Dark Water - Laura McNeal [43]
I never could fall asleep in the closet, but I stayed there for hours, until long after the television laugh tracks and the rattling sound of my mother’s vitamins tumbling into her hand.
“As for health insurance, when your mother and I were together,” he went on, “I did more than my fair share of everything. For fifteen years, I worked ten hours a day. I did work I hated because that was my role: to earn the money that paid for everything everyone wanted. It was her job to—well, I wouldn’t really call it a job. It was more like a lot of hobbies that she treated as if they were jobs, even though none of them earned a dime. And that meant there was never time for me to do anything that made me feel happy. I realized, finally, that I couldn’t go on living like that. I don’t think anyone should. If your mother now has to comprehend what it takes to stay solvent month to month, how to pay for the boring things like doctor bills and car insurance as well as heirloom hollyhocks and hand-spun yarn from the women’s cooperatives of Boola Boola, East Africa, well—better late than never. We all have to grow up sometime. Life isn’t just doing whatever you want to do because you find it meaningful and sincere, while someone else does the mind-blowingly repetitive, corporate sellout work that pays for things like health insurance and also, yes, this car.”
I had nothing to say to this. I looked hard at the sulfur streetlight on the other side of the parking lot, which was the same noxious color he shone on our life. I knew that my father did practical things and my mother did creative things, but I thought that was okay with both of them.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” my father asked. He spoke softly, as if all that anger could be forgotten now.
“No,” I said.
“So you just want me to take you home.” There was an edge to his voice again, and I knew he thought I was being a pill. I was a pill. I was a pill so big he couldn’t swallow it.
“I guess,” I said. I wondered where he was staying the night. He started the car, and in the moment that he began to drive slowly across the parking lot, the door to the Café Chartreuse opened and two people stepped out. One was a woman, and the other was Robby. I hoped that if I kept my mouth shut, my father wouldn’t recognize Robby, but the streetlight shone fully on their faces as we approached.
“Hey. Who’s that with Robby?” my father asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. Mary Beth had glanced into our car, and so had Robby. We were trapped.
My father stopped the car and rolled down both of our windows. “I thought that was you, Robby,” he said. “Sorry I missed your birthday party.”
“No problemo,” Robby said. Mary Beth was standing at a slight distance from Robby with her hands in the pockets of her coat. She looked as if she were hoping to remain anonymous, but my father stuck his hand out the window in her direction and said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Robby’s uncle, Glen DeWitt.”
“Mary Beth,” she said, smiling as she had when she was handing out slices of Robby’s cake. It was a reserved, strictly courteous smile. She offered it to me and nodded slightly.
“Enjoying the Fallbrook nightlife, huh?” my father asked.
“I just got off work,” Mary Beth said.
“How’s Paul doing?” my father asked, indicating the café and Mr. Eckert with a little nod. I wondered if my father had ever complained, when he was at the café without me, about what a drag it was to have a wife and a child, something Mr. Eckert might have remembered when I told him my father had moved out.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Robby said. “He asked about you.”
This led nowhere, maybe because my father knew people in town weren’t likely to take his side. There was an awkward pause, and then my father said, “So where are you headed now?”
I thought this was a little nosy, but Robby looked unperturbed, maybe even glad to lay out his plans. “I promised to show Mary Beth three things in Fallbrook she didn’t know existed but that she will definitely like.”
“Three?” I asked.