Page 58 of Tanner

HARPER

After having the absolute worst sleep of my life, I wake to a call from my dad. Seeing his name flash across the screen this early in the morning makes my heart race.

“Is everything okay?” I ask in a panic.

He exhales into the phone. “Mommy’s fine. It was a rough night, and I needed to talk to someone.”

My heart aches for my dad. My mother should be in a rehabilitation center, but he won’t have it. According to him, they’ll just wheel her into a corner and make her watch TV all day. Not that she does much more at home. She has a steady schedule of game shows and talk shows before Dad comes home from work.

Her home health aide cares for her during the day, and at night, my dad wheels her everywhere and even changes her diapers. He puts himself through hell to take care of her, but he won’t have it any other way.

“Talk to me about it,” I say as I sit up and try to wipe the sleep from my eyes.

“Nah, I wanna hear about my sweet pea. I haven’t spoken to you in a few days. What have you been up to?” The inflection in his voice rises a little at the thought of hearing about my life.

I wish I had better news to tell him.

“I think I screwed up.” No matter how old I get, I’ll always be the girl who needs her father’s advice.

“I highly doubt it. What happened? Is it something with school? Please tell me it’s not that scumbag Aaron.” My dad has a thick New York accent that makes him sound like Robert De Niro.

“It’s officially over with him.”

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. He was—”

“I know; you never liked him. You made that clear.” I stand up and walk to a mirror in the living room where I see the puffy bags I have under my eyes and my ringlets that are like little rat’s nests. “It’s not about Aaron.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“I met someone else.”

There’s a pause. I can hear the sound of the pilot light igniting on his stove. I bet he’s making himself some scrambled eggs.

“That was fast.”

“I wasn’t planning on meeting anyone; that’s for sure. He’s someone I met in a bar. We went to a speakeasy—which you’d love, by the way. We hit it off. And then I screwed up—big time.”

“Yeah, you said that.” He laughs. “If you just met him, how could things have gone south so fast?”

“Well, he’s a little younger than me.”

“At your age, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, he’s not a student of yours, is he?”

“Dad!” I say in shock.

“I read the paper. It’s always the female teachers who bed the high school kids. The women are always pretty, too. Can’t blame a sixteen-year-old when your busty blonde teacher wants to take you home.” He chuckles. My dad has always been there to say the craziest things to get a rise out of people.

“That’s so wrong, and you know it.”

“Hey, in my day, it would have gotten you a free drink at the bar.”

“Today, it gets the teacher a one-way ticket to jail.”

My dad is still laughing. He is such a throwback from Long Island City and a time when rules were made to be broken and you were rewarded for it. The comical part is that, where my dad’s friends have cut corners in life, he’s always played the straight and narrow.

“He’s not a student of mine, but he is a student,” I say.

“In high school?” he asks seriously.