All We Ever Wanted(47)

   “Talk about what?” I said, horrified.

“What do you think, Lyla?” he said.

“I don’t know, Dad,” I said as sarcastically as I could. “That’s why I asked you—since you obviously set this up.”

“I would imagine—and this is just a wild guess—that we’re going to talk about what Finch did to you,” he said super-calmly and just as sarcastically.

I’m not sure exactly what I pictured going down tomorrow, but he might as well have just suggested that the four of us sit naked around a table playing Monopoly. Like, I really couldn’t think of anything more painfully awkward than rehashing what Finch did to me.

“Wow. So you really are trying to completely ruin my life?” I said. It actually felt like an understatement. I held my breath because I wasn’t fooled. I knew that at any moment, he could erupt. These days my dad went from zero to a hundred in no time at all. Actually, there was never a zero anymore. He was always pretty amped up and ready to explode.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m trying to be a good father. That’s all.”

“Yeah. Well. Good fathers don’t usually try to destroy their daughters’ lives.”

I’d finally pushed his button, so he made a huffing sound, then threw up his hands like a pissed-off cartoon dad, and left the room mumbling, “You must have me confused with your other parent.”

I almost chased after him to tell him to stop playing the martyr. I mean, yeah, I get that Mom completely sucked in the parenting department. But Mom’s over-the-top sucking shouldn’t give Dad extra credit for doing the same basic job that everyone else’s parents were doing. I honestly couldn’t believe I’d never thought to make the point before and couldn’t wait to lay it on him, but I couldn’t make myself get up. So I just lay in bed low-key crying until Dad came back to my room—which I knew he would. He’d never stated aloud the don’t-go-to-bed-mad rule, but he more or less followed it. He’d always at least come back to say a civil good night. I heard Nonna once say that it was because he had “a weak stomach for conflict,” but I think it actually might have something to do with the way Mom left us.

   Neither one of them had ever been entirely clear about what had happened when she jetted off in the middle of the night, but I got the gist that they’d had a big fight over me. It was something about Mom drinking too much and almost letting me drown at a pool party. (Though Mom insisted that I knew how to swim from a few lessons at the Y, Dad maintains that I’d only learned how to turn my face to the side to blow bubbles.) Anyway, Dad was furious at her “negligence”—and she was pissed off at his “judgmentalness”—if that’s even a word. She was so pissed off, in fact, that she left. For good.

“Your father made it clear that he thought you would both be better off without me. And I suppose he was right,” Mom told me one of the times she came back. She was a master at painting herself as the victim even when talking to me, her abandoned daughter.

I almost pointed out that he wasn’t beating her. Like, being judgmental just isn’t that drastic. At least not drastic enough to choose abandonment, and obviously she had another choice besides completely throwing in the towel. She could have proven Dad wrong and tried to show him that she could be a responsible, good mother. Instead, she kind of proved his case for him.

As far as Dad goes, I think he can’t help blaming himself just a little for the way things went down. And maybe he even thinks that if the two of them had had the don’t-go-to-bed-mad rule, he could have convinced her to go to rehab or tried to figure their messed-up shit out. I doubt it, and I bet Dad doubts it, too. But I still wonder sometimes, and I bet he does, too.

   In any case, when Dad came back in my room, I was glad, even though I was still really pissed. Before he could say anything, or throw another pity party for himself, I went off. “Look, Dad. I’m totally grateful to you for being a good father and everything, but this whole deal is really killing me.”

“Killing you?” he said, doing the calm routine again.

“It’s just an expression, Dad.”

He nodded.

“Yes. I mean, honestly, the last thing I’d want to do in the world is sit down with the Brownings. Like, I’d rather walk through fire. Or pull my toenails out.”

“It’s not my idea of a good time, either,” Dad said.

“Then why are we doing it? Whose idea was it, anyway?” I asked.

“Nina’s,” he replied. “Mrs. Browning’s.”

I stared back at him, processing the information, as well as her name. Nina. It was so classy and elegant, totally fitting the memory I had of her from senior night at the last home basketball game, which was the only time I had ever seen her. Finch was one of four seniors on the team, so he’d walked out to midcourt before the game with both his parents. I don’t remember anything about his dad, other than that he was tall like Finch, but I remember thinking his mother was so pretty and stylish. She was petite, with shoulder-length honey-blond hair, and her outfit was soo good: dark denim, knee-high boots, and an ivory cape with a fringe of pom-poms.

“She called you?” I asked. I couldn’t help being a little intrigued by their exchange.

   “She emailed me,” Dad said. He glanced down at the laundry basket again, then walked over to the edge of my bed.