“Ah . . . well, it’s just a temporary one.”
“I hope you don’t mean that weaving gig, because that is not a job, Rachel. And by the way, are you still paying for all the materials out of your own pocket?”
Christ. “Not the weaving class, Dad,” Rachel said, exasperated. “It’s data entry!”
“Data entry.”
“Yes. Data entry. You know . . . entering data. Facts and figures, that sort of thing.”
“I hope you’re not talking about a cash register somewhere,” he said sternly. “I meant for you to get a job, but I didn’t mean for you to take all the money I have spent on your education and go to McDonald’s with it.”
“Dad—how’s Mom?”
He sighed, recognizing her dodge for what it was. “All right. All right for now, Rachel. Now listen, I’ll be through with this chemo in a few weeks. I’ll come out then, and we can discuss your situation like two adults.”
Right. Sure they could. Just like they always had. And while they were having this adult conversation, perhaps aliens would land and take over Washington.
“Rachel?”
“Let’s just wait and see how you are feeling, okay, Dad? Listen, is Mom there?”
Dad muttered something, but called Mom to the phone and said a terse good-bye.
“Hi, honey!” Mom sang brightly.
“Mom, was this your idea?”
“What?”
“To send Dad to Providence, that’s what. Because if it was, I’d like to ask you not to help me. I don’t want Dad to come to Providence. All he’ll do is find fault with the way I’ve done everything.”
“Not this time, honey. Dad is in therapy and he is working to make amends for past wrongs,” Mom said patiently.
“Let him make amends to Robbie and Bec, then.”
“He is. And he’s making some remarkable progress . . .”
A door opened downstairs; Rachel tightened the towel around her and padded out of her room to the top of the stairs, squatted down, saw the tail of Myron’s car through the dining room window as Mom droned on about Dad’s remarkable progress toward being an actual human being.
“That’s great, it really is, and I’m so glad he is attending sessions with you,” Rachel said, waving at Myron as he passed by the stairs on the first floor. “But does he have to come here?”
“He’s your father, Rachel. You and he need to talk about what happened in New York.”
“Nothing happened, Mom! He was his usual, hypercritical self, and I just got fed up. We don’t need to talk about it. Dad was being Dad, and there’s nothing left to say—”
“Rachel,” Mom said in the voice she generally used when she was asserting her maternal authority, “Aaron is making a yeoman’s effort to change the way he behaves toward his daughters. I would think the least you could do is allow him to come to see you, the daughter he sired with his sperm, in the house he bought so that you’d have a place to live while you pursued an education he financed. Is that really asking so much?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake! Rachel groaned; below her, she could hear Myron banging around the kitchen. “Fine, all right. Just give me plenty of notice, okay?”
“We will.”
“In the meantime, Mom, I need a favor,” Rachel said gingerly. “I got a job—a temporary job—”
“Really?” her mother said, obviously and inordinately pleased. “Doing what?”
Rachel swallowed down a groan. “Actually, it’s a temp agency. Right now I am typing autopsy reports. There’s a bit of a backlog.”
“Eewee—”
“I know, I know,” Rachel said, cutting her off. “But I don’t get paid for two weeks, and I have this really humongous utility bill . . .”
Now it was Mom’s turn to sigh. “What about the money Myron owes you?”
“Well,” Rachel said, jumping a little as the sound of something glass shattering on the kitchen floor reached her, “he doesn’t really have it, either.”
“Why not? Doesn’t he have two jobs?”
“Mom, please? I asked him, but Myron said he was in a bind, and he’s really going through some bad stuff at work right now. Could you just loan me the money this time?”
“All right, Rachel. But I really wish you’d get serious about finding a real job, and preferably something that hasn’t anything to do with dead people. Why don’t you start looking in a big metropolitan area, like New York or Boston or Chicago? Maybe you could get a job in a museum. And you could live someplace nice and fashionable where there are good jobs for girls with your background and lots of nice young men who have good professions.”
“Right,” Rachel said as Myron appeared on the bottom step, sandwich in hand, her cell phone in the other, which he waved at her before tossing onto a chair. “I’ll think about it, I really will. But will you help me out?”
“How much?” Mom asked.
“One seventy-five.”