with my head in his lap in a booth at McDonald’s, looking at the paper bag of vodka, thinking, So this is what it’s like to be parented.

“Chels, if we knew growing up that all you needed was a little vodka to calm you down, we would have started giving it to you as a baby,” my dad said, patting me on my butt as if I were a nine-year-old.

“Yes, Chelsea,” my mother chimed in. “Life could have been so much easier,” she said, reaching over the table, pinching my nose.

I propped my head up off my dad’s lap. “Had I known it would just take me moving across the country to get picked up on time, I would have moved to LA when I was twelve.”

“How did that feel?” Dan asked me.

“Great. I felt like a little girl. I loved that morning at McDonald’s.”



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That year on Martha’s Vineyard and every year after I visited in the summer, I would get up at seven A.M., before any of the other kids were awake, and go out to breakfast with my parents. I think of that time, and our breakfasts in Edgartown, and I felt loved—like they were really getting to know me, and that they liked this young-adult version of myself. “Guts,” my dad would say to me all the time. “My girl’s got guts.”

    The burden of raising me had been lifted. I had gone off on my own to California and chosen to come back without the pressure of them having to prove themselves to me—and, finally, they seemed as close to being parents as they ever had.

It turned out we all just needed a break.



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My dad has a great face. It’s full of something you’d want to get involved with. He has the features of a black man, which is part of my affinity for it, but not all of it. His face represents his interest in things, his intelligence, his joy, his naughtiness. He’s not cut off from things—he’s not judgmental. He has always been a flirt. I like that in a guy. I love flirting. I loved flirting with my dad. He saw himself in me and that was enough for me, and really still is. I always wanted his admiration—and when I finally got it, I was in charge of our relationship, and our dynamic flipped. I became the taker-carer of things, the one who called the shots.