“Bonjour, Papa,” I say when he picks up.
“Agnes! ¿Cómo estás, mi hija?” No matter how many of these temporary and permanent separations we endure, hearing his voice on the phone when he’s so far away makes me sad.
Sometimes it’s easier to not think too hard about how much I miss Jasper and Dad. To just let them be and know they’re happy there and Mom and I are plugging along here. What makes that even sadder is the fact that my very happiest memories are the ones where we were all together, no matter how chaotic it was.
“Bien, papá. ¿Podemos hablar?” I pause, and he waits. My father is incredibly patient. Sometimes that drives my mom nuts. She says she just wants him to flip out or rush or get aggravated like she does. It isn’t his style. “Lo siento, no llame… I… I’m sorry I haven’t called in a while.” I switch to English because I don’t know if I can translate everything I need to say accurately enough in Spanish.
“Don’t apologize.” His English has this slight accent that sounds a little Dominican and maybe French, I guess. Mom rolls her eyes about it, but I’ve heard her tell her friends he has the best phone voice of any man on Earth. “Senior year is so vital for the rest of your academic career. The last thing I expect is for you to call your father when I’m sure you’re studying like mad.”
Right. Studying.
“I called because…first of all, I have a social activism project.” Yes, I am avoiding the personal in favor of the political.
I can practically hear him sit up a little taller, his interest piqued. “What is it?”
“Before I tell you, I don’t want Mom to know yet. I don’t need her worried.”
“I can’t promise that, but I promise I’ll use my discretion.”
“I’m attending a school without an official prom. The independent proms they hold are segregated.” I think Jasper learned the art of sighing from our father.
“A segregated prom? If I’d never been to the Deep South, I’d think you were joking. I told your mother another position in the city would have suited you two better.”
“I think she wanted out of the city. Plus it’s expensive to live there, Dad.”
“I’m making more than enough off my publishing royalties.”
As brilliant as my father is, he has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact it’s not easy for Mom to hear him humble-brag about his success when she gave up her career so that he could have it.
“Anyway, here we are, and now my friends and I are raising funds for this alternative prom and we’re trying to get the word out—”
I can practically see the Harvard crest dancing in my father’s eyes. “Let me know where to wire money. And I’ll make sure the right media outlets hear about this.” His pen scratches furiously as he takes notes, and I figure I’d better find a way to tell Mom before she reads about it in a column one of Dad’s colleagues wrote for NPR.
“Ollie is helping with all that,” I tell him.
“Wonderful. Her parents have strong connections. This will be an absolute boon to your portfolio. Agnes, this is the kind of story the Ivies salivate over. I know you think you want to go to NYU, and that’s a solid school, but all top universities are open to reexamining a candidate on a special case-by-case basis. I certainly think spearheading such a radical social movement will give you a fantastic edge for reconsideration. The academic world will be your oyster. Maybe this move to such a rustic area wasn’t a total loss.”
I’m not going to tell Dad there’s no need to reexamine anything, because I’m going to NYU. I’m happy about my decision. Dad will have to get used to the idea.
“Dad—”
“Hold on for one second, Agnes.” My dad puts his hand over the speaker to muffle his voice, and his French is too fast for me to untangle even if I could hear clearly. What I can make out is his tone, which is light and flirty.
A woman answers back. The voice sounds…young.
It’s 1:00 a.m. in France right now.
“Dad?”
“Sorry, honey. That was just Celeste, my…intern.”
I flip open my laptop and Google her first name and my father’s university. She’s there in a dozen press photos, beautiful with sly eyes. She’s maybe in her twenties, grew up in Haiti, and got a scholarship in my father’s department this past fall.
“Your intern?”
This time his pause isn’t patient. It’s cautious.
“Did your mother tell you about us?” He drops his voice, and I wonder if it’s because Celeste is listening.
“Mom said you had something to tell me.” Dad doesn’t seem to know how to fill the expectant silence.
“You know the divorce was finalized months ago.” Pause. “I met someone.” Pause. “It was early this fall, before you came for the holidays. Your mother and I… It’s complicated.” Pause. “I married the woman—Celeste is her name—in September…”
“Celeste, your intern, is Celeste, your wife?” Shock incinerates all rational thoughts.
“At first it was purely a marriage of convenience, no romantic feelings involved. I wasn’t going to mention it to any of you because we planned to end it quietly as soon as Celeste was able to achieve tenure. She’d like to accept a prestigious job in the United States—”
“You’re moving back?” I pace my room like mad, trip over a flip-flop, and crash one shoulder into the wall. “Does Mom know? Did she know when we were in Paris?”
“Possibly. It’s complicated, Agnes.” Pause. Pause. Pause. “I should have been clearer about Celeste with your mother earlier. I should have let everyone know as soon as emotions started to build between us. I know your mother and I had talks about reconciling, and I should have been honest… I know the extent of my feelings for Celeste came as a surprise. For everyone.”
“Yeah, Dad, an unexpected fact is the literal definition of surprise. How could you have expected anything else?”
Pause.
He stumbles through explanations and rationalizations, and I’m struck dumb with guilt. All this time, I blamed Mom. Not that I was totally out of line. She did sleep with a married man. She did use technology like a bonehead. But…
She was hurt. Her heart was aching like mine after I found out about Lincoln. She could have ratted my father out. She didn’t have to put up with my accusations and snark. Why? What possible reason did she have not to tell me? Why didn’t Jasper?
I guess they wanted it to be between me and Dad. And now that I’ve finally made the call, I feel…empty. Sad. Let down. And a little more grown-up.
The adults in my life aren’t the all-knowing problem solvers they were when I was a little girl. When I was a kid, I felt like becoming an adult would be synonymous with figuring things out, but I realize things are only going to get more complicated from here on out. It makes me glad I’ve had such wacky stuff to deal with my senior year: at least I’ll be a little more prepared for whatever life throws me down the road.
I end my call with my father as quickly and painlessly as I can, reverting back to Spanish for the I love yous and goodbyes, because I want to hold on to some special connection with him, just a few words exchanged in the language he taught me first, I spend the next few hours thinking.
When Mom comes home later that night, I’m waiting in the kitchen with a sleeve of Thin Mints. My nerves forced me to devour the first sleeve alone as I tumbled my parental dilemma in my head.
“Girl Scout cookies?” She bites into a chocolate disk and moans. “Where did you get these?”
“One of Doyle’s cousins’s daughters is a Scout, so he used his connections to hook me up when I mentioned we’re total addicts. So, how was bowling?”
“Your mama bowled a turkey!” Mom holds her arms over her head, snaps her fingers, and whoops, cookie crumbs on her bottom lip.
“I assume that’s a good thing?”
“It just means I might leave the department chair and take up pro bowling.”
My heart is an overfilled wate
r balloon still attached to a running hose.
“Mom? I…I called Dad.”
She drops her arms and her smile. “You did?”
I hand her another cookie and nibble on my own. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I know at Thanksgiving you thought things were going a different way…”
“But they weren’t. So why not let me know?”
She leans her elbows on the counter and sighs. Unlike my father’s and Jasper’s, Mom’s sighs are almost musical. “At first I was furious. Your father tried to tell me, but I was blinded by having us all together again. I’d been really lonely. But I knew something was off. After?” She goes to the fridge and gets out the carton of milk, grabs two tumblers, and fills them up. “I messed up, honey. And I’m an adult. I knew you were mad at me, and I knew you weren’t sure where you wanted to stay. I didn’t want you to feel like you couldn’t go to your father. He and I agreed to keep his marriage quiet if you decided to finish your school year in France.”
“But I didn’t,” I point out, slurping a sip of icy milk.
“No, you didn’t. But you were settling in so nicely. And we were…well, we weren’t getting along that well, but I knew we’d find our way no matter what. I wanted you to forgive me on your own, not because you felt bad for your jilted old hag of a mother.”
I put down the milk and the cookie and stalk around the counter. I wrap my arms around my beautiful, crazy, flawed mother.
“Aggie?”
“Shh. If you call yourself a hag again, I’ll never, ever share my Thin Mints with you.”
In the kitchen where I danced with Doyle, I hold my Mom tight. I pause and feel a peace that’s filled with crags and bumps and fracture lines—and I recognize it for exactly what it is.
Love.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I twist my hands together as Doyle swings my front door open over and over again, inviting more people into my already-crowded living room. The space felt pretty big before it was full of our belligerent, infuriating classmates.
Black, white, and every color in between, they perch on my mother’s couch, the hearth, the floor, and the coffee table and scowl like the entitled jerks they are.
Mom rushes in and out with bright veggie trays and bowls of chips—the good ones we have to drive to a special grocery store forty minutes away to get. I bet everyone is wondering whether or not she’s my biological mother, and then if they’ve decided that yes she is, indeed, the woman who birthed me, how such a wide-eyed, shiny-haired stunner gave birth to a surly toad like me.
“Mom, stop,” I hiss, leading her back to the kitchen. “They’re assholes. You don’t need to feed them.”
“Agnes, good Lord, your mouth!” She glances into the crowded living room as a few more people file in. Khabria and Bo smile, mingle, try to keep the grumbles down to a dull roar. “Not a single one of those kids failed to say thank-you.”
“Ugh, manners are like their religion down here. They’re preprogrammed like little Southern droids. Don’t be fooled.”
“They also called me ma’am. How adorable is that? I think they seem lovely.”
“Lovely assholes,” I mutter as I mentally tally the list of complaints Doyle and I have already fielded for this currently nonexistent alternaprom.
Any ridiculous crap a person could imagine has been the topic of debate in the hallways, in every class, through texts, and in the comments section of the beautiful website Ollie put up for us. They’re every-freaking-where and they’re like rabid mad dogs who are positive we’re dying to give our undivided attention to their endless petty complaints. Their lists of demands and opinions literally never stop, with topics including, but not limited to, the theme song, the colors, the invitations, the playlists, the length, the date, the food, the photographer, and the election of a prom court.
And it’s not like some friendly town-hall type thing. It’s drenched in threats and foot stomping and the lowest-common-denominator, YouTube-comments-section ugliness.
Assholes.
It was Khabria and Doyle’s screwball master plan to gather all the miscreants together in person so we can resolve all these differences and sing “Kumbaya.” Or let them riot and boil us in oil.
Mom knows this is a gathering for an alternaprom. Before our mother-daughter fallout, she would have weaseled every detail out of me, but she’s handling this era of renewed peace with kid gloves, so she doesn’t realize we’re organizing this alternaprom because of racial segregation. I’m sure she thinks we’re going to dress as zombies or maybe wear sweats—something ironic and harmless. I don’t want to admit how scared I am for her to find out the ugly truth.
It’s basic logic that if I didn’t want her to find out, I should have reconsidered hosting the planning committee at my house, but I doubt anyone’s going to talk about the most important reason we’re doing this—after all, why discuss unity and equality when we can bitch about centerpieces and mylar versus latex balloons? I’m actually relieved when I overhear two girls fighting so fiercely over tablecloth colors. My living room might turn into an MMA arena at any second. Keep it shallow, Ebenezer High.
“Hey, y’all, let’s get things started.” Doyle’s voice booms around the room. Everyone snatches up the last wilted celery sticks and the oily remnants of chips from the bottom of the bowl. Pack of locusts. “We’ve gotten a lot of messages from e’rybody ’bout what you’d like to see happen at this prom and all that. Nes’s friend’s been cool ’bout setting up a website so it’s all pretty organized—”
“What do you think is organized exactly?” snaps a girl in the front. She pats her hair and snaps her gum. “We don’t have no date, no time, no place, no nothing. So what’s all been organized is my question?”
All around this loudmouth are other loudmouths nodding and uh-huhing and calling out their own asinine complaints until Doyle stumbles back, overwhelmed by the whine fest.
I mutter things so evil, I may be advance purchasing a one-way ticket to hell.
In the face of my passive aggression and Doyle’s lack of authority, Khabria takes the leadership reins.
She harnesses her cheerleader voice. “All right now, that is enough!” The room goes silent and she paces. “Thing is, we’ve never done this before. We’re learning as we go. This ain’t some easy thing, y’all. This needs to be done right. Everybody’s sitting here crying, ‘we don’t have this, we don’t have that,’ and that’s a big load of bull. Truth of the matter is, Nes’s friend—a girl who doesn’t know any one of us from Adam—is doing all kinds of amazing things for us.”
I was supposed to do the slide-show portion of this whole debacle, but Khabria plows ahead, and I’d be an idiot to jump in front of her magnificent freight train of power. She grabs the remote and brings up the webpage on Mom’s big-screen TV. Under the obvious public site is a password-protected administrative area, and Khabria clicks on the page that shows the donation statistics.
The room goes blissfully silent.
“Uh, where did all that money come from?” demands Alonzo, finally breaking the silence.
It’s rumored he’s neck and neck with Khabria’s ex for the title of Rose Prince, so he’s only a maybe, but he’s got more opinions than anyone else so far.
I clear my throat. “We’ve had really generous donations from different universities, social interest groups, and fund-raiser pages. My father has a connection at a big online news site. They ran a feature on us, and it’s picked up a lot of traffic.”
I turn to the screen, and Khabria already has the article up. There’s a picture of her, me, and Doyle sitting in the Ebenezer courtyard, looking thoughtful and busy. What we’re actually doing is trying not to get bit by fire ants and looking at Khabria’s Spanish folder while Bo puts his finger over the flash three separate times.
Bo is very handsome. Which is a good thing for him, because—as my classmates love to say—bless his heart, that boy is as dumb as a box of rocks.
&nb
sp; All around the room phones whip out and there’s a few seconds of silent sustained reading before someone howls, “Y’all, we’re famous!”
It’s funny how a surprise trust fund can change things. The room loses its viper’s hiss and converts to docile, sheep-like democracy. Khabria whips out a glitter-festooned ballot box and photocopied voting ballots.
I silently vow to never lose my connection to this girl because there isn’t a doubt in my mind: she’s going run the whole damn world one day.
Doyle flips up screens with options Ollie helped us price out. We don’t need this prom to become some Rich Kids Gone Wild scenario, so Doyle, Khabria, and I agreed on a fair budget, and extra funds will go toward next year’s alternaprom.
Alonzo sits up as the ballots for caterers are being cast and holds his phone over his head. “Yo, we’re trending on CNN!”
Doyle tugs me closer than he has in too long. “Better than I expected for sure,” he says in this sweet, held-back way of speaking he never used with me before.
“Thank God you charmed Khabria to our side. She’s like a cheerleader Machiavelli. Seriously, if we wind up in an apocalypse, I wanna be on her team.” I chew on my lip as I watch the revelers. “It’s good, right?”
“Of course it’s good.” He grins. “Seriously, I kinda thought it would be—”
Doyle never gets to finish his sentence. The scream of tires on the road outside my house sends a few kids running to the door, and when I see what they’re looking at, my knees buckle.
I would have hit the floor hard if Doyle hadn’t caught me under the arms, then curled me into his chest, trying to shield me from the hellish glow in my front yard. But it’s too big, too bright to block out. Anyway, he can’t stop my nostrils from filling with the sharp smell of gasoline that burns all the way down my throat. He can’t block the steady heat of the flames, licking at my skin with the threat of third-degree burns. He can cover my ears to mask the crackle, but I’ve breathed the danger into my lungs, my body, and it’s branded me in a way I’ll never be able to escape.
The girl who complained first tonight lets out a choked sob. Alonzo unleashes a long line of threats and curses. Khabria is stone-faced, shocked, seeped of power. When I see how at a loss she is, it scares the crap out of me. Bo puts his arms around her, and she doesn’t push him away, but she doesn’t lean into his embrace either. She’s a statue made of solid, cold stone.
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