A Carol Christmas (17 page)

I decided I was jumping to wild, unsubstantiated conclusions. Had to be.

“You’re with Andie’s dad now?” James asked Brittany.

It could be just an idle question, a way of making conversation, except for the fact that James was still wearing The Look.

“Yes.” Brittany had been leaning against Dad when we first came in. Now she sat up and reached for her water glass, putting space between them. Body language said it all.

Okay, no jumping here. I barely had to move. In fact, the conclusions were jumping to me. James still wanted Brittany, and Brittany was open to being wanted. That turned Dad and me into human leftovers. It was a disheartening moment, and I almost asked for a doggie bag for myself.

But then I remembered I was now a tough New York businesswoman. I knew how to fight for what I wanted. Brittany already had my dad. She wasn’t going to get my date too.

“Small world,” I said, and leaned close to James so he could get a whiff of my perfume. He needed something to remind him that there was another woman at the table.

The perfume worked. He turned and looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time.

Yes, it’s me, Andie, your date
.

“Well,” said Dad in a falsely cheerful voice, “Maybe we should think about ordering. Get whatever you want, kids. It’s on me.”

I was sure Dad had meant his remark to make him sound generous, but instead it made him sound old, like an amiable geezer rewarding us kids for being good at the dentist’s with a trip to Dairy Queen.

I sneaked a look at James. He was frowning slightly. “I’ll pay. It’s the least I can do for Andie’s dad.”

James’ offer sounded more competitive than kind, and it further cemented the fact in our minds that Dad was the father figure at the table.

Poor Dad. He looked like a chaperone at a teen party who had tried to join in the fun and games. I figured he was now wishing he’d hidden behind his menu and pretended not to see us.

“That’s really sweet of you,” I said to James, just so he’d know I appreciated his generosity.

He smiled at me, then shot a glance Brittany’s direction.

And that irritated me. What was the point in shooting compliments if the person they were aimed at recycled them for another woman? How badly did I want to fight for this guy, anyway?

We opened our menus.

I scanned the selections. Normally I’d be considerate on a first date and choose something relatively inexpensive, like the Polynesian chicken. But with the way things were degenerating, I have to admit, I was not feeling my usual noble self. I went for the Lobster Lulu, the most expensive item on the menu.

“That sounds good,” Dad said. “I think I’ll have it too.”

“Me too,” Brittany decided.

James suddenly looked pale.

“What are you going to have?” I asked him. At this point, all he could probably afford was water.

“I think I’ll try the Polynesian chicken.”

“You can’t go wrong with chicken,” Dad said, but when the waiter came, he stuck to his Lobster Lulu order.

“So, James,” Dad said, “what do you do?”

“I’m in the band with your son.”

Dad nodded. “Oh, yeah. So, what else do you do?” I guess being a rock star in the making wasn’t enough when it came to his daughter.

“I give bass and guitar lessons at the music store.”

“You can make a living doing that?”

“Almost,” James replied honestly.

Dad looked underwhelmed.

“Hopefully, the band will take off,” James added.

Dad shook his head. “Bands these days, they lack style.”

James stiffened next to me.

“I think Fish Without Legs has style,” I said, then hoped Dad wouldn’t ask me to back up my statement with proof. They were all cute. That should count for something, but probably not with Dad.

“Me, I like oldies,” said Brittany. “Like ABBA.”

“Abba doesn’t qualify as oldies,” Dad informed her. “Now, stuff by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, that’s oldies. Or the Righteous Brothers.”

“That’s not old, that’s ancient,” James joked.

Dad’s eyes narrowed to laser-shooting slits, zapping James’ smile.

“Who is Sam the Sham and Pharaohs?” asked Brittany.

“You know.” Dad began to sing a cheesy old song about Little Red Riding Hood, and I cringed. Brittany looked blankly at him. The generation gap at this table was getting wider than the Grand Canyon.

The food arrived and I waited in dread, hoping Dad wouldn’t bring out one of his favorite restaurant cracks. Surely he wouldn’t.

He did. “I’ll give you a dollar if you eat this collie,” he said to Brittany.

She’d obviously already heard it and just rolled her eyes. Both James’ eyebrows shot up.

“The movie,
Badlands
,” Dad explained.

“Oh,” James said and nodded the way you would to placate someone who might be dangerous.

“It was before we were born,” Brittany explained, and James nodded again, this time with understanding. He left Dad rambling around, lost in the past and asked Brittany, “How’ve you been, Brit?”

“Fine. I went back to school.”

“So, you finally took my advice,” he said.

She nodded. “You were right.”

“Of course I was. You have a lot to give.”

So did I, but my date wasn’t interested. I wanted to say, “Hello, I’m here,” but I wasn’t sure he’d even hear me. It was like he and Brittany were encased in some Plexiglas hut with unbreakable walls.

I shot a look over at Dad. He was pouting. He signaled a passing waiter. “I’ll have another beer.”

Now Dad was going to get plastered and make the whole evening even worse. Oh, boy.

My dream date was feeling more and more like a nightmare. How long until our dinner came, and how fast could I eat it and then scram? I started drumming my fingers on the table. My mother or grandmother, even my aunt, would have noticed this and observed that I was tense, would have showed some concern by suggesting I relax and enjoy my meal.

No one at the table even noticed my drumming fingers. I told myself to relax.

Our waiter showed up with the food. I looked down at my Lobster Lulu. It was drowning in thick sauce, lumpy with pineapple and peas. I scraped off the sauce and dug in. At least I would get a free meal out of the deal.

Brittany’s smile was as syrupy as the sauce on my lobster, but it didn’t match her eyes when she looked at me. She reminded me of a toy poodle guarding its favorite squeeze toy.

Take the squeeze toy already, I thought.

“How did you and James meet?” she asked.

“We met at the band concert,” James the ventriloquist replied, putting fresh words in my mouth. He remembered me, his date, and donated a surplus smile.

“You have an amazing talent,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. It made me sound like a groupie. At the time, though, it seemed like the occasion called for it. I suppose I still had hopes that I would be able to flatter him away from the strong attraction of unrequited love.

I wondered what our conversation would have been like by now if it had been the two of us back at that nice, private comer table. Would we have been discussing favorite movies or books we’d read? Maybe we would have already progressed to sharing our dreams. Or maybe we would have been comparing bad first dates. Instead, here we were, having one. Boy, would I have a story to swap with the next guy I went out with. If I ever went out again. After this night, who knew?

James and Brittany included us two outsiders for a while, but it seemed they couldn’t help drifting off to their own little conversational deserted island.

“You still renting that funky place over by the berry farm?” James asked her.

Oh, who cares? I thought.

She smiled and nodded.

Okay, I decided. Let the chick have him. Very noble of me, considering the fact that she’d had him since the moment we sat down at the table.

“Still cutting hair on the side in the kitchen?” he asked. Since his hair looked like it had been cut recently, I doubted he was asking because he wanted a makeover.

“No,” she said.

“She wants time to spend with me,” Dad said. It was a good try on his part, but it only felt like a bit of wedged-in verbiage.

“I’d give you a haircut, though,” Brittany offered. Even an idiot could intercept the message behind that.

I studied my father, trying to decide if he knew he was about to lose his trophy girlfriend to a younger man and was putting a brave face on things, or if he really thought he and Brittany were a solid couple. He looked cheerful enough, but I was sure I detected panic deep in his eyes. I thought about all the Christmas presents he’d bought this ingrate. He’d spent a fortune on her. Poor Dad.

A new thought entered my mind. Poor Dad would be feeling very lonely without The Girlfriend. Maybe he’d want to stop by the house on Christmas Day and visit with his long lost daughter. He’d be humbled after getting dumped by Brittany, and he’d show up on our doorstep with his eyes opened. He’d see Mom in a fresh light and realize he’d been a fool. He’d beg her forgiveness, ask her …

‘’Who wants dessert?”

My dad was being dumped over pineapple lobster and he was thinking about dessert? Well, that settled it. He didn’t have a clue. Oh, poor, poor Dad. I clenched my hands together to prevent myself from reaching across the table and strangling the haircutting heartbreaker.

“None for me. I ate like a pig and I’m stuffed.” Brittany patted her size six midriff.

Yeah, yeah, I thought. Actually, I was stuffed too. I decided I’d already made James pay enough for his disloyalty. “I think I’ll pass,” I said.

James looked relieved.

“The Lulu on Fire is pretty good,” Dad said, being generous with James’ money.

“Go ahead, Mike,” James said, but his tone was unconvincing.

Dad shook his head. “Nah. I’m fine.”

But not as fine as James, who Brittany was looking at like he was a Lulu on Fire.

James called for the check, the waiter brought it, and Dad scooped it up. James argued half-heartedly, but Dad waved off his feeble protest, reminding him he was a starving musician.

So, Dad wound up paying for the dinner. And I knew, as surely as I always know who’s going to win the Miss America pageant, that Dad would really be paying before the night was over. I could already picture him back at his lonely apartment, listening to Elvis sing “Blue Christmas.”

As we walked out of the restaurant, Brittany managed to get near enough to James to say under her breath, “Call me,” and he nodded.

They looked like a couple of conspirators planning to murder an inconvenient husband. I felt a surge of righteous anger. They deserved to be pelted with rotten pineapples. (I was sure I could find some in Lulu’s back dumpster.) I resisted my uncivilized urge, telling myself to let it go. In the end these two would get exactly what they deserved, which was each other. Anyway, there was no sense creating a scene and embarrassing my father.

Outside the restaurant, the valets squealed back with our cars. Right before Brittany climbed into Dad’s midlife crisis special, I saw her shoot James a look of longing. I sneaked a peek at him. He was reflecting it right back at her.

Well, that was the perfect ending to a perfect night. Now I felt like the warden, leading a poor prisoner of love off to solitary. Had I asked for this? I mean, who asked whom out?

James reminded me of Gabe Knightly, disloyal Gabe who feigned a broken heart, then went on to date every woman in Carol. Men, I concluded in disgust, they’re all the same: disloyal and scummy. Well, except Dad, who was more stupid than scummy.

After James and I got in his car it was “Silent Night,” and not the holy version.

Finally, he spoke, “Urn, 1 guess you’re wondering what the deal is with me and Brittany.”

Did he think I was a moron? “No, I figured it out pretty fast.” Under six seconds; that had to be a record.

“We went together for two years.” He shook his head. “I’m still not sure what happened. We just sort of, I don’t know. It all blew up one day about a year ago.”

Now, there was a good explanation. I could tell he’d given this a lot of thought.

“I think she was jealous of the band,” James decided. “We have to spend a lot of time practicing, and then there are the gigs. Other women would talk to me after the concerts, and she’d get jealous.”

The psychology expert would get jealous because other women talked to her boyfriend after a concert. That made a lot of sense, almost as much sense as it made that he preferred Brittany, the psycho hair stylist, to a normal woman.

“ Mmm,” 1 said frostily.

He gave me a quick little sorry look. “I don’t know what to say.”

Then maybe you should stop talking
. I shrugged. “Stuff like this happens.” Mostly in movies, though. Unless you were a Hartwell. Then you could count on it happening to you in real life.

James kept talking all the way home, psychoanalyzing himself and Brittany. Fascinating stuff. I tuned it out.

I had my hand on the door handle as we pulled up in front of the house. As soon as the car stopped I opened the door. “Thanks for the dinner,” I said. “I hope it works out for you and Brittany.” No lie there. James and Brittany would make a perfect couple: Mr. and Mrs. Idiot. And Dad needed to be set free so he could see the light and come back to Mom.

James could hardly look me in the eye, but the quick contact I got showed relief. “Thanks,” he said.

Go and sin no more
. “See you in concert,” I said. I got out and shut the door.

So James drove off, probably to see Brittany and set himself up for a future of free haircuts, always a good thing for a broke musician.

As for me, I went into the house, reminding myself that things have a way of working out. Just not always the way you want.

Oh, well. My date had fizzled, but at least my father had been set free.

Chapter Thirteen

I really didn’t want to talk about my non-date with my mother, so I tried to slip in the house undetected. But Mom has superhuman hearing.

I was halfway down the hall to my bedroom when I heard her call, “Andie?”