‘Good. You’ll love it. I promise you will.’
A few minutes went by. There was a splash in the outdoor pool. A door slammed. ‘Stella?’ My voice sounded pitted, small. ‘Aren’t you angry at Samantha? She could have said goodbye. I don’t think that was very nice of her. Surely she was meaner to you than I was to her, right?’
No answer.
I turned on my back and stared at the ceiling. ‘But maybe I am mean, sometimes.’ And then, even quieter: ‘Once, when my father was getting those treatments in the hospital, he sort of lost it in the hall. It was…embarrassing, I guess. Everyone was looking. And I shoved him.’
I glanced over at her. Still nothing. ‘I never talked to him about it, either,’ I whispered. ‘I never said I was sorry. But I didn’t do it to be cruel. I just didn’t know what else to do. I just felt…he’s my father.’ I closed my eyes. My cheeks felt hot. ‘He’s supposed to…he should…I’m his kid.’
Stella let out a snore. I opened my eyes, very aware of my surroundings. The room looked the same as before that had spilled out of my mouth.
I walked to the window, pulled up the shades, and then clutched both sides of my head. The rattling of the A/C penetrated my bones. I wanted someone to recognize this moment with me. To tell me that I was right-he was my father, and I was his daughter. These roles usually had different responsibilities and expectations. That I wasn’t a terrible person to think this, and no one would condemn me for saying it out loud.
I turned off the air conditioner, found my key card and slid out of the room. The paisley hallway carpet smelled overly deodorized, like the staff were trying to mask something. In the lobby, I made a left and went through the revolving front door. A group of Mennonites stood around a long, white van. One squatted down, checking out the front tire.
I watched them for a little while, leaning against a small green bench. We’d had a whole unit about genetically closed communities like the Mennonites and Amish in one of my college classes. Because of inbreeding, so many Amish children were born with incredibly rare diseases that didn’t exist anywhere else in the population. But instead of understanding that their own restrictions and bodies had done this, they simply said it was God’s master plan. I realized, though: my old belief in DNA-that it immutably set your course for life, that you were only the sum of its parts-wasn’t really that different. A master plan was a master plan, after all-it hardly mattered who or what was behind it.
The Mennonites had honest, plain faces, and I wanted to tell them everything. But then, as I took a step toward them, they noticed me and froze. Silently, they nodded in unison, climbed into the van and drove away.
23
The humidity skulked about the room, making us stick to the threadbare bedsheets. I woke up cramped, Stella woke up ornery. She complained that everything hurt; I assured her that Cheveyo would help her. I saw her rolling her eyes at me in the mirror. She complained about the coffee in the lobby and I snapped at her that she shouldn’t be drinking it, anyway. She complained that there weren’t any Amish people here, that she’d wanted to see an Amish person. I reminded her that, just the other day, she’d told me Amish people were carcinogenic.
And she looked at me as if I’d just told her I was planning to marry a potted plant. ‘Now, why would I say a dumbassed thing like that?’ she spat. ‘You must have heard me wrong.’
In the car, Stella put on her pink cat-eye sunglasses and held the Pennsylvania road map a foot away from her face so she could read it. ‘So, we have to take this squiggly road here. We’ll run smack into the jackalope.’
She pointed to a red line. The lines mingled with other lines and reminded me of veins on a leaf. ‘There’s no marker that a Jackalope Museum is there,’ I told her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. It’s a little building on the side of the road-they wouldn’t want to mark it on a map because then too many people would know about it. I remember that day clear as anything. Skip and I were trying to find Punxsutawney, but that’s right here.’ She pointed to a town almost a finger’s distance away. ‘We were quite lost.’
‘Why were you looking for Punxsutawney?’
She glared at me. ‘Because of the groundhog, of course.’
Of course.
‘The groundhog’s name was Phil,’ Stella added haughtily. ‘Or perhaps Philip. I don’t remember.’