Chapter 3

Dad threw something into the shopping cart. “What is it?” I said. It looked like an overgrown tennis ball that had been left out in the rain.

“Celeriac. Didn’t we ever have it before?”

“No.” I poked it. “Is it alive or dead?”

Dad weighed some tomatoes. “It’s just a root veggie, Ami. Ugly, but good.” He put his hand on my shoulder. I ducked away. I don’t know why. Just recently, it seems I don’t want my father always hugging me or putting his arm around me.

I followed him as he strolled through the aisles, looking at different kinds of crackers, tasting the cheese samples, and comparing prices. It takes him forever to do the shopping. We’d already bought everything on our list, but we were still wandering around the market.

“Da-ad.” I gave him a significant look and tapped my wristwatch. “School tomorrow.” That can usually get him going. He’s not the sort of person who lives in the fast lane. Mostly, he ambles along, very relaxed. Which can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on the situation. In my opinion, he had been too relaxed about my mother.

I take it back. That’s really unfair. Once my mother made up her mind, I guess there was no way anybody was going to stop her. And Dad tried, he really did. Three or four or five times a week, she and Dad would have what Mom called “the same old arguments, again, Martin,” and what Dad called “our ongoing discussion.” I would hear their voices, Mom’s racing, rising and falling, Dad’s slow, deep, and deliberate. After a while, she would stop talking, but he wouldn’t. Fred says when Dad wants something, he’ll wear you down with reasonable “discussions.” But he couldn’t wear Mom down.

Dad and I walked over to the fish department, and he started sniffing—it was really cute—just like our cat does when the wind is blowing. Our cat’s name is Alcott, after Louisa May. Did I say my father is an English teacher? That’s why half the things we have are named after dead writers. Our car is Steinbeck (for John Steinbeck) and, if you can believe it, my father’s desk is Willie. No, not for William Shakespeare, but some other ancient writer named Maugham, who lived to be about 200 years old. Well, 98 anyway. Or 89, something like that. “Wonderful writer,” my father says.

My father looks a lot like Fred. Or should I say Fred looks a lot like Dad? Both of them are sort of medium height and on the skinny side. Fred’s better-looking, but my father has a better personality, very gentle and patient. Really, he hardly ever loses his temper. Sometimes kids will come up to me in school and say, “Is Mr. Pelter your father? He’s neat!”

At the fish counter, the fish were laid out in ice, their dead eyes staring up at us.

“Fresh cohoe salmon today,” the pink man behind the counter said. The fish were gutted open. They were pink, too, outside and inside.

“Let’s have that little beauty.” Dad pointed to one of the fish.

I couldn’t believe it. My father’s worst fault is how cheap he is. He’s always pointing out to us how much things cost and how little English teachers make. “Dad, it’s eight dollars a pound!”

“Fresh cohoe salmon, Ami, you don’t see that too often. Think of it as a new experience.”

“Maybe I don’t want a new experience. What’s wrong with tuna fish?”

“We’ve had it three times a week for the last three months. Tuna fish casserole. Tuna fish sandwiches. Tuna fish loaf. I want something else once in a while, something I like.”

He sounded sort of sad and yet definite, as if he really didn’t want me to argue with him. “I just thought, since it’s so expensive—”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then a really strange thing happened. Right there in the supermarket, leaning on the fish counter, he started talking to me about Mom. “You know, your mother wanted to get into the world. She never lived on her own, she said she had to find out what it was like.”

“I know, Dad.” I kicked at the wheels of the cart.

“We were always different. Your mother’s much more go go go than I am.”

Why did we have to talk about it here?

The man behind the fish counter handed Dad the salmon wrapped in plastic. I thought Dad would take the hint and we’d leave, but he went on talking. “I asked her to go to a marriage counselor; I thought we should all go. You and Fred, too, because I saw it as a family problem. But your mother had other ideas. She said it was no good, it wasn’t like patching up a dish that was cracked.”

“Don’t you think we should get going?” I said. I tugged at the cart. “Do you want some ice cream? Or a frozen pie? Last week you said that frozen strawberry pie was delicious.” I was afraid he was going to get himself into a really depressed mood talking about Mom. The first few weeks after she left last summer were terrible. Dad hardly talked. We’d sit down to eat supper and he’d pick up his fork and then just sit there. Usually, after a while, Fred or I would say, “You okay, Dad?” And Dad would look up and give this sad, sad smile. It was awful! It made me so mad at my mother. For a long time, I was really furious with her.

“When she first brought up this idea of leaving,” Dad went on, “I thought it was just hare-brained, some idea she got from a woman’s magazine about fulfillment. And then I saw she was serious, I saw that no matter how much I talked and tried to change her mind, she had this one idea that she was getting a job and moving out.”

“Dad—”

“She could have held down a job here in Alliance. I wasn’t holding her back about that. You know that, don’t you? And I told her, any time she wants to come back—”

Suddenly, I thought, Mom is coming back! That’s why he’s talking this way. To get me ready for it. “She’s coming back?” I said. I could hardly breathe. “She’s coming back?”

“What?” Dad looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he tossed the package of fish into the cart. “No, honey, no. Oh, no.”

When we got home, Fred was in the kitchen, reading the sports page and eating last night’s leftovers. “Stop right there,” Dad said. “Don’t ruin your appetite, Fred. We have something special for supper tonight. Fresh cohoe salmon.”

“Fish?” Fred said. He didn’t look impressed.

While Dad cooked the salmon, I made french fries and Fred set the table. Alcott hung around, purring and getting between everyone’s legs. He was certainly enthusiastic about the idea of fish for supper.

When we sat down, Dad put big chunks of salmon on our plates and looked at us expectantly. I took a bite. Soft, and not too much taste. “Mmmm,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings.

“So. This is the famous cohoe salmon,” Fred said. “Kind of blah, isn’t it, Dad? Maybe you didn’t cook it right.”

“The flavor is subtle, Fred.”

“I guess it’s wasted on me.”

“Could be. Wait until you taste it cold tomorrow, though. That’s really special.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Fred said. “I’d rather have cold almost anything than cold fish.”

“I don’t understand you. This fish is delicious. Where are your taste buds?”

“Well, you have to defend it, Dad. You’re the guy who made the mistake of buying the expensive little sucker.”

My father’s eyebrows shot up.

Silence for a few moments. Then Fred said, “I finally got all the forms filled out for student exchange. Now I wait to hear if I’m in.”

“Student exchange?” I said. “When? Where?”

“Where do you think, Ami? France.”

When Fred was in sixth grade, he got into an AP conversational French course. Ever since then, he’s been a Francophile. Dad’s word. It means someone actually in love with everything French. Fred’s bedroom is covered with maps and posters of France. He listens to French records and French songs, he gets a monthly French language magazine. Of course, he rides a Peugeot bike, and he’s after Dad to buy a Peugeot car. They only cost about twenty thousand dollars!

Fred wants to be a translator, maybe work for the United Nations. I told him that the way he argues with Dad over just about anything, it’s a good thing he doesn’t want to be a diplomat, someone who has to make peace between people.

“I’ll be going in the spring,” Fred said. “March, April, May. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a family right in Paris.”

“You’ll be gone for three months?”

“Right. Back in time for exams. Dad, you won’t have to think about me for three months. Voilà! No arguments for three whole months.”

Dad and Fred started talking about the money part of student exchange. I left the table and began washing the dishes. My least favorite house chore, but I couldn’t just sit there and listen to Fred sounding so happy about going away. No one had asked me how I felt. Three months was a long time. What guarantee was there that Fred would even come home after those three months? What if he loved France so much he stayed there? It could happen. Mom had been gone five months now and I still wasn’t used to it. I didn’t think I ever would be. And I wouldn’t get used to Fred’s being gone for three months next spring, either. When he brought his dishes over to the sink, I said, “Traitor.”

“What’d I do now?”

“You know!”

“What? What?”

“France,” I muttered, splashing dishes into the water.

Fred looked at me, surprised. “Ami, it’s a long way off. Think of it this way. You’ll have Dad all to yourself. Anyway, what kind of red-blooded American kid sister are you? I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me.”

“You’re right! I will be.”

“There you go.”

“I still think you’re a traitor.”