"I don't know. I've been avoiding him." Since my breakdown at Pluribus three days ago, I've managed not to be in the same room even once with him. Every Morning Meeting I've arrived at the last possible moment and left at the earliest opportunity. Every lunch period I've eaten with Mallory in the parking lot, and every day after school I have been the first student out the door. I just have to keep this up for the next three years and I'll never have to speak to him again.
"You need to stop avoiding the people you like, honey."
"I don't like him."
"And I don't like Russell Crowe."
"Gusty is a dumbass anyway."
"You would never have a crush on a dumbass."
"I don't have a crush on him."
She rolls her beady eyes. "I think you should give this boy a chance, Kristi. He sounds like a nice kid, and he's cute, too. That's a difficult combination to find." Aunt Ann shares my suspicion of beautiful people, though she's less draconian about it.
"He thinks I'm sick."
"How do you know?"
"Because I can read minds," I tell her for the millionth time. She's the only person who knows about my ability because she's the only person I can trust with it. She only half believes me, which is fine with me. I don't have anything to prove.
"Honey, I know you're intuitive, but I don't think you're right all the time."
"I know what I know."
"Oh yeah? What am I thinking right now?"
I stare into her small brown irises. I let my mind go blank enough to receive her message and then say with a shrug, "You think I'm beautiful and any boy would be proud to go out with me, but you don't know Gusty Peterson and I do. He thinks I'm sick and psycho and that's all there is to it."
"I think you're the one who thinks you're sick, whatever that means. But I have to admit that was exactly what I was thinking. You're gorgeous, you just don't know it, and any boy would be proud to be with you." She winks at me, then stacks our empty bowls and tosses them into the trash can. "Let's go to the security area to wait for your dad."
I follow her very reluctantly. The pants I'm wearing are chafing the insides of my thighs, and my shirt feels weirdly constricting. For the first time in two years I'm wearing a store-bought outfit. My found wardrobe is probably a little much for Dad to take in, and maybe I don't want to show him that part of me. So instead I'm wearing the black slacks Mom got me for Christmas and an eyelet blouse Aunt Ann picked out for me when we went to California wine country last year. She buys even more stuff for me when she's blitzed.
We park ourselves by the security gate and Aunt Ann takes my hand. One of her fingernails digs into my wrist, but I don't mind so much because she's helping me feel less shaky. I take slow breaths and practice in my mind how I'll be. I will smile slightly, but not like I'm excited. More like I'm only slightly glad to see him. I will not cry. I will not say anything to him unless he speaks to me first, and then I will give him exclusively one-word answers until we get into the car. Once in the car I will open up slightly more, just enough to give him encouragement so that he doesn't give up the idea of trying to talk to me. By the time we get to Aunt Ann's house, I will begin volunteering information, but only the kind of stuff I would say at a job interview, such as my grades, my hobbies, current interests. I will mention Mom more times than he is comfortable with, and I will say her medical career is going splendidly, which will be almost the same thing as spitting in his eye. But I'll do it innocently so he won't know I'm consciously toying with him.
That's the plan.
But when the people start filing past the security gate, my heart rises to my mouth and all thoughts sail out of my brain. Aunt Ann is jumping up and down very slightly, biting her thin lip and kind of squealing. I stand behind her because I would rather she be the first person Dad sees when he gets here. Almost the entire plane full of people has filed past us before a balding man with blond-streaked hair, dark skin, and shining eyes comes up to us, drops his suitcase, and holds up his arms. "Hi, girls!" he cries.
It's Dad. I didn't even recognize him.
"Your hair!" Aunt Ann cries as she rushes at him. "Oh, little brother!" She starts crying.
I just stand there as they hug and hug. "Hey, little sister," the man who is my dad says. Aunt Ann is really the older sibling, but Dad calls her his little sister because she's so petite. "How you been?" he asks her, looking at me over her shoulder.
I don't like the way he's looking at me, as if he expects me to be mad and wants me to know that he's fully prepared for it. He pulls away from Ann and puts one hand on my shoulder. "Kristi. My, you've grown into a beautiful young woman."
I don't know what to say to him. I try to read his mind, but his strange face and weirdly skinny body are too distracting for me. He lost a lot of hair, but he looks a lot younger than he used to because he's so thin. The way he moves on his feet is light, as if he's ready to jump into action. He holds his head high, and his shoulders are square instead of bent like they used to be. He almost looks like a movie star. I watch him like I'd watch TV not expecting it to watch me back.
A smile slowly creeps over his face. The wrinkles around his eyes bend, and he takes a step toward me. I can see what he means to do, so I pick up his suitcase to hold between us. "We're parked a long way from here," I say, then I turn my back on him and walk away.
DINNER AT AUNT ANN'S
Things don't go the way I planned. I thought Dad would have all kinds of questions for me, but mostly he talks to Aunt Ann. He keeps looking at me in the side mirror of Ann's Honda Civic, as if he can't believe the way I look. I let him look at me, but I don't have anything to say to him, and apparently he has no trouble containing his curiosity about me as he answers all of Aunt Ann's questions about Ebola, dysentery, typhoid, measles, tuberculosis, malaria, and parasitic worms. I can tell she's working her way up to AIDS, which gives me a little time to think strategy.
I'm not in control. I thought I would be the one fending off the questions, but Dad is too busy to ask a single one. Aunt Ann is too fascinated by disease to give him a moment's thought about anything else. I listen to him explain that Ebola is rare, even in Africa, and that he hasn't seen a case yet. And yes, there are parasites, but they aren't transmitted through human-to-human contact. That he's inoculated against most everything else and so we shouldn't worry about catching anything from him. He sounds authoritative and happy to be talking about medicine. When she starts asking about AIDS he practically jumps out of the car with excitement, talking all about how his team is heading up a national campaign for education about prophylactics. A puppeteer from San Francisco is going to give educational puppet shows to grown women about birth control, how to say no to a man, and how to look out for an abusive personality. It sounds a little patronizing to make a puppet show for grownups, but then, what do I know about African people? Maybe they like puppets. Or maybe they're just too polite to tell rich do-gooders from America when they're being condescending jerk-offs.
We finally get to Aunt Ann's tiny house, which is one suburb over from ours. It's a poorer suburb, because she doesn't make that much money as a hospital administrator, but she likes where she lives. She's surrounded by a lot of Latinos, and she shouts incoherent Spanish at them, so they love her. Near where we park the car a whole bunch of guys wearing sweaty office shirts are kicking around a soccer ball. When they see her, one of them cries, "Mamacita, por qué no vienes para una cerveza luego, eh?"
"No puedo, papi!" She giggles. Her face is bright red. "Mi sobrina bellísima está en casa con mi hermano."
They break into even faster Spanish that I can't begin to understand. I had only a year of the Language of Our Hispanic Neighbors at Journeys before the parents decided they wanted their kids to learn the Language of Our French-Canadian Neighbors instead. Aunt Ann yells something about mañana at them, and then we all go into her tiny house.
She has put up a banner that says, "Welcome home, little brother!" in big orange letters. She runs into the kitchen, c
alling over her shoulder, "Sangria all around?"
We both call, "Yes," at her, but she's already in the kitchen, leaving us alone together.
I sit down on the couch because I don't know what else to do. Dad sits in the ratty overstuffed chair across from me. He has a smile on his face just like the one he probably gives to patients before he does something painful to them. I can feel the guilt practically wafting off him. "How are you, Kristi?"
"Oh, fine," I say distantly. "How are you?"
He leans his elbows on his knees and weaves his fingers together. "I'm wondering if you're going to forgive me, I guess."
"For what?" I say very coldly. The last thing I'm going to do is make this easy for him. In fact, I'm going to make it as difficult as it can possibly be.
"For leaving, obviously."
"Oh. That."
He gets up and leans against Aunt Ann's fake fireplace, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his thin, cheap slacks. As he speaks, I get a wave of guilt and sorrow, though he's hiding it well. "You know, I really thought that you wouldn't change so much. Your Aunt Ann kept sending me pictures, but to be honest I didn't absorb it. I thought you were still that skinny little girl, that you would stay that way."
"And now I'm fat," I say, to make him feel like an asshole.
"You're not fat." He says this without looking at me. I can feel his thoughts jutting out of him, all of them tinged with shame, but the look on his face is very calm. He smiles faintly at me, and his eyes trail to the flowers on the coffee table. He seems to be hiding his true emotions, but I don't understand why he would want to hide his guilt. Doesn't he know guilt would help me forgive him? Sometimes being able to read minds makes people even more confusing. "Looking at you, I can see a lot has happened in your life since I last saw you."
Dad sits down across from me again, his eyes on the floor, and he begins to speak as if he were recounting a very distant tale that doesn't involve me at all. "You know, it was like time got compressed while I was there. I was so busy, I didn't really have time to think about anything or anyone else. That's what I needed. To get out of my own head. And so two months would pass by and it would feel like a week. And after two months I'd think, 'Well, that wasn't so long. I can stay a little longer.' And I kept staying a little longer and a little longer, until all those 'little longers' added up to two years. I looked up from the operating table one day and suddenly I was two years older, even though I felt better about myself than I ever had. But I couldn't hide the fact from myself any longer that I'd let too much time go by. That was wrong, and I won't let that happen again, Kristi."
I watch him. My face is blank, not because I'm hiding anything but because I feel blank, wiped out. It is strange to talk to him, to hear him talk. He's relating to me like I'm an adult, which is how he always related to me. I used to like being his confidante, but now I'm not sure how I feel about the way he talks to me. I don't understand it.
"Here we are!" Aunt Ann calls as she carries in a tray loaded with guacamole and chips, a pitcher of sangria with three glasses, and a bottle of seltzer. I feel in shock. All the questions I was expecting from Dad still haven't happened, and it makes me wonder why. Why no questions?
Dad digs into the guacamole with real gusto while Aunt Ann pours the drinks. She puts a ton of seltzer into my glass with hardly any wine, which is fine with me because I don't really like the taste of alcohol. We all sit around, Aunt Ann and I silently watching Dad while he devours the guacamole. He looks at us, embarrassed. "It's been a long time since I've eaten food like this."
"That's all right." Aunt Ann grins. "I didn't believe you when you said you lost so much weight, but I must say you look great, Ken."
"Well, it's amazing what an appetite suppressant hard work and happiness can be." He smiles at her. She gives him a nervous little twinkle, and her beady eyes dart to me. Dad doesn't notice and begins part two of his lecture about the Diseases of Western Africa and the State of Health Care in the Third World. Aunt Ann and I listen, she avidly, I quietly. He talks and talks into the night, all through our late dinner of chicken enchiladas and corn on the cob. When Aunt Ann serves us her failed experiment with homemade flan, he switches from rare tropical parasites to problems with funding for his clinic. Then, as we sip coffee in the living room, all of us melted into the furniture, Dad goes on to describe the camaraderie of the international staff in the hospital where he works. Aunt Ann finally looks at her watch and cries, "We should get Kristi home, Ken."
He yawns loudly. "Yep, it's late." We all stand. He comes up to me, rubs my shoulders, and gives me a kiss on the cheek. I let him kiss me even though I want to pull away. I have to meet him halfway, don't I? I can hear in his thoughts, I must be careful not to push her too hard. I guess that's nice of him. "It's a school night for you, love bug, isn't it?" he says as he sits back down on the couch.
"If you can call Journeys a school." I toss this at him like I'd offer bait to a fish.
"Oh yeah, I want to hear all about that tomorrow night over dinner, just us, okay?" he says as he puts his feet up. I let his thoughts come to me, but his mind is still eight thousand miles away. I get short flashes of what he's seeing: women wearing bright sarongs, an ancient jeep working its way around a collapsed dirt road, a sunset red with dust in the air, a field full of green tents, pouring rain. Africa.
Maybe he just hasn't come home to us all the way yet. Maybe it's too much for him to absorb, and later, maybe tomorrow, he'll really be here, really with me. "Do you mind if I don't come along, Ann?" he says as he closes his eyes. "I'm pretty bushed."
Ann nods at him, though she must know he can't see her with his eyes closed. "Come on, honey," she says softly to me. I get up and follow her out the door and into the car. We don't say anything the entire fifteen-minute drive home until we pull up in front of the house. It's completely dark, so I figure Mom is probably hiding in her bedroom. Aunt Ann squeezes my hand and gives me an apologetic smile. "After all the excitement dies down, Kristi," she begins.
"Yeah, I know," I say, not because I agree that excitement is the reason for anything, but because I know what she's trying to do and I think it's nice of her. I can hear her thinking, Why can't Ken see she needs a father? She hurts for me, and this makes me feel a little less numb, which I guess is good. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I give her a kiss on her hard cheekbone and pull my new suitcase out of the back seat. "Thanks for all the stuff."
"Don't mention it, sweetheart," she says as I close the car door. She waits until I'm inside before she drives away in her buzzy little car.
Mom is either asleep or pretending to be. I've come home to a very quiet house, but the noise in my brain keeps me up all night.
GUSTY IS ZANY
By the time I get to school the next day, the pink tree is nearly bare. Petals cling very sparsely to the twisting branches, but the wind, which picked up last night, will take care of the rest. Pretty soon the nice part of fall will be over and the dark and cold will set in. I'm standing near the window before Morning Meeting begins, looking at that tree, remembering that only a few days before, I'd stood underneath it waiting for Gusty, feeling a simple happy feeling. Now that Dad has come back, I wonder if I'll ever feel a simple feeling again. Suddenly everything is complicated. It's as if the tree shed all its petals as a message to me: Be careful what you wish for.
Dad is still as magnetic as I remember him. Something about the intimate way he talks makes you want him to like you. When I was a kid, I loved his magnetism. I felt it last night, but somehow now it makes me angry. I don't want to be drawn into his magnet. I don't want to be a metal daughter again. A metal daughter is a robot. Change the batteries, oil the joints. Low maintenance.
Mom has been acting totally weird. This morning over coffee she asked me how I felt about seeing Dad again, but that was it. She wanted to hear only about my feelings. She didn't have any questions about Dad at all. I probed her thoughts as she stared into her mug, and I realized she's trying not to p
ut me in the middle of their fight. I guess that's nice of her, but somehow it doesn't feel natural. Nothing does.
Morning Meeting is starting late today for some reason. People are milling around me, and their voices blend with their thoughts in my mind so I can listen to the background the same way I would hear the ocean. It washes over me like warm water, all those thoughts. Usually hearing what people are thinking feels like torture, but now that Dad's back, none of that seems important. It's rare when I can do this, but today I let their thoughts come and go as I watch pink petals fly away from the tree.
I feel a tap on my arm and turn to see Gusty giving me a half smile that makes his mouth look lopsided. "I've been looking for you," he says. "Are you feeling okay? You were pretty upset the other day."
The quiet feeling is suddenly gone. "I'm sorry about breaking down like that."
"Kristi, come on, we're old friends." His quiet tone makes me look at his face. He's squinting at me. I can hear that he's thinking hard about me, imagining what it would be like to be in my situation. He hurts for me. This makes me feel for a moment as if I'm not alone, as though Gusty magically climbed inside my life with me and is looking around, taking stock. "Your dad coming back, that's major," he says.
There's something so honest about him, it makes me honest, too. "Yeah, it's very major."
He rests his hand on my shoulder. "Listen, you're a tough little woman. You'll get through this."
"Hey. I'm not so little," I say, pretending to be mad.
"Yes you are," he insists with a smirk. "Allow me to demonstrate." He takes a step closer to me and rests his chin on top of my head. "You see, Kristi," he explains in a clinical tone as his voice box vibrates against my eye, "only a little woman could fit under my chin like this."
This is such a bizarre thing to do that I freeze. I expect him to step away, but he doesn't. He stands with my head tucked under his chin as if this were perfectly natural. I would be turned on standing so close to him if this weren't so weird.
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