Afterparty(15)

He nods toward the landline. “Get Siobhan over here.”

I think of Siobhan stretched out by the mall bar, crossing and uncrossing her legs as some middle-aged guy in a fake-suede blazer looks her over. I think of her lifting her glass and shouting something angry at him in Portuguese. I think of her in four-inch heels, sitting in my living room pretending she doesn’t speak English.

“Now?”

Yes, now.

I panic.

My dad has tried to get Siobhan and her family over before. And, okay, what I told him can be dressed up, spelled out in letters made of butterflies and emblazoned in fancy needlepoint on little velvet pillows, but the bottom line is: I straight-up lied.

I told him the (completely fabricated) story that Siobhan’s mom rarely let her go out, where there might be R-rated DVDs, bad language, dangerous pit bulls, and unlocked guns lying around. I sent her entire family on (imaginary) church junkets to Tijuana to build (also imaginary) orphanages. I enrolled Nancy in a (fictional) Italian cooking class where she spent weeks gathering wild herbs in Sicily.

Let me pause here to say, no matter what my dad is worried about, I do not lack a conscience, or a rudimentary concept of right and wrong, or an at least minimally functional moral compass. I could tell, as all these untrue sentences came cascading out of my mouth, that the needle of that moral compass was pointing toward wrong and untrustworthy and bad daughter and overall bad, dishonest person.

But how could I tell him the truth without his head exploding?

I dial Siobhan with blood pressure that’s highly elevated for a girl who doesn’t run marathons or do massive amounts of cocaine.

I try, unsuccessfully, to sound normal. I say, “Hey, Siobhan.”

She says, “Hello?”

I say, “And congratulations again for that A. Way to go.”

She says, “Have you been smoking something?”

I say, “Yeah, we’re eating in a minute too. And I wanted to ask, do you want to come over tomorrow?”

“You’re shitting me.”

My dad mouths the words “Family Game Night.”

I say, “Family Game Night.”

“Oh. Is this a hostage situation? Does someone have a knife to your throat?”

“Something like that.”

“Cool. Sure. Family Game Night. Are you okay? You sound kind of slurred.”

“Yeah! My dad thinks so too! He can’t wait to meet you.”

“Shit.”

I nod to my dad. I say, “Tomorrow.”

He says, “Good. I’ll be sure to lock up the assault rifles and pit bulls.”





CHAPTER TEN


“HOW COME HE WOULDN’T THINK I’m your perfect friend, anyway?” Siobhan says over a spiked Big Gulp in her kitchen after school. “Don’t you think I’m presentable?”

“Of course you’re presentable! It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . he wants me to be more like Megan. Which means maybe you could be more like Megan. Just for tonight.”

Siobhan and Megan met once during my effort to make the pieces of my life converge over a pedicure. Megan thought Siobhan was too wild of a wild child. Siobhan thought Megan was suffering from metastatic dullness and I was lucky to have Siobhan at Latimer to save me from succumbing to the same sorry fate.

“Siobhan, promise you’ll be good.”

But when she’s sprawled in my living room, fifteen minutes into Family Game Night, it’s clear that Siobhan being good isn’t that good.

The evening starts with me and my dad playing French Scrabble before she arrives. We’re eating his potato cheesy puffs, the perfect food, crunchy and gooey and somewhat addictive.

He says, “We’ll switch to English when she gets here.”

I say, “We might not have to. Her French is great.”

My dad heads into the kitchen, humming, to get another bottle of Pellegrino. He calls back, “Don’t you steal my x when I’m gone, ma princesse, or I’m impounding that zed.”

“I’m hiding it right now! You’ll never find it!”

My dad cackles, “Ve have our vays,” in a mad scientist accent.

I yell, “Child abuse!”

My dad cackles some more.

I get maybe a half hour of him not worrying about being a good example, not worrying about me, not worrying about how, if he doesn’t stay on top of things, I’ll go from perfect to degenerate in three seconds flat.

Then Siobhan knocks on the door, and he starts worrying again.

It would probably help if she hadn’t fortified herself with a whole lot of vodka and orange juice before she got here. Or if she weren’t sharing tidbits of random information, which start off great before swerving toward the parental terror zone.

For example, given that she speaks many languages, she wants to become a translator at the UN. This sweeps the tension off my dad’s face like a giant windshield wiper. Until she adds, “And then, if the delegates get testy, I can screw with their negotiations.”

There is a gasp he doesn’t even try to hide.

Then she jostles the table and catches her Scrabble tiles in flight, one-handed, as they pitch toward the floor, demonstrating how she can play lacrosse, all right, slightly impaired.

She says, “I might not have the patience for Scrabble. I might have ADD.”