Father Of The Brat (12 page)

Maddy laughed and threw her arms open wide to receive him. “Good. Because I’m long overdue for a vacation.”

C
arver awoke to the sound of his front door being slammed shut. Immediately, he rolled toward the other side of his bed, fearful that Maddy had run out on him before he had the chance to tell her so many of the things he wanted to reveal. But she slept peacefully beside him on her stomach, her head turned toward his, one hand loosely clutching his pillow. He smiled. Her ivory skin was touched with pink in places, and her dark hair was wonderfully mussed, both conditions a result of their physical exploits of the night before. Her bare back rising and falling with the respiration of deep slumber told him she was nowhere near waking.

Carver wanted to wake her. He even went so far as to reach out to her, ready to trace the delicate line of her spine to where the sheet and blanket dipped dangerously low over her heart-shaped fanny. Then he remembered the jarring thunder of his front door moments ago. If he and Maddy were in the bedroom, he reasoned, only one other person could have generated the noise without being guilty of breaking and entering.

Quickly, he scrambled out of bed and rifled through his dresser for a pair of jeans and a denim work shirt. He stumbled barefoot out of his bedroom, hastily buttoning himself up, and recalled too late that his and Maddy’s clothes of the night before were strewn all over the living room floor. There was no way Rachel could have missed them when she’d come in.

He decided to deal with her reaction to that later. There was something a lot more pressing the two of them had to deal with now. Like where the hell Rachel had been the night before. Like the fact that he had envisioned the most gruesome scenarios about her fate. Like the fact that he had been worried sick about her….

Like the fact that he had honestly begun to wonder what would become of him without her.

Without further hesitation, Carver crossed the hallway to his daughter’s bedroom and rapped loudly.

“What?” her voice sounded from the other side.

Only then was he able to expel the breath he’d been unaware of holding. Rachel sounded angry, perturbed and generally annoyed. In other words, she sounded like she always did. His daughter was okay. Safe and sound and none the worse for wear. The realization hit Carver like a Mack truck. He was relieved, happy and satisfied. And then he got really, really mad.

He tried to keep his voice calm and level as he demanded, “Rachel, open this door.”

“I’m busy,” she told him.

“Open the door.”

“I’m busy.”

He took a deep breath and tried again. “Dammit, Rachel, open the door.”

“No.”

There was no lock on her bedroom door, but Carver made it a point to give her the privacy any human being deserved. He would not storm in there and behave like an overwrought father, he promised himself. Even if that was exactly what he was.

“I’ll say this one more time,” he told her through gritted teeth, “and if you don’t do as I ask, I’m coming in. Open…this…door. Now.”

A door opened at that, but it wasn’t Rachel’s—it was Carver’s. Maddy stood framed by the doorway wearing nothing but one of his plaid flannel shirts, fastening the last of the buttons. She ran a hand frantically through her hair, but to no avail. The short strands still shot up all over her head as if…well, as if they’d been ruffled by a very fervent lover.

“She’s home?” Maddy asked, clearly anxious about the potential repercussions of the situation.

Carver nodded. “She’s home. But she won’t come out of her room.”

Maddy edged past him toward the living room. “Well, let me get my clothes before you try again.”

At that, Rachel’s bedroom door flew open, and the girl peered out at the two adults. “Oh, gee, did I interrupt something?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Carver dropped his hands to his waist and glared back at her. “No, actually, we were finished. Now, where the hell have you been all night?”

Rachel seemed nonplussed by his reaction, and he took advantage of her discomposure. “Answer me,” he bit out. “Maddy and I have been worried sick about you.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see just how you two spent the night all wrapped up in what was happening to me.”

“Don’t dodge the subject,” Carver told her. “Maddy and I aren’t answerable to you. But you, dammit, are answerable to us.”

“Carver, watch your language,” Maddy said softly from behind him. “She’s only a child.”

He spun around to find that she had gathered up her clothes and clutched them close to her body. Her glasses sat firmly on the bridge of her nose, and she almost, almost, looked like herself again. He couldn’t help but linger his gaze on her long legs extending from the hem of his shirt,
though. Man, his clothes had never looked that good on him.

Then his mind reeled back to the subject of his daughter again, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when he could jibe his life with Rachel’s. He fastened his gaze to hers.

Rachel’s eyes were huge and accusing, and far too cognizant of what had happened between him and Maddy the night before. Not only that, he realized, but she had spent the night on the mean streets of Philadelphia and lived to tell the tale. She was too grown up for her own good, he thought. Only the spattering of freckles on her cheeks and nose reminded him that she was just a kid.

Some of his anger evaporated, and he slumped forward a little, as if succumbing to a great weight. He wondered if there was any way he could help her recapture the youth she had been robbed of by her mother’s irresponsible behavior and her family’s general neglect. Too late, he realized he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to help her out in that respect. Because he hadn’t known the first thing about kids, he, too, had been treating Rachel as if she were an adult, forgetting that someone twenty-six years his junior needed considerably more structure in her life.

And now that he was the one responsible for her, he reminded himself further, his own life was going to require a little reorganization, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing for his lapse into adult language when he was in fact addressing a child.

“Hey, it’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Rachel told him, her voice snapping as tight as a whip. “Hell, it’s nothing I haven’t used before.”

“That doesn’t make it acceptable,” he assured her. “For either one of us. Now, come out of your room. We have to talk.”

He heard Maddy shift behind him. “I, uh…I’ll just go get dressed.”

Carver nodded. “Fine. Rachel?” He extended his hand toward the living room.

She narrowed her eyes at him and opened her mouth to protest. But something in his own eyes must have made her think twice about challenging him, because she clamped her lips tight again and preceded him down the hallway.

“Sit,” he instructed when they reached the living room.

Miraculously, she obeyed him, perching herself on the edge of the sofa and staring straight ahead. Carver paced the length of the room to snatch a pack of cigarettes from a bookcase, then shook one free and lit it.

“Now then,” he began as he expelled a long stream of white smoke from his lungs. “Where were you last night?”

Rachel shifted a little nervously and studied the back of her hand. “I was out of smokes, so I went out for some more. While I was out, I decided to see a little more of the city.”

Carver inhaled deeply on the cigarette again, not so much because he wanted to feel the heat of nicotine warming him, but because he didn’t trust himself not to use profanity—lots of profanity—when he replied to Rachel’s explanation for her absence.

“You went out for a pack of smokes,” he finally repeated quietly, proud of himself for the level timbre of his voice.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“I see. And you decided to go sight-seeing, too.”

She nodded once more.

“How nice.” Carver resumed his pacing, crossing the room in four large strides before turning to complete the action again. “And did you see all the pertinent sights?” he asked. “The Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall and Penn’s Landing?”

Rachel studied the back of her other hand. “No, I guess I missed those.”

Carver stopped pacing in front of her and waited until she looked up at him before continuing. “Then where did you go?” he asked when she finally met his gaze. “Where have you been for the last sixteen hours?”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought Rachel tossed her head defiantly before she told him, “There was a rave going on at a coffee shop up the street.”

“A rave?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but asked anyway, “What the…what on earth is a rave?”

His daughter shook her head at him as if he were the most hopeless idiot on the planet. “It’s like…poetry.”

Now he was really confused. “Poetry.”

“Yeah, poetry. God, don’t you know anything about anything?”

Carver was fast approaching the end of his rope, an end that was quickly unraveling. “I know lots of things, Rachel. I especially know when some insolent kid is trying to snow me.”

“I’m not trying to snow you,” she denied. “There was a rave going on at a coffeehouse up the street. I like poetry, so I went inside. It was really good, and the people were really nice, and time just got away from me, all right?”

Her expression had changed dramatically as she spoke, and if Carver hadn’t known better, he might have actually been convinced that her feelings had been hurt by his mistrust. He was about to launch into another attack on her credibility when Maddy spoke softly from behind him.

“She’s telling you the truth, Carver.”

He spun around and found her dressed in her regular clothes, her hair now damp and fingered back into place.

“There was a rave at that coffee shop up the street last night,” she told him. “I noticed it when you parked your car.”

Carver’s gaze ricocheted from Maddy to Rachel and back again. “You actually know what she’s talking about?”

Maddy nodded. “Raves are these all-night sessions some of the coffeehouses put on. Kids dance, read poetry, sing, perform quick plays, whatever. And they drink lots of soda and coffee, so they can go on all night. Granted, the kids are usually in high school or college, but…” She looked past
him to offer his daughter a brief smile. “Every now and then you find a few younger ones who fit in fine. If Rachel says that’s where she was, I believe her.”

Carver turned back to study his daughter in silence. “What kind of poetry?” he finally asked, still not convinced she was being completely honest about her whereabouts.

She shrugged a little nervously. “Like, I don’t know. All kinds. Like Beat stuff, mostly.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Beat stuff? You like Beat poetry?”

Her shoulders scrunched up again. “Well, yeah.”

“Like what?” he challenged. “Give me some specifics.”

“Like Ginsberg’s ‘America,’” she said. “Or Ferlinghetti’s ‘Underwear.’ I like the funny ones best.”

Carver chuckled a little nervously and looked at Maddy again. She smiled back and shrugged herself.

“This is too weird,” he said. “I can’t believe a twelveyear-old girl is reading Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti.”

“Well, Mom sort of pointed me in that direction,” Rachel told him. “She gave me
On the Road
for my twelfth birthday. She thought it was, you know, important.”

Carver dropped his head into his hands and felt the weight of fatherhood try to squash him. Oh, boy. This parenting stuff was going to be a lot more complicated than he’d thought.

Clearly, Rachel wasn’t a little girl. Twelve years old nowadays was obviously a lot older than it had been when Carver had been that age himself. Nevertheless, she was still far too young to be left to her own devices. Things could not go on between him and his daughter the way they had been. Both of them were going to have to make some changes if he ever hoped to restore some degree of sanity to their lives.

“Okay, I’ll agree that you’re not a typical twelve-year-old,” he conceded softly as he took a seat beside Rachel on the sofa. “You’re smarter, savvier and a bit more sophisticated than most kids your age.”

“Like I’ve been telling you all along,” she said, “I can take care of myself.”

“And that’s where I’m going to have to disagree with you,” he countered.

“Hey, last night, I was smart enough to—”

“Last night, you were lucky nothing happened to you. Lucky, Rachel. Not smart.”

She opened her mouth to object, but Carver continued before she could say a word.

“No matter what your life was like in L.A., no matter how much you were forced to take care of yourself because your mother was unwilling or unable to do it herself…” He sighed, started to reach out toward her, then thought better of the action. “You’re still just a kid, Rachel. You’re twelve years old. You ought to start acting like it. Stop trying to be an adult. Trust me. It ain’t that great a gig. Enjoy your childhood while you can. Because you don’t have much of it left.”

He stood, dropped his hands to his hips, and met Rachel’s gaze eye to eye. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to start all over again, and pretend that this is the beginning. And from now on, Rachel, you’re going to have to follow some rules around here, no questions asked. There will be no more smoking, no more dressing like a bum, no more coffee, no more swearing.”

“Whoa, hang on. I’m not going to—”

“You will restrict your television viewing time to one hour a day,” he continued, ignoring her protest, “you will do your fair share of chores around the apartment, you will be in bed by ten o’clock every night, and you will read at least one
age appropriate
classic novel a month.
Black Beauty
might be a good start. I remember my sisters always liked that one.”

“Oh, now just wait one—”

“You will, in short, behave like a human being. Because you
are
a human being, Rachel,” he added meaningfully. “You’re bright, funny, interesting and decent. You’re a good kid, and you play an important role in the scheme of
things. And…” He sighed once, hoping she wouldn’t think he sounded like a sentimental jerk when he added, “And you’ve become very important to me.”