Making Pretty (5 page)

“Yes,” I say. “Like, real love. Not this. I don't want to watch the same movie play out over and over forever.”

“Things don't change until they do,” Karissa says.

“My dad's not like you and me,” I say, which is mostly wishful thinking, that anyone but me thinks I could be like Karissa at all, even a little. “But if you say I should have hope, I will. Again.”

Arizona would call me an asshole, remind me we're stuck in an endless cycle that's never going to get better. Roxanne would laugh. Maybe that's why I need Karissa. For the whole hope thing.

“You're a rock star. Let's do this forever, okay?” She kisses my cheek with the side of her pink-painted mouth and squeezes my shoulder. I am the luckiest person in the world, for one moment.

When Dad sees my hair almost a week after I dyed it, he changes our reservation from his favorite fancy restaurant, Le Cirque, to this Italian place on the Lower East Side. People with almost pink hair can't sit in a place like Le Cirque—there is a domed ceiling and silver platters and little one-bite appetizers or sorbets in between every course. People with almost pink hair have to stay below 14th Street where they belong.

“You had to do this tonight of all nights?” he says.

“I did it last week, but you haven't been around to see it,” I say. “So let's make sure we're directing our anger correctly.” To Dad's credit, he doesn't tell me to cut my attitude. Instead he nods, swallows, and agrees.

“Well. You have a point there,” he says. Roxanne used to wonder why Arizona and I have never stopped loving my father. Then she witnessed the measured way he admits to screwing up and his serious head nods and the way he laughs at my meanest jokes, and she got it.

“You know, my new friend might just like your crazy ways,” Dad says. He winks and I almost text Karissa to tell her that her signature wink is taking over the world, but I decide texting her and Bernardo will be my reward for getting through this night with a half-pleasant smile on my face.

“Call her your girlfriend, dude,” Arizona says. Dad laughs. His stubble is growing out, and he has this new tie that is purple and striped and a little too hip. He's wearing it with a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and I have never seen my father unmatched. His fancy gold watch is gone and his hair is a little mussed.

“Okay, dude,” he says, like he's been practicing saying the word
dude
lately, in general.

“Tell your sister she'll never get a job or a boyfriend with that whole punk look she's rocking,” Dad says to Arizona, and the tone is all joking, but there's something under it that hurts, and I know that thing is that it's his truth.

Also, my dad can't really pull off the word
rocking
even with his fuzzy face and power-clashing outfit.

“Actually, the color's growing on me,” Arizona says. I know this probably isn't exactly true, but when it comes to Dad's comments on how we look or how in love he is, we're automatically on the same team no matter what. Even if we haven't been talking much the past few days or months and even if her new boobs are squarely between us, changing everything. “Better than if she'd gone all goth-black or something.”

“Fair enough,” Dad says. “Can't blame a guy for wanting to show
off his beautiful girls, though.” The word
beautiful
is another thing that should feel good but hurts, because I know he doesn't really mean it. But Arizona is in a yellow sundress and heels, and at least Dad has one good, pretty daughter with enhanced boobs.

Dad's never talked to us about what happened with Natasha and our thirteenth birthdays, but it sits between us, this awful truth that dirties up every nice thing he says about Arizona and me.

I'm weak, so I weave a messy braid and hang it over my shoulder. I love how long and wild my hair has gotten. Arizona's is shiny and shoulder length and parted down the middle. It reminds me of Tess's. Natasha wears hers in a low bun, and Janie teased it out and never tucked it behind her ears.

I don't remember Mom's hair very well, except that it was dark blond and wavy like mine.

None of the wives have had pink hair. One of the girlfriends—before Tess but after Natasha—had a silver streak. It didn't make her cool, but it was a nice change of pace.

“She's going to meet us here, and we'll take a cab to CucinaCucina together,” Dad says, sighing at my jeans and probably the wide set of my hips. I could have worn more than a T-shirt, but I hate anything more than a T-shirt and this one is at least of the
Mona Lisa
, which has to make it classy. I am not in proportion. I am not symmetrical. Like Mona Lisa. “She's special,” Dad goes on. “I promise. You'll see. She's not like any of . . . anyone else. Anyone else I've ever met.”

“Where'd you find her?” Arizona says. I laugh, because it's the perfect word for what Dad does. He finds girlfriends and wives, he doesn't really meet them.

Dad doesn't answer her question. He looks sheepish and puts his hands in his pockets, and I don't know that I've ever seen my father nervous before, but this is what it looks like on him.

And without meaning to, I have hope again.

“Cell phones off tonight,” Dad says. “Even mine, okay? Everyone I want to hear from will be at that table.”

The hope nudges forward. Dad never turns off his phone. Maybe the new woman
will
be different. I smooth down my flyaway hairs and ask Arizona for lip gloss. I don't know exactly why, but if Dad can move a little in one direction, I guess I can too. Because who knows. Because maybe.

Dad answers the door, and I hear the laugh.

Her laugh.

Shit.

Arizona and I push our way onto the stoop.

“What are you doing here?” I say, even though I already know and definitely don't want it confirmed.

Karissa smiles and blushes. “You promised you'd be open-minded about my secret,” she says.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I say because the blush tells me everything.

“Hey now,” Dad says. My whole body is beating with anger. Like my heartbeat has taken up residence in every joint and bone and muscle.

“I know how much you love Karissa,” he continues. “And I want you
to know that I do too.” He's nervous but measured, and it makes me even angrier.

She is all legs and giggles and shakiness.

“Hi?” Arizona says, trying to navigate the moment without any sort of road map.

“I'm Karissa.”

“I'm Arizona.”

“You can probably tell I know your sister,” Karissa says, reaching for me and then changing her mind. Instead she hooks her hand into a tiny, nonfunctional, finger-size pocket right below her hip. “We were in acting class together. So.”

“So,” Arizona says. I'm unable to speak, and I have a feeling this is the last syllable Arizona will be able to get out for a while too. Karissa is only a few years older than us. She looks like she could still be in high school. She wears dresses with fake pockets and gives me cigarettes and wine and a special brand of attention. She's mine. She cannot belong to my father.

“Absolutely one hundred percent no,” I say. I won't look Karissa in the eye, but I have no trouble staring down my father.

“I didn't approach her until your class was over,” Dad says, like it's a good enough excuse. My class with Karissa finished up two months ago. I wonder if he knows about the bars and the boys and the pickle- and-wine parties and the cigarettes and the way she tells me I'm adult and special and her best friend.

“You know I think you're the greatest,” Karissa says. Her voice is low, as if it's a private moment between her and me, but with all four
of us on the stoop, there's no room for secrets. “And I honestly believe this could be something . . . magnificent.”

Loneliness jabs at me. All the time I spent with her, I thought I was finding my Person. It's unbearable. And embarrassing. And so terribly sad.

“This isn't happening,” I say. If I could think of the right words to yell at her, I'd do that, but there's a screeching in my mind, a banshee of fury, and it's hard to think with that going on.

“We're still best friends. I don't want that to change,” she says, in the exact moment that everything is changing. I can't stop thinking of her skinny friends and their bemused expressions. The way they said my name, like it meant something. They knew. Of course they knew.

It seems stupid to want to be the most important person in someone's life. But other people have that. So I don't see why I can't want it too.

“What if this made us all super happy?” Karissa says “Like, just, what if?” She has her crooked smile and her hair in her eyes and the same energy as my father, caught in between naive positivity and crazy-making denial.

“This is my family,” I whisper back, but the word hurts to say.

For a moment it is only me and her. We aren't blinking or moving or speaking. “We both deserve everything. Remember?” she says.

“But this is
mine
,” I say. “And you said you wanted
me
. Not my father.” My hands go to my throat, the universal sign for choking. I'm not actually in need of a Heimlich or anything, but I need them to know I can't breathe, something's stuck in my throat, I might pass out.

“Can we get the cab, please?” Arizona says, shifting the moment into something else, something looser and more okay. “I swear to God someone forgot to pick up after their dog, and I cannot do this in the presence of puppy crap, okay?”

She makes me laugh. A totally involuntary laugh, a really small one, but it's there and it feels good so I appreciate it, and take a mental note that it may go on my gratitude list tomorrow morning. So, so much about Arizona has changed, but at the end of the day she is completely not going to stand for anything as undignified as a dog-shit-flavored conversation about the newest of Dad's soon-to-be-failed relationships.

With a twenty-three-year-old.

With my friend.

I give it, like, a month. And if it's one of his monthlong girlfriends, there's no need for Arizona and me to be involved.

Because, come on.

They all get in the cab. I stand there like I'm getting in last, but then don't.

“I can't,” I say.

“Get in,” Dad says. He's not kidding. He wants me to squeeze in the back with Arizona and Karissa and sign off on this mess of a situation.

Not this time.

“You can have anyone else,” I whisper, getting close to his face in the window. “You don't even know her. She doesn't even matter to you. In two years you won't remember her favorite color or what she wanted to be when she grew up. But she matters to me.” I think maybe
he'll hear the truth in that.

“Montana. Don't be a teenager about it,” Dad says. It's a thing he says that used to make me laugh, but not today. I'm going to be Montana about it. I'm going to stay here and smoke cigarettes and Google the names of my stepmothers and some of the ex-girlfriends I remember and call Natasha, the stepmother I've semi-adopted as still mine, and try to warm the chill in my chest from seeing Karissa on my father's arm.

“You can't make me sign off on this,” I say. The cabdriver starts the meter, and I know my dad won't let it run too long.

“Totally,” Karissa says. “You need some time. Eat some ice cream. Chill. We can talk after dinner. Your dad and I understand.” She reaches to the front seat and puts a hand on Dad's shoulder. My body convulses.

“What if I don't want to talk to you later?” I say. I curl my toes and stand my ground as best as I can.

“We'll bring you back some pasta. You will eat it,” Dad says. He rolls up the window and stares ahead. Arizona watches me from the backseat, and I know I'm supposed to do this with her, but I can't. She started it, the making-our-own-choices thing. She changed everything. So she can't expect me to do everything with her anymore. She made the first crack in our impenetrable united front.

I call Natasha.

“You need to come over?” she says. “Our couch is your couch. You know that.”

“I hate my father,” I say.

“We'll adopt you,” she says. I still can't believe she is the same person she was when they got married seven years ago. It doesn't seem possible. She changed so much after my father and she split up.

“Can't you marry him again?” I say. “Wouldn't that be easiest?” I want the family in my head, the one that doesn't make me feel alternately claustrophobic and untethered. The completely nonexistent one.

“Come over, sweetheart. Help me make dinner. We can talk about your dad being the worst,” Natasha says. That doesn't sound right either. I don't want to hate on my father with his ex-wife. It is impossible to decipher what the fuck I want, to be honest.

“That's okay. Thanks. I'll come over this week for sure. It's okay. I'm okay.” I don't sound believable, but Natasha believes me.

When I hang up, I decide that what I really need, what will really help, is seeing Bernardo after I have it out with Karissa. I tell him to come by later.

That feels good and all, but I miss the other day and Karissa's party and the way the world was opening up, because now it is closing back in.