My Life in Dioramas

by Tara Altebrando

  My father was in the kitchen making coffee.

  “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” he said.

  “Not you.” I reached for my cereal.

  He went out to the back porch and sat there with his coffee, not saying a word about the note from the realtor or the bags of stink. I sat with my cereal at the kitchen nook alone for a few minutes then opened the window behind me a crack.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “You want fries with that?”

  “I’m good,” he said flatly, not looking at me.

  I got up and dumped my cereal and went out and sat next to him.

  “I don’t want you to sell the house,” I said.

  “I don’t want to sell it either! But we have to!”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only way we’re ever going to get out from under it.”

  “But I love it here.”

  “And I do, too. Or I did, until the whole place started feeling like this crushing weight on my back. It’s not a good way to live.” He shook his head. “What were you thinking, Kate? You’ve wasted everyone’s time.”

  “I just wanted to buy some time. To finish out the school year and to make it to Dance Nation.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Everyone in dance class. We’re learning a routine to compete in Albany. Stella and I have been wanting this for years. So I signed up. I paid the registration fee. And I forged Mom’s signature.”

  “You should have come to us. You should have talked about it.”

  “I tried!”

  Didn’t I?

  He shook his head. “Bernadette told me she had to go across the street to ask Troy to turn his music down and he said you asked him to do it. Did you?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re grounded.” He stood up. “For a week. At least.”

  “But I have dance classes!”

  “The point of grounding you isn’t to make you happy, Kate.” He went inside and came back out with a notepad and pen. “Right now. Letter of apology to Bernadette, whose time you’ve been wasting spectacularly.”

  “I’ll miss the bus.”

  “I’m driving you to and from. All week. No bus. And today we’ll go by the dance studio so you can tell Miss Emma what you did and explain that you will not be competing.”

  “But, Dad!”

  “But nothing!”

  I picked up the pen and started writing, then tore off the sheet and handed it to my dad, who read it, then looked up at me. “You were responsible for the smell last weekend, too?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head, folded my letter, and put it in his front shirt pocket. “Let’s go.”

  We drove in silence until we got to school. Before I got out, when I had my hand on the handle, I asked, “Are you going to tell Mom?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I said I haven’t decided yet.”

  I opened my door and he said, “I’ll see you right here at three.”

  When I walked into homeroom Megan said, “Wow, like, did your dog die?”

  Even Stella, who hadn’t spoken to me in days, looked concerned. So much so that she came over and said, “Everything okay?”

  “I’m grounded,” I said.

  I flagged Naveen over.

  “Grounded?” Stella said. “How long?”

  “A week,” I said. “Maybe more.”

  “But my party!” Stella wailed.

  “This isn’t about you! And what do you care? Aren’t we mad at each other?”

  She looked shocked. “I’m sorry. I was going to apologize today. For everything. So I’m sorry. What happened? I want to know.”

  I nodded. “The realtor found all the stuff I’d left around to sabotage the open house and put it on the front porch for when we got back from my grandparents’ last night.”

  “Your mother must have flipped,” Stella said.

  “She actually wasn’t there. She doesn’t know. Hopefully she never will.”

  Naveen looked confused. So did Stella.

  “She’s spending a few days with my grandparents.” I didn’t have the energy to tell them the whole truth. “My grandfather’s not feeling great and has a bunch of doctor’s appointments she’s going along on.”

  “Oh,” Naveen said. “That’s too bad. About your grandfather. And about getting caught. But even if they get an offer, these things can take a long time. I think?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. I told my dad how the reason I did it was because of Dance Nation, and how I forged my mom’s signature. It’s all over. He said I have to quit.”

  “I’m sorry I told Miss Emma,” Stella said, after Naveen had gone back to his desk.

  “Thanks.” It felt good to be talking to her again, even though I was still just a little bit mad. “I’m hoping I can wear my dad down by your party Saturday. Because I want to be there. I really do. I just don’t want to have to pick songs out beforehand.”

  “I get it,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  When I got into the car, my dad said, “How was your day?”

  I said, “Fine,” but then that seemed to be the end of it.

  He drove to the dance studio and parked and was going to get out of the car when I said, “Please? Can I just do it alone?”

  He turned the key and opened a window. “Make it quick.”

  Miss Emma was alone in the studio, doing paperwork at the desk. I could hear the music coming from the tiny dancers class: “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

  “I lied about troupe,” I said. “My parents never gave me permission.”

  “Oh, Kate.” Miss Emma made a pouty face. “You should’ve told me! You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I just really wanted to do it. More than anything. But I have to quit.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I moved a few times when I was a kid. I know it’s not easy, but I know you. You may not like it but you’re going to be okay.”

  “It’s not even that we’re moving,” I said. “It’s that we don’t even know where we’re going. We’re going to be staying with my grandparents. It’s all messed up.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  Then she came out from behind the front desk and gave me a hug and it felt so good that it almost hurt. I couldn’t think of the last time my own mother had hugged me like that.

  Dad started driving when I got back into the car but we went left at the diner instead of taking the right toward home.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Hiking!” He stopped at a light, tapping to the beat of the music with his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Dad,” I said. “You know I don’t ‘do’ hiking.”

  “You do today.”

  “But I have homework to do.” I looked out the window. “And aren’t I supposed to be grounded?”

  “So you’d rather go home and do your homework than go hiking on a beautiful spring afternoon?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then grounding doesn’t seem like a good punishment. If you want to be home, then keeping you there is not teaching you a lesson.”

  “I learned my lesson, Dad.”

  “We can’t go home anyway. Bernadette’s there, showing the house to someone who didn’t hear the barking dogs or loud music.”

  “So my plan didn’t work after all.”

  “It wasn’t a very good plan, Kate.”

  I nodded.

  We were at a spot I knew well. Minnewaska State Park. My dad parked and grabbed a backpack from the back of the car and handed me a hat. “Let’s go,” he said. He started up one of the hiking paths with me trailing behind.

  It was actually a really nice day. I just didn’t much see the point of hiking in general. A bunch of times that I’d been dragged along on hikes, we’d get to the top—some lookout
or vista or whatever—and my dad would be all ecstatic, like he’d really accomplished something. I’d just stand there looking out at the view, thinking there was probably someplace we could have driven to see the same view. More quickly, more comfortably, without having to break a sweat.

  I was getting winded trying to keep up with Dad, but at least it wasn’t buggy out. We probably climbed for about half an hour before we got to a lookout point perched above the lake. There were some mansions across the way. I wondered who was rich enough to live in a house like that. Doctors? Lawyers? Wall Street types? Who?

  Maybe my grandmother was right. That it was good to think about practical things, like how you were going to make money in life, enough to support a family if you had one, so that you didn’t have to ruin everything and uproot your daughter because you were broke.

  Stella and I used to play a game all the time—MASH—and it told you whether you were going to live in a mansion, apartment, shack, or house, along with what kind of car you’d drive and how many kids you’d have. We always thought it was hilarious when we got “shack” and not “mansion” but what if that’s how it all shook out in the end?

  “Are we broke?” I asked my dad. “Mom tried to explain it to me, but . . .”

  “Well, we’re not rolling in it.” He glugged some water and kept looking out at the lake. He had sunglasses on so I couldn’t really read him. “We still have more than a lot of people in the world have, Kate. Never forget that.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Anyway, I have a plan,” he said. “I just need to be sure it’s going to work out before I tell you . . . Or your mother.”

  “You have a plan that Mom doesn’t even know about.”

  “I do.”

  He handed me a bottle of water from the backpack and I drank the whole thing in one go.

  On the drive back home, the setting sun was turning the whole town pink. And when we turned down one road that gave you this amazing view of the mountains—all lit from behind like there was a bonfire in the sky—the world seemed so big.

  Dad pulled into a gas station and parked right near the quickie mart and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He left the car running and came back a few minutes later with a pack of cigarettes.

  “You really shouldn’t smoke,” I said.

  “I know.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a lotto ticket, and handed it to me. “Maybe it’s our lucky day.”

  “Please tell me this isn’t the plan.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said.

  I did my homework when we got home. Then my dad went out to pick up pizza and didn’t take me along, which I figured meant he wanted to smoke in the car without my judging him. After I packed up my backpack for school I called my mom’s cell.

  She didn’t pick up.

  After dinner, my dad said, “Hey. You want to hear what I’ve been working on?”

  “Sure.”

  So we went up to the computer and he turned up the volume on some speakers and unplugged the headset and a song played.

  And it was good.

  Really good.

  It was backgroundy, not like a pop song, and had a cool beat and a neat overall vibe. Like an old record made new by being run through some funky filter. It sounded like the kind of music you’d want blasting out into the yard while friends played boccie. It made me wish we were at a party.

  “I love it,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Really. What’s it called?”

  “I don’t know.” He scratched his head. “I’ve been calling it ‘Big Red,’ but I’ll probably change it.”

  “Don’t. It’s perfect. Want to see what I’ve been working on?” I asked, and then I led him downstairs and showed him the dioramas. They were sort of scattered all over the room so I cleared the desk and started to stack them on top of each other.

  “Kate, these are amazing.”

  I hadn’t actually realized that I’d almost made the entire house.

  “How did you know you could do this?”

  “I didn’t.” I smiled. “Until I did it.”

  When I went to bed he was still working on the song, sitting at the computer, the only light on in the whole house.

  21.

  School. Home. Chores. Homework. Sleep. Repeat. It rained for days—April showers for real—so there was thankfully no more hiking. I decided to make a birthday present for Stella so I spent long evenings downstairs working on that. I wasn’t sure how long exactly I’d be grounded but figured I’d need a present for her eventually.

  I hadn’t realized that a full week had passed until I walked into the kitchen and my dad said, “We’re running up to get your mom today.”

  It was Saturday.

  Stella’s birthday party.

  The sun had come out but a few drops clung to my mom’s wind chimes out back. Why hadn’t he gone to get her during the week?

  “Dad,” I said, as he was looking for his wallet and car keys on the shelves in the kitchen. “I’m really sorry about what I did.”

  “Good.”

  “So . . . Stella’s birthday party is today. And this might be the last time I get to go to a party with all my friends and—”

  “We have to get your mother, Kate.” He opened the front door and Angus stepped out onto the porch and sat there.

  “I was thinking I could see if I could go to Stella’s house now?” I tried. “Please?”

  He breathed out hard. Then he took off his baseball cap and scratched his head. I joined him on the porch, moving a pebble around with my sneaker.

  I could feel my heart beating.

  He was actually considering it.

  “Find out if I can drop you there now,” he said. “While I think about it. So we know if it’s even an option.”

  I texted Stella. Then stared at the screen and willed her to write back immediately. I didn’t have a lot of time.

  “It does seem sort of pointless to make you spend all morning in the car.” He seemed to be thinking out loud, talking more to himself than to me. “And you have been really good about this week, and I know you wouldn’t ever try to pull a stunt like that again.”

  I nodded. All true!

  Finally, a text came through. At Main Street Salon, getting hair done. Come here?

  “She said her mom said it’s fine and that they’re at a hair salon on Main Street.” I said it all so fast I almost ran out of breath. I paused to inhale. “Can you drop me there?”

  “What do you think your mother would do in this situation?” He squinted at me.

  “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  “Me neither. So I’ll take you into town, but here’s the condition.”

  “Anything.”

  “I won’t tell your mother about the nonsense you pulled with Bernadette. But you have to tell her about how you signed up for Dance Nation without our permission.”

  It wasn’t going to be pretty but it wasn’t like I had much choice.

  “Deal,” I said.

  “Then let’s get a move on.”

  “I just need to grab a few things.” I ran back into the house and grabbed Stella’s gift and shoved it in a bag and then got into the car.

  It seemed to take forever to get into town. But when we got to the salon, I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek before getting out. “Thanks, Dad,” I said.

  “Have fun, okay?” He said it in a weird way, like he really wanted me to.

  Stella was in a salon chair getting her hair blown out, only it didn’t look like her hair. She was loaded up with lavender streaks and looked about three years older than she normally did. She caught eyes with me in the mirror. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I love it,” I said.

  The stylist spun her around so she was facing me. But he was still drying her hair so she had to shout, “Want to do yours? Maybe a pink streak?”

  “Mmmm. I’m not sure.”
r />   Hair was whipping around Stella’s face. She had to close her eyes and mouth tight. The stylist spun her again and I wandered over to the waiting area and picked up a magazine. It was just pages and pages of hair styles that no one I know would ever have but I kept on flipping and flipping, wishing that my dad had a more fun day ahead of him and wasn’t just driving hours to bring home my depressed mother who pretty much blamed him for all their failures as a couple. Part of me felt bad for not going with him, just to keep his mind off things on the drive out. We could have played license plate word games or sung along with the radio. Maybe talked about how we’d spend our lotto winnings.

  Stella came over, looking giddy, and grabbed me by both hands. “Your turn.”

  “I can’t.”

  “My mom says it’s her treat,” Stella said. “It’s temporary!”

  “How temporary?”

  “Temporary enough!”

  “I should ask my mom.”

  “Come on, they can do you right now.”

  Stella looked so happy and her hair looked so fun and my dad had said for me to have fun and this felt like a good way to get the ball rolling on that.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it!”

  I got in the chair and the stylist asked me if I wanted a trim while we were at it, so I said sure. My hair had gotten kind of long and uneven and ragged looking. He took a few inches off and I felt like I’d lost five pounds. Then he showed me some color samples and I picked one of the pinks he suggested, and he and Stella decided where the streak should go. She had like ten different small streaks but for some reason everyone thought one would be good for me. So the color went on and it got wrapped in tin foil and then I sat there and waited while a kitchen timer ticked on the vanity in front of me.

  “Aaah.” Stella was buzzing around the place, getting a little cup of water, and then getting her nails done. I watched her in the mirror. What did it feel like to have everything you wanted? “I’m so excited,” she said, coming over and shaking my shoulders.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  “My mom wasn’t helping my grandparents,” I blurted. “She spent the week with them because she’s too depressed and mad to be at the house.”