by Lance Rubin
28
“When are you coming home?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Mom says.
We’re sitting at a bright pink table at Forever FroYo, the name of which has always made me slightly skeptical. What about two hundred years from now, when dessert technology has significantly evolved? Might be singing a different tune then!
“I miss you,” I say, spooning a glob of Reese’s Pieces–covered vanilla into my mouth. “Dad misses you.”
“Thanks, Win,” Mom says. “I miss you, too. I just need to…take some time. You understand that, right?”
“Sure. I mean, I guess.”
Mom’s staying at Paige’s again tonight, but she picked me up after dinner at home with Dad so we could talk. The whole thing is still shocking to me. It feels like this is someone else’s life. It can’t be mine.
Mom and I used to come to Forever Fro Yo all the time when I was younger. It was our Saturday afternoon tradition while Dad was teaching classes. But then at some point we stopped. Maybe once Dad’s schedule changed.
Mom smiles, a bite of chocolate and blueberries in her mouth. I want to cry.
But instead I force myself to spit out the words that haven’t left my brain since she left Chili’s.
“Did— Did Dad really cheat on you?”
Mom grimaces, like she feels worse about the pain it’s causing me than for herself. “That’s actually why I wanted to see you,” she sighs. “So I could say sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in front of you.”
Wait, so maybe she made that up? Is that what she’s saying? “So…Dad didn’t cheat on you?”
Mom goes totally still, her eyes looking to one side, then back at me. “No, he did.”
And even though I’d thought it had to be true, the entire room tips on its side. I almost fall out of my seat.
“But we worked through it,” she says. “I understood why it happened. I forgave him.”
“Why did it— What did you do to make Dad cheat on you?”
Mom’s head jerks back a little, as if my words have slapped her. She quickly recovers, though. “Come on, Win. You know it’s not that simple.”
I do, and I’m embarrassed that I phrased it the way I did. It’s just…My dad wouldn’t be a cheater for no reason, would he? My funny dad. A cheating fucking liar.
“Who was it?”
“What?”
“Who did he cheat on you with?”
“Oh, it doesn’t even matter now, it was so many years ago.”
“I want to know,” I say.
She opens and closes her mouth a few times before finally saying, “Stella. She taught with him at Tumble ’n’ Play.”
I don’t remember any Stella. But the idea of Dad cheating on Mom with some chirpy coworker at Tumble ’n’ Play makes me want to punch a froyo machine. Demolish it.
“You wouldn’t remember her,” Mom says, as if she’s reading my mind. “She stopped working there after it all came out. You weren’t even two yet.”
“This is so fucked up,” I say, really hitting the word fucked. We’re the only people in here, but the girl at the counter glances my way for a second. “I don’t— How could Dad do that to you?”
Mom gives me another sympathetic grimace. “That’s exactly how I felt back then, too. It was awful. We came really close to getting a divorce.”
WHAT THE HELL? My parents almost got a divorce and I never knew about it?
“But I understand it differently now,” Mom says. “I still wish it hadn’t happened, but I get it. And that’s part of why I left dinner the other night. And why I’m at Paige’s now. Because I see the same things happening again, and I can’t live like that a second time.”
“You think Dad’s cheating on you again?” My heart beats triple time.
“No. I don’t.” Thank god. “But when your dad gets nervous or scared, he hides those feelings away and doesn’t talk about them. Not even with me. And it’s infuriating. So instead, he ends up acting on his fear in unproductive ways.”
“Like by skanking it up with Stella?”
“Don’t say skanking it up, Win. That’s offensive.”
“Mom, who cares if I offend Stella by calling her a skank.”
“Stella wasn’t a skank. She was a confused girl in her twenties who made some bad choices.”
“That’s far too generous.”
“I’m just saying, that makes Stella the villain here, when really it’s your father. Call him whatever you want. But calling Stella a skank is unnecessarily demeaning to her. And all women.”
Whoa, geez. When did Mom become such a feminist?
I’m suddenly reminded of all the times Evan called Jess crazy, which turned out not to be true at all. Maybe that’s what I’m doing by skank-labeling Stella, a woman I’ve never even met.
I hate when Mom is right about things.
Wait, maybe that’s sexist, too. Because I don’t hate when Dad is right about things. Why is that? What’s wrong with me?
“Okay. I won’t call her a skank. Dad is a skank, though.”
“Much better,” Mom says, totally straight-faced.
“So why didn’t you divorce Dad? I would have. I want to divorce him as a dad.”
“Ha, don’t do that.” I don’t understand how Mom can find any of this funny.
“But really,” I say. “I always thought—” I’m trying to finish my sentence, but the lump in my throat wins. I sob.
“Oh, Win,” Mom says.
“I always thought Dad was one of the good guys.” I can’t wipe my face fast enough. The tears keep coming. I really wish this wasn’t happening at Forever Fro Yo. Better than Chili’s, I guess.
“He is, Win. He really is. People are complicated, though.”
“You mean people are sucky.”
“Sure. That, too.” The counter girl drops something. A zillion tiny somethings, actually. Miniature M&M’s, maybe.
Mom comes around the table and hugs me. “Aw, my sweet girl,” she says. It makes me cry harder.
“Come home,” I say.
“I know,” Mom says, which isn’t a valid response.
“I picked such weird toppings,” I cry, staring at my bowl, which is overflowing with Reese’s Pieces, blackberries, and Sour Patch Kids.
“I didn’t want to say anything, but yeah,” Mom says. She holds me for a minute more before sitting back down. “You have to understand what that time was like for Daddy, Win. He gave up his acting career, his comedy dreams, to stay at home with you and to support me in my career. And we’d left the city to come to Jersey just a few months before you were born. So even though he loved being a father to you, it was a tough transition for him. His confidence took a serious hit.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have agreed to do it if it was gonna lead to him cheating on you.” I blow my nose into a flimsy napkin.
“Definitely. But I don’t think he knew it was gonna lead to that. He just missed being around people, making people laugh. And I wasn’t always helpful with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, by the time you were one, we were able to socialize more, see some of our friends from the city, meet people in our neighborhood. And for Dad, that was such precious time because he was rarely around adults—this was right before he started working at Tumble ’n’ Play—and I was always around adults.”
I don’t really get where Mom is going with this, but I am rapt.
“There was this one dinner party, I remember this so well, at our friends Seth and Tanya’s house—they moved to Colorado soon after—and there were like fifteen people there, and Dad was so psyched to be going out, to be around people his own age. And I actually didn’t even want to go. Work was exhausting as always, but I could tell how much it meant to Daddy, so we got a babysitter
for you and went.”
“Was Stella there?”
“Oh no, there’s no cheating in this story. At least not in this part. I’ll cut to the chase: once dinner started, I said something dry about the helicopter parents in the neighborhood, and everyone at the table thought I was hilarious. And somehow, over the course of the meal, I became the funniest person at the table. And I knew it was destroying your father.”
Mom, the funniest person at the table? Those friends must have been a bunch of duds. No offense.
“So I would try to set him up for jokes, you know,” Mom continues, “try and steer the spotlight back onto him, but nothing worked. I was the funny one that night. And Daddy hated it.”
I am so confused by this story.
“When I asked him about it, he pretended everything was fine. Looking back later, that was where things turned, but at the time, I just kind of shrugged it off. Which was a mistake. I should have pressed him harder, talked it out.”
“I don’t fully get how this relates to Dad cheating.”
“His confidence, Win. He’d lost it. And I…I wasn’t around much. And when I was, I was getting the laughs, so he ended up cheating on me with someone who would laugh at his jokes, who made him feel confident again.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Like I said, I didn’t figure all this out until later, once I’d found out he was cheating on me, once I’d bawled my eyes out, once I’d stopped talking to Daddy for a week. When he and I finally talked it all out and, you know, decided we would move forward, I privately made a decision: I was never going to be the funny one. If your dad could make the huge sacrifice he did so that I could have a career, I could make that sacrifice for him. And I still get to be funny at work, anyway, so I’m good.”
Wait, what?
What the hell is my mom telling me? That she intentionally stopped being funny around Dad so that he could feel good about himself?
And suddenly moments are popping into my head, little glimmers when I’d thought, Hey, Mom actually has a sense of humor.
The time she backed her car into a tree in front of our house and told Dad not to worry because the tree’s insurance would probably cover it.
The time she packed my school lunches while Dad was on a road trip with Uncle Noah, including messily written notes like Please don’t actually eat us and If you let us live, we can be helpful to you.
The time the airline lost our luggage and she demanded that the man behind the counter give us someone else’s.
But I thought that’s all they were. Glimmers. Tiny flashes of potential. What an idiot.
“You stopped being funny around Dad? And me?”
“Well, not entirely,” she says. “Just pulled back a bit. Played the straight man. And you ended up giving him what he needed most: an audience. He hasn’t cheated again because he hasn’t needed to.”
“Ew, Mom! Because he’s cheating on you with me?”
“Ha, no, Winnie, of course not. But you look up to your father and you love his jokes, and that makes him feel good.”
I don’t know what to make of any of this. I feel like I’ve been duped or something.
Ohmigod.
The realization dawns on me like a ton of bricks.
“That kind of happened with Evan. He didn’t like that I was funnier on the announcements than he was, so he quit. And he told me not to do Speech and Debate, even though the club supervisor specifically asked me to. So I didn’t.”
“Oh.” Mom sounds surprised. “Wow. Yeah.”
“But I think Evan’s actually an asshole. Is Dad an asshole?”
“No, Winnie, Daddy’s not an asshole. And Evan probably isn’t either. Like I said, people are complicated.”
“I just like to smile,” my phone says. “Smiling’s my favorite.” It’s Will Ferrell as Buddy the elf, my text tone for Dad. I don’t want to check it, but I feel compelled, in case he fell or something.
Hey Banana. Hope the talk is going all right. Heart emoji.
Feeling guilty much?
It’s jarring to be reminded that the person we’re talking about is a real human being who I’m living with. A human being who I no longer have any idea how to feel about.
I don’t text back. This insecure cheater doesn’t deserve a response.
“Sorry,” I say. “It was Dad.”
“You don’t have to hate him,” Mom says, again reading my mind.
“Yeah, but you do,” I say. “You can’t even stay in the same house as him.”
“I don’t hate Daddy. I love him. A lot. I just needed to take a moment. And I needed him to know that I’m not messing around.” Mom’s voice gets wavery. “He’s very sick, Winnie. And he doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge that.”
I have no response to that. I wipe my face again.
“I don’t want to bring him down. But if he can’t talk this out with me, I can’t just hang around and watch. I’d rather repeatedly bash myself over the head with a hammer.”
Hey. That’s something I’d say.
Did I get that line from her?
I am overwhelmed. I’ve seen Mom and Dad in one particular way my whole life, a way that turns out to not even be accurate. How can you so completely misread the two people who you’re supposed to know better than anybody?
“I’m…I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Why?”
“For not, like, understanding how funny you are. For being shitty to you with my inside jokes with Dad when really you were being strong and incredible. I just…I didn’t know all of that.”
“Oh, Win, you don’t have anything to be sorry about. But thank you.”
“I think you should come home and start letting yourself be funny again.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Mom says. “I’m actually thinking of quitting my job and giving the stand-up thing a shot.”
“What?” My entire world is imploding.
“That’s a joke, Win.”
“Ohhhh.” I laugh. “You really are funny.”
29
I’m not talking to Dad.
I can’t. I’m too disgusted with him.
Unlike Mom, I can’t find somewhere else to stay for the week. If I weren’t still on terrible terms with Leili, maybe I could stay with her and Azadeh, but that seems like a lot to ask.
Plus, no matter how pissed I am, I wouldn’t want to leave Dad solo in this house. What if he fell and couldn’t get to his phone?
So I’m staying put at home. But I’m not talking to him. When we’d usually be watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or whatever else, I’ve been in my room. Dad cooks dinner for two, we just don’t eat at the same time.
Last night after dinner, though, I watched Breakin’ on my laptop in the family room because why should I be the one who has to hide out in my room every night?
“Ohmigod, I haven’t seen this in forever,” Dad said. “How’d you hear about this?” I shrugged. “I didn’t know teenagers knew this existed. Is it…Do you mind if I sit and watch with you?”
I didn’t respond, which Dad took to mean it would be all right. Which is kind of what I meant. As furious as I am, it felt nice to have some company. I never directly spoke to him, though. Not even during the broom scene.
Mom didn’t talk to Dad for a week after she found out he cheated, so I figure I can at least match that. It was officially confirmed Monday night, and it’s now Thursday afternoon, so what is that…two and a half days? Geez. I kind of thought it had been longer.
But whatever, I’m not talking to him for at least another five days.
Unfortunately, Leili has been using a similar strategy with me. Not that I’ve tried that hard to reach out to her. I mean, I’m still pissed. But it feels like I’m walking around without some vital organ, like my liver or something. Leili’s conveni
ently had yearbook work to do every day during lunch, and I somehow never see her in the halls.
And Evan’s back to sitting with Tim Stabisch and some other dodos at a table as far from us as possible, so it’s been me, Azadeh, and Roxanne at lunch every day. Which has been surprisingly nice. I hate to admit that Leili’s right, but I have sort of been in my own bubble for the past few weeks, and it’s cool to have some substantial conversations with Azadeh and get to know Roxanne better.
“They all know?” I ask.
“Yup,” Azadeh says, sticking her fork into a cucumber-and-tomato salad. “All of ’em.”
One of the girls on the field hockey team figured out their fairly obvious secret, and now everyone knows.
“I’m so glad,” Roxanne says. “Doing the Monica and Chandler thing was fun for a minute, but then it just felt stressful.”
I look to Azadeh, mouth agape, like Is she saying that because you told her? Or because she had the same thought Leili and I did?
Azadeh shakes her head, smirks, and rolls her eyes, like I didn’t tell her. She independently made the same imperfect reference you did.
“I totally hear that,” I say, beaming at Roxanne. “I’m mainly just glad Siobhan knows.”
Azadeh lets out one of her trademark loud laughs.
“Well played,” Roxanne says before glancing at her phone. “Oh shoot, I’m supposed to go meet Mrs. Okin for extra help before the test tomorrow. Gotta jet.”
“Don’t goooooooo,” Azadeh says, grabbing Roxanne’s arm as she gets up from the table.
“I gotta, I gotta,” Roxanne says, giggling.
“Okaaaaaaaaay.” Azadeh makes a pouty face.
“I’ll see you at practice. That’s, like, really soon.”
“Fiiiiiiiiiine.”
I should probably be annoyed, shouting “Get a room!” but it actually makes me really happy.
“So,” Azadeh says as soon as Roxanne is gone. “Today’s the day, right?”
“Improv rehearsal?”
“Well, yeah, that, but no, I mean today’s the day you and Leili make up.”
“I want to,” I say, “but she’s avoiding me!”
Azadeh gives me a deadpan stare, like Come on. Even I heard how defensive I sounded.