“It’s dark in here,” she said.
Her dad looked around the room like he’d just got there. “You’re right.” He walked around the main floor, flipping on lights. When he started on the lamps, Cath switched them off behind him. “I was just working on something…,” he said.
“For work?”
“For work,” he agreed, absentmindedly turning on a lamp she’d just switched off. “How do you feel about Gravioli?”
“I like it. Is that what we’re having for dinner?”
“No, that’s the client I’m on.”
“You guys got Gravioli?”
“Not yet. It’s a pitch. How do you feel about it?”
“About Gravioli.”
“Yeah…” He tapped the middle fingers of his left hand against his palm.
“I like the gravy? And … the ravioli?”
“And it makes you feel…”
“Full.”
“That’s terrible, Cath.”
“Um … happy? Indulgent? Comforted? Doubly comforted because I’m eating two comfort foods at once?”
“Maybe…,” he said.
“It makes me wonder what else would be better with gravy.”
“Ha!” he said. “Possible.”
He started walking away from her, and she knew he was looking for his sketchbook.
“What are we having for dinner?” Cath asked.
“Whatever you want,” he said. Then he stopped and turned to her, like he was remembering something. “No. Taco truck. Taco truck?”
“Yes. I’m driving. I haven’t driven in months. Which one should we go to? Let’s go to them all.”
“There are at least seven taco trucks, just in a two-mile radius.”
“Bring it on,” she said. “I want to eat burritos from now until Sunday morning.”
They ate their burritos and watched TV. Her dad scribbled, and Cath got out her laptop. Wren should be here with her laptop, too, sending Cath instant messages instead of talking.
Cath decided to send Wren an e-mail.
I wish you were here. Dad looks good. I don’t think he’s done dishes since we left, or that he’s used any dishes other than drinking glasses. But he’s working. And nothing is in pieces. And his eyes are in his eyes, you know? Anyway. See you Monday. Be safe. Try not to let anyone roofie you.
Cath went to bed at one o’clock. She came back down at three to make sure the front door was locked; she did that sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, when things didn’t feel quite right or settled.
Her dad had papered the living room with headlines and sketches. He was walking around them now, like he was looking for something.
“Bed?” she said.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to rest on her.
“Bed,” he answered, smiling gently.
When she came back down at five, he was in his room. She could hear him snoring.
*
Her dad was gone when she came downstairs later that morning.
Cath decided to survey the damage. The papers in the living room had been sorted into sections. “Buckets,” he called them. They were taped to the walls and the windows. Some pieces had other papers taped around them, as if the ideas were exploding. Cath looked over all his ideas and found a green pen to star her favorites. (She was green; Wren was red.) The sight of it—chaotic, but still sorted—made her feel better.
A little manic was okay. A little manic paid the bills and got him up in the morning, made him magic when he needed it most.
“I was magic today, girls,” he’d say after a big presentation, and they’d both know that meant Red Lobster for dinner, with their own lobsters and their own candle-warmed dishes of drawn butter.
A little manic was what their house ran on. The goblin spinning gold in the basement.
Cath checked the kitchen: The fridge was empty. The freezer was full of Healthy Choice meals and Marie Callender’s pot pies. She loaded the dishwasher with dirty glasses, spoons, and coffee cups.
The bathroom was fine. Cath peeked into her dad’s bedroom and gathered up more glasses. There were papers everywhere in there, not even in piles. Stacks of mail, most of it unopened. She wondered if he’d just swept everything into his room before she got home. She didn’t touch anything but the dishes.
Then she microwaved a Healthy Choice meal, ate it over the sink, and decided to go back to bed.
Her bed at home was so much softer than she’d ever appreciated. And her pillows smelled so good. And she’d missed all their Simon and Baz posters. There was a full-size cutout of Baz, baring his fangs and smirking, hanging from the rail of Cath’s canopy bed. She wondered if Reagan would tolerate it in their dorm room. Maybe it would fit in Cath’s closet.
*
She and her dad ate every meal that weekend at a different taco truck. Cath had carnitas and barbacoa, al pastor and even lengua. She ate everything drenched in green tomatillo sauce.
Her dad worked. So Cath worked with him, logging more words on Carry On, Simon than she’d written in weeks. On Saturday night, she was still wide awake at one o’clock, but she made a big show of going to bed, so that her dad would, too.