by Lisa Wingate
“How?” I asked blandly. “We don’t have any money.”
My father gave the syrup bottle a tired look, and then reached for it. “I still have a few aces up my sleeve. I’ll work it out.” Handing the syrup to Barbie, he forced a smile, but when she leaned over the table to reach the sibs’ plates, he rested a forearm on the edge and sagged over it, as if the weight of her expectations were almost too great a burden.
Mark tipped his head to one side, taking my father in, seeming to struggle to match the picture of the gaunt, stoop-shouldered, gray-haired man with that of the stranger who’d come and gone from our house in Highland Park. Mark’s frown appeared to question whether they were one and the same. “Daddy, did you gimme pancakes when I’m a baby, like Jewee? D’we go to the Waffle House?”
The question surprised my father. He turned to Mark as if he’d suddenly realized the boys were in the room, too.
Barbie paused with the syrup bottle and glanced over her shoulder, her expression a silent plea to my father. Aunt Lute stood with the pancake platter, hovering above the table as if she, too, were waiting for the answer. We all knew that Dad had never torn up little pancake pieces for any of the sibs.
My father gave Mark the Superman wink—the one that sold cars, and energy-efficient replacement windows, and houses that would eventually leave unsuspecting families on the street. “’Course I did, buddy,” he said, then tore a bit of pancake from his plate and pitched it across the table. Mark clapped it between his palms, giggling, and my father was Superman again. What was one more well-intentioned lie on top of all the others?
The remainder of the day went by in a mishmash of Let’s Pretend and clandestine calls on my father’s cell phone. An FBI agent from the local field office came by to talk to him. During their meeting, Barbie, Aunt Lute, and I spirited the kids off to McDonald’s to get them out of the way.
“How can you do this?” I asked Barbie, as we ordered food and the boys followed Aunt Lute to the playscape. “How can you pretend things are normal, after what he’s done?”
Some stray emotion—regret, perhaps—lowered her eyes, but it was quickly masked. “He’s back,” she said quietly. “That’s all that matters now.”
“It’s not all that matters. Are you just going to forget about what he did to us—all the lies he told? Are you going to forget what he did to other people? Just because Ross Burten might skate out on some kind of plea deal, that makes it okay?”
There was a flash of emotion again—something deeper; then she turned to the counter to order Happy Meals, a salad, and two combos. “That sound all right?” she questioned, pointing to the menu board. “I can get you a salad, if you’d rather.”
“I don’t care.” I didn’t want a salad or anything else. I wanted this day to end.
Sighing, Barbie turned her back to the counter as we waited for the clerk to make our drinks. She looked at her shoes—high heels in place of the sandals and sneakers she’d been wearing since she gave up partying with Fawn. “Listen, Tam, I’m not like you, all right?” Her gaze rose slowly. I saw myself reflected in her eyes, saw my anger. “I don’t have . . . all these . . . these big ideas floating around in my head. I’m not the type who wants to teach everybody to read, or go help out at some soup kitchen, or make sure the old lady across the street is safe in her bed at night. I’m not trying to . . . fix everything that’s wrong in the world. I just want to take care of my kids. I don’t want them to wonder why Santa didn’t show up on Christmas, or to walk into school and have other kids make fun of their clothes, or have to stand outside the fence and watch everybody else play soccer because nobody wants them on their team. They need Paul. I need him. I just want them to have it good, you know?” Stretching out a hand, she touched my shoulder. “It’s best for you, too, Tam. You should have college, and your golfing, and hanging out at the country club, and going to the mall with your friends. All the good things.”
College, the mall, the country club . . . I tried to imagine slipping back into the shoes of the girl whose overriding concern had been whether to take a scholarship or spend a year bumming around Europe. If my father moved us back to Highland Park, if he managed to clean up his image, would all those things be waiting? Would Emity be ready for a trip to the mall or a night of hanging out with rented movies and a quart of ice cream?
“I don’t want those things anymore,” I whispered. That life seemed artificial, shallow, pointless. It was empty, even while I was living it, which was why I’d wanted to take off for the far side of the world. I was searching for something, and somehow, in the house on Red Bird Lane, I’d found it. I’d found a purpose that was bigger than just me pleasing myself. Now they wanted me to leave it behind—as soon as Barbie and my father could make the arrangements.
She touched my hair in a gesture that felt oddly parental—strange, considering where we’d been these past weeks. “You’re so young, Tam. You don’t know what you want.”
Frustration welled inside me. “It doesn’t bother you . . . everything that’s happened? You don’t feel wrong about letting some sleaze win out, just because he can afford good lawyers?”
She shook her head, her mouth pressing into a downward curve. “Like I said, Tam, I’m not you.” The clerk slid our tray across the counter, and Barbie turned to receive it. “Let’s go eat, all right?”
We shared lunch and let the kids play until they were exhausted. Barbie wanted them to wear down for a nap, so my father could rest. “He’s under a lot of stress,” she pointed out.
“What a shame,” Aunt Lute chimed in, but it was hard to tell whether she was following the conversation or not.
By the time we got to the house, Landon and Jewel were asleep. The federal investigator was gone, and Dad was lying on the sofa asleep as we put everyone to bed for a nap. Barbie lay down with the kids, and Aunt Lute and I tiptoed around the house until finally a knock on the door disturbed the silence. Aunt Lute jumped, as if, in spite of my father’s reassurances, she was expecting bad news.
I answered the door, and Shasta was waiting on the other side with her boys. Seeing her there felt like having someone from a long-lost past drop in without warning. “Hey!” She looked at her watch. “You ready? We’re gonna be late for class. Cody’s gone to D.C. for a few days, so I’ve got the truck. I can dri . . .” She paused, craning to see past me as my father swung his feet around and sat up on the sofa, scratching his head. Her eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to remember where she’d seen him before.
I stretched a hand across the doorway, like a security bar. “My father’s here.” I was conscious of him surveying me from behind, trying to figure out who was visiting.
Blinking, Shasta stepped back. “Ohhh,” she breathed, concern evident in her face. “Ohhh . . .” Taking one last look into the room, she stepped out of his line of sight, and mouthed, Are you okay? Then she waited, her gaze darting suspiciously, anticipating some clandestine sign that we needed to be rescued.
“It’s fine.” I moved onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind me. “I’m not going to make class tonight, though. Can you ask Mrs. Kaye or someone to sit in for me? Tell them we’ve had a . . . a family emergency.”
Shasta’s disappointment was evident, and I immediately felt guilty—guilty for lying to her, guilty that my father was making arrangements to move us out of the neighborhood and I couldn’t say anything, guilty that Householders’ Superman was right around the corner, and Shasta didn’t even know it.
She leaned over and spied him through the window. “You sure you’re all right?” she whispered, rubbing her stomach and frowning. Clearly the situation made her nervous. “How’s Barbie?”
“Happy.” I wanted to slip away with Shasta and tell her the whole, bizarre story of my father’s homecoming. I couldn’t, of course. “She’s happy.”
“Whoa.” Shasta frowned, cocking her head and studying me. “You don’t look happy.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” I a
dmitted.
Shasta sighed. “You want me to hang out? We could go over to my place. I can call up to the church. They could get a few tutors to double up in class.”
“No.” Just looking at Shasta, seeing her house behind her, brought everything into focus. My father was her nemesis—the face of the evil that was trying to take away her home, slowly stealing this neighborhood and causing people to end up in the shelter down the road. “I’d better stay here. Besides, Sesay would be disappointed if you didn’t make it. Who would she show her new picture words to?” I forced a half smile, thinking of Sesay and her art pad filled with drawings and the words that Terence and MJ had helped her write.
“’Kay,” Shasta took another step back, pulling the boys with her. “You call if you need me. I mean it. Whether it’s during class or not.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Sure.” The lie seemed almost natural. My entire friendship with Shasta was built on lies. The minute she learned the truth, she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
She waved behind herself as she walked away with the boys, and a heaviness, a sense of ending, settled in my chest.
When I came back inside, my father was trying to figure out why the TV wouldn’t get CNN. “There’s no cable,” I told him. “We didn’t have the money for it.”
He sighed, his chin hardening, as if he were tired of being confronted with our current reality. No doubt in Mexico he’d been living in a place with cable. “Well, it won’t be for much longer. A couple days, max. As soon as I can get something arranged, we’ll be out of here.”
We’ll be out of here . . . soon . . . The words pulled and tugged, twisted painfully. He said them with a sense of abandon, indicating that this place meant nothing. To him, it didn’t.
“I want you to tell me something, and I want the truth,” I said finally.
“I’ll try.” He was already looking away, focusing on something else, thinking through the process of making a deal for our new living quarters, perhaps.
“How much do you know about Householders?”
His chin pulled inward, his mouth forming a bemused curve, the way a parent might look at a child who’d suddenly popped out a question like, Why is the world round, or How many stars are in the sky? “Householders?”
“Yes.” Even while composing the question, I was afraid of the answer. “Is it another deal like the sports theme park? Do you actually know what Householders does?”
Frowning, he pinched his chin between his thumb and one knuckle, stroked contemplatively. “Householders is legitimate. It’s actually just a sideline—not even under the Rosburten umbrella. They redevelop neighborhoods. Neighborhoods like this one, where the real estate is undervalued based on surrounding locations. You take a neighborhood like this one, with this kind of proximity to downtown, buy up the old houses, eventually clean them off the lots, construct something more . . . upscale. The tax base goes up, crime goes down, uptown workers get something close in with almost no commute. It’s a win-win.”
“Who wins?” Had he never considered the people who were here first? The people for whom upscale wasn’t an option?
His shoulders lifted, then lowered, as if the answer were elementary. “Everyone.”
I thought of Shasta and the family she’d met in the shelter, of Elsie and the people who came to the Summer Kitchen. I didn’t want to find out that my father knew what was happening to them, that he didn’t care, but I could see the truth without his even admitting to it. “What if people don’t want to move? What if they want to keep their homes the way they are?”
He shrugged again. “Once the properties around them are bought and sold at higher prices a few times, they don’t have much choice. The values go up, taxes increase, and the holdouts turn loose eventually. The investment company finally clears ownership of a block of properties, the neighborhood advances, and redevelopment goes on. In the right circumstances, it yields some handsome incentives for the development company—tax abatements and such. It’s a simple process.”
A simple process. The words rang in my ears. A simple process. Something clinical, with no human attachments, no complications. “So they sell the houses with no intention that people will be able to keep them, in the long term? It’s all part of a financial game?”
He coughed indignantly. “I wouldn’t characterize it that way.”
“How would you characterize it? This company is stealing people’s homes. They’re taking advantage of families who have no way to fight back, and you’re helping them.” I sucked in a breath. I’d never, ever talked to my father that way. Few people had.
He drew back, seeming offended. Then slowly the shadow of guilt turned his gaze downward, and I knew why he cringed every time those Superman commercials came on. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he knew exactly what Householders was doing, and no matter what flowery technical terms he used to describe it, he knew it was wrong.
“How would you characterize it?” I demanded, the words harsh, sharp edged. “I’d like to know, because to me it looks like Householders is taking advantage of people who don’t have the resources to defend themselves.”
“Fff!” He tipped his head back and looked down his nose at me. “Don’t be so idealistic, Tam. It’s business. Everything Householders does is legal. It’s all in their contracts.”
“These people don’t understand the contracts!” The words exploded from my mouth and bounced around the room. Aunt Lute came running from the kitchen, her eyes wide as she skidded to a stop in the doorway. “They’re not lawyers. They can’t even afford lawyers. They believe what the salesmen tell them. Only the salesmen don’t tell them everything, do they?”
Dad’s hands flew upward, came down hard, slapping the leather covering of the sofa. In the doorway, Aunt Lute was suspended mid-stride. She pulled her foot back and settled it behind her, then froze again.
“How would I know?” Dad’s voice rose to meet mine. Craning his head away, he leaned on the opposite arm of the sofa, like a man trying to maintain distance from something distasteful. “It’s not my department. I don’t keep track of the particulars. I do the commercials. I helped Boone’s company get the construction contracts. That’s as far as I go with Householders. I don’t run the company. I don’t make the policy. I don’t formulate the loans or write the legal jargon.”
“You own part of the company.”
“I had stock. Stock I received in return for doing my job. I sold it back to Ross months ago to raise some cash. Householders isn’t my problem. It isn’t my responsibility.” He washed his hands in the air, the clapping disturbing the dust floating in the window light.
I stared at him, stunned. How could he sit there and claim absolution? How could he, with a face that seemed filled with conviction, defend what Householders was doing? Was he so unlike the hero everyone believed him to be? Did I not know my father at all? “You put your name on it. You put your face on it. You endorsed it. People trust it because they trust you, because they know who you are.”
He sank against the cushions, his energy suddenly spent. “I can’t be responsible for everyone, Tam. We’ve got problems of our own. It’s business. People need to look out for themselves.”
“It’s not just business. There are people living down in the homeless shelter because they lost everything in a Householders home. Entire families. Do you realize that? You and Ross Burten didn’t advertise that on your commercials. This isn’t just business to them. We’re talking about people’s lives, their dreams. You can’t just turn your back and say it’s not your responsibility.”
My father’s gaze tangled with mine, held it, and I felt myself pleading, hoping, holding my breath. If he wasn’t Superman, then who was he? If he wouldn’t do the right thing now, then where did we go from here?
“Tam . . .” His voice was soft, conciliatory. I felt hope creep upward inside me. “I have to think of our future. You get on the wrong side of a giant like
Ross Burten, you lose. I can’t . . .”
The sound of one of the boys coughing amputated the sentence, left it bleeding onto the floor. We turned, my father, Aunt Lute, and I, in unison to find Barbie in the hallway. Landon was curled against her chest, his blond head nestled under her chin, his blue eyes blinking slowly, taking in the scene in the living room with a concern that caused something inside me to twist painfully. His lips trembled, and Barbie cupped a hand around his head, cradling him. “Paul,” she said flatly, her gaze settling on my father. “Tam’s right.”
Dropping his hands slowly to the chair arms, my father gaped at Barbie as if he’d never seen her before. “It’s not that simple.”
Barbie’s lips pursed, her eyes hardening to a cool blue. “What’s so complicated about it, Paul? While you were out there selling Householders, they were cheating people.”
“You don’t understand the position I’m in here.” The finality of the sentence seemed to say that Barbie and I were hardly capable of grasping the difficulties involved, that there was no point in his trying to explain them to us. Turning away from the conversation, he switched the channel on the television, indicating that he was tuning out. “I have to do what’s best for us.”
Barbie’s nostrils flared, and she set Landon down, whispered in his ear, and sent him to the bedroom. Padding off down the hall, he cast a worried look over his shoulder. Barbie waited until he was gone before she spoke again. “You can’t ignore me, Paul. Stop using us as an excuse for doing what you want to do.” She moved between him and the television, insisting she be heard. “How could you be involved in something like that? How can you defend it? You and I both know what it’s like to live in a place like this, to have your family slide headlong into disaster. We’re the lucky ones. We got out. But these people could be you and me. What if that football coach who plucked you off the street hadn’t bothered? What if he’d decided it was ‘too complicated’?” Her face pleaded for him to be the man she believed him to be. “Come on, Paul, nothing’s ever going to be good for us until we make this right. Don’t you see? These people down here need help.”