THAT NIGHT, DAD MAKES pizza for dinner. He makes the crust himself and rolls it out thin, then stacks it with sausage, red pepper, black olives and extra cheese. He makes it about once a month, sometimes twice if he’s in the mood. Usually we eat it on the black beanbag chairs in the TV room and watch a video, but tonight he’s got the leftover red Christmas candles going in the dining room like it’s somebody’s birthday.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Nothing. Can’t a man make his daughter a nice dinner once in a while?” he says.
Something’s up. Maybe it happened. Maybe Mom called. Usually I know what’s going on in his head. Usually I’m the one telling him what he’s thinking. He’ll be sitting in the living room reading a computer magazine and clutching his stomach and I’ll have to say, “What’s for dinner?” to remind him that he might be hungry.
The crust snaps and crunches in our mouths. I wait for him to say what he has to say and he sits there pretending nothing’s going on. When he finishes his slice he opens his mouth and I sit up.
“You want another slice?” he says. I can’t stand it anymore.
“Dad! When are you going to tell me?”
“What? When am I going to tell you what?”
“About the phone call?”
“Oh, that,” he says and wipes his mouth with his napkin. I’m shivering. It happened.
“How could you know about that?” he says. “Fine. I’ll tell you. Leon phoned. He’s quit his job. He’s been thinking about it for a long time, but today’s the day he did it. I said he could use the spare room as an office, but only if it’s okay with you...”
My mind is going in circles.
“Leon quit?” I say, trying to catch up.
“Uh-huh. His boss was none too happy about it, either. She’s bent out of shape because she’s afraid he’s going to steal some of her accounts.”
“And he’s going to work here?” In the spare room — he means the ghost room. Now Leon’s going to be around all the time.
“Yeah, so on the weekend he’ll come over and we’ll move the bedroom stuff out of there and we’ll go get stuff for Leon’s office. He’s got this mondo computer picked out and we might get a drafting table, too. I think there’s room in there for it. So, you don’t mind, do you?”
“What?” This whole big pizza deal over nothing.
“We don’t absolutely have to do this, Gwen. But, to tell you the truth, I’d be relieved to know he was around when you came home after school. I’m not comfortable with you being here alone. Last year you were always at Anisha’s.”
“Okay, Dad, I get the point.” So that’s what this is really about.
“What point?” he says, scratching behind his ear with his long nails.
“I know what you’re doing. I know you’ve noticed that I don’t have any friends this year, but you don’t have to get Leon to play with me. I’m thirteen, Dad. I can take care of myself.”
“No, no, no,” he says with his mouth full of pizza. “Leon does want to work here. It’s okay, right?” He has a big blob of cheese stuck on his chin, You’d think he’d know where his mouth is after forty-one years of eating. I put my finger on my chin to show him he’s got something there. He wipes his chin and looks at me like a dog waiting for a bone.
“I said it was okay, didn’t I? It’s not that big a deal.”
“Oh, it’s a big deal, all right. You know what a chance Leon’s taking, going freelance in this town? He does have a few leads. He’ll either start raking it in, or die a long, slow, painful death...as an art director.” I shake my head and stare at my plate. I really thought my mother had called him. I thought for sure this time.
“What’s wrong, Gwen?” he asks after a while of letting it be quiet, “You were saying you don’t have any friends this year. Do you miss Anisha? Is that it?” When it’s just me and him, sometimes his eyes go soft. It’s like his soft eyes are freshly peeled onions in how they make my eyes leak.
“No. I don’t miss her,” I say, wiping my nose with my sleeve. “I hate her. She’s so ignorant. I can’t believe I spent all that time with her.” He moves closer and puts his arm around me. He always does that.
“Don’t you like the other kids at school? Is anyone. . .jerking you around? What’s going on, sweetie?”
“Nothing,” I whisper and shove my head into his chest. He holds on to me for a long time. I look at an olive on the tablecloth and listen to him breathe. Dad kisses the top of my head, gives me a squeeze and lets me go. He wipes my eyes with his thumbs and smiles that goofy lop-sided grin of his.
“I got Heavenly Hash ice cream, too, in case the pizza didn’t work. Want some?” He gets up, leaving me to play with the melted candle wax.
The candles are making it hot. I open the dining-room window. The sunset clouds make mountains in the sky above Skeleton Park. That’s not the park’s official name, but everybody calls it that because it was built on a burial site for victims of a flu epidemic way back when. The neighborhood kids and dogs run and play on the grass growing over their dead bodies. Whenever they have to dig there for the sewers, they always find bones. They put a playground on top of it, but it’s still a graveyard.
Leon can move his stuff into the spare room and call it an office, but that won’t change what was there before. Doesn’t matter what’s in it. That room will always be the ghost room to me.
I open the window wider, lean out and smell the cool air.
Dad and Leon are moving the ghost room furniture out into the truck. Neither of them is really fit, so they are panting like two dogs. I can tell they are trying to prove to each other that they are in good shape by moving everything out fast. I sit on the windowsill and watch them grunt as they lift stuff into the van. The room is naked.
I never came in here anyhow. It had these frills on everything, little roses on the bedspread and perfume bottles on the vanity. It was too girly a room for me. They took the mirror off the vanity and put it in the TV room. It’s going to Leon’s place because he doesn’t have one. It was an empty mirror. Nobody ever looked in it except by accident. All that mirror ever saw was the room: the empty bureau, the empty bed, the curved top of the empty chair in front of it, and the round, pale-faced windup clock that stopped ricking five years ago.
That’s when my mother left. The ghost room used to be hers.
Dad said I could have anything I wanted from here. He said I could have the canopy bed. Before she left, I used to love that bed. It was like a fairytale bed with the fine white mesh coming down. I did sleep in it once after she’d gone, but I had this horrible nightmare that I started going transparent. In the dream, I was lying on the bed, weakening. My arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, only it looked like nothing at all. It was fading, so that I could barely make out its edges. I tried to throw off the covers, but they were too heavy. I looked at my arm and rolled up the sleeve of my pajamas and saw nothing. I didn’t exist anymore. It was like I was haunting myself. I sat straight up in the bed screaming.
Ever since then, every time I see those mesh curtains on the canopy bed, I feel like I’m a ghost and my stomach goes empty.
I’m glad they’re taking it away.
Leon comes huffing up the stairs and grabs a couple of drawers from the bureau.
“You could help,” he says. Sweat pours down the front of his legs below his red bicycle shorts.
“You two are doing fine without me.” I look out the window at Dad putting the chair to the vanity in the van. We’re taking it to the Goodwill.
“I understand if this is upsetting to you.”
“I’m not upset. I’m glad we’re getting rid of this stuff. It’s not like she was using it. You need a place to work. I understand. It’s practical.” I squeeze my crossed arms closer to my body.
“It’s more than practical, Gwen. I like it here. I want to spend more time with you. That’s part of it.” A drop of his sweat hits the floor. Dad comes up behind him and I turn to the window again.
“Gwen?” Leon asks.
“What?” I hiss, whipping my head around.
“You okay, Princess?” Dad asks.
“Don’t ever call me that,” I say and walk past them to the bathroom. I lock the door and sit in the dry tub.
“Leave her,” I hear Leon say to Dad. I wait for them to go downstairs with the last of the stuff. Then I go back to the ghost room.
It’s completely empty. You can see the outlines on the walls of where the furniture used to be. When we paint the walls, they’ll disappear, too.
We go to the Business Depot to look at office furniture.
“What do you think of chrome, Kevin?” Leon asks Dad.
“Mmm, yes. Chrome. Well, you can see yourself in it,” says Dad.
“Good point.” They nod their heads like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I plop myself on an office chair and use my feet to spin it.
Round and round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows. I steady myself long enough to catch them arguing in the corner.
“No, no, no. Absolutely not. Kevin, what are you thinking? You can’t be serious. This desk looks like it’s wearing a tie.”
“It is office furniture, Leon,” Dad says. “It should look like it’s wearing a tie.”
“You’re so old-age. Tell your dad to get with it, Gwen,” Leon says, trying to drag me into it. I spin away.
And spot Clara coming down the aisle, her eyes widened in excitement like I’m a movie star. She’s with her mom who is wearing a straight skirt and one of those blouses with the flouncy ties at the neck, and it’s not a work day. Mrs. Scanlan is staring at Leon. I can see her focus on his dyed blond hair. I wish myself to disappear.
Clara comes toward me.
“Hi. What are you doing here?”
“Nothing. Thinking about buying a desk.” I try to turn her away from Dad and Leon. Leon is getting loud. I take a deep breath. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothing. Getting videotapes and a binder for Garth. He’s grounded because Mom found out he hasn’t taken any notes in class since school started. He says he’s keeping it in his head, but he’s really trying to be cool by not carrying any books. Is that your dad?” Clara is looking over my shoulder at Leon.
“Family friend,” I say, tensing.
I bet Dad’s looking at us. I’m afraid that Dad or Leon might come over and want to be introduced to Clara. Clara’s mom is still giving Leon the evil eye but she’s also checking me out like I’m some hooligan.
“I hate getting dragged around all weekend,” says Clara. “I mean, it’s not like we’re kids anymore, right? Why do we have to go all over the place with these guys? It’s embarrassing. You see what Mom is wearing? She bought that yesterday and she had to wear it today.”
“Clara” Mrs. Scanlan calls. Clara grimaces.
“I might as well be wearing a leash. “You do one wrong thing and they’re on you like glue.” Her mom calls her again. “All right” she calls back. Then she drags her feet down the aisle toward her mother, who is still staring at Leon.
I hear Dad say, loudly, “Leon, over here. What about this one? Look at the legs. Nice, eh? Sexy.”
I dig my fingernails deeply into the fake leather armrests and start to spin again.
“Who was that?” Dad asks, stopping the chair.
“This kid from school. They’re getting her brother a binder.” That seems to be enough for him. Clara’s mom turns down the aisle. Clara follows her, turns at the end of the aisle and waves at me. Then she clutches at her neck, pretending she’s being pulled by a leash.
“Hammy,” says Dad.
I wonder what Clara did to get herself in trouble? Maybe she was talking about her brother.