Father Of The Brat (9 page)

“So you ditched school to see a movie,” he began again.

“Didn’t I just say that?”

He settled his knife and fork on his plate and glared at the girl, who was still too wrapped up in her magazine to notice. He was tired of being ignored by the feminine half of the population. More than that, he was tired of women he cared about treating him as if he mattered as much as carpet lint. Between the two of them, Rachel and Maddy were going to drive his self-esteem right into the ground.

“Boy, you are one surly kid, you know that?” he asked.

Without missing a beat, Rachel retorted, “Comes from having a surly father, I guess. Must run in the family.”

“Oh, I think your attitude is more an environmental factor than a genetic one.”

She licked the tip of her index finger and turned a page. “If you say so.”

Carver bit his tongue to keep from saying what he wanted to say. He reminded himself that behind all her churlishness, Rachel was just a neglected twelve-year-old girl who had recently lost her mother. Her emotions—emotions that were volatile enough to begin with thanks to her age—were probably rubbed raw. The last thing she needed was for some newly discovered father she didn’t even know to come down on her for what was, in the scheme of things, not a big deal. It wasn’t exactly uncommon or unexpected behavior. Nevertheless, he wanted to make sure she knew that it wasn’t acceptable behavior, either.

“Next time you want to see a movie,” he told her, priding himself on his steady tone of voice, “go on the weekend.
Don’t ditch school anymore. Not for any reason. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

Well, that was easy, Carver thought. Maybe a little
too
easy? Why wasn’t he quite convinced that everything with Rachel was now peachy keen?

“So, incidentally, how is school going?” he asked, striving for some semblance of what the average American family must do at dinnertime. It occurred to him, too late, that this was a subject they’d covered at their average American dinner with Maddy a couple of weeks before. Then he remembered that the conversation that evening hadn’t gone off too badly. And, hey, if something was a successful topic for conversation once, then perhaps one should just stick with that topic.

“It sucks,” Rachel told him, turning another page of her magazine.

Carver bit his tongue again. “A couple of weeks ago you told Maddy you liked it okay.”

“Then why did you ask me again?”

Good question, Carver thought. “Because I wanted to be sure you still liked it,” he said lamely.

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t. It sucks.”

“I see. And what exactly about it do you think…in what area do you find it lacking?”

Finally, Rachel looked at him. Looked at him as if he were a complete moron, granted. But at least she was acknowledging his presence for a change.

“The whole place is totally bogus,” she said. “Nobody has a clue.”

“What about your friend, Lanette?”

Rachel rolled her eyes at him, as if he should already know the answer to that question. “Okay, except for Lanette, nobody has a clue.”

“You said the other night that you like some of your teachers, some of your classes. You said you were doing well in Math.”

She turned her attention back to the magazine before her, once again dismissing Carver entirely. “I lied, okay? I hate it. I hate all of it.”

Carver tried again. “Look, Rachel, it’s always difficult going to a new school, but if you’ll just give it a chance—”

“Oh, like you know all about it, right?” she interrupted. “How many times did you change schools when you were a kid? You probably lived in the same house all your life on some cruddy little tree-lined street in some cruddy little quiet suburb. Your mom probably didn’t have anything better to do than stay at home to wipe your nose, and you probably had a stupid dog that followed you everywhere with some stupid name like Bingo.”

Carver forced himself to be patient while she completed her assault, once again reminding himself of her mercurial, prepubescent status and her recent maternal loss. When she seemed to be finished with her attack for the moment, he said, “Ralph.”

He felt oddly delighted by her utterly confused expression when she looked up at him again. “What?” she asked.

“My dog’s name was Ralph. Not Bingo. Ralph.”

Her expression soured again. “So what?”

“So I just wanted to set the record straight. And you’re right. I was never jerked around as a kid, and I sure as hell didn’t find out twelve years into my life about some father who had been a complete stranger to me until then. I can’t imagine what this whole thing must be like for you, and I won’t insult you by trying to be sympathetic.”

She eyed him warily, as if she weren’t sure what he was trying to pull over on her. Since he seemed to have her attention, however dubious, Carver decided to make the most of it.

“But you’re not the only one who’s experiencing a lot of weirdness here,” he reminded her. “This has been a little unexpected for me, too, you know. My life’s been turned upside down, too.”

“Hey, you should have thought about that a long time ago when you were boinking my mom,” Rachel told him.
“I didn’t ask to be born, you know. You guys could have at least taken some precautions, jeez.”

Carver was fast reaching the end of his rope. He wadded up his napkin and threw it down on the table. “Man, you have got some mouth on you. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners at all?”

“Why the hell should she?”

“Because you’re a human being, that’s why.”

“Oh, yeah, like you really believe that.”

Carver was about to argue further, had even opened his mouth to do so, when what Rachel had said fully registered in his brain. After that, he completely forgot what he had planned to say. Was that the whole problem here? he wondered. That Rachel didn’t think he saw her as a human being? Had she thought the same thing of her mother? Did she in fact feel that way about herself?

“Rachel—” he began.

But she cut him off with her most vehement attack yet. “Just what the hell were you and my mom thinking back then?” she shouted at him. “Didn’t you have any idea at all what might happen? Didn’t you realize Mom might get pregnant? Didn’t it occur to you that someone might get born because of your actions? Why didn’t you take any precautions? Why didn’t you
think?
Why did you cause me to be born?”

With that, Rachel bolted from the table and out of the room. And as Carver rose to his feet and stood nonplussed in the center of his kitchen trying to figure out what had just happened, he heard the front door slam shut behind her.

I
t was after midnight when Carver pulled to a stop in front of Maddy’s house in Bryn Mawr, and he wondered again why he had driven there without calling her first. Because he was frantic, that’s why, he answered himself immediately. And because for some reason, it just felt natural to turn to Maddy when he needed help. He hesitated before he got out of his car, looking at her house as if maybe the small Cape Cod could explain the changes that had come over the woman he’d known so well as a girl.

In the light of a streetlight at the foot of her driveway, he could tell it was a nice house in spite of its state of disrepair. He knew somehow at once that it was the one Maddy had shared with her husband before her divorce. The homemade landscaping, the uneven brick walkway, the patched roof, the crooked porch light all bespoke a middle class, two-income family that was living just a bit beyond its means. He wondered if Maddy had any trouble making ends meet now that she was on her own. With a little extra
money, the house could be a real charmer. The perfect place to raise a family.

He pushed the thought away and got out of his car, making his way to the front door with quick, deliberate strides. He decided not to wonder again why Maddy had chosen not to have children when everything else about her indicated a family was something she’d always wanted. People change, he reminded himself. Hell, just look at him. He’d never wanted kids himself, but now that he had one, he cared enough about his daughter to be out in the middle of the night—when the city was anything but safe—searching desperately to find her. That was what had brought him to Maddy’s house. He couldn’t tolerate the desolation of looking for Rachel alone.

When Maddy finally opened her front door to Carver’s incessantly loud knocking some minutes later, he realized quickly that he’d obviously interrupted something. What precisely that something was, however, he couldn’t begin to imagine.

Her hair was a mess, as if she’d been trying to pull it out by the roots. Her glasses were completely absent. Without hesitation, his gaze swept from her head down to her feet. She wore a man’s undershirt over men’s flannel pajama bottoms and hadn’t even bothered with a robe or shoes. The thin cotton of her undershirt molded against her breasts as if she wore nothing at all—he could even see the dark, circular outline of their dusky peaks. The pajama bottoms hung low on her hips, and he realized with no small amount of trepidation that with one gentle tug of the drawstring, he could have them down around her ankles.

He frowned at her apparel. Hell, he could have been anyone standing at her front door. Who did she think she was answering his feverish knocking in such a getup? Didn’t she even care about her own safety?

She squinted at him in the dim light, obviously trying to discern his identity without having to go to all the trouble of finding her glasses. Finally she stopped squinting, fell
against the doorjamb in an insolent lean, and said, “Carver.”

With her pronunciation of that one word, he could tell that she had been drinking. He looked past her into her living room, taking in the wadded up blanket on the couch, the half-eaten pizza in an oily box, and the blender pitcher that contained what appeared to be the remnants of a major margarita. He frowned.

Half drunk and half dressed and opening the door to what could have been some total creepoid hell-bent on hurting someone. This was a woman who saw plenty of total creepoids like that in her line of work, Carver thought. One would think she would take precautions to keep herself safe. Unless, of course, he thought further, more than a little troubled by the realization, getting herself hurt was exactly what she had in mind.

“Can I come in?” he asked, pushing his way past her before she had a chance to reply.

“Sure, come on in,” she said unnecessarily as she closed the door behind him. “What’s the rush? Where’s the fire?”

His gaze dropped to the undershirt again. Maybe Maddy was too skinny on the whole, he thought, but parts of her were quite…extraordinary. “You don’t want to know,” he said under his breath.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He looked around the cluttered living room again, then gave her another once-over. Maddy Saunders had always been a real clean-freak in high school, fastidious to a fault. Her plaid skirts had always been perfectly pleated, her knee socks had never sagged. And although Carver had never been in the Saunders house when he was young, he’d always known somehow that Maddy’s bedroom would be bright and cheery and clean, with nothing, not one scrap of anything, out of place.

“Jeez, Maddy,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the acrid aroma of spoiled food, “even
I
put the pizza in the fridge after a couple of hours.”

She sighed as she moved slowly across the room, folded the top of the pizza box and shoved it under a pile of newspapers. “Sorry. I fell asleep.”

“Looks more like you passed out.”

“Whatever.”

She flopped onto the couch on her back and threw her arm up over her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

He eyed her critically, letting his concern for Rachel be replaced for a moment by his concern for the woman who lay on the couch without concern for herself. Ever since Maddy had stumbled back into his life, Carver had been worried about her. She was different these days. A lot different. When he’d known her before, Maddy Saunders had always been too nice, too naive, too idealistic. He’d always thought what she needed most was a good, healthy dose of reality shoved down her throat to make her see how horrible, mean and hateful the world really was. Twenty years ago, Carver had been certain it would be in Maddy’s best interest to change.

Now he could see that she had changed. And he didn’t like it one bit.

“Maddy?” he asked softly.

“Hmm?” she replied without removing her arm from over her eyes.

“What’s going on here?”

She didn’t seem to move a muscle, but somehow she tensed up at his question. “What’s it look like is going on here?”

“It looks like you’re trying to self-destruct.”

“Yeah, well…” She sighed heavily, removed her arm long enough to cover her eyes with her hands, then rubbed them hard. When she was finished, she left them balled loosely there and said, “It’s none of your business, Carver.”

He moved to the sofa and perched on the edge of the cushion near Maddy’s hip, then settled his arm along the sofa’s back. He wanted to touch her, wanted to brush her hair off of her forehead and pull her hands away from her
eyes. He wanted to tug her up into his arms and do nothing more than hold her close. He wanted to chase away the shadows from her eyes, wanted to see some of her old spark, some of her old fire. He wanted…God, he wanted to do whatever he could to bring back the old Maddy, the one who had infuriated him so badly, the one who had been his last hope for a world gone mad.

“Maddy,” he said again. “What’s going on here? What’s wrong?”

She still didn’t remove her hands from her face as she asked, “What makes you think something is wrong?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you’re lying here in the middle of a messy house, eating crummy food, wearing some guy’s cast-off pajamas and underwear, when in high school you couldn’t tolerate a speck of dust on your perfectly pressed Peter Pan collars and always carried the basic four in your brown bag. Maybe the fact that back in high school, you were worse than Carrie Nation when it came to denouncing the consumption of alcohol, yet you obviously had a really good drunk going here before you passed out and I interrupted the scene.”

He dropped his hands to her bare shoulders, tracing his index fingers down the length of her arms. He felt her shiver beneath his touch, but only threaded his fingers through hers and pulled her hands away from her eyes. Immediately, he was sorry he did. They were red-rimmed and puffy, brimming with tears.

“Maybe because never, no matter how relentlessly and mercilessly I needled you in high school, I never—not even once—saw you cry. But ever since you came back into my life, Maddy, I’ve felt like all it would take was one little wrong word to make you burst into tears.”

She blinked, and the tears he had never seen tumbled from her eyes, falling in two identical slow streams into her hair. “Go away and leave me alone,” she said softly, her voice shuddering a little on the final word.

He cupped her jaw in his hand, then skimmed his fingers along her cheek and temple to brush her bangs off her forehead. “Why?” he asked.

She sniffled and blinked again, sending two more tears along the same trail. “Because…because I have a headache.”

His fingers came back to her face, tracing the delicate line of her mouth. “It’s no wonder, after half a blender of margaritas.”

“I mean it, Carver. Go away. I don’t want you here tonight.”

He crossed his arms over his chest to prevent himself from doing something truly foolish—like pulling Maddy into his arms and kissing her with all the heart and soul he could muster, which he was astonished to realize was precisely what he wanted to do.

“Maybe I don’t want to go away,” he told her. “Maybe I won’t go away. Maybe I think you need someone here with you tonight. May be…maybe I need you, too. Did you ever think of that?”

She sat up and slouched forward, dangling her hands between her knees. “What could you possibly need me for?”

Carver was about to list a number of things, all of them very provocative in nature, but the only words that emerged were, “Rachel’s missing.”

Maddy snapped to attention at that. “What do you mean, she’s missing?”

“I mean she’s gone. She and I…we had a little disagreement.
Another
little disagreement. She stormed out of the apartment and didn’t come back. That was six hours ago. It’s after midnight. I’m worried about her. She left without her coat, and as far as I know, she doesn’t have any money. I thought maybe you could help me find her. You know kids. You know the city. I thought you might have some idea where she’d go.”

Maddy scrubbed her hands over her face, shook her head as if to clear it, and stood. She seemed a little shaky, Carver
thought, but not too bad. She seemed perfectly capable of helping him find his daughter.

“Just give me a couple of minutes to get dressed,” she said. Then, glancing quickly around, she added, “Where are my glasses?”

Carver noted them immediately on the end table. He picked them up and unfolded them, then settled them on Maddy’s nose. For some reason, he wanted to bend down and kiss the tip of that nose when he completed the action. But somehow, he forced himself to resist.

“There,” he said. “Now hurry up.”

She raced from the room and came back in a matter of minutes rolling up the sleeves on a striped flannel shirt which she then stuffed into her jeans without bothering to unfasten them. She went to the sink and drenched a dish towel with cold water, took off her glasses, then held the wet towel over her face for several seconds. Finally, she donned her glasses again, ran her fingers through her hair to tame the wild tresses as best she could, and told Carver, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

She retrieved her coat from a closet near the front door and shoved her hands into the sleeves. “I know a couple of places we can start, but since Rachel’s a stranger to Philadelphia—I’m not sure she’ll find her way to any of the usual haunts.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob, meeting his gaze levelly. “I hate to say this, Carver, but she could be anywhere.”

“Do you think she’s safe?”

Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. She’s a smart kid.”

“But there are a lot of creeps out there,” Carver finished for her.

He could tell Maddy was trying to smile reassuringly, but her expression fell well short of making him feel better. “Yeah, there are a lot of creeps out there,” she agreed, only reinforcing his concern.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

She tugged the front door open and preceded him through it. “Who’s driving?” she asked.

“I am.”

“I’ll give you directions, then.”

Carver caught up with her in the driveway and curled his fingers fiercely over her shoulder. “Just help me find her, Maddy, that’s all I ask.”

She turned to face him, covering his hand with hers. “I’ll do my best, Carver. But like I said…”

He sighed fitfully. “She could be anywhere.”

Maddy nodded, then the two of them were off again. And all Carver could do was hope that
anywhere
was someplace warm and dry and safe.

Carver sat silently in a small booth in a tiny downtown Philly diner and stared at the woman sitting across from him. Maddy looked no better now than she had when she had opened her front door to him three hours ago. She still looked as if one wrong move from him would cause her to crumple into a miserable heap at his feet. He tried to tell himself it was because the two of them had had no luck finding Rachel. But in truth, he knew the melancholy that surrounded Maddy stemmed from something that troubled her far more than he and his daughter, and it had been with her for much longer than since the day he had walked back into her life.

“Maddy, what’s wrong?” he asked her for perhaps the twentieth time that night.

And for perhaps the twentieth time, she ignored his question. “There’s one more place we might try looking,” she said instead. “It’s a long shot, but there’s an old abandoned church on 86th where some of the kids sleep when they’re on the streets. Rachel may have found her way there.”

Carver nodded. “Okay. Finish up your soup and we’ll head out. In the meantime, you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

She gazed at him blankly. “Rachel’s missing, that’s what’s bothering me.”

“I don’t doubt that. But even before I showed up at your place tonight, something had you so down that you were acting like a stranger.”

She dropped her gaze to the hands she had woven tightly together on the table. “What makes you think I was acting any differently than usual? How do you know I don’t spend every night eating pizza and drinking margaritas in my pajamas?”

Carver emitted a rude sound of disbelief. “Please, Maddy, don’t insult me. You may have changed a lot since high school, but you haven’t changed
that
much.”