by Jen White
What would happen to them?
But then I thought about it some more. If Dad sold our condo, then that probably meant we would get to travel with him everywhere he went, like Puerto Rico, and China, and the Amazon rain forest (although I wasn’t very excited about the rain forest because I read in school that the Amazonian people were hunters and gatherers and sometimes ate wild monkey or alligator, and I didn’t want to eat that; but I did like granola bars, and trail mix, and fruit rolls, so I could probably just eat those). I bet Dad had already planned it all out for us and it would be okay, because I would do anything to be with him again.
Billie and me had already packed our bag. Julie had the key to our condo and promised to lock it up tight and to take care of George and Martha because this summer we would be living with Dad in his camper. And I was so excited/scared that I could have thrown up the chocolate chip pancakes that Julie had made for us that morning. Before Mom died, I didn’t know Julie could cook more than takeout, because if she came over for girls’ night, that’s all she ever brought.
The doorbell rang. Julie opened the door and smiled a huge smile like she saw someone she could hardly wait to see.
Dad stepped inside.
“Sam?” said Julie in a high voice. “How are you?”
Dad, taller than I’d thought he’d be, still had his back to us. He let Julie shake his hand. “Hi,” he said in a voice I wasn’t sure if I remembered.
I held my breath. He was really here.
“And the girls,” said Julie, spinning him toward us. “Liberty and Billie. Of course you remember them.”
Dad nodded.
Did he?
“Would you like a Coffee Crisp or anything?” Julie asked, walking over to her jars of candy.
Dad shook his head. “I’m fine.”
The last time I’d seen Dad, I was six and Billie was two. Mom said he met us at McDonald’s (because it had a PlayPlace). I always had questions about the Last Time We Saw Dad, like if I heard the story enough I might find a clue to explain why he never came back. But Mom didn’t like to talk about that.
I remembered how Billie screamed in her high chair and I unbuckled her to let her get on the big slide. Also, Dad ate two Big Macs, which seemed like a lot of Big Macs compared to the four Chicken McNuggets that Billie and me shared.
Mom said when he came in he needed a shower and he hadn’t slept in days. He said he had been camping. I didn’t remember that part. But I remembered the crying part. When Mom cried after Dad left. She said Billie got stuck at the top of the indoor slide and Mom sent me to get her out, but Billie wouldn’t come. That part I remembered, because I was scared to climb all the way up, and I wanted to stay by Dad, and the slide smelled like dirty diapers and French fries.
And then Dad climbed up, his long legs folding onto the slide like a praying mantis. And he grabbed Billie kind of rough, probably because she was kicking and screaming, and he brought her down the slide. He carried her away from his body and gave her to Mom.
Mom said the last thing he said was, “Here.”
And then he walked out.
I didn’t remember that, but I did have a memory of him waving at me through Ronald McDonald’s face painted on the restaurant window. After that Mom said she didn’t know where he was for a year and a half, and that’s when she got a divorce, and there was nothing he could do about it because he had disappeared. She said he was an unreliable genius and not good around people.
After a while Mom said she saw his pictures in a magazine, so she knew he wasn’t dead. But he might as well have been, because after that he only ever sent me one thing in my entire life.
In Julie’s condo, Dad smiled at us. He didn’t look like a genius, or unreliable, or not good around people. Actually, he looked a lot like Billie. Or Billie looked like Dad. And I already knew that from the pictures I saw of him. But looking at him, standing right in front of me, he really looked like Billie. He even had invisible white eyebrows like hers.
“You’ve gotten big,” he said to Billie. He picked her up like she was a baby. And I thought she’d get mad, but she didn’t say anything. Dad said, “The last time I saw you, you were just a baby.”
“I know,” whispered Billie.
“I have something for you,” he said, still looking at Billie. He dug around in his backpack and pulled out a little stuffed koala bear. “It’s from Australia.”
Billie smiled shyly and hugged it. I already knew Dad had been to Australia because once, when I was Billie’s age, I saw some pictures he took in a magazine when he was there.
Finally he looked at me. “Hi, Liberty.” He reached out awkwardly and grabbed my hand. His was rough and scratchy. “I brought you this.” He pulled something out of his bag. “But I think you might be too old for it now.”
It was a bug hut. You know, the kits you get when you’re about five years old to collect spiders and stuff? I used to have one. I used to really love it.
“When you were little, you were crazy about catching bugs,” he said.
“Thanks.” It was nice of him to bring me something, even if I was too old for it.
And that’s when I remember being really mad at Mom. How long had she kept him from us? He seemed nice, just sort of shy.
Dad came in and sat on Julie’s couch while Billie and me played Go Fish out on the balcony. He crossed his legs and swung his foot as Julie talked and talked and talked.
He and Julie talked for a long time, and most of it I couldn’t hear, until Julie finally stood up and walked toward the door to the deck.
She said, “It sounds like you’ve been doing really well. I’m happy to hear it. I have a good feeling about this. The girls are so excited. Where are you guys headed?”
“We’re going to scout out some locations in the desert.”
“All summer?” asked Julie.
“Yep,” said Dad.
“Living in your camper?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Yep,” Dad said. “They’ll love it.”
We would, right? Dad was finally back. I’d make sure that Billie and me loved it.
Survival Strategy #11:
SOMETIMES YOU SHOULD FEEL SORRY FOR THE COBRA
Julie came and got us from the deck. “Are you excited?”
I nodded and squeezed Billie’s hand.
“If you need me, you can call. You have my phone numbers, right? Home and cell?”
I nodded. I had them written in my notebook.
She pulled on her watch that was a bracelet, too. “I’m just going to be working all summer. So you call about anything, okay?”
“Yes,” I said.
She handed Dad a piece of paper with her phone numbers written on it. “Call me with any questions,” she said. “But you don’t have to worry; they’re good girls.”
Dad nodded.
“It will be fine.” She patted my arm.
But we wouldn’t need to call her. Why would we? We had our dad now.
She steered me toward him and put her arm around Billie, smiling too big. “You guys are really going to love getting acquainted after all these years.”
Billie smiled at Dad. I thought she liked him already.
Maybe I did, too.
Dad looked sort of embarrassed. And maybe scared, like Antonio’s bearded dragon when I reached into his cage to pick him up. Spike got all squirmy, kicking dust all over the place. Antonio said it was because he wasn’t comfortable with me yet. Maybe new/old dads and bearded dragons were the same.
Julie said to Dad, “Children really do belong with family after such tragedies. Don’t you agree, Sam? You’re ready for it, right? I mean, you feel good about it?”
Dad nodded.
She looked around her living room, running her hands through her hair. “My house is quite small for two girls.”
And really, it was. Her condo had two bedrooms like ours, but the extra bedroom was her office. At first Billie and me had wanted to stay in our own feels-like-Mom
condo, and she let us for the first few nights. But then Julie got tired of sleeping on our sofa, since she wouldn’t sleep in Mom’s room, and she said that we had to stay with her. Her condo was so close, we could just run home to get whatever we needed. We slept in the office on the pullout sofa.
I figured after our summer with Dad things would be more official and if we didn’t go to the Amazon or China, maybe Dad wouldn’t sell our condo. Maybe we could stay and he could take pictures of things in San Diego. When I told Antonio that, he said I was loco. He said that my mom told his mom that Dad was a loner. He said that my mom told his mom that Dad was a deadbeat. What did Antonio’s mom know, anyway?
Mom said Antonio’s mom was a busybody. Mom didn’t care about gossip; she was too worried about taking care of us. Plus, having kids was really expensive, so Mom had to work a lot. Mom said that all the time. And that’s why if I ever got a birthday invitation, I didn’t even show it to her because we didn’t have money to waste on a present. And really, who cared about that when I knew my invitation was only because we were in the same class at school? When I saw Mom working herself into a sand-crab ball, scrunched up onto the couch, so tired from three night shifts in a row, then I felt bad. I always tried hard to not be expensive.
Anyway, what did Antonio know about anything? He ate dinner with his nosy mom and his dad and his brother every night—he didn’t know about missing dads. But the one good thing about Antonio’s mom was that she let me come over and hold Spike even if Antonio was at soccer practice. And usually she had extra tamales, or empanadas, or a Coke for me. Antonio’s mom was a good cook.
Usually Antonio was a decent friend. He liked animals, he lived close, and he didn’t always have to be talking. Being friends with him was better than having to be friends with Suzanne and the girls from my sixth grade class. All their talking and giggling and their liking-of-boys made me tired. Antonio was easy even if he wasn’t always nice. I just ignored the bad parts of him. Sometimes you have to do that with people.
Julie turned away from Dad and shoved a Snickers bar into my hand. “It’s going to be fine. And if it’s not, you call.” She had chocolate on her front tooth.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Then I pulled Billie closer to me and squeezed her hand. I’d make sure everything would be perfect. I’d do it because I had to.
We loaded our suitcase into the camper—Billie and me shared Mom’s big one. Then Dad showed us around. The camper was old, but it had a little fridge and a little shower and a big bed for Dad and a smaller one for Billie that folded right out of the cabinet above the kitchen table. And I would sleep on a bed that you could make out of couch cushions and the kitchen table. It was pretty smart. Maybe this living in a camper would be fun.
That first day, Dad let us sit up front with him on the long bench, with seat belts that had fallen behind us like snake tongues. And Billie sat by Dad. And I sat by the window. We drove the longest I had ever driven in a car. Hours and hours. Dad said we were still in California, but I didn’t believe him until he showed me the map. California was big—filled with freeways and deserts and roads where you could drive for hours and still be in the same state. Soon, Julie was gone. And so was San Diego. And so was the ocean, with Mom in it.
That day Dad didn’t talk a whole lot. But he tried, at first. “You look like your mom.”
“I know,” I said. Because I did know. Everyone said that.
“Your hair is the same color. And you have her forehead.”
I nodded. Same brown hair. Same big forehead.
He cleared his throat. “So, you doing okay? After everything…”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry about Cindy,” he said. Cindy was my mom’s name.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I felt uncomfortable talking about Mom, especially to him. “But we’re glad you’re here now.”
Billie smiled to herself and hugged her koala.
Dad smiled, too.
There was a whole part of me that didn’t even believe Mom was dead yet. Or that this dad I had always hoped for was sitting next to me. Did he make chocolate chip pancakes? Was he going to tell us everything he knew about animals? Did he have a notebook just like me?
Having Dad back was supposed to be like magic. Everything should feel normal, right? But it was just weird. I held on to my notebook because it was the only thing that felt real.
“What is that?” he asked.
“My notebook,” I said, flattening it onto my lap. It felt safer there. “Just stuff I write. About animals and things I like.”
Dad coughed. “You’re interested in animals?”
I nodded.
Billie stared.
“Nice,” said Dad.
But that’s all he said. And I wanted to ask him questions, but they stuck in my throat like that time I had a fever and Mom gave me three Advil to swallow. The questions stuck and wouldn’t come out.
Finally, after an hour or so, the silence began to bother me. Shouldn’t we be able to talk to him like we had talked to Mom? He was ours now, wasn’t he?
I swallowed hard and said, “So, where have you been?”
He cleared his throat and scrunched his lips together. “I’ve been working.” He sounded a little irritated.
I rubbed an imaginary spot off the dashboard. “Oh. Do you like being a photographer?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you live?”
“All over.”
“What do you like to take pictures of?”
“Everything.”
And then I pulled out a clipping from my notebook. It was a picture of a king cobra from the Kids Discover magazine subscription Dad had sent us about two years after he left. As far as I knew, it was the only thing he had ever sent Billie or me. “I really like this picture.”
And he said, “I can’t believe you still have that.”
Then he told me all about getting that shot in India. And how it would have been easier to go to a snake charmer to get the picture, but he wanted the snake to be a healthy cobra, not one that had had its mouth sewn shut. So instead, he took a picture of a cobra in the wild.
“Why do they sew their mouths shut?” I asked, not believing that snake charmers would really do that.
“So they won’t get bitten.”
“But then how does the cobra eat?” I asked.
“It can’t,” Dad said. “Eventually it dies.”
The older I got, the more I realized people did all sorts of stupid things, just because they could.
“That’s sad,” Billie whisper-said, squeezing her koala bear tight.
Dad nodded. “Cobra venom is lethal. But in my experience, cobras aren’t as scary as they seem. You just have to know how to behave around them.”
I thought maybe that was true about missing dads, too.
That was my best day with Dad, by far. Maybe it was the adventure of it. Or the summer days stretched out before us. Or maybe I finally realized how much I missed having a dad. That day, bumping down the desert road with him beside me talking about cobras and smelling like a campfire, I realized I had missed him a whole lot more than I had ever imagined.
But that was a trap, and the worst part was, I didn’t even know it.
Survival Strategy #12:
NEST AND REST
Now, on the highway with the Lavender Lady and Orson, the darkness cradled me like a baby bird tucked into a nest of blackness, turning me and Billie into downy balls covered in feathers and sticks and dryer lint. Anyway, that’s what most nests are made out of. You couldn’t even tell it was us. Poof. We had disappeared like magic. No one on the entire planet knew we were here. It felt good to be invisible—invincible—in the dark.
Did you know most nocturnal animals live in the desert? I always preferred nocturnal animals anyway, like owls, and hamsters, and mice. Mice really are the cutest things. And so smart. But Billie had always wanted a cat.
I stretched my foot fart
her under Orson’s seat, hoping he couldn’t feel it. The hairs inside my ears perked up. Orson snored, and the Lavender Lady hummed to the radio. Outside, the sky was dark. How long had we been driving? My watch said 7:57. Six hours. Billie’s hair splayed across my hand and became tangled in between my fingers. The rest of her was scrunched up into a little nest-ball near the door. I felt around the floor of the car for my tennis shoes.
The snoring stopped. Then it started again. Orson coughed so loud, it made me jump, and Billie, too. But she did it in her sleep and didn’t even notice. Reflexes always work, even in your dreams.
The tires bumped over the highway and slowed to a stop. The car turned to the right. And then the left. Then it jerked and stopped again, like maybe we had hit something.
“Where did that curb come from?” asked the Lavender Lady. She opened her door.
Orson woke up, grumbling like a California grizzly.
“No. Not yet,” she said. “We’re just stopping here for the night. Five more hours tomorrow. I’ll check us in. No. No. Just stay.” The door slammed.
The rustling in Orson’s seat stopped.
Billie sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Where are—”
I covered her mouth. Shh. I pointed to where Orson sat, but he didn’t move. I needed to use the bathroom, and I’m sure Billie did, too. Orson shifted in his seat. Then an old, gnarled hand poked through the curtain of clothes, almost brushing against my forehead. Billie and me shrank back.
The front door swung open again. “I forgot my purse.” Now the Lavender Lady’s hand joined Orson’s, swinging dangerously near us through the clothes. “Stop it, Orson. I’ve got it. Sit back. Orson, I’ve got it!”
Billie grabbed the purse and shoved it into the Lavender Lady’s hand.
“There it is,” she exclaimed. “I swear I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.” She slammed the door again and walked away.
I stared at Billie. Usually she never did stuff like that. She was only brave around people she knew.
She shrugged. What?
I made a tunnel through the clothes and peeked at Orson. He was unconscious again.