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.
The band’s wonderful.
A woman comes up to the table and puts her hand on my father’s shoulder.
She coos, “Hi, Jim, how are you?”
I want to smack her hand off his shoulder. She looks like she once was a cheerleader—the type that’s ever so cute, always tossing her hair a certain way.
My father looks up at her and then stands up. “Hi, Martha. I’d like you to meet my daughter, Phoebe.”
She sits down without even being invited. “Hello, Phoebe. What a sweet name for such a lovely looking girl. Don’t you just love your name?” She uses that yucky voice that some grown-ups have when they don’t know how to talk to kids like real people.
I stare at the band. “My name is Phoebe Anna Brooks. My father chose the first name after Holden Caulfield’s little sister in The Catcher in the Rye, his favorite book when he was a teenager. My mother picked the name Anna because she likes palindromes, words that are spelled the same front and backward. If I were a boy they would have named me Babbling—Babbling Brooks.”
She giggles and looks at my father. “Babbling Brooks . . . She’s so cute, Jim. She looks just like you.”
“Excuse me, please.” I stand up. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
To barf, I want to add, but don’t.
I go to the bathroom door. There’s a sign on it that says RESTROOM. I’ll never understand why they call it that. People don’t go in there to rest.
Knocking first, I make sure no one’s in there and then I go in and look at the mirror.
Why can’t I be beautiful? I look so average—brown hair, brown eyes, too thin eyebrows. Boring. I must have gotten average genes from an ancestor. My mother’s a beauty. That’s what Duane, her boyfriend, always says. Although he’s generally a nerd, he’s right about her looks. And my father’s nice looking. It’s a case of two positives making a negative.
I put on lipstick, Passion Pink Frost.
It doesn’t help.
By the mirror on the wall, someone’s written HOO HA—SIX O’CLOCK. It makes no sense, but there are lots of things that don’t make any sense.
Oh, well, I guess it’s time to go out.
I walk out and stand by the salad bar.
Maybe she’s fallen in a hole somewhere.
She’s even taken my seat, the one closest to my father.
I go up to the table, pull over the other chair, and sit on his left side.
While I pretend to listen to the music, I listen to their conversation.
She’s saying, “There’s a great group, the Marc Black Band, at the Lake over the weekend. I hope you’ll be there, Jim. You’re such a good dancer.”
I want to stuff her head into the drum set.
“Maybe. It sounds like fun.” My father touches his bald spot. “Next weekend Phoebe will be visiting her mother in the city. When she’s here, I like to spend the time with her. I’ll probably be there. Be sure to save a dance for me.”
“As many as you want.” She gets up.
Maybe by next weekend someone will break her legs.
After she leaves, I turn to my father, who says, “Phoebe, you could have been more polite.”
“She got on my nerves.”
He shakes his head. “She’s a nice lady.”
“How do you know her? How does she know you’re a good dancer?”
He picks up his swizzle stick and keeps hitting it on the side of his glass. “I love to listen to live music. I love to dance. The Joyous Lake is the best nightclub to do that in town. I went there during the summer, while you were at camp. I go there some weekends. You go to school and have the chance to meet new people. I don’t.”
“Did you ever go out with Martha?” I take the swizzle stick out of his hand before the tapping drives me nuts.
“No. But who knows? I may. Listen. I’m thirty-eight years old. Single. I date. I have a right to go out. It may upset you, but I do go out. I just don’t do it while you’re home. We have enough to adjust to already with our new life.”
“I like our new life just the way it is,” I tell him. “We don’t need anybody else.”
He shakes his head but says nothing.
I bite my fingernail. “I just don’t want you to bring home a wicked stepmother someday.”
He rumples my hair. “Don’t give me that Cinderella number.”
I pick up my soda. “And no mean stepsisters. Promise.”
“I promise.”
He’s really a good guy.
Anyway, I’m the one who’s sitting here with him—not Martha or anyone else.