Notes from Ghost Town (20 page)

Austin looks over at me, rolling his eyes as his mother stands up from the table, sighing, and disappears from the kitchen, into a room I can only assume is packed with cleaning products she typically pays someone else to use. Ted sighs heavily, glances briefly over at Austin and then at me. No one says anything for a few moments—we listen to Clare rustle.

“So, Ted,” Austin says, finally cutting through the silence. “Are you going to finish your pasta, or …?”

Still obviously disgruntled, Ted stares at the table, at the stain on his shirt. “You take it, Aus,” he says, pushing the plate toward Austin. He inhales, and all at once returns to the cool-collected-in-control version of Ted Oakley I’ve always known. The Ted Oakley who gets things done. The Ted Oakley who knows just who to call in a pinch. His phone rings then, tinny, from his pocket; he pulls it out and examines the screen, sighing as he rubs his head. “I’d better take this,” he says, smiling apologetically. “I hope you’ll forgive my rudeness, Olivia. Clients. They’ve got no manners. Total barbarians, calling in the middle
of dinner.” He stands up before Clare has the chance to return with the stain remover, puts a hand on my shoulder. “So glad you could come by. It’s always so nice to see you around. Come back any time, you got that? I promise, next time—no wine spills or embarrassing outbursts.” He makes his way toward his office. I hear his door click shut.

“Sorry,” Austin says, shrugging. “He doesn’t usually freak out like that, at least not in front of other people.”

I sit without saying anything for a minute, fiddling with my napkin. Then I burst out: “So, why did he?”

Austin snaps his head around to face me. “What?”

“Ted. Why do you think he freaked? I mean … I started talking about the hearing, and then …”

“I told you. He’s been super stressed out the past couple of weeks—you know, lots of money riding on Elysian Fields, I guess. Stuff with Mom.”

“Oh.” There’s a twisted-up feeling in my belly I can’t shake. “That sucks.”

“He’ll get over it,” Austin says. I can feel his breath, close, close to my skin. And even that smells good—sweet with wine, slightly peppery. His citrus-spice weaves around my head, softening me to a sudden sleepiness. I turn to check the time on the wall clock over the stove: almost eight o’clock. Late. Dad’s probably a wreck—I turned my phone off earlier to shield myself from Raina’s barrage of texts. He probably assumes I’m dead by now.

I grab my bag up from beneath the table and check my cell phone. Just as expected, my inbox is bombed by
messages from Raina and from Dad. But mainly from Dad. I don’t read them.

“You okay, Red?” Austin asks, grabbing a noodle from Ted’s plate and chomping on it. Red. That word barely means anything to me now. It could be anything. It could be nothing.

“My dad,” I tell him. “He’s sent me like fifty text messages in the past four hours.”

“You didn’t tell him you were coming here for dinner?”

I shake my head weakly, feeling wobbly in the eyes, double-sleepy now.

“You’re such a rebel, Olivia,” he says, putting his hand over my bare knee and squeezing it, hard. “Such a devil.”

My brain is soft-edged from the wine. For a second, I’m just a regular sixteen-year-old again, flirting with a boy, wanting to touch him, to be touched, to run out into the surf, shedding my clothes to the wet sand. I move my hand to his thigh for just a second, move it up, and up, before releasing it. “Think I can bum a ride back to hell?”

O
livia Jane.”
Busted
. Dad’s voice, angry, rings out from the kitchen.

I step gingerly into the line of fire. He’s drinking whiskey in a rocks glass at the kitchen table. “Dad—I’m sorry I didn’t text—I was out with—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Olivia,” He shakes his head, taps lightly against the table with the edge of the glass. There are circles dark as Ted Oakley’s under his eyes. Maybe Ghost Town is sucking them both dry. “The bridesmaid fitting has been on the calendar for over a
month
, Liv. Do you know how disappointed Heather was? I texted you about twenty times and heard nothing.”

Shit. “My phone died. I totally forgot.” I shuffle my feet along the tile floor. I can’t tell him I actually
did
have better things to do than try on some stupid Ann Taylor dress built for middle-aged back-in-the-saddle types trying to hook a husband. “It wasn’t on purpose, okay?”

“You say that, Liv, but I don’t think you mean it.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “You’ve never been
good at hiding what you’re thinking. And it kills me that you’re so unsupportive. It really does.”

“You really expect me to be
supportive
?” I stare at him, stare at the face of my Dad, and wonder why it looks so different to me now. Why it suddenly looks alien—like this house, his kitchen, his fiancé, his whole life after Mom.

“I expect you to consider the feelings of others. Sometimes you don’t think through your decisions, and you end up doing hurtful things as a result.”

I practically jump out of my chair at this, but the
don’t you go anywhere young lady
expression on his face keeps me put. “I
told
you I didn’t mean to miss the bridesmaid fitting. It was a
mistake
. You make mistakes. Big ones. Blond ones.” I don’t mean to say it; it just pops out. He sits back in his chair and starts shaking his head. “But I’m not allowed to do the same thing? Are you even
listening
to yourself?”

“I’m not the one who needs to listen.” He rubs his eyes. Suddenly, he looks tired. “Look, Olivia. I think it’s time you give talking to someone another try.”

“What, like a
shrink
?” I sink back in my chair for a moment, feeling my whole body go sharp with a fiery heat. The words of my first-and-only shrink to date remain burned into my memory:
there’s really nothing psychiatry can do to ward off schizophrenia, Olivia. Unfortunately, all we can do is wait, and medicate
. He’d smiled at that last part—his funny little rhyme.

I fix Dad with a sharp stare. “Are you serious?”

“Yes, Liv. I know the first time we tried was a whole mess,” he says, softly, “but that was a hell of a long time ago, and that guy was a real quack. We’ll find you a better one this time—someone who can help. We’ll do our research this time.” He reaches across the table for my shaking hand, but I pull it away. “You’ve gone through stuff you’re too young to understand—and by too young I
don’t
mean not smart enough, so don’t leap down my throat. Just too damn young.”

My breath comes quick and sharp. “So now you think I’m crazy. You think I’m like her.” I pull my knees into my chest and stare at the tile floor. It gleams beneath the overhead light like it’s just been washed. It’s too clean in here. Sterile.

“Liv, now you’re just being immature. You know I don’t think that.” He sighs, pulls at his chin. A scruffy beard used to grow there. Mom loved it. His five o’clock shadow. She’d say his chin gave the best back-scratches of all time, when it was just a little bit prickly. “There’s a lot of change in your life right now …”

“Oh? You mean changes like Heather?” I make a face.

“Don’t you talk to me that way, Olivia Jane. Don’t you even dare,” he warns. “I know this is hard for you, but I love her, and you’re going to have to give her a chance. You haven’t even let yourself get to know her—just decided point-blank you weren’t going to like her, day one. You have got to stop giving her such a hard time.”

“Why should I?” I spit, watching water bead up around
the edge of Dad’s glass. “I mean, what do you even
see
in her, Dad? She’s got nothing in her head!” I tap my palm dramatically against my temple like it’s a block of wood. “She’s an idiot. She’s—”

“You watch your mouth, Olivia,” Dad cuts in sharply. “Heather’s an incredible woman, and very strong. She understands more than you know about”—he imitates my head-tapping gesture—“this whole thing.”

“What whole thing, Dad?” I challenge. “Is she crazy, too, and just really good at hiding it?”

“Her first husband killed himself,” Dad responds matter-of-factly, which shuts me up right away. “When Wynn was just about a year old, Liv. Put a gun to his own head, right in their bedroom. She walked in, found him like that.”

All the air goes out of me, and for a second, all I can think about is baby Wynn, never getting a chance to meet her own father.

Like Austin.

I’m quiet, shaking a little, not sure what to do with all of this information. It’s too much. It’s all too much. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know.”

My dad stares into his drink. His mouth is set in a firm line. “He was a manic-depressive, on a bad spell. His meds stopped working for him. He didn’t see another way out, I guess. As you can imagine, this pretty much gutted Heather. She’s done a lot of work to move on, but it’s a process. Just like it is for all of us, when the unthinkable
happens. She’s not so different from us, Liv.” He lifts his chin slightly, scratches at his neck with his long fingers before returning them to the coolness of his glass. “So don’t go on assuming you know anything about what a person’s gone through.” His eyes are dark and steady and serious. “Heather understands what we went through with Mom. What we’re
going
through.”

I clear my throat. “Then how come you guys act like Mom never existed?
She’s
not dead, Dad. And you used to love her. You did. You used to love her. How did you just stop?” I swallow the tears, rolling into my mouth, angry that I’ve cracked, that I’ve spilled, that I’m spilling. “You got sick of her and went to some dumb support group to help deal with her and instead of helping, you just replaced her. And you replaced Oh Susannah, and your old life, and your old job. Everything.” I stare at him, hard. “You
replaced
her, Dad.”

“Replaced her?” He sits back in his chair and looks at me, openmouthed, stunned. For a moment, we sit in silence. Then he stands, using the table to help heave him to his feet, looking suddenly like an old man. He passes into the darkened hallway without another word. I sit, swallowing the taste of saline, fighting the heave in my chest, thinking he has gone upstairs. I watch the time blink on the microwave clock.
8:17. 8:18
. It blurs around the edges as I stare at it.

But then he’s back. He’s holding a twine-bound stack of letters. He plunks them softly on the table. He rests his
hand on top the letters, tenderly, as though they were the head of a small child he wants to comfort. “I’ve written a letter to your mother every week for the whole ten months she’s been in that place.” His voice cracks. “When she’s lucid, she answers. I stuck with her best I could; I don’t know what else to say about that. I know you think things could have gone different, but they didn’t. They went like this. And the thing about your mom is, Liv, she wants us to be happy.” He sits back down, scoots his chair around the table to sit beside me. “It’s in all of her letters. She wants us to be happy. Because she loves us.”

“No.” I shake my head, willing it away, willing it all back. Time. History. Every bad thing that’s ever happened. “No. Not like this.”

“Livie Livie Livie!”

Wynn rushes into the kitchen, wearing her pj’s, before I can continue. Her feet squeak across the floor. She hops straight into my lap, wraps her arms around my neck, and gives me little bumblebee kisses on my face.

“Hi, Wynn,” I say. I realize I’m shaking.

Wynn puts one little finger against the wet beneath my eye. “Why are you sad, Livie?”

I hug her to me and she blocks Dad from my sight. “I’m okay, Wynny,” I whisper to her, though my chest aches with anger, with a deep, gnawing sadness. “It’s fine.”

I hear the front door open and close. I swivel around and see Heather kicking off her suede flats in the hall, carrying a Walmart bag.

“Mommy!” Wynn yelps, wiggling out of our hug. Heather comes into the kitchen, placing the bag on the counter by the sink, and leans over to kiss Wynn. All four of us now. The happy little family.

Dad stands from his chair, crosses to her, kisses her lightly on the mouth. The little stack of letters still sits there on the table, the length of twine a wavy shape beside it. I try to shut my ears from their “sweet” little greetings—
honey
s and
love
s and
I missed you
s. Wynn’s still in my lap, making my hair into little corkscrews with her fingers.

“Olivia,” Dad says curtly. “I believe there’s something you’d like to say to Heather.”

I sit there, silent for a moment, Dad and Heather looming over me, Wynn twirling and making funny little cat noises in my ear. After all that, he still has the nerve to put me through this. An apology from
me
, when he’s the one who should be apologizing. Unfair. I’m sorry her husband offed himself, but, it’s not my problem. I shouldn’t have to apologize for all the damned crimes of the world, for every bad thing people do to each other.

But I have no other option. I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. It’s the best I can do. I focus on Wynn’s white-blonde curl-haloed head so I don’t have to look at Heather, or at Dad. I don’t want to see Heather’s face and imagine that day, baby Wynn in her arms, she found her husband’s brains spattered on the rug. I don’t want to see her as human.

“Thank you, Olivia. I appreciate that. But, know what?” Heather leaves Dad’s side to come to mine. Wynn reaches her arms up in my lap and Heather reaches back, pulling her up from my lap and into her arms. “It all turned out okay. I peeked at some of the dresses in your closet, and ordered something for you that should fit.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “If it doesn’t, we can always make tweaks when it comes in.”

I shift in my chair, force a smile.

“Okay.”

“I hope you know how much it means to me to have you by my side on my big day.” Her smile is painfully, annoyingly genuine. Her
big day
. But the cold, hard, undeniable truth is: Dad
does
look beaming-happy, lit-up, when he’s with her. And she with him. And I guess that makes me the asshole who wants to take that away, for the sake of honor and broken promises and broken family bonds and broken mothers.