by Niki Lenz
The next Saturday, I threw on a sequined mermaid sweatshirt and fish-scale-printed leggings and met up with Bea at Springdale’s only coffee shop. We were supposed to be working on our famous-American reports, but I couldn’t imagine cracking open a book when my head was so full of my dad and me and lasagna.
A quiet buzz of voices mixed with the clanking of dishes and the whirl of the coffee bean grinder. The smell of fresh-baked muffins wafted through the air.
Bea gave me a quick hug when she saw me, and we both ordered frappes with double whip and dragged our stuffed-full backpacks to a quiet table in the back.
After a few seconds of getting all her books and papers and notecards stacked and in order, Bea pulled a bag of Skittles out of her backpack and started divvying them up. Her blond hair was combed and decorated with a pink headband that coordinated with her pants. She was clean and neat and organized. Basically the opposite of my kitchen last weekend.
“Have you ever seen one of your parents have a complete and total meltdown?” I asked as I pulled my books out of my pack.
She scrunched up her nose. “Until recently I would have said no, but the other night my mom put one of Julian’s diapers on her head and pretended to bop herself over and over again with his stuffed bear.”
“Uh…why?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
“Julian thought it was funny. And he has this hilarious little laugh. Mom would do pretty much anything to get him to do it.”
“Oh, well…I was talking about like crying and stuff,” I said, not meeting Bea’s eyes.
“Hmm…I’ve seen my mom cry a few times, but not really my dad. Why? What’s going on?” She scooted the pile of red and green Skittles toward me and took a long sip of her coffee.
I filled her in on Chef Dad’s tearful dinner menu and her mouth dropped open.
“Oh Mylanta. Do you think it was because you’ve been messing with all his dates and now he thinks he’s hopelessly unlovable?”
My guts twisted as I remembered the miserable look on Dad’s face. “I hope not. That’s totally not what I meant to happen. The last person on earth who should feel unlovable is my dad. He’s the best. And I feel terrible about all the trouble we’ve caused him.”
“We’ve caused him? Speak for yourself. One hundred percent of these ideas have been yours, and I merely went along for the ride,” Bea said flatly.
I smiled. “That’s why you’re my best friend. I promise I won’t implicate you in any future interrogations.” I watched a guy carry his tray of drinks over to his table. A pretty lady grabbed her coffee off the tray and then set the other two smaller cups in front of their two kids. They all smiled at each other and I had to look away.
My mom used to love this place and she would take Dad and me here a lot on Saturday mornings. Dad would practice his preaching and I would order a pastry and Mom would sip her coffee. She was great at giving Dad ideas for funnier sermon illustrations. They would laugh together as he scribbled notes in the margins. I realized I hadn’t given Dad any sermon ideas in a long, long time.
“My dad is lonely. And not just missing-Mom kind of lonely, but, like, big-fat-hole-in-his-heart kind of lonely. You know?”
Saying the words out loud made them more real. I clutched at my frappe cup, even though my fingers felt frozen.
Bea nodded. “So, I guess that’s it? Quit derailing his dates if it’s making him cry over his pasta.”
I cringed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Bea cleared her throat, and her eyes traveled all around the room. “I’m not saying I think you’re wrong…,” she started. Which instantly made me think she totally thought I was wrong.
My eyes bulged at her over my frappe. “What?”
She pulled her straw out and licked the whipped cream off. “It’s just…what if letting your dad be happy…makes you super unhappy?”
I had a sudden vision of Dad ditching me to go play shuffleboard with Miss Regina. Missing my birthday to shop for cantaloupes with Rachel. Spending all our road trip money on presents for White Pants.
I took a deep breath. And then ate some Skittles. And then washed them down with some coffee. Finally, I lifted my eyes to Bea’s. “I guess if that’s what it takes, if that’s what he needs, then it’s just something I’ll have to deal with.”
The combination of sugar and caffeine was kicking in, and I stuffed my hands under my legs to keep them from vibrating. Or maybe it was the fact that my life was falling apart that made me shaky.
“Whew,” Bea said, and then, when she saw my hurt face, quickly added, “I’m just relieved we aren’t going to be doing any more scheming. I wasn’t meant for a life of crime!”
The iceberg of guilt in my chest melted just a tiny fraction after we’d officially decided to keep our noses out of Dad’s business. Maybe now I could just work on fixing things between the members of Team Gravy. No more lies. No more pranks. No more plans. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I wasn’t either.”
Sunday afternoon meant more construction time with Dad after church. Putting the trim up in the attic was taking a lot longer than I had thought it would, but I wasn’t even mad about it because at least that meant more time for Team Gravy.
“Here, hold this piece in place while I nail,” Dad said, whipping a hammer out of his tool belt. The funny thing was, he never remembered to put any of the tools back in the tool belt and was constantly losing them.
“Got it,” I said, holding the trim snugly against the wall. The corners matched up perfectly, thanks to my awesome work with the angle saw.
“Just a few more pieces to go and we can call this a wrap,” Dad said, wiping his brow with his flannel shirt.
“Still needs paint and carpet,” I reminded him. Then it would really feel like a finished space. I couldn’t wait to move all my stuff up here.
The rest of the trim pieces went up with only one minor problem—luckily, we’d measured too long instead of too short, so it was easily fixed. When the last board was nailed to the wall, Dad declared it was break time. He sat down on the rough wooden subfloor, and I jumped up to get cold cans of soda out of the mini-fridge. The tiny refrigerator was literally my only possession that had found its way up here so far, but it came in handy during construction.
“Cheers! To the best new room a girl could ask for!” I said, sitting on the floor next to Dad, and he clunked his Coke can into mine.
Dad took a long swig.
Even though it was early March, which most places would consider spring, in Missouri it was still cold and gray. There were some dirty patches of snow still piled up in parking lots and everyone was just ready for winter to be over. The magic of the snow is definitely dead by March. My eyes watched some random snowflakes that drifted by the window and I hoped they didn’t plan on staying long. “Hey, you know what I thought about this morning?”
“What?”
“That night of the blizzard. When I was ten. Do you remember?” I asked.
Dad smiled. “Yes. How could I forget? I think I got frostbite.”
I laughed, remembering the night so many years ago like it was yesterday. I’d gone to bed on a regular weeknight, but in the middle of the night, I awoke to Dad shaking my shoulder. “Come with me,” he said. “You gotta see this.” He bundled my sleepy self up in my warmest coat, mittens, and hat. And then we walked hand in hand into what looked like the inside of a snow globe. It felt like magic. I hadn’t been bothered by the biting wind or the bitter cold. I’d just stared as the snowflakes danced in the streetlights and the neighborhood transformed into something out of a Christmas storybook. Dad and I watched the snow until we were both shivering and our ears hurt from the wind and cold. But I remembered the feeling of being the only two people in the world. Just me and Dad. And thinking that it felt perfect.
“What made you think of that?” Dad asked, but I just shrugg
ed. I didn’t want to tell him I was still wishing we were the only two people in the world. Not after I’d just vowed to support his new dating goals. But as I watched his face, I could still remember the snowflakes that landed on his eyelashes that night.
“A special memory, I guess. Just the two of us.” I smiled at Dad, and he suddenly looked like his T-shirt collar was too tight.
“I’m gonna order a pizza tonight. What kind do you want?”
“We always get Hawaiian,” I said, cautiously studying his change in body language.
“Right. Right. I’ll get one Hawaiian, and maybe one pepperoni. Everyone likes pepperoni, right?”
“I guess. Why two pizzas? That’s a lot for just us two.”
Dad paused and flicked at an invisible speck on his knee. “I invited someone over for dinner. An old friend from high school. Her name is Gretchen.”
There was a long pause. I didn’t know what Dad wanted me to say about this. He’d invited a woman over to our house for dinner. Was she his old girlfriend?
“Gretchen,” I repeated, like some kind of not very intelligent robot. I glanced over at Dad’s face. He blushed. Or maybe he was just sweaty from construction. The corners of his mouth were curled up in a smile, though. And when he looked at me, it was almost like he was asking my permission.
It took all of my brainpower to remember that this was what I wanted. I wanted my dad to be happy. But a tiny part of me felt like this was some kind of test. A date at home would be so very easy to sabotage….
“So, you know her from high school,” I said cautiously. I needed more information.
“Yeah,” Dad said. “We were actually friends when we were little kids. I used to cut the hair off her Barbie dolls, and she used to put frogs in my backpack.”
Frogs in your backpack, huh. Maybe Gretchen and I had more in common than I would like to admit. I squashed the urge to put salt in her iced tea and thumbtacks on her chair. At least for now.
“I’m sure she’ll just croak for some pepperoni, then,” I said, giving my dad the wide-open Get it? look he always gives me.
“Well played, Giblet. Well played.”
* * *
Dad jumped in the shower to wash all the attic stink off him, and I decided I’d better try my best to make a good impression too.
I flicked through my closet and settled on a lime-green sweater with a cute lemon pattern. My grandma Bette had sent it from New York last month, and I hoped it might cheer me up. I paired it with a purple sequined skirt. As I pulled the sweater over my head, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to control my urge to get rid of Gretchen. I just kept telling myself I only wanted Dad to be happy.
I pulled my hair into two pigtails and then wound them into buns, Princess Leia–style. After selecting a Dr Pepper Lip Smacker, I gave myself my most winning smile in the mirror.
Gretchen would love me. And she’d love my dad. And they’d love each other. And even if nobody loved anyone, everyone loved pizza, so it would all be okay.
At exactly six o’clock there was a knock on the door. I flung it open and stared at the lady standing on our porch. She was a lot prettier than I was expecting. She wore a long gray coat, with a soft flowery top underneath. Her jewelry sparkled, and red curls framed her face. Everything about her looked expensive, and her fancy perfume punched me in the nose. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.
“Hello, Gretchen. Nice to meet you. I’m Grace, and I believe you used to bully my dad when you were kids.”
She smiled and cocked one eyebrow. “Hello, Grace. I’ll tell you some stories about your dad, and then you can decide who the bully was.” Somehow that one cocked eyebrow made it feel like me and Gretchen were in on a joke or something. I instantly liked her just a little bit.
“Is that the pizza guy?” Dad leapt down the stairs, still buttoning his blue shirt. He saw Gretchen and froze on the last stair, a big, goofy grin on his face.
“Hi, Davy!” She leaned over the threshold.
I held the door open even more. “Won’t you come in?”
She stepped inside, and Dad bounded across the room in three large steps and shook her hand like she was a car salesman or something.
“Grace, I see you’ve met Gretchen. Fun story, Gretchen and I recently ran into each other at the DMV. I was retaking my eye exam, and I thought it would be funny to loudly spell…well, I don’t need to tell you exactly what I spelled. The point is, the examiner did not laugh, but Gretchen cracked up, and when I turned around to see who got me…” He looked at her and they grinned at each other.
“It was pretty funny to hear a preacher spell POOP at the top of his lungs,” Gretchen said.
Dad took Gretchen’s coat and hung it on the rack. “I couldn’t believe it. There she was. The girl who used to steal all my paper route money.”
Gretchen had the good sense to look slightly embarrassed about that one. “Well,” she said, “candy you buy with stolen money tastes better.”
Gretchen walked around our living room, touching and commenting on things, while Dad followed her. She seemed nice, although not too interested in me. Dad, on the other hand, was acting like a kid who’d eaten too much sugary cereal for breakfast—all sweaty and jittery and talking a mile a minute.
His face relaxed when the doorbell rang again. “Ah, the food’s here.” While he paid the pizza guy, Gretchen and I sat silently at the kitchen table. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. Then she examined her manicure.
I was grateful when Dad returned and we could dig into the piping-hot pizza.
“So, Gretchen, what have you been doing for the last…twenty years?” Dad asked, smiling. He struggled with the packet of hot peppers, and instead of just opening, the envelope exploded in a confetti of red flakes all over the table.
“Smooth move,” I whispered. Geez, maybe I didn’t even have to pull any pranks to ruin Dad’s dates. His nerves seem to be doing a pretty good job of that without any help from me.
“Well, I work as an auditor,” she said.
There was a weird pause where I hoped my dad would jump in and say something charming, but no such luck, so I kept things rolling. “And what is an auditor again?”
Gretchen smiled with her extra-white teeth. “An auditor checks to make sure that individuals and businesses are complying with tax laws.”
“That’s so funny, because I’ve always said a pastor is like an auditor of souls.” I crossed my arms and smiled.
Dad smirked at me. “Is that what you’ve always said? You literally just asked what an auditor is.” We all chuckled at that, but then silence settled around us like deep snow. Turns out being an auditor is not a rich well of conversational topics.
We took cheesy bites of pizza and stared at our laps.
“So, what do you think about my dad? He’s great, right? Quite a catch, if you ask me.”
Dad kicked me under the table. It hurt my heart more than it hurt my shin. But Gretchen just laughed. “He is pretty cool.”
I snorted at that. Because my dad is a lot of things, but cool is definitely not one of them.
Gretchen told us all about her job (I zoned out), her car (just bought it), and her lake house (how much did auditors get paid?). Dad seemed to be losing interest even faster than I was. Finally, she started talking about her tiny Pomeranian puppy, a topic I could get behind!
“Oh, my mom always wanted one of those dogs! They are so cute and fluffy and…”
The grown-ups looked very uncomfortable all of a sudden, and I didn’t think about what I’d said until everyone went silent. We all just shoveled pizza in our mouths, thinking about the big dumb elephant in the room, which I’d just named.
My mom.
Who was dead.
Was I not allowed to talk about my mom in front of Dad’s dates? Was that a rule or something? It felt li
ke a pokey wooden sliver under my heart.
Wow, dating is harder than it looks on TV.
It was so quiet, we all jumped out of our seats when there was another knock on the door.
“Who in the heck would that be?” I said.
“I’ll get it,” Dad said, springing to his feet.
“Hey, Team Gravy!” Miss O’Connor burst through the door and froze when she saw us gathered around the table. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t know you had company.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Dad grabbed the stuff out of Miss O’Connor’s hands. “Lemme help you with those bags. Uh, Gretchen, this is Olivia O’Connor. She’s our friend and Grace’s history teacher.”
They nodded at each other, and Miss O’Connor bustled inside. She had a way of filling up a room, like she had this energy pulsing out of her. It was a happy energy, and I liked it.
Dad peeked in the bag. “What’s in here?”
Miss O’Connor grinned. “Well, Grace was telling me all about the costumes she’s making for the World’s Fair, and I told her I’d look for fabric the next time I went to Branson.”
“What costumes?” Dad asked, glancing at me as I grinned from ear to ear.
“Surprise! We were hired to be reenactors at the St. Louis World’s Fare Heritage Festival this summer! Remember, I told you about it? You and I will be cosplaying the most popular president and first daughter duo in history—Teddy and Alice Roosevelt, who famously visited the World’s Fair in 1904.”
“You’re going to dress up in costumes?” Gretchen asked, letting out this high-pitched laugh that sounded like a hyena.
Dad said, “I’m one hundred percent on board with this.” His cheeks pinked up, but he gave me an extra-tight hug. “Why not? We were already planning on road-tripping to St. Louis this summer. Got to rub that billiken belly.”
“Yeah!” I said. “And…I had another great idea. While we’re there and all dressed up, let’s re-create the photo of Four-Times-Great-Granny Juliet.”