Recovering Dad

by Libby Sternberg

  “I was able to hitch a ride up with a friend. Thought I’d stop by.” He stares at me as if waiting for an explanation.

  Worlds are colliding and I’ve lost my lifeline to the mothership. Doug is no longer a part of the St. John’s world. He’s an alien creature here. I’d thought Doug was gone forever, exploring the final frontier, lost and untethered.

  Friendly, comfortable Brian, however, is of this planet, my planet. But now, he catches the odd vibe and stands slightly behind me, probably wondering just what kind of girl I really am.

  I wish I knew.

  “Uh … how long are you here for?”

  “Just the night. Have class tomorrow afternoon. Wanna grab a bite to eat?”

  Yes. No. Maybe.

  “Uh …”

  “We can reschedule,” Brian mumbles, rustling papers. It’s the Mumble of Disappointment, the kind where you’re trying to sound nonchalant, even cheerful, but before the words manage to spill from brain to breath to voice, they transition into a slo-mo garble that gives your real feelings away.

  “Brian’s my AP Physics tutor,” I explain, but it feels as if I’m betraying Brian by referring to him as my tutor and not my friend. I mean, I kissed the guy.

  And then Doug says something that takes on its own slo-mo life, something that hangs in the air like a mist, dampening the affection I had so willingly bestowed on him.

  “Physics? Who talked you into taking that?”

  There are a hundred different meanings to be extracted from that question — nay, a thousand. He could just mean that AP Physics doesn’t matter much in the big scheme of things. He could just mean that AP Physics is really of value only to the rocket scientists amongst us. He could just mean that AP Physics is such a brain twister that one should avoid it at all costs.

  Or he could just mean that he doesn’t think I’m smart enough to know I shouldn’t take it, let alone smart enough to pass it.

  Anger shoots from my heels to the roots of my newly-shorn hair. And that reminds me — Doug hasn’t said diddly about my new look. His gaze didn’t even linger there when he saw me. He never was one to say much about appearances. I used to think that was an indication of his depth of character — after all, being fixated on appearances is shallow, right?—but now I realize his lack of attention to such self-improvements is just plain rude.

  “I need to stay,” I say. “Sister Delia will bounce me out if I can’t raise my grades.” There, take that. The awful truth.

  Doug widens his eyes, drops my hand, and steps back as if I had cooties. Guess he expected me to leap into his arms or something. And maybe I would have — even a week ago. “Oh.” He looks down, frowns, and fumbles in his jeans pocket. “I’ll call you later,” he says. “About the Junior/Senior Ball.”

  After he leaves, there’s an awkward silence with Brian that I fill with babbling. I babble about how I cut my hair (in excruciating detail), why Connie doesn’t like me to borrow her car, how Kerrie is a great friend but I’m feeling more and more as if she’s in a different league, how I’ve enjoyed getting to know Brenda, what I liked most about summers when I was a kid, how pistachio ice cream has become my new favorite flavor, how I can’t wait until the snow cone stands open again, how I hope I can retrieve a History paper that was eaten by my computer … I babble as much as Gardenia did about her life, and I’m sure it’s equally seductive.

  Brian doesn’t look at me a lot but focuses on the task at hand as if punching a clock at the Tutoring Factory, setting up the textbook to the right page, pulling out sample tests, and straightening their edges with NASA-like precision. I try to lighten the mood by making corny jokes. No effect. Translation: The Junior/Senior Ball. Some older guy asked you about the Junior/Senior Ball — some guy I can’t compete with.

  At the end of our hour session, he closes his book and picks up his papers. I’m hoping he’ll offer to drive me home, but he says nothing. I should let it go and allow him to skulk away in peace, but I’m thinking of my transportation options and none seems good. Call Connie? She’ll just make up excuses and tell me to take the bus. See if Kerrie’s still around? Half-hour lecture on the wonders of Wonderbras. Tony? I’ll be lucky to get Tony back to St. John’s for my graduation.

  “Where do you live?” I ask by way of a hint.

  “Burbs east of town.”

  “St. Clements,” I say, naming the parish we used to belong to before my mom moved us back into the city years ago. I know parishes like I know malls.

  “Annunciation.” He says, naming a church that borders on St. Clements’ parish. He smiles and looks at me. “You need a ride?”

  Is the Pope …

  Somewhere between school and home, I remember what Brenda told me about Brian’s dad working at the Post Office. So I ask him how one could determine who owned a Post Office box if one has a key that’s no longer in use.

  “I’ll ask him,” Brian says. Then, after a pause, he asks, “Is this about your dad?”

  “Yeah. I want to solve the case — before my sister does.” This reminder of a sad subject puts the Cone of Silence on any happy chit-chat we might make. It’s just as well. There’s still the Doug appearance to muddy the waters. And oh, yeah, the “will Bianca jump Brian’s bones again” thing. In other words, how to handle the goodbye and thanks at the door.

  “Bye! Thanks for the ride!” That’s how I decide to handle it. When he pulls up to my house a little while later, a car is hard on his heels, so there’s no time to linger. I scoot out of his Honda faster than you can say “dodged that one.”

  I’m not sure I’m glad I dodged it, though. I like Brian. I don’t like the fact that he might have been hurt by Doug showing up, or by Doug referring to the Junior/Senior Ball as if we’d made plans to go together long ago.

  Okay, so that’s true, we did. But Doug had not been following through on those plans until today. I brood about this as I make meatloaf per Mom’s instructions. Connie’s nowhere to be seen (my guess is she’s avoiding kitchen duty by pretending to work at her office) and Tony’s got a late class. So the house is all mine and I engage in a veritable Brooding Fest. I even shed a self-indulgent tear or two as I think about how excited I was when I first mentioned the Junior/Senior Ball to Doug. It was before he moved away, before he went off to college. And he’d been filled with promises about how he’d come back for sure, how he’d miss me, how he’d mark the date on his calendar that very moment.

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t as effusive as all that. But in Doug language, those were all the things he meant.

  Over the past year, those promises faded — just like our relationship. Brian’s presence has given me a point of reference. It’s made me realize how much I was missing. Eww, ick. I hate girls who don’t give up one boyfriend until they’re sure they have another. I can’t be one of them, can I?

  The phone interrupts this painful self-examination. It’s Kerrie.

  “So Doug came into town today,” she says, her voice bristling with excitement.

  “Yeah.” I explain to her, in the minute detail required, everything about Doug, Brian, AP Physics, SATs, colleges, and the path to world peace.

  She offers all the appropriate affirmations and probing questions. In fact, it surprises me how supportive she’s being when, not so long ago, she’d been a Doug/Bianca cheerleader. Is this merely a ruse to get me to give in to her diabolical ChexMixBra plans?

  “I think you’re right to give Doug the cold shoulder,” she says.

  Say what?

  “Do you know something?” I ask.

  She hems and haws and then divulges her intel — yeah, she knows something. She’s been in contact with a Richmond student, one of those recruitment things colleges do to get you to think warm, fuzzy thoughts about their institutions. And in the course of the e-mail exchange, Kerrie said she knew a student there — Doug. “Oh,” the student replied, “I know him. He was dating my best friend’s friend, until last weekend, when they broke up.” The best friend’s f
riend, Kerrie says, lives in D.C.

  My spidey senses had been right. Doug wasn’t just hanging with a “bunch” of friends. He had been seeing one exclusively. A friend — a friend who lives in D.C. He got a ride to B’more with a “friend.” Was it this special one? Did he just stop by to see me at St. John’s because he was feeling sorry for himself and needed someone waiting for his attention like a puppy dog at his feet? Had he taken to heart our agreement to keep it casual and see other people?

  The rat-bastard! At least I denied Doug the satisfaction of a slobbering reunion. I refused to be his consolation prize.

  When our call-waiting squawks in my ear, I tell Kerrie to hold while I look at the LED to see who the caller is. I don’t recognize the number but the display flashes the name— McClelland. Brian.

  “Brian’s calling me.”

  “Well, we’re finished anyway. Take it!”

  I push the buttons and say “hi” to Brian and am about to tell him how glad I am that he called, but he speaks first.

  “I got some information about that Post Office box.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “HE CAN LOOK it up for you,” Brian explains, “but he says if it’s something someone wants hidden, they probably used an alias, like John Doe.”

  Great.

  “My dad had another piece of info, though,” Brian says. “He remembered something. There was a pile of cash — a significant sum — found in a box about seventeen years ago. Never claimed.”

  My father was killed seventeen years ago. Was he going to claim it? This might not be good. It could have been a payoff. The same wave that swamped me after my talk with Gardenia crashes into the shore of my heart. Oh, man!

  “Maybe you should take this to the police,” he adds.

  “Can’t do that.” Not if it means finding out things I don’t want to know.

  “Must be hard delving into all this,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  There’s a pause before Brian, probably trying to stop me from dwelling on my dad, changes the subject. “Anything on your SATs yet?”

  “Nothing’s posted,” I say. And I don’t know if I want to spend the extra cash — or ask Mom to do it — to get the bad news early.

  We make some small talk about school. He tells me how well he thinks I’m doing at my tutoring sessions. I agree — I actually managed to ace a homework assignment this week. And then he backs up to his own touchy subject — he makes a stupid joke about how Andrew Jackson’s picture on a twenty dollar bill always reminds him of a male model ready to strut down a high fashion runway, and uses that lame joke to say he knows a girl at school whose mom is buying her a designer gown. And this leads to …

  “Uh, Bianca, I don’t know if you’ve made plans yet — for the Junior/Senior Ball, that is. I was going to go with a bunch of friends. But I was wondering if, you know, you’d be free to go with us. Well, with me.”

  Translation: Seeing Doug made me realize I better grab any chance I have with you.

  This impresses me. Brian isn’t backing down. He’s fighting for me.

  Every fiber of my being tells me to scream out a “yes.” Yes, I’d love to go with you. With you and your friends or just with you. I’d love to start a whole new life with a new name and a new past. I’d love it love it love it.

  But my mother has done something awful to me. She’s trained my conscience. And even through the blur of emotions clouding my moral compass right now, I sense that saying yes to one guy after already asking another just might fall on the wrong side of okey-dokey, no matter how mad I am at the other guy.

  “I’d … I’d … really … like … to …” Deep breath. Close my eyes. Dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand. “… think about it. I … made some plans. With friends, you see. And I have to see if I can get out of those plans. With the friends.”

  He knows what I’m saying. And I feel like a heel for saying it. Leading on one nice dude because of a promise made to a not-sonice dude? Not good.

  We both mumble our way off the phone. I pull out some books and make a halfhearted stab at homework. But every time I start my Creative Writing assignment, “Write a story that examines an unfulfilled dream and its consequences on the protagonist,” I see myself all decked out in my prom garb, standing at the ball with Doug-the-Betrayer as I watch Brian float by on the arms of a girl who deserves him.

  “Hey, how’d you figure that out?” I ask Connie.

  After said halfhearted stab at homework, I gave up and came into Connie’s room. I’m sitting on the floor while she holds her cell phone. She’s just told me what Brian told me earlier — that a big sum of cash was left unclaimed at the Post Office the year Dad died. I’ve come into Connie’s room to try to convince her yet again that pursuing this case isn’t a good idea. I’ve decided the best way to do it is to suggest that Mom might be cooling on the idea of marrying Paluchek and if we bide our time, she might drop her marital plans altogether.

  Okay, so that’s a big fat lie. But it might buy some time and get Connie onto other things. Surely she must have other clients to deal with — for example, catching cheating spouses on video doing the horizontal mambo with someone other than their legal partner. She brushes aside my suggestions. She tells me it doesn’t matter if Mom is cooling on the wedding idea. She still wants to “drive the stake through this vampire’s heart.” The vampire being Paluchek.

  As we discuss the case, the Post Office key again comes up, and that’s when she divulges the same intel I got from Brian before dinner. In fact, it’s eerily similar to the way he described it to me — the same phrases, the same words, the same detail.

  She gets up and rummages in her purse for the key, then pulls out her wallet and stares at a bill instead. I notice it’s a twenty.

  “Say, you ever notice how Andrew Jackson looks like a male model …” I say.

  “Yeah, actually. I was just thinking that,” she says.

  Ice water couldn’t chill my heart faster. I glare at her, my mind refusing to believe what that comment appears to mean. No, she couldn’t … she wouldn’t … she isn’t that low. Not my sister, my own flesh and blood.

  But the conclusion is unavoidable — Connie actually bugged our phones! Oh, the humanity! As my eyes widen at the horror, I mentally replay any phone conversations I might have had in the past few days. What did I say? What did I reveal?

  Does she know about Dad and Gardenia?

  No, I didn’t say any of that over the phone, I’m sure. But still! Standing now, I head out of the room, a woman on a mission. Connie calls after me but I ignore her. I pop downstairs, where Mom is watching the news. I grab the cordless phone and race back upstairs. I go back to Connie’s room and stand in front of her, opening the phone.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Looking for the bug.” I dump the phone innards on her bed and start pawing through the mess of battery and wires. “I can’t believe you actually did it. You bugged our own phones! That’s despicable! Detestable! Immoral! Sleazy!” I spit out the words.

  Connie is unfazed. She stands, picks up the phone, reassembles it — with the bug still inside somewhere — and shrugs her shoulders.

  “Think what you like. It got me some good information.”

  “My information! It got you what I found out through my friends!”

  As if reminded of something, she raises her eyebrows and stares at me with fresh eyes. “You know, if you already told Doug you’re taking him to the prom, you shouldn’t be leading on that poor sap, Brian.”

  Steam pours out of my ears.

  “But then again, if Doug is such a dope, you could just dump him. Dump him and then tell Brian you’ll go with him.” She nods her head as if coming upon the solution to a complex problem. “I never knew what you saw in Doug anyway.”

  I emit a low growling noise.

  But Connie is oblivious to my rage and continues her rambling overview of my life as revealed by her wiretaps.

 
“I’m with you on not paying for the early SAT results,” she says, moving to her dresser, where she runs a comb through her hair. “Why seek out trouble? It’ll find you soon enough.” She smears on some lip gloss and grabs her purse, then turns and smiles at me.

  “What? You’re not really mad, are you?” She looks amazed that I could be so angry at her for listening in on my private conversations. “You know you would have told me all that stuff at some point. Besides, I got some great information.”

  “My information,” I repeat.

  “Not just that. I got the stuff about Mom backing off the wedding plans.”

  Connie’s headed to her office and I follow her out the door, nipping at her heels like a pesky puppy. When Mom asks where we’re headed, I yammer, “To help Connie with a case,” before the door slams behind us.

  “What makes you think that?” I pester Connie, now unafraid Mom will overhear.

  She doesn’t slow her pace and talks over her shoulder. “She was on the phone with Paluchek late last night.” She stops and turns to me, a surprised grin on her face. “Did you know she talks to him at midnight? I thought she was always asleep by then!” She speaks about Mom as if she’s some disobedient teenager staying up past her bedtime.

  Hmm … that would be me.

  “What did you hear?”

  Stopping, Connie opens her mouth to spill but closes it quickly, a devilish smile lighting up her face. “Why should I tell you, Little Miss Play-by-the-Rules? Didn’t you just yell at me for bugging the phones?” She resumes walking. “She who criticizes the fruit of the vine cannot sample same.”

  What?!!! I race after her, grabbing her boucle sweater’s hem. It’s a new sweater, so she stops as if hit by an electric wire. She’ll hate having it stretched out.

  “Hey!”

  “You tell me and you tell me right now,” I say. I don’t need to add, “Or this sweater gets it, sister.” She understands. “You can’t bug my conversations, rub them in my face, and then not tell me what you learned from Mom’s.”

  She ponders this alleged injustice. Actually, I think she’s pondering ways to keep her sweater safe from harm. Eventually, she shrugs away.