by Jeff Zentner
My dad might have rebuilt his horror movie collection and is maybe watching one right now. He could be watching my show at this moment for all I know. Maybe he got his hands on it somehow, like Larry Donut did.
I’m dizzy and breathing fast—almost hyperventilating—to the point of growing faint, and my heart is thrumming with more energy than it did when I drank the Cobra Venomm. I catch my eyes in the rearview mirror and try to psych myself up. I notice I’m still wearing my Delilah makeup. I rub most of it off. My dad will already have a hard time recognizing me.
No one would fault you if you left. No one would think less of you. Now you’ve seen him again, sorta. You’ve seen for yourself that you share the same planet and breathe the same air.
But that’s not what you came for. You didn’t come to see if he was still alive. You came to ask him why.
So ask him why.
A part of my brain outside of my conscious control takes over. I open the door and get out, almost collapsing immediately on legs that have taken on the consistency of biscuit dough.
I walk to the front door and stand on the porch. My life feels like it’s been leading up to this moment. I suddenly have the most intense focus. I’m noticing everything. That Dad’s doorbell is cracked and I can see part of the lightbulb inside. The paint on his screen door is chipped. There’s a hole in the screen. The muted sounds permeating from inside.
I ring the doorbell and hear footsteps. The space between each footfall is a thousand years. I live a lifetime between each heartbeat.
A man opens the door. “Hi,” he says tentatively, not making eye contact. “I’m sorry, I’m not—”
I am looking at my father’s face. Dark spots swarm my field of vision. I feel like I’m going to black out.
He looks up and meets my eyes. The color drains instantly from his face, and his jaw hangs slack. “Are you—” he whisper-gasps. His eyes widen, and he steadies himself with a hand on the doorframe. “You can’t be—Oh my lord. DeeDee?”
And then I look him in the face and I ask him why.
Why he left me behind.
Why I wasn’t good enough.
Just kidding! I go to speak and promptly yak all over his front porch.
They seat us and hand us menus. I open mine like it’s a Kleenex someone with Ebola has sneezed into. Oh, fun. Seventy-dollar steaks. Ninety-dollar lobsters. Twenty-five-dollar appetizers. Twenty-dollar salads.
Divine studies the menu. “Mmm, mmm, mmm, everything looks so tasty! Who can choose? So, tell me about your show,” he says without looking up, like he’s wondering out loud, Now, what exactly is raclette cheese?
In fact, I almost miss his asking about the show, that’s how nonchalantly and seamlessly he tossed it in. “Um, okay, I’m not totally sure what Delia’s told you, but—”
“Am I in the mood for something heavy like a steak?” Divine interrupts. “Or something lighter like lobster? I don’t know.” He taps his lips and waves at me to continue, still not looking up.
“Uh…so…we’re horror hosts of a show called Midnite Matinee on TV Six in Jackson, Tennessee. We air from eleven p.m. to one a.m. on Saturday nights. We’ve been doing it for about a year and a half. We do a show a week, for the most part—”
“I might do both,” Divine says.
“Sorry?”
“The steak and lobster. I can’t decide, so I might do both.”
“Oh. Anyway, we’re syndicated in Little Rock, Topeka, Des Moines, Greenville, Macon—”
“I’m going to do both. The ol’ surf ’n’ turf. Isn’t it strange how good lobsters and beef taste together when lobsters are just giant insects of the sea?”
“It always weirded me out to see ants eating beef, ants on a hamburger or something. It’s like, You couldn’t have gotten that beef on your own, ants. Have some respect.” I’m nervous-jabbering.
Divine’s face squinches. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I mean…insects and…beef?” I blush. “I thought we were talking about—”
“Very bizarre thing to bring up at dinner. You’ll put me off my food.” Divine snaps his menu shut. “Horror hosting, you say? You’ve come to the right man.”
“So I understand.”
“No one’s achieved more in the genre than me. I’m the pinnacle. The top dog. The big cheese. I did well on my own, but with SkeleTonya…let me tell you, I took horror hosting to the mainstream. No one has achieved what I have before or since. I made her into a cultural icon. A household name. She owes me her career. Her life. How many other horror hosts do you think most Americans can name? That’s right. None. Zip. Now—Oh my.” Divine stares.
“What?” I look up. A stunning, Brazilian-looking woman in a sleek black dress is approaching our table.
Divine pretends to look at his menu, but his eyes follow the woman as she passes. She doesn’t so much as glance in our direction.
“Va va voom,” Divine murmurs. “Yuri, did you see that?”
“Pretty girl,” Yuri says, sucking at a tooth.
Divine nods at Lawson. “What say you, young man? Fine specimen, eh?”
“I didn’t notice,” Lawson says tersely.
Divine slowly lowers the menu. “Now, how am I supposed to concentrate, with Helen of Troy prancing around this steakhouse?”
“Um…try really hard?” I say.
“Yuri, when that young vixen comes back this way, do be a prince and get her number for me, won’t you?”
Yuri shrugs. “Okeydokey.”
I could count on one hand the number of things I would find more unnerving than Yuri asking for my number. “Is that a good idea? I…would maybe be weirded out if I were her.”
“What am I thinking?” Divine says. “Of course you’re right.”
“Yeah, I mean—”
“I’ll get her number myself. She’ll have a much harder time turning me down than Yuri.”
“Um.”
“No! Better yet! You get her number for me. Woman to woman.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t know if I feel comfortable doing that.”
“What’s your plan, then?”
I pretend to give the matter deep consideration. “I would probably leave her alone. But that’s me.”
Divine starts to respond, but the waiter comes, drawing his attention, just as the woman is on her way back from the restroom. I’m grateful on her behalf. “Have we decided, ladies and gentlemen?” the waiter asks. “Yes? I’ll start with the lady, then.”
I’m not sure how this works—if we’re paying for ourselves or if he’s paying for us, and I’m on a tight budget. I order the baby kale salad. Lawson follows my lead.
“Salads? Here?” Divine asks incredulously. “Boy, are you missing out! I’ll start with the crabmeat cocktail and the crab cakes, with the prime porterhouse and the three—no, four-pound Newfoundland lobster. Yuri here will have the same.”
“Anything to drink, sir?” the waiter asks.
“You know, we’re talking some important business, and I’d say nothing helps lubricate the gears of the free market like…a Pappy twelve-year-old. One for me, one for Yuri.”
For a second, I wonder if I misheard and Divine actually ordered a “happy twelve-year old,” who the waiter would hook up to him with blood transfusion lines. This seems like the kind of place that could accommodate a request like that.
The waiter glows. “Yes, sir! Impeccable choice, if I do say so myself!”
“I rather thought so! Now, can I get that with a splash of RC Cola?”
The waiter tries not to look aghast but fails.
Divine winks. “I’m joking, of course.” He and the waiter share a hearty laugh. I guess it was a great joke?
We make (weird, uncomfortable) small talk while we wait for our food to arrive. I excuse myself
to go to the restroom. While I’m in there, I text Delia. Love you, DeeDeeBoo. Thinking of you. When I exit, Lawson is standing outside the door.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I am. Dragging you along tonight. For this insanity. I had no idea it’d be like this.”
He shrugs. “I would not want you dealing with this dude alone. Plus, I’m spending time with you. All I care about.”
I hug him. “Right answer.”
He hugs me back. “How you doing?”
“You mean besides that I’m about to sit down to eat a sorry, expensive salad while watching a person whose ego is the size of a sack containing every human sorrow and his Russian mobster bodyguard eat two thousand dollars’ worth of steak and lobster?”
“Besides that.”
“Besides that every time I try to talk about our show—which is my whole reason for spending an evening with this actual loon—he finds some way to talk about how amazing he is? And meanwhile, my best friend, who arranged this, is on a potential collision course with virtually certain heartbreak three hours away?”
“Besides that.”
“Besides that part of me is terrified about where this night is heading, but I’m also feeling weirdly compelled to see it through to the end?”
“Besides that.”
“Oh, then great, thanks.”
We smile and quickly kiss.
“I’ve been hanging back,” Lawson says. “I have a lot I could say, but I don’t want to mess in your business.”
“Yeah, let me handle it.”
“If you need me to step in at any point…”
“I got this.”
“Hang in there,” Lawson says. “I know he seems like a nut, but maybe he can help y’all.”
“I sure hope so because—” I almost slip and tell Lawson what’s riding on tonight. But right now is not the time or place. “Otherwise we’ll have wasted a perfectly good evening that we could have spent playing in the pool and kissing.”
Dad jumps back to avoid getting his feet splashed.
“Sorry,” I wheeze in a just hurled and might still hurl a little more voice, doubled over with my hands on my knees. I had the presence of mind not to say “Sorry, Dad.”
“It’s okay, hang on.” He slips on a pair of shoes beside the door and leaps clumsily over the pool of barf on his front stoop. He uncoils a hose in the front of the house. “Okay, stand back.” He sprays the puke into the bushes, thoroughly diluting it.
I’m hearing my dad’s voice again. The same voice that told me to go to sleep. That asked me what I wanted for Christmas. That told me to pick up my toys. His voice.
I watch him in the fading light. He’s wearing a polo shirt with SynergInfo embroidered on the chest, tucked into khakis. He’s got a little belly paunch. He has a gentler slope where his jaw meets his neck than I remember. Fine lines surround his eyes. His hair is thinner and shorter than he used to wear it. He’s never looked more like a dad. He’s never looked less like my dad.
While he works, I see him stealing glances at me. He has a stunned expression. There’s something else mixed in. Guilt? Anger? Sadness? Wonder? All of the above? He keeps moving his mouth like he’s about to say something but stops himself.
“Derek?” a woman’s voice calls from inside the house.
Dad leaps up the steps. “What, sweetie?”
Wow, it’s weird to hear my dad responding to a new name.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep! I got called into work, and as I was leaving I saw Boomer had puked on the front porch.”
“Has he been eating grass again?”
“Probably. I got it handled. Go back to sleep.”
The sound of the woman’s voice burns my ears. And he lies so well and so easily.
He coils the hose. “Hang on,” he says quietly. “Let me get my keys.” He runs inside and comes back a moment later with keys, some Kleenex, and a cold bottle of water.
I’m standing there, shell-shocked, the bitter stench of puke in my nose. He goes to hug me. “DeeDee.”
I put out my hand to stop him. “I—Please just—”
“Yeah, yeah, right. Got it,” he stammers. “Okay, we gotta leave. Then we can talk.”
I nod and follow him to his Jeep. We get in and he pulls away. He hands me the bottle of water and the Kleenex. I blow my nose and drink half the bottle. We’re silent for a second.
I’m being driven somewhere by my dad. I never, ever thought that would happen again.
“You used to spit up a lot as a baby. Your stomach got tougher as you got older, but you still…” His voice trails off. Several seconds pass. “How?”
“I hired a PI. Who was that woman?”
“That was, um, Marisol.”
“Are you guys—”
“My fiancée.”
“Wow.” I have that sensation right before you slip on ice. “When’s the big day?”
“September.”
“Wow.”
“She’s…pregnant. That’s why she was asleep when you arrived.”
“Wow.” (I’m having some vocabulary issues.) “Boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
“Wow. So I’m going to have a half sister?” I’m reeling inside. I feel like a billy goat just butted me in the stomach.
Dad thinks it through for a second. “Yeah. You are,” he says softly.
“A half sister that I would’ve never known about if I hadn’t tracked you down.”
Dad opens and closes his mouth a couple of times. Finally: “I don’t—I—I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Lucky little girl.” I almost ask what her name’s going to be, but I can’t go there. What if it’s Delia?
Dad winces like I kneed him in the nuts. He rubs his forehead.
I turn my face away and look out the window so Dad can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. “Does Marisol know?”
“About you?”
“Yeah.”
“She…does.”
“That sounded very tentative.”
“It’s so weird that you know words like ‘tentative’ now.”
“Does she know or not?”
“She sort of knows. She doesn’t ask many questions. I don’t think she really wants to know.”
“So no.”
“Sort of.”
I keep looking out the window. “This is so weird.”
“She knows it’s a painful topic for me and I have a hard time talking about it. She has her own past anyway.”
“Does she know your name isn’t Derek Armstrong?”
“It is Derek Armstrong.”
“Does she know you weren’t born Derek Armstrong?”
“No.” Quiet for a few seconds, and then he asks, “Are you hungry?”
My stomach is technically empty, but it’s not sending me any signal as unambiguous as hunger. It has other things on its mind. But I say, “Sure.”
“Still like pizza?”
“Do people generally outgrow liking pizza?”
He smiles thinly. “Not usually. I know a place.”
* * *
•••
We sit and order.
“I was hoping it would be Cicis,” I say, looking for some hint of recognition of the reference.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Because I bet we have one.”
I can’t tell if he gets it. “No, I’m good.”
I’m sitting across from my dad. I’m about to have pizza with my dad again. I feel the tingle of tears gathering in my eyes. One falls in spite of my best efforts. I quickly wipe it away.
“Delia,” Dad says softly.
“I’m fine. This is…a lot.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I dab another tear with my napkin.
“I can’t believe how big you are. When did you get—” He motions at the bottom of his nose, where my septum is pierced.
“Last year.”
“What’d Mom think?”
“She took me to get it.”
He laughs. “Sounds right. I can’t stop looking at your face.”
I guess I don’t need to wonder anymore if my show ever somehow reached him. Nope. “Didn’t you ever, like, Instagram-stalk me or anything?”
“A couple times. But seeing you…from that distance—it broke my heart. I couldn’t handle it.” Tears well up in his eyes. “Wanna tell me about your life?”
More than anything. And also no. But I do. A little. “After you left, things were hard for a long time. Mom wasn’t doing well at all. Me neither. It sucked. For years. But we survived. We each got on medication that helped us a lot with our depression. And—” I realize I’m about to tell him about the most important thing in my life. The thing I made to try to get him back. My sacred thing. “I started a show with my best friend, Josie. Called Midnite Matinee. It’s on TV Six in Jackson and some other public access stations around the U.S. We’re horror hosts, like Dr. Gangrene or SkeleTonya.”
“Are you serious?” he says, awestruck.
“That’s why we’re in Florida. For ShiverCon. Josie is meeting with Jack Divine in Orlando right now.”
“Jack Divine? As in Jack-O-Lantern? He did SkeleTonya’s show?!”
“The very one. He’s talking to us about working together on our show.”
Dad sits back. “Wow. Wow. DeeDee, that’s amazing. Good for you.”
And now he knows. It feels strangely anticlimactic. I think about all the times I sat there, Arliss counting us in, waiting for this. The moment he knew what I had done with my life. Now he knows. And nothing is different. The earth is unmoved.
“Josie’s pretty great,” I say. “She wants to go into TV professionally, so she makes our show a lot better than it would be otherwise. She’s super funny.”
“She sounds awesome.”
“Do you still watch horror movies?” I ask.