“Clare!” He often addresses my mother as though I am not at the table. “I ran into Hattie Winters today at BI-LO, and she looks like she could use someone to talk to. I wondered if you might phone her up or invite her to coffee.”
A typical pastor’s wife job. He traffics in souls; it’s her job to traffic in hearts. I am currently trafficking in roast beef, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, and three bags of LEGOs on my placemat. The LEGOs have priority. I try to bring a distraction to the table that isn’t my life.
Dad, wanting my mother to pay attention to him instead of the news, says her name as if she is deaf. When that doesn’t work, he taps the tines against her plate. “Clare, did you hear me?”
“They’re showing coverage of the quake,” she explains. The news channel shows a picture of the elementary school, looking far better than it did two weeks ago, but several windows are broken.
I was on that roof recently, I think. I was on that roof falling out of love with Woods.
We have a small television in our kitchen that has one channel when Dad’s around: Fox News. It is this nine-inch screen that my parents squint at now rather than the fifty-five inches of HD beauty in the living room, also visible from the kitchen table. My mother wipes her mouth with a napkin. Folds the cloth into a triangle and places it neatly in her lap. She gives my father her full attention.
He says, “I wish someone would buy the school and tear it down. It’s an eyesore.”
I sit bolt upright. Four chair legs on the floor.
He continues, “Nothing useful will ever happen there again.”
So many useful things have already happened there. Who would have thought that a game of Beggar and a kiss could change the future? That school is directly responsible for my surname never being Carrington. I hope it will soon be responsible for saving the Harvest Festival.
Mom gently guides the discussion back to where it was previously going. “What were you saying about Hattie, Scott?”
He crams another bite into his mouth. “She could use someone to talk to.”
I’m adding LEGO bricks to my prototype of the elementary school, the very one my father wants to tear down, but I’m listening intently.
Dad speaks again. “You know everything she’s been through. First, John. Then losing her dad. And now . . . Davey.”
If we were a normal family, my mom would give my dad a look, and they would finish this discussion far from my ears. I’ve seen the Carringtons employ this tactic.
“What’s wrong with Davey?” Mom asks.
Dad checks in—I am a blank page—and answers, “Hattie was hinting that he might be gay. That maybe he’d experimented with a friend in Nashville, and he’s . . . I don’t know, dating someone? Billie, what do you know about that? I mean, I’ve noticed the eyeliner. But when I was your age I loved grunge bands and they used plenty of eyeliner and seemed pretty hetero. So I didn’t assume. Maybe Hattie is assuming.”
“Maybe she is.” Mom shrugs. “Maybe she’s not.”
Dad ignores Mom and taps his fork near my LEGOs. “I’m asking you.”
Lumpy mashed potatoes have never tasted so good. I fill my mouth, lift my shoulders as if I give zero shits.
This doesn’t suit him. “Come on, you have to know something. She needs some comfort.”
“Dad,” I say, using universal eye contact for I’m not answering that.
His head whips toward Mom. “Clare?”
A simple tone that has come to mean: control your offspring.
Being nominated for the Corn Dolly clearly doesn’t fix everything.
“Elizabeth”—Mom is typically the only person who calls me Elizabeth, and she only does so when she’s caught between Dad and me—“he’s not asking you to betray your friend’s confidence. He’s asking if Hattie has any reason to be concerned. Right, Scott?”
“No,” Dad asserts. “I’m asking if Davey Winters is sexually fluid.”
Despite my best efforts, my tongue nearly licks the carpet. Sexually fluid? When did Dad zoom out of his century and into mine? Some preachers’ conference over the last year? “Dad, we don’t . . . we don’t talk about sexuality.”
“Please! I’ve read books about this. I’ve listened to podcasts and they all say your generation doesn’t care to define sexuality,” he says with all the confidence of an expert.
I curl tighter into my chair.
“There’s a whole alphabet of letters. L-G-B-T-Q-I-A-B-C-D—”
“Dad.”
“Oh, Scott, you’ve embarrassed her,” Mom says.
Dad slaughters roast beef with a steak knife, lifts his fork, and chews a tine long after the meat is gone. “Hattie is the one who seemed embarrassed. She’s troubled over this, feels like her son’s not talking to her.”
I’m instantly pissed off on Davey’s behalf. Why would he talk to his mother about his sexuality if she seemed even slightly embarrassed? Before I remember I’m talking to Brother Scott McCaffrey, I say, “Would it be so bad if Davey were gay?”
“See?” Dad says to Mom. “I told you, they have talked about it.”
“No, we haven’t,” I say.
His retort is a classic parental redirect. “Please take the LEGOs off the table.”
“This has nothing to do with LEGOs.” I’ve built far more unusual things at this table while they talked to each other. If the diorama of my favorite Marvel scene made entirely of colored toothpicks didn’t piss him off, LEGOs certainly shouldn’t. I shove my plate off the placemat. The fork rattles on the plate. The knife falls to the floor.
He huffs. “I don’t understand what I’ve done to make you so unhappy. Clare, we’ve raised the most difficult child on the planet.”
“Scott! That’s ridiculously untrue.”
“Clare.”
My parents love each other, but neither of them loves the way the other deals with me.
“I’m full.” I’m up and in the kitchen using scalding-hot water to rinse my plate before Mom can say, “Billie, you don’t have to leave.”
I sweep LEGOs into a bowl I swipe from the counter and walk to the garage with Dad yelling at the back of my head. “Why am I the bad guy for caring about Hattie?”
“Why am I the bad guy for caring about Davey?”
“I should ground you from the gar—”
I slam the door.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, my father raised a glass on my behalf. That is the potential of us. The reality of us is me dumping LEGOs on a workbench, finishing my replica, and setting the display on a belt sander. I take out my cell phone, turn on the sander, and record an earthquake. I’m judging it to be 5.2 on the LEGO Richter scale while the argument coming from inside my house is an 8.
The LEGOs explode all over the floor.
I am nostalgic for a time when my family slathered butter on popcorn and watched Survivor reruns on the living room couch. I am nostalgic for parents I don’t have. What would it be like to be raised by a couple who say things like “Fall in love with a person, Billie,” rather than a minister who says things like “Hate the sin and love the sinner”? I am smart enough to understand that Dad’s conversation with Hattie was also about me. There among the subtext, he’s asking a question.
I wait for the yelling to stop before I slink to my room and fall into bed fully clothed.