You’re canceling on me?
Natalie: Not exactly. But I talked to my mom and she laid the annual guilt trip on me. Hard.
Hard like concrete or hard like the erection of a man who should admit he needs medicine to get it up?
Natalie: Ewwwww.
Well???
Natalie: Concrete hard. Can we go to her place first and then to your parents’?
Sure. What about your dad?
Natalie: He’s coming to the city this year. I’m seeing him the night before. At a Chinese restaurant.
Nothing says Pilgrims and Native Americans like a steaming dish of Lo Mein.
Natalie: I know, right? Pick me up at eleven?
Her assumption that I’m renting a car is accurate. It’s one of the few luxuries I allow myself. The winding street on the way to my parents’ house is thick with trees on both sides, and a street like that deserves a car hugging its curves. Taking the train out to Pound Ridge feels like an implied insult.
I’ll be there. With my driving gloves. No arguments.
Natalie hates my driving gloves. To be honest, I wear them to annoy her. Though it doesn’t hurt that my hands are encased in soft fabric while I’m doing it.
She responds only with an eye roll emoji.
I run a finger above my top lip and scroll through tonight’s conversation. No mention of what happened a few nights ago. Not even a joke to smooth things over. I could have made a facetious comment likeI haven’t talked to you in four years, to which she would’ve replied,Actually it’s been five.
But, no. Nothing. Just a hop into conversation as though nothing disrupted its flow in the first place.
I guess we’re just going to act like it never happened.
11
Natalie
Why doesthe sight of that blonde-haired, doe-eyed little snot eating food off the ground give me such pleasure? Surely that’s not the right feeling to have? As I watch, his two small fingers reach out, pinching a pea like a crab seizing whatever the hell it is crabs eat.
Allegra, my father’s new wife, peeks under the table and spots her precious angel inserting the pea and what I assume are at least three million microscopic bacteria into his mouth.
“No, Jagger. No!” She moves quickly, her chair scraping against the red tile floor. I wince at the sound it makes, but it’s a good cover up for the amusement that was surely showing on my face.
Allegra comes up from under the table with Jagger in tow. She sets him back down in his chair and whips out an iPad from her purse. Within seconds Jagger’s eyes are wide, the screen putting him in a trance.
“I wish we would’ve had those when you girls were small.” My father nods at the iPad. “Maybe we would’ve gone out for dinner more often.”
I eye him, trying not to show the disgust that’s making my stomach churn.We didn’t go out because people would’ve wanted to know why Mom wore a sweater in July.
The words die somewhere in my throat. I don’t know if Allegra knows about the abuse. I don’t know if Allegra experiences it herself. She’s wearing a cowl neck sweater tonight, but of course, it’s November. Maybe I should pay them a surprise visit in the summer.
“Yeah, iPads are great,” I respond. Instead of paying attention to me, he’s looking around the restaurant. First at the shelf on the right, where there is a large porcelain statue of a cat, then around the whole place. It’s a small restaurant, so it doesn’t take long for him to finally look back at me. In the past year, the gray in his hair has increased ten-fold, and the bags under his eyes have become a permanent fixture. I wonder how often he is mistaken for Jagger’s grandfather?
Our conversation, which was paltry at best, ceases completely. The air is thick with discomfort. I have almost nothing to say to the man who raised me. Nothing to say to the man who used his hands to push me on the swings then used those same hands to hurt my mother. A fissure split him in two the first time I noticed a bruise on her arm. I cannot reconcile the two versions of my father, and a small part of me hates him. Not just for what he did to her, but for what he did to me and Sydney. He took away our happy family, an offense so grievous it pours over every good thing he’s ever done, leaving nothing but midnight black on memories that should be white.
“So, Henry,” my dad starts, pausing to assess what hearing Henry’s name will do to me. “How’s he doing?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since the papers were signed.”
