Vibes (12 page)

We both call, "Yes," at her, but she's already in the kitchen, leaving us alone together.

I sit down on the couch because I don't know what else to do. Dad sits in the ratty overstuffed chair across from me. He has a smile on his face just like the one he probably gives to patients before he does something painful to them. I can feel the guilt practically wafting off him. "How are you, Kristi?"

"Oh, fine," I say distantly. "How are you?"

He leans his elbows on his knees and weaves his fingers together. "I'm wondering if you're going to forgive me, I guess."

"For what?" I say very coldly. The last thing I'm going to do is make this easy for him. In fact, I'm going to make it as difficult as it can possibly be.

"For leaving, obviously."

"Oh. That."

He gets up and leans against Aunt Ann's fake fireplace, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his thin, cheap slacks. As he speaks, I get a wave of guilt and sorrow, though he's hiding it well. "You know, I really thought that you wouldn't change so much. Your Aunt Ann kept sending me pictures, but to be honest I didn't absorb it. I thought you were still that skinny little girl, that you would stay that way."

"And now I'm fat," I say, to make him feel like an asshole.

"You're not fat." He says this without looking at me. I can feel his thoughts jutting out of him, all of them tinged with shame, but the look on his face is very calm. He smiles faintly at me, and his eyes trail to the flowers on the coffee table. He seems to be hiding his true emotions, but I don't understand why he would want to hide his guilt. Doesn't he know guilt would help me forgive him? Sometimes being able to read minds makes people even more confusing. "Looking at you, I can see a lot has happened in your life since I last saw you."

Dad sits down across from me again, his eyes on the floor, and he begins to speak as if he were recounting a very distant tale that doesn't involve me at all. "You know, it was like time got compressed while I was there. I was so busy, I didn't really have time to think about anything or anyone else. That's what I needed. To get out of my own head. And so two months would pass by and it would feel like a week. And after two months I'd think, 'Well, that wasn't so long. I can stay a little longer.' And I kept staying a little longer and a little longer, until all those 'little longers' added up to two years. I looked up from the operating table one day and suddenly I was two years older, even though I felt better about myself than I ever had. But I couldn't hide the fact from myself any longer that I'd let too much time go by. That was wrong, and I won't let that happen again, Kristi."

I watch him. My face is blank, not because I'm hiding anything but because I
feel
blank, wiped out. It is strange to talk to him, to hear him talk. He's relating to me like I'm an adult, which is how he always related to me. I used to like being his confidante, but now I'm not sure how I feel about the way he talks to me. I don't understand it.

"Here we are!" Aunt Ann calls as she carries in a tray loaded with guacamole and chips, a pitcher of sangria with three glasses, and a bottle of seltzer. I feel in shock. All the questions I was expecting from Dad still haven't happened, and it makes me wonder why. Why no questions?

Dad digs into the guacamole with real gusto while Aunt Ann pours the drinks. She puts a ton of seltzer into my glass with hardly any wine, which is fine with me because I don't really like the taste of alcohol. We all sit around, Aunt Ann and I silently watching Dad while he devours the guacamole. He looks at us, embarrassed. "It's been a long time since I've eaten food like this."

"That's all right." Aunt Ann grins. "I didn't believe you when you said you lost so much weight, but I must say you look great, Ken."

"Well, it's amazing what an appetite suppressant hard work and happiness can be." He smiles at her. She gives him a nervous little twinkle, and her beady eyes dart to me. Dad doesn't notice and begins part two of his lecture about the Diseases of Western Africa and the State of Health Care in the Third World. Aunt Ann and I listen, she avidly, I quietly. He talks and talks into the night, all through our late dinner of chicken enchiladas and corn on the cob. When Aunt Ann serves us her failed experiment with homemade flan, he switches from rare tropical parasites to problems with funding for his clinic. Then, as we sip coffee in the living room, all of us melted into the furniture, Dad goes on to describe the camaraderie of the international staff in the hospital where he works. Aunt Ann finally looks at her watch and cries, "We should get Kristi home, Ken."

He yawns loudly. "Yep, it's late." We all stand. He comes up to me, rubs my shoulders, and gives me a kiss on the cheek. I let him kiss me even though I want to pull away. I have to meet him halfway, don't I? I can hear in his thoughts,
I must be careful not to push her too hard.
I guess that's nice of him. "It's a school night for you, love bug, isn't it?" he says as he sits back down on the couch.

"If you can call Journeys a school." I toss this at him like I'd offer bait to a fish.

"Oh yeah, I want to hear all about that tomorrow night over dinner, just us, okay?" he says as he puts his feet up. I let his thoughts come to me, but his mind is still eight thousand miles away. I get short flashes of what he's seeing: women wearing bright sarongs, an ancient jeep working its way around a collapsed dirt road, a sunset red with dust in the air, a field full of green tents, pouring rain. Africa.

Maybe he just hasn't come home to us all the way yet. Maybe it's too much for him to absorb, and later, maybe tomorrow, he'll really be here, really with me. "Do you mind if I don't come along, Ann?" he says as he closes his eyes. "I'm pretty bushed."

Ann nods at him, though she must know he can't see her with his eyes closed. "Come on, honey," she says softly to me. I get up and follow her out the door and into the car. We don't say anything the entire fifteen-minute drive home until we pull up in front of the house. It's completely dark, so I figure Mom is probably hiding in her bedroom. Aunt Ann squeezes my hand and gives me an apologetic smile. "After all the excitement dies down, Kristi," she begins.

"Yeah, I know," I say, not because I agree that excitement is the reason for anything, but because I know what she's trying to do and I think it's nice of her. I can hear her thinking,
Why can't Ken see she needs a father?
She hurts for me, and this makes me feel a little less numb, which I guess is good. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I give her a kiss on her hard cheekbone and pull my new suitcase out of the back seat. "Thanks for all the stuff."

"Don't mention it, sweetheart," she says as I close the car door. She waits until I'm inside before she drives away in her buzzy little car.

Mom is either asleep or pretending to be. I've come home to a very quiet house, but the noise in my brain keeps me up all night.

By the time I get to school the next day, the pink tree is nearly bare. Petals cling very sparsely to the twisting branches, but the wind, which picked up last night, will take care of the rest. Pretty soon the nice part of fall will be over and the dark and cold will set in. I'm standing near the window before Morning Meeting begins, looking at that tree, remembering that only a few days before, I'd stood underneath it waiting for Gusty, feeling a simple happy feeling. Now that Dad has come back, I wonder if I'll ever feel a simple feeling again. Suddenly everything is complicated. It's as if the tree shed all its petals as a message to me: Be careful what you wish for.

Dad is still as magnetic as I remember him. Something about the intimate way he talks makes you want him to like you. When I was a kid, I loved his magnetism. I felt it last night, but somehow now it makes me angry. I don't want to be drawn into his magnet. I don't want to be a metal daughter again. A metal daughter is a robot. Change the batteries, oil the joints. Low maintenance.

Mom has been acting totally weird. This morning over coffee she asked me how I felt about seeing Dad again, but that was it. She wanted to hear only about my feelings. She didn't have any questions about Dad at all. I probed her thoughts as she stared into her mug, and I realized she's trying not to put me in the middle of their fight. I guess that's nice of her, but somehow it doesn't feel natural. Nothing does.

Morning Meeting is starting late today for some reason. People are milling around me, and their voices blend with their thoughts in my mind so I can listen to the background the same way I would hear the ocean. It washes over me like warm water, all those thoughts. Usually hearing what people are thinking feels like torture, but now that Dad's back, none of that seems important. It's rare when I can do this, but today I let their thoughts come and go as I watch pink petals fly away from the tree.

I feel a tap on my arm and turn to see Gusty giving me a half smile that makes his mouth look lopsided. "I've been looking for you," he says. "Are you feeling okay? You were pretty upset the other day."

The quiet feeling is suddenly gone. "I'm sorry about breaking down like that."

"Kristi, come on, we're old friends." His quiet tone makes me look at his face. He's squinting at me. I can hear that he's thinking hard about me, imagining what it would be like to be in my situation. He hurts for me. This makes me feel for a moment as if I'm not alone, as though Gusty magically climbed inside my life with me and is looking around, taking stock. "Your dad coming back, that's major," he says.

There's something so honest about him, it makes me honest, too. "Yeah, it's very major."

He rests his hand on my shoulder. "Listen, you're a tough little woman. You'll get through this."

"Hey. I'm not so little," I say, pretending to be mad.

"Yes you are," he insists with a smirk. "Allow me to demonstrate." He takes a step closer to me and rests his chin on top of my head. "You see, Kristi," he explains in a clinical tone as his voice box vibrates against my eye, "only a little woman could fit under my chin like this."

This is such a bizarre thing to do that I freeze. I expect him to step away, but he doesn't. He stands with my head tucked under his chin as if this were perfectly natural. I would be turned on standing so close to him if this weren't so weird.

"Um—" I begin, but then he swallows really hard against my head, making a very audible
glug
sound. I actually feel his Adam's apple moving against my forehead. He's totally acting like a freak on purpose, making it as weird as possible.

I decide to make it even weirder, so I continue the conversation with my mouth against his T-shirt. "So how was your night last night?"

"It was okay," he says, totally deadpan. When he talks, his chin hits my head, which makes me giggle.

"What did you do?" I say. My breath is making his T-shirt moist, which makes me giggle even more.

"Hmm, let me think." He strokes his chin, getting his fingers totally tangled in my hair, but he pretends not to notice. "Read a book about sharks. Played video games. Trimmed my toenails."

"Your toenails, huh? How'd that go?"

"Not so great. They tasted terrible."

I laugh so hard, I have to step away from him. He's laughing, too, but silently, so his face is bright red. We stand there giggling, smiling at each other for a long time, until finally it gets a little awkward and someone has to say something. "Anyway," he says, a goofy grin on his face, "the next assignment is due on Tuesday. Do you want to meet this weekend to work on it?"

"Okay. But not at Pluribus," I say, cringing.

"I'll call you Saturday morning, and we can meet up Saturday afternoon, okay?"

"Yeah."

For about ten seconds I am ridiculously happy. I watch as he trots away from me to go stand next to Eva and Hildie, who have seen the whole thing.

One eye on me, Eva tugs on his T-shirt to demand his attention. He turns to face her, and she moves in on him, wrapping one lithe arm around his neck and pulling him toward her to whisper into his ear. I want him to pull away from her—I
will
him to. But he doesn't pull away. I can tell he likes standing close to Eva. The way her slender body undulates as she whispers into his ear is so sexual that I have to look away.

When Gusty stood near me, it was only for a joke.

I feel shredded.

Hildie sees the look on my face and grins with satisfaction. She doesn't want Gusty getting near me. She never has, even when we were friends, ever since that day Gusty and I went behind the shed.

It was years ago, and the three of us were playing together over at their house. We made up a game with a football and a Hula-Hoop that we leaned against their dying oak tree. If one of us was able to pass the football through the hoop without knocking it over, then the other two had to do that person's bidding.

Gusty was the worst of us, which is weird since he's such a good athlete. I was the one winning. I had them get me a root beer Popsicle and watch while I ate it all myself. I made Hildie French-braid my hair even though it made her arms tired and it took forever because my hair was super long. I made Gusty walk on his hands all the way across the yard, and he could do it, too.

When Gusty threw a spiral that finally sailed through the Hula-Hoop, he stood looking at us, trying to think of what to make us do. He licked at his upper lip where a little sweat was forming, and that made me lick my upper lip, too. "What do you want us to do, Gusty?" Hildie asked as she twisted her long blond hair into a rope that bounced against her back and came untwisted again.

"Just Kristi," he said, his voice barely audible.

"Why just Kristi?" Hildie asked. She looked at me suspiciously.

"Behind the shed," he muttered, looking at the ground.

"No way," Hildie spat at him, but I was already walking around the shed. "You don't have to go," Hildie called after me.

"I have to do his bidding. It's the rules," I called over my shoulder.

"This is stupid, Gusty," she spat.

They started fighting in whispers.

I waited in the space between the wooden fence and the shed. It was dirty there, but the tree branches from the neighbor's yard leaned over the fence like a roof. Carved into the brown fence were lots of primitive figures. Most of them were four-legged animals, dogs and cats and maybe a horse or two, but one of the carvings was of two stick figures holding hands. One of the figures had very long hair, and the other was wearing a backwards baseball cap, the same way Gusty always wore his.