by Zelda Reed
Every girl feels a similar way about their first love, but with Justin it felt real enough to touch and my feelings were reciprocated. Justin wrote notes and secretly slid them into my purse, three line poems about the color of my eyes (I’ve never seen/Two so green/Your eyes, Caty) and the smell of my hair (Strawberry, Grape and Lime/You smell like fruit all the time/I’m so glad you’re mine). He had his mother bake heart shaped cookies and wrote my name on the inside of his arm, before scribbling his own on the curve of my hip. Our adolescent matching tattoos.
He was my forever until he fucked it up. Viciously and without shame.
And yet, whenever I think of him, I always imagine him happy and my stomach swells like a balloon at the thought. I hope so, I tell myself, I hope he’s married and happy and fulfilled. After years of repeating it, it’s so very easy to swallow the lie.
______
Out of boredom I head down to the hotel bar. It’s nine-thirty, late enough for me to have a drink without feeling like a lush, and early enough that if I decide to over-indulge (which I rarely do, I’m not twenty-one anymore) I’ll have enough time to recover by morning.
I’ve been ignoring Gina’s calls and texts all day, her shrill voice clogging up my inbox, her desperate messages begging for a reply. She wants to hang out, to grab lunch, how about dinner? I really, really wanna see you before the funeral :) I can see her now, pacing the linoleum floor of her tiny kitchen, chain-smoking as she taps and swipes at her screen. Her mouth’s tight and angry but she tacks on the smiley to seem less anxious and more casual, but she’s a few years too late, I already think she’s crazy.
I turn my phone face down on the bar top as the bartender pours a mix of Sprite, orange juice and vodka in a highball glass.
I feel all of sixteen again, sucking down fruit-flavored drinks that barely mask the smell of alcohol but if you hold your breath you can’t taste it. Sheepishly grinning at the bartender who knows you aren’t legal but what can he do? Your ID says otherwise. I don’t get to play those games anymore. I’m twenty-five now and my students have told me it shows, “In the best way possible, Mrs. Wheeler”. The bartender doesn’t ask for my ID as he places my drink on a coaster and charges it to my room.
The bar’s full of lone drinkers like me, staring at their hands as they wrap them around glasses of bourbon and bottles of non-alcoholic beer, occasionally glancing up to see if they’ve caught someone’s eye. An older woman and man make eye contact from across the room but she blushes and ducks her head and he’s too shy to make a move.
I wish I was one of those women, the quiet, non-threatening ones who wear “adorable” and “docile”, like a well-fitting sweater. Instead, I project an uncontrollable aura of fuck off, which women found attractive on men like my father but has never done the trick for me.
After Justin there were a string of boys in Boston. Handsome New Englanders whose parents owned estates on the water and summer homes in Italy and France. They had names like Blake and Cooper and Reginald, and they all had trust funds. Oh, the trust funds. Hundreds of thousands tucked away just in case.
I didn’t have the capacity to love them and they didn’t seem to mind. There was always another girl who would marvel at their knowledge of Socrates and Gorgias by Plato. There was always someone else willing to give up their summer for a trip to Greece, but it wasn’t me.
I was hung up then and I’m partially hung up now, wishing beyond reason that Justin will stroll through the lobby and take a seat at the end of the bar, staring at my profile as he slowly realizes, holy shit it’s her.
But that’s not what happens.
What happens is a man in a salmon pink shirt and navy tie takes up the barstool next to me. He points to my nearly empty glass and says, “Can I buy you another one?”
Without looking at him I say, “No thanks.”
Making eye contact with a stranger in a bar is the best way to keep them by your side all night. It’s intimate, catching the light in their eyes and watching the corners wrinkle when they laugh. It makes you seem open and it pulls you closer together, neither of which I’m looking for tonight.
(For a moment, let’s forget about Justin.)
He leans against the bar. “You know, I’m not gonna leave until you look at me.”
I almost laugh. “That’s very mature of you. Are you sure you’re old enough to drink?”
He laughs. “You’re funny.” I feel him shift a little closer and my shoulders lock up. “I don’t meet many funny women.” I swallow the rest of my drink and push the glass towards the bartender. “I feel like I know you from somewhere,” he says.
I push myself from the bar. “I’ve got twenty dollars that says that isn’t the first time you’ve used that line.”
“It’s not a line. You’re Caitlin Wheeler, aren’t you?”
Feet on the carpet, phone in hand, I look at him. His smile slowly transforms into a grin, a cat whose teeth have sunk into the mouse. He’s handsome in the way all men are handsome when they clean up: nice hair, nice clothes, nice scent, but take it all away and he’s nothing to write home about.
“Are you gonna answer the question?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I thought you said you were going to leave once I looked at you?” He ducks his head. Hi cat, meet mouse.
From the pocket of his well-cut jacket he pulls out a business card. Thick stock pressed between two fingers. He leaves it on the bar, in plain sight as if I’ll snatch it up once he turns his back. “Anthony Serafin.” He holds out his hand. “The Chicago Times.”
I’ve almost forgotten about the media circus that surrounds my father. It drums up in spurts, like a volcanic eruption, unpredictable and sudden. A violent event that runs for a few days before sizzling out, almost as if it had never happened.
Fall was when my father always got into trouble. September-November, like clockwork, his face would appear in The Chicago Times (my mom has issues delivered to the house and pretends it has nothing to do with my father) beneath a bold sensationalized heading: CROOKED FINANCIER JULIAN WHEELER COOKS THE BOOKS. He wasn’t important enough to grab a spot on the front page, but his name floated around the finance section like an incessant bee. Another client of Julian Wheeler’s was arrested this morning for fraud, and, Wheeler, recently named CEO of Cooper & Sons, renames business to J.M. Wheeler.
The city of Chicago was convinced my father was a crook, but he was resilient, refusing to answer questions hounded at him on camera, ignoring the reporters who camped out in front of his building, even the women who offered to flash him their tits. All of his wives (even my mother) knew to hang up and ignore fishing reporters. But I was young and stupid and angry at my father, willing to rant at anyone who would listen.
I grab Anthony’s card and rip it into fours. He pulls out another one and I rip up that one too.
“Don’t worry.” He smirks. “I’ve got plenty.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I want an interview.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I turn away from him, two steps sinking into the carpet before he says, “You paid your drink to your room.” He waves the receipt, pinched between his two fingers, just like his business card. “Room eight-oh-six.”
I don’t bother snatching it away from him. The numbers are already engrained in his memory. Eight-oh-six, eight-oh-six, repeating like a news ticker.
“I have a taser,” I tell him, stepping close. “If you show up at my door not only will I use it, I can’t promise I’ll stop before your heart does.”
He grins. “You really are like your father.” My fingers curl into themselves as he pulls a notepad and pen from his pocket. Old school. He probably thinks he’s so cool. He flips to a new page, clicks his pen and says, “Now was that on the record or off?”
I exhaust every ounce of composure to keep myself from slugging him in the jaw. I tell him, “It’s off the record,” but I know it doesn’t matter.
Journalists climb atop their high horses and drop their integrity, when it comes to my father, and by proxy, when it comes to me.
______
I remember the first time I saw my photo in the paper. I’d consented to having it taken at the Starbuck’s on Broadway, down the street from the Belmont stop where I met Cara and Louis, a young couple from Toronto who were looking for a place to grab some coffee. I was immediately taken with them – Cara with her short black bob and red lips, Louis with his tweed jacket and round glasses – they were a picturesque couple of the new generation. Well-dressed, educated, starving artists. They bought me a hot chocolate and complained about the price of cigarettes, spinning their empty box of Menthols atop the small table in the corner, the barista glancing over worryingly, waiting for the moment when she could say her line: You can’t smoke in here.
The conversation shifted from cigarettes and money, to parents with money, to father’s without an ounce of respect for their children.
“My dad called me a dyke,” Cara said, shuddering at the word.
“But isn’t Louis your boyfriend?” I asked.
She tugged on a strand of her hair. “Yeah but straight girls don’t cut their pretty long hair.”
My hands were folded in my lap as I patiently waited for my turn to speak, my resentment for my father naturally growing in my stomach. He was married to Darlene then. That morning she’d ushered me out the house with no more than a few words and a wave of her hand. “Don’t come back until around five,” she said, shoving my dad’s credit card in my pocket before slamming the door in my face.
Louis’s father wanted a son who played football and chased cheerleaders while drunk off cheap beer. “Not a writer,” he said, shaking his head. “The last thing he wanted was a writer.”
My neck bristled with anticipation as Cara looked at me. “What about you? Got any daddy issues?”
I excitedly nodded. “I hate my dad and not, you know, in the way a lot of girls say they hate their dads but then they still hug and hang out with them. Not me.” I shook my head. “I hate him and he hates me too.”
They held my hand through the conversation, leading me from one step to the other.
“Where does your father work?”
“He’s in finance.”
“Lucky you, I bet he makes a lot of money.”
“Yeah but it’s…It’s not really all legal.”
In retrospect it all played out like a well-structured play. Cara playing the role of the sweet, understanding woman, seeking solidarity through softened eyes and our mutual feminine disappointment in our fathers. Louis was the disgruntled son who funneled his anger through conversational mini-games. One-Up: the Who-Has-It-Worse edition.
Louis: “My dad’s done some illegal shit too. Sold drugs, ran a small prostitution ring.”
Cara: “That’s not even remotely true.”
Louis: “Yeah it is. He just doesn’t bring it up anymore.”
Cara: “Well my dad used to hot wire cars and was arrested once.”
Louis: “Congratulations.”
Cara: “Yeah. At first it was nice but then my mom had to get another job and overworked herself to a mental breakdown.”
It was ridiculous. Their unbelievably cliché sob stories that only sixteen year old me would believe. And I did. I eagerly slurped up their words.
Me: “Well, my dad’s never been to jail.”
Cara: “Good for you.”
Me: “But, um, he works with – for – a lot of bad guys. You know, the crooks you see on the news all the time.”
Cara: “What crooks?”
Me: “I don’t wanna name names or anything.”
Louis: “Oh come on.”
Me: “No. Just. He’s into some shit. That’s all.”
They tried to pry more information out but I wrapped my lips around my cup and refused to say any more. Louis sulked in his chair, arms crossed over his chest as he flickered his gaze between the window and me.
Cara smiled. “Our dads are all into some shit, we should make a club or something.”
I smiled. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”
From her messenger bag, army green and covered in patches, pins and buttons – So trendy! So cool! – Cara pulled her camera and said, “I’m doing this art thing in Toronto next week. Just like, photos of people we met in Chicago. Only interesting people though and…I hope you don’t think this is weird, but would you mind if I took your picture?”
She had me at “only interesting people”.
My photo was in the paper a week later, tucked away in the finance section but it immediately caught my father’s eyes. JULIAN WHEELER’S DAUGHTER REVEALS FATHER IS A CRIMINAL. Paragraph after paragraph highlighted my father’s suspected crimes and at the end, tacked on like an after-thought, was the single sentence: Unsurprising to no one, his daughter hates him.
That summer was the first and only time I was sent home early.
Four
“Go on, you should say something.” Gina bumps her shoulder into mine, a shimmering black sequin catching on the short sleeve of my dress. She plucks it off and drops it on the carpet, covering it with her heel. “Everyone would love to hear from you.”
I wanted to remain standing in the rear of the chapel, my back against the pale pink wall, heels digging into the grey carpet, but Gina wrapped her arm around my wrist and dragged me to the first pew. There are eight pews sectioned in sets of two, all filled with sniffling men and women, dotting their eyes with handkerchief’s, wiping away tears with the backs of their hands. Clusters of people line the walls, hands clasped respectfully in front of them, all of us turned towards the front of the room where my father’s ashes rest in a ten-thousand dollar urn. Solid onyx and gold.
The ceremony was short and conducted by a lone pastor who zipped through my father’s life. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, moved to Chicago, died in Chicago. He rattled off a list of his charitable contributions, four thousand dollars there, sixteen thousand dollars here, opening small windows to my father’s life where enough sun could peek in to wipe away some of the dark.
Now is the time for remarks, the pastor abandoning the podium so others may speak, but we all remain squirming in our seats, eyes darting around the room to see who’ll be the first to make a move.
Darlene sits behind us. Beautiful and tall as ever. She keeps one hand wrapped in her husband’s, the other on her son’s shoulder. He’s adorable and obedient, keeping his head down as he flips through a book. She’s said all of three words to us, “I’m so sorry,” as if none of this has affected her. As if she washed her hands of my father the minute she left him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.
She has nothing to say and neither does Gina, who nervously chews at her lips before she whispers, “I would go up and say something, you know, but I don’t wanna cry, I mean look at me.” Her make-up’s caked on in layers – foundation too light for her skin, eyeliner thick around her eyes, blush, bronzer, and lipstick that remains despite her teeth against her lips. If she cries her face might melt off and we wouldn’t want that.
Across the small aisle, from the first pew, Ashleigh shoots to her feet. The low string of conversation halts. Ashleigh, dressed in a short yellow sundress – Yellow! Like she’s at a garden party! – has been wailing since the ceremony started. Her cry is the sound of someone who’s practiced in the mirror, fixing her lips and cheeks and eyes so she still looks pretty. She throws her hands over her face and runs out the room. Overly dramatic.
Again, Gina bumps her shoulder into mine. “How’s it gonna look?” she whispers. “His only daughter – his only child – doesn’t have one nice thing to say about him?”
I try to think of one good memory but all I remember is the icy aura my father wrapped around himself, whenever I was around. He was never supposed to have children, especially a daughter, and yet there I was, taking up space in his condo every summer, sucking in the same
air as him, digging through his fridge in the middle of the night, asking for money to buy tampons. He openly resented me and now Gina wants me to stand and bullshit niceties for the sake of a dead man.
“I don’t care how it looks.” I cross my arms over my chest and sink into the pew.
Gina tuts beneath her tongue. “You’re gonna regret this, you know.”
I highly doubt it.
______
The press waits for us across the street from the funeral home. A small gaggle of them huddle around one another, sweating beneath the high afternoon sun, their cameras at the ready, hurling questions from the sidewalk. They have the right to come closer, to lean against the line of pitch black limos if they want, but they’re all too afraid.
The press has never been able to prove that my father dealt with unsavory characters – drug dealers, hit men, what’s left of Chicago’s dwindling mob – but the rumors are enough to keep them at a distance when there’s a flock of large men in black suits and tattoos on their knuckles, pacing up and down the sidewalk, glaring at them from behind their sunglasses.
Gina’s ushering me in the back of a limo when I spot Anthony Serafin of The Chicago Times. Mr. Eight-oh-Six. Without his suit he blends in with the lanky reporters next to him, their heads bent towards one another, a poor attempt to devise a plan. What happened to your brazenness? I want to shout across the street, but Gina has both hands against my lower back, impatiently shoving me inside.
Darlene, her husband, and her kid ride with us to the repass. Stiffly, Gina extends an offer to Ashleigh but she declines in favor of riding with her college-aged friends. Six of them pack into a beat-up Sudan with Wisconsin plates and beer bottles and fast food wrappers littering the floor. They ride behind us with The Smiths playing on low, Ashleigh squished in the backseat, sobbing on her friend’s shoulder. I watch from the back window and catch Darlene and Gina tossing glances over their shoulders too.