The Pretty One(73)

“Have you seen the Oreos?” my dad asks.





twenty-five

cheat (verb): to make an action onstage look realistic without actually performing it; e.g., an actor looking toward the audience in the general direction of the person he is talking to is cheating.

“I ate them all,” I tell my father as he rummages through our cupboards.

“The whole bag?”


“They were stale anyway,” I reply. Like that makes it all okay.

“What about the pretzels?”

“I finished those off, too.” I brace myself for the lecture I’m pretty sure I’m going to get by chewing on my thumb cuticles. All my dad likes to talk about now is how good-looking I am. I’m pretty sure he won’t be happy to hear that I’ve reverted back to my old eating habits.

Instead, he turns around holding a container of peanut butter and says, “You look nice.”

What? This wasn’t the response I was expecting. I guess when you have a pretty face no one notices little things like un-washed hair and dirty jeans. “Thanks,” I say.

“Where were you?”

I pull my thumb away from my mouth. “I went out with Simon.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he says, setting the peanut butter down on the counter and turning back toward the cupboards again. He pulls out a grody-looking open bag of marshmallows that I’m pretty sure we bought for sleepover camp in fifth grade. “Your mom said you were going out with Simon tonight.” He unrolls the bag of marshmallows, unscrews the top of the peanut butter, dips a marshmallow in, and pops one in his mouth.

I’m not hungry in the slightest and the marshmallow–peanut butter combo looks about as appetizing as a cold bowl of spinach, but I still reach into the bag and follow suit, taking out a marshmallow, dipping it in the peanut butter, and eating it.

My dad grabs a couple more marshmallows out of the bag. We both sit there looking at each other. “These are terrible,” he says finally, opening up his hand and studying the marshmallows cupped inside it.

“Awful,” I agree, taking another one.

“And I’m not even hungry,” he admits.

“I’m stuffed,” I say.

“Like father, like daughter.”

Even though my dad isn’t exactly paying me a compliment, I don’t mind. I’m just happy to be sharing something with someone I love. And if it can’t be an oversized nose and puffy cheeks, it might as well be a bag of stale marshmallows.

“My mom was the same way. She always ate when she was stressed.”

“I wish I had met her,” I say quietly. My dad’s mom died right after Mom and Dad got married. According to my mom she was smart, funny, and quite round.

“She would’ve just loved you. You got your love of art from her. She was always dragging me and my sister to museums every chance she got.” He smiles. “And she would’ve been so proud of how you’ve handled everything the past year.”

“I’m not sure there’s so much to be proud of,” I say, thinking of the turmoil in my life. “It’s been a little tough since I went back to school.”

“I bet it has. But you’re obviously dealing with everything. It’s nothing like how things used to be. Christ, every time I turned around Lucy was going out to one party or another and you were sitting home all by yourself.”

Ouch. I put down the marshmallow.

My dad’s eyes shift from my discarded marshmallow back to me. “Sorry,” he says. “All I’m trying to say is that I used to worry about you. It didn’t seem healthy. Who wants to be…” He looks around and laughs. “Alone in the kitchen at ten o’clock on a Saturday night stuffing your face with marshmallows and peanut butter.”

“I don’t know, Dad. Sometimes I kind of miss my old life.”

“Oh, come on,” he laughs, as if he’s sure I’m joking.

I shrug as I glance away. Even though I’m definitely enjoying hanging out with my dad, I’m not sure I’m ready to bare my soul to him.

“You’re serious?” he says, putting down the marshmallows.

“What’s going on?”

I sigh. Where to begin? And how much did I really want to share? “For starters, I just had my first date with Simon.”

“Tonight was a date?”

I nod.

He leans back, surprised. “Your mom told me you were going out with Simon, but I didn’t realize it was an official date. How about that? It’s kind of like me and Mom, huh?”

“That’s right!” I say enthusiastically. “You guys were friends at first, too.”

“Not really friends. More like a one-sided love affair. It took me a long time to win over your mom. She used to come in every day and order the exact same thing: coffee, no sugar, a hardboiled egg, and whole wheat toast with the butter on the side. I thought things between us were progressing pretty well. At least, until I asked her out.” He chuckles.

“And what did she say?” I had heard this story at least a hundred times before, but I thought it might do me some good to hear it once more.

“She thanked me and told me how flattered she was, but that she was in a relationship. And then she stopped coming in. About a year later, I saw her at a bar in town. I had lost about thirty pounds and cut off my mustache and started working out…I don’t think she recognized me, even though to this day she insists she did. Anyway, turns out that she had broken up with the guy she was dating. And I had moved on, too. I had graduated from school and taken a job with Cisco. Just that day I had bought two concert tickets and I thought, what the hell. So I asked her.”