Tell Me Three Things

by Julie Buxbaum

  “Something I should talk to my therapist about. Speaking of which, you could speak to the school counselor if you want. We have a psychiatrist on staff. A life coach too.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I know, right? Finding ways to justify the tuition. Anyhow, if not them, feel free to come talk to me anytime. Students like you are the reason I chose to teach.”

  “Thanks.”

  “By the way, I look forward to your and Ethan’s ‘Waste Land’ paper. You’re two of my brightest students. I have great expectations.” Dickens is next on the syllabus. A literary pun. No wonder Mrs. Pollack was destroyed in high school.

  “We intend to reach wuthering heights,” I say, and as I walk by, she reaches her hand up, and I can’t help it—dorks unite! nerd power!—I give her a high five on my way out.

  —

  Later, at Book Out Below!, which is customer-free, I sit behind the counter, message SN. So far, I’ve successfully avoided Liam since I’ve been back from Chicago, and I am relieved that he’s not working today. If he is really planning to ask me out, I have no idea how I’ll say no.

  Me: Are you sure we should meet?

  SN: yeah, I think so. why? you getting cold feet?

  Me: No. It’s just, you could be anybody. It’s different for you. You know who’s going to show up.

  SN: well, I promise I’m not a serial killer or anything like that.

  Me: Serial killers don’t usually confess to being serial killers. In fact, isn’t that the first thing a serial killer would do? Say “I’m not a serial killer. Nope, not me.”

  SN: true. don’t take my word for it. let’s meet in a public place. I won’t bring my scary white van or candy.

  Me: And where should we meet, Dexter Morgan? IHOP, really?

  SN: yup. love IHOP. they have pancakes that look like happy faces. I have a thing at 3, so how about 3:45?

  Me: Okay. How will I know who you are?

  SN: I know who you are, remember?

  Me: And?

  SN: I’ll come introduce myself, Ms. Holmes.

  Me: Brave man.

  SN: or woman.

  Me: !!!

  SN: kidding.

  The bell rings; my head lifts up. It’s become Pavlovian. Please don’t be Liam, I think.

  Fortunately, it’s not.

  Unfortunately, it’s my dad.

  “So this is where you work,” he says, and looks around, his fingers brushing spines, just like mine do. He isn’t the reader my mom was, but he still appreciates the magic of books. When I was little, he would read to me all the time. He was the one who introduced me to Narnia. “It couldn’t be more perfect. I’m so happy for you.”

  “I like it,” I say, and wonder if that’s how we are going to do this. Pretend that we never fought in the first place. That we haven’t gone something like fourteen days without speaking.

  “Beats making smoothies, I hope?” My dad’s wearing his plastic tag, his name printed under the words How may I help you? The way it dangles on a steel clip makes me feel tender toward him, as if he came in here with a milk mustache.

  “Yeah. Though the Smoothie King has Scar. I miss her.” He nods. We haven’t even talked about my trip home. He hasn’t asked—well, that’s not quite true; he texted and I ignored him, and I still haven’t said thank you. Maybe Theo is right: I’m turning more Wood Valley than I realize. I wonder if Scar’s mom called him afterward and reported back. I don’t think she heard me throwing up or knew we were drinking in the basement. The few times I saw her, she gave me big hugs and said, “I missed my other daughter,” which was sweet, so it doesn’t really matter if it was only a tiny bit true.

  “I know.” He quickly looks around, sees that we are alone. Nods as if to say Then we can talk. “I miss everything.”

  “Everything” means my mom. Funny that we can’t just say those words out loud. But we can’t. Some things are harder to say than others, no matter how much truer.

  “Can you believe it’s ninety degrees in November here? That’s just not natural,” my dad says, and settles on the floor with his back against the Get Rich Quick shelf, his knees bent in front of him. “Never thought I’d miss the cold, and I don’t, really. But this weather is…unsettling. And the pizza sucks. Pizza should not be gluten-free. That’s just wrong.”

  “Lots to get used to,” I say. Should I give him more? Should I get this party started? Say: Dad, you moved us without even asking me. Just plopped me into a new school, a new life, said “Ta-da!” and then abandoned me to the wolves.

  I stay quiet. Let him make the first move.

  “Listen, I know it’s been hard. And I was so wrapped up in trying to adjust myself, make this work for us, I didn’t do my job as your dad. I thought it would be easier. Everything. I was naive. Or desperate. Yeah, that’s it. Not naive but desperate.” He delivers this to the bookshelf in front of him, the children’s section—which has always seemed a weird arrangement to me and yet so LA, money directly across from the kids. My dad is staring at the cover of a book about crayons going on strike, the primary colors annoyed at being overworked by their owner.

  I shrug. I wish we could have this conversation on paper, or better yet, on a screen, in back-and-forth messages like I do with SN. It would be so much easier and cleaner. I’d say exactly what I want to say, and if the words didn’t come out right, I could just edit them until they did.

  “Do you want to move back to Chicago? If that’s what you want, we can do it. I wouldn’t want you living at Scar’s. We’d rent a place or something, and you could finish out school, and then I’d move back here when you go to college. If you were okay with that, of course. Rachel and I would figure it out. You’re the most important thing in the world to me. If you’re not happy, then I’m not happy. I know it hasn’t seemed like that the last few months, but it’s true.” I think about last weekend. Scar and Adam, her new life without me. How we’ve all moved on—forward—and how in some ways, moving back would just be moving backward. It’s not like my mom is there, and I guess memories, as much as they can be held on to, are portable. Granted, Chicago would mean never having to feel bullied, a huge bonus, but Gem’s not quite scary enough to make me flee the state.

  I think about the life I’ve built here. SN and Ethan, or maybe SN/Ethan, Dri and Agnes, even Theo. Liam too, I guess. How my new English teacher said I’m one of her brightest students, which is a huge compliment, considering I go to a school that sends five kids to Harvard each year. How Wood Valley may be filled with rich brats, but it also has a beautiful library, and I get to work in a bookstore, and I’m reading college-level poetry with a boy who can recite it back to me. In a strange way, thanks to Rachel, LA has turned out to be nerd heaven.

  I think about Ethan’s smile, how I want to see it every day. No, I don’t want to move back.

  “Nah. I mean, I think about Chicago all the time, and for a minute there, all I wanted was to go home, but that’s not what I’m mad about. It’s not like it would even really feel like home, anyway. I just feel, you know—” My eyes fill, and I look at the cash register. The 9 button is wearing thin. I hate that I don’t know how to say what I want to say.

  “You know you can talk to me about anything, right? I don’t want you to ever feel alone.” And there, he said it for me, so I can say it out loud now.

  “Dad, you kind of orphaned me. Like I lost both of you guys, and Scar too. You left me to figure it all out on my own.”

  I did figure it out.

  Most of it, at least. Maybe Scar is right: I am more kick-ass than I give myself credit for.

  “Can you imagine how lonely it’s been for me? Not now. I mean, now I’m okay. But not so long ago, I felt like I didn’t have anyone in the world. And you were out every night with Rachel or holed up with your laptop. It’s not like I hate her or anything. I mean, I don’t know her, actually. I guess…thank her for my ticket, please.” I pause, take a breath. Of course I should do that myself, and I will.


  “It’s just, I moved into this house, and have like, this weird room with these big paintings on the wall, like a third grader did them. What’s up with that? Anyhow, it’s not the art or even the soap with those strange letters, which make my hands smell nice, really, unfamiliar but nice, but it’s just not mine, you know? And I just…It sucked, Dad. I mean, it really sucked,” I say. Nope, the tears have not retreated; they’re back, spilling down my cheeks, and I’m at work, and I just hope the bell doesn’t ring anytime soon. I think I have said more to my dad in the last thirty seconds than I have in the last three months. Sometimes when I start, when the words finally find themselves, I can’t hold back the momentum.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” My dad stands up, and I think he’s coming to give me a hug, so I wave him off. I don’t want to cry on his shoulder. Not right now. I’m not ready yet. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  “I don’t want an apology. I don’t want anything. I’m mad at you, and I have a right to be mad at you. And I’ll stop soon. You’re my dad, and of course I’ll stop. I get it. Our world exploded. And you just didn’t have enough left over. I kind of did the same thing to Scar. And I wish I were stronger or better or something and I didn’t need anything from you. But I’m not. And I do. It would have been nice if we could have done this together. But we didn’t. And it’s done. We’re here now, and we’re making it work. But it’s really sucked.”

  “I think ‘really sucked’ is too much of an understatement. It’s ‘fucking sucked,’ ” my dad says, and he half smiles, and I can’t help it, I smile back. He hates foul language; if this had been two years ago, there’s no way he would have used the F-word. “Okay, you can still be mad at me. Fair enough. But you can’t stop talking to me again. I can’t take that. I miss telling you something that happened each day. I’ve been writing things down so I could tell you when you started talking to me again. And we need to start spending time together.”

  “Eww, no. I’m sixteen. I can’t hang out with my father.” I smile as I say it. I miss my dad, probably even more than he misses me. “That’s, like, so uncool.”

  “Let me give you one bit of parental advice, if I may. Cool is way overrated.”

  “Says the guy wearing the plastic name tag.”

  “Touché.”

  “You love her, don’t you?” I ask, apropos of nothing, but it’s not, not really.

  “Rachel? Yeah, I do. I mean, I leapt in a little fast, and we’re figuring out the kinks, but yeah, I love her. But that doesn’t mean—” I smile at him, bat away his words. He doesn’t need to finish his sentence. I’m not a child anymore. I know that how he feels about her has nothing to do with me. Or my mom, for that matter.

  I know that love is not finite.

  And also this: I’ll be leaving for college in less than two years. A part of me will be relieved to know he’s not alone.

  “I get it.”

  My dad looks around again, breathes in the paper smell.

  “Mom would have loved this place. Even its silly name. Though probably not the exclamation point.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you, sweet potato.”

  “I know.”

  My phone bleeps. Text from Scarlett.

  Scarlett: Holy shit. We did it.

  Me: Seriously? It-it?

  Scarlett: Yup.

  Me: And?

  Scarlett: I give us a 7, maybe an 8, which isn’t bad for the first time. Hurt a little. And the whole condom thing was tricky, trickier than with a banana, and it was awkward, you know? But still. Good. I think we’ll do it again in a minute.

  Me: WHERE ARE YOU?

  Scarlett: In the bathroom. Had to tell you right away, and had to pee, so I’m multitasking.

  Me: So ADAM IS STILL IN YOUR BED?!?!

  Scarlett: Yup.

  Me: Did you just emoji me?

  Scarlett: What can I say? I have it bad. Starting the pill next week to be totally covered.

  Me: So happy for you, you little slut!

  Scarlett: Love you.

  Me: Love you too. xoxo. Tell Adam congrats from me.

  “What are you smiling at?” my dad asks, since I am, apparently, grinning goofily at my phone. Scar lost her V-card! I want to say it out loud because it’s so exciting and I’m so happy for her, but no, no I won’t.

  “Nothing. Just something funny from Scar.”

  “Her mom says she has a boyfriend,” my dad says, and I laugh, picturing Mrs. Schwartz and my dad gossiping about Scar and Adam.

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s really dating Adam Kravitz? He was always a little shrimpy.”

  “He’s been working out.”

  “Good for them.”

  “They’re happy.”

  “Any guys in your life?”

  “Dad,” I say, and blush. Realize that even if I wanted to tell my dad about Ethan, about SN, about all of it, it would be too confusing and complicated.

  “Right,” he says. “Remember when you were little we used to ask you how you got so big so fast, and you used to say ‘I growed!’?”

  My dad looks at his hands, which are not holding a phone like mine are, and have nothing to work out the nervous energy. My parents used to talk about my childhood all the time—start stories with “Remember?” and then tell me about something I used to do, and then they would smile at each other, like it had nothing to do with me, as if to say Look what we pulled off.

  I shake my head. I don’t remember.

  “Well, sweetheart. You’ve really growed. I’m sorry I haven’t been here. But I’m so proud of you. And your mom would be too. You know that, right?”

  Do I know that? I know she wouldn’t be not proud, which is not the same thing as proud. I’m not sure I’m ready to think about her that way yet, to wrap my head around the “would be” part.

  “Yeah,” I say, mostly because of his empty hands and his name tag and the look on his face. It could be that this adjustment has actually been harder for him than for me. “Of course I know that.”

  SN: what was under the glass tonight?

  Me: Some sort of delicious fish and the big couscous. What’s that called?

  SN: Israeli.

  Me: Ha, I know. Just wanted to make you use your shift key. I want to get you a T-shirt that says “No proper noun left uncapitalized.”

  SN: and I’m the weirdo.

  Rachel is waiting in my room when I get upstairs, sitting on my desk chair, again staring at the picture of my mom.

  “She was so beautiful,” Rachel says, by way of hello. She looks sad tonight, subdued, and is nursing a big glass of red wine. Again, her volume has been turned down.

  “Yeah,” I say, but I am not ready to talk about my mom with Rachel. Not sure that is something I’ll ever be strong enough to do. “Hey, you took the pictures off the walls.”

  I look around. The elementary school paintings—which I realize now are probably the work of some famous artist I should know about—are stacked in the corner, and it’s just white in here, with a few nails left like punctuation marks.

  “I’m sorry. I hadn’t even noticed them. My husband—um, Theo’s dad—was in charge of decorating the house, and he picked them out. They’re probably not the best choice for a teenage bedroom.” Rachel sips from her glass, rubs her arms, which are covered in a delicious cashmere. “You should put your own stuff up on the walls. Posters or whatever. Make it yours.”

  “Thanks for my ticket home. To Chicago, I mean,” I say. “That was really nice of you.”

  Rachel waves her hands, like it’s no big deal. And maybe it’s not to her, but it is to me.

  “And we’ll get you a new bed. A queen, maybe? I didn’t realize until tonight how ridiculous this one is. Oh and I’ve told both of Theo’s SAT tutors that you’ll be joining in. Don’t know how I didn’t think of it earlier. Sorry about that.” Her face falls, and I see she is near tears herself. What happened? I’m not sure I am equipped to deal with this.

 
“Thanks. The bed’s actually more comfortable than it looks. I mean, are you okay?” I can’t just let her cry and not ask. That would be wrong.

  “Bad days. Good days. You know how it is. Just because I’ve found your father, who is wonderful—I mean, really, the best—doesn’t mean this isn’t all hard or complicated or that I don’t miss—” She takes a deep breath, the kind that starts down in the belly, the kind you would only learn in a yoga class in California. “And I know Theo misses him, and I’m not enough. I’m just not. So it’s hard sometimes. Sorry again for all the balls I’ve dropped. I shouldn’t be in here.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, though I’m completely at a loss. This is a house full of pain, of bad juju, as Theo said, but it’s also a house of starting over. Maybe we need to light a few candles. Better yet, start putting things on all of the white walls. “You know, I mean, this place is beautiful, but maybe you should put out some pictures too. Of your husband—I mean your, uh, other husband, Theo’s dad, and of Theo as a kid. So he can remember.”

  Rachel looks at me, wipes her tears with her sleeve, and I try not to wince, because she’s wearing mascara and her sweater must be dry-clean only.

  “That’s a great idea,” she says, and looks straight at me. Almost smiles. “This is tricky, isn’t it? You and I.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’ve been trying hard not to try too hard with you, and then I worry I’m not trying hard enough, you know?” She stands up, walks toward the door. Turns around to face me once more.

  “Yeah,” she says. “We’ll get there.”

  CHAPTER 34

  I’m early, so I sit in the first booth, a cowardly move that ensures I will see SN before he sees me. My back is to the rest of IHOP and their mountains of pancakes, and I watch the parking lot through the glass double doors. In just fifteen minutes, I will meet SN. He will sit down across from me and introduce himself, and our entire virtual relationship will become something real. Will be brought into the light and into the here and now. Based on something both more and less tangible: spoken words.