Wednesdays At One: A Novel, page 18
He could add never including his sister to his running tab of fuckups.
Gregory pushed the front door open quietly, thinking if Carrie was still asleep, waking her up wouldn’t improve his chances with her. But as soon as he was inside the air-conditioned house, he heard loud laughter over a driving pulse of music. He followed the female voices through to the kitchen, where he found an empty orange juice carton tipped over in the dish drain. Nearby on the marble counter was a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose. Liv would never have a screwdriver for breakfast, not even on the brink of separation.
“Hello?” he called out. “Carrie?” The music shut off abruptly, leaving the house ominously silent.
When he heard a noise, almost a scuffle, Gregory walked quickly through the dining room into the sun porch. Carrie was sitting thigh to thigh on the white wicker sofa with another girl. His daughter’s eyes had been transformed by thick makeup that made the shock on her face more pronounced. She jumped to her feet and took a step away from her friend, a young woman with ink-black hair and a row of piercings in each ear.
“Jesus Christ, Dad! I thought you guys went to see Petey.” When she looked at the glass-topped coffee table, as if to assess the damage, Gregory followed her gaze. There were two tall plastic Mickey Mouse tumblers, souvenirs from a long-ago family trip to Disneyworld, and what looked to be a vape pen. Her friend, meanwhile, quickly tucked a bag of weed into the backpack at her feet.
Carrie looked up at her father—her eyes wide.
This wasn’t the day Gregory was preparing for, and he needed to adapt. But as he stood there trying to formulate a response, he thought his bladder might burst. “I’ll be right back,” he said, his eyes trained hard on Carrie, indicating that she was not to disappear.
In the bathroom mirror, he studied his shaggy hair and heavy eyes ringed with dark circles. He splashed cold water on his face then reached for the white guest towel inscribed with a chunky black W. He dug in the medicine cabinet and excavated a small comb and a sample-size mouthwash. As for what to do about Carrie, he was flying blind and wingless. He knew what his father would have done to him in this situation, and while he would have hated it, it might have taught him a lesson that saved him from a life of misery.
Then he thought about what Margaret had said: She needs a father who sees her.
Back on the sun porch, the friend had vanished. Carrie was gathering the Mickey Mouse cups and other detritus of what was clearly an aborted weekend party for two, courtesy of her parents’ well-stocked liquor cabinet.
Gregory sat down in one of the two wicker chairs, a move that made Carrie rush to clean up even faster. But just as she was about to duck into the kitchen away from his scrutiny, Gregory pointed at the table. “Put those back down, please.”
Carrie froze before slowly setting the cups and crumpled cocktail napkins on the table. She worked her hands into the pockets of her tight jean shorts. She folded in her shoulders, as if there were a possibility of actually vanishing from her father’s sight. Still not meeting his gaze, Carrie stared at the floor.
“What’s your friend’s name?” Gregory asked.
“Jess. Jessie.” Her voice was more sullen than scared.
Gregory remembered the mad hot in a purple bikini line and felt glad for his daughter, who at almost seventeen was possibly venturing into her first summer crush. Or maybe she’d been doing this kind of thing for years, although he didn’t think so. “Did she leave?”
“Yes.”
“She’s not driving, is she?”
“She took the T.”
Gregory nodded. “Sit down.”
Carrie sighed heavily and plopped down on the sofa. She sandwiched her hands between her knees and fixed her eyes on the glossy coffee table book entitled Summer Light, a Liv project about how to host casual, seasonally inspired summer parties.
“I’m going to give you two options,” Gregory said in the same voice he used when he told a client with addiction issues that they had to make changes or they’d blow their recovery. “Your choice. Okay?”
Carrie shifted her eyes to the side in something between assent and an eye roll.
Gregory leaned in and reached for one of the capped Mickey Mouse cups. He shook it, mostly trying to determine how much she’d had to drink, before setting it back down. After doing the same with the second one, he hazarded that they were just getting started. Plus, she was obviously coherent.
“Option one: I can tell Mom about this, and the three of us can have a conversation when she gets home tomorrow. She’ll probably want to ground you, and I would support that. In the meantime, you can use the weekend to start your summer reading.”
Carrie squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. As a little girl, she had always cried easily, but he didn’t know if that was true anymore. He saw so much hostility in her that he never knew what was really going on beneath the low simmer of anger. “Great,” she muttered.
“The other option is—well, wait, do you have to work later?”
“No.”
“Then option two is that you hang out with me for the rest of the day, and Mom never finds out about any of this.” He didn’t feel terrific about bribing his daughter into spending time with him, but he’d do whatever it took to start rebuilding what they’d lost. He wouldn’t be like his father.
Carrie looked directly at him for what felt like the first time in months. Her eyes crinkled with uncertainty. “Wait, what? You’re not going to tell Mom? All I have to do is hang out with you today?”
As soon as Gregory saw how easily he could leverage this, he realized he should have set a few more ground rules up front. He shook his head. “Not a word. Except there’s one other thing.”
She huffed. “What?”
“No phone the whole time we’re together. Starting right now.”
Carrie paused. She probably hadn’t been away from her phone for five minutes all summer, let alone several hours. She withdrew it from her back pocket and reluctantly set it upside down on the table.
“And I want to say one more thing.”
Carrie sighed.
“When you get your license, don’t you ever, and I mean ever, drink and drive. If you or your friends needed me to pick you up, or—”
“Oh my God, Dad! It’s so not an issue. We call an Uber, or there’s a DD. We’re not stupid. Plus, I’m never going to get my license because you never take me driving.”
He nodded. “You’re right. Let’s get you out there practicing. If it weren’t for Mickey there”—he nodded at her drink—“I’d say we could go today. But definitely next week.”
“Whatever.”
Gregory drew a breath and clasped his hands together. “Thanks for the reminder. I’ve been slacking on that.”
After a few seconds, Carrie looked at him sternly. “Why are you being all nice to me?”
Gregory snorted and answered truthfully. “Because it’s about time I was nicer.”
“No, seriously,” Carrie continued. “When I saw you standing there, I was like, I am so dead. Aren’t you supposed to be in New Hampshire or something?”
“I have to stick around in case anything happens with Grandpa.”
“He’s getting better though, right?”
“I hope so, but let’s not talk about that now. This is our day together. What are you up for?”
Carrie tilted her head. “What? Don’t we have to garden and stuff? I thought this was you making me do chores.”
Gregory waved that idea away. “I was thinking more like lunch in Harvard Square.”
“Oh shit!” Carrie cried out, then quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry.”
That’s when he noticed them: three silver bracelets on Carrie’s left wrist.
When he tried to speak, his jaw trembled, and he struggled not to sound accusatory, or terrified. “Where did you get those?” He nodded at her arm.
Carrie lowered her hand, and the bracelets made a chiming sound. “These?” She spun them around on her wrist, the same way Mira had done when she was wearing them at their first session. “Mom left them for me. I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. They were just in my room. She’s always leaving me clothes and jewelry and stuff. Usually I hate it.”
Despite the coolness of the shaded sun porch, Gregory could feel the sweat on his neck. He ran his fingers through his hair. Is this what Mira meant by “seeing”? Was she lurking around their house, watching them?
Carrie shrank back into the sofa. “You’re freaking me out, Dad. What’s the big deal? I’m sure it was Mom.”
Gregory wasn’t sure. But if Carrie found out that those bracelets just appeared in her room, left by someone other than Liv, his problem was going to get even bigger. He tried to sit back and look relaxed. “Sorry. Sorry. Of course it was Mom.”
Carrie shrugged her shoulders and lifted her arms defensively. “What? They’re just stupid bangles. Do you want me to take them off? I don’t even like them that much. I only put them on because they were there.” Carrie had to squeeze her hand to get the bracelets over her knuckles, but she managed to slide them off and drop them onto the side table. One rolled and clattered onto the stone tile floor. “There,” she said. “Happy?”
Before either of them spoke again, the doorbell rang.
Gregory sat up, hyperalert. “Who’s that?”
Carrie exhaled with exasperation. “That’s what I was about to tell you. Jessie—well, we—ordered some stuff from The Cheesecake Factory.”
Gregory stood and reached for his wallet in his back pocket. As he headed through the house to the front door, he automatically went into diaphragmatic breathing and began the type of internal dialogue he recommended to clients who were losing touch with reality: Likely, it was just a coincidence, he told himself. Who’s to say they’re the same bracelets? He reminded himself of the Occam’s razor principle that helped with cognitive reframing: the simplest explanation was most likely the true one.
Liv left the bracelets. Put it out of your head and have a good day with your daughter.
He took four more calming breaths, vowed to let it go until he was alone again, and opened the front door.
Gregory returned to the sun porch with a large, striped plastic bag. Carrie waited sheepishly on the couch. “Ninety-eight dollars before the tip? How the hell many cheesecakes did you get?” he asked.
“I’ll pay you back.”
Gregory cocked his head. “Wait a minute? Did you order alcohol?”
Carrie lowered her face.
“So, what were you going to do if he wanted to see your ID?” When Carrie didn’t answer, Gregory said, “I can always run this by Mom.”
“No!” She waved her hands in protest. “Just don’t get all freaked out.”
Gregory’s voice hardened. “Tell me.”
“Jessie has a fake.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen?”
“Is she your,” he hesitated, “girlfriend?”
“Jesus, Dad! Don’t be weird. If I don’t answer, are you going to tell Mom? Like is that how the whole day is going to go?”
“Hmm. I wish I’d thought of that earlier,” he said, teasing, “but I guess not.” Letting the Jessie thing drop, he hoisted the bag on the table with exaggerated effort and started unpacking the variety of plastic containers, asking Carrie what each thing was. Mac ‘n’ cheese balls. Loaded tater tots. A bacon glamburger.
“A glamburger? Huh,” he said, and moved on to two slabs of cheesecake, one chocolate, one dotted with bright red strawberries. When he got to the drinks, tall lidded plastic cups, he shifted them aside. Then he paused. He still couldn’t completely let go of his worries about the bracelets, and a little alcohol might help calm his nerves. And since he was here supervising, maybe he could show his daughter that she didn’t have to be devious about alcohol and abuse it the way he used to. What if his father had sat down with him over beers when he was still a teenager and told him he was there for him? Might things have gone differently?
Gregory nodded at the drinks. “Which one is yours?”
“I guess that one,” Carrie said, her voice a mortified whisper as she pointed at a frothy, peach-colored concoction.
He slid it toward her with a straw. “What are you drinking?” he asked. “Rum punch?”
Carrie shook her head at him. “Are you on something?” She indicated her father cheerfully sitting across from her, offering alcohol. “Or is this some kind of trap?”
“Trap?”
“I don’t know. You’re acting crazy.”
He thought about that for a beat. Was it so obvious that he might be losing his mind?
“It’s not a trap, honey. I’d rather teach you about drinking in moderation. I know what happens when there are no limits.” Gregory drifted off, then took a small sip of the sweet drink in front of him. He found it surprisingly refreshing and had to resist gulping it down. Guys at the club were so hung up on their extra-dry martinis and Manhattans, but those never held any appeal for him. Maybe he needed to try more fruity beverages. He reached for one of the mac ‘n’ cheese balls and leaned back, trying to relax.
In the meantime, Carrie turned sullen as she sat across from him, sipping her own drink, probably hoping to lose herself in the alcohol. Gregory realized that however preferable it was to chill with her father instead of being grounded, this was still not the afternoon of debauchery she had planned for.
“Okay if I amend the plan a bit?” he asked.
Carrie shrugged her defeat. “You’re the one in charge.”
“If our day together goes well—and I don’t see why it shouldn’t—you can hang out with your friends tonight. But that’s later. Right now, you’re with me.”
Carrie’s lips released the straw. The smallest hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. Gregory smiled, too, wishing he had finagled a day like this years ago when she was starting high school and began to drift away. Her eyes darted around. “Who are you, and what did you do with my father?”
Gregory studied his daughter’s features, her overly made-up eyes. People would say she looked like Liv because of her big round eyes, but he saw himself in her face—the doubt and longing that were never far from the surface. She would turn seventeen in October, and he wanted to weep at the idea of all the years he’d lost with his family, with his daughter. “I’ve been a crappy dad lately, Carrie. I haven’t been here for you.”
“That’s not true!” She picked up a tater tot and bit delicately. Well trained by Liv, she finished chewing before speaking. “You’re busy. You work really hard to take care of people so we can have nice stuff. I get it.”
Gregory polished off his mac ‘n’ cheese ball. When he asked if he could have part of the glamburger, Carrie pushed it toward him. “It’s Jessie’s. I’m trying to not eat meat.”
“I didn’t know that,” Gregory said. “What else?”
“What else what?”
“What else don’t I know about you because I’ve supposedly been so busy?”
Carrie shrugged and reached for the fries. “I don’t know. Nothing really.” She opened a package of ketchup and made a viscous red puddle in the top of the container. “Can I put the music back on?”
Gregory slid her phone across the table so she could sync to the stereo. When she was done, she miraculously set the phone down again instead of responding to any new texts that might have popped up. The pulsing drumbeat now reverberating through the speakers felt like his heart when he was nervous. Fast, hard, racing. Then a high, dreamy sounding female voice cut in.
“Who’s this?”
“Billie Eilish. You like it?”
“Yeah. A lot.” Gregory made a mental note to pay more attention to his daughter’s music. “But you were saying about nothing going on—”
Carrie sighed. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“Like, all of my friends have a thing, the way Petey has soccer and, you know, Sammi plays the piano. She’s practically professional. But I don’t have a thing.”
“That’s because you’re a renaissance woman. You do a lot of things well. You’re really good at baking.”
“Seriously, Dad? All of my friends are good at baking.”
“You play field hockey.”
“Right, the sport for girls who don’t play real sports. Plus, I suck.”
“How can you suck if you made the team?”
Carrie raised an eyebrow. “Everyone makes the team.”
“Then what are you saying? Do you want to have a ‘thing,’ or do you think you should have one because other people do?”
Carrie groaned and flopped back against the couch. “Everyone is so into the college thing. Mom has me signed up for some stupid SAT class, and I’m supposed to start with a math tutor next week. But I don’t give a shit about math!”
“Mom just wants you to do well. That way you’ll have options.”
“Well, it’s a waste of money, because I’ll never do well in math.”
Gregory doctored his glamburger with ketchup and took a big bite. It tasted good and fatty with all that bacon, plus grease and condiments dripping out onto the waxy paper. For the first time, he really understood why his client, Barry C., a compulsive eater, loved this kind of stuff. It was delicious. “Do you want me to talk to Mom?” he asked.
Carrie stiffened. “It’s not just Mom. Everyone in my class is so focused on getting into college. But I don’t even know what to focus on.”
“Forget about everyone else. Let’s start with what you like to do.”
Carrie tightened her lips. “I guess I like to write. But it’s kind of Mom’s thing. So that’s taken.”
“Mom doesn’t get to own writing. And she’d be thrilled to know you were interested in it.”
