And Then Things Fall Apart (20 page)

But it worked. Dad joined in, singing in a dooby, dooby, doo Sinatra-esque fashion. Then we listened to the oldies channel, driving on the expressway until the suburbs disappeared and we were surrounded by skyscrapers and giant billboards and we were at Oak Street Beach.

We parked and dragged our crap from the van. We walked past hot dog vendors over fiery hot sand to a spot close to the water and unfurled our sheet between a Mexican family and a gay couple.

Dad opened the giant umbrella and poked the spike into the sand like he was harpooning a whale or raising the flag at Iwo Jima. His every motion felt important and camera ready: Divorced Man Takes His Only and Troubled Daughter to the Beach.

Me, I was just trying to keep the sun from getting onto my skin without my permission. Ozone layer, global warming, etc. In layman's terms, I fry. It took me twenty minutes to slather the SPF 50 over every inch. As I rubbed the lotion across my legs and arms, neck, face, the holes in the silver rings, I could feel where there once had been chicken pox.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the sheet, Dad took off his shoes and pushed his socks into them. Then he took off his shirt. He was tall and lean, but some forlorn hairs on his skinny chest were gray. His shorts had tiki flames on them and were way too young for him. Surf's up, dude. Gnarly midlife crisis. Bitchin' mess your life is. And before I could join him, he yelled, “Rotten egg!” and bounded into the water like a deranged golden retriever.

Unbelievable, these adults. Just when you think their actions are predictable, just when you think you know them inside and out and understand how they see the world, how you fit into it, and what they expect of you, they up and change. I wanted to run after him, splash around and cool off and just play with my dad in the water. I wanted it to be like when I was little and he called me jelly bean when I wore a bathing suit because I looked like one. I'm not a jelly bean anymore.

Make no mistake, I'm still furious at him.

I burn easily.

Besides, I couldn't just leave all our stuff alone. So I
scrunched back farther into the shade of the umbrella, opened up my copy of
The Bell Jar
to the beach scene and read words I could have recited by memory as my Dad's head bobbed up and down in the faraway waves.

Before I'd known we were going to the beach, I had taken all of the nail polishes Amanda had given me as a parting gift and I'd painted each finger and toe a different color. The overall tone of them was dark, so it wasn't like a rainbow of craziness on my extremities. My fingertips looked like I'd slammed them in a car door and left them to throb—black, purple, green, and blue. Same with my feet, and I buried my toes in the sand, hoping that some of the polish would wear off quicker. I had decided to use my nails as a timer for getting over Amanda. I would not use acetone remover. I would wait for the polish to chip and wear away on its own, bit by bit, each square of paint eroding a little more every day. When all the polish was gone, Amanda would be out of my system for real. That was the Einsteinian plan, anyway.

When you are mad at your dad for sleeping with a so-called friend of yours, your family is disintegrating before your very eyes, and you are recovering from a nasty bout of the chicken pox, do not set your blanket up between the world's most adorable family and the most in-love gay couple in all of Chicago. The family was a mom, a dad, an older boy who was about six, and a little girl who was about four. They'd brought tacos and orange soda. They played with
a beach ball. The father buried the boy in the sand. The daughter made castles with a yellow plastic castle mold. They were happy the whole time. They took turns swimming. They smiled. A lot.

The other guys were in their twenties. They spread sunscreen on each other's backs. They played chess on a travel chessboard. On the beach! They laughed frequently. Although they didn't kiss or make out in any way, their knees or hands or feet were always casually touching. They were totally together. Totally happy. And I was about to fall asleep, I was so depressed and warm and lulled by the waves and the gulls and the
thump-click
of chess pieces and giggles of family harmony and my heart beating
IamIamIam
.

Then Dad lumbered across the sand and crash-landed on the sheet spraying water everywhere.
Ka-thunk
. And he saw: the family. He saw: the couple. He lay down and closed his eyes. I couldn't tell if it was water or sweat or what, but some kind of liquid rolled from his eyes to the sheet, and he sighed and said, “Keek?”

And I said, “Yeah?”

His skin was very white. He didn't look old-old, but he looked older than he had three months ago. I wanted to put a pillow under his head, drape a blanket across him like he was sick and I was there to take care of him, instead of the other way around. Droplets of water sparkled on his collarbone, then evaporated.

Just when I thought he was asleep, his breathing regular and his body still, he said, “I love you. And if you never forgive me, I will still love you anyway and will still be your dad. No matter what.”

I didn't say anything. I was thinking of something to say to let him know I was still really pissed without swearing or saying something I would later regret. I thought of phrases from this book I got for an essay I wrote for English on
The Taming of the Shrew
about international insults, and these were my options:

 

1. Up yours!

2. You and your mother, too!

3. You bastard! And my favorite

4. Go piss up a rople!

None of which were entirely appropriate. I still said nothing, and he said, “You want a hot dog? Come on, I'll get you a hot dog.”

And suddenly, despite my quasi meat boycott, our ability to eat all the hot dogs our hearts could ever desire at the D&D, and my avoidance of
El Sol
, I found myself standing up and saying, “Okay, Dad. I'll eat a hot dog with you. Least I could do.” I asked the couple to watch our things. We hopped/walked to the sidewalk, risking our lives by crossing
the path for Rollerbladers, skaters, and cyclists, to get beach dogs.

The Chicago beach hot dog is an entirely different species of dog from the Chicago-style hot dog of lore. Its bun is not seeded. The hot dog itself is naked but for a swipe of brown mustard. It is not wrapped in paper but tucked into a silver envelope that says
HOT DOG
in blue letters. There is something about the fresh lake air, the sun bouncing off the skyscrapers, the seagulls circling like buzzards, the extra tang of sand that inevitably finds its way into the last bite, that makes the beach dog the king of Chicago Hot Dogs. I guess it's a local thing. An entry for the
Not for Tourists Guide.

I don't know if I have mentioned that my dad and I used to be—if not best friends before all this nonsense began—at least really friendly lab partners. I could always count on him for important things. To know when and how to do the right thing in most situations. But this situation is beyond what I ever thought would have happened to us. I see now that this whole beach date is how we will repair things. For the rest of my life I will date my father on the weekends. We will go to movies, to dinner, to roller-coaster parks, and exhibitions at the Museum of Science and Industry. He will take me to breakfast at the
Chicago Tribune
's top-ten places for breakfast in Chicago. Afterward we will browse bookstores on the North Side. On nice days we will go to the Lincoln
Park Zoo, Navy Pier, the Botanic Garden. He will become a different kind of boyfriend. He is my dad, and I love him, whether I can forgive him or not.

Life is freaking impossible. Mom comes home on Monday. I gotta pack and whatever.

Yes sir, yes sir, one bag full.

When Mom picked me up from Gram's today, we had set up a fire alarm system. She said she would call Gram's number, let it ring once, and then hang up. How KGB. Then I was supposed to sling my bag over my shoulder, kiss Gram on the cheek, and head out the door when Mom's car pulled up in front of the house.

During my illness, I watched a PBS show where they removed a rotten tooth from a lion that was heavily sedated at some Australian zoo. It was quick and painless, and the dentist was in and out in minutes. This is how the pickup would have gone, but for some reason when we did it, the lion woke the hell up. First off, Dad was home, which was news to us all. He practically answered the phone before it rang. “Huh. That's weird,” he said when there was no one on the other end. So I had to tell him that Mom was coming to pick me up. “Oh, good, I'd like to talk with her,” he said. Which was the whole reason for the subterfuge in the first place.

Duh.

Mom told me that she was just a little burnt out from her trip to “deal with your father on top of everything else.” And although I sort of knew what she meant, I'd just started “dealing with” my father again, and he wasn't so horrible, really.

So when Mom pulled up, instead of me slipping off into the sunset, pox-free and 10 pounds thinner, my dad lumbered down the porch steps before me and stood leaning into the driver's side window like a flirting teenager, talking about God knows what with his soon-to-be ex-wife.

Then Gram waltzed into the front room and lit up a Winston, and we just stood there watching the real-life drama unfold. Reality unscripted is actually a little boring. They just talked. I thought there would be screaming and shouting. Perhaps pounding on the car roof. I turned away from the window and sat on the radiator cover and looked at my gram.

“Well, kid,” she said. “I guess this is good-bye.” She said it just like that actor from that movie in the desert with the war and the Nazis, and we both had a short chuckle. She looked good. I imagined her in a dress with shoulder pads and a 1940s hairdo like the tattooed lady who pierced Matt had. I felt like whatever was coming, at least I had her in all my scenes, four inches taller in her peep-toe platform sandals.

“Thanks for everything, Gram. I mean, it was fun—in between the puking and blood and Spam and everything.” And I meant it. I didn't really want to go home. The last time I was there, I felt like the house was going to murder me. I missed my dog, my room, YouTube, etc., but here, I'd had a little room of my own and a typewriter, and a place to think that wasn't dripping with memories of happy familydom. I mean, at Gram's I wrote, like, hundreds of pages. Amazing! Who knew I had it in me?

Gram is a woman of few words. She hugged me, and we were both a little sad. And then she said, “Go on down there. They are your parents. Not much you can do about it.” Right before I opened the door, she said, “Wait a minute,” and then she came back with the IBM typewriter. “Keep it. It's yours. Let me help you down with it.” So she took one half, I took the other, and we crab-walked it to the back-seat of Mom's car. Gram and Mom waved/smiled/shot laser beams through their eyes at each other, and I waved at my dad and got into the car.

During the drive Mom patted my hand every now and again and blathered on and on about Aurora this and Aurora that, and “You look great. Hard to believe you were ever sick. Dad says you went to the beach? Great.” And blah, and blah, and blah. I stared at the yellow lines in the center of the road until we were out of Gram and Dad's neighborhood and well on the way to our own.

I was so overcome with daughterly joy at seeing my long-lost embezzling mother that for the first three miles or so I was simply content. It seemed, there in the passenger seat, that everything was the way it was supposed to be. Back to normal. How it was before Dad moved out, Mom went to California, and I got the chicken pox. As right as freaking rain. Then we passed this motel with the diving girl on the 1960s
VACANCY
sign.

The girl is a very simple design. She has no face, wears a red bathing suit and a white bathing cap, and is folded in half in a dive position. This is to denote that the motel has a pool. When I was a kid looking out the window driving home from Gram's house, I never saw the girl diving. To me it always looked like a pork chop or T-bone steak, like her white bathing cap and the white space where she was bent in two was a bone, and the red suit was meat, and her pink arms and legs, gristle. And then one night, for some reason I looked at the sign and recognized the girl as a girl. In a white cap and red bathing suit. Diving. And try and try and try as I might, I cannot for the life of me ever see her as a piece of steak again. It's like my whole perspective has changed and there's nothing I can do about it but keep moving.

And so it is with my dear sweet self-absorbed fraud-committing mother.

Overnight she somehow morphed from a dizzy, artistic woman-wronged entrepreneur into a diabolical
she-devil-alien-mom. As the wheels purred over newly poured summer blacktop, the muscles beneath my clavicles started to quiver and shake, and before I could think to take a deep breath, count to ten, or bide my time until we were in the house, I clenched my fists into angry mallets and pounded the car roof, screaming, “How could you do it? To our family!” And then I got supercreepy quiet. “For Christ's sake. Why?”

Why I didn't ask my dad that, I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with us being women, like there is a total sisterhood code and she broke it by lying to me. Same with Amanda.

Not that Dad was an angel or anything. I'm probably in for years of therapy because of his behavior. I will be like Esther Greenwood with Dr. Nolan, going on and on about my father this, and Daddy that, and “Time's up. Let's begin here next session.” Dad was just being an asshole, and besides, we had our talk. Dad and I were on the road to being cool with each other, at least. At the very least, Dad was trying.

This woman driving the car? She had a lot of explaining to do.

And if we had been the magnificent friends Mom always said we were, she would have talked with me about her plans, and I would have talked her out of it, and then perhaps Mom, Dad, and I would all be driving home together now, planning a trip to the Wisconsin Dells.