Dad purses his lips and exhales like he’s rationing his air. He used to do this when he got annoyed, but was trying to keep his temper. It’s the reaction I want (to make it harder on him, to—yes—to punish him a little), but it hurts my feelings all the same.
“Well,” he tries, “I saw a Mexican place near the freeway—Don something-or-other. Wanna get some enchiladas?”
“I guess.”
“Great.”
Dad reaches over and fiddles with the radio.
Call now and you’ll receive … You and me could write a bad romance … The Dow Jones is up three percent and market shares … At Crazy Dan’s you’re not just getting a good deal, you’re getting … Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly …
Finally, he just shuts it off. His hands grip the wheel, his knuckles white, and I stare at them for a moment, lost in a memory of him teaching me to write, his fingers gently guiding my own. This is the man who gave me words. But he didn’t listen when I tried to use them.
“So how do you like high school?” he finally says.
“It was good until all this started up again.” Now, being in the midst of the show, I know it was more than good. It was football games on autumn nights, eating lunch in the caf at long, sea foam green tables with no one staring at me. It was sleeping over at my friends’ houses and knowing people liked me as Chloe, not Bonnie™.
“Your grades okay?”
Really?
“Dad, I can’t talk about my grades right now. I haven’t seen you in years, and you come during our live episode and get in a fight with my stepdad and show up at my school and—” I stop because if I don’t, everything I’ve wanted to say will come tumbling out.
Dad pulls into the restaurant parking lot and kills the engine. I can see the Vultures in the rearview mirror, taking out their cameras. This is why I only go from home to school and back again.
“Shit,” Dad says.
I don’t wait for him. I shove open the door and sprint toward the restaurant.
“Bonnie™! One picture!”
“Hey, Bonnie™, how’re you feeling?”
“Andrew—just one shot of the two of you. C’mon, man.”
Dad walks slowly, and when I look back, he’s talking to them. Traitor.
“Please. I’m just trying to take my daughter out for lunch. Go back to Hollywood, huh?”
I swing open the door of the restaurant and immediately go to the bathroom. I pull out my phone and dial.
“Benny?”
My voice is shaking and I’m not strong I can’t do this I’m a coward why can’t I just tell him to fuck off and why why why did I get in that car oh God please—
“Chlo! Where are you?”
“Don Ricardo’s.”
“What’s going on?”
I look at myself in the mirror—dark circles under my eyes and stringy psych-ward-escapee hair. It occurs to me that MetaReel might be listening in on Benny’s phone even though I’m using my prepaid one. Right now I’m too upset to care.
“I have no idea. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”
Benny swears, and I hear him muttering to someone near him. It’s lunchtime at Taft. “Hey, Patrick wants to say hi. Hold up.”
I can hear the chaos of the cafeteria for a few seconds and then, “Hey, you.”
“Hi,” I say, my voice soft. I can hear the yearning in it—can he hear it, too?
“Do you want me to kick his ass?” Patrick’s voice is dry, but the undercurrent of emotion in it suggests he’s not entirely opposed to the idea.
I laugh. “Would you?”
“Actually, yes. I think I would. I’m not violent by nature, but you sort of bring that out in me. Er, not you. Rather, the people around you. Hey—hold on a sec. What?” I can hear someone talking to him, then, “Tessa and Mer say they’re willing to Taser him.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out as a grunt. “Well, I’ll text you if it comes to that.”
There’s a pause and then, “Seriously. I’ll come pick you up. You don’t owe him anything.”
Refusing is not something I’ve ever been allowed to do. I don’t know what the consequences would be if I did. I’m tempted to take his offer, to have Patrick shield me against all the Vultures and whisk me away to somewhere quiet and safe.
“That sounds…” I sigh. “I have to deal with this.”
“I know.” He pauses, but because I can’t see his face, I’m not sure what’s weighing down the air between us. “Don’t go home until I get to see you, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Benny gets back on. “One call, and we’ll come out and rescue your scrawny ass.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Benny’s worried. I can tell visions of me popping pills are dancing in his head. I hang up, then splash some water on my face before I go out into the restaurant. Dad’s sitting at a table in the back, away from the windows. He looks anxious and a little bit lonely, which makes me sad. I realize I’ve never seen him alone. Ever. This seems statistically impossible, but it’s true.
I look at the lime green drink beside my place setting and raise my eyebrows.
“I ordered you a margarita,” he says.
I plop down into the chair across from him. “You’re aware that I’m seventeen?”
He grins, magnanimous. “My father let me drink when I was a senior in high school.”
My grandfather, it must be noted, died eight years ago from a busted-ass liver.
I look at the drink and then decide, What the hell? I put the straw between my lips and take a tiny sip. It’s delicious—tart and salty and warm when it hits my stomach. Dad settles back and gives me a long look. I tuck my hair behind my ear self-consciously, and he smiles.
“I missed you, honey.”
The mariachi music being piped through the speakers on the wall is too cheerful for this conversation.
“Your fault, not mine,” I say. “I guess MetaReel made it worth your while?”
I feel like I’m getting away with murder, being this openly disrespectful.
He bites his lip and looks up at the ceiling. “They offered me access—access I haven’t been able to get for years.” I snort and let my eyes drift over the southwestern décor. “Sweetie, when you get older, you might understand a bit more.”
“What’s to understand? You cheated on Mom, you left. It seems pretty simple to me.”
I take a big sip of the margarita and then another when my eyes start to water. I’m not going to cry in front of him. He doesn’t deserve it.
“Bonnie™, I know that’s how it looks, but it’s actually pretty complicated—”
He stops himself as the waitress comes up.
“You guys ready to order?”
She’s wearing a traditional Mexican dress that accentuates her curves. Dad meets her brown bedroom eyes and smiles. Goddammit, can’t he just be a normal dad for three seconds?
“I’ll have the enchiladas—cheese. And another one of these.” He points to his margarita—he’s already drained it. Typical. “Bon?”
“Cheese enchiladas,” I mumble.
“La Cucaracha” plays in my head, and I wonder if he’s thinking of the same thing.
The waitress leaves, and Dad puts his hand over mine. “Look at me. Please.”
I take my hand away and bring it to the straw in my drink, taking another long sip.
“Go easy, hon.”
I narrow my eyes. “You want me to go easy? I thought you were the one with the drinking problem.”
Seasons ten through thirteen have well documented that. Dad sighs and leans back.
“What can I do, Bonnie™? I’m here. I’m trying. I love you—I love all of you.”
“Then where have you been?” I say, the words ricocheting around the empty restaurant. “You broke your promise. You said you’d come back. But you didn’t. And I’ve been waiting
and waiting and then Mom married Kirk and—”
My voice breaks. How many times have I rehearsed this monologue? In my head, it is perfectly edited, each phrase crafted for the express purpose of making him hurt as much as I do. My words are supposed to be daggers thrown at his heart, not half-coherent complaints. I grip my knees with both hands and try to hold my body together. I’m about to rip at the seams; if I cry, everything inside me is going to fly out. When someone opens the door, pieces of me will be borne away on the wind. I’ll never be able to find all of them. I’ll never be whole. I’ll never be whole.
When he speaks, Dad’s voice is low, placating. “Honey, I know. I know. I wanted to keep that promise so badly. But I couldn’t. Your mother and I … Bon, we hate each other. You know that. And the arguments were getting worse—you must remember how bad they were. When you took those pills—”
My dad stops, picks up his glass, and drinks half of it in one sip. He doesn’t even get brain freeze. He motions for the waitress to bring another round.
“When you took those pills and we almost lost you—I blamed myself.”
I roll my eyes. Right. He blamed himself, which is why he, what, ditched us?
He leans forward, his eyes bright. “I know why you took them. You wanted me to come back. You wanted everything to be like it was before … before I left.”
“You mean before the affair.”
He sighs. “I mean before your mother and I stopped loving each other.”
I finish my drink and close my eyes so that I don’t have to see the pain in his. Instead, I picture the amber tequila flowing down my throat and into my veins. It turns my blood into gold. I’m warm and made of rubber.
And I want more tequila.
The waitress brings the drinks and our enchiladas. I’m obviously underage—I even have my backpack with me. I wonder how my dad charmed her while I was in the bathroom. Or are these celebrity perks? I can tell the margarita is going to my head because I’m having trouble maintaining control of the cold ball of anger that was rolling around in my heart a few minutes ago. Now I just feel depressed.
Which is so much worse than angry.
When the waitress leaves, Dad takes a bite of his enchilada and smiles. “Better than mine?”
This is an olive branch. Should I accept it?
I stab at the enchilada—the taste holds so many memories. I swallow, then permit the corner of my mouth to turn up. “No. But good.”
We eat in silence for a while, and I’m surprised how much of it I manage to get down. After a few minutes, I take off my sweater.
“God, it’s hot in here.”
Dad picks up my drink and puts it on his side of the table. It’s only half finished, but he slides a full glass of water close to my hand.
“Drink that up, or I’ll never hear the end of it from your mother.”
Is he playing cool dad—or is this how he would have been anyway? I open my mouth to argue, but then the room starts to spin, so I bring the glass to my lips.
“I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why didn’t you try harder to see us?”
“I did. But you always refused to come to the phone. You never answered any of my letters or e-mails. The last thing you said to me was that you hated me and never wanted to speak to me again.”
“Yeah, but … but you’re not supposed to give up!”
Dad keeps his eyes on his plate. Something about the sagging defeat in his face causes all those hurtful memories to add up.
“You never wanted this, did you? You didn’t leave because of … because of her. You left because of us.”
My voice is soft, not accusing. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but I’m finally getting it. It’s despicable—he’s despicable—but I now understand season twelve, when he bought sports cars and took “business trips” to Vegas.
“It all happened so fast,” he whispers. His eyes are glassy, far away, like he’s watching his life play out on a big-screen TV.
“It was a joke between your mother and me—a baker’s dozen! We were only twenty-two, you know. By the time I was twenty-three, we had you, Ben, and Lex.”
Four and a half years older than I am right now. Shit. Here he is, a divorced father of thirteen … and he’s only forty. Most of my friends’ parents are the same age as my grandparents. No wonder Dad freaked out. Still, that doesn’t make it okay to do what he did.
He looks at me, and I nod for him to go on.
“We had both just finished college, and I had a crappy job in a cubicle. Your mom wanted a baby so badly, but the doctors said it was impossible. We knew we could never afford the fertility treatments. She was so sad … it broke my heart. Hell, we were high school sweethearts.”
That’s the most depressing part about the whole thing. People who have prom pictures together should never get a divorce.
“Anyway, she wrote MetaReel, told them about our plans. I never expected them to be interested. I thought, What was the harm in letting Beth have a little hope? But then we got the call. You should have seen the look on her face. She acted like she’d won the lottery. And, I guess in a way, she had. We had. Once they interviewed us and decided on the show … I mean, it seemed like we’d be crazy to turn it down. And when the treatments worked, and we got you … it felt like it was all worth it. For a while, it was great. It really was.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste the salt on my lips. Dad reaches out and touches his fingertips to my cheek, and this makes me cry harder. For just a second, I lean against his upturned palm.
“Daddy, I…”
Mom never has time. Even after Kirk, there’s only so much of her to go around. She doesn’t know about Patrick, that he even exists. I want to tell Dad how I have this fantasy of Patrick coming to my house to pick me up for a date and how he would call Dad sir and shake his hand. Dad would make jokes about having a shotgun and then I’d say Dad, you’re embarrassing me. The only person who’s always had my back in this whole world is Benny, and he’s great, but he’s not a substitute for the man sitting in front of me.
“I tried my best to be a good dad, I really did,” he says. “But I was so young. It was just … too much.”
“But we’re still here,” I whisper.
“Yes. You are.”
We don’t stay at the restaurant much longer. Though there are a million things I could say, I feel like I need to let this soak in for a while. I’m glad Dad doesn’t make any promises, and I don’t ask him to. Will I see him again? I honestly don’t know.
“Are you sure you can drive?” I ask.
He nods. “Of course.”
I watch him walk ahead of me, and he doesn’t stumble or sway. He must be drinking quite a bit for three margaritas not to affect his motor skills. They made him pretty honest, though.
When Dad pulls into the Taft lot, I hesitate, my hand on the door handle. We lock eyes, and I’m surprised to see parts of myself in his face—the green eyes, the long bridge of my nose.
“I love you, Bonnie™.”
I can’t say it back, and I’m not sure if I believe him. Instead I nod and open the door. There’s a flicker of disappointment in his eyes, but he smiles. The bell rings—if I hurry, I can make it to Spanish. I watch him drive away and then I turn back toward school and the life I’ve made for myself without him.
SEASON 17, EPISODE 20
(The One with the Notebook)
There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door later that night. I was expecting it earlier, but Mom was busy with tantrums and dinner. My head is pounding from too much tequila—too much Dad—and I really don’t want to have this conversation, but I slide my journal under my mattress and open the door.
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
Mom sits on the edge of my bed, and I sink into the desk chair. “You doing all right?” she asks.
I nod, but just that one motion makes me wince.
“Yeah.”
She crosses her arms. “You
don’t seem all right.”
I shrug. If she finds out Dad let me drink, the fallout will be fodder for next week’s episode. “I mean, it was hard. And unexpected. I wish you’d told me about it.”
I play with a pencil, to give my hands something to do. I don’t know if Dad told her how he never wanted all of us, but now I will always see her differently. Not as a mom, but as a woman. I wonder how bad the hurt is when someone falls out of love with you.
“I couldn’t,” she says. “Chuck would have found out, and the cameras would have been there. I wanted to give you privacy. I felt like … like I owed you that.” She hesitates, and I notice the lines in her face, the wisp of gray showing at her roots. “Honey, I’m so sorry about Thanksgiving.”
I have a whole rant I was saving up, about how I couldn’t trust her anymore and she was letting Chuck control our lives, but now it seems beside the point. I’m finally realizing that both my parents left a long time ago. She just happens to still live here.
“I heard you and Chuck—the night Benny and I were babysitting. You let him talk you into it. You knew about it.” I stare at her. “How could you do that?”
She shifts her weight, looks at her hands. “I have to choose my battles with MetaReel. I really felt this was one I had to let them win.” Tears spill onto her cheeks, a little river of mascara that trickles down her Lancôme mask. “But when everyone started fighting, I realized I’d made the wrong choice. And I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
I can feel my pulse in my head, and when I touch my cheeks, my skin burns my fingertips. The Excedrin isn’t helping. I can’t deal with a hangover and two broken parents in one day.
“Sure, Mom. Whatever.”
There’s a heaviness between us. Maybe it’s always been there, but I feel it now more than ever. Because sorry just isn’t good enough. How do you say sorry for damaging someone’s life?
“Do you want to talk about lunch?” she asks, wiping at her face.