I think.
“How did it go being alone?”
The words barely came out as a question. By tone alone, they sounded like a robot speaking, like if Siri had a voice without any inflection.
“It was good!” I said. “I got a lot done. Labor laid out about fifteen percent of the foundation so far this week. It’s going great!”
“Good.”
Good.
Not, “Good job, Elizabeth! I’m proud of the direction you’re going.” Not, “Great job, dear, you’re doing the family well.” Not even, “Good, Elizabeth.”
Good…
“Do you want to hear more?” I said.
“Sure,” my father said, though it was delusional to think he meant it.
“Well, we have about a dozen people working out there now. We are on schedule and actually coming in below budget. We haven’t yet laid out any of the panels, but obviously, that’s sort of a last step. No good having the panels if they can’t convert the sunlight into energy.”
“Uh huh.”
Dad, come on.
“Steele provided security today.”
My father looked up.
He scowled at me.
That was so fucking stupid.What I had done in an attempt to get attention from him had instead suddenly turned into a judgmental glare.
“Steele,” he said. “As in, the loser that your sister dated for two years?”
I bit my lip. What was I going to do, surprise him by saying there was actually a second guy named Steele that he’d never learned about?
“Yes, Steele Harrison,” I said.
“This is unacceptable,” my father said, leaning back and putting his hands on his head. “I knew this would happen. Those boys are nothing but trouble. Only NME-hired personnel should be on site. How does this happen?”
My father continued to ramble, less talking to me and more himself as he started typing out an email to…it didn’t matter who he was typing out the email to. It just mattered that he was typing to someone and not talking to me.
In a moment like this, I could see why Tara had decided to say fuck it and move out. Why should I care about my father’s approval? Tara no longer did. Why couldn’t I?
Because Tara can succeed on her own and you can’t? Because you’ve always been the less attractive and less intelligent sister? Because without your parents, you’d be nothing?
“What’s going to happen, Dad?”
“What’s going to happen is that we are going to implement a corporate policy in Santa Maria that only authorized employees are allowed on the premises,” he said, still glancing at his computer. “And if anyone comes on who is not, we are to ask that person to leave…and if they do not…”
My father couldn’t possibly believe that Steele would leave if, say, the local architect asked him to leave. Granted, I think he’d only met the man twice, but did my father really think a man who rode bikes and said fuck the police regularly was the type of guy to bow to some corporate speak on a Word doc?
But he’d listen to you. And if you want to avoid trouble with your father…
If you want to stay in his good graces…
If you want to avoid falling to pieces without him…
It clicked for me then, though the realization that followed only made me feel worse, not better.
I didn’t feel a kindred spirit with Steele because we both had tough relationships with parents, or because we masked whatever we felt with false certainty or with visible disgust.
It’s because we silently felt inferior and weak.
Not that Steele would ever admit that.
Not that, if I had any choice, I would ever have to face that possibility.
I guess today really would wind up being Steele’s only day working the front of our Santa Maria office.
