Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (11 page)

done it.

But none of this accomplished anything. My dad fi xed Hall-

ie’s bike, she threw away the ice cream, and was only sick for a

few hours after eating the hamburger. And though Karen was

upset about the book, Hallie didn’t get in real trouble.

I had a feeling I had to do something bigger— something
sig-

nifi cant
— to make Hallie unhappy enough that Karen would want

to go.

I told Karen that I wanted to help with throwing Hallie’s twelfth

birthday party, and we or ga nized the celebration together. She

helped me oversee the planning, the decorations, the e-vites that

were going out to all the summer kids we’d become friends with.

What Karen didn’t see was that I changed the date on the invita-

tion right before the e-mail went out. When the day of the party

rolled around, it was just me and Hallie and our parents sitting

in our reserved lane at the bowling alley. The area was festooned

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with streamers and balloons and piled high with snacks, favors,

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and a huge strawberry- vanilla cake, but we were the only ones

there.

As it was happening, I felt increasingly bad, my stomach churn-

ing with guilt as I watched Hallie biting her lip to keep from cry-

ing and the way Karen kept giving Hallie all these fake- cheerful

explanations for why nobody had come.

I hoped that this would do the trick, sure that Karen would

take her daughter and leave, but as the days passed, there was no

sign of it.

I knew that things had reached a critical moment when my dad

took me for ice cream at Sweet & Delicious, not seeming to under-

stand that I now associated him buying me ice cream with him

giving me terrible news. This time, he ate his own cone as he told

me he and my mom were thinking about continuing their tempo-

rary separation after the summer was over, and that he was think-

ing about getting an apartment in Brooklyn. I sat there with my

own ice cream untouched, knowing what this meant. Brooklyn

was where Hallie and Josh and Karen lived.

I realized, as I watched him eating his ice cream, that I had

been going about this all wrong. I should have cut out the mid-

dleman and just tried to get rid of Karen from the outset.

The opportunity presented itself later that week, when my dad

hosted a party at our house. Technically, it was Bruce’s house, but

Bruce had barely been around the whole summer, as he’d been deal-

ing with a movie that was shooting in Iceland and was beset with

problems. Both the director and the star were always quitting or

threatening to quit, there were crew mutinies, a reindeer stampede,

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and an unfortunate incident when the all the stand- ins had got-

ten trapped on a fjord.

My dad seemed to want to take advantage of the fact that we

were staying in a mansion in the Hamptons, and had planned a

big- deal dinner party. He had invited the other teachers at the

workshop, and a number of important publishing people— agents,

editors, and critics— were coming up from New York City. And

the most important guest of all was my dad’s agent, Stu. My fa-

ther told me he thought this dinner would be good for Karen’s

career, and that he’d been talking up her work to Stu, hoping he’d

take her on as a client.

I worked out the plan for the party in detail, writing every-

thing out in my notebook, not wanting to get anything wrong. I

had a feeling that this would be my last and best chance to stop

what was happening with my dad and Karen, before I suddenly

had a stepmother and two stepsiblings and the chance of my dad

coming home again was just a pipe dream. So I laid out the par-

ticulars of the biggest plan yet, the one that I was sure would

change things.

I just didn’t realize how right I would end up being.

O O O

As the day of the party neared, my dad got more and more

caught up in the preparations. He was sending copies of Kar-

en’s book to the critics and editors who would be attending, in

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addition to trying to sort out the catering and the decorations.

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All of this meant he’d pretty much stopped paying attention to

what I was doing. At my urging, he’d bought me a game that I’d

installed on his computer, Olympia and the Olympians. It was de-

signed to be educational about the Greek myths, but actually just

made me incredibly bored— except for when ea gles sometimes tore

people’s livers out, it mainly seemed to be about people stuck in

revenge cycles and never learning anything or stopping them.

But it was very useful because it allowed me access to my dad’s

computer, so that he wouldn’t be suspicious when he saw me

using it. Because when I was on his computer, I wasn’t playing

Olympia and the Olympians. I was reading through my dad’s

e-mails, particularly the ones to Stu.

The night of the party arrived, and I was maybe more ner vous

than my dad was. Hallie and I were both attending the dinner,

and it seemed to be going really well. There was lively conversa-

tion around the table that I mostly ignored, as it was all publishing

gossip, but I could tell from the noise and laughter that it was a

successful dinner. Karen was fl ushed and giddy with the attention

she was getting, Hallie was basking in her mother’s glow, and my

dad was sitting next to Karen, smiling, looking happy and proud.

I waited for my opportunity, and when my dad went to the

bathroom, I excused myself as well a moment later and dashed

for his study. I pulled out my notebook from where I’d hidden it

in the desk drawer and consulted it for the notes I’d taken on my

father’s correspondence with Stu. I turned on the computer, pulled

up my father’s e-mail, and entered Stu’s e-mail address. I typed a

message as fast as I could.

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Stuart,

This is a diffi cult e-mail to write. I didn’t want to say anything

at dinner, but I felt I needed to tell you, mano a mano. I don’t

think you should work with Karen, even though we discussed

the idea last Wednesday. Though she wants it, I really don’t

think it would be a good idea for you to have both of us as

your clients. I don’t think it’s fair to you to be put in the

middle like that.

And furthermore— and I hate to say it— her work is not

original. Please don’t work with her without thinking all this

through carefully. A er all, you have your own career to

consider.

All my best,

Paul

My heart was hammering as I typed these lies, and I paused,

lifting my fi ngers from the keys before hitting Send. Was I really

going to do this?

I heard the toilet fl ush, then the sound of the water running,

and I hit Send before I could question this any further. I deleted

the e-mail from my father’s sent mail folder, closed out his e-mail,

shoved my notebook back in the drawer, turned off the lights,

and dashed from the room.

Hallie was waiting outside the door.

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I gasped. “Hallie!” I said, trying to get my bearings, trying

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not to look like I was panicking. “What . . . are you doing here?”

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“I was looking for you,” she said. Her eyes strayed behind me

to my dad’s study and I shut the door quickly. “What were you

doing in there?”

“Nothing,” I said, willing my brain to think faster than it cur-

rently seemed to be capable of doing. “Just . . . needed to get away

for a second. You know.” I shrugged and smiled at her, but Hallie

didn’t smile back. She just looked at me for a moment longer, her

head tilted slightly to the side, as though she was trying to fi gure

something out.

“Girls?” I heard Karen call from the dining room, and I had

never been so happy to be called back to the table. I hurried past

Hallie, not meeting her eye, and took my place next to my dad.

My dad and Karen were in the middle of telling a story to-

gether, trading off sentences, all about one of their students in

the workshop, and the table seemed to be listening, rapt. Stu,

though, was not engaged, and his eyes were glued to his Black-

Berry screen. He frowned as he read what was presumably the

e-mail I’d just sent, then turned to my dad, but my dad was look-

ing over at Karen at the time and missed this.

Stu looked down at his BlackBerry again, then tapped the critic

next to him and showed her the screen. She was soon whispering

to the editor on the other side of her, and before long, it was clear

that nobody was listening to Karen’s anecdote, which fell fl at

when nobody laughed at the punch line.

The party broke up almost immediately after that, even though

it was still early and dessert hadn’t even been served. Stu left not

meeting Karen’s eye, and giving my dad only the most cursory of

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good- byes.

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After the party, I found myself pacing around my room. I couldn’t

help but think that this time, I’d gone too far. But I realized that

it probably wasn’t too late to pull this back. I could go tell my dad

what I’d done, and he could call Stu and tell him the e-mail was

from me. He’d be mad at me, but it might be worth it. I took the

stairs down to the kitchen two at a time, ready to confess, but

stopped short in the doorway when I saw my dad standing by the

kitchen counter with Karen, their backs to me, his arms wrapped

around her.

“I think it went fi ne,” he murmured, rubbing her back. “I’m

sure everyone was just tired. You were great, as always.”

“You think?” Karen asked. As I looked on, feeling my stomach

clench, my dad bent down and kissed her.

I turned around, but not before the image had burned itself

into my brain. I thought about my mom, all alone in Putnam.

And as I walked back to my room, my doubts were gone. I hadn’t

gone too far— this was what needed to happen. Karen needed to

go, or we’d never be a family ever again.

O O O

The next day, Stu told Karen he was no longer interested in

working with her.

I was thrilled that one of my plans had fi nally worked, and I

waited eagerly for it to cause a rift between my dad and Karen.

But instead, it just seemed to make trouble between my dad and

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his agent. I was eavesdropping outside my dad’s study the next

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afternoon and heard him on the phone to Stu. “What e-mail?” I

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heard my dad yell, and my breath caught in my throat. For just a

moment, it felt like my heart stopped. But thankfully, they didn’t

linger on this, and it seemed like the conversation moved on—

until a second later, when my dad slammed down the phone and

stormed out of his study, not seeming to notice me lurking in the

doorway.

I fi gured that the plan hadn’t worked and I decided to chalk it

up to the weirdness of adults and move on to the next idea.

Which was when things moved beyond my control.

Without warning, Karen’s publishing house cancelled her next

contract— and when pressed for a reason, would only say that there

had been questions about her artistic integrity.

My dad and Karen were baffl ed by this until the publishing

blogs started to pick up a rumor that she had plagiarized her book.

The rumor gained traction, especially when a blind item was

published about its origins— that it had come from a fellow writer

who knew her work well. This writer had told his well- regarded

agent, who had passed on the information to a respected critic at

a Hamptons literary dinner party. It wasn’t hard to fi gure out

that this other writer was my dad, the agent was Stu, the party

was ours— and the fault was mine.

I truly hadn’t understood that this would be the result of my

e-mail. I’d wanted Stu to help create distance between my dad

and Karen— not to damage her career. When I wrote that her work

wasn’t original, I was just using the phrase I’d heard my dad use

whenever he wanted to put down a fellow writer, usually one who