2
Jessie Wainwright didn’t know, sitting at the breakfast table that Saturday morning, his cell phone propped against a cereal box as he streamed last night’s football game, that this was the day when everything would change. Weeks later, he’d think back and pinpoint that exact morning as the end of life as he knew it.
His daughter, Izabella, sat across from him, busy on her own phone.
“What’s your plan for the day?” he asked.
“Emma and I are going to the mall. I need my color refreshed.”
His gaze skimmed over her hair, recently dyed black with two inches of purple peeking out from the bottom. Along with her pale blue eyes, she’d inherited a mane of lustrous honey -colored hair from her mother. He hated what she’d done to it. But Izzy’s hair was not a hill he was willing to die on.
“And I need a new pair of jeans.”
“Do you need some money?” Already his hand was sliding into his pocket.
“I have my birthday money.”
He pulled out two twenties and set them beside her plate. “I’ll get the jeans. Just don’t buy a pair that’s full of holes.”
She sighed. “OK, Dad. Thanks.”
“How are you girls getting to the mall?”
“Emma’s mom is taking us. She has to do her Christmas shopping.”
Izzy had turned sixteen three months before, and so far, had no interest in getting her driver’s license. Which suited Jessie just fine.
He finished watching the game highlights and turned off his phone. A disappointing end to a disastrous season. There was always next year, except maybe there wasn’t. He’d stopped taking things like next year for granted.
He swallowed the last of his egg and sausage sandwich while Izzy nibbled at a slice of dry toast. The egg and sausage sandwiches had been their Saturday morning thing for as long as he could remember. He’d learned to make them after Nicole died, wanting to keep at least one small thing the same. But last week Izzy informed him she was a vegan now. That wasn’t his hill either.
He carried his plate to the sink and filled it with soapy water, grabbed the scraper and went to work on the fry pan. “I have a drywall job to finish up today. I shouldn’t be much later than six. Do you want me to bring home subs for dinner, or shall we grab something to eat at the festival?”
“Dad, about tonight. Can I tell you something without you making a federal case out of it?”
A federal case. His wife used to say that when she thought he was being unreasonable It’s fine, Jessie. Don’t make a federal case out of it. He didn’t like the way it sounded any better coming from his daughter. He took a moment to compose his face before turning around.
“What is it?”
“I got invited to the movies.”
A fist squeezed in his chest.
“Who invited you?”
“His name is Lon. And before you ask, you don’t know his family. They just moved here from Brooklyn. Mrs. Murphy made him my study partner in science class. That’s how I know him.”
It was too much information coming at him all at once. A movie date. With a boy he didn’t know. Lon from Brooklyn. Thank you, Mrs. Murphy.
“So it would be, like, a date?”
“Pizza and a movie, so yeah. Can I go? You said I could start dating when I turned sixteen.”
Yes, he had said that. But at the time she was fourteen and sixteen seemed so far away…
This. This was his hill.
To say that Jessie had not enjoyed dating would be like saying the passengers on the Queen of the Sea did not enjoy their ride. A skinny, socially awkward kid, Jessie’s dates were train wrecks, each one worse than the last. Until he met Nicole. He loved her at first sight, loved her calm spirit, and the way she put him at ease.
Baby, you’re fine. Don’t try so hard.
At seventeen, she was the third girl he’d dated. He thought she’d be the last.
The week before, thirteen months after Nicole died, his sister, Wendy, set him up with Alexis Crossman. Jessie regularly did work for Wendy’s real estate clients and Alexis had hired him to do some electrical work before she put her father’s old Victorian-style house up for sale. Though it needed much more than just new circuit breakers, the house had sold within a week, and the day after the closing, they went out to dinner to celebrate. Wendy and Mark, Jessie, and lovely Alexis.
Before the appetizers even arrived, he was that awkward kid again, his heart knocking around in his chest while sweat soaked his armpits. Not wanting to seem as though he was trying too hard, he sat like a buffoon, silently shoveling in his pasta. Embarrassed. Angry at himself. At Wendy. At life’s cruel twists. He wasn’t supposed to have to do this again.
Later, Wendy scolded him for being a grump.
“I wasn’t a grump.”
“You seemed it, sitting there like you were made of stone all evening. I’m afraid you made Alexis feel very uncomfortable.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“You need to lighten up, Jess. Take a chance and grab a little happiness. It’s OK to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
But he wasn’t happy. He was lonely. Alexis hadn’t seemed happy either, but he could understand that, having unexpectedly lost her father just a few months before. Even so, she was beautiful and intelligent, and he’d wanted very much to grab some of that beauty for himself. Instead, he’d caused another train wreck. He didn’t enjoy dating. But he could understand why Izzy would.
“You can go,” he finally said. “Movie. Pizza. Nowhere else. Home by eleven.”
“Dad, it won’t even be—”
“Home by eleven. That’s the deal. And I get to meet him first.”
She sighed.
“OK?”
“Okaaay.”
“What time are you going?”
“The movie starts at seven. He’s picking me up at six thirty.”
“You don’t want to go to Christmas in the Village, then?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been a million times.”
“What about your key? You might be a winner this year.”
“I thought maybe you could go. You could get my prize for me if I win anything.” She slid a silver key from her pocket and tapped it across the table, as though she’d prepared for the question ahead of time.
“I don’t know if I’ll go.”
“Please go, Daddy. I know you enjoy it. I’ll feel terrible if you spend the evening sitting around here alone.”
Then don’t go. But of course, he couldn’t say that. With a sigh, he slid the key into his pocket.
“And Dad, could you not be wearing your bathrobe when Lon gets here? And not be watching those old reruns?”
“I thought you liked those old reruns.”
“I do, it’s just…”
He didn’t know how it became a thing. After work, on winter Saturdays, he’d shower and put on the bathrobe Nicole gave him their last Christmas together. He and Izzy would eat the take -out he brought home and watch reruns of old sitcoms. A daddy-daughter date. Something for them to share. Something to laugh about at a time when there seemed to be so little laughter in their home.
Suddenly it dawned on him. It was the laughter, the earthquake of his laughter, must be, that was the problem. Fine for the two of them here alone, but an embarrassment in front of Lon from Brooklyn. He was losing his baby girl to a stranger. Lord, I’ll need your strength to get through this.