Amends: A Love Story (3 page)

She hands me the tablet, and I see it's a
detailed invoice that catalogues everything down to the last slice
of Wonder Bread—exactly the kind of thing my father doesn't give
two shits about. If he were here, he'd probably say something like,
"Get that fucking thing out of my face. I'm sure it's all fine.
Just tell me where to sign." But he isn't here. It's just me. And I
just hate the idea of making mistakes, especially today.

"OK, I'll do it." I handle the stylus
gingerly, as if it were a knife.

/////////////////////////

My mom's celebration of life, like all her
parties, is taking forever to wind down. Mom—the ice sculpture,
that is—is almost entirely melted. Stragglers are holed up
everywhere. Some are the college-age sons and daughters of Mom's
friends, getting hammered on free drinks. Others are middle-aged
couples running down the clock on their babysitters. A few older
women I recognize from Mom's various charitable committees may
actually be remembering her and reminiscing about special moments
from her life.

As I predicted, my father still hasn't
showed. Asshole.

I want to tell Tricia to shut everything
down. I need it to be over. Soon. But first I want to find Deegan
and Ember. I leave the donation table satisfied that everyone who
was going to bleed some green has already done so. Even from the
grave, my mom is an ass-kicking fund raiser. Her guests have
pledged more than five million dollars in her memory.

I walk quickly across the atrium, pass
through the front doors, and emerge into a carefully landscaped
parking lot. It's full of green islands, flowering shrubs, and
quaint little benches. It's exactly the kind of place where Deegan
and Ember would go to get discreetly fucked up. I see a cluster of
flowering trees—something rare and tropical that I can't quite
recognize—and a small cloud of smoke. I head towards it.

As I get closer, I see a blond man in a gray
business suit with his arm around Ember. Deegan is standing off to
the side, puffing away. His posture is visibly uncomfortable. Ember
and the man—who is in his forties with a long, ropy build and the
kind of chiseled face girls seem to love—make a striking, golden
couple. She leans against him and giggles. He pulls her in for a
playful embrace.

"Dad," I call to the man in the suit with his
hands all over my girlfriend, "what the fuck are you doing out
here? You missed the entire funeral."

"Laird," he says in the smooth, liquid voice
that parts investors from their money and women from their
clothing, "it was a celebration of life, not a funeral. Your mother
hated funerals. You know that."

"I hate funerals, too," adds Ember, twisting
her neck so she's gazing into his eyes. "How do we know death is so
bad, anyway? Maybe it's just nature's way of setting the soul free
to wander the universe."

Dad gives Ember a squeeze, and she rests her
head on his shoulder, eyes closed. "Exactly," he says. "I'm
confident Maureen would not have begrudged me some time with these
wonderful young people."

Deegan looks at me and rolls his eyes. I know
this sick-making tableau isn't his fault. I'm sure he tried to drag
my dad and Ember out of this very secluded corner of the parking
lot. But eighteen-year-old Deegan—tattooed bad boy wanted by half
the girls in the senior class—is no match for my father.

I look at Dad and shake my head. "You should
at least make appearance. C'mon," I say, walking as fast as I can
back to the Mangrove Center.

Deegan hurries to keep up with me. His mouth
is moving, but the buzzing in my head is all I can hear. I think
he's murmuring something like, "Dude, I know the score for sure. I
stayed with them the whole time. Nothing happened, I swear."

I groan inside. He means well, but Deegan
just doesn't know Dad like I do.

/////////////////////////

It's almost midnight, and there's a party at
Deegan's house, because life goes on, right?

Dad's on a plane to New York City. It's where
he does a lot of business and where he keeps his
townhouse-slash-fuck pad. After the memorial, I barely spent ten
minutes with him. He cleared out the stragglers with a simple yet
eloquent announcement and then excused himself to take an urgent
business call. When I followed him outside, he put his call on
mute, shook my hand, and told me to go home without him, that he'd
be heading to the airport. Heartless fucker.

Now I'm driving Ember to Deegan's house.
We're a study in hostile silence. She stares out the window,
actively avoiding my gaze. I keep my eyes on the road, watching the
mile markers tick by. I try to lose myself in the hypnotic sameness
of the landscape—the waxy looking shrubs, the palms, the pastel
houses. It doesn't work. My head is burning with anger. All I want
is for Ember to answer a single question.

Why?

"Enough with the silent treatment. What the
fuck were you doing with my dad today?" I ask, my voice tight and
quiet. Ember ignores me for a few beats, and my hands grip the
steering wheel harder and harder, until my knuckles are white
stars. Finally, she turns to me with cold, defensive eyes.

"I went outside to get some air, OK? You know
I've hated funerals ever since I saw Nana's open casket. I went
into the parking lot to sneak a joint, and I just bumped into him.
He was sad. Really broken up about your mother. He needed to talk
to someone, so I talked to him, alright? I thought that's what you
would have wanted."

The buzzing in my head gets louder, and my
eyes sting and water. I want to tell her that what I'd wanted—what
I'd really, really wanted—was for her to stay by my side at my
mother's funeral or celebration or whatever the fuck it was.

Instead, I say this: "You know, he does this
all the time. You'll hear from him in a few months, when you're
about to turn eighteen. He'll take you out to dinner a couple of
times and then fly you someplace cool and urban. Or maybe someplace
warm and tropical. Whatever you want. You'll tell your parents
you're going on college interviews. He'll fuck you senseless for a
few days, ship you home, and send some kind of a courtesy
gift—maybe a lavish bouquet of flowers or, if you're really good,
those fucking Louboutins you're always drooling over. And then
you'll never hear from him again."

Ember says nothing. Her face is a painted,
opaque mask, and her eyes are trained on the horizon. I really
should just shut up. But I don't. I take a long, deep breath and
continue. "You know, he started doing this—fucking around with
barely legal girls—when Mom got sick. She said it was his fear of
death that drove him to it. I think he's just an asshole."

Ember still stares her zombie stare. She
won't engage, won't argue. It's not too late for me to shut my
mouth and cut my losses. I could still apologize and attribute my
harsh words to grief. But the static in my head is deafening. My
voice gets low and mean.

"Sometimes, girls he's been with show up at
the house, looking for him. When they find him, he calls their
parents to come get them. Then he gets a restraining order. If they
show up a second time, our security guys call the police. I thought
you were better than that, but I guess not."

Finally, her mask cracks and steams. She
reacts with all the hot fury reflected in her name.

"I can't believe you think I would—how
exactly did you put it?—fuck your father. I'm your girlfriend. Or,
at least, I was your girlfriend. You keep telling me what a bad guy
you're father is, but I think you're the sick one."

Now it's my turn to stare out the window. I
watch the road signs whip by. This is probably the worst day of my
life.

Ember clutches at my arm. Her long nails dig
into my flesh. "Why don't you pull over and let me out of this
fucking car! I'll walk to Deegan's party! Just let me out!"

We're driving past a gator-infested culvert.
There's no way I'm going to let her out here to stumble around in
the dark. "That's ridiculous! You're wearing high heels. You can
barely walk in them. I'll let you out when we get to the party.
We're practically there."

Ember yells in my ear. "I said let me out
now!" She reaches over and grabs the steering wheel, pulling it to
the right. "Now! Now! Now!"

We struggle, and the car swerves. I'm so
focused on removing her hands from the steering wheel without
hurting her that I don't notice the stop sign, or the white Ford
Escape, until it's too late.

Chapter 3: Amity

I am dreaming of my future, perfect life at
Adams college. My stammer and limp are magically gone. I have witty
conversations with pretty people in cozy cafés. The air is crisp,
dry, and tasteless—the polar opposite of central Floridian air. And
there is foliage. Lots of foliage.

"Amity, wake up, honey! Wake up!"

I feel a rough hand on my shoulder and inhale
the minty sour scent of beer imperfectly masked by mouthwash. It's
Dad. I roll over, open my eyes, and push myself into a sitting
position. Dad looks awful: unshaven, red-eyed, and
stoop-shouldered. He's wearing a white T-shirt decorated with
condiment stains.

"What's up, Dad?" I ask warily.

"It's your mother. She didn't come home last
night." His lips quiver. He's close to crying. He's also obviously
drunk.

"Are you sure she's not working an extra
shift at the hospital?" Sometimes Mom will work around the clock,
napping between shifts. I think of her promise to help me pay for
college and feel a twinge of guilt.

"Yes, honey. She told me this morning she was
working a double. She said she'd be home by eleven at the
latest."

I ask the next obvious question. "Did you
call or text her?"

"Yes. She's not picking up or texting
back."

I frown. Mom is typically ultra-responsible.
She has to be when she's at work—people could actually die if she
screws up—and I guess it just bleeds over into the rest of her
life. Dad looks distraught. Tears are gathering in the corners of
his eyes.

"I'm sure there's a good reason," I say,
trying to convince myself as well as my dad. "She could have a
critical case. Maybe she's monitoring a child in a long, complex
surgery."

Dad shakes his head and locks his droopy
brown eyes onto mine. He's about to burst into loud, drunken sobs.
"Can I ask you something?" His voice is tremulous.

"Sure."

"Is your mother having an affair?" When I let
the question dangle in mid-air, he rushes to add, "If you say yes,
I'm not going to do anything crazy. I just need to know, OK?"

I nod slightly and think over what he just
asked. My gut reaction is to say no in the strongest possible
terms. But then I remember my freshman year of high school, when
Dad was getting blackout drunk, and he and Mom were fighting all
the time. Mom took Xanax like they were candy. They were
legitimate—her doctor prescribed them for stress and she never took
them at work—but she told me later she'd had a problem. When I
reacted with shock and disbelief—Mom was always the stable one—she
said, "Everyone has problems. It's just that some people are better
at hiding them than others."

Now, despite feeling like the worst, most
disloyal daughter in the world, I wonder.

"Not that I know of, Dad," I hedge.

He is not satisfied. "C'mon," he says,
wheedling. "You can tell me. Is it one of the doctors?"

I shrink back into my pillows. I'm trying to
think of something to say, when a Jasper Heights police car, sirens
blaring, pulls in front of the house.

/////////////////////////

"More coffee, Mr. Dormer?" Dad nods while
Chase McNaughton, the young male officer, expertly makes a fresh
pot. Chase is movie-star handsome.

I am lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket
with my feet propped up. Nan Jacobs—the rounded, middle-aged female
officer—takes my blood pressure. "A little low," she mutters, "you
might be suffering from a touch of shock."

"I thought that only happens when you lose a
lot of blood," I say, confused.

"No," she says. "Some people can have an
extreme physical reaction to emotional trauma. It's a normal
physiological response to an abnormal situation."

I am silent for a moment. I feel strangely
cold. My hands and feet tingle. What the officers told us just
can't be right. There's got to be some kind of mistake. Maybe Mom
really is having an affair, and she's run off with a bipolar
plastic surgeon. Anything but this.

"Are you sure it was my Mom?" I ask. "She's a
very careful driver. She's never been in an accident before."

Nan's face radiates pity, and the bottom
drops out of my stomach. "We're sure," she says. "One of the
doctors at the hospital identified her body."

"But how did she die?" I can't help asking
even though I really don't want to know.

"Blunt force trauma," says Nan as gently as
she can. "It's a fancy way of saying she hit her head and then bled
into her brain." I feel my guts clench into a ball, and I'm
suddenly glad I'm not a breakfast kind of person.

I close my eyes for a moment
and open them when Dad starts sobbing. His cries are primal and
anguished: rough, shuddering barks that Nan and I can hear from the
kitchen. I hear a loud smash and Chase urging my father to keep it
together from his daughter.
Me.

Nan is frowning. She pulls a card from her
pocket and hands it to me. It's a number for a women's shelter.
"I'm not exactly sure what your situation is here," she says
cautiously. "But, if you need someplace safe to go, don't hesitate
to call that number."

"Thanks, but I'm fine." I'm not sure if it's
true, but it's my reflexive response. Dad keeps sobbing. He must
reach for a beer or a bottle, because I hear Chase ask him to put
something down. Things are definitely looking ugly.