The Right-Under Club

by Christine Hurley Deriso

  Elizabeth touched her cousin's leg. “But you have a great dad,” she said.

  Hope nodded. “I know. But I envy you guys. I'd give my right arm to have any one of your moms.”

  The girls averted their eyes.

  “Hey,” Tricia said. “We've got each other, right? And no more gossiping about each other or making snide remarks. We may feel like leftovers in our families sometimes, but we'll always be Right-Unders to each other.”

  Tricia held her arms out by her sides, then folded them around her friends. They all followed her lead, one after the other. There they sat… the Right-Unders, a single solid circle.

  … … …

  She'd only known them a few weeks, but Tricia was realizing she already felt closer to the Right-Unders than to some kids she'd known all her life. There was something about that tree house…. It somehow stripped away the superficial stuff. As she settled into bed that night, Tricia reflected on how much she'd learned about her new friends in such a short time. She'd had to unlearn some things, too. She'd thought she had the girls pretty much sized up after the first couple of meetings, but she'd been wrong in a lot of ways. She reached for her Right-Under journal and began writing:

  Elizabeth isn't a babyish little kid. She may be the smartest one in the club.

  Mei is quiet, but she really knows who she is.

  Sometimes Hope's sense of humor is a cover for sadness.

  Leighton isn't nearly as pulled together as she wants everybody to believe.

  Tricia read over the list, rubbing her eyes sleepily. These girls really had become friends. They didn't just help each other… they knew each other. Tricia laid the journal on her bedside table, turned off her lamp and lay quietly as her eyelids fluttered in the darkness.

  19

  Tricia felt unusually lazy for the next few days. The weather matched her mood. The persistent summer sunshine had given way to a three-day stretch of misty rain. The temperature was still warm, but the gray sky made Tricia feel chilly. She stayed in her room and read a lot.

  But just as she'd get to a good part in the book, she would find her attention wandering. She didn't even realize it until she turned the page and realized she couldn't remember a word she'd just read. That wasn't like her. She was usually so focused.

  Everly occasionally toddled in, shoving a picture book under Tricia's nose or ordering her to play, but Tricia waved her away.

  Late Wednesday afternoon, Tricia gave up on her book and plopped onto her bed. She lazily outlined the planets on her bedspread with her finger. She was glad the Right-Unders were meeting the next day. She needed the company. And yet…

  All the girls had shared a problem except her. Mei's mural… Hope's spa day…Elizabeth's visit with her grandparents… Leighton's cousin's wedding…

  Tricia was much more comfortable hearing other people's problems than sharing her own. But she knew the girls wouldn't let her off the hook.

  Why did she think it would be so difficult? The RightUnders would surely understand. After all, their “complicated” families had led them to form the club. But Tricia's family seemed somehow more complicated than the others. True, Hope's mom and Leighton's dad had fallen off the face of the earth, but at least everybody was clear on the matter. Tricia's relationships—well, one relationship in particular—seemed fuzzier. How could she make the girls understand? She didn't even understand it herself.

  She laid her cheek against Jupiter and breathed in the fragrance of the freshly laundered spread. Like it or not, it was time to give the Right-Unders a chance to help her.

  … … …

  “The July fifteenth meeting of the Right-Under club is now in session.”

  Tricia tapped the Problem Stick against the floor of the tree house.

  Hope looked at her knowingly.

  “What?” Tricia asked defensively.

  “It's your turn,” Hope said.

  Tricia fingered the Problem Stick nervously. “Old business?” she said weakly.

  Hope shook her head. “We covered old business during our emergency meeting. It's time for us to help you with your problem.”

  “What if I don't have a problem?”

  “We know that's what you want everybody to believe,” Hope said. “But we know better. Just because you're our oh-sowise leader doesn't mean you don't need help, too.”

  Tricia blushed. The Right-Unders really did know her.

  “Spill it,” Leighton said tersely, and everyone laughed, relieved to see their friend back in familiar form.

  Tricia chewed her bottom lip.

  “Okay,” she said. “I'll tell you my problem. But I don't think you'll be able to help.”

  Hope dropped her jaw in mock indignation. “What do we look like, chopped liver?”

  Tricia grinned. “Okay, okay.”

  She stared down at her hands as she rubbed them together. “It's my dad,” she blurted out.

  “Nooo!” Hope said sarcastically, and the others laughed.

  Tricia shrugged. “See? That's just the thing. You already know I miss my dad, but there's nothing anybody can do about it.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked. “Why can't you see him more often?”

  Tricia's mouth tightened. “I don't know,” she said. “I think my mom is totally jealous of my relationship with him. It's so weird…. It's like she has this cut-and-paste idea about families: cut my dad out, paste Troy in. Troy's okay, but he's not my dad, and my mom can't make me stop loving my real dad.”

  “Your mom doesn't seem like the type who would want to bust up your relationship with your dad,” Hope said sensibly. The others nodded.

  “Then why won't she let me spend more time with him?” Tricia asked angrily. “I only get to see him once or twice a month, and then just for a quick hamburger or bowling. Mom even sits in the parking lot while I'm with him.”

  “She sits in the parking lot?” Mei asked incredulously.

  Tricia nodded. “She tells me she's going shopping or whatever, but I know she's right outside. She just can't stand the thought of me having a little time with my dad. And God forbid I ask to spend the night with him.”

  “Well…,” Elizabeth said. “Have you asked?”

  Tricia looked exasperated. “Of course I have. I ask all the time. I beg Mom to let me spend a weekend with my dad. But the answer is always no, and she never has a good reason. She just gets him on the phone, then runs me over to McDonald's for a half-hour visit.” She twirled her finger in the air sarcastically, surprising herself by feeling an urge to cry. “It's not enough.” Her voice broke.

  Her words hung in the air for a tense moment. It was odd seeing Tricia like this. She was usually so…in charge.

  “Tricia, your mom is utterly reasonable,” Mei said. “You just need to talk to her.”

  “I told you, I've tried,” Tricia snapped. “She may seem great to you guys, but trust me, she is totally off the wall where my dad is concerned. He says so himself. And she can hardly ever be bothered with my problems anyway. It's all about Troy and Neverly. I'm a distant third. Very distant.”

  Mei looked unconvinced. “I just don't see it,” she said.

  “Some things you can only know firsthand,” Hope said supportively. “After all, everybody besides me thinks Jacie is great.”

  “I don't hear anybody talking about how great my stepdad is,” Mei said with a smile.

  “He's the principal,” Hope said. “Principals have no shot at greatness. Sorry.”

  Tricia twirled a lock of her blond hair. “My mom's okay,” she concluded. “She just doesn't get it. And she definitely doesn't get my dad.”

  “What's he like?” Mei asked.

  “Totally cool,” Tricia said, warming to the subject. “He wears his hair in a ponytail. His jeans have holes in the knees.”

  “Okay,” Leighton said.

  “He's just totally comfortable with himself, you know?” Tricia explained. “He doesn't care what other people think. He plays the guitar and
writes his own songs. He's a poet.”

  Hope wrinkled her brow. “Does he make any money at it?”

  Tricia rolled her eyes. “It's not about money. It's about following your heart. I love Mom, but we have nothing in common. I wish I could live with Dad.”

  Wow. That was the first time she'd ever said that out loud.

  “That's no good,” Hope replied. “Then you wouldn't live here, and where would we meet?”

  Tricia ran her finger along the bark of the Problem Stick. “I figured you wouldn't be able to help me.” She smiled at her friends. “But thanks for trying.”

  “Not so fast,” Hope said. “We haven't written down our solutions yet, and mine is going to be brilliant. Not that I've thought of it yet…”

  “Hope's right,” Elizabeth said. “Get your notebooks ready, everybody. It's time to write down our solutions.”

  Tricia appreciated their efforts, but she felt so selfconscious…so exposed. Why hadn't she made up some lame problem like hating her mom's cooking or something? Her relationship with her dad felt so special, so exclusive. She loved her friends, but she liked keeping her dad all to herself. Now she'd spilled her guts, and there was no turning back.

  She glanced at her watch and said, “Your five minutes starts … now.”

  The girls scribbled quickly, then erased, then scribbled some more. Most of them could have written entire essays on the “I Miss My Dad” theme. Mei thought about hers… the college professor with close-cropped hair and a serious expression. Her mom told her how much her dad had loved bouncing her in the air and “flying” her like a plane. Mei couldn't remember any of it, of course, but she was glad she had lighthearted stories to balance the sternness he projected in his pictures. He had been brilliant, too…a scientist. Mei knew he would have done great things if he had lived. She wished she'd known him.

  Leighton couldn't remember her father, either, even though he was alive and well. He was her mom's high school sweetheart…a football player with muscular arms, narrow hips and dimples in his cheeks. She got her thick dark hair and olive complexion from him. He had freaked when Leighton's mom told him shortly before high school graduation that she was pregnant. He turned nasty, calling her mom mean names and questioning whether the baby was even his. Her mom had never seen that side of him before, probably because she'd never seen him scared before. After all, he was just a kid. Leighton's mother had understood, but it hadn't made the heartache any easier when her boyfriend abruptly moved out of town with his family. She had tried to maintain contact, and a couple of times, he had even stopped by to see the baby. But Leighton was nothing to him except a grim reminder of his teenage stupidity. He had moved on with his life. Leighton wasn't part of it.

  It had been tough for Leighton's mother. She'd managed to coax a few child-support payments from him, but the money was nothing she could count on, barely enough to pay for a couple of boxes of diapers. She was on her own and she knew it. She'd scrapped her dream of being an architect and gotten an entry-level job at a hospital. Eventually, she had worked her way up to becoming a medical transcriptionist, but money was always tight. She'd worked so hard, and she'd used her vacation time to haul schoolchildren around on field trips and bring cupcakes to Leighton's class for special occasions. She must have been tired most of the time, and she'd never had any money for herself, but she'd never, ever complained. She'd just put one foot in front of the other. Then she had met Carl….

  Elizabeth's dad… well, it was impossible not to think of dads when concentrating on a solution for Tricia, but Elizabeth had gotten very good at pushing him out of her thoughts. It was too painful to compare the old dad with the new dad. He'd been so funny and fun-loving until last year. Now he was bitter and angry. Her mom, too. It was as if aliens had inhabited their bodies. All they did was scream at each other, then stomp around stewing. They tried to keep things civil for Elizabeth's sake, but emotions ran too high. They were both so hurt. Elizabeth didn't know all the details, but she was all too attuned to the shrill accusations and slamming doors. Why couldn't they just take a deep breath and stop destroying the family? That was how she felt sometimes: destroyed. When she thought about it. And she thought about it as seldom as possible.

  “Time's up.”

  Tricia's voice interrupted their thoughts. Tricia blushed and pulled a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “I guess it's time for you to fix my life,” she said.

  She passed the bowl around as the girls folded their pieces of paper twice and dropped them in.

  “Can I read the solutions this time?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Sure,” Leighton responded. “It's your turn.”

  My turn, Elizabeth thought. She liked the sound of that.

  She reached for the bowl, unfolded the papers and read them one by one:

  “SOLUTION: Sit down with both your mom AND your dad at the same time and tell them how you feel. If your parents are like mine, you probably get one story from your mom and another story from your dad. If you're all in the same room together, everybody will have to come clean.

  “SOLUTION: Remind your mom that if you spend every other weekend with your dad, you'll be out of her hair for a while and she'll have Troy and Neverly all to herself.

  “SOLUTION: Ask your dad for guitar lessons so you'll have an excuse to see him more often. Your mom probably won't mind because you'll be doing something productive.

  “SOLUTION: Quit stressing about your dad. Dads are highly overrated.”

  As Elizabeth set the bowl on the floor, Leighton leaned back onto the palms of her hands. “Dads really are overrated,” she mused, more to herself than to anyone else.

  “Hmmm. Wonder which solution was yours,” Hope teased.

  “I think the guitar lessons are a really good idea,” Elizabeth said, then quickly added, “and that wasn't my solution.”

  “Mom would never go for it,” Tricia said.

  “Why not?” Mei asked. “Doesn't every mom want her kid to take music lessons?”

  “Not from him,” Tricia muttered, staring down at her hands.

  “But you said he's a really good guitarist … right?” Mei persisted.

  “It's just not a good idea!”

  Tricia spoke so sharply that the words hung in the air. A knot tightened in her stomach. She hated this, having her deepest feelings picked over like grapefruits in the produce department of a grocery store. She couldn't explain why she missed her dad so much… she just did. She couldn't explain why her mom hated how close Tricia was to her dad… she just did. Tricia didn't understand any of it. She just felt it. She was embarrassed to create so much tension in the room but suddenly resented the girls’ intrusiveness. She didn't want to talk to them about her dad, and she certainly wasn't interested in their lame solutions. Maybe this whole club had been a stupid idea.

  “Tricia,” Mei said gently, “nobody can really understand your problem except you. But that's true for all of us, you know.”

  “So what are you saying?” Tricia asked angrily. “That I think I'm all that because my problem is extra special? I don't think it's extra special. I think it extra sucks.”

  “If you won't let us try to help you, maybe you're just happier being miserable,” Leighton said with an arched eyebrow.

  Okay, that was it. “This is a stupid club,” Tricia muttered. She stomped out of the tree house.

  20

  Tricia moped in her house all that day and the next. She would hole up in her room for an hour or two, then wander into the den and click the television's remote control a few times, then go into the kitchen and peer into the pantry. Nothing looked good. She wasn't hungry anyway.

  “What's wrong, honey?” her mom asked her as Tricia roamed restlessly through the kitchen that Friday evening.

  Tricia shrugged.

  “You've been so quiet the last couple of days,” her mom said, wiping off the kitchen counter. She walked over to Tricia. “Is something wrong?”

  Tricia h
adn't planned to say anything, but the words spilled out: “I want to see my dad.”

  Her mother subtly sucked in her breath. “He said…he could probably take you bowling… next Saturday,” she said haltingly.

  “I don't want to go bowling!” Tricia spat. “I don't want to do anything with him. I just want to be with him. For longer than fifteen minutes! And without you waiting outside in the parking lot!”

  Tricia's mother bit her bottom lip. “Honey…,” she began.

  “I've heard it all before!” Tricia cried, flinging her hands in the air. “ ‘Dad's so busy.’‘I don't like you spending the night away from home.’‘This is your family now.’ Well, you know what? You can't wish Dad away, no matter how hard you try. And why do you try? Don't I deserve to have my dad?”

  “Honey …” Her mom tried to touch her arm, but Tricia jerked it away.

  “I don't want to hear anything else you have to say!” she screamed at her mother through tears that were now flowing freely. “I've listened to you for the last time!”

  … … …

  The idea formed so effortlessly that Tricia considered it destiny. Of course she would do it. Why hadn't she thought of it before? It wasn't like she was a kid anymore; she'd be thirteen in three more weeks. She didn't have to run to her mother for every little thing. Her mother would probably be relieved that Tricia was finally taking matters into her own hands. That was part of growing up, right?

  She even had her own money. She wasn't sure how much it would cost, but she had been saving babysitting money from watching Hissy on occasional afternoons and evenings. She hadn't had any particular goal in mind; she just liked the thought of money in her pocket. Now she knew why. Destiny.

  Still, guilt nagged at her. She reached over to her bedside table for her Right-Under journal. There were plenty of good reasons to carry out her plan. She wrote them down:

  I'll be home by Sunday night, and I'll call Mom so she won't worry. She'll understand.

  I've tried asking for her help. She refuses, so what choice do I have?

  Like one of the Right-Unders said, she'll get to have her “real” family all to herself for a change. I'm doing Mom a favor.