“Montana’s never told you about our lists?” Natasha says, and he shakes his head. “Well then, I know exactly what you need.” She goes to the bookshelf and pulls out a navy journal. It’s masculine enough. “She’ll tell you what to do with this.”
She’s bringing him into the fold. Letting him in on the thing that is ours.
We take the subway to his place and I tell him about the List of Things to Be Grateful For, and he sits on a stoop and writes out his three right away.
They’re about me and Victoria and Veronica and what it means to love a city that smells like garbage all summer long.
He gets it.
twenty-four
Dad asks to have one more breakfast with Arizona and me, the morning of the proposal. I don’t like the way he phrases it—one last meal—marking a before and after where everything is going to change. Again.
We’re at the diner, of course. It’s a sort of autopilot assumption for him that the crummy lighting and chipped plates will fix what’s wrong between us.
He’s waiting there for us instead of walking over with me. He’s probably been there for hours. His paper has expanded, the way papers do when they’ve been unfolded and refolded, never again managing to take their original shape.
“No,” he says when he sees my Sharpie-covered skin. “For the love of God, Montana, no.”
“Can we please make this not about me?” I say. I’m bleary-eyed and weary-limbed and wondering when and why I’ve started drinking quite this much. It’s not like we’re from Wisconsin, where there’s a sort of boredom that has to be drunk away. We’re in New York City. But maybe the lights and sounds are more manageable when they’re dulled, and maybe everything else is more manageable too.
Plus, I like getting tipsy with Bernardo. It enhances the falling-in-love thing and makes it even wilder and buzzier. We went to his place and poured gin into a bottle of juice and played a drinking game with old-timey TV shows where every time the guys were misogynists, we had to drink.
“I ordered you scrambled eggs,” he says. He looks legitimately sad, not just irritated.
“I don’t like them scrambled,” I say, knowing a good daughter would say that sounds fine. “I like poached. Did you get bacon?”
“I didn’t think about bacon,” he says. I’m even angrier about this than I am about the proposal.
“How do you not think about bacon? It’s the whole reason we come to this stupid place!”
“I like this place. And you can order some bacon. Change your order. Or maybe Arizona will eat your scrambled eggs and you can eat her fried ones.”
“Fried’s not the same as poached,” I say. I sound seven. I sound ridiculous. I want to throw the napkin holder at him. I don’t want to eat eggs and talk about the future.
He sighs but lights up when Arizona breezes in all coiffed and curved and blank-faced.
“You look beautiful!” Dad says, so loud half the diner hears him and turns to check her out. Dad forces a smile at me too. “My two beautiful girls,” he says, and I can see him giving himself a mental pat on the back for complimenting us both even though it’s clear who has won the day.
“Interesting look there,” Arizona says. She mumbles under her breath, “This your solution? Drawing on yourself? Grow up.”
“Don’t worry, Montana’s going to scrub that off by tonight,” Dad says, as if we’ve discussed it already and some decision has been made.
“It won’t wash off,” I say. “Permanent marker. Gonna be a few days.”
The waiter comes over at the exact right moment and drops scrambled eggs and fried eggs and no bacon onto the table.
Arizona picks her fork up.
“I’d like to order poached eggs and bacon, please,” I say. “And coffee.” The coffee here is thin and unlimited. I’m going to need a lot.
“I’ll eat the scrambled,” Dad says. He takes the salt and pepper shakers, one in each hand, and goes to town.
“Nothing is more important to me than you girls,” he starts. “I want you to have everything you deserve. I hope you know that.”
I almost want to ask him if he’s talking about the eggs. I’m not in the mood for this conversation. Coffee gets poured, and the smell is a little burned but not terrible. Familiar.
“I haven’t always done the best job at giving you what you need,” he says.
It’s weird to feel sadder about how sad he is for me than I am about my actual sadness. It sucks not having Mom around, but it’s even more painful seeing how desperately Dad doesn’t want us to have gotten robbed of something everyone else has.
“I’m vetoing,” Arizona says. Her voice is higher and pointier than usual, but under control. Like she’s practiced this in the mirror.
“I’m sorry?” Dad says.
“I’m vetoing Karissa,” Arizona says again, like it’s some rule we decided on when Dad started dating and marrying and falling in love with everyone. “I don’t want her in my family, I think it’s a mistake, I’m saying no.”