Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  When it was time for bed, Harvey’s mouth was still sore from the shots. Jason stayed and read Harry Potter. Then he stroked her arm and her eyes closed.

  THE NEXT DAY, while Harvey was at school, Jason called Dr. Foster’s office and wrote down everything they said. None of it seemed real. Jason kept looking at the numbers, couldn’t believe it was going to cost more than their car was worth.

  He decided to call Wanda and find out if Social Services would cover it. If not, there were other ways. He could rob a gas station—wrap one of his tools in a plastic bag and march right in there at closing. But then the car might be caught on a security camera, or the attendant might have a real gun and shoot him dead. He tried to imagine Harvey’s face when the police came and said that her father had been killed. That he’d been shot in a robbery. That her dad was the robber.

  THEIR FIRST VISIT to the orthodontist was only a consultation. The doctor wore a striped bow tie. In his waiting room hung framed diplomas from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

  Harvey told Dr. Foster that he looked like a wizard from Harry Potter.

  “Is it the bow tie or the white hair?” Dr. Foster said.

  Before leaving, Dr. Foster explained to Jason what was going to happen and what all the final costs were likely to be.

  “My daughter is in good hands with you, right?” Jason said. “Because this is a lot of money for us.”

  The next day Jason called Wanda again and went over what he’d learned. If he wanted help from the state, she said, he’d have to fill out some forms and go to certain dentists. Dr. Foster’s name didn’t appear in the directory of approved providers.

  For the next two weeks, Jason drove around as many thrift stores as he could, looking for things he could put on eBay to sell quickly. He also asked Mr. Gonzales to try and get him hired on a construction site, but it turned out to be impossible with his prosthetic leg.

  That weekend Harvey said she wanted to go bowling again or to Chuck E. Cheese’s, but Jason told her it was too expensive.

  “Other kids go.”

  “I can’t right now, Harv, I ain’t got it.”

  “So we’re poor?”

  “We got food, a TV, a refrigerator, a car, air-conditioning, TV . . .”

  Harvey asked to leave the table, then carried her plate to the kitchen in silence and went to her room.

  “And you’ve got your own bedroom!” Jason called after her. “Your own private part of the house. I could rent that, y’know! Make a lot of money!”

  Their weekly visits to Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ceased. Jason limited their grocery shopping to sale items. But Harvey just didn’t get it.

  “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything,” Jason told her as he loaded the cart with blackened half-price bananas. “Any kind of animal, Harvey—even insects.”

  “Gross.”

  “Even human flesh,” Jason went on. “I saw a movie where a father and son were trying to get away from redneck cannibals who wanted to eat their flesh. That could be us.”

  In the weeks that followed, when Harvey mentioned what other kids had for dinner or did on the weekend with their parents, Jason just bit his lip and said, “Uh-huh. Okay, Harv, whatever.”

  After three weeks, between his savings and eBay profits, Jason had close to a thousand dollars—more than enough for the down payment. He told Wanda he wasn’t taking Harvey to no charity dentist—she was going to the Harvard guy and that was final. Wanda admired his determination and sent him a personal check for fifty dollars. Mrs. Gonzales’s church group also gave a hundred. Every penny counts, Jason told Harvey as they searched the couch for loose change.

  One night when Harvey was in bed, Jason sat in the garage staring at the motorcycle it had taken him almost a decade to build. It could easily have been in a custom motorcycle showroom with balloons tied to the handlebars. The tires were jet black, without even a single inch of distance on them. Harvey had helped hang leather strips from the ends of the grips and polish the nickel-plated headlight. When they started the engine for the first time, the roar made their ears ring for hours.

  He remembered Harvey saying that she couldn’t wait to see the faces of everyone at school when she showed up on the back of her dad’s bike. “No one believes me when I tell them you’ve been building a motorcycle in the garage. They think I’m lying.”

  “See what they say when we roar up to the gates!” Jason promised. “I’ll even rev it up a bit—or just skip school altogether, and we’ll ride all the way to Montauk and then back like it’s nothing.”

  MONTHS LATER, AFTER endless consultations and instructions from Dr. Foster, it was time for the retainer to be fitted in Harvey’s mouth. When they got home that afternoon, Harvey couldn’t stop looking at herself in the mirror.

  “Oh my God,” she kept saying. “Oh my God!”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jason said.

  “It hurts and I look stupid.”

  “This is for the future, Harv, so that when you’re older, your teeth are straight and look good.”

  Harvey stamped her foot. “I can’t keep this in my mouth!” she yelled. “I look stupid. Why did you let them do this to me?”

  “You needed it,” Jason said. “Dr. Sarah said so, and Dr. Foster too. Try and see it as medicine.”

  “But I’m not sick,” Harvey screamed. “My teeth were fine, and now they’re ruined! I’m a freak!”

  Jason closed the hatch on the coffee machine and listened to her bang around in the bathroom. “You think those doctors have those fancy offices from getting it wrong?” he called out to her. “They make a lot of money helping to put kids’ teeth right. They get rich from being right.”

  Suddenly, she was standing right in front of him. “No, Dad, they make a lot of money from suckers like you! This is a nightmare and I can’t wake up!”

  Jason thought of the Metallica video where a man comes back from war without any arms or legs and says the same thing to the doctor: This is a nightmare and I can’t wake up.

  Then Harvey said in a low voice, “My real father never would have let this happen.”

  Jason slammed down his coffee cup and waited for the impulse to pass. Then he said calmly, “Steve would have done exactly the same thing, Harvey, it’s money well spent.”

  When the coffee was ready, Jason poured it, then went to get milk, but Harvey was blocking the refrigerator.

  “I look stupid!” she hissed. “Like a cheese grater.”

  Jason reached around her to open the door, but then let his hand fall and backed away.

  Harvey was livid. “You’ve ruined my life!”

  “I think you should go to your room and calm down.”

  But Harvey wouldn’t. “I’m not a child anymore—I’m a tween. But then you wouldn’t know what a tween is, would you? You just don’t get it. And you never will.”

  When she had gone, Jason leaned on the counter and shook his head. A cheese grater, he thought. What next?

  When dinner was ready, Jason realized she might be embarrassed to eat in front of him, so he left a bowl of chili, some buttered cornbread, a glass of Sprite, and a napkin outside her bedroom door.

  A few hours later, when he woke up from a nap, Harvey was already in her pajamas and fast asleep. The bowl, plate, and glass were in the sink, and the paper towel she’d used as a napkin balanced on top of a full trash can.

  He thought that was the end of all the drama, but as he was making breakfast the next morning, Harvey burst in from the garage, and Jason dropped the toast that was in his hand.

  “Your bike’s been stolen!” she cried. “I just went out to get my skateboard, and your motorcycle’s gone! We have to call the police!”

  Jason picked up his toast and brushed it off. Then he reached deep in his pocket for the poker-chip key chain that had once hung from the ignition key. Harvey didn’t understand.

  “How come you have that?”

  But Jason just nodded. Could still smell the o
il and the rubber from new tires. He had built that motorcycle with his bare hands.

  XL

  THE NEXT MORNING it was raining, so they shared an umbrella up the rue Caulaincourt toward the Métro station.

  It was rush hour, and the train was full of people carrying briefcases and bags. When they got off at Madeleine, however, the streets were empty because it was early and the shops were still closed.

  For breakfast, Harvey wanted to take her father to a café on rue Saint-Honoré, near the grand fashion boutiques.

  The enormous stone pillars of the nearby Madeleine Church, blackened by decades of traffic, seemed ancient and made Jason want to come back when he was alone to sit somewhere, and think about how quickly he felt life was passing now.

  When they reached a quiet corner with some shelter from the rain, Harvey asked her father to stand still and close his eyes. Then she described a solemn line of horses and rickety wagons moving across the cobbles, full of people on their way to the guillotine.

  When they continued on toward the café, Harvey asked Jason what he thought people in the future would say about what people living now had done wrong.

  “I’ll be long gone by then,” he said. “And you’ll be an old woman in a spaceship with grandkids on your lap in aluminum foil diapers.”

  “You’re so weird, Dad.”

  “If you think about it, Harvey—you might be the only person left alive who remembers that a guy called Jason once lived on Long Island.”

  When they reached the café, the waiter wasn’t there to seat them, so they sat along a narrow bar, watching workmen line up at the front for hot croissants. On a shelf in the background, a television was showing a video of bakers loading baguette dough into ovens on wooden paddles. The screen was dusty and the television set too high up for anyone to watch comfortably.

  When the waiter finally appeared, he seemed to recognize Harvey, but not well enough to ask who Jason was. There were faint patches of flour on his pants where he’d been leaning against a counter. He apologized for being absent and asked what they would like to eat.

  When the croissants arrived, they were on two small plates with butter, jam, and the café name written in gold script on brown napkins. Below the name was a sketch of a little girl holding flowers behind her back.

  “I can’t wipe my mouth with this,” Jason said. “It’s way too pretty. Reminds me of you.”

  “It’s just a napkin,” Harvey said. “Wait until you see my office.”

  Her building wasn’t far from the café.

  When they got close, the rain stopped and Jason folded up the umbrella. At the entrance, Harvey typed in a code, and they stepped through a small wooden door into a cobblestone courtyard where a few cars and motorcycles were parked.

  “This is like in Harry Potter,” Jason said. “What was that place? Diagram Alley, right?”

  Harvey grinned and told him that the art department had its own entrance, which was easier than having to go through the main gate every morning, with all the security on rue du Chevalier-de-Saint-George.

  The building had once been a music school, she explained, then during World War II, the students were sent away and the building was used by the Nazis, who draped flags on the outside and piled sandbags by the doors.

  Harvey’s desk was in a large, open area, near other designers who looked up from their work to say allo when they saw her appear with her father.

  Then a woman came over and kissed Jason on both cheeks. “We love your daughter,” Sophie told him. “Please don’t take her back to America.”

  Harvey’s desk was a mess of papers, crayons, cans of felt-tip pens, pictures cut out from magazines, cartoons, and a miniature camel she’d brought from home. On a cork bulletin board were drawings with dates written over them in heavy black pen. Harvey said these were her assignments. In a frame beside her giant Apple monitor was a photograph of her father. “Look,” she said. “Here’s that guy Jason who lived long ago on Long Island.” The picture had been taken at Jones Beach a few summers before.

  “That’s a lovely photo,” Sophie said. “But you’re not smiling.”

  Taped to an electric pencil sharpener, Harvey had a small picture of her first mom and dad. Jason pointed to it. “It’s cool you have that,” he said.

  Over the years, Harvey had grown comfortable asking Jason more about what they were like. Jason had never met her mother—so they both had to imagine what she was like from the photos, and from the things of hers that Wanda had brought over.

  After Sophie found Jason a seat, someone made coffee and put out cookies. Harvey checked her messages, then clicked Jason through different art files on her desktop, explaining what her main role was at the company.

  When it was time to leave, Jason asked to use the restroom. All the espresso had made him dizzy, and after splashing some cold water on his face and neck, he caught himself staring at his reflection in the mirror, wondering how the people in Harvey’s office saw him, and if his daughter was ashamed of the thinning hair and the shriveled tattoo on his neck. He remembered their conversation that morning in the rain, as they walked to the café, about how one day he’d be gone, how she would be the only person left to remember him.

  HARVEY TOLD EVERYONE in the office she was taking her father to Galeries Lafayette to check out the toy department. Sophie walked them to a taxi stand, then kissed Jason again several times on both cheeks.

  Harvey could tell her father was a little embarrassed. “I thought the French didn’t like Americans,” he said, blushing.

  Sophie laughed, “No, that is not true—or maybe just the Republican Party.”

  It was a short ride, and they got out behind the Paris Opéra. Harvey said that she spent a lot of time at Galeries Lafayette, just strolling around the different departments, looking for new colors and designs to inspire her. They entered through menswear, then, stepping off the first escalator, came upon small mountains of powder and dried teas. A group of Chinese tourists were taking photographs of themselves in front of a four-foot bottle of brandy.

  Once they’d seen all the spices, they strolled past refrigerated cases full of cheeses and meats. Harvey wanted to buy some famous Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee for Jason, but there were too many people waiting, and the young male attendant was surrounded by teenage girls who kept pointing to different coffee beans and giggling. One of the girls kept covering her mouth, the way Jason remembered Harvey used to, after her retainer was fitted.

  Passing through the jams and mustards, Harvey noticed a security guard trailing them. When she turned angrily in his direction, the guard sidestepped into some Spanish hams. Harvey wanted to confront him, but Jason thought it was funny.

  “His instincts are pretty good, Harvey—I do have a criminal record, after all.”

  “But you just beat the crap out of bad people,” Harvey said. “You never stole anything, did you?”

  At the rear of the food department was a folding table stacked with sale items: chocolate kittens with cracked paws or missing ears, dented cans of Portuguese sardines, sweets left over from Christmas, broken Hanukkah candles.

  “I guess this is the reject pile,” Harvey said.

  Jason picked up a box of chocolates that had melted into one uneven mass and looked at his daughter. “This is the section where the French Jason would work.”

  “C’mon, Dad,” Harvey said. “That’s not funny.”

  When they ascended to footwear, Harvey asked if Jason wanted to try anything on, but he already had new shoes, so they went up another escalator and found themselves in the fabled toy department.

  The colorful shelves were crammed with cars, helicopters, buses, board games, soldiers, dragons, horses, knights, fairies, soft animals from every jungle and forest, river and sea. In another section were rows of pistols, ninja stars, bazookas, and boxing gloves. Two boys dueled with plastic swords for the attention of their blond nanny, who was busy texting.

  When they passed into the girl
s’ section, Jason noticed an entire shelf of Polly Pocket dolls. There was a Polly Pocket beauty salon, a pizzeria, even a stable of ponies. A sign at the top of the shelf said POLLYVILLE.

  “Look, Dad, they’ve got play sets now!” Harvey said. “That’s so cool.”

  Jason couldn’t believe they had Polly Pocket dolls in Paris. “I used to buy you these all the time, Harvey—used to save up and buy them for you from Stop and Shop.”

  “Yeah, I still have a box of them somewhere. In my room, I think.”

  “Remember when we took them camping in the backyard? And made tents out of leaves?”

  “Wow, that was so long ago,” Harvey said. “More than half my life.”

  “It wasn’t long for me,” Jason said. “Or it doesn’t feel like it was.”

  Harvey sifted wistfully through the play sets. “God, I was so young then.”

  “You like something Harvey?” her father asked. “Can I get you something?”

  “No thanks, Dad.”

  “C’mon, Harv. Please? When was the last time I bought you a new toy?”

  “Well,” Harvey said, reaching for a doll, “I don’t have this one! Will you please get this one for me? Please, Dad? Please? I’ll do extra chores! I’ll do my homework! I’ll even put my shoes away . . . please, Daddy?”

  The cashier, a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf, must have sensed it was important and took a lot of care with the doll, wrapping it in paper and tying the package with a ribbon.

  When they got outside, Harvey wouldn’t let on where she was taking her father for lunch, but on Boulevard Haussmann she handed him a small item in tissue paper.

  “Last thing from my Father’s Day box?” Jason said, turning it over in his hands.

  “Almost,” Harvey said. “There is something else, but it’s an envelope.”

  As they strolled beneath the statues of long-dead French writers, they talked about the future. Harvey said she wanted to live in Tokyo for a while, then get married, maybe buy a house in Montauk, where a new art scene was happening. Jason said that after he retired from the supermarket, he wanted to ride a Harley-Davidson trike across the country and get pictures of all the people he would meet along the way.