The Divorce Express (3 page)

Some days are just awful. This has been one of them.

T
he phone rings, awakening me.

I look at the clock. It’s six thirty in the morning. There’s no one who’s going to call me at that time. It must be for the big game hunter. Let him get it.

The phone keeps ringing.

I put the pillow over my head.

Where is my father?

Why doesn’t he get it?

The phone keeps ringing.

I reach for it.

It falls off the nightstand.

As I go to pick it up I yell, “Hold on. I’ll be right there.”

It’s under the bed.

Finally I get it, making a sound that I hope passes for hello. Mornings are not my best time.

It’s my father. At first I figure he’s picked it up, finally. I listen to figure out what nitwit is calling at this hour.

The nitwit is my father.

“Phoebe, I’m over at the gas station. I took Rocky away this morning, early, so that you wouldn’t have to deal with the situation. Listen, don’t hang up on me. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

I listen, saying nothing, twirling the phone cord.

“Are you still there?”

“Yup. I just got to sleep after worrying all night.” Sometimes it’s good to make a parent feel a little guilty.

There’s a pause. “I didn’t sleep well last night either. So about four o’clock this morning, I checked up on you. You were sound asleep,” he answers.

Sometimes a parent likes to make a kid feel guilty too.

“We’ll discuss all of that later,” he says. “Right now though, we’ve got a problem.”

I thought we already had a problem.

He continues. “Charlie says that Rocky’s not a he, she’s a she.”

He woke me up to tell me that?

Sometimes he’s very hard to understand.

I mumble something without really saying anything.

“She’s a nursing mother,” he says. “The babies will die if I don’t bring her home. It’s probably crazy, but I’m bringing her back. We’ll get stuck with Rocky and her babies knocking over our garbage . . . but I just can’t let them die.”

I wake up. “Oh, Daddy . . . . Thank you.”

He sighs. “We’ll be home soon. Why don’t you get breakfast going?”

“I’ll make you the best breakfast ever.” I want to hug him.

“See you soon,” he says. “Phoebe, I love you.”

“Me too—I love you too. I think you’re wonderful,” I gush.

“Look, honey, I’ll be home in a few minutes. I’m just going to stop off for the Sunday paper.”

After we hang up, I jump out of bed and get dressed, putting on my new jeans and sweat shirt, which I was saving for a special occasion.

The sweat shirt’s a little tight, the way they always are when they’re not broken in. Pulling it out, I try to stretch it.

That’s one of the reasons that I need to have a best friend in Woodstock. That’s what best friends do—help you stretch your sweat shirts . . . talk . . . have pimple-squeezing sessions.

I really miss Katie, my best friend in New York City. We used to do lots of things together, like the time we took five rolls of toilet paper and completely covered her older sister’s room with it. And the time we roller-skated in the fountain in Central Park. We could also be serious. Like when my parents were getting a divorce and when her father found out he had cancer. We really helped each other through both of those things. Sometimes I want to slug the grown-ups who say that childhood is so easy and fun. It isn’t.

I know that Rocky’s not the answer. A raccoon
can’t do the things Katie and I used to do together, but at least having her around will make me feel better until I do make a friend.

I rush into the kitchen and start the breakfast—melon, peppermint tea, carrot juice, pumpkin bread, and an omelet—all things that I know my father loves.

When the car pulls up in the driveway, I rush out and hug my father.

We get the cage out of the car trunk.

Rocky’s not moving much. I’d be pretty scared and tired, too, if I’d been through all that.

My father takes a stick to open the cage door. “Stand back, Phoebe. She may be angry. I don’t want to have to take one of us to Kingston General Hospital with a raccoon bite.”

The cage door opens.

We step back.

Rocky just sits there.

My father prods her with the stick.

Looking carefully at us, Rocky steps out.

She’s so cute—those little paws, the way her face looks like she’s a bandit with a mask.

She’s not moving.

I kneel down and talk to her. “Go, Rocky. Go back to your babies.”

“She’s afraid to lead us to them. Let’s go inside.” My father takes the paper out of the car.

We start walking down the path, arm in arm.

I turn around.

Rocky’s rushing off.

“Daddy, thank you.” I pat his arm. “I promise to clean up the messes.”

“I’m going to have a trash bin built.” He sighs. “Then we won’t have to worry. We should have done that from the beginning. I just didn’t want to spend the money on it.”

“We can leave some leftovers out for Rocky and her babies.” I open the back door to the kitchen-dining area.

My father goes inside.

I follow.

He’s talking to himself. “Full-time country living takes some getting used to. It’s so different. I hope I made the right choice.”

Me too, I think, making the omelet. Sometimes late at night I think about what it would be like if we could move back. But when I mentioned it, he got upset. So now I just think it, I don’t say it.

I make the omelet while my father starts
The New York Times
crossword puzzle. Scrambling the eggs,
I mix them with onions, mushrooms, pepper, and cheese.

Now that there are just the two of us, I do a lot of the cooking.

The breakfast’s on the table. It looks great but I’d love to have bacon. My father’s turned into a semi-veggie, so I have to wait till I go to New York for my meat fix.

My father tastes the food. “This is really good. Listen, there’s a terrific band playing tonight at the Café Expresso. Let’s go.”

“I’d love to.” It’ll be like a date with my father.

“I’m going to spend the day painting. Mind making the dinner tonight? I’ll be on food detail tomorrow.”

“Leave it to me.” I clear the table. “It’s going to be a meal you’ll never forget.”

W
henever I cook, I think of Missy Mandelbaum. She was the only kid in the Shake, Bake, and Make elective back in my old school who got an A-plus. I wish she were here now to help me prepare this meal. It may turn into a dinner my father will never forget because it’ll be the pits.

I’m not a fantastic cook—or even a good one. In fact, I’m a pretty lousy cook. I’ve been trying, but it’s not easy.

Before the divorce I helped out in the kitchen, but helping out is not the same as making an entire meal.

How do people get complicated meals together, set the table, and smile at the same time?

I started out my cooking career after I returned from camp. Macaroni and cheese from the package was my first solo attempt. “Not bad,” my father said, so I made it every night for three nights. “Boring,” he said, so I made it the next time with tuna fish, thinking maybe he wouldn’t notice that I was still using boxed macaroni and cheese.

He noticed. He also read the ingredients on the package.

“Enough” was his response.

Now I’m trying out new menus, but there have been several disasters, like the time the recipe said “Blend the salad” and I threw it in the blender. That night we had salad soup.

I want everything to be special tonight, to celebrate Rocky’s release and going to the Café Expresso to listen to live music.

The main course is easy. Cheese fondue. The bread cubes are cut and the cheese is grated. All I have to do is melt the cheese down with some wine in the chafing dish. The vegetables are cut and ready to
steam. The salad is made, tossed—not thrown in a blender.

It’s the dessert that’s driving me nuts. My father loves mocha Bavarian cream, even if he is trying to stay away from sweets. It should be easy to make. My mother never had any problems with it. The recipe calls for two tablespoons of strong coffee and heavy cream. I’ve used the beaters on it, but it looks pretty weird.

I put my finger in the mixture and lick it.

It tastes pretty weird.

Times like this (and other times), I miss my mother.

She’s out of town on a job and left a number to call in case of emergencies.

This dessert is a disaster.

Disasters are emergencies.

Therefore I can call her.

I dial the number my mother’s given me.

I ask the person who answers to please put my mother on the phone.

The voice that answered sounded southern. I sometimes wonder about the people my mother decorates for. What they look like . . . what their houses looked like before . . . what they look like after she’s done . . . . Sometimes I resent the people because my
mother has to meet with them when it’s convenient for them—like on a weekend I’m supposed to spend with her.

Finally my mother comes to the phone. “Phoebe, what’s wrong?”

“Hi, Mom,” I say. “How are you?”

“Out of breath from running to get to this phone.” She takes a deep breath. “Is everything all right? Are you okay? Has anything happened to your father?”

I realize that I’m probably going to be in deep trouble for making this call. “Mom, everything’s okay. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to make mocha Bavarian cream and I’m having trouble. I need your help.”

There’s a long pause, a very long pause.

“Mom, you don’t have to help me if you don’t have time,” I say.

“You shouldn’t have called me at a client’s home unless it was an emergency. I was frightened to death. You should be more responsible.”

“I’m sorry.”

There’s another pause and then a sigh. “Okay, just don’t do it again.”

“I promise,” I say. “And, Mom, I guess I just wanted to talk to you. I miss you.”

As I say that, I realize it’s true. I do miss her. Whenever I’m with one parent, even if I’m having fun, there are times when I miss the other one.

She calms down. “I know, but you should have called tonight at the hotel, not here. Use the emergency numbers just for that.”

“I promise. Honest.” Sometimes parents think they have to tell you something twelve times before it sinks in.

“Now, as long as you’ve already gotten me out of the consultation, tell me what the problem is with the recipe.”

I explain. “I took out the coffee beans, ground them up, and put them in the cream and beat them. The mixture tastes awful, gritty and yucky, not the way it is when you make it.”

She laughs. “Phoebe, you’re supposed to make the coffee first and then put in two tablespoons of liquid. That’s what went wrong.”

No wonder.

I feel like a real airhead.

She keeps laughing.

That doesn’t help.

Finally she stops and says, “Don’t feel bad. It happens to all of us. When I first got married, I wanted
to make your father a lemon meringue pie. The recipe said to beat the egg whites. I boiled the eggs first and tried to beat them. How was I supposed to know you were supposed to beat them raw? So don’t feel bad.”

We talk for a few minutes more, then she says, “I’ve got to go. They’re trying to decide whether to furnish the rec room in Art Deco or Hi-tech. Every time I do a job in the suburbs, I swear that I’ll never do another.”

The suburbs on a Sunday—I wonder if she’s caught poison ivy yet.

We tell each other that we love each other and then hang up.

I remake the dessert, brewing the coffee first. This time it works.

The dinner’s a success. My father loves it.

As we’re eating dessert I tell him that I called my mother.

“How’s Kathy doing?” he asks quietly.

“Fine. Busy. Working hard.” I pour myself more milk. “She told me how to make the dessert right. I goofed it up at first.”

He smiles. “She always was good in the kitchen. Except for a few early disasters.”

“Like the lemon meringue? She told me about that.”

He takes more dessert. “Did she tell you about the time I tried to make a meat loaf?”

“No. I think she was kind of busy.”

“I put hard-boiled eggs in it.”

“That sounds right to me,” I say.

“Without taking the shells off first?”

“No wonder you gave up red meat.”

“It was for your mother’s twenty-third birthday. She was pregnant with you. It was my first attempt at making anything that wasn’t barbecued. She was so good about it, smiled as she picked the shells out of her teeth.”

“Sounds like it was fun in a weird way.”

“It was.” He sighs. “There were some really good times between your mother and me. It’s a shame it changed.”

I just sit still, folding my paper napkin into a tiny square.

He looks at me. “The good memories and the fact that we have you make it worthwhile, Phoebe.”

I put the napkin down and pat him on the hand. “Maybe it could still work out if you both really tried.”

“We really did try, honey. It was no one’s fault. I
married someone who fit right in with the way I was brought up. Only one day I realized I didn’t want to live the way I was brought up. Look, let’s not talk about it. I’ll do the dishes. You better get changed if we’re going to leave in half an hour. Thanks for the dinner. You did a great job.”

I look down at my clothes. They’ve got mocha Bavarian cream and coffee grounds spattered all over. That’s because I turned on the beaters before I put them into the mixture. Gunk all over my new clothes. Now I’ll have to wash them before wearing them to school. That’s okay though. New clothes always have to look used to look right.

While I’m changing I think about the marriage and the divorce. I do that a lot.

I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it and it won’t hurt so much.

I hope so.

I
feel like I’m on a grown-up date with my father, sitting at a table and listening to the Betty McDonald Band.

School’s tomorrow, but tonight I can stay up late. My father loves to celebrate things. Tonight it’s because Rocky’s free. Once, before the divorce, he wanted to celebrate the septic tank being cleaned out. My mother said it was ridiculous to make a big deal out of something like that, but my father
insisted. Now that they’re divorced though, I’m glad to celebrate any time he wants to.