by Lily King
“From being black?” I asked.
“From being anything but what I really was.”
“Get away, you fucker. Get the fuck away!” My father is swatting at a seagull. It has hopped out of reach but is still looking intently at the corner of plastic wrap sticking out of the sand. “Oh for God’s sake, take it.” But when he throws it, the seagull isn’t interested. “I don’t know what you want, then. I can’t help you.” He sits up. “Let’s get out of here.”
I think we can make the four o’clock ferry, but we hear it pull out while we’re still in the woods.
“Jesus H. Christ,” my father says, his fists clenched tight.
“It’ll come right back. They leave every half-hour.”
He looks at me as if I’ve arranged it all on purpose. He’s a little boy who’s woken up from his nap in a terrible mood.
“Take a few deep breaths, Dad.”
“And you take a long walk off a short pier. Christ, I need a drink.”
“Very funny.” But I see he wasn’t joking. He’d forgotten. I watch the rage pour into his face.
“You know what, Daley?” Day-lee.
Before he can tell me what, I say, “I don’t want to hear it. Just keep it to yourself. You’re in a shitty mood and I’m in a shitty mood so let’s just get on the ferry and go home.”
“I’m not going to that goddamn meeting tonight.”
I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve even rehearsed my calm response. “Okay.”
“I am so sick of those people and their problems. I don’t have anything in common with them. Nothing.”
“Except that you want a drink.”
At quarter of seven that night he calls up to my room. When I come down into the kitchen he’s showered and dressed and standing by the door.
18
When I was little my father loved to surprise people. It was not uncommon for him to go upstairs during a dinner party and come down in a Marie Antoinette wig and my mother’s underwear. Once he gave us all presents on his birthday. At Christmas there was always something unexpected: a kitten, a drum set, a new car in the driveway. But if the surprise was revealed prematurely, look out. Garvey never received the Ping-Pong table he found in the shed two days before his birthday, and my father never spoke to Mr. Timmons again after he told my mother to have a good time in Hawaii—which was to be a surprise for their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Apart from their abrupt departures, neither my mother nor Catherine had been much for creating surprises themselves, and I doubted his unhappy mother or even Nora, who was kind but not playful, had done much in the way of the unexpected for him. So I decide to throw my father a surprise party on the twenty-ninth of August, which is both his birthday and his sixtieth day of sobriety.
I stop by Neal’s to ask if he knows any caterers. He gives me the number of someone named Philomena. His shop is empty so we sit on the stoop. The town is fogged in this morning, the air so wet and briny it’s hard to inhale, as if salt and seaweed have been ground up into it. Even without the sun, it’s already hot. Neal is wearing shorts, which look funny on him and he seems to know it. He keeps covering his pale knees with his hands. His hair has curled into ringlets around his ears.
“How do you know her?”
It would be just like Neal to have a girlfriend named Philomena.
“She’s an old friend of the Dead Girl.”
“Who?”
He looks down at his hands. “A girl I used to know.”
“But she’s not really dead.”
“No.”
“Bad breakup?”
He nods. I wait to see if he’ll say anything more about it.
“You ever had your heart smashed to pieces?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I mean really broken. Everybody walks around saying they’ve had their heart broken, but they mean they went out on two dates and they really liked the guy and he never called back. Or they’re like my brother, who went out with this truly awful girl for two years and all he did was complain and make fun of her and then she slept with someone else and he said his heart was broken in two. And then he had a new girlfriend by Tuesday. I’m not talking about that kind.”
“You’re talking about waking up every morning feeling like someone has beaten you up and you can’t quite take a regular breath.”
Neal shuts his eyes. “Yes.”
We sit there. Cars goes by. There’s a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex in the window now. I read it last winter for the first time. One morning I was reading it on Jonathan’s couch while he vacuumed. He was much neater than I was. I’ve never owned a vacuum cleaner. “I’m the third sex,” he said as he went by. “But ain’t nobody written a book about me yet.”
“What happened?” Neal asks.
“I lost the job and the guy. No deferments for either.”
“He’ll come around.”
“I don’t think he will. I would have heard from him by now.” I still jump every time the phone rings, still feel hopeful when the mail arrives. I’ve called information, but there’s no listing for him on Paloma Street or anywhere else in the Bay Area.
“What’s his name?”
“Jonathan.” It hurts to say the syllables. I need to get off the subject. “And your Dead Girl?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t say it anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Too long a story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“I don’t.”
“Just give me a detail.”
“Started freshman year of college and ended six years later in a Pottery Barn at the Chestut Hill Mall.”
I lean back against the doorjamb. “C’mon. A few more.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t get all settled in for a good yarn. Girls are always like that, always trying to leech everything out of you.”
“No, girls are not always like that. Women—those are people of the female sex eighteen and over—aren’t either. I happen to be interested because I am a behavioral anthropologist. Or was. What happened at the Pottery Barn?”
“She was going to move in with me. Here.” He points upstairs. “I wouldn’t pay for half the bed we were buying. I had the money; I just thought it should be clean—she buys the bed, I buy the couch. Just in case. And she turned it into this whole big thing about trust and commitment.”
“Which it sounds like it was.”
“Yeah. I’ve had a few years to replay the scene about ten thousand times. It was.”
“Where is she now?”
“I’m not sure. Vermont, maybe. Your turn. Tell me something about Jonathan.”
I wish I hadn’t told him his name. It feels like I’ve given him a gun with bullets.
He leans back on his elbows.
“Don’t get comfy.”
He laughs. “Just go.”
But there is no story yet. It’s just a tight searing knot.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, giving me the slightest shoulder nudge.
A woman and her daughter come up the steps with a long summer reading list. “We’re a little late, but she reads fast,” she says, handing the sheet of paper to Neal.
“Ashing Academy,” he says, waving it at me.
“Renaissance Cup, 1978,” I say to them, pointing at Neal who’s heading inside.
“Really?” the mother says, impressed.
He points back at me. “You do that again and you will be banned from this store.” And then he is all business, gathering the books for them, and I rouse the dogs from their naps and we go home.
I mail invitations to my father’s closest friends, the ones who have not sided with Catherine, the ones he speaks of more or less fondly. I buy tiki torches and hide them in Neal’s storage room. In the thrift shop I run into the bohemian woman who is often late to the meetings, and she tells me her name is Patricia and that she’s enjoyed getting to know my father, so I invite her, too.
If I could make my father deaf f
or two weeks I would. I am terrified someone will slip and mention the party. When we are downtown together, I feel quite ready to lunge at the throat of anyone I suspect is about to blurt out the secret. Every time he comes home from the hardware store or the dump or a meeting, I wait for him to tell me he does not want a fucking surprise party. And when finally, very casually, I ask what he might like to do on his birthday, he says, “Nothing. I hate birthdays.”
I reassure him that we’ll have a quiet dinner at home with the dogs. And when the night comes I tell him I want to make a special meal and ask him to drive himself to his meeting. It’s the first time I haven’t accompanied him, but it feels fine. It feels like it’s time. As soon as he’s gone, Philomena and her team arrive and we begin quickly setting up tables and chairs on the lawn beside the poolhouse. Mrs. Bridgeton comes early with several big pots of hydrangeas that she puts around the pool, and helps me arrange the flowers and candles for the tables.
“I remember you in a fuzzy pink bathrobe passing out hors d’oeuvres at all the parties your mother used to have. You were such a precious little thing. And now here you are, throwing a grown-up party all by yourself.”
The pale blue hydrangeas look beautiful. It’s exactly what my mother would have done.
Neal has volunteered to waylay my father outside the church. I told him to ask my father if he’d seen Billy Hatcher, the Red Sox outfielder, steal home a few weeks ago. That conversation will last a good half-hour. My father cannot stop reliving the moment.
At seven-thirty my father’s old friends begin appearing around the pool. I asked them to park well beyond our driveway so they come on foot. They come in summer attire, cotton prints in bright colors. They are a clean, well-groomed generation. They smell of flowers and spices and booze. I warned them in the invitation that no alcohol would be served, so they’ve come well lubricated.
Mrs. Keck takes hold of my hands and won’t let go. She is much more frail than I remember her. “This is a wonderful thing you’re doing for your dad.” Her head wobbles. Parkinson’s. She looks around at the tables covered in white cloths, the delphinium in jars and the torches lit and flashing in the dusk. “A very wonderful thing.”
And then the phone rings in the poolhouse. It can mean only one thing. Neal didn’t find my father outside the church. He is AWOL. I pick it up.
“The eagle has flown.” I can tell he’s smiling. And then he hangs up.
I am scared. I’ve lost most of the feeling in my hands. My father’s car turns up the driveway. I can see it through the tree trunks, slowing as he makes the turn and sees the pool and the tables and the torches. He comes to a full stop before the poolhouse. His window is down.
“What the hell are you people doing here?”
“Surprise!” everyone says in unison, though I never suggested anything of the sort.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, and drives on into the garage.
When he comes across the lawn, people call surprise again and he shakes his head. People go to greet him. His face is red. I can’t tell if his smile is fake or real. One of Philomena’s helpers approaches him with a plate of smoked salmon on crackers and he takes one and nods his thanks.
“Where’s Daley?” he says with his mouth full. “Daley, get over here!” But he is coming over to me, pointing a finger. “You do all this? You plan all this?”
I nod.
“But when I left you said—”
“I know. It’s a surprise party, Dad. I had to lie a little.”
“But none of this was here. And who are those people in aprons?”
“Caterers.”
“Caterers.” He says the word like he hasn’t been to thousands of catered parties in his lifetime. “Jesus Christ.” He turns around and looks at the tables set with china. One of the servers is filling the water glasses. “Everyone’s staying for dinner?”
I tell him they are. “Prime rib,” I say, because I know he wants to know.
“Just like Sunday nights at the club.”
He seems a little in shock. People come up and speak to him, and he is buffeted around on the grass. He makes responses, but all the while he is looking around like he’s never seen the place before. My mother had plenty of parties like this, fundraisers for so many different candidates and causes.
“Let me get you a club soda, Dad. Then we can eat.”
We’ve set up a table with juices and sparkling water near the diving board. It’s too far away and not many have found it. The glasses are still spread out neatly, the bottles full. I have no idea what my father is feeling, so I have no idea what to feel myself. I pour the soda and feel scared to turn back around.
“Boy, you were right about Billy Hatcher. He had a lot to say.”
It’s still strange to hear Neal’s voice again. I don’t understand why it’s soothing to hear a remnant from my past when my past was not soothing.
I smile and watch my father over his shoulder.
“You can relax now,” Neal says. “You did it.”
“I don’t know if he’s enjoying himself.”
“It doesn’t matter. You did something kind for him. You can’t control his response to it.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Now have a cranberry fizz.” He hands me a cup and knocks his own against it. “Cheers.” I wonder if Neal is a drinker, if he gets plastered every night upstairs in his little apartment by himself. I wonder if he, too, had something before he came.
Not surprisingly, I’ve had my share of alcoholic boyfriends. The last was a Brit who hid his addiction well for a while and then, when I was safely smitten, flaunted it like something he was vastly proud of. He was sharp and sexy and always horny, no matter how much he’d put away. I had fast, intense orgasms when he was drunk. And then he hit me, at a party. It wasn’t a hard blow and didn’t even leave the proof of a bruise on my face. After that I learned how to spot even the very sly ones. Dan was one, and I figured it out before I saw him drink anything at all, knew it the minute he started pounding on the steering wheel. Jonathan and I liked the taste of red wine, but neither of us enjoyed the feeling of being drunk or even buzzed, and an open bottle could hang around his apartment for weeks. Drinking was something neither of us remembered to do very often.
“I need to give this to him. And there’s Patricia.” I pour another cranberry soda and take one to my father and one to Patricia at the edge of the lawn. Thinking she’ll need to be introduced I lead her toward the party, but she seems to know nearly everyone.
I feel like my mother, greeting, kissing, directing the servers, integrating the guests. Now and then I sense Jonathan watching me, angry, cynical, shaking his head and muttering, And so another Ashing socialite is born. Or maybe it’s Garvey. Jonathan would just be shaking his head, still in shock. You gave up me and Berkeley for this? In California it is still afternoon. Whoever has my job has already begun the fall semester. The urban kinship project is well under way. But with the last of my own money I have thrown a catered party in the suburbs.
“When I left the house she was making a nice dinner for two!” I hear my father say. “She got me good, I tell you. She got me good.”
I manage to get everyone seated at a table, and the servers come immediately with salads. My father and I sit with the Bridgetons, the Utleys, Neal, and Patricia.
The sky has gone quickly black. The five tables are close together on the lawn, a candle on each that lights our plates and faces but nothing beyond. It feels very intimate, exactly what I imagined. For the first few moments it is quiet. No one is drunk. No one is squawking. Everyone seems to be taking it all in, as I am.
Mr. Gormley at the table next to us breaks the silence. “Well, we haven’t been to such a classy event at this address in years. Usually you go over to Gardiner’s for drinks and you end up on the roof wearing a hula hoop!”
“It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” my father says.
The main course arrives. I check my father’s p
late: a thick slice of prime rib, very rare, bathed in jus, very few vegetables, exactly how I asked Philomena to prepare his plate.
“Hey, hey,” he says looking down at it. Then he looks at me. “You are something, you know that.”
“No, you are something, Dad.”
“Yeah, something awful.”
“No, Gardiner,” Barbara Bridgeton says. She is on his other side, patting his hand. I see Patricia lift her head. “You are very special to all of us.”
“Hear, hear!” Mr. Utley says, raising his plastic cup of soda water. Mile High Mr. Utley, Garvey and I used to call him, because he’s at least six-five.
“How’s that shop of yours doing?” Mr. Bridgeton asks Neal.
“Let’s just say I don’t think my gross profit will outdo IBM this quarter.”
Mr. Bridgeton, who works for IBM, looks momentarily confused, then laughs. “If you’ve got anything in that store as good as Shogun, I’ll come and get it tomorrow.”
“I remember reading that the author had been a prisoner of war in Japan,” Patricia says. She is mothlike, thin and slightly translucent. “And that he was treated very badly and nearly starved to death.”
“Is that right?” my father says. I wonder what they know about each other. Like my father, she goes to the meeting every night.
“But then he wrote this sensitive portrait of that country, which in the end made the English look like the barbarians.”
“Huh,” my father says.
They recommend in AA that if you’re single you do not get into a romantic relationship until you are sober a year. It seems like good advice. I hope Patricia will still be around by then. I like her, and I think she likes my father, though he seems entirely oblivious.
“I’ve never had a better prime rib,” he says, putting down his fork, vegetables untouched.
