‘I didn’t know we were getting dressed up,’ he said when she sat down next to him.
‘I’m expecting you to take me someplace nice,’ she said softly.
‘I will …’ he said. He took the tie in both hands and straightened it. ‘Someday.’
He was a lot more likely to say stuff like that on the way to school than he was on the way home.
Sometimes she wondered if he was fully awake.
He turned practically sideways in his seat. ‘So you’re leaving right after school?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’ll call me as soon as you get there …’
‘No, I’ll call you as soon as the kid settles down. I really do have to babysit.’
‘I’m going to ask you a lot of personal questions,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I have a list.’
‘I’m not afraid of your list.’
‘It’s extremely long,’ he said, ‘and extremely personal.’
‘I hope you’re not expecting answers …’
He sat back in the seat and looked over at her. ‘I wish you’d go away,’ he whispered, ‘so that we could finally talk.’
Eleanor stood on the front steps after school. She’d hoped to catch Park before he got on the bus, but she must have missed him.
She wasn’t sure what kind of car to watch for; her dad was always buying classic cars, then selling them when money got tight.
She was starting to worry that he wasn’t coming at all – he could’ve gone to the wrong high school or changed his mind – when he honked for her.
He pulled up in an old Karmann Ghia convertible. It looked like the car James Dean died in. Her dad’s arm was hanging over the door, holding a cigarette. ‘Eleanor!’ he shouted.
She walked to the car and got in. There weren’t any seat belts.
‘Is that all you brought?’ he asked, looking at her school bag.
‘It’s just one night.’ She shrugged.
‘All right,’ he said, backing out of the parking space too fast.
She’d forgotten what a crappy driver he was. He did everything too fast and one-handed.
Eleanor braced herself on the dashboard. It was cold out, and once they were driving, it got colder. ‘Can we put the top up?’
she shouted.
‘Haven’t fixed it yet,’ her dad said, and laughed.
He still lived in the same duplex he’d lived in since her parents split up. It was solid and brick, and about a ten-minute drive from Eleanor’s school.
When they got inside, he took a better look at her.
‘Is that what all the cool kids are wearing these days?’ he asked.
She looked down at her giant white shirt, her fat paisley tie and her half-dead purple corduroys.
‘Yup,’ she said flatly. ‘This is pretty much our uniform.’
Her dad’s girlfriend – fiancée – Donna, didn’t get off work until five, and after that she had to pick her kid up from daycare. In the meantime, Eleanor and her dad sat on the couch and watched ESPN.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and sipped Scotch out of a short glass. Every once in a while the phone would ring, and he’d
have
a
long,
laughy
conversation
with
somebody
about a car or a deal or a bet.
You’d think that every single person who called was his best friend in the whole world. Her dad had baby blond hair and a round, boyish face. When he smiled, which was constantly, his whole face lit up like a billboard. If Eleanor paid too much attention, she hated him.
His duplex had changed since the last time she’d been here, and it was more than just the box of Fisher Price toys in the living room and the makeup in the bathroom.
When they’d first started visiting him here – after the divorce, but before Richie – their dad’s duplex had been a bare-bones bachelor pad. He didn’t even have enough bowls for them all to have soup. He’d served Eleanor clam chowder once in a highball glass. And he only had two towels. ‘One wet,’ he’d said, ‘one dry.’
Now Eleanor fixated on all the small luxuries strewn and tucked around the house. Packs of cigarettes, newspapers, magazines … Brand-name cereal and quilted toilet paper. His refrigerator was full of things you tossed into the cart without thinking about it just because they sounded good.
Custard-style yogurt. Grapefruit juice.
Little
round
cheeses
individually wrapped in red wax.
She couldn’t wait for her dad to leave so that she could start e a t i n g everything. There were stacks of Coca-Cola cans in the pantry. She was going to drink Coke like water all night, she might even wash her face with it.
And she was going to order a pizza. Unless the pizza came out of her babysitting money. (That would be just like her dad. He’d take you to the cleaners with fine print.) Eleanor didn’t care if eating all his food pissed him off or if it freaked out Donna. She might never see either of them again anyway.
Now she wished she had brought an overnight bag. She could have snuck home cans of Chef Boyardee and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup for the little kids. She would have felt like Santa Claus when she came home …