I wake to the sound of screaming.
“Lance! Are you aware of the date?”
My mother. I check the clock on the night table. Seven-thirty.
“It’s April twelfth. Twelve! That’s eleven days late for this month, and we still don’t have March!”
Ah. Daddy-kins is late on the child support. Again.
“If I don’t get that check, I’ll have to buy her clothes at Wal-Mart! Do you care?”
I really don’t think my dad cares where she buys my clothes. I think about the gummies in the garbage.
“You try and feed and clothe a sixteen-year-old on what you give me! The least you could do is not insult us by being late on top of everything. Really late.”
I take the bag from the garbage, then go to the bathroom, and shake the bears into the toilet. They scream as they whirl down the drain. I read once that Lindsay Lohan, the actress, dumps her Diet Coke onto her plate when she’s through eating so she won’t be tempted to graze, which is why you can see every bone in her neck like it’s on display. I need to do that. Closer to the bedroom, Mom’s voice is louder.
“No, I don’t use the money for myself. We had an agreement, Lance! Lance! Don’t you dare hold the phone away from your ear!”
I’m about to turn the stereo louder, the better to avoid Mom’s Vengeance Aria, when I hear the finale.
“You think you could do better, raising her?” She laughs. “I’d like to see that!”
Opera_Grrrl’s Online Journal
Subject: In Their Gummy Graves
Date: April 12
Time: 8:00 a.m.
Feeling: Determined
Miami HS of the Arts Possibilities
• Work on Mom
• Forge Mom’s signature on registration paperwork
• Stay at Key Biscayne High, be a cheer-girl & get stalked by ex
• Try 2 live with Dad???
I hit the backspace button and erase the last one.
The first thing I remember my father doing was leaving. That was the second thing too, and the third, and the tenth. My father was always leaving for something—business trips, double-secret golf weekends. Then one day when I was five, he got tired of coming home for fresh Jockey shorts and he left for good.
The day he left, in a scene reminiscent of The Parent Trap but without the British accents, my parents divided up the important stuff: Mom got me. Dad got the Porsche. I can still see myself wearing my favorite Sleeping Beauty dress (I loved Aurora because she looked just like Mom). We came home from preschool, and Dad was loading his suitcase into the trunk of the aforementioned Porsche. I asked if he was going on a trip. He looked at Mom.
She shrugged, like, “You tell her,” and he said no, he was leaving for good.
Note word choice: For good. He didn’t say what I now know are the usual meaningless things about how we’d still be a family, that it wasn’t my fault. He said he was leaving for good. I had no idea what “for good” meant, except it didn’t sound any good to me. I started crying. He yelled at Mom that she brought me home on purpose to make it hard for him and that this was the kind of crap she always did. Finally, he pried my fat fingers from his pants leg and drove away.
Mom held me, to keep me from being crushed by the Porsche, then said, “We should have dinner at Mickey D’s. A shake always helps.”
“No!” I didn’t want a shake. I wanted everything to go back to the screwed-up way it was. Finally, I agreed to go. I got a shake. A Shamrock, because it was March. Large. Since then mint ice cream has always made me sick. It’s one thing I can’t eat. But if I had to guess, I’d guess that’s also the day I started eating when I felt bad.
Some people fantasize about their dads coming back, or about going to live with them. Not me! I see Dad twice a year, at Thanksgiving or Christmas (not both, even though he only lives twenty minutes away), and again on Easter. For a long time, I associated Dad with the smell of sweet potatoes. Mom drives me to his place, which he shares with his lovely wife, Macy, and their charming daughters, Thing One and Thing Two. I get there an hour before dinner and leave an hour after. I always get presents, even on Thanksgiving, since Macy wraps my Christmas gifts early. Last Easter, the bunny brought me a Movado watch, all stuffed inside a pink plastic egg. I spent the next week trying to figure out how to convert it to cash. The stupid thing would’ve paid for an opera subscription or a lifetime supply of sheet music. But the jeweler would only give merchandise credit.
So I don’t kid myself about Dad. Even if Mom hasn’t exactly been supportive—even if she’s sort of a witch—she is, as she constantly reminds me, my only parent. I know that. That’s why it’s unfair of me to think about asking Dad to move in with him, just for a few months, until Mom realizes that Miami High School of the Arts is a good idea.
It’s also completely stupid, because I know he’d never take me.