I'd Give Anything(70)

Everyone laughed. Gray rumbled like a car going over a bridge. CJ slapped his hands onto the top of his head. Kirsten tossed back her head and set loose a clamor like an entire flock of crows.

And I laughed, too, because my daughter was funny and because she made my old friends Kirsten, Gray, and CJ laugh and because, if only for that one glowing moment, it was exactly as if the twenty-year chasm running down the middle of our friendship had disappeared, closed up, healed.





Chapter Seventeen





Avery


Because, for months, she had been mired in confusion and conflict regarding her father, Avery had been trying to write her way to clarity. She wasn’t a natural writer like Zinny; she wasn’t really a storyteller like Kirsten, either. But anyone, she told herself, could make a list. So she listed reasons, at least one every day, to believe that her father was a good person and/or a good father. Was it possible to be a good father and a bad person? Or a better father than you were a person? Or vice versa? In the before—prior to her father’s getting fired—Avery probably would’ve said no. A man was just who he was, whether he was at work or in a restaurant with an eighteen-year-old girl or at home cooking French toast in the exactly right way for his daughter. In the after, she wasn’t so sure. It was one of the issues she hoped the list-making would resolve, but so far, it hadn’t.

The French toast was number six on the list. He dusted it with cinnamon sugar.

Number nine was how if a stranger was rude to him or to someone else, he wouldn’t be rude back but would tell Avery to remember that sometimes people just had rough days.

Number fourteen was how mad he got when referees made bad calls, at Avery’s games, on television, at the Sixers or the Eagles games, anywhere. It was one of the few times he yelled. Maybe some people wouldn’t count this as a positive trait, but Avery understood that his anger resulted from knowing the rules inside and out and from his strongly developed sense of justice.

Number thirteen was how, ever since she was six, he’d taken her to Sixers and Eagles games. They’d wear jerseys and would drink soda—which normally she wasn’t allowed to have—and eat soft pretzels with mustard, and they’d cheer until they were hoarse.

Number two was how they could sit in a room or at the breakfast table or in a car together and be quiet. Sometimes, the silence could get uncomfortable, but mostly Avery liked it. Her dad didn’t bombard her with questions the way her mom sometimes did. There was a generosity in his silences. They invited her to speak or not speak; they gave her the choice.

Number twenty was how, on Sundays, he’d drive to the corner near the entrance to the highway ramp and buy a newspaper from a man named Jake, whose teeth were dark yellow and who didn’t look as if he had access to a shower. Her dad did this even though they got a different Sunday paper delivered to their house.

Number twenty-one was how he knew the man’s name was Jake.

Number one was how absolutely patient he was when he helped her with her math homework. Even when she cried. Even when she threw her pencil across the room or let her gaze leave the book or the piece of paper and wander to the ceiling. He’d said (how many times over the years? Hundreds? A thousand?), “I get it, Aves. Math is a bear.” Who said that: Math is a bear? And in the calmest voice anyone had ever heard? No one in the world but her dad.

The day after the dinner party at Gray and Evan’s, Avery called a meeting. In school, they’d been learning about South Africa: apartheid, Mandela, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Avery thought that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was surely one of the most splendid organizations that had ever existed. The victims of injustice got to tell their stories, and so did the perpetrators of injustice. No matter what side a person had fought on, no matter how awful their injuries or horrific their crimes, they could speak their truths, recount their heartbreak and loss, and, if necessary, ask for forgiveness. Amnesty. Even when amnesty was refused, they’d gotten to say they were sorry in front of everyone, to put words to the shapeless, overpowering regret that must have lived inside them. Avery believed that was worth a lot.

While she didn’t tell her parents, in Avery’s mind the meeting she’d called was a convening of her family’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She needed answers. And maybe the truth wouldn’t set them free or maybe her father wouldn’t be able to tell it and maybe, if he told it, she wouldn’t be able to grant him amnesty. But she hoped.

She’d considered having the meeting at her father’s apartment instead of at the house. If it went terribly, blew up in her face, at least it wouldn’t have happened in her house. Rooms had a way of keeping what had happened in them. But then she’d decided to have it at their house after all. It was the place the three of them had lived and been a family, where they’d eaten meals, opened gifts, done jigsaw puzzles on snowy days, and watched cooking and baking shows (which her father unaccountably loved). Their dining room table was where her father had sat, sometimes until late at night, teaching her math. What had taken place between her father and Cressida was part of all that, part of their family story, however much all of them might wish it weren’t, so that house, that table, seemed to Avery the fitting and just location for their family truths and reconciliations to unfold.

Before the meeting, Avery opened her notebook and read her list all the way through, once and then again.