“David? Hello?”
I turned to see Mrs. Dobson-Wade, standing on her side porch, her door open behind her. She was craning her neck, scanning the side yard, a concerned look on her face.
Dave got up, walking to our door and sticking his head out. “Hey,” he said. She jumped, startled. “I’m over here.”
“Oh,” she said. When she saw me, she waved, and I waved back. “Sorry to interrupt. But that documentary your father mentioned earlier is coming on, and I knew you wouldn’t want to miss the beginning.”
“Right,” Dave said, glancing at me. “The documentary.”
“It’s about the lives of cells,” Mrs. Wade explained to me. “A really fascinating, in-depth view. Highly acclaimed.”
I nodded, not sure what to say to this. “I’ll be there in a minute,” Dave told her.
“All right.” She smiled, then shut the door, and Dave came back to the table.
“Cells, huh?” I said as he sat back down.
“Yep.” He sighed, stacking our bowls one in the other, and putting both spoons in the top one. “They make up everything and everyone, Mclean.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sure it will be fascinating.”
“Want to join us?” I bit my lip, trying not to smile as he stood up, pushing in his chair. “Yeah, it’s not exactly my cup of tea either. But if I want to go to Austin, I have to play the game. Be a good son, and all that.”
He walked over to the stove, where he picked up the saucepan, stuffing the pot holder in his pocket. Then, as I watched, he carefully shut all the open, empty cabinets. Just like that, my kitchen was normal again. At least, from the outside.
He was walking to the door now, the pot in hand, and I pushed out my chair, getting to my feet. “You know,” I said, “the fact that I didn’t come by today . . . it wasn’t about anything you said. I’m just—”
“Not into entanglements,” he finished for me. “I get it. Loud and clear.”
We stood there for a moment, just looking at each other. If I had more time, I thought, but really, it wasn’t about that. I just wasn’t sure any relationship could work. If the perfect love story turned out not to be, what did that mean for the rest of us?
Dave looked over at his house again. “I’d better go. The cells and their lives are waiting.”
“Thanks for the soup.”
“No problem. Thanks for the company.”
I pushed open my door, and he stepped through, glancing back once as he went down the stairs and across the driveway. I watched him go inside his kitchen, putting the saucepan in the sink. Then he started down the hallway, where the light of a TV was flickering in the distance.
I was almost back to my room, and my homework, when the phone rang. Which startled me, honestly, as I’d sort of forgotten it was there. My dad and I usually didn’t bother with landlines, instead just using our cell phones, as it was easier than having to keep learning new numbers in every place. But here, for what reason, EAT INC had put in a house line for us. The few times it had rung, they were wrong numbers or telemarketers. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was looking for a reason to procrastinate, I probably would have ignored it altogether.
“Hello?” I said, my tone stern, already in No mode.
“Is that Mclean?”
I didn’t recognize the voice, which just made the fact that the caller knew who I was that much weirder. “Um,” I said. “Yes. Who’s this?”
“Lindsay Baker. From the town council. We met the other day at the restaurant.”
Immediately, I saw her in my head: that yellow-blonde hair, bright eyes, even brighter teeth. Even over the phone her confidence was palpable. “Oh, right. Hi.”
“I’m calling because I’ve been trying to reach your father for a few days now on his cell and at Luna Blu, without any luck, and I was hoping to catch him at this number. Is he around?”
“No,” I said. “He’s at the restaurant.”
“Oh.” A pause. “That’s strange. I just called there and they said he was at home.”
“Really?” I looked at the clock: it was 7:30, prime dinner rush. “I’m not sure where he could be, then.”
“Oh, well,” she replied. “It was worth a shot. I’ll keep trying him, but could I bother you to pass on my number and a message? ”
“Sure.”
I picked up a pen and uncapped it. “Just tell him,” she said, “that I’d really like to get together for lunch and discuss what we talked about the other day. My treat, at his convenience. I’m at 919-555-7744. That’s my cell, and I always have it with me.”
LINDSAY BAKER, I wrote, with the number beneath it. WANTS YOU FOR LUNCH. “I’ll tell him,” I said.
“Perfect. Thank you, Mclean.”
We hung up, and I looked back down at the message, realizing only then that it sounded like something the big bad wolf would leave. Oh, well, I thought, sticking it on the kitchen table. He’ll get the idea.
I went back to my room and tried to immerse myself in the Industrial Revolution. About a half hour later, I heard a soft knock at the back door, so quiet I wondered if I’d imagined it. When I came out, no one was there. On the back deck rail, though, there was a small box, a sticky note attached to it.
I picked it up. It was a plastic container of thyme, already opened, but more than half full. JUST IN CASE YOU DECIDE TO STICK AROUND, the note said in messy, slanted writing. WE HAD THREE OF THESE.
I looked back at the Wades’ dark kitchen for a moment, then turned around and went back inside, putting the thyme in the cupboard, right by the salt and pepper and the silverware. The note I took back to my room, where I stuck it on my bedside clock, front and center, so it would be the first thing I saw in the morning.
Nine
v width="0em" align="left">The next day I woke up to a bright white glare outside my window. When I eased the shade aside and peered out, I saw it had snowed overnight. There were about four inches covering everything, and it was still coming down.“Snow,” my dad reported as I came into the kitchen. He was at the window, a mug of coffee in his hands. “Haven’t seen that in a while.”
“Not since Montford Falls,” I said.
“If we’re lucky, it’ll delay Chuckles at the airport. That would at least buy us some time.”
“To do what?”
He sighed, putting down his coffee cup. “Wave a magic wand. Poach the staff of the best restaurant in town. Consider other career options. That kind of thing.”
I opened the pantry door, reaching inside to pull out the cereal. “Well, at least you’re thinking positively.”
“Always.”
I was getting out the milk when I suddenly remembered the call I’d answered the night before. “Hey, did you leave the restaurant last night?”
“Only at about one to come back here,” he replied. “Why?”
“That councilwoman, Lindsay Baker,” I said. “When she called and left that message, she said they’d just told her you were gone.”
He sighed, then reached up to rub a hand over his face. “Okay, don’t judge me,” he said. “But I might have told them to tell her I wasn’t there.”
“Really?” I asked.
He grimaced.
“Why?”
“Because she keeps calling wanting to discuss this model thing, and I don’t have the time or energy right now.”
“She did say she’s been trying to reach you for a while.”
He grunted, taking one last sip off his mug and setting it in the sink. “Who calls a restaurant in the middle of dinner rush, wanting to make a lunch date? It’s ludicrous.”
“She wants a date?”
“I don’t know what she wants. I just know I don’t have time to do it, whatever it is.” He picked up his cell phone, glancing at the screen before shutting it and sliding it in his pocket. “I gotta get over there and get some stuff done before Chuckles shows up. You’ll be okay getting to school? Think they’ll cancel?”
“Doubt
it,” I said. “This isn’t Georgia or Florida. But I’ll keep you posted.”
“Do that.” He squeezed my shoulder as I reached into the fridge for the milk. “Have a good day.”
“You, too. Good luck.”
He nodded, then headed for the front door. I watched him pull on his jacket, which was neither very warm nor waterproof, before going out onto the porch. Not for the first time, I thought of the next year, and what it would be like for him to be living in another rental house, in another town, without me. Who would organize his details so he could be immersed in someone else’s? Iidth it wasn’t my responsibility to take care of my dad, that he didn’t ask for or expect it. But he’d already been left behind one time. I hated that I’d be the person to make it twice.
Just then, my phone rang. Speak of the devil, I thought, as HAMILTON, PETER popped up on the screen. I was moving to hit the IGNORE button when I looked at the clock. I had fifteen minutes before I had to leave for the bus. If I got this over with now, it might buy me a whole day of peace, or at least a few hours. I sucked it up and answered.
“Hi, honey!” my mom said, her voice too loud in my ear. “Good morning! Did you get any snow there?”
“A little,” I said, looking out at the flakes still falling. “How about you?”
“Oh, we’ve already got three inches and it’s still coming down hard. The twins and I have been out in it. They look so cute in their snowsuits! I e-mailed you a few pictures.”
“Great,” I said. Thirty seconds down, another, oh, two hundred and seventy or so to go before I could get off the phone without it seeming entirely rude.
“I just want to say again how much I enjoyed seeing you last weekend,” she said. She cleared her throat. “It was just wonderful to be together. Although at the same time, it made me realize how much I’ve missed of your life these last couple of years. Your friends, activities . . .”
I closed my eyes. “You haven’t missed that much.”
“I think I have.” She sniffed. “Anyway, I’m thinking that I’d really like to come visit again sometime soon. It’s such a quick trip, there’s no reason why we can’t see each other more often. Or, you could come here. In fact, this weekend we’re hosting the team and the boosters for a big barbecue here at the house. I know Peter would love it if you could be here.”
Shit, I thought. This was just what I’d been worried about by agreeing to go to the game. One inch, then a foot, then a mile. The next thing I knew, we’d be back in the lawyers’ offices. “I’m really busy with school right now,” I said.
“Well, this would be the weekend,” she replied. Push, push. “You could bring your schoolwork, do it here.”
“It’s not that easy. I have stuff I have to be here for.”
“Well, okay.” Another sniff. “Then how about next weekend? We’re taking our first trip down to the beach house. We could pick you up on the way, and then—”
“I can’t do next weekend either,” I said. “I think I just need to stay here for a while.”
Silence. Outside, the snow was still falling, so clean and white, covering everything. “Fine,” she said, but her tone made it clear this was anything but. “If you don’t want to see me, you don’t want to see me. I can’t do anything about that, now can I?”
No, I thought, you can’t. Life would have been so much easier if I could do that, just agree with this statement, plant us both firmly on the same page, and be done with it. But it was never that simple. Instead, there was all this dodging and running, intricate steps and plays required to keep the ball in the air. “Mom,” I said. “Just—”
“Leave you alone,” she finished for me, her voice curt. “Never call, never e-mail, don’t even try to keep in touch with my firstborn child. Is that what you want, Mclean?”
“What I want,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice level, “is the chance to have my own life.”
“How could you think it’s anything but that? You won’t even share the smallest part of it with me unless it’s under duress.” Now she was actually crying. “All I want is for us to be close, like we used to be. Before your father took you away, before you changed like this.”
“He didn’t take me away.” My voice was rising now. She’d fumbled around, poking and prodding, and now she’d found it, that one button that could not be unpushed. I’d changed? Please. “This was my choice. You made choices, too. Remember?”
The words were out before I could stop them, and I felt their weight both as they left me, and when they hit her ears. It had been a long, long time since we’d talked about the affair and the divorce, way back to the days of What Happens in a Marriage, that brick wall that stopped any further discussion. Now, though, I’d lobbed a grenade right over it, and all I could do was brace for the fallout.
For a long while—or what felt like a long while—she was quiet. Then, finally, “Sooner or later, Mclean, you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything.”
This was the moment. Retreat and apologize, or push forward to where there was no way to return. I was tired, and I didn’t have another name or girl to hide behind here. Which is probably why it was Mclean’s voice that said, “You’re right. But I can blame you for the divorce and for the way things are between us now. You did this. At least own it.”
I felt her suck in a breath, like I’d punched her. Which, in a way, I had. All this forced niceness, dancing around a truth: now I’d broken the rules, that third wall, and let everything ugly out into the open. I’d thought about this moment for almost three years, but now that it was here, it just made me sad. Even before I heard the click of her hanging up in my ear.
I shut my phone, stuffed it in my pocket, then grabbed my backpack. Four hours away, my mother was crumbling and it was all my doing. The least I could have felt was a moment of exhilaration. But instead it was something more like fear that washed over me as I started down our walk, pulling my coat tightly around me.
Outside, the air was cold and crisp, the snow coming down hard. I turned the opposite way from the bus stop and started walking toward town, the snow making everything feel muffled and quiet around me. I walked and walked; by the time I realized how far I’d gone, there were only a couple of storefronts left before the street turned residential again. I had to turn around, find a bus stop, get to school. First, though, I needed to warm up. So I walked up to the closest place with an OPEN sign, a bakery with a picture of a muffin in the window, and went inside.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” a cheerful voice called out the second I crossed the threshold. I looked over to see two people behind the counter, bustling around, while a few people waited in line. Clearly, this was one of those chain places that was supposed to look like a mom-and-pop joint: decorated to look small and homey, mandatory personal greeting, a crackling (fake) fireplace on one wall. I got in line, grabbing a couple of napkins to wipe my nose.
I was so tired from the walk, and still reeling from what had happened with my mom, that I just stood there, shuffling forward as needed until suddenly I was face-to-face with a pretty redhead wearing a striped apron and a jaunty paper cap. “Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” she said. “What can we do to make you feel at home today?”
God, I hated all this corporate crap, even before I’d heard my dad rail against it endlessly. I looked up at the menu board, scanning it. Coffee, muffins, breakfast paninis, smoothies, bagels. I looked back at the smoothie options, suddenly remembering something.
“Blueberry Banana Brain Freeze,” I told her.
“Coming right up!”
She turned, walking over to a row of blenders, and I took another look around me at this, the place where Dave’s downfall began. You could hardly imagine a place less likely to corrupt someone. There were needlepoint samplers on all the walls, for God’s sake. LIFE’S TROUBLES ARE OFTEN SOOTHED BY HOT, MILKY DRINKS, read one by the sugar, milk, and cream station. Another, over the recycling bins, proclaimed WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. I wondered where they
’d ordered them, and if you could get anything mass-embroidered and framed. LEAVE ME ALONE, mine would say. I’d hang in on my door, a fair warning, cutely delivered.
Once I got my smoothie, I went over and took a seat on a faux-leather chair in front of the faux-roaring fire. Dave was right: after two sips on my straw, I had a headache so bad I could barely see straight. I put my hand to my forehead, as if that would warm things up, then closed my eyes, just as the front door bell chimed.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” one of the counter people yelled.
“Thank you!” a voice yelled back, and someone laughed. I was still rubbing my forehead when I heard footsteps, then, “Mclean? ”
I opened my eyes, and there was Dave. Of course it was Dave. Who else would it be?
“Hi,” I said.
He peered at me a little more closely. “You okay? You look like you’ve been—”
“It’s just a brain freeze,” I said, holding up the cup as evidence. “I’m fine.”
I could tell he was not fully convinced, but thankfully, he didn’t push the issue. “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were a Friend of Frazier.”
“A what?”
“That’s what we call the regulars.” He waved at the redhead, who waved back. “Hold on, I’m just grabbing a Freaking Everything and a Procrastinator’s Special. Be back in a sec.”
I took another tentative sip of my smoothie, watching as he headed over to the counter, ducking behind it. He said something to the redhead, who laughed, then reached around her to the bakery display and grabbed a muffin before pouring himself a big cup of coffee. Then he punched a few buttons on the register, slid in a five, and took out a dollar and some change, which he deposited in the tip jar.
“Thank you!” the redhead and other guy working sang out.
“You’re welcome!” Dave said. Then he started back over to me.