Life by Committee (18 page)

“I'm being weird,” I say.

“We're waiting for my friend to stop by,” Elise says, trying to save me from myself, I think. Of course, that in no way explains why I am acting like I have never participated in human interactions before. I take a deep breath, because I'd forgotten Heather was coming by too. I cannot take another person witnessing whatever it is I'm about to do to myself.

“Maybe you should meet Heather somewhere else,” I say.

“Oh.”

“Who's Heather?” Devon says, taking this all as some opportunity to stay involved in the conversation. His voice is too chipper.

“My parents are weird right now, Elise. They might do something embarrassing. I mean, I wouldn't bring my
own
dates here. So I don't want to ruin yours. Tell her we can all hang out a different time, okay? I think it'd be
weird if she came here.”

“
Tabitha
,” she says. My name pinches her mouth and comes out a grumble. Her frown is turning into a line so straight it could be a ruler. Devon clears his throat like we need a reminder he's there, and holy
shit
we
do
need a reminder of that, because I just called Heather Elise's
date
in front of a total stranger.

“I'm sorry, I just mean, maybe it's too weird to—” I try. She's red-faced and glassy-eyed, like tears are only a few deep breaths away. Between me half outing her to Devon and implying that it'd be weird to have her bring a girl here, I've basically become the world's worst friend in under a minute.

But I feel Zed's countdown in my bones. As if I'm Captain Hook's crocodile and there is a ticking clock in my belly. I've got to get her out of here so I can focus on my Assignment.

“Anyway, you don't want me screwing it up for you,” I try. I glare at Devon so that he takes another step back. I do not have to glare for long. He does a one-eighty and slumps back to his table. I am ruining people's days and their opinions of me left and right, but it will all get way, way worse if I don't meet my deadline.

“No, yeah, I get it,” Elise says. She raises her eyebrows, widens her eyes a little in a challenge. Shoulders back. Aggressive.

“She'll like you better if she doesn't know how close we are.” I'm rambling now. I'm doing that thing where I'm leaning forward and basically packing Elise's bag for her. No jokes about my cleavage this time, and Devon's not looking over here anymore anyway. I keep looking toward the door. I know I'm doing it and I know it's rude and I can feel Elise's eyes, hot on me like the Tea Cozy fireplace when it's really roaring.

“I don't think the problem is with Heather's opinion of you,” Elise says. She's practically throwing her books into her tote, and I can see her jaw clenching and her hands shaking with anger. “
Heather
is super open-minded.”

“No, I know. I'm sorry. I'm trying to help,” I say. I have to get this Assignment over with, since it scares me so much. I told them I'd do it. I read the rules. I joined the site. I am one of them. Elise would get that, if I could tell her everything. Which I obviously can't. Won't.

“I said whatever, Tabby,” Elise mumbles.

I'm going to have to fix it later.

“Have fun, okay?” I call out, but she doesn't turn back on her way out the door.

Cate's on me as soon as Elise is gone.

“Thank
God
,” she says. “Your father is AWOL and I need someone to serve drinks. You game?”

I don't answer. She thrusts a couple of mugs into my hands and points me toward the table that ordered them.

“You're a doll,” she says, and kisses my cheek before scurrying behind the counter. A few families have come in, and our policy with little kids is to get them out of the café as quickly as possible.

Cate hands over more drinks, and I drop off a green tea and a decaf coffee to some of the little old ladies who like table service, and then I go to get a better look, a few steps closer to the window. There's the top of Paul's head, graying red hair and a spiral of smoke sneaking up over his head and disappearing when it hits the sky.

My mind is raw enough right now to push me ahead. If I think about it any more, I might not go through with it, and I
have
to go through with it.

Cate's eating a scone behind the counter, having successfully rid Tea Cozy of tiny children, and the few filled tables are digging into cookies and coffees, so I can sneak out for a few minutes without being noticed. I take off my apron. Some weird logic has me worried that if my apron smells like weed, my mom will know what's up. I tie my hair into a bun (didn't someone say that helps with the lingering smell?) and ignore the
no no no
voice in my head that's telling me to just have a normal day doing normal things. Reading books. Pouring coffee. Replacing
the honey and the skim milk on the counter. I could give up on LBC and Assignments and be Tabitha from Before. She was okay, wasn't she?

I have to do this
, I think, and try to put all the fear and not-wanting-to in a box in the back of my brain.

The back door always sticks, and I have to push the full weight of my body against it to nudge it open.

“Tab! Jesus!” Paul waves his hand with the joint around. He can't decide whether to take another drag, hold it behind his back, or stamp it out into the frozen ground.

“You sharing?” I say. No pause. No intake of breath. No hemming and hawing while I figure out how to phrase it. Inside I am a mess, but on the outside maybe I am pulling this off.

I'm looking Paul in the eyes. Our secret rule has been that I never look at him straight on when he's smoking or high. It's funny how those boundaries set themselves up and keep us safe.

And it's even funnier how I'm out here kicking them down.

Paul's either so shocked or so stoned that he can't muster up an actual response.

“Do you have some for me?” I say. I pull my shoulders back like I'm all confidence. I reach my hand out, and Paul almost hands the joint over on reflex, I think, before
shaking his head and remembering who exactly I am. You know. His daughter.

“Go inside, Tab,” he says. His voice is small and sad, and he shuffles his feet in the pile of icy leaves he is standing in. They crunch and the wind whistles and I pull my wool blazer more tightly around myself.

“I accidentally outed Elise. I have officially lost my last friend,” I say. I'm not sure making a plea about how shitty my life is currently is the best strategy, but I have to fill the silence with something, and the truth is what is most readily accessible. Paul reaches out his free hand to squeeze my shoulder, but I wince away from the touch so he knows that's not what I want.

“Also, the school counselor, your good friend Mrs. Drake, basically called me a whore.”

“That is completely not okay. Cate and I can go in and—” Paul loses his words in a hefty cough and then seems to forget what he was saying. “Bad” is his epic conclusion.

“I'll do it regardless,” I say, pointing at the joint when he has neither taken a drag nor handed it over to me. The joint hangs in the air between us, an unanswered question. “This guy I sort of like does it. Everyone does it. I thought you'd want me to try with you first.” I don't say it like a threat, but I guess that's what it is. Paul looks at me with his drooping eyes and pulls his winter cap
farther down over his ears. He likes that I'm telling him things about my life, though. I can tell.

“Your mother will hate me,” he says at last, in a morning voice, groggy and slow. The pile of leaves gets picked up in the wind, spins around frantically, and drops down somewhere else.

“I'm not telling Cate,” I say. “I'm not crazy. This is a Paul and Tabby thing.” It's a phrase Paul uses. It refers to used books, strong espresso, science fiction movies, staying up way too late, adding crazy garnishes to Cate's perfect recipes, singing along with country singers using opera voices and cracking ourselves up, eating an entire block of cheese in one sitting, collecting photographs of New York City. And if all goes my way, smoking pot together.

Paul brags to his friends about Paul-Tabby things. “I'm not one of those distant, secondary-parent dads,” he's always saying. “This one here's my best friend. We've got something special. Cate and I have very separate relationships with her. Like it should be.” It is maybe the only thing Paul ever really gets on a high horse about.

It does the trick.

“I appreciate you coming to me about it, instead of going to some party and doing it there,” he says.

“Family of the Year,” I say. “I know I can trust you.”

“Okay,” he says. He rubs his forehead, like maybe he can dislodge some thoughts. “Okay,” he says again. He drops the last bit of his joint on the ground and rolls a brand-new one, his fingers moving confidently in spite of how high I'm sure he is. “Your mom's busy in there?” He nods to the back door of the Cozy, and I nod back. He has got to know what a horrible idea this is, giving me drugs in the back of his family-owned business, pregnant Cate a few feet away. But Paul has never been much for carefulness.

“You're the best,” I say without even trying to smile. I'm too scared and shocked and uncertain to muster up a normal facial expression. I've never even smoked a cigarette. I hear it burns on the way down. I've seen the way people cough it up, and I don't like the strange, earthy smell.

Paul hands me the joint, and I suck at it the way I've seen him do.

It tastes like it smells, which is to say not great, and there's the burn I'd heard about, a rockiness as it goes down my throat, and a screaming insistence that I blow it right out even though I know the people who know what they're doing hold it in. So I shut my eyes tight and focus all my energy on keeping my mouth closed. Smoke spins around in my mouth, the roof getting too hot to handle.

Paul can't stop himself from laughing, but he opens his
mouth to have me mirror him, and I do. I sputter and cough and wait for something to feel actually good. “Another,” he says. What was awkward only a moment ago is now something he wants even more than me. I shiver in the cold and look at the mountains. Something to anchor me.

Paul's eyes have lit up, and I'm not his daughter anymore but a project. He is taking it seriously and wants to do it right. I do what Paul tells me and take another hit, and another.

I finally keep a little down and go light-headed. I giggle.

“There it is,” Paul says. He's full of pride for about a second, and then his forehead creases and it's something else: fear of what he's done, of what it means, of who he is. Maybe even of who I am.

I wonder if even the mountains shift, in this moment. Maybe a little snow melts and slides down. Nothing is quite as stable as it might seem.

Paul puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. And that's nice, the closeness, but my chest squeezes a bit when I think about sitting on his lap as a little girl and coloring my baby dolls with Magic Markers and having him take me to gymnastics on Saturday mornings.

I'm high, he's high, and the best things about having a
father have vanished.

There are things you should not do with your father, even if you call him by his first name.

Immediately, I miss the time before this exact moment.

I think Paul does too. He is frowning and we're shaking from the cold and our decisions and the fact that we have probably officially taken ourselves out of the running for Family of the Year.

I want it to be a year ago. I want it to be three years ago, five even. I want it to be thirty minutes ago.

The door does its slow push forward, and Cate's face appears where it shouldn't.

“Tabby, your tables are—” Her voice is edgy and impatient; she's been looking for me for a while. She sounds even a bit relieved, at having located me, I guess, but then she stops short.

The joint is still in my hand, between two fingers like I'm some expert.

I know I'm high because the thought occurs to me in slow motion. The slowest, most detached realization I think I've ever had.

“Oh come
on
,” Cate says. “Some fucking father you're becoming, asshole.”

The words hit me so hard I trip, even though I am standing still. This is not how Cate and Paul speak to
each other. Not ever. Not even with pregnancy hormones and stuff.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Paul says. If he's as high as I am (which, let's be honest, I'm sure he's way higher), he simply can't come up with anything more compelling to say right now.

“Hey?” Cate says. She is fuming, and no one's manning the counter, which means she must be
really
freaking out. She takes Tea Cozy seriously. “HEY? You are giving
drugs
to our
daughter
. What the
fuck
are you thinking, dipshit?”

Now I'm sweating. Pouring sweat. People inside the café are listening in and Cate is railing at Paul and I'm still stuck here with the joint in my hand, which is still strangely funny so I'm trying simultaneously not to laugh
and
not to cry. Leaves blow around and get displaced again. Every little gust changes everything.

I can see, beyond Cate's pregnant body crowding the doorway, customers craning their necks to watch. Whispering to one another. Scooting their chairs closer to the door, hoping to get a glimpse of the excitement. I reach forward to close the door, but Cate's not budging, and I don't want to make her even angrier.

This is bad. Not just bad for the family, but bad for business, I would think.

“Ummm,” I say. It does not stop Cate from yelling at
Paul.

“Don't even think about coming home. You hearing me? I am having another kid, and we are raising this one right, and I will not have you pulling this crap with—”

“Okay, okay, show's over,” Paul says, cutting her off. He grabs the joint from my hand and throws it to the ground. Hands me the keys to his car, which Cate rushes to grab back since obviously I'm not driving when I'm high. Paul blushes. He'd been trying to do the right thing. He says a literal “Oops,” which I don't think I've ever heard an adult man say in real life.