Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now

by Dana L. Davis

  “You ready, Tiffany?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Ready.”

  Margaret thanks the lady behind the desk and we move on.

  * * *

  The hospital has strict rules about the ICU visiting area, so Margaret and I are waiting in another waiting room on an entirely different floor. I keep checking my phone every second and a half, hoping to get another text from Jo. I don’t dare text her, knowing she’s in her own personal hell and truly doesn’t need distractions from me.

  “Your dad’s here. He’s parking.” Margaret breaks the hours-long silence.

  I check my phone again. Still nothing from Jo.

  After a few minutes, Anthony rushes into the waiting room, still in his hospital scrubs, looking frazzled, tired and anxious. Margaret stands to greet him and they hug.

  He sits beside me, squeezes my leg. “How you holdin’ up there, Tiffany?”

  He smells like a mixture of alcohol and that pink bathroom soap they have in public restrooms. “They’re installing an LVAD. Is that a dangerous surgery or something? I feel like Jo was hinting that he might not make it.”

  “Medicine has advanced tremendously. People can live for years with an LVAD. He’ll have a little backpack. The device will reach from his heart and out his stomach. He’ll carry it with him wherever he goes and plug into a machine at night.” Anthony squeezes my leg again. “Tiffany, let’s go home. There’s no reason to be here. If he makes it out of surgery, he’ll be placed in an induced coma until his body heals and revitalizes. He won’t wake up for days.”

  “But I want Jo and Monique to know I’m here. I don’t want them to feel alone. I always felt so alone when Mom was dying.”

  “Trust me,” he tosses out casually. “They’re not worried about you being here.”

  “Correction. They’re not worried about you being here.” Asshole. “I’m staying.”

  “We’ll stay with you, Tiffany.” Margaret gives Anthony the same look I gave Aric right before I dislocated his nose from his face.

  “Well, then, let’s be proactive and not just sit here.” Anthony leans back in the chair beside me. “I think it would be a good idea for us all to pray together.”

  “Great idea, honey,” Margaret replies.

  A few chairs away from us a baby starts to wail. Her mom pats her on the back and paces around the small waiting room.

  “I’m not going to do that. You guys knock yourselves out.”

  “Tiffany, c’mon,” Anthony urges. “Let’s pray together. As a family.”

  “What exactly is the point? I prayed for my mom and look where that got me.”

  “The point of prayer is to ask for Jehovah God’s help,” Anthony states.

  “And what if Jehovah God doesn’t offer one bit of help?” I ask. “Like, what if we all hold hands and pray and then Marcus dies? What then?”

  Margaret and Anthony exchange looks. Disturbed, confused, mystified looks. Almost as if the thought never occurred to them. What happens when “God” doesn’t answer prayers? Hell if we know, they seem to say without saying.

  I think back to when Marcus and I talked on the balcony in Malibu. “When is the last time God ever physically helped anybody?” he asked me. “In so many ways, Tiffany, you are the God you seek.” I so wish that were true. If I was God, like if I really and truly were like...a god—I would make an awesome one. I’d create a place where people like my mom and Marcus got to live long, happy lives.

  “I have an idea.”

  Anthony and Margaret perk up, hope sprung back to their dead, crazy eyes.

  “What if instead of praying for God to save Marcus’s life and then being disappointed if that doesn’t happen...what if we saved a life. Someone who needs saving. Someone we can save.”

  Anthony’s brow furrows. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Marcus’s family has money, right?” I say. “They can afford health care. What if somebody didn’t have insurance and they had Marcus’s issues? What would they do?”

  “That would be a rough road.” Anthony shakes his head.

  “Sadly, it happens all the time,” Margaret adds.

  “What if we... I dunno...started a GoFundMe page to help victims of heart disease who don’t have health insurance. Is that lame?” I ask.

  “Not lame at all,” Margaret replies.

  “I like this idea, Tiffany.” Anthony squeezes my leg again. “But instead of a GoFundMe page, what if we started a nonprofit organization? I can help you get it started.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d be happy to.” Anthony sounds genuinely happy to be of some use to me.

  “Thank you, Anthony. This will be my prayer. This is my prayer.”

  “I like it. It’s active prayer. Let me make some calls. See what I can do to get the ball rolling for you.”

  “I want to help, too,” Margaret adds. “Tiffany, can I be a part of it?”

  “Definitely. I need all the help I can get.”

  * * *

  It’s after 4:00 p.m. when I get a new text from Jo. Margaret, Anthony and I are in one of the hospital cafeterias eating a snack when my phone buzzes. With shaking hands I read the text.

  “Read it out loud, Tiffany,” Margaret urges.

  “‘Marcus is out of surgery,’” I read. “‘Praise God! He’s in a medically induced coma, but—’”

  “See, I told you,” Anthony interrupts.

  Margaret glares at Anthony. “Anthony, shh! I want to hear this.”

  “‘But things are looking good.’” I continue reading. “‘Might be days before he wakes. Please go home, Tiffany. We love you so much and will be in contact. Thank you for being here. It means so much to us.’”

  As I look up and breathe a sigh of relief, Anthony’s phone buzzes loudly on the table. He grabs it. A look of sheer terror clouds his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Margaret asks.

  “It’s Rachel calling.” Only he says, It’s Rachel calling, like he really said it’s the devil calling. “I can’t answer it. I can’t.”

  “I’ll do it.” Margaret grabs the phone.

  Anthony’s head is lowered, eyes closed, and he’s breaking his plastic fork into tiny pieces like a crazy person. Is that because he wants me to be his kid or he doesn’t? I can’t tell.

  “Hi, Rachel,” Margaret says weakly. “Right. Okay.” She nods. “What are our options at this point?” Margaret gives me a polite tilt of the head.

  That polite tilt of the head says it all. It’s written all over her face. Etched in the lines of her frown. But how could Anthony not be my father? It doesn’t make sense.

  “Right but...” Margaret trails off, listening. “I do understand that, but—” She sighs. “Right. Then what’s the next appropriate step?” Margaret sighs again. Heavier this time. “I’ll talk to Anthony and see if he wants to move forward with that. I doubt he will, though. We just want to move on. Get back to our lives. Thank you, Rachel. I will speak with Tiffany and let her know her options. We’ll be in touch.” She hangs up and Anthony throws his crumpled bits of plastic fork. Fork bits fly everywhere.

  “What is wrong with you?” Margaret asks as she dodges an airborne shard of plastic.

  “We’ll take another test!” he bellows.

  “Why would we do that?” Margaret sounds exasperated. “These tests have no gray area. They’re ninety-nine percent accurate.”

  “I don’t believe it! I know she’s my daughter! I know she is.”

  “Of course she’s your daughter!” Margaret shrieks so loud a few people in the cafeteria look over at us. She ignores the stares. Speaks pointedly. “You are Tiffany’s father. You are. That’s what Rachel said. You are.”

  I exhale. Relieved. I knew it. I knew it!

  “But what was all that �
��We’ll see what our options are from here’?” Anthony asks. “And you sounded so sad.”

  “That was Rachel wanting us to sue Xavior, which I don’t think we should. He’s a nice man. He meant well. That was what she was asking me about.” Margaret beams. “Turns out Tiffany Sly...is a Stone. Perhaps you two could do with some privacy.” She slides her chair back, stands and quickly makes her way out of the hospital cafeteria, a satisfied smirk plastered across her face.

  Anthony and I sit in silence for a long, long while. A rewritten version of Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited” plays in my head. Reunited and it feels so awkward.

  “I don’t want you talking or texting with that guy ever again,” Anthony finally says. “Are we understood?”

  “That’s what you want to say to me? A DNA test confirms I really am your daughter and your response is ‘Don’t talk to that guy ever again. Are we understood?’” I shake my head. “Dude. You’re unbelievable.”

  “Dude?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that on the house rules list? Do not call your father a dude?”

  “Tiffany, look. I didn’t need a DNA test. I already knew you were my daughter.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Can you imagine what I must have been feeling for the past several days? Do you know anything about empathy? Or is your goal in life to be mean and awful and never think about how other people feel? Are you a sociopath?”

  “Is that what you think? You think I’ve been awful enough to be a sociopath?”

  “And mean. Don’t forget mean.”

  “Jesus.” He leans back in his chair. “That hurts when you say that.”

  “Talk about hurt? You made me play basketball. I hate basketball.”

  “Why? It’s a great sport.”

  “So is rugby. Doesn’t mean I want to play it. And you made me take out my braids.”

  “So? Your hair looks lovely.”

  I pull at my hair. “It’s not mine! It’s a weave. Jo gave me a weave because my hair is a mess.”

  He sits up, angry. “Why would you go against my rules like that?”

  “I have alopecia. I don’t care about your stupid rules when it comes to me looking like a troll doll or a human girl! The braids were strategically placed to cover up the bald spots on my head.”

  He leans back in his chair again, grabbing a plastic spoon. I imagine him breaking it up into bits and throwing it like he threw that fork. But he doesn’t. Thankfully he sets it down gently in front of him and stares ahead. Blue eyes as dead as the deadest dead man in dead town.

  For some reason I mumble, “I watched Cinema Paradiso.”

  He tosses me a side eye. “Really?”

  “I watched it last night. I’ve decided you’re Salvatore. But instead of loving filmmaking, you love helping women and delivering babies. And Chicago is the home you never wanted to return to. And Mom—she’s Elena, the girlfriend from your past, and—”

  Crazy happens. Like, absolutely insane transpires. Anthony Stone starts to cry. He lowers his head over his tray of hospital cafeteria food; his shoulders shake and he weeps.

  My eyes bulge and I stare at him in shock. Holy. Baloney. What do you do when a grown man starts to cry?

  “You’re right, Tiffany,” he sobs. “You’re right. This has been so hard for me. Seeing you. Having you here. Reminds me of what I lost. What I walked away from.”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “When I was a kid, we had these books.” He looks up at me, eyes pained, tears streaming down his light brown cheeks. “When you finished a chapter it gave you a choice. Turn to this page if the hero goes through the door. Turn to another page if he...climbs the mountain or whatever. I used to love those stories. Mostly because I could always go back and make another choice. See what happened on the other page. But in life you can’t do that. You make a choice and you don’t get to go back and...see.” He lowers his head. “You show up and you remind me of those pages I can’t ever read. What would our life have been like? Maybe I might have noticed the signs of the Hodgkin’s. Perhaps Imani would still be alive.”

  I close my eyes and imagine just that. My doctor dad dropping me off at school in Chicago. A happy, healthy mom at home. We would have visited a lake house on the weekends. Mom and Anthony would argue playfully on the long drive up. Maybe there would have been siblings. Little brown-skinned brothers and sisters that looked just like me. My heart aches at the thought.

  “You called me a runner at the beach house,” Anthony continues. “It’s true. I have been running. You think growing up in Englewood was easy? I made a vow when I left Chicago. One...to never return. Two...to be better than all the horrors I saw growing up. I wanted to be better. But I spent so much time working to be a cut above... I suppose I forgot what I was working for. I forgot about my family. I’m so sorry I didn’t even have the common decency to come to her funeral.” Anthony cries. “I was a coward—I couldn’t face what I did. I loved her. I have always loved her.”

  I sit in a stunned silence.

  “I love you, too, Tiffany.”

  I sit up, baffled. “I don’t believe you.”

  “What? How could you think I don’t love you?”

  I quote Margaret. “Love is not a warm and fuzzy feeling. Love is action. Work. Commitment. You’ve been gone for my whole life. And the day after I get here, you leave for San Francisco. Lame.”

  “Which I admitted was the wrong thing to do.”

  “But then you try to isolate me from the McKinneys, even though they actually have shown me love. Even lamer. You—”

  “Tiffany, stop.” He groans. “Please don’t point out everything I’ve done wrong. I’m sorry. Look, I can’t fix everything overnight. I can’t rewind time. So tell me something I can do? Name one thing I can do to make things better.”

  I don’t even hesitate. “Accept who I am.”

  “Of course I accept who—”

  “I won’t ever be a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “Tiffany.” He shakes his head. “I can’t accept that. You’re sixteen. Traumatized by the death of your mom. God will reveal Himself to you again. I know He will.”

  “Maybe,” I admit. “Or maybe not.” I lean forward. “But this is where I am right now.”

  He drums his fingers on the table. “I can respect where you’re at. I won’t force church and religion on you. I’m sorry I tried to do that.”

  “Apology accepted. Next. Stop judging the McKinneys because they’re gay.”

  “What? Tiffany Sly, I am not judging—”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday. I know you are. You know it, too.”

  He picks up the spoon again. Another long moment passes. “Fine. I can work on it. It’s hard for me. I can admit it. I don’t approve of their lifestyle. I think homosexuality is a sin.”

  “See?” I say with a sigh. “Doesn’t it feel good to be honest?”

  He chuckles. “It feels bad actually. Really bad. I feel like a jerk. Tell me something, though. Why does Marcus paint his face white? How can you not be creeped out by that?”

  I tell him everything about Marcus and why he wears white makeup on his face. Anthony shakes his head in wonder. “Jehovah God. I owe that kid an apology.”

  He’s right. He does. In fact, Anthony Stone owes an apology to his whole family. Margaret and Pumpkin, London, Heaven, Nevaeh...and me, too. “What is keen-wah?”

  Anthony laughs. “It’s spelled q-u-i-n-o-a. Beyond that...I don’t know.”

  “It’s pretty gross. Maybe we can kindly tell Margaret I don’t eat that?”

  “Done.”

  “Hey, I know something else you can do to make things better.”

  “What’s that, Tiffany Sly?” Anthony asks with a sad smile.

  “You can give me a hug. Like a real hug.”

  He kneels at my side and embraces
me. This time the hug doesn’t feel like the hug from the principal at my old school. It feels like the way Mom used to hug me. Like she was never going to let me go.

  23

  As I’m stepping into my pajamas, my Stone family cell buzzes. Anthony’s decided to no longer confiscate it at night. Another attempt to make things better. Though internet is still not allowed. But what are you gonna do? Rome wasn’t built in a day. London’s in the bathroom taking a shower, so I quickly grab it from off the nightstand. Xavior X scrolls across the screen.

  I sit slowly on the edge of the bed and press the answer button. “Hey.”

  “Tiffany.” He’s still saying my name like it’s the most important name in the world. I can hear the hustle and bustle of the airport in the background. “I hope you don’t mind me calling. I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You had a hunch. I don’t blame you for wanting to know the truth.”

  “Maybe all this happening is the universe guiding me to get my act together. Meet a nice girl. Fall in love. Have some kids. I’d really like that.”

  “Make sure you make them listen to Sgt. Pepper’s.”

  “And Ziggy Stardust.”

  “Spiders from Mars? Best. Ever.” I hear the shower click off in the bathroom. “I...better get going.”

  “Hey, listen. If my kids turn out to be half as cool as you, Tiffany Sly...they will be the greatest ever. Rock on, my little homey.”

  I smile. “Rock on, Xavior Xavion.”

  * * *