At the sound of my voice my father wiggles his body backward and pops his head out, clutching Jerry’s tennis ball in one hand.
“He lost it again,” he explains, before handing the ball to a patiently waiting Jerry, who takes it and drops it, bouncing it to himself for a moment before losing it under the sofa again. My father’s shoulders slump. I start tapping my fingers against the side of my leg to a made-up rhythm as I psych myself up for the question I need to ask.
“Hey, Dad, did you happen to hear back from Madeleine as to whether we’ll be seeing her on this trip?”
“Great question,” my dad says, getting back down on the floor and searching under the sofa again. “Not entirely sure on that yet.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I’m just not sure if she’s going to have time between the conference and all the travel,” he starts to ramble, but the end of it gets cut off, muffled by the sofa.
My father, a grown man, is actually hiding from me. I tap my fingers faster. This is harder than I thought it would be.
Let me know when you’re ready to live in the real world, I hear Max say.
Screw it, I think, and I lie down on the ground, too, so both my father and I are on our stomachs with our heads stuck under the sofa. Behind us I hear Jerry make an anxious whinnying noise.
“Alice, what are you doing?” my father asks.
“Dad,” I say. “Look at me. The conference is in five days. Have you heard from Madeleine at all?” I ask. “Did you even reach out to her?”
“I wish you would call her Mom,” he tells me again.
“I would be able to do that if she’d been one,” I say. And he closes his eyes for a moment, as if I have pained him. “Dad,” I say, “Mom left us. She left us for monkeys, and she’s not coming back. We have to accept it, and we have to talk about it.” As I peer at my father in the dim light under the sofa, I consider that perhaps, for us, this is our womb. The place we feel covered enough to share how we really feel. Like a person going into a fetal position, or Jerry taking his treats under the dining room table to eat them in peace.
Eventually, my father nods. “That sounds like an excellent idea, Alice. How about we do it over some cake?”
“That depends,” I say. “Is it edible?”
“I always knew she wasn’t coming back,” my dad says as he digs his fork into a surprisingly moist piece of red velvet. “But it was so much easier to deny it than to come to terms with the kind of person she truly was. The kind who could desert her family, her husband, and most of all, her daughter.” He pauses. “It was easier to ignore that fact than to confront the idea that I never really knew her at all.”
“That must have been hard,” I say, taking a sip of coffee.
“It must have been hard for you,” he says, placing a hand on mine, and this time he’s not so quick to remove it. “You were so young. I know I failed you in this, Alice. I know she caused the nightmares, but I should’ve been able to stop them. I should’ve been able to make you feel safe. But I didn’t want to talk about it, and you were alone. And I’m sorry.”
I tell him it’s okay and take another bite of cake, chewing slowly. He managed to get the texture right this time, but he also seems to have added twice the salt and half the sugar. This conversation makes me feel so much better, but it still doesn’t make me feel totally right. There’s still one apology I’m missing.
“It means a lot to hear this from you, Dad. I just wish I could hear it from her,” I admit.
“Well, maybe you should email her,” he suggests. “At this point, what’s stopping you?”
I get up and start clearing our plates without thinking. No way was I going to email Madeleine. She was the mother. That was her job. But then, for what must be the fortieth time today, I think about Max.
Slowly I set the plates down in the sink, grab my bag, and head for the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” my dad asks. “Was the cake that bad?”
“It was the opposite of bad,” I lie. “It was delicious. But now I have an email to write.” I pause in the doorway, then walk back to give him a kiss on the cheek. “That was a good talk, Dad. We should have them more often.”
In response, my father smiles widely, adjusting his glasses a little bit. “I’d like that very much,” he says.
It’s time to take down the patio lights.
34
All We Have
FROM AN EMOTIONAL standpoint, there is really never a good time to cause your imaginary dream boyfriend to break up with you. I have been well aware of this every day for the past week, since we got back from Maine. But from a practical standpoint, as I approached the new science center, balancing my succulent trays atop my bike basket, I could have really benefited from the use of my imaginary dream ex-boyfriend’s station wagon.