Dedication (31 page)

I take a seat on the floor, positioning her room at my back. Willing the redbricked vista before me to keep my perspective buoyant, I slide my fingers ambivalently along the Overnight Express tape. Grabbing a forgotten cowboy boot from beneath the dresser, I sliver the seam with its brass-tipped toe. The flaps rise as they’re released. I drop the tan crocodile to lift out balled tissue paper, my hand encircling Mom’s old microcassette recorder taped to a card with 1 written on it. I take the black plastic brick between my hands, fingering the little yellow Post-it with an arrow to the
PLAY
button where she has written simply, “Please.” I let out a long breath. Don’t want to. Don’t want to please. Want to leave them on that porch and have the whole history evanesce. Want to be done.

I hit
PLAY.

“Is it on?” Dad’s voice ekes into the room. I press my thumb into the volume wheel, moving it up until it’s at its peak.

“I think. Try testing,” Mom says as if next to me. I slide my thumb down.

“Testing,” Dad says. “I feel like I should sing something.”

“Moonlight in Vermont,”
Mom warbles. My cheeks lift in an uncertain smile.

“Seriously.”

Mom clears her throat. “Yes.” She takes a breath. “Kate, hi.”

“Hullo,” Dad chimes in.

“So, it’s Christmas. And we’ve opened our presents and your dad’s barbecued the shrimp. And we’ve missed you. We’ve spent the day, well…”

“Fought like hell.”

“Yes, we’ve fought and talked and really had ourselves quite a row. And here’s where we’re at…we’re really just terribly—”

“Sorry,” Dad says, the word sounding utterly foreign not couched in a joke.

“Sorry that I had an affair,” Mom pushes on as heat rises up to my forehead. “And that you had to stumble upon it, be alone with it.”

“Sorry I lost my marbles and made everyone feel so rotten,” Dad says with such clarity that I stop the tape with my trembling hands, rewind it a slippery beat and press
PLAY
again.

“Lost my marbles and made everyone feel so rotten. And I’m saying it here where you can listen as many times as you need to.”

I press the pads of my fingers to my mouth as Mom takes an audible breath. “And after Dad moved back in we never talked about it with you because we were trying to get you back to a happy family as fast as we could. We didn’t want to burden you, drag it out. But that clearly didn’t, well it didn’t—”

“Bloody dreadful tactic, apparently. So Kate, here it is. We’re going to tell you everything now, all of it. From the day the research center closed to the day I moved back in. We’re going to tell you everything you could ever want to know about those months and you can listen to as much or as little as you want.”

“We’ve got ourselves a full pitcher of piña coladas,” Mom says, and I smile deeply as I picture her shoulders rise. “And I even treated us to pigs in a blanket from Publix in your honor.”

“Even got the little umbrellas,” Dad adds. “One other thing, before we start, I want you to know I went off my medication under supervision. I don’t like to discuss it with you, Katie, because it’s not my proudest quality as a parent…” His voice has gotten so quiet I have to press the box to my ear. “The blubbering’s only supposed to last a few weeks.”

“You did well up over the kids’bell choir this morning.”

“Claire, he said I’d be normal. Not an android,” Dad scoffs. “Those little angel robes with the bells bigger than their tiny heads, I’m not immune.”

“All right, then.” I hear Mom smile. And that she is nervous. “Let’s get to it.”

“Yes. So, let’s see, to the best of my recollection I just woke up one morning, feeling like I hadn’t slept, feeling heavy tired—”

I click
STOP
, absorbing the magnitude of their gesture, realizing, now that they’ve been cleanly offered I don’t need to hear the details. What I’ve needed is to know they’ve been voiced, dealt with, laid to rest. Closing my eyes, letting the brilliant sun burn through my lids to turn my focus a warm pink, I lift the recorder to my heart.

Blinking, I reach into the box and feel a wrapped bundle. I withdraw it, taped to a card with 2 written on it. I wriggle off the recycled ribbon, unfurling the gold tissue from Neiman Marcus in which I wrapped her slippers last year, and pull out a seashell she’s slid inside the folds. I place it next to me before crinkling the paper back on familiar worn wool. I lift the blazer up in front of me, realizing almost every inch of fabric has been safety-pinned with our old pictures—the metal carefully pricked through fading photos of Croton Middle and Croton High, the winter choir concert, family birthdays, debate championships, the seventh-grade play, every stop of my adolescence, and there at the heart, where Dad’s university crest used to be, a picture of 34 Maple Lane with the three of us out front taken the day we moved in.

My cheeks wetting, I pull it on, looking down at everything I’ve done in all its carefully pinned-on glory, everything they wanted for me, even when clinically depressed and cheating. I catch sight of the Princess phone on the chaise and pull it over, lifting the receiver as I punch in the number.

“Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Kate?”

“Happy New Year’s.” I swipe a hand across my damp face.

“Isn’t that tomorrow?” he asks playfully, but I can hear the relief in his voice.

“I figured since I missed Christmas—”

“The Battle of Sarasota?”

“That bad, huh?” I smile.

“We were due—we hadn’t had a good dust-up in years. And your mother makes her jam tarts when she’s feeling contrite.”

“What do you do?”

“A soft-shoe.” I hear the twinkle in his voice.

“Yeah, me, I like to run off with a rockstar.”

“How’s that going? Gotten a tattoo yet.”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.” I fit the smooth shell in my palm and pull the jacket around me. “For the blazer and the tape and everything—”

“If Jake as son-in-law is part of your package deal, I will learn to love him again.”

“Really?”

“He was a good kid. Hold on, I’ve got Mom bouncing up and down for the phone. Happy New Year, bun. I love you.”

“Kathryn?” she asks furtively.

“I
love
it.”

“You didn’t burn it?”

“No.” I smile.

“But you can if you want to, it’s your choice. Number three.”

“Of course I’m not burning it,” I say as I tip the box toward me to see the round tube of fireplace matches roll along its emptied bottom. “I’m sorry I lost it back there.”

“Oh, I don’t know, it was kind of nice having a teenager in the house again.”

“Referring to me?” She laughs and I squint against the graffiti pullulating from the surfaces surrounding me. “Tell me what you guys’re up to.”

“WellI’m working on a puzzle.”

“Of course.”

“And your father is about to grill up some swordfish and vegetables for lunch—”

“I miss you,” it fervently escapes me, the acknowledgment of this lost feeling, the revelation of its long absence overwhelming. Silence. “Mom?”

“I’m here.”

“I don’t know if this is…I don’t know how I should be…how to make this real.”

“You shouldn’t be
making it
anything. That’s the whole point of trying this on, isn’t it?”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes, trying this on, seeing how it is.”

“How did you know with Dad?” I wrap the blazer closer around me. “How did you know to hang in?”

“How do I phrase this?” She pauses for a moment. “Because he hung in for me, Katie—the real me, not the concept of, not the abstract. And we share, not only the last thirty-five years, we share you. He’s my partner—in all his grumpy, silly, smart, smart glory.”

I smile at her summation of him, of them. “Mom, I found out all the songs after ‘Lake Story’ were about his father.”

The line is silent. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, for his sake.”

“That’s gracious of you.”

“I know.” She laughs before sighing, “Wow.” I sense it sinking in for her. “Oh, your father’s having trouble with the grill—”

“Yes, go.”

“Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The door wedges and Jake’s voice belts,
“Kaaaa-tie,”
through the opening, startling me.

“Yes?” I stand, blanching as he strolls in, full makeup, full-frontal flapping flesh framed by the scrawled door he closes behind him. He reaches his arms out, fingers waving for me. “Is that Croton?”

“My parents sent it as a peace offering. It’s my—” He takes my face in his hands, staring comfortingly into my eyes. “Hi,” I say softly. He buries his airbrushed face in my neck. “Jake.” I push back from him. “Stop.”

“Can’t,”
he groans, perspiration beading above the makeup. “Only have five before I have to go through the lineup again.” He tugs at my turtleneck, knocking me off balance, forcing me to grab back for the chaise as I land on it. “Sorry. You get undressed. I’ll turn around.”

“Jake?” someone yells from behind the door before I can respond.

“Yeah?” He jogs to it, bare feet slapping the stone.

“Call from Tokyo.”

He spins to me, feet squeaking. “Got another break in thirty. Get changed and we’ll meet, oh—” His face falls. “But not in here, okay? Bad vibe. In the bedroom. In
that.
Love you.” He tugs open the door and disappears, singing,
“I’m gonna fuck you, Kaaa-tie!”

I sit up, touching the smear of foundation on the fawn-colored cashmere, my eyes landing on the picture Mom pinned beneath the right sleeve. There, nestled in with every other milestone—sits the unmistakable cake-platter of Jake’s childhood home.

As the limousine inches into Times Square I peer out at the elated throngs, screaming the New Year in. Beside me Jake sits with his eyes closed, doing his visualizations, wriggling uncomfortably against the confines of his suit while nursing a Marlboro. My cell vibrates and, seeing Lucas’s number, I press
IGNORE
, letting him add yet another voice mail to his cache of “brainstorming.”

“Who’s stalking you? Should I be jealous?”

“My boss. It’s about you, actually.” I shift to alleviate the chafing of the tape securing my cleavage. “He has this cockamamie idea about making you the face of global sustainable development.”

Jake’s eyes open.

“Don’t worry, I told him you were going on tour. You don’t have to get involved at all. I’m sure I can mollify him with some sort of anonymous donation, I mean, if you wanted to, no pressure.”

“Anonymous?” he asks.

“Totally ot a problem—”

“Oh, okay, I see.” He sits up, blowing a strong stream of smoke out his nostrils. “So your boss likes me enough to want to make me the face of this cause, but you…you, what? Think I’m not serious enough? Think I’d embarrass you?”

“Jake,
no,
that’s not it at all,” I say, taken aback. “I just didn’t want to tell you what to do with your money.”

“No, I get it. I get it.” The limo inches into alignment with the red carpet where Joss waits with our security detail. “Ready?”

Before I can say no the door swings open. “JAKE! JAKE! JAKE! OVER HERE, JAKE!” We make our way down the red carpet, through blinding flashbulbs and the defeaning hysteria of the crowd. My hand clasped, I stop when he stops, angling my chin down as Kirsten instructed.
“JAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!”
Behind the phalanx of press, the crowd of girls screams themselves hoarse. He smiles, waves, says, “Hedi Slimane for Dior Homme” over and over, signs autographs.

We squeeze through the revolving doors of 1515 Broadway. “Jake. Jake. Jake.” A corps of MTV staff wearing headsets descends, tobacco-stained fingers grabbing his arms and pulling him from me. I don’t even make it into the elevator.

The studio floor is packed, every corridor crammed with revelers and handlers and reveling handling. Holding up the pass around my neck, I snake through the throngs, choking on the mushroom cloud of perfume and nicotine billowing from their clothes. I find the dressing rooms. “Jake?” I call out. A multiplatinum rapper struts down the hall with his entourage, sweeping me up in their cannabis wake. Disengaging myself before I’m pulled onstage I fold into a miraculously empty nook and peer out through the black felt flaps. The rapper takes the mike from a scrawny man old enough to be grandfather to the prepubescent audience screaming their appreciation of his serenade.

God, they’re so young.

Registering the trilling of my phone as speakers break out the driving beat, I lift my clutch to my ear. I fumble to crack the crystal minaudiere and let out a cry of delight when I see the glowing Vermont area code beside my lipstick. “Laura!” I exclaim. “Hi!”

“Happy New Year!” she calls down the line. I hear the boys echo her in the background.

“How are you?” I press my finger to my other ear and huddle into the wall.

“I am e-la-ted. I’m on a crack high, you brilliant, brilliant girl. I’m sitting here with my hysterically happy husband and my brand new Chloé bag. You know what it goes with?”