“We need to plan a funeral,” he said.
I just stood there a moment.
“For Jonah.”
I pushed some blowing hair from my face.
“I think it might help us,” he said.
I took another step toward him, and he put his arms around me. He held me tight. But it was okay. It felt good. I held him back. I don’t know what it meant, but it was good just to cling for a moment. Like we were two parts of the same broken thing.
Me:This is it, Jonah: the person you left me with.
28
My dad came home later that evening, and I watched him stand out in the backyard, smoking a cigarette. He had supposedly quit a year ago, and so far the only times I’d seen him cheat were when he was stressed about something. But his face looked calm now in the orange light of dusk.
Which brought up another possibility. He’d probably been with Grace. He’d probably been with her all afternoon and all those other mornings when he disappeared with no excuse. And yes, he had probablybeenwith Grace in the Biblical sense (insert very loud dry heave). When he walked inside, he held the scorched filter of his cigarette under the tap before tossing it in the trash.
“Your fly’s unzipped,” I said, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Jesus, Tess!” he said. “What are you doing? Keeping watch?”
He looked down.
“My fly is fine.”
“But you checked!” I said. “You checked because you’re guilty! Guilty of having gross sex!”
He ran his hands through his hair.
“Don’t say sex,” he said.
“Sex,” I said. “Screwing. Porking! Doing the nasty!”
He stood there in the light of the kitchen, looking mildly ashamed.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
Then, before he could say anything else, I said: “If you want to spend your time with a traitorous floozy, that’s your business. But I’m not happy about it.”
“Floozy?” he said.
“She pretended to care about me to get in your pants. I think that’s pretty obvious at this point.”
“Tess,” he said. “That’s not true. She’s a divorcee and we have a lot in common.”
“Yeah, like you’re both selfish assholes.”
I could see him getting angrier. Hell hath no fury like a middle-aged man scolded.
“Hey!” he said. “Can you cut me some slack please?”
“You should print that on a T-shirt,” I said.
He shook his head. His face was red.
