The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [43]
"Yes," he said, playing air guitar to the chase music. "I absolutely have to watch now."
For a minute, I got absorbed in the movie—sexy girls vavooming on motorcycles down Main Street.
"Listen," I said, "I want to talk to you."
He began air-guitaring again and gave me a goofy smile.
"I think you should try not to be late so much," I said. "It tells people they can't count on you."
"There was traffic," he said, and turned back to his movie.
I knew my speech lacked the power Archie's had, but I went on anyway. "We want Dad to know he can rely on us."
He turned and looked at me, and I thought maybe he was considering what I'd said. "Why don't you just say you're mad I was late?"
Then Rebecca walked in. "What's on?" she asked.
"It's either Chopper Chicks in Bikertown," he said, "or Biker Babes in Chopperville."
She sat down beside him. "Groovy."
—•—
Her bed was made when I woke up. Henry was in the kitchen, shaking an orange-juice carton.
"Where's Rebecca?" I asked.
He told me that she was at the wildlife refuge, painting.
"She's just using you for your landscape," I said. Sounding like myself at twelve, I said, "Is she your girlfriend?"
He shrugged.
I said, "Why did you bring her if she's not your girlfriend?"
"She's funny," he said. "And I thought it would be easier with more people around."
I said, "Easier for who?"
"Everybody."
I said, "You don't have to sleep with her."
"Yeah," he said, smiling. "Gross."
I said, "Does she even know about Dad?"
He said, "Of course not."
—•—
Henry and my mother went sailing, and I stayed behind on the porch with my dad. He read a book about how the atom bomb was made. I edited Mr. Putterman.
After a while, I said, "I have a question."
He nodded.
"How come you never told anybody about being sick?"
"It was selfish," he said. "I didn't want to think about it any more than I had to."
I said, "I'm asking so I don't do whatever it was you wanted to avoid. The reason you didn't tell people, I mean."
He smiled at me. "Well put."
Then he took his glasses off and cleaned them, which was what he did when he was organizing his thoughts. He told me that the main reason was that he didn't want people treating him like a sick person instead of who he was.
That's what made me tell him about Archie.
He didn't seem upset. He told me he was glad I had someone to lean on. That was important, he said.
Then he went back to the bomb, and I to Mr. Putterman.
—•—
We had dinner on the porch, steamed lobster and mussels, white corn on the cob, tomatoes, and fresh bread.
Rebecca was back by then, washing up for dinner.
Henry sat next to me at the table. He nodded at the bowl of mussels and said in a low voice, "Vaginas of the sea." I looked at them and saw what he meant.
My mother served. "Everything's local except the lobsters," she said.
"The mussels are local?" Rebecca said. "Is the water here really that clean?"
"I'm sure it's fine," my mother said in a breezy voice.
She passed the bowl of little vaginas to me, and I said, "No, thanks."
"Jane." My mother was annoyed. "The mussels are delicious."
We stopped talking for a few minutes, and there was only the sound of cracking shells and then my father's cough, and I wondered if this was why my mother was tense. "Great corn," I said to her.
My father asked how Rebecca's painting had gone, and she said, "Great."
"I'd love to see," my mother said.
Rebecca said, "When I finish it."
After dinner, my father said he was tired. My mother followed him into the bedroom, and I heard her say, "Marty? Can I get you anything, sweetheart?"
V I I I
I woke up early. I found my mother crying in the kitchen. She'd always been a big weeper; there were balled-up Kleenexes in the pockets of every one of her bathrobes and coats. In the past, I'd teased her about it. We all had. But now I thought of the times she must have been crying about my father and couldn't tell anyone about it. I put my arms around her.
She said that my father had a high fever and his cough was worse; he was talking to Dr. Wischniak