This Time Around, page 10
“Sweetie, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve gotten a little weird lately.”
Allie sighed. “Thank you, Daddy.” She cleared her throat. “So what box were you talking about?”
“It’s not a huge deal or anything. Just—some old letters, okay?”
“What kind of letters?”
“Love letters.”
Allie felt her pulse kick up again. “You mean you had a mistress?”
“What? No, of course not! I’d never cheat on your mother.”
His voice was loud enough that several inmates and their guests looked over. A man with tattoos up both arms stared for a long moment, then shook his head and went back to his own conversation.
“Who are the love letters from, Daddy?”
“Your mother and me.” A faint flush had crept into his cheeks, and Allie watched with curiosity as he dropped his gaze to the table. “They’re from when we first dated, back in college.”
“I don’t understand. Why is that a secret?”
“You know how your mom is.” He shrugged and gave a small smile, meeting her eyes again. “Not very sentimental. She was always throwing things out, doing spring cleaning and fall cleaning and purging. You remember when she threw out your old teddy bear?”
“Right. Well, I was sixteen, so—”
“Doesn’t matter. Sometimes you want to hold on to things like that.” He shrugged again and glanced down at their hands. “Anyway, I didn’t want her to chuck those in one of her cleaning binges, so I hid ’em up there in Grandma’s attic maybe seven or eight years ago.”
“So that’s it?”
He frowned. “What were you expecting?”
She shook her head. “Not that, I guess.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Thought maybe you’d found them and read them. You had kind of a funny look on your face earlier. Like you were hiding something.”
“Right.” Allie shook her head. “I wouldn’t read your private letters, Daddy.”
He laughed and bumped her knee with his beneath the table. “Nah, you’re welcome to read ’em. Heck, you might even learn something. Good stuff about life and love and courtship—all the stuff your mom and I were still figuring out back when we were eighteen.”
“Did you figure it out?” The question came out breathless, and Allie realized she genuinely wanted the answer.
He laughed. “At eighteen? Nah, we were all dumb hormones and lofty ideals back then. We didn’t really figure it out until we were well into our mid-twenties. After you came along and we started to get our careers underway.”
“Oh.”
“But those letters—those early bumbling attempts at love? They’re worth remembering. Even if it’s not where we ended up, they’re part of how we got where we were going. That means something.”
Allie nodded, not sure what else to say. She’d been witness only to parts of her parents’ love story. The parts that included her, and the ones she saw through the trial and their prison separation. Her chest felt tight as she considered how much more there was to the story. Those long ago memories that belonged only to the two of them. Wasn’t that the core of intimacy?
Her dad squeezed her hand again, and Allie felt something twist in the center of her chest. “You sure there’s nothing else, Alliecakes? You seem like you have something on your mind.”
She hesitated. A movement in the corner of her eye made Allie turn to see the guard had changed positions. He’d moved four or five feet down the wall, a better position to keep a close watch over the heavily tattooed couple holding hands across a gray table identical to theirs.
Allie looked back at her dad. If she kept her voice low, she could probably confess what she’d found. What she was really hiding.
But the words that came out of her mouth had nothing to do with the money. “Jack Carpenter is back in town.”
A look of understanding flashed across her father’s face. “Ah. That makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Why you seemed so—undone, I guess.”
She started to argue, but took a deep breath instead. “He got married,” she blurted, not sure why she was confessing all this to her father. She knew she’d never tell her mom any of this, and it felt good to confide in one parent. “But his wife died a couple years later.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he murmured.
“They had a kid. A daughter. She’s ten years old and Jack’s been raising her alone. I think he’s grown up a lot.”
Her dad nodded, and gave a soft little laugh. “That’ll change a man. Having a daughter.”
She smiled back, relieved to see him looking happy again. “Yes. I imagine it would.”
“Always felt sorry for the guy, truth be told,” her father said. “That’ll do a number on a kid, having his dad walk out like that. What was he, six, seven?”
“Six,” Allie said, surprised her father remembered, since she and Jack hadn’t known each other then. But she’d told her dad the stories, wanting her father to care about Jack the way she did. Wanting her parents to love and accept him like she had.
“It definitely shaped his personality,” Allie said. “Always expecting people to walk out or disappoint him.”
Her dad squeezed her hands. “You can’t blame yourself for any of that, sweetie. You were right to break things off when you did. The two of you were just kids.”
“I know,” Allie murmured, but her voice was small. She wanted to change the subject, and felt a wave of relief when her dad did it for her.
“Listen, sweetie—maybe you should stay out of the attic for now. Are those rickety old boards still up there?”
“Yes, but I’ve been trying not to step on them. I’m being careful.”
“Still. I’m not sure it’s safe. I’d hate to have you go crashing through the ceiling or something.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “Besides, I’m not sure I have much of a reason to go up there again anyway.”
“Good.” He squeezed her hands. “Always such a good girl, Allie.”
She smiled and tried to ignore the knot in her gut.
Of the items on Jack’s list of quintessential Portland experiences to have now that he was back in Oregon, getting a straight-razor shave from a heavily tattooed guy wearing lumberjack plaid and sporting a Fu Manchu mustache ranked right up there.
“Dad! Hold still. I want to take a picture for Instagram.”
Okay, having his ten-year-old photographing the experience added an extra element of weirdness. Maybe that made it more Portlandesque.
“Make sure you get a good shot of all my gray hair,” he said as Paige angled up on her knees in the adjacent barber chair. “Since you’re responsible for most of it.”
She giggled. “You mean there’s a color besides gray in there?” Plunking back down in the seat, she began to scroll through the images.
The guy with the mustache—whose name, according to both the sign above his workstation and his knuckle tattoos, was Bam—paused with his narrow scissors poised over Jack’s overgrown sideburn.
“You can tag Union Barber if you want,” Bam told Paige.
“Okay, if my dad lets me. He’s super strict about that stuff.”
“Poor abused child,” Jack said. “One accidental tagging of a strip club instead of a playground, and suddenly your evil father monitors your every online move.”
Paige grinned as she typed with impressive speed. “The struggle is real.”
Man, when did his kid get to be so witty? She’d always been clever, a born comedienne, just like her mother. But lately there was a sophisticated quality to her humor that left him floored.
In the waiting area behind her, a man and a woman—or was it two women?—were having a boisterous conversation about a date one of them had the night before. The taller one sported fuchsia hair and more piercings than Jack could count. The other had a buzz cut in mottled hues of blue and green. They chattered loudly over the blare of an Avett Brothers song on the overhead speakers, and Jack inhaled the familiar scent of pot and patchouli wafting from their direction. He’d almost forgotten marijuana was legal in Oregon. Not that he smoked it these days, but he’d blazed a joint or two in college. If it had been legal back then, would he and Allie have spent less time bickering about his recreational use?
Probably. They’d certainly never had a shortage of things to squabble over.
He glanced back at Paige, who was still engrossed in her phone. As an app developer, he couldn’t be too annoyed by her reliance on the gadget. As a dad, he could be as annoyed as he wanted to be.
“Paige,” he warned as Bam combed down his right sideburn. “Remember this counts toward your thirty minutes of screen time.”
“Even if I’m doing this for Grandma?”
“I can assure you Grandma won’t be that excited about my haircut.” Which probably wasn’t true. His mom lived for the tiny minutia of Paige’s life, routinely posting emoticon-heavy comments with the screen name “PaigesGramma.” Allowing grandmother and granddaughter easy contact with one another was the main reason he’d gotten her the phone in the first place.
“You can show it to her tonight when I’m at the reunion,” he added. “You ladies can play with that new app that lets you turn people’s faces into butts.”
“That does sound fun.”
Paige shoved the phone into her backpack, which was pink plaid with kittens on it. She’d pleaded for it at the start of the school year, but within three months had declared it “babyish.” He’d insisted she keep it for a few months after that, but now that she’d be starting at a new school, he was willing to concede that something more mature would be fine. He’d let her pick it out herself if they had time to hit the mall before he had to pick up Allie for the reunion.
“We’re going to do a little hot towel treatment now,” Bam told him.
“Sounds good.”
The couple in the waiting area laughed about something as Bam marched in heavy Doc Martens to a contraption in the back corner of the room. He returned with a hot, damp towel that smelled like limes and some spice he couldn’t identify. Coriander, maybe? Allie would know.
The thought of Allie drifted through his mind like a wispy ghost, and Jack closed his eyes as Bam tilted Jack’s chair back and began to wrap the towel around his face.
“Too hot?” he asked.
“Nope. It’s fine.”
“Daddy, you look like a mummy.”
He grinned beneath the towel and tried to think of a daddy/mummy joke that wouldn’t fall flat or remind her that she’d spent most of her life as a motherless child.
“That’ll save me the trouble of finding a Halloween costume in a few months,” was all he could come up with.
Bam finished wrapping the towel and rested his hands on the sides of Jack’s face. “I’m going to leave that on there for just a few minutes. Let the steam do its thing.”
Jack nodded, feeling a little silly with nothing but his nose sticking out of the warm, scented towel. It was quiet under here, with sounds muffled by the damp terrycloth. It bothered him just a little not being able to see Paige. What if someone snatched her or she wandered out the door or—
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“What does shaving your boobs mean?”
He replayed the question in his mind, trying to make sense of it. “Um—”
“Or poops. Maybe it’s shaving your poops.”
“I have no idea.”
Behind him, Bam chuckled. “Pubes. The word is pubes.” He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Keep it down over there, ladies. We have children in the house.”
“Sorry!” The two voices came from the waiting area, which answered at least two questions pinging around in Jack’s mind.
Jack sighed. “Pubes is a short way of saying pubic region,” he said, feeling ridiculous delivering this information with his face wrapped in a towel. For all he knew, he had a full audience listening to this little father-daughter moment.
But he knew Paige was waiting for a response, and he’d promised her a long time ago that he’d always answer her questions promptly and honestly. Might as well get this over with. “Remember that book we read together a couple months ago?”
“The one with the monkeys?”
“No, the other one. The one about what’s happening to your body.”
“Oh. Yeah. That one.”
He pictured her sitting there with her cheeks turning faintly pink. He opened his mouth to suggest they continue this conversation later, but she surprised him by pressing on.
“I liked that book,” she said, a little quieter now. “I learned some stuff I didn’t know.”
“It’s a great book,” Bam offered. “One of my favorites.”
Paige was quiet a moment, probably thinking. “So why would someone want to shave pubes?”
Jack was still trying to formulate a response when Bam beat him to the punch.
“Shaving’s a personal choice,” the barber said. “One for when people get old like your dad.”
“Thank you.” Jack stopped there, hoping the response settled his daughter’s curiosity instead of inviting questions about anyone else’s pubic grooming.
But Paige just said, “Oh,” and fell quiet again.
He hoped he hadn’t dissuaded her from asking questions of a sexual nature. The older she got, the more obvious it would be that she didn’t have a mom to answer increasingly tough questions. He loved that she still felt comfortable coming to him with inquiries about everything from breast development to if he thought he could eat fifteen oranges in one sitting. He always did his best to answer truthfully.
Bam began unwinding the towel from his face, and Jack breathed deeply. He glanced over at Paige, who flashed him a grin. “Your face is all red.”
“Probably because you’re making me discuss pubes in public.”
She laughed as Bam began to lather his face with a thick foam that made his cheeks tingle. Had he ever had another person shave his face like this? Seemed like one of those things that always happened in romantic movies with the woman propped bare-legged on the counter wearing nothing but the man’s shirt.
The mental picture jogged his memory, reminding him of the time Allie had asked to try it in college. She’d been wearing gray sweatpants and a little red tank top with no bra underneath. Her hair had been loose around her shoulders, cool as silk between his fingers as she patted shaving foam on his face, then wrapped her legs around his waist and—
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Did you have a girlfriend when you were my age?”
Jack held off on answering while Bam finished smoothing the foam around his jaw.
“Nope. Didn’t have a girlfriend until I was a lot older.”
“How old?”
“Mm, fifteen? No, sixteen.”
“What was her name?”
“Sarah Williams.”
Paige was quiet a moment, and they both watched as Bam put a fresh blade into his straight razor. The handle was some sort of carved wood, very beautiful. He glanced at his daughter to see if she looked nervous. About the razor, about the girlfriend, about anything. She didn’t look worried, but she did look like she had something on her mind.
Seeming to sense his gaze on her, she turned and looked at him. “Was Sarah the first girl you were in love with?”
“No.”
“Who was?”
An achy little knot appeared unwelcome in the center of his chest, but Jack was determined not to let it get to him. “My second girlfriend. The one I started dating when I was seventeen.”
“What was her name?”
“Allie.”
He waited for Paige to connect the dots. Bam slid the razor blade into the contraption and tested the edge with his thumb. Beside him, Jack could hear his little girl breathing heavy, the way she did when she was deep in thought.
“Was it Allie whose house we visited the other night?”
“Yep.”
“You loved her?”
“At one time. A long, long time ago.”
“Before Mommy?”
“Yes. This was before Mommy. A few years before.”
Bam cleared his throat. “Okay if I start the shave now?”
“Go right ahead,” Jack said.
Beside him, Paige was silent. He wondered what had triggered all the questions. She’d always been inquisitive, but this wasn’t her usual line of questioning. She’d been watching a lot of lovey-dovey stuff with her grandma and one of her little friends in California, but maybe that’s what little girls did at this age. He’d have to look it up in one of his child-development books. It made sense she’d be starting to think about things like boyfriends and girlfriends, but it had never occurred to him she’d take any real interest in his life.
“Daddy?”
“Mm?” He was careful not to move his face as Bam glided the blade across his right cheek.
“That book we read? The one about bodies and how babies are made and stuff?”
“Mmhm.” No movement, very good.
“I was just wondering.” Her voice was small, but determined. “Did you do that stuff with other people besides Mommy?”
“Whoa!” Bam jumped back, yanking the razor away from Jack’s face an instant before he flinched. “You’re lucky I saw that one coming, man.”
“Thanks.” Jack moved his jaw from side to side, relieved not to feel any nicks or cuts. He turned to his daughter. “Why do you want to know that, sweetheart?”
She shrugged. “I just do.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Well, that’s one of those questions that’s very personal. A lot of people don’t like to share that kind of information with other people.”
“Right,” she agreed. “But we’re not other people. We’re family.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Bam said.
Jack shot him a look. “Not helping.”
“Sorry, man.”
He turned back to his daughter. Her expression was earnest and he reminded himself he’d promised honesty. He might not have that much to offer as a parent, but he had that.
