The Reading Promise

by Alice Ozma

  My father’s entrance was holding up the end of an already seven-hour rehearsal, and people started whispering. They were trying to figure out who he was, and though I wouldn’t have minded letting them know, there was no way of informing the whole crowd without standing up on the stage and announcing it. I waved again, but my father wasn’t even looking toward the stage.

  “Well,” my father said briskly, “that’s not gonna fly. It needs to be right now.”

  I suddenly got an idea, simple but clear and effective—my father need only say, “It’s urgent,” and there would be no question of letting me go, at least for a few minutes. It was vague but earnest. People would assume there had been a death in the family. They would feel sorry for us as we headed toward the exit, instead of staring at my father with contempt as they were now. I closed my eyes and tried to send the message to him telepathically, but my skills weren’t as sharp as they should have been because that’s not what he said. What he said, in a low voice that he clearly intended to be a whisper, was: “I need to read to her by midnight.”

  As I constantly remind him during concerts and lectures, my father has yet to learn what an actual whisper sounds like. His version actually made the situation a little worse, because he was perfectly audible but added a somewhat conspiratorial tone to his voice. Then he finally saw me and pointed. I don’t know how he was able to find me, since I was slumped over like a rag doll and trying to bury myself in the folds of my dress. Maybe my red face attracted his attention.

  Heads turned. I could practically hear the eyebrows raising.

  “What?” the director asked, staring up at him and obviously assuming he’d misheard.

  My father just nodded and pointed at me again. I flashed a weak smile and hoped that the heat coming off my face would set off the fire alarm and give me an excuse to run out the back door. Someone near me whispered, “Let her go. I’m not going to sit here all night.”

  There was a general mumbling of agreement, which the director may have heard because, after looking at my father for another moment or two, he said, “Well, all right, then.”

  My father waited at the door as I made my way down the stairs and toward him, hearing people ask from all around me, “What did he say he has to do? Read her what?”

  Someone close to my age pulled on my hem as I walked by and asked, “Is this some sort of a religious thing?”

  I eventually made it to the door. Before I left, as was customary, I hugged and kissed the director good-bye. He looked confused but smiled at my father over my shoulder, apparently trying to convince him that all was well. Just as the door shut behind me, I could hear him announce, “Well, no one else is getting out of here until notes are done!”

  Because we couldn’t make it home before midnight, we read a chapter of Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie in the parking lot, leaning up against the car. My father held his flashlight over the pages, despite the fact that it was quite easy to see by the streetlights. As we were finishing, the cast began trickling out to their cars. Most of them pretended not to see my father reading to me, which made it even more strange. I smiled a big smile, but kept my eyes on the book. Normally, even a glance at the text on my part made my father self-conscious. This time, however, he didn’t say anything. He let me stare right at the words he was reading, and when he finished, he closed the book and got into the car quickly and quietly.

  To my surprise, we had an understanding. He knew that at least for one moment in time, I was embarrassed of The Streak. And for that, more than anything that had happened that night, I was ashamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Day 2,986

  He could not play the game without hope; could not play the game without a dream.

  —Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

  Did you see a ring?”

  “No, she had her hands in the dough. I couldn’t just ask her to take them out.”

  “You could have tried to shake her hand.”

  “Geezle Pete, Lovie! I think you’re right again. Should we go back in?”

  “No, now it will be obvious.”

  “What if I act like I just remembered I wanted a cinnamon bun?”

  “There’s already one in the bag, I think.”

  “You think! Is there or isn’t there? Check!”

  “There is. There are two, actually.”

  “Geezle Pete.”

  “Wait, I think she’s heading toward the window. I can probably get a good look. Stand here and act like you’re eating your doughnut.”

  I had more wing-woman experience than most teenage girls. Sometimes a single dad needs a hand.

  “Why would I act like I’m eating a doughnut? Can’t I just eat it?”

  “There it is. There’s a ring.”

  “A wedding ring?”

  “Looks like it. A gold band.”

  “Geezle peezle. We’re dead ducks, Lovie.”

  There are plenty of things my father does well. He is very skilled at baseball analysis and giving driving directions, and he’s even got a pretty strong drawing hand. But he’s never been particularly good, or perhaps the word is lucky, when it comes to dating.

  That’s not to say, of course, that he has not dated. At some point in his life, he must have dated my mother. And then he was single, and then he started dating Lee.

  Lee was a thin woman with curly blonde hair and kite-like shoulders. She was in the audience for the matinee of one of my performances in high school and came up to me afterward to say hello.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” she began.

  I didn’t.

  “Of course I do! You’re, hmm…”

  “Lee! I used to work with your dad. Well I just wanted to let you know what a great job you did up there!”

  She had a nice smile and smelled like a home.

  “Thank you! Thank you for coming. I will tell my dad I saw you.”

  “Yes, please do!”

  Even though I liked her, I forgot.

  A few weeks later, my father said that he was going out for the evening with Lee.

  “Oh! She came to my play. I was supposed to tell you.”

  “I know. She sent me a letter.”

  “A letter? Saying what?”

  “That she’s got the hots for me.”

  “It did not say that!”

  “If it didn’t come right out and say it, that was still the general idea.”

  It had never even occurred to me that my father might want to date. He hadn’t mentioned women, even in passing, other than noting our superior mental capacity. In what I later learned was an effort to stabilize our home and make it clear that my sister and I were his real priorities, my father had gone six years without a woman in his life. Before this very moment, I had not considered how strange that was. When he came home later that night, smiling and whistling as he made himself a cup of tea, I wondered how long he’d been thinking about this moment. I wondered if he’d had butterflies.

  Two weeks later, I asked for permission to go on my first date.

  “Can I go to the boardwalk with Ben?” I whispered through the crack in his door, as he was just waking up from his nap (and at his most relaxed).

  “Who else will be there?”

  “No one.”

  He closed his eyes for a minute, and I thought he was going back to sleep. Then, without opening them, he said, “If you plan to be out late, we’re going to need to read first.”

  As I got dressed for the big night, I considered the possibility that I might come back whistling too. I did, and by the end of that summer we were both in relationships.

  When we had dates on the same night, we would compare notes as we got ready. This generally consisted of him telling me what great shape he was in and how every outfit looked good on him, though some looked better than others. Then I would ask him what he thought of my outfit, and he would make a pained look and comment on the color or the fabric. If there was time, he would usually make me hand over
the entire ensemble so he could iron it, because he was very passionate about well-ironed clothes.

  “It only takes a few minutes, and you go from looking like a horribly wrinkled monkey warrior to a real class act.”

  I have never figured out who these monkey warriors are or what harrowing experience left them with bodily wrinkles, but having a father who loves to iron has always been advantageous.

  We both stayed in our respective relationships for a few years, and I really came to care for Lee. She had children of her own and took me under her wing without even having to think about it, making me Easter baskets, baking on my birthday, and accompanying my father to any event that involved cheering me on. She even seemed to get along with my mother. We were starting to feel like a lopsided but somehow logical, happy family. And then, no one really understood what happened.

  I was sitting in the dining room a few weeks before my senior prom. I had on the Phillies game, which my father was attending in person, and I also had on every light in the house. Being home alone still made me nervous. I thought every noise was someone creeping onto our front porch, so I nearly ran for the phone when I noticed that someone actually was. When I realized that it was Lee, I sighed, and laughed, and went to the door to let her in. But when I got there, she was already backing out of the driveway. On the porch was an early graduation present to me, a gorgeous forest-green set of luggage with a lovely, heartfelt card. Next to the luggage, in a neat and tidy pile, every gift my father had ever given her looked up at me regretfully.

  “I just don’t understand,” I heard him say on the phone that night.

  There was a pause, and then, “Are you sure?”

  Another pause, this time shorter.

  “Well, I’m not going to beg you,” he said, and he hung up the phone.

  After two years, the conversation lasted less than thirty seconds. He was blindsided.

  He seemed upset for a day or two, but then he began repeating, like a boxer with a mantra, the same general phrases: “She was a great find but I am a great find, too. I will move on and find better. If she doesn’t want me, the heck with it. Someone else will jump at the chance. I am in great shape.”

  He dated, and quickly realized that though women were available and interested, he would be starting all over again. He missed the comfort of his relationship. He missed Lee.

  So he spent a few months trying to find out what had happened between them. He tried leaving her notes, and making small gestures, and letting her know that she was still on his mind. There was even one golden moment when a friend said that she’d seen a photo on Lee’s desk of her with my father, long after the breakup. Buoyed with hope, my father called her for the first time in months. It turned out the photo was of another white-haired man.

  He went back to dating, but since he hadn’t done it in years (Lee had pursued him, and there had been no one between her and my mother) he was out of practice. At first, his standards were too high—he was looking for someone in great shape, who could cook and wanted to be a part of the family, and who loved to travel and sometimes listen to Elvis. He was looking for Lee. Even when I convinced him to lower his standards a bit, though, his luck didn’t improve much.

  “So how was that blind date?” I asked one morning, as I was organizing my things into piles for my senior class trip. He had gone on a few in the past month, but none was quite what he’d been hoping for.

  “Lousy,” he said, sitting on his bed and rubbing his feet.

  “You can sum it up in one word? Was it really that bad?”

  “I walked up to the restaurant, and there was this man who looked exactly like George Washington outside, waving to someone. When I got closer I realized that he was waving to me. When I got even closer, I realized he was a she.”

  I let air out between my teeth.

  “Well, that’s a rough start, I’ll admit, but you can’t keep judging these women by their looks. Not everyone is as passionate about exercise as you are, you know.”

  “She chewed with her mouth open, cursed like a sailor, and bragged that the only thing she reads for pleasure is the funny pages. Are my standards still too high?”

  After months, and then years, of similar stories, I became my father’s personal salesman. I had no choice, as far as I could see—I wanted him to be happy, and he couldn’t seem to figure it out on his own. I started off tentatively (“It’s funny, my father laughs the same way!”), but gained momentum quickly.

  “You know,” I said to an attractive, middle-aged woman helping me find my shoe size at a local department store, “you really should wear your ring, if you’re married.”

  She looked confused.

  “But I’m not married,” she said.

  “Oh! Well you know, actually, neither is my father. I wonder what else you two might have in common!”

  My tactics might be a bit too direct, because as of this writing, he has yet to find anyone. He goes through moments of optimism and times of frustration, but he is still looking, which is all I can ask for. As long as he still wakes up in the morning believing that the woman for him is out there, I think he comes closer to finding her. It just hasn’t happened yet.

  But it has to, and not because I want it to—my father has to find someone because it’s impossible that he wouldn’t. We noticed a pattern over the course of The Streak, books about mothers who left the family and fathers or grandfathers who had to try to piece things back together. These male characters were always sad, mopey creatures, curling up in their bedrooms and hiding from the world. My father was never that man, and we laughed at these stories. What had inspired these authors to write such unrealistic tales? Weren’t there men anywhere like my father? Men who woke up excited about the day, optimistic about raising children alone, full of humor and life? In all of The Streak, we never found a character who looked at his situation the way my father did, eager to find someone but unafraid to raise his daughters as a single man.

  In the books we read, even those sad, unfamiliar men often found someone. Some lovely woman wandered in, made the man laugh for the first time in years, and brought him back to life. My father was full of life, but this woman never came. I can’t even say for sure if the stories gave him hope. But we kept reading them, so something must have stuck. I know that the right woman is out there, maybe reading this book and wondering why she’s never met a man like my father.

  If I met her, I would remind her that no one is like him. Not even close.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Day 3,156

  The world itself was a whirligig, its myriad parts invisibly linked, the hidden crankshafts and connecting rods carrying motion across the globe and over the centuries.

  —Paul Fleischman, Whirligig

  I sat at the intersection for quite some time, waiting to cross over to the other side. I was a terrified new driver with almost no desire to use my freshly minted license. My friend had been able to convince me to visit him only because his house was within walking distance of mine. But just as I was heading out the door it started raining, and I knew I’d have to drive.

  “Be careful crossing the highway,” my father had called, as I grabbed the car keys from his nightstand. “There’ll be a lot of shore traffic today. Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”

  I said no as I thought yes and now, waiting and waiting and waiting for even a small gap in the endless line of cars, I wanted to turn back and take him up on the offer. But there were three cars behind me already, and there was nowhere to turn around. I tried to give them an apologetic look in my mirrors.

  Then the break came, wonderfully large and roomy, big enough for myself and every car behind me. I put my foot on the accelerator. Nothing happened. I pressed harder. Still nothing. I remembered, suddenly horrified, that this had happened as I was pulling out of the driveway, too. There I had stopped, turned off the car and restarted it, and tried again. That time there were no problems. I’d thought about going inside to tell my
dad, but I figured whatever the problem was, it was probably something I’d forgotten to do, something small and silly. Now I knew that it was the car, and I was stuck. Nowhere to turn around, no way to back up, sitting at the edge of an intersection in a car that wouldn’t go. I decided I needed to calm down and think for a minute, try not to panic, try not to look at the cars around me.

  What was that? I felt a tug in my stomach I initially thought was nerves, and then I noticed that I was moving. Not the kind of slow, rolling movement that should have taken time to register. I was being yanked forward at top speed into oncoming traffic faster than I knew cars could move, like being towed by a race car. Everything lurched forward, I was thrown against the steering wheel; I realized, too late, that I’d never taken my foot off the gas when I stopped to think. Somehow, after two or three minutes, the car had registered my request to speed up and move forward, and granted it tenfold. I couldn’t think to put my foot on the brake; it was as though it wasn’t actually happening to me. I was just watching myself, and the car, careen into traffic. Something hit my bumper. My car spun onto someone’s lawn. It landed on the street again, heading back to the highway. The car made screaming sounds, or maybe that was me. I smashed into a fire hydrant and smelled smoke all around me.

  I looked up. The thing that had hit my bumper must have been another car, because there one was, stranded on the highway, hood dented and crinkled like an origami project. I heard sirens and people yelling, the smoke got thicker, the rain came down harder. My head was pounding. Trucks pulled up all around me, well, us. There was someone familiar behind the wheel of the other car, a woman with soft round cheeks and short brown hair. My mother. She wasn’t looking at me. They were coming to take her away again.

  In the dizziness and confusion, the lights and sounds around me, the face of the stranger in the other car had changed to that of my mother. I slouched over my steering wheel and closed my eyes, trying to separate the moment from the memory. They were blending together dangerously; I wondered if I was dreaming, or falling asleep.