“Taze.”
“Is it too much to ask you to pull your punches a little, Kai?”
“Yes.”
“Good God. I don’t need you giving me shit like this right now. Don’t you think I get enough of that from literally everyone else on the planet?”
“So?”
I reach for my gym bag but he moves away. My arm drops at my side. “Can I have my bag back?”
“I’m not going to play this game with you, Tasia. If you want to be friends with me, get honest and get used to honesty. If not, keep doing this thing you’re doing. I don’t have time for uncertainty in my life. I had enough of that, you know, growing up in the foster system, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t get hard over it now.”
I say nothing.
“You don’t want to talk about it? That’s okay. We don’t talk about it. But then it’s like, don’t come out the gate swinging on me because you’re frustrated.”
I nod.
“You nod, but do you really get it?”
I nod.
Then, because, Jesus, he has a point, and I feel like a piece of flavorless chewed-up gum on the bottom of a shoe now, I offer, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was a bitch. Before. This morning. My mom came to Merrick’s unannounced. And she said some stuff to Merrick and Merrick said some stuff to her and … It’s like, my parents, they don’t fight. Like, ever. The most disagreeing they ever do is when Mamma’s trying to get Daddy to help her choose placemats for the table at Thanksgiving and he says, ‘Now, c’mon, Sloane,’ and Mamma says, ‘For the love of all that is good and holy, Solomon, just point in one general direction!’
“But Merrick and my mom—Jesus. They hate each other so much. Because, my mom’s my best friend, pretty much. Or, she was. And now, it’s like …” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes until I see red-fire galaxies inside the blackness. “And, so my day started shitty.” God. “And I get here and Vic won’t say a single word to me, and Dahlia won’t shut up about you and pancakes. It felt like she was rubbing it in my face, and”—before I can keep myself from saying it—“I got so stupidly jealous that you had gone without me, and I don’t even know if I would have wanted to be there, because who even knows what you guys were doing. I’m just sorry, Kai. Like, seriously. Mentally, I feel like I’m falling up lately, which is so much more unnatural and uncomfortable than falling down.”
Kai nods, then he hugs me. Once. Quick. And throws his arm around my shoulder.
“Merrick is a good dad,” I say. I don’t even know why. Not like Kai gives a shit or has any real grasp on what “good” parents are.
Kai raises an eyebrow. “Is he.”
I’m a little offended on Merrick’s behalf. “I mean, yeah?”
“How so?”
“Well …” And I find I can’t think of a single concrete way that Merrick might fit into the Good Parent category. I try very hard not to weigh Merrick and Mamma on the same scale.
“Boba?” is all he says in response to my waffling.
I shake my head. “I didn’t drive today. But maybe we can suck Merrick into making a pit stop.”
“Gelit.”
“Only you could make slang even more abnormal.”
He chuckles.
“I’m having dinner at my grandparents’ house Thursday. At your house.”
“Gross.”
I laugh because, yeah, I kinda get it. “Yeah. I know.”
After I text and ask Merrick to come and get us, I look at Kai’s clothes. This is the most normal I’ve ever seen him dress—grey sweatpants, a baggy, worn Hanes T-shirt with a hole in the bottom that I think might be Merrick’s, hightop Nikes, an open flannel—except he’s got a chain connecting one of his gauges to the ring in his cartilage.
“What are you wearing?” I whisper, laughing.
Merrick’s rust bucket pulls up and Kai calls shotgun as we both climb in.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It takes Merr till the early evening on Thursday to bring up the “discussion” he had with Mamma.
He catches me right as we walk in the door. “You wanna talk about what happened? With your mom that other morning?” he says.
I shake my head. I really don’t. “I get it.”
“Well, why don’t I talk and you can listen.” Merrick exhales. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sworn at your mom, and so, I’m sorry for that, too. I’m sure you know this, but … no man should ever talk to you that way. No man should ever talk to anyone that way. Understand?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. And you know, if you want to leave here, if you want to go home, or spend a little time at home, then you can. That’s your decision. But I want it to be solely your decision. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. And I feel like I need to explain what happened before I found you.”
Technically, I found him. “You really don’t—”
“I do, though. Because there are consequences to my actions—good and bad. Your mom and I were together because I loved her and she loved me. But it got hard. She was with Sol—your dad—and it was long distance, so she said she would end it. But there was a morality clause in my contract that I just … and eventually we both realized that if we were going to be together then, waiting wouldn’t hurt us. Only, waiting did hurt us. So even after we’d already been together, we split and went our separate ways with an agreement to eventually try again after she graduated, and so I quit my job and disappeared—which I’m good at—to teach music somewhere else. And then she had you without my knowledge. When I heard through some mutual friend that she and your dad got married just a year later, that she’d had a baby a few months prior to that, I assumed it was his.”
Selfish. She’s so selfish. The thought manifests and sticks like glue. I ask, “Would you have wanted me?”
Merrick closes his eyes, the expression on his face going tight, then loosening. It’s pain, a lot of longing, some wistfulness that sits primarily in the space beneath his eyes. It’s a lot.
He opens his eyes and stares at me hard before speaking again. “Then? I wish I could say yes, but the most honest answer I can give you is that I don’t know. But your mom was determined to have you. I mean, clearly. Because here you are. But I think she would have had you, and I would have seen you, and I’m certain I would have been yours from the very beginning.”
I want that to be true so badly, I wish for it with my whole body, while also thanking whatever blip in the universe gave me Daddy and Tristan and the Quirky Core Four, as Tammy calls us. Despite it all, I’m still so here for the Quirky Core Four. For eighteen years, they’ve been it for me. They were always it for me.
That same night, as we get ready for dinner, I tell Merrick all about how the impromptu tryout went.
From down the hall, in the bathroom, Merrick yells, “You think he’ll play you?”
I shrug, knowing he can’t see me, as I force a diamond stud through my lobe. “Hope so. I mean, really, I just want him to put me on the team. All I need’s a shot. And I did what I could. Tried to create separation from the defenders. Tried to make sure I planted and caught what was mine and what wasn’t.”
“You’re talking gibberish, kiddo, but that’s good. I’m proud.”
I roll my eyes. “You ever play any sports?”
“Nah,” he says. “I was a band geek. I played the cello and stuck with AP Art. That was me. The artsy pothead. You don’t smoke pot, do you?”
“Absolutely not.”
He appears in my doorway suddenly and laughs. I wonder if he knows I’m lying.
I dress up for them. For Merrick’s parents and Emily, who will criticize my hair, and all the people who take one look at me, see GIRL, and just … expect it.
It’s a little for me, but a lot for them.
I wear a lacy forest green babydoll dress that hits me right above the knees. And at first I think to pair it with low-heeled booties. Instead, I wear my S
k8-Hi high-top Vans.
Not for fashion. I don’t do it for fashion.
I spend too much time thinking about this decision, picking at the cuticles on my thumb. Because I want to wear the booties. Slim likes them a lot and they make my calves look less muscle-y than they are. I choose the high-tops because people probably expect me to. Tasia might wear the booties. Cornerback Taze wears Vans, because the dress needs to be balanced out on the imaginary femininity scale that I live my life in fear of.
I am who people expect me to be.
The booties get chucked into the dark corner of my closet with more force than is necessary.
“T, let’s go, baby, chop-chop! My mom hates it when people are late to her dinner table; she’s French!” Merrick calls.
Meeting Merrick’s parents is a thing that is not supposed to give me anxiety. But my entire life gives me anxiety lately, so the fact that this news sits in my stomach and on my neck like a brick wrapped in wet toilet paper is not unusual.
Kai will be there, and that’s a win in my book.
But Emily will also be there, and that’s not.
It’s nice for Merrick, I’m sure, because he’ll get to show his happily married parents that he is A Good Dad.
Anytime he gets to demonstrate this is a good thing. When he buys me vegetables for dinner, that one time a few days ago when he ran down to the corner store and bought me a box of tampons. The way he’s been somewhat nice to Kai despite all the overt he-could-get-it looks I’ve been giving him.
I think Merrick thinks all of these things classify him as A Good Dad, and maybe some of them do. But Daddy never did the grocery shopping, has never talked to me about my period, and would have probably already buried Kai in a shallow grave somewhere, in stereotypical Dad fashion—and he’s still a good dad too.
And this dinner, it’s pretty nice for me, too, I guess because that box has been burning a hole through the floor of my closet. I wanted to bring it with me so bad, but Merrick basically chewed me out with a single look as we left the apartment.
No matter what, this is another step in the right direction. Another step toward answers. Another step toward some peace and calm and understanding of myself. Another step toward getting rid of this new anxiety that’s made it impossible for me to focus on anything else.
On the drive over, Merrick hums some blues song along with the radio and asks me if I’m nervous. I laugh.
“Uhhhm …” is all I have to offer.
But Merrick takes that and accepts it as A Thing We No Longer Need To Talk About.
“Mémé” greets us at the door and is everything you want her to be. She is short and round, but curvy, and warm and blond as hell. She is rose-cheeked and has makeup game for days. She looks like a dame right out of some 1920s film, with gray eyes and hair that she must have spent hours on before “putting the roast in the oven.”
But she smells like sugar-dipped grapefruit, and she cries as soon as I walk inside. I feel like we should have knocked, but Merrick didn’t bat an eyelash. Mémé’s accent is nonexistent. Which is to say: What the fuck? Because I have no shame in admitting that I expected her to be severely French, to use a common phrase. I expected her accent to be as thick as her hips, and only mildly impossible to understand.
It’s not. What the hell was Kai even talking about?
Once we’re inside, she comments on the volume of my hair, saying I get it from her side of the family, but does not touch, and I guess that, too, is a win.
I’ve got that “water boiling in a screaming kettle” feeling from being so overwhelmed, but then Kai walks into the room wearing a very tight white Hanes T-shirt, which I think might be mine, and a sleeveless jean jacket over it with his black jeans, socked feet.
And I exhale a little and I don’t care who sees it, except Kai, who walks over to me and wraps his arms around me, pulling me in to his neck, in to himself, bringing me all the way outside of myself.
“AHHHHHH!” Mémé yells, and it’s like hearing her voice over a sound system—she’s that loud, her voice that far reaching—and I don’t know what she’s saying because all there is is Kai.
“What?”
Kai laughs. “She thinks I’m suffocating you.”
“My only granddaughter,” Mémé says. “I have one, and we need to make sure she lasts, Kai.”
Kai’s eyebrows meet the ceiling. “She’s talkin’ about your stamina,” he says, and I punch him the chest.
Mémé says, “Good girl!” and then to Kai, “Set the table.”
I get very caught up in the fact that everyone seems to know what to do except me. Everyone seems to be living in this weirdo episode of The Brady Bunch except me. I stand in the middle of the small but open living room, wondering whose way I might be impeding. Wondering if it’s okay for me to take my jacket off.
Merrick’s already sitting in front of a large flatscreen—probably the newest thing in this entire house—in the living room next to an older gentleman who hasn’t said a word to me. No one has bothered to introduce us.
Cool.
I don’t see or hear Emily, so I assume she hasn’t arrived on her very own alcohol-soaked glitter cloud yet.
Merrick’s mom sings loudly, but—aha!—Frenchly, as she bangs—literally, she is banging—around in the kitchen. Had I not smelled the food, I might have wondered if she was just trying to break as many dishes as possible.
Kai is seated on the floor in a corner of the kitchen, not far from Merrick’s mom’s constantly moving feet. Each time she passes him, her fingers find his hair for a silent stroke.
“So you enjoy football, Tasia.” She pours a can of chickpeas into a brassy looking pot.
Merrick talked about me? About the things I like? About me and football?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t be so formal,” she says, then pats the counter right above where Kai is sitting. “Sit.” It’s a command. I obey. “I don’t watch it, but I’ve noticed Merrick seems to be taking a recent interest.”
“He tries,” I say. “I’m trying to teach him.”
“Good. Men need a little instruction from their superiors.”
This is when I first learn that my grandmother is like hot oil in a shallow skillet—dangerous when you get too close, but perfect with just the right amount of caution.
She stirs the pot of rice for a moment and then turns to me. “And what about college? Plans?”
“Haven’t heard back from any of the places I’ve applied.” I shrug. “Just a waiting game now.”
She tsks. “Waiting is hell, they say. And you’ll play football in college?”
“They do say that. When I get in to Berkeley, I might take up another sport. I don’t know. They don’t really let women play college football.” It’s practically unheard of. I’m no Shelby Osborne.
“When,” she says.
“What?”
“You said ‘When I get in to Berkeley.’ You’re so sure.”
I mean … “Well, yeah.”
She laughs. “I’m not judging. It’s good for women to know we can have whatever we want.”
Kai laughs. I’d almost forgotten he was down there, except not really, because now it’s my hands in his hair, and every couple of minutes he turns his lips up into my palm to bite the meatiest parts of it.
“Do you speak French?” I ask. Everything’s just so skewed. I’d hoped this expectation, at least, would hold.
“Not anymore,” Kai says, just as she says, “Ouí.”
She pours a deep glass of the bloodiest wine I’ve ever seen and then offers me a shorter glass, which I sip slowly. Kai drinks his like he doesn’t enjoy it, in three messy gulps.
She amends, “We moved here when we married. I was very young.”
“How young?”
“Nineteen.” The same age as Mamma when she got pregnant with me. “The grump in the living room, he was older. Nine years my senior.”
What is it with these age gaps?
I nod. “So you moved here. And did what?”
“Well, nothing at first. I worked to lose the accent so that I could find work.”
“What kind of work?”
She hands me a cherry tomato and I pop it in my mouth to bite it in half before passing the rest to Kai.
“She was an actress,” Kai says, chewing.
“No way.”
She doesn’t even pretend to be shy about it. In fact, her spine straightens. She maybe even preens a little. “I was great,” she says. “Your grandfather worked for Les Films Corona. Very big production company up through the 1970s.”
“So why did you move here, then? If he was successful there?”
“He was successful. I was successful. I had your father a few years before we moved to America and my career as a French actress had peaked. And,” she cautions, “when you taste success once, you always crave more. So we moved here. He worked to make American connections; I worked at learning to lose the accent. And I did.”
This story feels fantastical. Unreal in so many ways. “Were you ever in anything I might have heard of?”
She laughs. “No, mon cher. I was in one or two things before I got pregnant with Emily.”
Makes sense. A lot of Merrick’s mannerisms are much more Eurocentric than Emily’s. His hugs are firm but less bone crushing, the volume and pitch of his voice is a bit lower.
The space around me feels thick.
Something on the stove begins to boil over, so she adjusts the heat. “Well. I can’t wait to have you meet some of our friends at Mass soon. They’ll love you.”
“Why?”
“Why shouldn’t they?” she says.
“Right. So you’re Catholic?”
“We are.”
Kai pinches my calf. I pull his hair.
“I didn’t lose that, at least. My faith. Might be the only reason I survived this country full of blond women who judged the thickness of my words.”
I hate how it sounds like she’s saying she lost an integral part of who she is. Like, some French woman’s diaspora. Because, to me, “French woman” isn’t who she is. To me, she’s just another standard white woman. I don’t like that she thinks she can just … escape the fact that she is a white woman. She’s not exempt from that. Every part of this feels so aggressively … effortful? Like, she’s just trying so hard with the wine and the mention of Mass, and there’s a baguette on the counter. It’s just …
Home and Away Page 14
