“It’s a journal,” she says, and then clears her throat. “Ellie’s journal.”
I look at her. I didn’t even know Ellie kept a journal.
“How did it get into my stuff?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she left it at your house?”
I run my fingers through my hair. “What do I do with it? Should I read it?” I’m overcome with the sudden desire to do just that. To get inside Ellie’s brain, find out everything that she’s been thinking. Unravel the mystery that is my teenage daughter.
“No! You can’t read your daughter’s journal. That’s against every parenting rule. Ever.”
I know she’s right. She’s right. But still.
“Well, I could text her and see if she wants it back, but she’s not exactly speaking to me.”
“Eric,” Con says.
“I know, I know,” I say. “I’m sure she wants it back. I’ll just mail it to her.”
“Eric,” she says again, fixing me with her ever-changing hazel eyes that mirror my own. Right now, they’re more green than brown.
“What? I won’t read it. I swear,” I say, crossing my heart. “Where is it?”
She stares at me a beat longer and then says: “On your dresser.” She walks past me to the dining room to collect her purse from the lone chair, then turns and puts her arms around my shoulders. I stand there awkwardly as she hugs me. We’re not a hugging family.
“Er, Con?”
She lets go and sighs. “I just wish you would find someone,” she says. “You shouldn’t be doing all this alone.”
I scoff, even though I don’t entirely disagree with her. “What, are you going to set me up again? That didn’t work out so well.”
A year after my divorce, I went on a blind date with someone Connie knew in college who lived about thirty minutes away from me. A lawyer. Corporate attorney of some kind. She was lovely—big, doelike eyes and thick lips balanced out by a sliver of a nose and thin, stick-straight locks of hair that grazed her shoulders like blades of grass. She laughed easily at my pathetic jokes and robustly defended her stance—like any good lawyer—on the merits of corn versus flour tortillas.
I behaved jovially, like a gentleman. I laughed at the appropriate times, opened car doors, fetched her a glass of water after an athletic bout of sex later in the evening.
But alone the next morning, I stared at my face in the mirror, searching . . . for what, I didn’t know. I felt numb. Or worse than numb, like I had lost a limb and was still having pain in it. I called her that afternoon and told her voice mail I had had a lovely time but didn’t think I was quite ready to date again.
“You had just gone through a divorce,” Connie says. “You weren’t ready yet. That’s normal.”
I stick my hands in my pockets and shrug. “I don’t know that the word ‘normal’ applies to me.”
She smiles. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years,” she says, reaching for the door handle. “See you tomorrow.”
When Connie’s gone, I pull my cell out of my back pocket and scroll to Ellie’s name. I have her journal. Surely telling her that would elicit a response. Even a threatening “Don’t you dare read it or else” would be preferable to silence. And I could tell her that I wouldn’t dream of betraying her privacy that way, that I’ll mail it back instantly, which would maybe garner me some kind of cool-dad points in her book. But that all feels slightly manipulative, and as much as I want my daughter to speak to me again, I don’t want it to be because she’s being coerced to do it.
So instead I tap out a quick message:
I love you, Ellie. Dad.
Then I turn off the lamp and walk down the hall to my bedroom, stopping for a moment at Aja’s door and placing my ear to it. I hear the keys clacking away at his computer, of course. I’ll give him a few more minutes before lights-out.
In my room, I sit on the bed, the mattress groaning beneath me, and take my shoes off one by one, thinking about what Connie asked me: How was your day? Stressful. That’s how my day was. How every day has been since I started this job last month. Naturally our largest client would be acquiring an S & P company now, rather than doing it before Shelly left for maternity leave or waiting until she gets back, leaving me—and the team, but really me, since I’m in charge—solely responsible for all the valuations and analyses. There’s no room for error or senior management will go ballistic.
I loosen my tie and lie back on the bed, surveying my barren room and giving in to a self-pitying What in the hell am I doing in this apartment in New Jersey moment. The notebook on my dresser catches my eye. Ellie’s journal.
Ellie. My daughter who hates me. I knew the divorce wouldn’t be easy on her—is it ever easy on any kid? But I never thought we’d be here. We had a good relationship. I thought we did, anyway. Better than most. I knew exactly how to make her laugh. Corny jokes, silly faces behind Stephanie’s back, a well-timed pun. We watched every episode of every season of The Amazing Race together—and the best moment of my life might have been when she turned to me and said, “We should do it. We could totally win.”
How did we go from that—being a hypothetical team on a world-traveling reality show—to this? I glance at Ellie’s journal again and then look away, as if not seeing it will make it less tempting to open it. It’s not. I get up from the bed, snatch the book from the dresser, and quickly open the top drawer, throwing the book in and shutting the drawer before my hands and eyes have a chance to betray my best intentions.
Then I walk down the hall and knock on Aja’s door. I hear him grunt and take that as an invitation to open it. I’m greeted with his profile, his eyes locked to the computer screen. I stand there for a minute, but he doesn’t move.
“Found your wheelchair today,” I say.
He grunts again.
“Hey, did you hear me? I thought you’d be really excited.”
He turns to me, his eyes large and serious. “I just found out they don’t do dress-up at this school, like they do at home. Mrs. Bennett said it’s too much of a distraction.”
I suppress a sigh. Would have been nice to know before I spent my whole lunch break tracking a wheelchair down.
“But at least you can still wear it Halloween night? Go trick-or-treating?”
“I’m too old for that.”
“You are?” I try to remember when Ellie stopped. I guess it was around this age.
“Well, it’s probably for the best, considering it could be really offensive—”
“I’ll find somewhere to wear it.” Aja cuts me off.
I rub my hand over my face. I wonder if I should continue arguing, try to make him see my point of view, but then decide it’s not worth it. If he can’t wear it to school or trick-or-treating, the chances are slim that he actually will find another place to wear it. It’s not like he has a gaggle of new friends at school that will be inviting him to parties or anything.
“What are you doing on there?” I ask.
“Talking to Iggy,” he says.