by Niki Lenz
“Did you see that? How Mom just pawned him off on us? That’s pretty much the story of my life now.” Bea scowled and ate a cracker.
I watched Julian paw at the crackers with chubby fingers. “Is it even a little bit fun? I always thought having a baby in the house would be like having a personal living doll. Can you dress him up at least?”
Bea shrugged. “Not really. He hates getting his clothes changed. It’s not worth the screaming.”
This whole thing was so unfair that I felt outraged on Bea’s behalf.
Bea leaned closer and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “My parents missed my gymnastics meet last night. They’ve never missed one before. I had to get a ride with Becca because they said they were just too busy and exhausted to go.”
“It was just one meet,” I said, trying desperately to find a silver lining here. “I’m sure once things settle down they’ll be able to find time for both of you.”
“And it was Mom’s turn to bring snacks. Which I reminded her of two days in a row. Guess who had to explain to everyone why they were going to be starving on the way home?”
That was harsh. Snacks were my favorite part of sports games.
Bea closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch. “I think I could sleep for a week.”
I lowered my voice enough that I hoped Mrs. Morrison wouldn’t be able to hear me from the kitchen. “This isn’t fair at all! I mean, you didn’t sign up for this. And now this kid that your parents have adopted is just like…ruining your life!”
I thought Bea might’ve had something to say about that, but she’d fallen asleep. I covered her with the blanket that’s always draped over the couch and waited for my tuna casserole. Julian stared at me with big round eyes and continuously stuffed his face with crackers. He was just giggling, drooling proof that one little addition had the potential to wreck a whole entire family.
When I got home after choking down my portion of tuna-cheese slime, I found Dad camped out on the couch with his laptop. Jungle Survivor was on the TV, but he was so focused on the computer that he didn’t even look up when I walked in. In fact, I think I could have thrown a flaming bag of dog poo at his head and he wouldn’t have noticed. Something was up.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, sitting down next to him on the couch and waving my hand in front of his face to try to bring him out of his stupor.
“Hey,” he said, and then, “Do you think I’m more of a Kennedy or a Clinton?”
“Huh?”
Dad’s face turned the color of pistachio pudding as he realized who he was talking to. “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s for my profile on this website.” He tried to subtly turn his screen away from me.
A whooshing sound filled my ears, and panic sent my hands shaking. What was this fresh madness? Dad was on a dating site now?
“You’re more of a John Quincy Adams, I’d say.” I tried to keep my voice casual, but Dad’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Old JQA, huh? Maybe if I grew in my chops…” Dad started stroking at his sideburns. “Wait…wasn’t he the one who was always swimming naked in the river?”
I shrugged. “He was in tune with nature.”
Dad started typing away furiously, and I risked a lean in his direction to get a glimpse of the screen. The website was called A Lid for Every Pot, and it seemed to be a dating site for people with geeky hobbies. Dad was fully entrenched in the history-buff section, filling out his profile information. He’d already uploaded a picture of himself wearing his stovepipe hat, like Abraham Lincoln.
I sat there watching Jungle Survivor and listening to Dad introducing himself to future wives. I wondered if he even mentioned me in his profile.
A man on Jungle Survivor ditched the rest of his team to claim the prize in the challenge. He jumped up and down with excitement about the five-course dinner and the night at a luxury hotel that he’d be enjoying alone. His teammates glared at him. I understood their rage at his betrayal. But unlike those jungle survivors, I wasn’t going to let Dad leave me high and dry in the pulsing tropical sun.
“Hey, so next weekend we should finish the baseboards in the attic,” I said, watching his face closely. If he had any dates planned, he would definitely flinch or something.
“Well…maybe. We’ll have to wait and see.” He glanced at his laptop screen one more time before shutting the lid.
“Oh really. Not sure what you might have going on, huh?”
“I just like to keep my plans free and breezy, you know? I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy.”
Since when? We couldn’t even plan weekends now? I couldn’t count on my dad being around or finishing projects that we’d started together because he might get a date?
He finally glanced at me long enough to see the pout forming on my face. “Hey there, Giblet. We’ll get your room done. I just can’t say for sure exactly when.”
I crossed my arms and harrumphed and told Dad I was going to bed. He kissed my forehead and booped my nose (which I hate) and told me he’d be up in a few minutes to say my prayers with me. He never came.
With Potus in a ball at my feet, I lay there listening to the sounds of the house. Dad turned off the TV around ten and headed to bed. I stared at the ceiling, thinking about my new room and all the time that me and Dad could have been working on it if he hadn’t been brainwashed to find true love in a hurry.
Finally, Dad’s snoring reached Civil War cannon levels of loud, so I snuck downstairs in my sock feet. His computer was still sitting on the couch where he’d left it. For a second I rested my hands on the keys and wondered if what I was about to do was right. I’d never betrayed my dad’s trust this way before. I mean, if you can forget the fart basket and the stuffed-chicken sabotage. But hacking into his computer? That was taking things to the next level.
Potus, who had followed me downstairs, gave me a judgy look. “What?” I whispered. “Dad didn’t even come to say my prayers with me like he said he would.” The dog tilted his head as if to say, Is that all?
“No, that is not all. He also couldn’t squeeze out any time for me in his busy date-filled weekend.”
The dog just kept staring. It’s like he knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. Or maybe I knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to. Animals are very sensitive to human feelings. Including guilt. “Look, dog, I know what I’m doing.”
Potus sighed and put his head down on his paws, as if he was tired of arguing with me.
I let out a long breath and touched the pad to wake up the screen. And there was the dating website, right where Dad had left off.
His username and password were saved on Lidforeverypot.com, so all I had to do was click Sign In. That’s how much my dad did NOT worry that I would mess with his stuff. Gulp. And there at the top of the page was his goofy, smiling face. Staring at me with that silly stovepipe hat on his head that we’d gotten at the Lincoln Library last summer. My stomach churned.
Maybe Pastor Davy was too geeky even for these geek chicks? I mean, his profile said he loved presidential trivia, history, and Jungle Survivor. I did smile for a fraction of a second when I noticed he’d called me the love of his life and his pride and joy. At least he wasn’t hiding his single-dad status.
A tiny red notification dot with the number ten in it signaled from his mailbox. I clicked it, my fingers shaking. Ten matches in the first couple of hours! Ten women who were charmed by him wearing a hat that looked like a canister of oatmeal. How is this happening?
I started answering emails as fast as my fingers would go.
Sorry but I’m deathly allergic to dogs. (Nope.)
Sorry but I actually hate all movies about Nixon. (Lies.)
Sorry but I might be moving to Guam. (Ha ha.)
Sorry but I’m not sure my daughter would approve. (My favorite.)
No
w that the inbox was clear, I put my real plan into action. It took me approximately ten minutes to set up a different Lid for Every Pot account, steal a profile picture off Google, and write up a bio that would make Dad drool.
“Clarissa Washington” lived in the next town over. She was a historian and a museum curator. She liked to dress up like Jackie Kennedy. She played the accordion (I figured she had to have at least one flaw, or Dad would think she was too good to be true).
Clarissa sent Dad a simple note saying she was interested in what she’d read of his profile, and would he want to meet up the following Saturday for lunch? Noon at Ziggy’s in Springdale.
I thought about all the weekend road trips and Saturdays full of projects and silly pajama days with my dad and how all that time would definitely go to someone else if he started dating seriously. I took one last shaky breath before clicking Send.
Dad would be at Ziggy’s for lunch on Saturday, but Clarissa Washington would not make an appearance. Dad was about to learn an important lesson about people on the internet not always being who they say they are, a lesson he’d pounded into my head since elementary school. Some pots don’t need lids. Some pots do a great job cooking stuff all by themselves.
Dad left for his date at eleven-thirty without telling me his plans. He had a bounce in his step and gel in his hair. I felt my heart squeeze as his truck pulled out of the driveway. Poor sucker. Dad would show up at Ziggy’s exactly on time. He’d request a table for two with a twinkle in his eye. And then he was going to wait, and wait, and wait.
I came home from watching movies at Bea’s house to what sounded like a plane being dismantled. I stepped over the cookbooks littering the living room floor and discovered the crashing was actually my dad throwing pots and pans around in the kitchen.
“Hey, Dad.” I dodged a large puddle of water in the middle of the checked tile floor. “What kind of science experiment is this?”
Dad’s cheeks were red, either from exertion or from heat. Every burner flamed on the gas stove, even though there were only two pans on there. It was sweaty hot.
“I was in the mood for lasagna.” He had three different dish towels flung over his shoulders, like he’d thrown them up there and then promptly forgotten where they were.
“Lasagna?”
He didn’t stop rummaging in the cabinet. “Yeah. Just like Mom used to make, remember?”
I did remember. My mom made the most amazing lasagna. It had so much cheese on top she had to smash it down with her hands so it wouldn’t fall out of the pan. I used to request lasagna for my birthday dinner every year, and Mom made a big deal out of fixing it for me. She would stick the birthday candles in the cheesy top and let me make a bonus lasagna wish in addition to my cake wish.
Dad yanked a jar of marinara out of the cabinet and immediately dropped it on the floor, shards of glass exploding and covering the walls and cabinets with chunky red sauce.
“Cheese and rice,” Dad muttered. He wasn’t using real swear words yet, so I figured it wasn’t too late to fix this situation.
“It’s okay. Hey, let’s call Ziggy’s and order a lasagna to go! We could go pick it up and then come back here and—”
“No Ziggy’s,” Dad said fervently. “I’m making it….I have Mom’s recipe right here.” He used one of the towels from his shoulder to wipe sauce off a thick cookbook.
I surveyed the disaster and the sad look on Dad’s face and turned off the burners that weren’t heating any pots. This catastrophe was at least partially my fault. Well, mine and Clarissa Washington’s. I grabbed a dish towel and crouched down to help mop up the sauce-and-glass mess.
“You okay, Dad?”
“This never happened when she made it,” Dad muttered, attempting to scoop the goop into a dustpan.
“Do you have another jar of sauce?” I asked, plucking a large chunk of glass out of the sludge.
Dad stood up and scanned the contents of the cabinet. “We have salsa….Do you think that would work?”
“Um…”
He unscrewed the jar and added the contents to the crunchy-looking meat scorched to the bottom of a frying pan. I tried not to think about how that would taste.
“Here, I’ll drain the noodles.” I grabbed the pot off the burner and quickly dropped it, screaming in pain.
“Grace! You gotta use one of those fluffy mittens when you touch hot pans!”
“Oh yeah. I forgot.” I ran my angry red palms under cool water to try to take some of the sting out.
“Here, let me do it.” Dad pulled some long white socks onto his hands, up to his elbows, and I burst out laughing.
“I thought you said you had to wear fluffy mittens!”
Dad straightened his back and stuck out his chin. “Well, we don’t have any of those. At least not any I could find…”
I reached into the drawer where the oven mitts lived and gave him two.
“Huh. What do you know?”
“I know how to take frozen pizza out of the oven,” I said.
“Well, let me drain at least.” He awkwardly tried to tilt the heavy pot to dump the water out while keeping the noodles in with a wooden spoon.
“Here.” I handed him a colander from a top cabinet, and he gave me a quizzical look. “I also know how to drain the noodles for my mac and cheese.”
The noodles dropped into the colander in one large stuck-together blob. Dad and I both stared at the ball of gluey ribbons.
“Is that what it’s supposed to look like?” he asked.
“How should I know?” I said, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the answer was no.
Dad got out a large glass casserole dish and began layering the shreds of noodles he could loosen from the ball with the meat and salsa mixture. Then a layer of cottage cheese (we didn’t have any ricotta, like the recipe called for). He finished the concoction by smashing an entire bag of mozzarella on the top, just like Mom used to do. As he pressed the mess in the pan, a single tear ran down his face.
I stared in horror. Dad didn’t cry! I mean, I hadn’t seen him cry since those first dark weeks without Mom. He was the strong one! I guess part of me thought he never missed her the way I did. But that tear told a different story. Guilt about all the ruined dates I’d orchestrated filled my guts. I put my hand on his arm, and he wiped angrily at the traitorous tear. “Must be the onions,” he said gruffly. But there weren’t any onions in there, and we both knew it.
While the lasagna (or whatever you would call the mess we’d made) smoldered, the smoke detector went off, and I had to help Dad wave dish towels at the black clouds billowing out of the oven.
“I don’t know what happened! It’s not even supposed to be done yet!” Dad yelled over the alarm.
I squinted through the smoke to the bottom of the oven, where the extra cheese had slipped off the top of the lasagna and made a blackened, broiling mess.
I slammed the oven door shut and turned it off, waving my dish towel toward the alarm until the screeching stopped.
Dad’s face drooped. “Maybe we should microwave it the rest of the way?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, but there was no way I was eating that mess. I dumped the disgusting lump in the microwave and then herded Dad into the living room and plopped him in front of the TV.
I crossed my arms. “This is all Miss Donna and Miss Marge’s fault,” I said, staring at whatever was happening on whatever show we both were not watching.
“What are you talking about?” Dad’s voice sounded tired.
“Those busybodies from church! They got it into your head that you should go on dates and stuff. They’re the ones making you sad.”
Dad sighed and rubbed his hands down his face. “This has very little to do with the church or those ladies, Grace. I know it must seem like that to you, but the truth of the matter is, I want to
start dating again. I’m lonely.”
My stomach turned to ice. This whole time I’d been thinking those ladies were putting thoughts in Dad’s head, trying to get all up in his business. But it was his choice. He wanted to date. He said he was lonely, and I believed him this time. His face was twisted miserably as he stared at the TV, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that single tear running down his face.
I felt something inside me break. A wall that had been resisting finally crumbled. I couldn’t stand to see my dad unhappy. Confused, sure. Gassy, you betcha. But I wasn’t going to cause him to be unhappy anymore. If going on dates was what he needed, I wasn’t going to interfere. My meddling days were over.
I cleared my throat. “You won’t be lonely for long, Dad. Somewhere out there is a lady just dying for some terrible puns and history trivia.” My voice softened to a whisper. “Don’t give up, okay? You should be happy.”
Dad smiled and squeezed my knee. “Hey, who said anything about giving up? This is your old man we’re talking about.”
“I think we should give up on that lasagna. What do you say we order some Chinese food?”
The microwave beep was accented by a terrible smell.
I hopped up to grab the menu, and Dad followed me into the kitchen. We stood in the doorway, surveying the clouds of smoke, the puddles of water and sauce, the chunk of unused noodles still in the sink.
Dad glanced at Mom’s open cookbook on the counter. It looked wilted and a bit singed around the edges. He let out a sigh. “Fine. Chinese it is.”
I pulled out paper plates and napkins. (Hey, I wasn’t going to do any extra dishes after the mountain we already had in the sink!) And when the delivery guy came I thanked him profusely and gave him an extra-big tip. I managed to make Dad laugh by balancing my chopstick under my nose like a mustache and somehow the sadness lifted by a fraction and we were able to exhale.
My dad was sad. And maybe lonely? And missing something in his life, I guess. And as much as I wished it wasn’t true, I needed to start thinking about him more than me and stop undermining his dates. If going on boring old nonsabotaged dates was what my dad needed, I wasn’t going to stand in his way.