by Sara Zarr
Yeah. I knew.
“You need to keep an eye out for your sister.”
As if she ever had to tell me to do that. “At school she pretends like we’re not even related.”
Mom rubbed her temples, like our conversation was giving her a headache. “Do it anyway, Gem. Whatever you can.”
6.
DIXIE HARDLY talked to me the next week. At school it was pretty much the same as always, but then she gave me the full silent treatment at home, too. It was a week of Mom not going out except for work, staying straight. Like she was trying to keep alert for Dad’s arrival, and whatever it might bring with it. She bought a few groceries—a roasted chicken, a jar of spaghetti sauce, boxes of instant rice. She asked me about school, how my classes were. On the weekend, she even made us breakfast. At noon, but still.
I was wary. It couldn’t last.
I wanted to talk to Mr. Bergstrom about everything going on—in our appointment or in a Come say hi anytime. But in our appointment on the next Monday, words couldn’t get past my throat, could barely form in my head. He tried to get me to draw on the whiteboard; I refused. He asked me if I’d found out what was in the letter and I lied, I said no.
He rocked back in his chair and waited, then rocked forward and folded his arms on his desk. “I’m kinda worried, Gem, to be honest. You’re upset, and I wish you’d tell me what’s up. Did your mom find out about you getting on the lunch list? Was she mad about it?”
“No.”
“Did I do or say something to make you not want to trust me?”
I shook my head. He hadn’t, but I knew when I heard the word that trust was something I didn’t feel for anyone at that time, even the one person who might deserve it.
“Okay. I’m not going to push. That works on some people. You’re not one of them. Listen, though,” he said, then paused for a long time. “For the record, I am here and I do actually care. It’s my job, but not just that.”
We sat quiet. Then I asked if I could go, and he said yes but without his usual smile. I felt I’d let him down.
Through another week, I ate, at school and at home. I did my homework, I kept my side of the room neat, I smoked my Haciendas. Every day I felt sure something would happen.
And finally it did.
On the next Tuesday morning, I got called out of English. “Gem,” Mrs. Cantrell said after hanging up the room phone. “They need you down in the office.”
A few people looked at me, including Helena Mafi, whose seat was in front of mine. “What’d you do?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I stood.
“You should probably take your stuff,” Mrs. Cantrell said. There were only ten minutes left in the period. I packed my bag.
You would think he’d know better than to just show up at school, where he’d have to go through the office and bring all this attention. That was his plan, maybe, catching us by surprise, making a dramatic gesture.
His back was to the plate glass window of the office as he chatted with Ms. Behari, the attendance secretary. I saw Dixie’s face before I saw his. She glowed, wide-eyed and happy, not the hard, cool Dixie she normally was at school. This was why Mom had told me to keep an eye on her. As tough as Dixie was, when it came to Dad she was a regular girl who wanted her father to love her.
So I guess it was my job to not be like her. Not be a regular girl.
I steeled myself before he turned around. I made myself remember all the ways he’d failed, left us, messed us up. It wasn’t hard.
Then he did turn, with his big smile, his Russ True charm-and-con smile. His hair had more gray than I remembered, and he wore it shorter, with a matching little gray goatee. Sunglasses resting on top of his head. He had on jeans that weren’t too ratty for someone who’d never kept a job, and a Skin Yard T-shirt with a flannel over it, and he had a small brown backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Gem, baby,” he said, and opened his arms.
Despite how I’d prepared myself and despite what Mom had said, despite what Dad had done and not done, despite how he’d described me in the letter in which he hadn’t used my name . . . hearing it in that moment, my name on his lips and in his scratchy smoked-out voice, I went to him. And for that ten seconds or whatever it was, I held on. I pressed my face into the soft flannel. I let him put his rough cheek to mine and whisper: “See? I’m here.”
When I pulled away, I saw that Mr. Bergstrom had appeared in the office. He smiled a wide, fake smile I’d never seen him use. “Is this your dad?” he asked me. He stuck out his hand. “Mike Bergstrom.”
“Russ True,” Dad said, shaking it, and matching his cheerfulness. “Are you the principal, or what?”
“He’s the school psychologist,” Dixie said.
Then Mr. Bergstrom extended his hand to Dixie. “Hi. We haven’t formally met.”
She shook it and we all stood there, and Dad said to Mr. Bergstrom, “Just taking my girls out a little early today to do some catching up.”
“Sure, sure,” Mr. Bergstrom said, with that smile. Then, “Hey, Gem, quick question if you have a sec before you go?” He motioned me toward the hall that led to the administrative offices. I didn’t move. “About your schedule next week?”
I glanced at Dad, who said, “Go ahead. But make it quick, we gotta run.” He threw a wink at Ms. Behari, who was not smiling.
In the hall, Mr. Bergstrom led me to an empty office and pulled the door most of the way closed. “Ms. Behari called me down as soon as he got here. What’s going on?”
“Just what he said.”
“You didn’t tell me he was coming.”
It sounded like an accusation, or at least that’s how I heard it. “I have to go.”
“You don’t have to. Is this what you’ve been worried about?” He waited. Then: “Ms. Behari checked, and there’s nothing on file that says he can’t be here, but if you don’t want to go or you need to tell me something else, now’s the time to say it, Gem.”
What I wanted to say was, Why couldn’t it be true that my father was there for exactly the reasons he said? To catch up with us, see us, because he was our father and he loved us. Why couldn’t Mr. Bergstrom, who didn’t know even half of everything, believe in that moment that my father had come for those simple fatherly reasons—and that I deserved that as much as anyone, as much as Dixie?
I didn’t believe it, but why couldn’t he?
“It’s fine,” I said. I looked him in the eye. “It’s fine.”
“Now listen,” Dad said as we walked away from the school building, “Dixie told me Mom would be out all day today. The apartment should be empty now, yeah?”
It sounded like he and Dixie’d been talking since the letter had come, though I didn’t know how Dad had gotten ahold of her, or her of him.
“Maybe,” I said.
“She has an appointment,” Dixie said to me. “Then she’s taking one of Margot’s early shifts and working a double.”
So Mom hadn’t totally been freezing Dixie out the way I’d thought, had still been telling her things. Dixie had Mom. Dixie had Dad. I stepped apart from them as we walked down the street, scared I would let my guard down if I wasn’t careful, wanting a different version of us to be real.
“My idea is let’s go home,” Dad said. “I know it’s kind of a long walk home, but let’s do it, I want to see everything. We’ll go clean the place up and make it nice. We’ll go shopping and fill up the fridge, the freezer, everything.”
Dixie must have also told him about how things had been, our food situation. What she obviously hadn’t told him was that Mom already knew he was coming back, because if she had, he wouldn’t be so excited. I tried to focus on the facts, on what I could know, what was happening right now in reality. We were going home, and then to the grocery store. That’s all.
“Can we get bacon?” I asked.
Dad laughed. “Sure. Whatever you want.” He stopped walking and turned to me. He held his arm out. “Come here. Hey. Gem.”<
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I went to him. The regular girl I was trying not to be went to him, while Dixie watched.
“Let me see you.” He put his hands on either side of my face, his fingers gentle on the skin behind my ears. His eyes searched mine and I let them. “You’ve grown up. You really have.”
For a few seconds it was only us standing there on the street, my father and me, people and cars around us fading away. I was here first, I reminded myself, and silently reminded Dixie. For a couple of years, I was the only daughter they had, the only one they loved.
Then, keeping one hand on me, he put the other on the back of Dixie’s neck, pulling her close, too. “We’ll make everything perfect, then we’ll wait up for Mom and surprise her. You girls need to wait up with me, okay? She’ll walk in and see me and you and the clean house and the food, and she’ll be happy.”
“I don’t think she’ll be happy,” I said.
He dropped his arms. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Fair enough. She won’t be happy.” He laughed then, like Mom being mad would be a fun adventure. “I’ll get out of there fast and give her some time to warm up to the idea. I just want her to see us all together. You know there’s never been anyone for me but your mom. Not in my heart.”
Not in his heart. But there’d been plenty of other people in his bed, other people in his daily life in place of us.
“Is that all your stuff?” I asked.
He gripped the shoulder strap of the backpack. “Some of it. Just some clothes and business things.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“At a friend’s. I don’t have much. I’m starting over all the way.” He took a deep breath of the cool air. “Goddamn I missed this place. Don’t ever go to Texas, that’s my advice.” We rounded the corner of our street. He put one arm around each of us. “I got some breaks. Things are coming together. This is going to be good, okay?”
We heard a shout from across the street. “Russ! Hey, Russ!”
A short guy with stringy hair and a big grin came over, dodging a car before he got to us. Dad dropped his arms and moved in front of me and Dixie in a way that seemed protective. “Do I know you?”
“Yeah, you know me, shithead,” the guy said with a laugh. “It’s Bongo.”
After a second, Dad nodded. “Oh yeah, sure, hey.”
“That’s all you got for me? ‘Hey’?” He glanced at us, and Dad turned and said, “Gimme a minute here.” They walked down to the corner together.
“Have you told Mom he’s here?” I asked Dixie while keeping one eye on Dad.
“No.”
“You should. You should text her right now.”
Her hand went to her pocket, where she kept her phone. “That’d only mess everything up.”
“Mess what up? You seriously think his stupid plan is going to work? You know what’s going to happen when she sees him in our house.”
We leaned against a building, watching Dad. I checked Dixie’s face. She was still trying to be happy, staring at Dad like he was some kind of rock star. But she couldn’t hide her feelings, not from me. I saw the doubt already forming—about how Mom was going to take it, maybe about other things.
“That guy he’s talking to,” I said. “He looks like some weed dealer or something.” Or maybe Dad owed him money; Bongo wasn’t grinning anymore.
“Not everything is terrible, Gem. Some things are good.” Dixie folded her arms and moved away from me. “Why can’t you give this one little chance to be a good thing?”
“Because I can’t.”
Dad came back; Bongo went the other way.
“Sorry,” Dad said. “Just some loser I used to know. I wanted to make sure he knew to stay away from me and my girls.”
Dixie looked at me like, See?
It started to drizzle. Dad laughed and looked at the sky. “Fucking Seattle, man. This is the place.”
He put his arm around Dixie again; I kept myself separate for the rest of the walk home. I needed my Hacienda, and time to think. I heard Mr. Bergstrom’s voice in my head. You don’t have to. No one had a gun at my back as we walked down the street. The only gun at my back was me—not just how I’d promised to keep my eye on Dixie when it came to Dad, but also how there was a piece of me tired of trying not to be a regular girl.
So I kept walking. Dad pointed out this or that place where he used to go, asked what happened to his old favorite pizza shop, what happened to the guitar store. When we got to the front of our building, Dad looked up at it, the ugly beige, the way it was streaked with dirt. Pigeons perched on the roof and fire escapes and anywhere else they could find a square inch of space. Garbage filled the gutter and was scattered around the front gate.
“Shit,” he said, letting his arm fall away from Dixie. “Did it always look like this?” The question came quiet, like he was asking himself.
“Yeah,” I said. “It did.”
“It’s not that bad on the inside,” Dixie told Dad.
He shifted his backpack to the front of him and held it close. For once the gate was locked like it was supposed to be. I opened it with my key and we went up the three flights of stairs to our unit.
“Did it always smell like this, too?” Dad asked. With each flight, his steps slowed. He stopped on the second-floor landing. Dixie stopped, too, and so did I after a couple more stairs. “What?” I asked, looking back down at them. He was as fit and wiry as he’d ever been. The stairs couldn’t have been a problem.
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his goatee. His eyes were rimmed in red. “I didn’t expect it to . . .” He could only finish that sentence with a shrug.
Dixie gave me that look again, like she was right and I was wrong, and Dad was this sensitive hero, come back to save us. For the briefest seconds of seeing him from my place on the stairs and knowing red eyes can’t be faked, I wondered if she could be right. Then a door slammed somewhere above us, and we heard footsteps coming down. Dad seemed to shake whatever he felt off, and we continued up. Dad greeted the neighbor we passed on the stairs cheerily, fake.
When we walked through the door to our apartment, he said, “Yep,” nodding as he looked around, touched the wall. “I remember this.” He pointed to the couch. “That’s new.”
The old one had been covered in tiny spots, where ash or cigarette butts had scorched the fabric before the building manager gave Mom a final warning about smoking inside.
“Used,” I said.
“Used from . . .” Dixie started. “Used.”
Len, she didn’t say. Len, who Mom dated for a month, worked in a furniture warehouse and got us this before they broke up. We never actually saw Len himself, only heard about him from Mom. Two delivery guys from his work brought it over.
“The place doesn’t actually need much cleaning,” Dad decided. I don’t know what he expected. That we’d been living in squalor or something? “Let’s call a cab and go to the store.”
7.
SHOPPING WAS just like Dad promised it would be—everything we needed, anything we wanted. We stocked up on bread and apples and peanut butter, eggs and cereal, cheese, milk. Bags of chips, boxes of crackers, cans and cans of stuff—chili and soup and tuna. Also tampons and pads, and pills for cramps and headaches. Dixie slipped some makeup into the cart. I did the same with shampoo and conditioner and a serum that said it would give my limp hair more body.
Dixie smiled at me once while adding a big package of cookies to our mountain of stuff, the first of her smiles aimed at me in a week. She was practically skipping alongside the cart, skipping like she’d do when she was little, while Dad walked behind us making suggestions. “Get that cheddar popcorn, Gem, you like that.”
At first I tried to let myself be happy like her. I did savor the idea of opening up the cupboard for weeks to come and always finding something to eat, and I liked it that Dad remembered my favorite foods. But the more stuff we piled into the cart, the sadder I felt. Because it wasn’t how things were supposed to be. We weren’t in some game sho
w where the prize was all the groceries you wanted. Our dad buying us food shouldn’t have been a special treat, it shouldn’t feel like Christmas or a trip to Disneyland; we should have had it all along. There should have been child support, there should have been someone making sure we had what we needed at school. There should have been regular bedtimes and no one working nights, leaving us home all alone. We should have been getting advice—better advice than “Don’t ever go to Texas.”
I trailed farther and farther behind the cart and hung back while the cashier rang it all up. The total came close to four hundred dollars, and I thought Dad would freak out and tell us we had to choose stuff to put back. But he didn’t. He paid in cash, and how he had that much money I didn’t want to know.
We took another cab back to the apartment, with the trunk full of bags. Dixie sat between me and Dad, snuggling up to him, her hand slipped through the crook of his elbow while I leaned against the door.
They cooked dinner. Dad wanted meat loaf and macaroni and cheese, and green beans and chocolate cake. “Comfort food,” he said. “Home cooking.”
“Mom’s a vegetarian,” I reminded him as we put away groceries. As if that was the biggest problem he’d have when she got home.
“She can skip the meat loaf.”
Dixie brushed past me with a can of chili in each hand. “You could try saying thanks,” she muttered.
I announced that I had homework to do and left the kitchen with a jar of peanuts I’d been about to put away. I closed the door to our room and ate peanuts by the handful, barely stopping to breathe.
That was my father in there. My father.
He was the person who’d left and come back and left again and again. The person whose only reliable act was disappearing. He was the person who bought us a storeful of groceries now but also the one who’d helped keep us hungry. The one who made my mom believe we’d all be happy—they’d have the club, the dream, everything that went with it. The one who, after every screw-up, vowed to start over and never mess up again, then immediately proceeded to do exactly what he promised he wouldn’t.