“I’d offer you something with more spunk, but I’ve decided to quit drinking.” She points to the bracelet on her arm, which is the same as the W.W.S.D. ones that Kate and Liz were wearing. “Sara was thinking about quitting too, and we had some great conversations about it. Well, we had one conversation one night when we were both pretty drunk.” She laughs as if this is normal mother-daughter behavior, then her face turns serious. “Don’t you think Sara would be proud of me?”
“Very proud.” I’m about to tell Janet that she was a good mother, but in the new vein of not lying, I go with, “Sara really loved you.”
“I know she did. And I loved her and she loved you. Actually, it’s perfect timing that you’re here, Danny. Cal and I want you to have Sara’s car.”
I choke a little and the sparkling water starts to come up my nasal passageway. The tingling sensation is exacerbated by the bubbles, and I pinch my nose, anticipating a sneeze.
“Her car?” I say, sounding nasally and confused. I don’t know the protocol in these sorts of situations, but a Range Rover seems like an absurd gift from a dead friend’s parents.
“Yes,” Janet says firmly. “And here, you need a Sara bracelet.”
She leaves the room and I put Sara’s phone in the electronics drawer, feeling a little guilty but nothing I can’t live with. When Janet comes back, she puts the rubber bracelet on my wrist for me. “We don’t need three cars now and I can’t stand looking at it in the driveway any longer, thinking she’s home. Besides, you’re a second daughter to us.” She fills a cup with water at the sink and refills the vases. They’re plenty full but I can see that she likes tending to something. “I won’t accept no for an answer,” she adds.
And that’s how I leave Sara’s house with her keys in my hands and my bike in her trunk.
“Well, don’t be a stranger, sweetie,” Janet says as I adjust the seat and mirrors. “You know you’ve always been part of the family.” She leans through the window and gives me a Chanel kiss, then tells me not to wipe it off. “Also, there’s something for you in the console. Take a look when you’re home.”
I figure it’s a card or something and forget all about it, because the moonroof works, the car smells new, and I’ve just figured out how to fund Operation Free Bird.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Back in my room, I get out my biggest backpack and try to narrow my life down to the necessities: four pairs of my sturdiest granny panties (there will be frequent hand washing), three of my darkest smocks (the rationale being that they’ll be the least likely to show food/dirt), my journal + two awesome pens, the water bottle that filters itself through its own straw, computer + computer charger, and finally, a letter I wrote Bugg. I survey the situation, determine I’m not a very exciting person, but decide that’s okay. Us boring people have our own ways of having fun. It’s about four o’clock, which means time did not graciously slow down for me while I was getting my affairs in order. “Very well, clock, I’ll pick up the pace a bit.”
The first stop is the DMV, where I do all the tedious stuff involved with making Sara’s car my car. It’s insanely boring, but there are lots of free lollipops. Score. The second stop is the dealership, where I park Sara’s car (it should technically be classified as a bus) and try to find whoever is in charge. This turns out to be a red-faced man named Lou.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart?” Lou asks.
I hate men who call women sweetheart. You don’t know the sugar content of my heart just because of the genital parts you assume I’m sporting beneath my smock. “I’d like to trade in my car over there,” I say, pointing to where I parked. “For cash.”
“All right, I’m going to need to see the paperwork proving you own it, then it’ll need a thorough inspection, which should only take a couple of days—”
“Oh no. I was hoping I could have the money now.”
Lou laughs and pats my head. Pats my head. “It’s gonna be at least a week, sweetheart. What are you in such a rush for? Not escaping the law, are ya?” He winks and slaps me on the back.
I burst into tears. “I… need… the… money… by… tomorrow,” I gasp. “Or… else… I’m… screwed.” I swear I didn’t mean this as an act, but his face crumples like tissue paper and you know he has a daughter who’s gotten herself into a snafu once or twice.
“All right, don’t cry now. Let me see. How about you give me the keys and the registration stuff and I’ll take it for a quick spin right now. If it seems okay, I’ll front you a couple grand and send you a check in the mail as soon as we’ve cleared it. Sound good?”
I sniffle and nod. “Thank you. Thanks very much. It’s only two years old because my best friend always got the best new things and I wouldn’t even be in such a hurry about it except it’s an emergency, kind of a long story—”
“Hey, it’s none of my business, sweetheart. Just the car is my business.”
I hand him the keys, and he hands me a check for two thousand dollars. It’s the most money I’ve received in one sitting in my whole life. Actually, it’s the most money I’ve received in my whole life ever.
“Cool,” I say, then remember Janet telling me there was something for me in the console. “Wait!” I dig around the console until I find an envelope with my name on it. I’m too tired to read any sappy stuff from Janet, so I grip it in my sweaty palm and start home.
I spend the next day avoiding my parents, which is easy at first because they’re at work, but much harder when they get home. They come into the kitchen looking the worst combination of sad, guilty, concerned, and eager to win back my affections. It’s the sort of culpable look where I could probably leverage a puppy, if I wanted one.
“What can we make you for dinner on your last night here, Danny?” my mom asks, as if it’s not disgusting that she’d like to do something nice for me now that she’s decided my grueling fate.
I try not to grimace, though. It’s imperative that I seem cooperative about traipsing off to prison tomorrow, lest they suspect my hidden agenda. “You know what I’d like? One of Sara’s grilled cheeses.”
Upon hearing this my mother bursts into tears. Tears. “It’s so unfair that she was taken so young,” she sobs.
“I don’t think unfair is how you can describe it.” Because do any of us really deserve anything? It seems to me that things happen in a tits-to-the-wind type fashion. If you get a life lived out into the monotony of old age and orthopedic shoes, well then, good for you, but it’s certainly not deserved.
“You’re being so strong, Danny,” my mom says, and I sort of break out in hives where she kisses me. “If you want a Sara grilled cheese, that’s what we’ll make.”
My mom breaks away to blow her nose, and my dad touches my elbow. “Come on, let’s go get supplies,” he says.
I take a deep breath. I only have to survive the next sixteen hours without blowing my own cover. Really, how hard could it be?
When we get to the grocery store I’m about to thank my dad for rescuing me from my mom’s heart-to-heart when he goes, “Seems like a good time to talk, now, doesn’t it?” We’re parked in one of the various strip malls that has both an actual mall and a grocery store in it.
I muster all my courage. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
He kills the engine, then puts all the windows down. I keep my seat belt on as an emotional precaution, although nothing could protect me from the whiplash that follows him reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pack of Marlboros.
“What are you doing?”
“Sneaking a cigarette. You don’t see anyone we know, do you?”
I look at the pack in his hand then back up at him. “Certainly no one I recognize.”
Who is this mysterious man posing as my father? As he takes a cigarette from the carton it occurs to me that I don’t know that much about him, considering we share a hot water supply.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for so many months, and now that I finally ha
ve your attention I’m getting stage fright,” he says and sucks on his cigarette. I help myself to one too, and he opens his mouth to say something, then smiles, probably realizing there’s absolutely nothing he can say.
“It’s okay, Dad. You’ve, er, got this?” But I’m nervous too. I have no idea what I’m in for.
“All right. I’ll give it a go and if it gets bad, cut me off.” I’ve never seen my dad nervous. It’s kind of sweet, in a weird parents-are-human type way. “The reason I couldn’t visit you in treatment wasn’t because I was disappointed in you, Danny,” he says. The pause is enough for six pregnancies. “It’s because I was you.”
The seat belt suddenly feels very tight around my body. I light the cigarette and blink through the dirty windshield as a plastic bag comes into view, blown slowly across the gravel by the wind.
“I had an eating disorder, for as long as I can remember,” he says, then launches into this story about how he used to diet and binge and throw up—the whole nine yards. “It wasn’t until I was married to your mom and she walked in on me one day that I admitted I’d been doing that for years. She made me go into treatment, and since our whole marriage depended on it, I went.”
I’m trying to listen to what he’s saying, but sometimes someone says something that hits so close to home, you end up feeling homeless.
“But I didn’t want to get better, so for the first couple of years nothing happened. Then one night I hit a new bottom. I was sick of being so sick all the time. I was sick of hating my body. I decided I didn’t care if I was three hundred pounds, I couldn’t keep dieting and bingeing anymore. So I went back to treatment for me, and that’s how I got better.”
The plastic bag continues to drift across the parking lot like a ghost of things bought. I clench and unclench the seat belt, trying to control my anger by thinking about absolutely fucking nothing.
“It was too painful to see you in treatment,” he continues, “suffering the same way I did. I couldn’t bear it.” He looks at me for too long and accidentally blows smoke directly into my face.
“Jesus, Dad,” I say, waving my hand in front of my face, even though I’m smoking too. “Jesus Shit Christ.”
I want to run until I am someplace new, where no one is pretending and nothing is kept secret and no one is nineteen.
“Do you know how many hours I spent wondering what was wrong with me? Why this shit came out of nowhere? If I’d known it’s probably genetic, I could’ve at least slept peacefully after I threw up my dinner.” I undo my seat belt and open the car door, then get out and slam it shut with so much force I half expect the window to break.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, following me out of the car. “Danny, please, where are you going?”
I chase after the plastic bag I saw through the windshield, stomp on it, then crumple it into a ball.
“Besides feeling like an idiot for having this random, stupid thing wrong with me,” I shout, “don’t you think it would’ve been a nice thing to know that you weren’t ignoring me in treatment because you were disappointed in me? Do you have any idea how much less confusing and painful this would have been if you’d just told me?” I start walking toward the nearest trash can with the plastic bag safe in hand. At least one of us can be saved from a life of aimless drifting. “I hate you,” I yell back at him, then scrunch the plastic bag into a tighter ball, probably burrowing a million plastic bag diseases into the creases of my palm. “I fucking hate you.”
When I get to the trash can, I start crying because it smells bad and life is stupidly complicated and I’ve never sworn at my parents so much as this summer and I’m probably going to get grounded for this. I wipe the snot with my wrist. You know what? My dad ought to be grounded too.
“I’m sorry,” he says again when he’s caught up to me. “But you of all people can understand how easy it is to keep avoiding important conversations.”
I turn around and glare at him. “But you’re the adult! You’re supposed to be better at doing the right thing.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” he says miserably, and standing there with his hands in his jeans he looks about ten years old. It occurs to me that just because adults have age on their side, doesn’t mean they’re any older than kids. “I want to tell you what worked for me so that you can get better too. Even though I’m late, I might not be too late.”
I stand there for a moment, not knowing what to do. “I’m going into the mall to wash my hands now,” I say, pointing toward the glass doors of the most dismal place on earth. “I’ll find another ride home.”
“Danny—” he starts to say, but then the mall doors open and a woman with tall hair and too much perfume comes swirling out. Even after she’s walked away my dad and I are left standing in her sugar scent, like her eau de toilette crop-dusted us.
“God, we’re all trying to mask something,” my dad says, looking bitterly after her.
And I don’t want to, like, I risk drawing blood by biting my lip to avoid it, but despite my best efforts I let out a suppressed laugh that gets stuck in my throat and makes me cough.
My dad looks delighted. “You liked my little joke,” he says, way too pleased with himself.
“You’re not off the hook,” I tell him, opening the doors to suburban hell. “That was a shitty thing to do, Dad.”
And it was, but as much as it feels like I got punched in the boob, it also feels like a weight has been lifted, because maybe I didn’t go and give myself an eating disorder. Maybe my shit genetic luck had something to do with it. And honestly, I think that’s the truth about truth: It knocks the wind out of you, but surely that’s a fair price for making you freer too.
“I don’t know how to make it right,” he says as we go inside.
We pass the pet store and I point to the closest puppy in the window. “You could start there,” I say. “I’ll name it Dog.”
My dad puts his arm around me and I let him, mostly because the AC is so high I feel susceptible to the flu. Then he starts to try to convey, like, a life’s worth of eating disorder wisdom onto me, saying things about “loving your body” and “feeding your soul.” It’s a relief when we get to the bathrooms.
He waits outside while I wash my hands. There’s something disturbing about how many times I can put my hand under the dispenser and it still shoots pink antibacterial liquid into my palm. It’s like it never learns or never remembers that we’ve been here before—ten seconds ago, in fact. I slap it with my hand a few times before realizing it’s not the soap dispenser who needs changing.
“I thought you might have fallen in,” my dad says when I come out.
“I know what you can do.” I stand across from him tugging at my smock in a way that does not suggest confidence. “Convince Mom that going back to St. John’s is a waste. You said it yourself. You can’t get better until you want to get better, and I do want to get better. I don’t like being so obsessed with food and veganism and how I look and all that stuff. But since I know St. John’s isn’t going to help me, I’ve devised a plan that will.”
My dad looks down at his man-sandals. “I wish I could prove to you that there’s a whole world out there beyond hiding who you love, beyond this whole obsession with food.”
“Hold the phone,” I say, kicking one of the mandals. “You can’t sneak that in there. You’re supposed to let me tell you unprompted if I want to share any details about who I love.”
He looks at me all deer-in-the-headlights, and even though my heart is beating outside of my chest, I’m secretly glad he pried the door open. Now I can own up to it real quick and we’ll never have to talk about it again. If the cat is already out of the bag, what difference does it make if I pet it or not? “You’re right, okay? I’ve been lying about who I love. Stephen isn’t my boyfriend. Bugg is. I mean, my girlfriend. I mean, she was.”
His eyes bulge out.
“Oh, Danny, I had no idea,” he says.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAD NO IDEA?”
I shout, and a startled mother steers her two children to the other side of the mall.
“I was talking about pre-med,” he says, semiwhispering.
“PRE-MED?”
“Yeah,” he says hurriedly. “You don’t have to pretend that you like your pre-med classes and want to be a doctor. Your mom and I have suspected that you hate it, and we wouldn’t be mad if you wanted to pursue a different career path. Hence why I said you don’t have to hide what you love.”
“I THOUGHT YOU SAID WHO I LOVE.”
At first I’m so mad at him and at myself that my face gets all tomato-like, but then I burst out laughing, because how did someone as dense and idiotic as I am get into Harvard? Off the waitlist, but still.
My dad is howling at this point, leaning against the pet-store window for support. When he finally catches his breath enough to talk, he ruffles my hair, which would be fine if I had a crew cut, but really ruins the ponytail thing I’ve got going on. “You know your mother and I love you no matter what. We’re very progressive people, not to mention progressive parents.”
“Correction: You’re progressive people and helicopter parents. But thanks. I know you don’t care, it was just a weird thing to have to tell you.”
Because it’s not that I ever thought they’d give a shit, but it’s still hard to say, “Hey, I know you thought I was one way but actually I’m another way entirely.” Maybe the hardest person to say that to is myself…. No, it’s definitely harder to tell him, here outside the last stop for those poor creatures at the puppy mill. I’m sorry, I mouth to them. Then I turn to my dad with my best impersonation of the cutest one in there. “So will you do it? Tell Mom I don’t have to go?”
My dad sighs and looks longingly at the puppies, probably wishing he’d agreed to Dog. “Well, what will you do instead?”
“Like I said, I have a plan,” I assure him. He looks at me expectantly, as if I’m going to lay out Operation Free Bird for him. “You know I can’t tell it to you, Dad. That’d put you in a bad position with Mom. And besides, how do I know you’re not some sort of Benedict Arnold?”
Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Page 21