“That’s not really going to help you.”
When the light changes to green, the car behind them honks twice.
Ellie jerks the car forward, laying hard on the gas. “I don’t know what to say, Dad. It was wrong. I knew you’d think it was wrong. I messed up, and I’m sorry.” She tries to turn to say this directly to him. But he tells her to keep her eyes on the road.
“Why were you crying back there?”
“It’s embarrassing,” she says. “All that talk about being on my side.” She rolls her eyes, and for whatever reason, this makes Jay smile. “So where’d you go?” he says, pointing for her to make a right turn on Shepherd. “You guys taking off from school. Hope it was something good,” he says. “This was Lori’s idea?” He looks at his daughter behind the wheel. She’s biting her lip, silent.
“Okay,” he says, leaving it for now. “You’re out for the rest of the day, and you’re grounded until next weekend. We can talk about the rest when you’re ready.” He squirms in the passenger seat, unused to the view from this side of the car. He’s screwing this up, he’s sure of it, sending the wrong message, that he’s weak and uncertain. But he just can’t work up the outrage right now.
“She asked me to go with her,” Ellie says finally.
Jay turns to his daughter, surprised to hear her speak. “Lori?”
Ellie nods.
“Go where?”
“To the clinic, the place on Main, by the Astrodome,” she says, speaking of the old football stadium, which has sat empty since the Oilers left for Nashville. The neighborhood has dulled since then, which isn’t saying much. The Astrodome had been the crown jewel of an area of town otherwise filled with pawnshops and taquerías and one aging, midrange hotel. Jay can’t understand why Lori would go all the way the hell out there to see a doctor.
“She’s sick?”
“Dad,” she says, exasperated by his dimness. “She’s pregnant.”
“Lori?” She might as well have told him the girl had joined the circus.
Lori is only fifteen. Fifteen. Just a few months older than Ellie. He turns to look at his daughter, seeing a body closer to its first bike ride than motherhood. He doesn’t even know if she’s kissed a boy. He feels a sudden panic at the thought of her behind the wheel, a child steering two steel tons.
“But you can’t tell her mom.”
“Elena, I can’t promise something like that.”
“You can’t, Dad,” she says, taking her eyes off the road, swerving a little into the next lane. He reaches for the wheel. “I swore I wouldn’t tell. I wouldn’t have told you at all except I promised Mom.” Her voice catches on the last word.
“What?”
“I promised Mom I would never lie to you,” she says. “She said it wouldn’t be fair, that you were going to have a hard enough time as it is, but it’s not fair to me either.” This, Jay soon discovers, is where the tears are coming from. Ellie wipes at them with the back of her hand. They’re still a few blocks from the diner, but Jay tells her to pull over. She yanks the wheel and turns the car into the parking lot of a Kwik Kopy. Jay pulls up the hand brake. He reaches for his daughter, who is shaking now. She collapses in an awkward heap across the armrest. Jay holds her up. He can feel the dampness of her tears on his neck.
“I got you,” he says. I got you.
For one furious moment, he actually hates his wife for putting this on Ellie, hates her, in fact, for every day that’s passed since she went out like a light one warm November afternoon, not even a word to him when he left the room for five minutes, just long enough to show Ben, again, how to switch the TV signal to VCR. Those last few days at home, Jay had sent Eddie Mae to Blockbuster with a hundred dollars, told her to bring back anything PG and under, just lots of it, something a nine-year-old boy could watch while his mother died in the next room, all those long hours in the house while they waited, times neither Ben nor Bernie could stand another good-bye. “No more,” she told Jay. Ben watched movies, and Evelyn, god bless her, kept the food coming. That last morning, Bernie asked for a cheese sandwich, of all things, and a cup of tea, and then she slept for hours. It must have been close to five when Jay stepped out of their bedroom. The sun was setting, he remembers. The nurse, the only one in the room, said Bernie spoke only once. “It’s okay,” she said, just before she went.
They have a quiet dinner at home, the three of them, spaghetti for Ben, chicken and dirty rice for Jay and Ellie. Ben, who likes to sit at the table with his legs crossed under him in the chair, talks football, making guesses about the playoffs, still two months away; much to his father’s chagrin, Ben favors the Cowboys. But what can you do? Jay thinks. Nobody sticks around for nothing anymore, and a boy’s got to have a team to pull for. Ellie jumps the second the phone rings, two seconds after taking her last bite. “Can I, Dad?” she says.
He nods, letting her go.
It’s technically Ben’s night with the dishes, but Jay offers him a hand, and the two of them knock it out in no time, and then Jay pretends to watch Family Matters with his son. Really, he’s thinking of his daughter, and whatever is going on behind her closed bedroom door. He thinks of Mrs. King, likewise locked out of the details of her daughter’s life. If it were him, he’d want to know. It ought to be criminal, actually, for one parent to keep something like this from another.
At about a quarter to nine, the doorbell rings.