Longest Day Ever

By the time Grandad and I leave the record store, it’s nearly four o’clock. Grandad has to go to a weekly meeting at his veterans’ club until five and Mom doesn’t get home from work until 5:30. So when I get home, I go to the kitchen for a snack and sit down on the couch with my school computer.

I check my email. No reply from Jane Yolen yet.

I check my grades. All good.

I check the school calendar and see that the homecoming dance is three weeks away.

I’m about to search for how to ask a girl to the homecoming dance, but then Dad walks in the front door and it’s Thursday, so it feels like an emergency.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Uhh—aren’t you happy to see me?” he asks back.

“Sure,” I say, “but it’s Thursday and—does Mom know you’re coming over tonight?”

“Yeah. I’m staying for dinner.” He sits down on the other couch and puts his feet on the coffee table.

“Oh. Okay. I have some stuff I have to do upstairs,” I say. “I’ll be down in a little bit.” I pick up my computer and take it to my room. I don’t know why. I just don’t feel right being alone with Dad in Mom’s house. Plus, Mom would have told me if he was coming today. She always reminds me.

I sit on my bed and open my laptop and barely have time to type in How to ask a girl to a dance when I hear Dad walking around outside my room. I hear him open the linen closet door and close it again. I hear him move toward Mom’s room. Something about it makes me get up and go to the hallway.

“Oh! Hey there!” he says. His hand is still on the doorknob to Mom’s bedroom.

“Why aren’t you in the garage?” I ask.

“Do I always have to be in the garage?”

“Well,” I say, “yeah. Kinda. I don’t think Mom wants you up here. Not in her room, anyway.”

“I was just checking things out. Bus dropped me early.”

I know and he knows that the bus didn’t drop him off early—he just caught an early bus. He lies with the same ease as Denis gets freaked out by snakes.

I know the only way out of this is a diversion, so I say, “Let’s go play catch.”

He turns around and starts back downstairs, which I take for a yes. But then, on our way down the steps, he says, “I can’t really play catch, though. My arm is hurting today.” His arm seems fine to me. But I don’t tell him that. Instead I say, “Okay. Let’s just sit outside or something. Mom should be home soon.”

We go out to the porch and sit on the patio furniture. He looks around and doesn’t say anything. Finally, Grandad comes home and saves me. If Grandad is surprised to see Dad, he doesn’t show it. I need to work on that.

“Mac,” Grandad says, “you need to empty the dishwasher. I’ll keep Mike company.”

I say, “Okay,” and go inside and find the dishwasher already emptied. When I look back out to the porch, I can see Grandad leaning forward and talking to Dad with a serious look on his face.

I don’t think Mom knew he was coming.

I don’t think Mom wants him here on a Thursday.

I don’t think he was invited to dinner.

I don’t know what to do with my own dad. He thinks he’s not from this galaxy. And he’s acting more and more like that every day.

This has been the longest day of my life. It’s like I lived a week from the eight a.m. meeting with Dr. McKenny until recess detention. And another week between then and now.

Mom finally comes home close to six and is balancing two pizzas from our local pizza shop. (She’d have gotten it delivered, but they passed an ordinance last year banning pizza delivery in the town borough.) I take them from her and put them on the table and get busy finding paper plates and getting glasses out for drinks. The fact that there are two pizzas makes me understand Grandad already texted her to let her know Dad is here.

“You’re such a good kid,” Mom says. She smiles at me, then walks over and kisses me on my head. She takes a deep breath of my hair and I don’t get why she does that, but when I asked last time, she said it’s because I still smell like I did when I was a baby. Weird.

At dinner I tell Mom, Dad, and Grandad about our second meeting with Dr. McKenny, how we know it’s Ms. Sett, and how she said that kids had complained. I explain what Marci said about how this is all about the patriarchy and how we need feminism because it’s good for everyone.

“Oh wow!” Grandad says. “She’s a firecracker!”

I smile. “Yeah,” I answer. “And at the end of the day, we talked to Ms. Sett, just to make sure she knew we aren’t trying to be mean or anything. We just want to not have censored books.”

“What’d she say?” Mom asks.

“She acted like crossing out words in books is a totally normal thing to do. Just like the principal did.”

Dad says, “What did they censor?”

“The word breasts and another vague mention of a girl’s chest,” I say.

Grandad asks, “So your next stop?”

“Superintendent. And a school board meeting, probably,” I say.

“I still think you should write a letter to the author,” Mom says.

I don’t tell her I already did. It’s as if the reality of Dad smashing Mom’s blue mug is in that letter because when I think of the letter, I think of the mug. So I haven’t told anyone I wrote it because just like my dad smashing things, it’s now a secret I want to keep.

She adds, “And don’t forget I’m coming to talk to Dr. McKenny tomorrow. Maybe I can get this moving faster.”

Grandad nods.

Dad doesn’t say anything. He just eats pizza.