Her father called plaintively after her, “Don’t run away. Where are you going so fast?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said brightly. But in her parents’ room the image came to her again of her father with a hard-knuckled fist and her mother crumpled on the floor. She dropped the flight bag, the bag with his things in it, as if it were a nest of snakes, and went out quickly.
Downstairs, her mother was making a pot of cocoa. She commented on the flowers, tiny white asters with rosy centers, that Toni had picked in a field and put in a jar in the middle of the table. Her mother noticed that everything was clean and in order. “You really took care of things, sweetheart.”
Toni leaned against the counter. She glanced at her father, who was sitting at the table, glanced at him and then away, at him and away. There was a kind of buzzing in her head, a swaying, wavering dizziness. She looked at him. Her father. Hal. Harold. The same father she’d always known, a big man with a round face, a little too much weight on him, sweating as always, easygoing as always. And at the same time in her head was the father Martine had given her: a violent father, angry, his arm raised, his lips thin with frustration, fury.
“So how do I look to you, Babyface?” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Look in the right place.” He tapped his belly, grinning at her.
“Good … you look good. You’re thinner.”
“Lost ten pounds,” he said proudly.
A familiar sweetness, an ache of feeling for him, came over Toni. Her father! Her darling father. Daddy! But Martine had said … Could she have gotten things wrong? It was all so long ago. She might have mixed things up, exaggerated … or gotten confused. Toni’s head began to ache.
Her father buttered a slice of bread, rolled it over, ate it, buttered another slice.
“Trying to find those lost pounds again?” her mother said.
“Oh, I’ve missed this butter.” Her father chewed. “Baby, tell your mother she’s being a food cop.”
“Food cop?” Toni echoed dully.
“Right. She isn’t supposed to take responsibility for what I eat. Or do. Or don’t do. This is an important point. That was one very good thing at that place, the get-off-my-back sessions for spouses.”
“Tell him there were a few other good things,” her mother said.
“Rules for living,” her father said, drawling out the words. “Toni, I tell you it was like being in the Army again. Hup two three four. No free will.”
“He needs to face reality,” her mother remarked to Toni.
“Tell her if reality makes you unhappy, what good is it?”
They were doing it again, talking to each other through Toni. Tell her … Tell him … Her chest felt hard and tight. Maybe she was having a heart attack. YOUNGEST VICTIM ON RECORD DIES AS “LOVING” PARENTS BICKER.
Why had she never seen that they were using her, like a pipeline or a telephone … or a fence. How could she have lived in such ignorance for so long? And now she blushed; ashamed, furious, thinking of the Jensens, thinking of Julie and herself. She’d always felt a little sorry for Julie, maybe even a little superior, because the Jensens were so crude, unthinking, while the Chessmores were so good, outstanding. A perfect little family unit: that was the story she’d believed. That was the story her parents had let her believe.
“Tell him you have to be motivated from within. You have to take charge of your life, and reality is part of that,” her mother said.
“Tell her I know the jargon as well as she does.” Her father whistled a little tune. He smiled at Toni, winking to show that this was all in fun, just part of the familiar game. They were both smiling at her, and Toni smiled back. Felt compelled to smile back, the smile of an actress playing a part she’d played for years, knew by heart.
Yes, that was it! They were all in a play; it was called The Happy Family, and they were all reciting lines they knew by heart. The cast was Toni, Innocent, Lovable Daughter. (She believed in the goodness and perfection of her world and never noticed that everything might not be flawless.) And Violet and Harold, Devoted Married Couple. (Oh, yes, they had their little moments of bickering, but it was only cute, they’d never had an instant of real trouble between them.)
Toni wanted to tell them they could stop acting, the play was over. They could all stop reciting their lines and start telling the truth. But she didn’t know how to say it. She didn’t even know how to start to say it. Her head hurt, and she went out of the kitchen.
“You forgot my good-night kiss,” her father called after her.
She was halfway up the stairs. “Take a rain check, Dad.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Toni and L.R. had no classes together. She looked around for him in the halls, and at lunchtime finally saw him in the gym—where else?—on the pegboard. That hadn’t changed since last semester. Nor had her shyness, not enough, anyway, because she just glanced in, saw him hanging on the pegboard, and raced by.
It took her the entire weekend to work up the nerve to call him. She did it Sunday night, from her room. She knew it was his father who answered when she heard him say, “A girl for you, son.” And then something else she couldn’t make out, said with a laugh. And exactly as if she were there, in L.R.’s house, in that room, being teased by his father, her face flushed with heat.
“Hello?” L.R. said.
“Hi,” Toni said in a too soft, embarrassed voice. She puffed out a breath. “Hello! It’s Toni.”
“It’s you?” He sounded happy enough that her face got even hotter. “Where are you, at home?”
“Yes. In my room.”
“You have your own phone? Cool.”
“I got it for my birthday in May.” She thought of telling him how she and Julie shared their birthdays. She’d written Julie last night but somehow hadn’t mentioned bowling or L.R. Was it dishonest to leave L.R. out? She’d left out a lot of other stuff, too—everything Martine had told her.
He was saying something about a music group he liked. Toni had lost the thread. “I don’t know them. I’m ignorant,” she said.
“Oh, no, just uninformed,” L.R. said with a laugh.
“Ignorant,” she said. “Ignorance is supposed to be bliss. Is it?” She’d never actually understood what that meant until now. Yet she had been the perfect example, ignorant and blissful. She said, “L.R., do you think anyone could like being ignorant?”
“You mean, they know they’re ignorant and do they like it?”
“No, no, no. They don’t know but they are. They’re fools in a way, they’re more or less in the dark about everything. They have the wrong ideas about everything but don’t know it.”
“If they don’t know it,” he said, “it’s not a fair question, is it? You can only like or not like being ignorant if you’re aware of it. Then you have a choice.”
“You’re right,” Toni said. “All right. Good-bye.” She reddened at her abruptness. She hadn’t meant to say that. She seemed not entirely in her own control anymore.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Did you call mainly to ask me that question?”
“Yes, to ask your advice.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Good-bye.”
She felt calm, even happy, when she hung up. She thought about L.R. But five minutes later her mood changed. She heard her parents moving around downstairs, and she began to breathe hard. She shut her door. She put a chair against it. She wished she could make a sign. KEEP OUT! KEEP OUT! KEEP OUT!
At the supper table Toni noticed her mother’s mouth moving silently, as if she were talking to herself. Had she always done that? Violet seemed tired. Her face looked shrunken, tiny. Her father, too, seemed to have shrunk. The heart attack? The lost weight? Toni studied her parents, watched them in a way she never had before. Noticed things she’d never noticed before. Noticed how often their mouths said one thing, their bodies something else.
“Milk, Hal?” her mother asked.
Her father paused, fork in midair. His
lips shone with grease from the oil he’d poured on his salad. “Thanks, no.” His words polite, his lips twisted to one side. “Drinking that two-percent stuff is like taking a dose of milk of magnesia.”
“Sorry. I won’t buy it again.” Her mother’s words, careful, concerned, her fingertips pushing aside the milk carton, as if even to touch it was to be unpleasantly rebuked.
“Before you ask, I skipped my walk today,” her father said. “I was tired.”
Toni looked down at her plate. Why did he make excuses for himself? Even if he was tired, he was supposed to walk. He didn’t have to walk fast. He just had to do it. When she was a little girl, she had thought her father could be anything or do anything. He could be the president, a brilliant scientist, a great singer. She thought he was perfect, kind, brave, wonderful in every way.
Now she was appalled that he wasn’t even a little bit brave. He wasn’t doing the things the doctor had told him to do, the things he needed to do for his own health. He sabotaged the shopping list, came home with rich desserts, with fatty meat and snacks and treats. “For you, sweetie,” he’d say to Toni. Or sometimes, “I bought this for Violet, your mom needs a little flesh on her.” And then later, at the table, with a smile, it would be, “Babyface, give your dad a tiny taste of that ice cream … let me have one of those fries … I’ll just take a bite of steak.…”
Toni looked down, couldn’t bear to see her father chewing and swallowing, dizzy with shame for him, shame for herself, remembering how safe she used to feel—safe all the time, safe, happy, snug. Oblivious of everything, asleep in her palace of dreams. And now she was awake, only it wasn’t a prince with a kiss who had wakened her, but her sister with a story.
The moon was hammering into Toni’s eyes. She woke, went down the hall toward the bathroom. As she passed her parents’ room, she heard their voices rising and falling in the darkness. She must have heard them that way hundreds of times, thousands of times, the words indistinguishable, only the whispery blur of their voices coming to her. She stood there for a moment, listening, as if she would hear something that would explain everything, that finally would answer all her questions.
Still later, she woke from a strange disturbing dream. In the dream she was asking her mother if she and her father would get a divorce. Her mother was standing on a ladder. “Go away with your questions,” she said in a silly voice. “Questions, questions, questions.” Then the scene switched and Toni saw her father lying on his back on the wet green lawn. His hands were crossed over his chest. His face was red, and she thought he was dead. Her heart beat in her ears. Then he opened one eye slowly and slowly winked at her. “Gotcha!” he said, pleased with himself.
Then she woke up.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
“Why do you live with just your father?” Toni asked L.R.
“My parents are divorced. My sister, Betsy, lives with my mother in Scranton. We switch parents for a month in the summer.”
“Is it awful that they’re divorced?”
L.R. shrugged. “You get used to it. It didn’t work out last summer. My mom and her boyfriend drove across the country. Betsy went with them, but I stayed here. I don’t like my mother’s boyfriend.”
“What’s it like when your parents are divorced?” They were standing outside school. “Do you mind me asking all these questions?”
“No, I don’t care. It’s like I had a divorce, too. I’m pretty much used to it now, but sometimes I forget. I’m just walking home or something, and I think, Wait till I tell Mom this, or I think I’ll see my sister and she’ll be messing around my room, and I start getting mad. Then I remember I don’t have to get mad. I won’t even see her.”
They walked slowly across the street. “My parents almost got divorced once,” Toni said suddenly.
“Toni,” her mother called up the stairs. “Take the phone, Martine wants to talk to you.”
“Hi, Martine,” Toni said.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” said gracious Martine right off the bat. “I just wanted to say hello and that I miss you.”
“You do not,” Toni said.
“Well, I do, in a way. I admit you were a pain a lot of the time—”
“Thanks so much.”
“—but you were kind of okay, too.”
That was a compliment, coming from Martine.
“But let me get to the point. Do you want to come here for Christmas? Alex and I will take you out. We’ll do a lot of stuff. Rockefeller Center, a play, eat out. We’ll have fun. It was actually his idea.”
“He sounds nice. Are you going to marry him?”
“I’ll try to.”
Toni laughed. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have to learn to trust myself. I have a problem with this. Every time I start getting happy, I also start thinking it can’t possibly work out.” Her voice faded, then came back. “It’s those damn parents of ours. Don’t repeat that.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” Toni said. “Christmas? It sounds like …” She hesitated, was going to say “fun.” Did it sound like fun? What was Alex like? Opposites attract. That meant he should be cheerful, talkative, emotional. Maybe Julie could go with her. She’d be back by then, and—no, not enough room in Martine’s apartment. Herself, Martine, Alex.
“Think it over,” Martine said. “Let me know. I should hang up now, I’ve got a dinner date.”
“With Alex?”
“No, three old girlfriends. Nancy, Jane, and Cynthia. We met years ago when we were all on our first jobs. We were all lowly types that everyone ordered around. Get me this! Get me that! We called ourselves the get-me girls. Now we get together and remember the bad old days.”
“Are you the prettiest one?”
“What does that matter? Anyway, I’m not. Nancy is, she’s gorgeous.”
“She isn’t as pretty as you.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“You never even saw her, knucklehead.”
Toni laughed with surprise. Insulted by her sister! Now that was nice.
Writing to Julie, Toni again made no mention of L.R. She could easily have thrown down a few casual words. Julie, guess what? L. R. and I have become friends. We talk on the phone sometimes. See each other in school a little. No big deal. Jul, he’s probably the nicest boy I’ve ever known. Remember how we used to think he was so mysterious? Well, Julie, he’s actually just the opposite. He’s frank and honest. He is the way he is, nothing hidden. I like that, Julie!
Fine, but what if Julie misunderstood? What if the word friend escaped Julie’s notice? What if Toni said too much—or too little? That decided her; she’d wait until Julie came home. It wasn’t that long now. Another week, maybe two. Time had again started moving swiftly since school began. When Julie returned, Toni and she would talk about everything, about L.R. and Julie’s parents, and Toni’s, too. That was something else she hadn’t written about to Julie.
Later, lying in bed, petting Paws, Toni thought about L.R. for a long time, and then about Julie, and then about the two of them, L.R. and Julie. The two of them together. Would they hit it off immediately, the way she and L.R. had? Would Julie make him laugh? Would he sympathize with her family problems? She imagined them in a car, L.R. at the wheel. (Too young to have a license, but so what, she needed a car for the plot of this fantasy.) Okay. In the car, tooling along, Julie’s hair blowing in the wind. They’re on their way to a drive-in movie. Right. They’re there, parked, the big screen looming ahead of them.
Julie is near the window. Aren’t they too far apart? Like a puppet master, Toni gives them a shove. Hmmm. They could be closer. Another little push. Better. But why are they looking in different directions? She turns their heads toward each other. Fine. Now they have to talk.
L.R., isn’t it wonderful that Toni brought us together?
Julie, what do you mean she brought us together?
Well, L.R., maybe Toni didn’t tell you,
but my dear best friend always had in mind that the two of us, you and I, would become best, best, best friends.
Julie! You don’t mean that Toni was friendly with me just to help us along?
Oh, no, L. R. Toni liked you, she certainly did, but … she knew you were mine.
Yours, Julie? Is that what you said, yours?
Well, L.R., only in a manner of speaking, of course! I mean, I don’t own you, but I did see you first. Yes. And without my dear friend Toni, we would not be here in this drive-in movie together, having such a wonderful time!
L.R. and Julie move closer. Closer still. Is a kiss coming?
Wait, Toni calls, maybe you guys want to think about this! L.R. and Julie don’t seem to hear her. Well, how can they? They are in the car, she is out here. Suddenly she’s in the car, too. Although they don’t know it. She’s in the backseat, right behind them. And just in time, just as their smiles are about to merge, she pops up and thrusts her head between them. Oh, Toni, they both say. Toni! Here you are. And they smile at her. And forget all about kissing.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
In the morning when she went downstairs to make breakfast, Toni saw her father outside in the yard, smoking. He heard her and turned quickly, guiltily. “Just needed to smell it,” he said, and heeled out the cigarette. But gradually, over the next few days, he took up smoking again. Although, as he said, it was only four or five a day now, not like his old two-pack-a-day habit. “I’m feeling nervous about things,” he said. “A cigarette helps. It calms me.” He had gone back to work, half time, but there was a question about his ability to remain on the truck. He might have to apply for a desk job.
They were all in the family room eating popcorn, watching TV. Her mother was lying on the couch. Her father was in one chair, Toni in another. “You shouldn’t be smoking,” her mother said.
Toni’s eyes swiveled to her mother, then her father.
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