I went back upstairs to Dad on the couch. He wasn’t crying anymore, and he looked emotionally lighter, if there is a way to look emotionally lighter. “Do you hate Jasmine Blue?” I asked.
He thought about the question for a few seconds. Rubbed his chin. “Yeah. I pretty much do.”
“I think I’m starting to hate Ellie, too,” I said.
“Let’s not use the word hate, okay, Cupcake? Your mom would freak out.”
I sputter laughter. “Like she didn’t hate Jasmine after she found those pictures? Yeah right.”
“She didn’t. She kinda felt sorry for her. Same as she felt sorry for all those other women—you know—in compromising positions.”
“And then she committed suicide, Dad.”
He looked at me.
“If that’s not an act of hate, I don’t know what is,” I said.
“She hated the world,” he said. “She was mad as hell at the world.” He looked at his hands then. “I always figured it was her final joke—leaving us on her own terms. Getting the hell out of here. All the politics. All the bullshit. Your mother? Was too honest to live. That’s what it was. She was too honest.”
I looked at him and smiled because he was smiling. There we were, smiling about Dead Darla.
But I could picture him then, the way he used to look—cargo shorts and a cut-off flannel shirt and some faded T-shirt that had holes in it. Long, curly hair. Boots. Doc Martens, probably. Young, like Darla was. He was a handsome man. She was a handsome woman. I was their handsome offspring who was also too honest to understand bullshit. And I didn’t fit into any conversation I ever heard because all people talked about was dumb crap that I didn’t give a shit about. Nobody talked about art. Nobody talked about how the mourning dove lied. Nobody talked about the Zone System.
I fit in here. In my house. In my family, which was just me and Dad since I was four. I didn’t think I’d ever fit in anywhere else. Ever. When I looked at Dad, I realized he felt the exact same way. We were mad at the world, and this was the only place it was okay to be mad at the world.
Darla had to escape. That’s what she did. So what would I do? What would Dad do? If rolling in bullshit isn’t something we can do, then where’s the door? There’s got to be another door.
“So what did Ellie do this time?” he asked.
“Nothing any worse than what she always does,” I said. “She’s always about Ellie, you know? Self-serving or whatever.”
“But friends forgive each other for that shit, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Ellie has never really been a friend.” I felt like the worst person right then. “I mean, we’re—uh—accidental friends. She lives there. I live here. But we don’t really have much in common or something.”
“Huh.”
“Is that okay?” I asked.
“Sure. I mean, as long as all this stuff we’re talking about isn’t turning you away from her. She always seemed like a pretty cool kid.”
“But the apple, right? It doesn’t fall far and all that.”
“Huh,” he said again. “But she didn’t do anything that made you say that?”
“We had a fight. But it’s a fight we should have had years ago, so no, she didn’t really do anything specific. Everything serves to further, I guess. You know? Maybe I’m changing. Maybe I’m growing up or maybe she’s not. I don’t know.”
“Be careful with her.”
“I’ll try.” I couldn’t explain to him that she hadn’t been careful with me.
I walked outside. It was one of those perfect early-June nights. Cool, but I could still wear just a T-shirt. I left all the porch lights off so I could see the stars. I looked up at them and talked to Darla because she was there in the stars because I was there, too. In the history of the world, we are all in the stars, right?
I told her, “Sometimes I want to leave on my own terms too, but I have something to do. I don’t know what it is yet, but I know I have something to do.”
Transmission from Betelgeuse: You have something to do.
Transmission from Vega: You have something to do.
Transmission from Polaris: You have something to do.
I nearly fell asleep on the porch step, sitting up. Crying was exhausting. I hadn’t done it in so long, I’d forgotten how it makes you tired. Maybe Darla was so tired, she just couldn’t do it anymore.