Multiple Listings

by Tracy McMillan

  I love this girl. I love how committed she is to her truth, and how real she’s willing to get about her anger. It’s a gift, really. She could be doing that thing some women do where they get on an IV drip of never mind. Where they pretend everything’s fine because they’re unwilling to show their hurt, their pain. But Nicki? Nicki is honest about her feelings with me and that’s a good thing. I find it very encouraging, because if she feels safe enough to tell me the truth, she actually trusts me already. I can work with that.

  “Don’t ‘thank you’ me,” she says. “It’s patronizing.”

  “You want to know what I think?” I say.

  “Not really,” she says. Then she looks up at me, just slightly. “What.”

  “I think you’re amazing.” Then I look pointedly at her. “And I think you should listen to your son.”

  11

  * * *

  NICKI

  I said yes. I’m not 100 percent sure why. Guilt, mostly. Yes, I’m concerned about how this might affect Cody. No, I really don’t want Ronnie here. Yes, I’m furious he would just show up on my doorstep and put me in this position. But it pretty much came down to this: I just couldn’t throw my own father, a fifty-seven-year-old man without a cent or a piece of clothing or anything at all really, out on the street. They’ll make him go back to prison, and I can’t do that to him.

  Ronnie’s not a bad person. He just isn’t. He’s been in jail a lot. And he’s desperate for the attention of women. And that desperation made him want money so much that he was willing to do really stupid things to get it. But at his core, he is basically good. Even my mom said so. One day we were standing in the kitchen after our every-other-week phone call from him. I must have been about thirteen. Beth had just hung up the blue wall-mounted phone and she looked at me and said, Your daddy’s not a bad man. He’s actually sweet. Always was. He just goes about everything the wrong way. The way she said it, I could tell that even though he was a world-class fuckup, she still loved him.

  It was the only time she ever said anything like that.

  I never forgot it, because it made me feel like maybe it wasn’t so awful that he’s my dad. Like maybe it was still okay for me to love him, too. Just by her saying that one thing, I grasped that regular people don’t understand prison because they’ve never known anyone who went there. They’ve never been inside a prison visiting room and seen all the guys who, if they weren’t wearing uniforms and there wasn’t a guard in the room, would look like slightly rougher versions of the average person’s uncle or cousin. In fact, the whole reason regular people are regular is because they’ve never had to deal with extreme life circumstances. If they had, they would know that going to prison is like doing drugs or going skydiving. It’s only crazy the first time. After that it becomes normal because human beings can adapt to just about anything.

  Anyway, there is just no way for me to justify forcing Ronnie back to prison. I have this thing I call the Grocery Store Exit Clipboard Test that I use sometimes to make decisions. It helps me figure out what kind of person I think I am, and whether the choice I’m making matches up with that person. For example: if someone stood outside a grocery store with a clipboard and asked me if I would force my almost-senior-citizen dad to go back to prison rather than let him stay with me for a week or two or even three or four, I would say, Nooooo! I’d never do that!

  Of course, here I am in that situation and that’s exactly what I want to do. But am I going to live up to the person I’d declare myself to be outside the grocery store? Or am I going to take the easy way out? I’m not so cold that I’m going to send an old man back to jail. Nor do I want to feel bad for the rest of my life if he drops dead tomorrow. So I said yes. Not so much because I wanted to say yes, but because I’m afraid to say no.

  “You can put your stuff in there,” I say, pointing toward the spare bedroom. I open the hall closet and pull out enough linens to make the bed. “Let me just grab some sheets.”

  The other thing is Cody. The way he looked at Ronnie—he just had this light in his eyes I’d never seen before. It was automatic love—my dad didn’t have to do anything to earn it, and all the bullshit he’s done can’t take it away, either. Which, I don’t know how that’s possible. I’ll probably never totally forgive Ronnie for all the ways he’s fucked up. There’s a part of me that wants to make Ronnie pay for every mistake he’s ever made. Then here comes Cody saying, Oh, don’t worry about it, Grandpa. You don’t owe me anything. What, is he trying to make me look bad? If someone with a clipboard outside the grocery store asked me if I would deprive my son of the grandfather he never knew, I would have to say, No. No, I wouldn’t.

  “I want you to know I think you’re making the right decision, Nickles,” Ronnie says. He’s trying to make me feel good about this by using my second-string nickname, but it’s backfiring.

  “Ronnie, with all due respect, and that’s not a whole lot, everything you say to encourage me feels like manipulation,” I say. “So I would stop that, if I were you.”

  “I get that,” he says.

  “What does that even mean, I get that?”

  “It means ‘fair enough.’ I’ve hurt you a lot and you’re not sure you’re ready to forgive me yet. ”

  “I’m fine with forgiving you,” I say. “I just wish I could do it with you over there. Not in my face. But that’s not what’s happening, is it?”

  “Peace is a practice, little girl.”

  “What?”

  “You know what they say: what you resist, persists,” he says. “I hear you trying to be in acceptance. I commend you for that.”

  I roll my eyes as hard as I possibly can. “I don’t actually need your commendation.” I don’t know why I’m being such a teenager right now—I can see my behavior for exactly what it is, since I’m the proud owner of a sixteen-year-old myself—but Ronnie is, to put it politely, bugging the shit out of me right now. It’s bad enough I’m letting him stay here—does he have to force all his New Age crap down my throat? It’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut. “This is it.”

  I flick on the light in the spare bedroom. It looks like a storage bin. There’s a rolling rack of clothes, an old futon couch, and a bunch of Cody’s outgrown toys and clothes. The one thing the room really has going for it is a nice window that looks out onto the yard. The windows in this bungalow—­giant, double-hung with original glass and hardware—are one of the main reasons I fell in love with this house in the first place.

  “Why would you ever sell this place?” he asks. When I told him he could stay, I said it was going to be temporary because we’re moving soon. Which I now realize I shouldn’t have said because it made him think he could act like my father about it. “It’s so nice.”

  “Please don’t start asking a bunch of questions. I’ve lived without your advice this long,” I say, “I don’t need it now.” I set the bedding down on the mattress. “I take it you know how to make a bed.”

  “Sure do,” he says.

  He starts singing out loud. “A thousand kisses from you is never too muh-uh-uh-uuuuch . . .”

  “Ronnie.” I say it all exhausted. “Please?”

  “What? You don’t like Luther? That was the jam back in the day! You used to love that one.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t now.” I clear a path to the other side of the futon and pull it into the bed position. “You’re driving me kind of nuts. Are you always this relentlessly upbeat?”

  “That’s called being happy, girl.”

  “It’s a bit much,” I say. “Can I ask you a question? How is it that you spent a million years in prison and you come out sounding like some sort of motivational speaker? All happy and carefree?”

  “I told you,” he says patiently, “I did a lot of work in prison. I read books, I studied, I learned meditation. I figured out where I went wrong and I healed myself.”

  That
sounds a little too awesome. I’m not sure whether to believe him or not. On the one hand, there’s what Cicero said: res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. This man is not hardened, seemingly at all. He feels like an exceptionally bright Salvation Army bell ringer, or some homeless person who is at peace despite having nothing to his name but a cardboard box and a German shepherd wearing a bandanna. On the other hand, who comes out of prison after all this time with a smile on his face? Is that even possible? Isn’t he supposed to be guarding his food with his forearm, and checking to see if anyone is coming up behind him? I don’t get it.

  “Prison was good for me.” Ronnie grabs the other end of the fitted sheet and tucks it in. I notice his hands as he smooths the corner flat. I remember thinking how huge they were as a little girl. Now I can see they’re just regular-size man’s hands. “I never lived right, Nicki. Not one minute of my life. And this time I went away for long enough to figure that out. I’m grateful.”

  “Hmmmm,” I say. I find it irritating how confident he sounds. It’s not exactly arrogant, but maybe a little too sure. “Forgive me if that’s kind of hard to believe.”

  “I understand,” he says. “You’ll see.”

  As I help him adjust the elastic over the top corner of the bed, I notice I haven’t missed Jake or felt shitty for the past hour. Which almost makes me feel a twinge of panic. Like, is the bad feeling going to come back now? I wait for a second, but I still seem to feel okay.

  “What’s going on with your boyfriend?” Ronnie asks. “Is he going to be okay with me being here?”

  What, is he reading my mind? Weird.

  “Um, that’s kind of complicated,” I say. “He doesn’t really live here, technically. He just stays here a lot. But anyway, we got in a big fight, so we’re going to take a little break from each other.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s okay, actually.”

  “Is that why you were all messed up yesterday?”

  I hate how observant he is. “I wasn’t all messed up yesterday,” I say. “I was tired.”

  “Okay, then,” Ronnie says, making it glaringly obvious he thinks I was all messed up yesterday. He holds a pillow under his chin while he snaps open the pillowcase. “What kind of business is Jake in?”

  It’s an innocent question, but I feel a block of marble move into my chest. I don’t want to tell my dad one single thing more about my life. Not one thing.

  “I’m letting you stay here, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get up in the details of my life,” I say. “Not to be rude.”

  “You’re right, baby. I’m sorry.” He gives me an understanding glance, and to be honest, I hate that he’s so nice. It would be much easier to be cranky if he wasn’t. “It’s none of my business. I’m just grateful to be here.”

  “Hey.” Cody appears at the door. He sees Ronnie and looks all alive. “What’s up!”

  “Heyyyy!” Ronnie’s excited to see Cody. He holds up his fist and Cody pounds it, all dudelike. “My boy! Come here and help me with this sheet.”

  Ronnie grabs the top sheet and hands the other end to Cody, who doesn’t have a clue what to do with it, but takes it anyway.

  “Just lay it down nice and flat, then tuck it under like this.” He makes a perfect envelope corner on the mattress, no doubt learned in prison. “Then like this.”

  Cody takes his end and follows along, attempting to fold the corner of the sheet under the mattress. He struggles for a second, but ends up with something close to an envelope. When he’s finished, he looks at Ronnie like a four-year-old would. As if to say, I did it!

  “Nice, son,” Ronnie says. “Now smooth it out a little. Like this.”

  I take a step back and watch them together. Maybe Ronnie being here is okay for tonight.

  * * *

  I plunge my feet into the warm water. This is the best I’ve felt in three days, almost normal. Peaches is in the chair next to me. I’ve purposely been avoiding her since all hell started breaking loose at home, because she’s very judgey and she always finds a way to make everything about her. I don’t feel like dealing with her, but she’s my best friend and that means I can only respond by text and send her to voice mail for so long before she starts to get suspicious. The limit is about forty-four hours.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say, leaning back into the chair.

  “Your dad is living with you.” She says it like when a really great basketball player gets the ball, runs all the way to the other end of the court, and slams it into the net with such skill, flourish, and finality you just want to stand up and cheer. Even if you’re on the other team.

  “How do you know that?” I certainly didn’t intend to give it away so quickly that she’s right, but it slips out.

  “A little bird told me.” She stops. “Okay, Cody put it on his social networking,” she says. “You know, those crazy little phones have all sorts of stuff going on inside of them. Like apps and whatnot. You’re behind, bitch.”

  I used to check Cody’s social networking, but I stopped doing it with any regularity because it felt like I was spying on him. Did I even really want to see what was on there? Not really. Once I became reasonably certain he wasn’t going to become the teenage Unabomber I decided to trust him instead of trying to control him. Although I have to admit that maybe if I’d paid more attention I might not have been caught off guard over all those absences at school.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I don’t like the idea that Peaches is hiding stuff from me, even if I’m hiding the same stuff from her first.

  “I wanted to see how long it would take you to tell me,” she says. “It was a test.”

  “That’s sneaky,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, I’m sneaky,” she says, balancing her cell phone on the arm of her chair. Peaches likes to live dangerously, even when there’s absolutely no reason to. “Anyway, you passed. It only took you a couple of days, and I can understand that.”

  “Thank you, Peaches.” I say it like I appreciate this rare moment of being the bigger person; that doesn’t happen very often, does it?

  “Yeah, you’re welcome,” she says back, not appreciating my tone. “Anyway, what’s it like so far? Does your dad put his arm around his food so you guys don’t try to steal it off his plate? I had a boyfriend once who told me that’s how it goes down in prison.”

  I love that Peaches has the same stupid idea of prisoners as I do. Not that I’m going to tell her that. I’m too busy maintaining my air of superiority.

  “No, Peaches. He acts perfectly normal while eating. It’s only been a couple of days, so I don’t really know yet,” I say. “So far, the weirdest part is that it’s not very weird. He seems almost unbelievably normal. Every once in a while I’ll see him staring off into space. And sometimes he seems like he’s in his own world. Like he’s connecting the dots in ways that the rest of us probably aren’t. But then again, he read a hundred books in prison and now he thinks he’s some sort of cross between Joel Osteen and Dr. Phil, so who knows.”

  “Sounds fantastic. When am I coming over to meet him?”

  “Yeah, um. Absolutely no rush.” Peaches and Ronnie are like the two people from opposite sides of your life that you’re not sure you want talking to each other at your birthday party. “I mean, you and he both annoy me individually, so together, I’m sure you’re really going to annoy me, and I’m not in a big hurry for that to happen.”

  “You’re just scared to have us comparing notes on you.” Peaches sucks in a giant snort of air. “You might lose your precious feeling of control.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “I spent my whole life dealing with Ronnie being out of control, and now that he’s out of prison, everything’s gonna go at my speed this time. So you can just take a number and have a seat.” I finish it with a got it? face.

  “So, next quest
ion,” Peaches says. “Have you heard from Jake?”

  “I actually haven’t,” I say. “But you know what’s crazy? I’m sort of fine with it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No, seriously. It’s true. Okay, maybe not totally fine, but I’m not all broken down crying.” No one is more surprised at this than me. But since my dad moved in, I’ve hardly even thought about Jake. It’s like Ronnie’s presence is so big he’s taken up all the space Jake occupied and a whole lot more. Or maybe Jake’s presence was just a lot smaller than I thought. He did work pretty much around the clock.

  “He’s going to come back, you know,” Peaches says. “Not that I’m excited for that. But you’re the best thing that ever happened to him. I always felt like you’d have to peel him off of you to get him to go.”

  “Do you have to judge, Peaches?” I say. I secretly like that Peaches is so sure that Jake’s going to come back—I think he will, too—but I don’t like it when she implies that he’s some sort of gold digger. “It’s half the reason I don’t like telling you things.”

  Hua taps my left calf, signaling me to change feet. I dutifully pull the right leg out of the water and put the left one back in. I relax into the feeling of the bubbles around my ankles. I have friends who think mani-pedis are a waste of money, but the way I see it, if someone said it’d cost twenty-­seven dollars for a ninety-minute trip to heaven, wouldn’t you say, Deal! Of course you would.

  “I don’t! Judge,” she says.

  “Are you kidding?” I say. “You’re the most judgmental person I know.” I didn’t mean for it to come out that harsh. But it’s sort of true, so I don’t feel like taking it back. “Isn’t she, Hua?”

  “Not getting involved,” Hua says. “Feet up.” She grabs what is essentially a long skinny cheese grater and starts filing away at my calluses.

  “I guess if you feel I’m judging because I say what I see,” Peaches says, “then maybe, yes. I judge.”