21 Proms (13 page)

Shutter

by Will Leitch

It occurred to Joe, in a way that depressed him in a way he couldn't put a finger on, that Andrea seemed awfully relaxed for someone preparing for her senior prom. When he had gone to his prom, thirty years earlier, he spent a good fifteen minutes sitting in his car, idling, just around the corner from Jennie Dooley's parents' house. Fidgeting with the cross hanging from the dashboard mirror of his father's Buick. Staring straight forward.

He remembered sweating a lot then, scratching at his cummerbund, doing everything he could to talk himself out of putting the car back in first and heading right back home. It would look bad. It would look very bad. Eventually, he made it to the Dooley front door and, after a few minutes of bringing his finger to the buzzer and pulling it back, he finally pushed it. There was no reason for him to be nervous; he'd met Jennie's parents (her dad had even been his American Legion baseball coach), and Joe was charming, quick, the type of guy parents loved. But still. Something was making him sweat.

He found himself sweating more now, more than his daughter, so much so that she frowned and asked him if he'd taken his blood pressure medication. (She was always bothering him about this. He found it both sweet and annoying.) It was unlike him to be nervous these days; with her college applications, her scholarship rejections, his own endless nights out restoring power to the dark homes for the electric company, he hadn't much time for nervousness these days. Too much happening, with Andrea, with all of it, to sweat. But there he was, anyway.
Like a stuck pig
, his father used to say.
You're sweating like a stuck pig.
Joe had never understood this expression — wasn't it
bleeding
like a stuck pig? But there was no doubt about it: Joe was sweating like a stuck pig.

 

It was impossible, Joe felt, that it could have been four years since Andrea had enrolled at St. Anthony, a Catholic high school about twenty miles up I-70 in Effingham, since life suddenly became so
serious
, since Joan had left. One day, Joe was the type of guy who drank Natural Lights with the guys from the shop at the V.F.W. until dinner was ready; the next, he was an expert in toasted cheese, permission slips, and feminine hygiene. There were no Cliffs Notes or study guides. He just bolted into doing it all, immediately, and that was that.

He knew it was going to happen; he knew from the minute he checked his voice mail and heard the message that he'd be lying to himself to pretend otherwise. Joan had been spending too many hours with the other teachers after class ended, much more than she ever had before. At first she pretended that she was just readying herself for Andrea to arrive next fall — their only child needed to know that the same rules applied at school, too — but her distance, from him, from Andrea, was palpable and obvious. She and Andrea had never quite connected, Joe thought, the way a mother and daughter were supposed to, whatever that was. Andrea went to Joe when she had problems with math, or boys — or, more often toward the end, Joan. Joan had always been different from Joe, more yearning, more restless. She had always seen their family life as a defeat somehow, a confession that she wasn't what she had always wanted to be. Whatever that was. Whatever the hell that was.

His name was Harold. Joe had known him for many years. He had been divorced twice, had a broad laugh, and wore a bushy, thick mustache that Joe couldn't have pulled off if he had tried. Joe had liked him once. That was a long, long time ago.

Joe didn't need Joan to lie about staying late after school. He had known, he had always known. And the worst part was that Andrea had always known, too. But maybe that wasn't so bad, either.

“We're gone, Joe,” she said, her voice pixilated and furry. She sounded like she was ordering a pizza. “I had to make my choice. That's what you said, right? I needed to make a choice. So I have. This is my choice. Tell Andrea I'm sorry.” He had come home that night and discovered that Joan's belongings were already out of the house. Thing was: It didn't look that much emptier than it had in the morning.

It was inconceivable to everyone but Joe and his daughter. Andrea cried for a while, but then she stopped, and then she just never cried anymore. One late night, a few weeks after Joan left, Andrea came to Joe's room hours after she was supposed to have been asleep, lights out.

“I don't miss her, Dad,” she said.

Joe told her that was wrong, that she should miss her mother.

“I know I should, Dad, but I don't.” Andrea's eyes were clear and hard. Joe thought she looked like her mother right then. “And I don't think you should miss her, either.”

Joe told her to go back to bed, and they'd talk about it later. But she didn't, and they didn't. That night, they fell asleep watching
Singin' in the Rain
, humming a happy song, “
Good morning, good MORning! It's great to stay up late.
…”

Then a funny thing happened: Andrea, who had always been a listless, bored student, became a book monster. Halfway through her freshman year, her counselor called Joe at home and said Andrea needed to be moved to the honors classes, that she had “earned the opportunity.” She joined the volleyball team, volunteered for St. Anthony's eco-squad, and even ran for student council. Joe had been worried Andrea would feel out of place at St. Anthony's as one of the few non-Catholic students. But she never did. She just decided that she was going to take over the school, and nothing was going to stand in her way. And, as far as Joe could tell, she had.

It had been surprisingly easy, these last four years. Andrea had done much of the heavy lifting; he had never had to deal with any rebellion. No clandestine parties, no smell of alcohol, no boys calling at all hours of the night. In fact, from what Joe could remember, there had never been any boys at all. The four years had passed in a blur of practices and math meets and car pools and the occasional all-night study session, which usually consisted of Joe quizzing Andrea from a textbook and her answering every question correctly until Joe fell asleep. He felt he'd done a pretty good job with her, if he'd actually done much at all. But the boys-thing was odd, he thought. Weren't teenage girls supposed to be obsessed with boys? Wasn't he supposed to be throwing them intimidating glances and “you be careful with my daughter”? There had been none of that. Not that he minded — he knew he wasn't particularly intimidating — but it still was peculiar. He also didn't understand why Andrea's friends, the fat one and the Asian one with braces, talked about boys whenever they were over, while Andrea usually just nodded blankly. She was so much prettier than they were, prettier than any teenage girl had any right to be. Where were the boys?

He asked her about it once — only once — about a year ago. She had been watching the History Channel; it always unsettled him that she watched the History Channel, and he did whatever he could to discourage it, though he wasn't sure why.

“Hey, An, did some guy call here the other night for you? I thought I heard the phone ring,” he said, knowing it hadn't.

“I don't think so, Daddy,” she said, bored, not really listening.

Joe sat next to her on the couch. It was an old couch and always smelled of Cheetos. He told himself to be as casual as possible. “So, uh, are there any boys out there I should know about?” he asked, lightly punching her in the shoulder, just joshing, ha ha ha.

She changed the channel to a program where people were trying to cook really fast. “No, I don't like the boys at school,” she said. “They're all immature.” She flipped to a music video with a teenage girl writhing on the ground with a snake. “God, she's so awful,” she grumbled. “Don't you think she's awful? I think she's awful.”

And that had been the end of it, all of it, until a week ago. Andrea walked into the kitchen, where Joe was trying to fish the remnants of a Pop-Tart out of the toaster, and, as briskly as if she were mentioning that she needed money for a class trip, said she was going to prom. “So I guess I'm going to need a dress or something,” she told him.

Joe dropped the Pop-Tart. “You are? Really? Uh … when is it?”

“Next week,” she said, pouring a glass of some syrupy orange beverage she inexplicably liked. “It's a guy, Paul, from the scholastic bowl team. He's, uh, really nice. We really can't wait.” She then kissed Joe on the cheek and went up to her room. He had left $100 on the kitchen table, and then it was gone, and then it was today, and then she had come out of her room in the dress, a black strapless thing, and she was the most incredible creature he had ever seen. This made him sweat.

 

Paul, whoever he was, was late. The Jenkins family (all two of them) sat uncomfortably in the living room, like there was something they were supposed to be doing but neither knew quite what it was. Joe looked at his daughter. She was wearing makeup — too much, frankly. He didn't know whether he'd ever seen her in makeup before. Surely she had worn some at least once, right? He also noticed, with considerable alarm, that she had sprouted cleavage. Joan had wondrous breasts — large, full, obnoxious — but Andrea didn't have that gene. She'd always been flat-chested, or so Joe had believed. But maybe he simply hadn't noticed? Not for the first time, he looked at a woman in his home with confusion, as if he had just realized she was there and couldn't figure out how she'd gotten in the house.

He went to the fridge and popped open a beer. He only drank at home these days, and not very often. This time was as good as any, though, and he had a sudden insane inclination to offer one to Andrea. He resisted.

“So, uh, this Paul guy —”

Andrea interrupted him with words that sounded like they were being read off a teleprompter.

“His name is Paul Sarker, and he's the captain of our scholastic bowl team. He earned all-conference honors and is trying to get on
College Jeopardy
. His parents both work at the Donnelly's plant in Mattoon, and he's going to Millikin next fall to study economics. He is very excited to meet you.” She said the words way too fast, like a dog drinking from a bowl, lap lap lap.

“Sarker,” he said. “I think I knew a Sarker once.”

“His aunt,” she said. Joe realized she'd prepared an internal dossier for his benefit. “She graduated with you. She's a nurse out at the hospital. She took care of Grandpa for a while after he had his first heart attack.”

“Yes,” he said. Had he really drunk that beer so fast? Time for another.

They sat back down, and Joe attempted to fill the air with questions about application deadlines and upcoming finals. They had tickets for a Cardinals game in St. Louis in a few weeks, with Joe's brother Hal, his wife, and their son, Gene. Andrea had never liked Gene — and, frankly, Joe didn't like him much, either. They had been privately making fun of Gene for years, and Joe hoped a mention of him would bring the conversation back to a safe, familiar level. But Andrea just nodded and said she'd make sure to have the car's oil changed by then.

More waiting. Joe wanted to strangle this Paul character, with his “scholastic bowl” team and his economics major and his sudden, perplexing entrance into his and his daughter's life. Andrea turned on the television; dolphins were trying to avoid a shark.

“So, are you and this Paul, like, boyfriends or something?”

“I'm not a boy, Dad,” she said, annoyed and dismissive, like Joe had said something wrong. “And, well, it's kind of a long story. It's not a big thing, it's just that —”

The doorbell rang. Andrea's head twisted around the room like she was looking for a place to hide. She stood up, finally, and walked to the door. Joe, feeling a sudden urge to do something that a normal dad would do, cut her off and answered it himself. He practiced the suspicious sneer he imagined dads were supposed to have when their daughter's prom dates showed up twenty minutes late.

He opened the screen door to … Paul. Joe wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't quite this. Paul looked like he was about thirteen years old, with a barrage of zits, a cowlick, and, even though he seemed skinny, a preponderance of chins. His tuxedo looked to be about four sizes too large.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Jenkins,” Paul lisped. Joe thought this was the type of guy who would have been really good friends with that boy from
Napoleon Dynamite.

Joe snapped to. “Yes, you must be Paul,” he said. “Come in, come in.” He opened the screen door and tripped on the rug as he stepped backward, almost falling over. Not something a normal dad would do, he thought, angry with himself.

Andrea straightened up and walked through the room like she was trying very hard to look like a movie star. Strange thing was, Joe noticed, she appeared to want him to be the audience more than she wanted Paul to be. Paul seemed as confused as Joe.

“Hi, Andrea,” he sputtered lamely. “You, uh, look great.”

“You, too,” she said. “Though your hair, it's … well, here.” She licked her palm and went to work on his cowlick, tensely, her eyes shifting back and forth between her father and her date. She didn't have much luck; it actually looked worse than it did before she started messing with it.

Everyone stood around for a moment, awkwardly, waiting for something else to happen. For a second, they looked at the television and stared blankly. The shark caught the dolphin.

“Oh, I guess I need to give you this,” Paul piped up, bringing a white box out of a strange man bag he was carrying with him. It was an odd shade of purple. He took out a wrist corsage with white roses. Joe figured they were white roses; they looked like roses painted white. Did they make white roses?

Paul tried to put it on Andrea's wrist but missed, hanging it on her thumb and then dropping it altogether. She picked it up quickly and put it on correctly, blushing. And then everyone stood around again. It suddenly struck Joe that he had a couch.