They cooked dinner. Dad wanted meat loaf and macaroni and cheese, and green beans and chocolate cake. “Comfort food,” he said. “Home cooking.”
“Mom’s a vegetarian,” I reminded him as we put away groceries. As if that was the biggest problem he’d have when she got home.
“She can skip the meat loaf.”
Dixie brushed past me with a can of chili in each hand. “You could try saying thanks,” she muttered.
I announced that I had homework to do and left the kitchen with a jar of peanuts I’d been about to put away. I closed the door to our room and ate peanuts by the handful, barely stopping to breathe.
That was my father in there. My father.
He was the person who’d left and come back and left again and again. The person whose only reliable act was disappearing. He was the person who bought us a storeful of groceries now but also the one who’d helped keep us hungry. The one who made my mom believe we’d all be happy—they’d have the club, the dream, everything that went with it. The one who, after every screw-up, vowed to start over and never mess up again, then immediately proceeded to do exactly what he promised he wouldn’t.
And he thought he could turn up, and put his arms around me and say, Gem, baby, and come into our house with some grand plan, filling the place up with food and making it nice. Maybe some part of me had fallen for it for a minute. Maybe a little more. But I didn’t care what he said or how he looked into my eyes or how he bought us all that food, cooked us dinner like a dad on TV. I knew in my gut it was bad news, and I knew in my gut I didn’t want to be in that apartment with him.
You don’t have to.
I argued with Mr. Bergstrom in my head. That it wasn’t so simple, especially with people around you—especially your family—saying you do have to or assuming you will.
“I bet you didn’t know I could cook like this.”
Dad, across from me, put a huge slab of meat loaf on my plate, next to a pile of green beans and a scoop of macaroni and cheese. The beans were from a can and the mac and cheese from a box, so really he’d only made meat loaf. Which didn’t seem like that hard a dish.
But I’d had worse. Okay, I’d had much worse. It all tasted good and even though I’d already eaten half a jar of peanuts I cleared my plate in minutes, partly because I liked food and also to stuff down the dread of what would happen when Mom got home. All it would take for me to not be there when it all went down was walking out the door. But my feet were lead and I hated them.
Dad said, “I was telling Dix earlier I got a job here in Seattle.”
“Already?” I asked. How long had he been in town?
“Well, I as good as got it. Nothing big, just working the door at Roddy’s. All I gotta do is meet the manager. It doesn’t pay a lot but it’s not about money anyway. It’s about networking.” He helped himself to more meat loaf. “A lot of the connections I had aren’t around anymore. Roddy’s is the shit now. The Velvet’s gone downhill, everyone says.”
I took more food. It was surreal, the way he talked and talked as if it were normal for him to be here, and the way I sat there and listened.
“It’s a stepping stone. Filling in the gap. Which I don’t even really need to do.” He pointed his fork at the food. “I provided, right?”
I didn’t want to hear any more about his big plans and how great he was, so I said I’d do the dishes. Dad went to use the bathroom and Dixie turned on the TV and unpacked her homework. I stood in front of the sink and watched it fill with hot water, making mandarin-orange-scented steam from the new dish soap we’d gotten.
I visualized myself walking to the door, going down the stairs, out the front gate. That part I could imagine; it was what would happen after that I couldn’t picture. Would it be enough to go to the park and have my cigarette and make it to tomorrow? That’s how I’d been living—day to day to day. I washed plates and imagined leaving and not coming back. Then I shook my head at myself, the impossibility of it. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what most girls who ran away ended up doing for money unless they had some kind of help.
While I did dishes, Dad talked his head off about Roddy’s and wandered around the apartment. He’d use that job to learn everything he could about running a club now, what had changed since he’d last been in Seattle. “Bunch of hipsters these days,” I heard him saying as he came back into the living room. “Not as many rockers, not as many punks, is what people say. But I know they’re out there. You don’t listen to any of that twee hipster shit do you, Dix?”
She said no.
“What are you listening to? Play me something you like. Where’s the stereo?”
“We don’t have one anymore,” I called.
“I listen on my phone,” Dixie said.
Mom had also sold off their CD collection when she needed some cash. The main noise in the apartment now was the TV.
I finished cleaning and went back out into the living room. They were on the couch together, Dad pointing to something in Dixie’s homework as if he was actually helping. The apartment still smelled like meat loaf. It was all cozy, the way Dad wanted it to look for Mom. My stomach had gone into knots—with worry and also because I’d eaten way too much. I broke into a cold sweat and rushed to the bathroom, where I bent over the toilet until everything came out. I sat on the floor with my head resting on the toilet seat.
It would be a good time to cry. I couldn’t. I didn’t. Not then and not generally. If I wasn’t going to leave, there was nothing to do but hide and wait. I brushed my teeth, then went back out and announced, “I’m going to bed.”
Dad looked up. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m tired.”
“She does this all the time,” Dixie said, glaring. “When she doesn’t want to deal with shit, she just goes to bed.”
“I’m tired,” I repeated.
“You can lie down on the floor in here and doze,” Dad said. “Let’s all be together when your mom walks in. United front.” He threw a pillow from the couch onto the floor and pointed.
I felt my knees bend and I hated how he could do this to me in the few short hours since getting here. Make me do what I knew I didn’t want to. Make me complicit.
I lay down with my back to them and looked at the TV.
8.
I WOKE up with Dixie’s toes digging into my ribs and the sound of Mom’s key in the door. Dad hissed, “Get up onto the couch, Gem.” Before I could even move, he took a handful of my shirt and pulled me backward and up. He was strong and it scared me. When the door cracked open, the three of us were lined up on the couch, Dad right between me and Dixie. He kept his arm behind me, his fingers tucked into the waist of my jeans so if I tried to get up he could pull me back down.