Tell Me Three Things(34)

Dad.

I open the glass doors and step outside. Wrap my arms around myself, because there’s a sharp breeze and a bite to the air I associate with Chicago.

“Hey,” I say, and my dad gives me the same look Rachel gave me this morning. As if my very existence comes as a surprise. I am here, I want to scream. Why am I so easily forgotten?

“Hi, sweetheart. Didn’t hear you. Sit with me.”

I flop down into the lounge chair next to him. I want to ask about our status—Are we evicted?—but I don’t have the courage.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

“Just thinking.”

“Ouch,” I say, and my dad smiles.

“It occurred to me just now that I’m finally, officially, in every single way a person can be, a bona fide grown-up. But honestly, sometimes I forget, and think I’m twenty-two. You know what I mean?” he asks. I hope he knows I do not. How could I? Twenty-two sounds old to me.

“If it helps clarify things any, I’m pretty sure you’re forty-four. You’ve been a grown-up for a long, long time in my book,” I say.

“Right. You’re almost a woman yourself, and I’m your father. But damn, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m equipped for adult life. Any of it.” His voice suddenly turns raw and shaky. After my mom died, I never saw him cry, not once, but in those first few months, he had perpetually watery and bloodshot eyes, as if he had just finished weeping somewhere unseen.

I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say. My mom is not here to help us.

I’m not equipped for this life either.

“I wish when you were little someone had said to me: These are the good times. Right now. These are the good times. You are young and things are simple. And one day it’s all going to blow up in your face or bottom out or whatever metaphor you want to use—your mom would have a good one for us—and so relax and enjoy while you can. When I first started out, I used to have nightmares that I gave out a wrong prescription. That I gave Mrs. Jallorari Valium instead of her heart medication. Or that I dosed out the Zackowitzes’ kid’s lithium incorrectly. Your mom and I, though…that part was always easy.” I feel his shoulders start to shake, and so I stare straight ahead. If he’s going to cry, if he is going to choose right now to fall apart, after everything, after him making all of the decisions—selling our house, getting remarried, moving us here and my having no choice in the matter, none—I will not look at him. I’m sorry, but I cannot give him that.

“A wise person in our family used to say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I say, because that is the best I can do. An empty morsel.

I can’t say Mom.

I can’t do that either.

“I know it’s not fair that you’re the one having to comfort me,” he says, eyes on the hills, looking out at the other houses, before glancing back at me. “I do realize that you are the kid here.”

“Am I?” I ask. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He makes his hands into fists and taps his eyes, one-two-three, and then drops them, as if he is done with the self-pity.

“You are just like your mom. An old soul. When you were a baby, you used to lie in your crib and look up at me, and I remember thinking, Man, this kid already sees right through me.” I look over at him. He is wrong. I don’t see right through him. He is deeper and more complex than he likes to admit.

I’ve seen him order cabernet with steak. Many times. Happily.

“Dad?” The question forms again: Are we leaving? But I let it go. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“So forty-four is really old?” His face brightens. He’s now recovered from whatever gripped him.

“Ancient,” I say.

“Better tell Gloria to add Depends to the shopping list, then.” A stupid joke, maybe but I laugh anyway because I can. I can give him that much.





CHAPTER 17




SN: three things: (1) my first crush was on Wonder Woman. I’m a sucker for a girl with a lasso. (2) my mom has a whole pharmacy in her medicine cabinet. Xanax. Vicodin. Percocet. all the good stuff. and she takes them. all the time. like it’s a problem. (3) you have beautiful hands.

Me: Not in order, but…(1) I have my mom’s hands. She used to play piano. I quit after 2 lessons but I should have stuck with it. Sometimes I listen to her favorite pieces and pretend she’s playing. Oh wow, can’t believe I just told you that. (2) I was Wonder Woman for Halloween a few years ago. Except I wore pants instead of blue undies. Chicago = cold. (3) How’s this for irony? My dad is actually a pharmacist. For real. So I know about all those drugs. I’m sorry about your mom.



—

“Hey, Dried Tubers,” Ethan says when I meet him in the library. Same shirt every day, same chair by the Koffee Kart, and now the same table where we met last time. This guy has his routines down.

“Really? That’s how it’s going to be?” I say, though I smile. I like the familiarity. That he would call me a nickname at all. “I thought you said it made a good insult.”

“I decided we should take back the word,” he says, and packs up his books. Apparently, we’ll be walking again. This makes me happy. It’s so much easier to talk when I don’t have to see his eyes. Ethan looks different today, borderline peppy. “How about Tub-ee? Tuberoni? No?”