I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl

by Gretchen McNeil

  I stomped across the floor with more force than was necessary and pulled the door open to reveal the face I’d already known I was going to find. My dad.

  “Hey, BeaBea,” he said.

  “Hello, Andrew,” my mom cried from the dining room. “Won’t you come in?”

  “No,” I whispered. “You don’t want to.” She’d intentionally invited my dad over while she had her new boy toy in the house so she could show off. Would my mom ever grow up?

  “Andrew?” she repeated more urgently.

  My dad edged past me. “I don’t want to be rude, BeaBea.”

  My mom was leaning on Benjamin’s arm, her head resting languidly on his shoulder. “Oh, Andrew!” she said, sounding surprised by his entrance as if she hadn’t just been demanding he come inside. “How good of you to come.”

  “Well, you said Bea needed the books she left Sunday, so—”

  “I asked Mom to pick them up on her way home from work,” I said, refusing to play along.

  “I didn’t have time, Beatrice.” My mom’s voice cut like steel.

  Benjamin cleared his throat. “If I’m interrupting something, I can . . .” He started toward the door.

  “Don’t be silly.” My mom yanked him back to her side. “My ex-husband was just dropping off some of Beatrice’s things. Andrew, I’d like you to meet Mr. Benjamin Feldberger.” She paused and cocked an eyebrow. “Esquire.”

  My dad strode across the dining room and extended his hand. “Ben, good to meet you. You’re starting up the new patent law practice group at Dwyer Hartmann, right?”

  Despite the nearly twelve-inch difference in height, Benjamin Feldberger, Esquire, took my dad’s hand firmly in his own and looked him straight in the eye. “I am.” All traces of the excited nervousness he’d exhibited when talking to me had vanished. Apparently, when it came to business, Benjamin Feldberger was in his element.

  “It made quite a stir when they poached you from Knobbe Martens down in Newport.”

  Benjamin laughed. “I just hope I can live up to the faith they’ve put in me.” Then he gestured toward the open bottle of wine on the counter. “Care for a drink?”

  I’d been watching my mother keenly throughout this exchange and as her brow lowered and her smile faded, I realized that this was not the outcome she’d been hoping for.

  “He can’t stay,” she snapped.

  “Flor is right. My wife’s been under the weather while I’ve been out of town, so the sooner I’m home the better.”

  “Oh!” Benjamin piped up. “Were you at the ABA Conference?”

  My dad swallowed. “Er, yes.”

  “Old buddy of mine from Boalt runs that thing each year. Mel Yukimori? You must have met him if you were there.”

  “Yes, yes,” my dad said, clearly flustered. “Great guy.” He hurried toward the door. “Enjoy your dinner. Nice to meet you, Ben.”

  I excused myself early from dinner, pleading homework. Realistically, I could have said I wasn’t feeling well, because I was totally and completely sick to my stomach.

  And while literally a million different elements of my life could have caused my nausea, tonight my parents were the cause. First my mom, who for reasons I couldn’t fathom had insisted on parading her new lawyer beau before her lawyer ex-husband. I felt sorry for Benjamin Feldberger, Esquire, who clearly wasn’t an idiot. He’d held his own with my dad, and had soldiered on through dinner, keeping up the conversation despite my reticence to speak and my mom’s obvious pouting.

  I also felt sorry for Sheri. The instant my dad heard the words “ABA Conference,” his entire demeanor had changed. His eyes shifted around the room, his brow glistened with sweat, and he literally couldn’t wait to get out of the house. It didn’t take a mind reader or a superstar litigator to know he’d been caught in a lie.

  And if he hadn’t been at the conference, then where had he been?

  I shuddered to think.

  My parents were overgrown teenagers, unable to control their attention-seeking behavior and throbbing loins. Seriously, how exactly was I expected to engage in anything remotely resembling a healthy romantic relationship with the two of them as role models? It was a miracle I’d found Jesse at all.

  Jesse. Maybe I’d been wrong about him. About us.

  I thought of the photo on the campaign flyer of Toile and Jesse kissing. They’d looked happy, but how blissful could Jesse have been in that relationship if he’d been trying to hook up with me just last week?

  I was surrounded by men who cheated, if not physically, then emotionally. Had I been subconsciously attracted to that in Jesse because I’d been conditioned to seeing the same behavior in my dad?

  That was so fucked-up.

  I thought of my formulas, the intersection of information theory and everyday life, the effects of statistics on behavioral sciences. What if I could fix this? What if there was a formula that could keep people from cheating?

  I needed to know. I needed to know why my dad cheated on his wives, needed to understand the psychology of it, the mental and emotional thought processes. A serious, no-bullshit conversation.

  But I couldn’t exactly call him up and ask him, not in front of Sheri. It was time for a field trip to Kelger & Giovannini.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE ELEVATOR DOOR opened onto the fifteenth-floor offices of Kelger & Giovannini at three fifteen, exactly thirty-five minutes after I left school. My dad should have been done with his lunch meetings and back in the office for the afternoon, but Mrs. Akers, the longtime receptionist, greeted me with a mix of elation and disappointment.

  “Beatrice!” she cried, rising from the plush leather chair that seemed built for someone twice her size. “It’s so lovely to see you.” Her face immediately fell. “But your father isn’t back from lunch yet.”

  Helluva lunch. “That’s okay, Mrs. Akers. Do you think it would be okay if I waited in his office?”

  “Of course, of course. He should be back any moment.” She smiled as she waved me through the glass doors that opened onto the half-floor office, her lips heavily lacquered with a peachy nude matte lipstick.

  “I like the new lipstick shade, Mrs. Akers.”

  “New? Oh, child, I’ve been wearing the same color for forty years!”

  I don’t know why I made the comment about Mrs. Akers’s lip color. I guess I’d known since that day my dad came home with lipstick on his collar that he’d been cheating on Sheri. I’d wanted to believe what he’d told me, wanted to think that my dad had changed. But he hadn’t.

  Which is why I was there in the first place.

  Why did people lie? Why do something that you weren’t willing to fess up to? It seemed so ridiculous to me. So childish.

  I slid into my dad’s oversize executive chair and spun it around like I used to do when I was a kid. I was midrotation when the office door burst open.

  Two people tumbled into the room: my dad with his back to me, and a freckled, sinewy-armed woman who had her face stuck to his. They were lip-locked, pawing at each other like crazed lunatics, and it took the woman loosening my dad’s tie and going for his belt buckle for me to snap out of my daze and say something.

  “What the fuck?”

  Tonya, my dad’s legal secretary, pulled away, and I caught a glimpse of her lipstick: shimmery hot pink.

  The second my dad saw me, his face flushed crimson.

  “Tonya—er, Ms. Steevers,” he said. “Can you step outside?”

  “Don’t bother,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m not staying.”

  I shot Tonya a withering glance as I marched past her, but I couldn’t even look my dad in the eyes.

  I was four blocks away in Fullerton’s busy downtown district, still marching at a rage-fueled pace, when I heard the car pull up beside me.

  “Bea, can we talk about this?”

  “No.” I sped up, tote bag bouncing off my hip.

  A horn blared, and an angry driver shouted an expletive out the window a
t my dad, who was crawling in the slow lane.

  “Please?” my dad begged, ignoring the commuter behind him.

  I stopped dead and turned to face him. “If you’re afraid I’m going to tell Sheri, don’t be.” The charming douche in the BMW roared around my dad’s Lexus, giving us both the finger as he passed. I didn’t blame him. I kind of wanted to flip my dad off too.

  He leaned over into the passenger seat so he could see me through the open window. “I just want to explain.”

  “I’m not sure how you can explain this, Dad.”

  Another irate blare of a horn and this time two cars veered dangerously around my dad’s stopped car. As much as I didn’t want to talk to him, I didn’t want to cause a massive pileup either. So with a sigh, I reluctantly yanked open the passenger door and dropped into the seat.

  “Thank you.” My dad pulled away from the curb but didn’t initiate conversation. Neither did I. If he wanted to explain his infidelity, I was all ears, but I wasn’t going to make it easy on him. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. I’d gone to his office to ask him why men cheat, only to catch him in the act. Now I hardly cared what his explanation was—I just wanted to be out of his sight.

  The silence continued until my dad veered onto a quiet, residential street and cut the engine.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Bea,” he began, still staring ahead as if he were driving.

  I doubt it.

  “I could tell you that you were mistaken, that it wasn’t what it appeared. But I’m not going to lie to you.”

  Good, because I’m not an idiot.

  “When I have a new secretary . . .” He sighed. “I don’t know what happens.”

  I turned to him in disbelief. “Really? That’s your excuse?”

  “Guess it’s not a very good one.”

  “It’s not even an excuse, Dad.” I held up three fingers, counting off his marriages. “A trio of wives. Isn’t that enough for you? I thought you really loved Sheri.”

  His head whipped around. “I do love Sheri. And your mom. And Irene,” he said, mentioning his first wife, “though perhaps not as much.”

  “Then why do you cheat on them?”

  “I don’t know.” He hung his head, staring at the steering wheel.

  This was ridiculous. My dad was almost fifty years old. He wasn’t some teenager who couldn’t control himself.

  “Get your shit together, Dad.”

  He jolted. “Beatrice Maria Estrella Giovannini, how dare you—”

  “No,” I said, cutting him off. “No more talking out of you. If you’re going to act like an idiot sixteen-year-old, then I’m going to treat you like one. You need to grow the hell up and take some responsibility for your actions.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, then paused as his anger cooled. “You’re right.”

  His shift in mood placated me. “Look,” I said, more kindly than a moment before, “you and Mom were a mess, and even though I never thought I’d live to say it, your divorce was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’re both so much happier now.” For the most part. “But you and Sheri? She’s good for you, Dad.”

  “I know.”

  “And if you break her heart, I’m never going to forgive you.”

  He looked up at me, and for the first time in my life, instead of a strong, dominant father figure, I saw a tired old man. “I understand.”

  We fell silent again. My anger had mostly dissipated, replaced by a sense of sadness and loss. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, looking up to her dad, trying to make him proud. Instead, I was the defender of morality, doling out tough love. When had I become the parent to my parents?

  “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

  Ugh. It was Wednesday, which meant “home” was the Giovannini house, and Sheri. She’d been a mess with all the fertility treatments, and the stress of it had knocked her on her ass with a nasty stomach virus. How could I go there and look her in the eye now that I knew my dad was cheating on her?

  I could have gone to my mom’s, since she was still at work. But eventually I’d have to explain why I was there and not at my dad’s. Would I tell her? Would she be gleeful that Sheri had “gotten what was coming to her”? Or would she commiserate with her? After all, they’d both been mistress and wife. It was a selective club.

  I felt badly for everyone: Sheri, my mom, even my dad, whose issues with fidelity seemed utterly pathetic. Intellectually, I’d understood my mom’s anger when she’d found out about my dad’s infidelity, but emotionally, my response had always been “What did you expect?” Not that I was giving my dad an excuse, but my mom’s overly dramatic episodes had grown tiresome after a few weeks and I’d kind of shut her out. Now, for the first time, I was internalizing her betrayal. And it sucked.

  “No,” I said at last. I needed a break, a chance to sit and think about everything. And home wasn’t the place for that right now. I craned my head, trying to figure out where we were, and saw that we were right across the street from D’Caffeinated, a place I usually avoided like the plague. But anything was better than spending another moment in that car. “I’m going to grab a coffee. I’ll . . . I’ll see you at home tonight.”

  “I love you, BeaBea,” he said as I opened the door.

  I sighed. “I love you too, Dad.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DESPITE THE HEAVY conversation with my dad, I felt lighter as I crossed the street to D’Caffeinated. I’d been suppressing my anger with him for far too long, and it was good to finally let it out, just like at school yesterday, when I’d finally unloaded on Toile.

  I grabbed a double latte and a chocolate chip cookie from the counter (ignoring Flordeliza’s voice in my head telling me I should really have picked the fat-free blueberry antioxidant muffin) and tucked myself away at the table in the corner. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Toile or continue to hate her. Yeah, no. That wasn’t really an issue. I hated her. She’d insinuated her way into our school under false pretenses, masquerading as someone she wasn’t. Hell, maybe her name wasn’t even Toile. I hadn’t executed a particularly thorough internet search for her, but her name hadn’t popped up during a rudimentary Google search. Maybe that was because she didn’t exist?

  Suddenly, I had to know.

  I pulled my iPad from my bag and quickly logged into the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi.

  I’d already Googled “Toile Jeffries,” so I knew there was no point in walking down that road again. Maybe Toile was a nickname? Middle name? Nom de guerre? If so, “Jeffries” might be her legal surname. But that was a relatively common one, and without a first name, I’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Hold up. Not entirely. What had Jesse said that first day of school?

  She lived in Hawaii before she came here. Honolulu, I think.

  Honolulu would have a limited pool of high schools, so I started there, searching for any students my age named Jeffries.

  A hit came up almost immediately.

  Sybille Jeffries.

  Once I had her name, Sybille Jeffries wasn’t terribly difficult to track down.

  And I did mean track. Literally across the country. Toile aka Sybille had been enrolled at seven different schools in as many states over the last seven years. Each school had a different version of Toile, none of which was the perky manic pixie who had arrived in Fullerton.

  She spent fifth grade at a private Christian school in South Carolina, where she sang in church choir and attended youth Bible study meetings religiously (pun intended). Her hair was light brown then, and she dressed like a tomboy, not in the retro girlie dresses she wore now.

  During that summer, her family apparently moved to Pensacola, Florida, and the Sybille Jeffries who turned up at Warrington Middle School was a gung-ho athlete. She played soccer, softball, and basketball, chopped off her hair, and appeared to have a wardrobe that consisted entirely of warm-up pants, sports bras, and hoodies.

  But that didn’
t last long. Her next stop was Corpus Christi, Texas, where, as I would have assumed from the state, Sybille showed up for the first day of seventh grade as a cowgirl. She never played a sport, never even tried out for a team, as best as I could tell, but she wore cowboy boots every single day, had an impressive array of plaid shirts and jean shorts, and loved to country line dance.

  I saw a pattern forming. In Bethesda, Maryland, Sybille went dark and goth. In Groton, Connecticut, she was a straight-up preppy. Honolulu got the surfer, and now, in bright and sunny Southern California, we had the bright and sunny Toile.

  I had discovered Toile’s secret: she was a chameleon who adapted to whatever environment in which she found herself. Now what was I going to do with this knowledge?

  The good angel on my shoulder, which oddly enough sounded a lot like Spencer, said to leave it alone. I knew I was right, that her manic-pixie crap was all a calculated act, just as Trixie had been. That should be enough for me. I’d let Toile win the election, let her keep Jesse, and just move on with my life.

  The bad angel, which kind of sounded like Flordeliza, was telling me some long, roundabout story about people in the Philippines I’d never met and generational wrongs that needed to be righted, that would inevitably end with the words “eye for an eye.” Because that’s how my mom rolled. Bad angel voice was definitely urging me to humiliate Toile in the same way she’d humiliated me.

  The thought of that made me smile.

  I guessed I was my mother’s daughter after all.

  But then I thought of Spencer. I could already see the disappointment on his face, and I hated the way that made me feel. And he’d be right: outing Toile’s past was a dirty thing to do. But was it any dirtier than what she’d done to me, mocking my breakup with Jesse in front of the whole school?

  Two different choices, two very different outcomes. There was only one way to figure this out.

  I pulled out my notebook and a pen. Tucked away in my brain somewhere, there had to be a pros-and-cons formula for getting revenge.

  I was halfway through some preliminary calculations when a nearby conversation caught my attention.