“Sorry to be late.” Marco leaned forward and brushed his lips across my forehead, then placed his hand upon my shoulder.
When he said it, when he touched me, something swarmed inside me, quick and light as bees. We weaved down the corridor, past fellow travelers, with his apologetic hand on my forgiving shoulder, past the red vinyl booths in the restaurant where we might make plans over French fries before my flight out on Monday afternoon. Past bathrooms, pay phones, past the bar where he must have meant to stop for just one beer to settle his nerves. He steered me into the gift shop, for gum, he said. He reached for a pack big enough to share and set it down on the counter. I never took my eyes off his hand with the perfect half-moons at the base of each nail. A father seemed like such a big thing, I needed to start with one small piece of him. He fished change from his pocket and held it out to the clerk. She smiled at him the way women do at handsome men, like she’d be willing to unwrap a stick of gum, slide it into his mouth, and tuck the wrapper into her purse to throw away later.
Behind her, a shelf crammed with panda bears, price tags dangling from their paws, ran the length of an entire wall, a gap where mine must have sat. I worried my fingers through my panda’s fur, staring first at the stuffed-animal shelf, then at all the shelves lined with coffee cups, corkscrews, dolls, T-shirts, shot glasses, magazines, and chocolates. What made him think I’d want a three-foot panda? I was fourteen. He must have known what I was thinking because at the last minute he grabbed a snow globe crowded with skyscrapers and the elevated-train track. Before he held it out to me he gave it three quick shakes, confusing the Chicago scene with fake snow.
“Your second souvenir,” he said. I slipped it inside my mother’s purse.
He’d rented a black sedan, a Lincoln Town Car, to get back and forth from the airport to the hotel and the jewelry convention. He asked if I wanted to drive but I told him I didn’t even have a learner’s permit. A pine-green cardboard tree hung from the rearview mirror, and the car smelled like someone’s clean bathroom. He seemed at ease driving around Chicago, one elbow hanging out the window.
I arranged myself on the seat next to him, crossing my legs, folding my hands over the purse, trying to look comfortable, trying to think of something to say. I wanted this to be easy as any father-and-daughter outing. He told me we were staying at the Drake.
“That’s where Phil Donahue puts up the guests for his show.” I watched every afternoon while I did math homework and ate Ritz crackers. When he didn’t say anything I kept right on talking. “I had a cat named Phil Donahue. He got run over. A long time ago.” I paused because thinking of Phil Donahue still made me a little sad and I didn’t want to be sad in a car with my father for the first time. I wasn’t exactly sure what I should be, but it wasn’t sad.
My father looked at me with his brown eyes and said, “Too bad.”
“Isn’t it funny that the real Phil Donahue married the woman from
That Girl
? I mean, he is so serious and she seemed like she was just having fun starring in commercials and running around with a matching hat and gloves?” He asked me to pick a radio station and I was relieved to have something to do. I found Paul Anka singing “Having My Baby.” It was becoming one of those times where everything can embarrass you. I went past that station.
“Turn back to that,” he said and for the rest of the song he tapped along with his thick gold wedding band. I hoped it was just nerves and that my father wasn’t a Paul Anka fan.
“You must be hungry. Early dinner okay with you?”
When we pulled up to the valet at the Palm, I opened my door before the man had a chance to come around and let me out.
My dad held the restaurant door open for me. I stood next to him while he talked to the maître d’. The times my mom and I went to fancy restaurants, birthdays or paydays or just for our mental health, my mom never had a reservation, partly because she wasn’t good at planning ahead, partly because, as she said,
I thrive on challenge.
Usually she’d flirt, touching the maître d’ on his wrist. Once, when a table couldn’t be found, she’d walked her fingers up the guy’s arm all the way to his elbow, saying,
I won’t take it personally,
but I could tell by the way she flounced out that she did. In the parking lot, she clamped down on her cigarette and called him an asshole.
My father slid his hand deep into his pocket. I watched the graceful exchange of the folded bill from my father’s hand to the maître d’ and realized that my father was a man who made things happen.
We were led us through the restaurant with its burgundy carpet, polished wood walls, and thick white tablecloths. Our corner table felt romantic, operatic. My dad asked what I liked to eat.
“Stew?”
He ordered without even opening the menu, steaks, medium well for me, rare for him, creamed spinach, new potatoes, and a bottle of Chianti.
He swallowed down one glass and poured another. “I’m a little nervous. Are you?”
When I nodded, he poured some wine into my water glass and said, “Don’t tell your mother.”
Ruby let me sip from her wine spritzers, but this was different. My dad poured from an elegant bottle. It was offered in a thoughtful manner, like
maybe this is just the ticket for you and me right now.
We clinked glasses and he said, “To a fresh start,” then closed his eyes to swallow. I did too. The wine was warm and slipped easily down my throat.
My dad impressed me by cutting his entire steak before he started eating. He paused to sip wine after each bite. I organized my meal too, alternating steak and vegetable bites, while he described his six jewelry stores spread out in strip malls across southern Florida. I imagined working with him, arranging pearl and diamond necklaces in black velvet display cases, winding the watches in the timepiece case. He explained the 4 Cs of diamond quality—cut, color, carat, and clarity. Mine were princess cut, SI
2
, rated J for color, which, he emphasized by stabbing his fork in the air, was very good. “They look perfect on a pretty girl like you.”
I loved being in Chicago. I loved this meal. Most of all, I loved falling in love with my father.
He pushed his plate away and continued talking, about his family now, his German wife, Gretchen, and his twins, my eight-year-old half sisters, Louise and Charlotte. Both a couple of pistols, he told me, grinning. He said I’d really like them. The family had two basset hounds, Captain and Tennille, and lived in a ranch house in Fort Lauderdale.
Ruby’s voice filled my head as he went on about his girls, how they liked to ride around the yard on his lawn mower cutting crazy designs into the grass. It all sounded so . . . nuclear. I imagined him leaning back at a breakfast table, cowboy boots slung up on a kitchen chair, sipping black coffee and trying to read the Florida paper, which had been delivered to his door. Charlotte’s arms flung around his neck; Louise, blond and braided, ransacking his paper for the comics page. When he asked about my life, I rearranged the food on my plate. I sometimes did that at home when Ruby and I were having leftovers, chili or ham-and-lima-bean casserole. She knew what I was trying to pull and delivered her making-ends-meet rant. When I was little, I’d hidden a hot dog inside an empty milk carton in the trash. She washed it off, reheated it, and then sat at the table while I choked the thing down. Now, when I’m mad at her, she still brings it up.
Don’t forget to tell them about the hot dog,
she says,
when you notify the child protection authorities.
He asked only the basics. Did I like school?
“Yes.”
What was my favorite subject?
“Biology and language arts.”
Did I have a boyfriend?
“Yes.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask for a name. If he did, I would say Doug Jordan. It could be true if I wanted it. I couldn’t really picture Doug Jordan here. He seemed more of a hot-dog type. I hoped I didn’t. Here in Chicago, in black velour pants and SI
2
J-color princess-cut diamonds, I was inventing a pretty daughter for Marco and his life.
“What about a stepdad?” Marco asked. He twirled the wine around in the bottom of his glass.
“No,” I said. Though I thought about Frank, who gave us a TV and almost moved in before he’d changed his mind, said he didn’t want to leave one family and jump into another, and ended up relocating to Denver.
“That all sounds good.” He nodded. “Sounds like you’ve got a full life in California.”
I didn’t know what he was trying to say. My life wasn’t full. It had plenty of room for lawn mowers, half sisters, and a dad. It seemed like things were being offered and then retracted. Here at the table it was suddenly too unpredictable, too tipsy. At least with my mother, I always knew what to expect. “I’ve got to use the restroom.” I walked slowly away, trying to look relaxed, certain he was watching my back. I found the phone in the hall next to the ladies’ room. She accepted the charges. “Everything is fine,” I said, pressing my ear against the phone and her voice.
“How does he look? Did he ask about me?”
“We’re at a restaurant and then I guess we’re going to the hotel.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
“He’s got twin daughters. They live in a ranch house.”
I heard a man laugh in the background, heard my mom’s muffled “Shhh! My baby’s on the phone.” And then more clearly, “Did he take you somewhere nice at least?”
I flicked the coin return open and shut. “I should go.”
“Did you tell him about your grades and how we camped last summer?”
“He said it sounds like we have a full life.” The ceiling was smudged gray directly above me from people smoking while they talked. This must be the type of conversation someone would light a cigarette for.
Her hand went over the mouthpiece again. “Stop,” she said. And then to me, “My friend Leland is painting my toenails.”
When I turned toward the mouth of the hall, there was my dad, watching me. I felt caught, like a fly under a glass, as if I’d betrayed him somehow by reporting to my mother and as if I’d betrayed my mother by coming to Chicago.
“Call me tomorrow. I love you . . .” And her voice rose up at the end the way it always did, like a question, as if her love required an answer.
“She says hi,” I said. I had to turn sideways so he could squeeze past me and continue down the hall to the bathroom.
He plunged his hands deep into his pockets. “Tell her hi from me.”
Saxophone or trumpet moaned from the radio as we roamed around Chicago. My dad’s chin rested almost on his chest; one hand hung from the bottom of the steering wheel.
“You don’t mind if we take a drive?”
I didn’t say anything because I could tell he wasn’t really asking. He steered along a boulevard, past brightly lit high-rise condos and department-store windows full of furs and overcoats. Gradually, buildings thinned out and we were cruising through neighborhoods. Streetlights flickered on, the engine hummed, and the wine glowed in my stomach like a night-light.
Streets were named after the trees that lined the sidewalks, Oak, Maple, and Aspen. They dropped crisp leaves in the fading light because that’s what trees are meant to do in October. Soon their bare branches would stand out against a pale, wintry sky. People would make soup and haul out the Halloween decorations. They’d pull on heavy coats, while in Los Angeles palms and magnolias were always green and you could wear your swimsuit in November. I guessed that’s what it was like in Fort Lauderdale too. Another thing my parents had in common: winter-free lives.
I could have relaxed if it weren’t for my father seeming like he was just about to say something. He kept clearing his throat, glancing over at me every time he pulled up to a stop sign. I would have liked to reach my hand toward his on the seat, to let him know that I was ready to hear what he was trying to say, only I wasn’t. I steered the conversation toward something I already knew.
“We have a dog. A cockapoo—part poodle, part cocker spaniel. A stray. The vet gave us pills to crush into his food because he smells bad. When I take him for walks he goes running in open doors, barking and wagging his tail like he’s some long-lost pet yelling out, ‘I’m home. Thank God, I’m back.’ Ruby calls him shameless.”
“You just need to train him.”
“I’m afraid he’ll find his old house.”
He pulled to the side of the street, pressed a button to roll down both our windows. The air was cool and smelled faintly of wood smoke and lasagna. I wrapped my arms around my chest, so he left the engine on with the heat blasting my legs and a cold wind chilling my face. My body felt confused, hot and cold, sitting in this dark car with a stranger.
“I want you to know what happened.” His voice was serious and sincere. He seemed to need to muster up courage because he stared out the window before he spoke again. I saw everything he saw. A lit porch hugging the length of the house, the red handle of a spade sticking up from the dirt, a forgotten sweatshirt draped over a bush. Dark shapes inside, moving toward a dining room and dinner.
“It wasn’t the right time. I was young.”
I held my hands under the heater vent, then pressed them into my cold cheeks. He looked at me like I should understand. I told him I did. It was the idea of me that was too much.
“You weren’t planned,” my dad said.
I pictured him eating his dinner so carefully. I guessed I’d cured him of not planning. As far as I could tell, this man would never not plan again. Even though it was the last thing I wanted to happen, my throat closed up and tears stung my eyes.
He noticed. His face went pale and he started petting my head. “Now, none of that. Come on.”
Do not cry. Do not cry,
I was telling myself over and over, so I almost didn’t hear the next thing he said.
“You weren’t even an idea. It was your mother I didn’t love.” He ran his thumb across my cheek.
He was nearly pleading with me. This was the piece my mother never told me. It wasn’t me at all. I stroked my hand along the fringe of her purse, as if I were untangling hair. My eyes overflowed and I never felt sorrier or more relieved.