“I nursed one tiny beer the entire night,” Daisy says proudly. “And like I said, if it wasn’t for Tate, Maggie would have done the same.”
“If he offers you booze at the market…” Mom starts but I raise a hand and stop her.
“He won’t. He’s not a complete idiot,” I reply. “See you tonight.”
I bounce with as much energy as I can muster to the truck Ben just finished loading. “Daisy will go with you and I’ll take Dad.”
Ben nods and he and Daisy get into his truck. Dad shoves his cane into the back seat and pulls himself up into the passenger seat of the beat up Kia Soul I share with Daisy. I start down the drive and turn onto Route 2A toward town. The Adler Farm whizzes by, and Dad cranes his neck to look up their drive. “Wonder if they’ve already left.”
“Who cares?” I reply. “Maybe if we’re lucky Tate is more hungover than me and he slept in.”
“You’re partying with the Adler boy?” Dad raises one bushy blond eyebrow.
“Notwithhim. I went to a party and he happened to also be there. And he insisted on annoying me the entire time and…”Kissing me like his life depended on it, my brain reminds me but of course I don’t say that out loud. I suddenly feel hot and put down the window. “Let’s just say I understand Clyde’s impulse to punch Adlers now.”
Dad chuckles. “So you hate the Adlers now too?”
“Don’t we all hate the Adlers, always?” I ask as the truck hums along. Dad lowers his window too. It’s a cool fall morning but the sun is already warming it up.
“Yeah. I guess we do,” Dad replies.
“Why is that?” I ask as the sun starts to gleam off the road and I pull my sunglasses off my head to shield my eyes.
“It’s a long and sordid history, Maggie. I don’t even know where to begin,” Dad says.
“Okay. I’ll begin,” I say. “One of my first memories was Clyde screaming obscenities at George because he thought that George had built the fence between our properties too far onto our side. George responded by throwing rotting apples at him and Mom had to call the police.”
Dad huffs out a breath and I don’t dare take my eyes off the road to see if it’s out of frustration or amusement. “Before that we didn’t have an official fence. Just some rope tied to posts in the ground only about hip high. George put in that six foot chain link monstrosity two feet past where the original one had been so he did steal some of our land. We have always wanted to take it to court but don’t have the money for that. We did get the police to make him take down the barbed wire he had originally placed on top of it.”
“So all this is over two feet of land?”
“Nope. Honestly Mags, I don’t know exactly when it started. George and Clyde have been fighting my entire life,” Dad explains and puts sunglasses on over his blue eyes. “Tate’s dad Vince and I used to go at it too. We got into at least four fistfights in high school. Both of us got suspended for it the fourth time, which is the only reason I think we stopped. And one time I made Vince and Tanya storm out of the grocery store. Left a cart full of stuff in the middle of the aisle, because when I saw them there, I stood in the produce aisle and started to loudly talk about how bad the quality of their apples was.”
I smile. “Tate’s mom, Tanya, threatened to shove a cupcake up Mom’s ass at the fourth-grade school bake sale.”
Dad laughs deeply. “I remember that. First time I think a parent has ever been hauled into the principal’s office.”
“Did Grandma used to fight with George Adler’s wife, Faith, too? The way Clyde and George go at it and Mom and Tanya did?”
I steal a glance at his face this time because this topic can be touchy depending on his mood. No one in the family likes to talk about his mother, Elizabeth Todd. Dad is in a Zen mood today though because he doesn’t tense or frown he just shrugs. “Don’t remember. I was only three when she left, remember?”
No, I don’t remember because I wasn’t alive. As usual I only have Todd family folklore to go off of. “And Ben and Bobby were barely two.”
“Yup.”
“And…we don’t know where she went?”
“Maggie not this again, please,” Dad says, and by the hard edge to his tone I know I’ve finally annoyed him. “We don’t know where she went and we don’t care either. Now can we stop talking about my deadbeat mother?”
“Fine. Fine.” I sigh and bite my tongue. The fact is I don’t actually ask about my grandmother all that much. I learned at a young age, when I was doing a family tree project in sixth grade and Clyde saw the poster board and tore it up when he saw her name next to his, that Elizabeth Todd was a taboo subject. But the older I get, the more interested I am in our family history. And lately Daisy is positively obsessed with finding out more about her, and our roots in general, so I hear it a lot since we live together. We’ve never even seen one picture of her.
“My mother decided she didn’t want Clyde and I don’t blame her. But she also decided she didn’t want her children, which is the unforgivable part,” Dad says as I slow the car and turn onto Pine Place that will take us to Pine Street, where the farmer’s market is held. “I mean hell, Vince and Tanya Adler divorced what, like ten years ago, but she still sees her kids. She is still a parent. My mother never reached out. Not a Christmas present or birthday card or even a letter. She didn’t care what happened to us, so we aren’t going to care what happened to her.”
I carefully tuck into a spot in the grass lot where all the vendors park and Dad opens the door and gets out before I turn off the engine. I try to ignore how he struggles to find his balance for a second. He doesn’t like when we fuss over him.
I hop out after him and give him a smile, walking around to the back of the car and popping the trunk. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
He grabs his cane and joins me, pulling me into a hug. “Clyde is a jerk a lot of the time but he didn’t abandon us. He raised three little boys on his own. He always found the money to give us school trips and hockey equipment and whatever reasonable request we had.”
