Don't Expect Magic (6 page)

I finish the last of the sandwich on my way down the hall to Hank’s office. The door is closed—and locked. This is no big deal. We had the same locks at our apartment in New Jersey. I accidentally locked the bathroom door on my way out once, and Mom showed me how to break back in. All you need is something long and pointy, like an ice pick or a screwdriver, to shove into the little hole in the middle of the knob and pop the button lock. After last night’s exploration, I know exactly where to look. I grab a couple of the letter openers from the living room, and a fountain pen in case the letter openers are too big.

The first letter opener fits, though, and I wiggle it until I feel the tip catch on the spring for the lock. The door opens and I’m in. I sit down in front of the desk and tug on the bottom drawer until it’s out a sliver, then use the fat side of the letter opener as a crowbar, forcing the drawer out far enough for me to slip my fingers in and press down on the stuff inside. A couple of hard yanks and the drawer jerks open.

It’s not hundred-dollar bills inside, though. Instead the drawer is crammed with photos and cards and goofy kid drawings. Confusion, surprise and disbelief jumble together in my head as I recognize that they’re all of me, from me, by me.

I dump a big handful onto my lap. My eyes are instantly drawn to a greeting card near the top. “Happy Father’s Day,” it reads, and inside, “From your favorite daughter.” On the left side, written with a pink glitter pen: “Dear
Daddy, How are you I am fine. We got a new swing set. I miss you. I love you. XOXO Delaney.”

Next is a photo, a digital snap printed on regular paper, its ink so faded that the only colors are purple and pink. In it, I’m waving cheerfully at the camera and wearing the dress Mom got me for my seventh-birthday party. My princess costume.

I remember that day, but I remember it like a picture of someone else. A storybook character or a little girl from a movie. My younger self smiles up at me. I can’t recall what it feels like to be so joyful. To have hope and believe in happily-ever-after.

Suddenly I want to see it all. I scoop everything out of the drawer and spread it out on the floor. Using postmarks and photo date stamps and guesses, I shift items into chronological order. There’s nothing of me from when I was a baby. In the earliest pictures I can find, I’m already standing, two years old at least. There are lots of me with Mom through the years, a few with Hank, and even a couple with all of us together. Mom seems really happy, not heartbroken or tense. Hank’s the one who looks sad and left out, like a kid at a party who’s only there because the birthday boy was forced by his parents to invite him.

Laid out in a row, with the letters from the same year stacked on top of each other, the papers are like a skateboard ramp, or one of those cartoon drawings of a snake that’s swallowed a dog or monkey—big in the middle, tapering off on both ends. The years I was nine and ten, it
seems like I wrote every week. The letters were always the same cheerful reports of the nothing stuff I was doing and the final wish: “See you soon!”

Blinks of memory come back. Getting Mom to buy me special stationery, with daisies on the bottom or stars along the edge. Using different-color pens for each sentence, so the paragraphs looked like horizontal rainbows. Peeling off my favorite stickers to seal the envelopes.

Though the words are the same in a lot of the letters, I can decode the slowly dying hope of seeing Hank again, or of even getting a letter back from him. It’s like reading a book about a girl who doesn’t know about the bad stuff that’s coming, but you do, and so you’re crushed way before she is.

If I had ever laid out the cards he sent
me
on random birthdays and holidays, it would be a short trail, with a tiny hill in the middle. A baby garter snake that swallowed a crayon. Not that I could do it, because I tossed them out forever ago, with my other kiddie toys and baby dreams.

What I can’t figure out is why Hank has kept this stuff. Then I remind myself that he crammed it all in a bottom drawer, out of sight.

I hear the front door open, and this time I don’t dash to my room and hide. I lean back on my hands and listen as I picture Hank going into the kitchen, seeing the scraps from my bag lunch, and looking around in confusion—or maybe irritation? A few seconds and then here he comes,
down the hall, almost passing by the office before catching sight of me on the floor, surrounded by the contents of his secret stash.

“What’s going on? Why aren’t you in school?”

Instead of answering, I hold out a handful of the letters and photos and ask a question of my own: “Why did you keep these?”

Hank stands there and about a million years go by until, at last, he says, “Why wouldn’t I? You’re my
daughter
.” He tries to make it sound like I’m an idiot for asking, but it comes out like a bank robber saying “I’m innocent” when he’s got a bag of stolen cash in his hand.

The letters flutter pathetically as I wave the pile at him. “You never wrote back. You barely even answered my emails,” I say. “You stopped coming to see me. You never wanted to see me when you did come. So why …” My voice has gotten creaky and I worry that I sound like I still care, which I don’t. That was another me, the un-wised-up me. To prove it doesn’t bother me, I toss the stuff back onto the floor like the trash that it is. Hank flinches as if I’ve thrown it at him.

“I
did
want to see you, Delaney …” It seems like he’s going to say something else, but instead he sits down in the desk chair and leans over to pick up one of the photos.

“But …?”

Hank stares at the picture and I wonder if he’s trying to remember the girl I was too, or if to him it’s more like looking at someone who was always a stranger. He gently
sets the photo back on the pile and rests his hands on his knees. His gaze shifts to the shelves and his eyes narrow a little, like he’s trying to psychically extract advice from one of his books.

“It was difficult. My job is … all-consuming.”

“Yeah, I know. You told me. Twenty-four/seven.”

“And you lived so far away. Plus, I don’t think your mom really wanted me to come.”

“That’s not true!” I jump up from the floor. “I used to hear her on the phone all the time, begging you to visit me. I gave up on you way before she did.” My arms go stiff, the anger shooting through them to my fists. “But you gave up on me first.” The room seems to have shrunk and I feel like I’ve got to escape quick, before the walls move in any further and trap me. I stomp to the door, my boots crushing the letters and cards and dead hopes scattered on the carpet.

Back in my room, I dive onto the bed. My eyes sting and I am so mad all I can see are sparks.

“Delaney …”

“Get out!” I scream, then press my face into the pillow. I crumple the bedspread in my hands, and little embroidered spirals press into my palms. I take slow breaths, concentrating on the sharp laundry-detergent smell of the pillowcase.

I feel Hank hovering at the door. “I wish …” His voice is quiet, wistful.

I turn my head away from him. “You wish what? That
I’d never come here? So do I.” The dolls and stuffed animals on the shelves glare at me, mocking. I glare back. “Let me go home. I know you don’t want me here.”

Hank hesitates a second, then comes all the way in and sits down on a corner of the bed. He’s so close to the edge, he’d fall off if I tapped him with my foot. I should do it—but I don’t.

“I do want you here, Delaney.” There’s a helpless, non–Dr. Hank tone to the way he says this that makes it sound sincere, but I’m not ready to believe him yet.

I raise my head and wipe away the few tears that managed to leak out. “So that’s why you ran out to see your girlfriend like a second after I got here? And then you wouldn’t even admit she’s your girlfriend?”

“Andrea’s not my girlfriend. She’s a client, like I said.” Hank’s phone rings. He groans. “I don’t believe it. I’m sorry. I’ll tell her I’ll call her back.”

“Why don’t you just let it go to voice mail?” Hank considers this like it’s some radical new idea. He sets the phone on the bed. It rings a couple more times, then stops.

Hank intertwines his fingers, then taps his chin with his thumbs. Another one of the life-coach poses I’ve seen before. There’s something different about it this time, though. Like he really is thinking seriously and not just pretending to.

“I shouldn’t have left you last night. It was the wrong thing to do. It’s just that Andrea is an exceptionally hard
case, and this …” He unclasps his hands and waves at the air between us. “It’s new to me.”

“How is it new? I’ve been on the planet for fifteen years. You blew me off at birth.”

“That’s not true, Delaney. Your mom moved away and never told me she was pregnant. A few years later, I was in New York promoting my first book and she saw me on TV. You’d started asking about your dad, and I guess she decided you had a right to know him, so she called me.” I knew they’d broken up before I was born, but Mom would never tell me why. I learned to stop asking, because it didn’t matter. I had her.

“That’s the first time I met you,” Hank says. “You were about two. After that, I tried to see you as much as I could.”

“Lie.”

“It is most certainly
not—
”

“Yeah, you came and took me to the park or the zoo or some other clichéd weekend-daddy activity. For a
while
. And then—
poof!
—you were out of there. You never even let me visit.” Hank’s phone rings again. “Tell her you’re with another client.”

“There’s only Andrea.”

I lean up on my elbow. “You only have
one
client?”

“One at a time.”

“You must charge a lot.”

Hank doesn’t answer. The phone rolls over to voice mail again. He raises his eyes and finally looks at me, but
his expression has changed. It’s as if he’s looking at someone who seems kind of familiar but who he’s only just begun to recognize.

“You’re right. I should’ve spent more time with you. If I could do it over, I’d do it differently.” The phone rings
again
. No wonder he’s only got one client at a time, if they’re all this out-of-control. “I’ll turn it off.”

“No, it’s okay. You can answer it.” My fury has faded a little, as if the bed has absorbed it, and I’m curious about what’s so urgent that this Andrea lady has to hit redial every five seconds.

“Hello, Andrea,” Hank says wearily. “Mm-hmm.… I thought we agreed that you’d try it on your own for a few days.… Yes, I know, but I really think it’s—” Hank listens. He leans over and presses his fingers to his forehead like he’s been struck with a migraine. “Okay, Andrea.… I will.… All right.” He hangs up.

“You have to go out.” I say it before he can. I’m getting mad again because two seconds ago he was apologizing and trying to bond and be Mr. Paternal, but now there’s no follow-through.

“I’ll make it quick. As quick as I can. How about I pick up dinner on the way back?” Like drive-thru slop is going to make everything okay. “What do you want?”

“I want to come with you.”

“Delaney …”

“I’ll wait in the car. We can go out to dinner after.” Here’s his chance to prove that he really wants to spend
time with me. Plus I still have a lot of questions that need answers.

Hank gives me the look again. That “maybe I
do
know you” look. “Okay,” he says.

A half hour later, we pull up in front of a small courtyard bordered by two rows of little cottage-in-the-woods-type apartments, each with its own two-step front stoop.

Hank turns off the engine and sits there a second, his hands on the wheel. “Don’t worry about me,” I say. “I brought a book.” Hank doesn’t move. Instead he glances over and studies me again. “I thought this was a life-coaching emergency,” I say, hoping this will get him to stop staring. “She could be losing precious ounces of self-esteem with every second you delay. Better hurry up, Doctor, before it’s too late.”

Hank half smirks, sighs and finally gets out. After he closes the door, he leans in the window. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Or less.”

“Gotcha.” I tap the time on my cell. “On your mark, get set, go.” Another smirk, a full one this time, then he heads up the center walk into the complex. I watch and wait, although if this world-shattering therapy session is only going to take twenty minutes, I can’t wait too long. Once he’s out of sight, I get out of the car and look around. There’s a narrow lane along one side of the complex, so I decide to try that.

Moving from apartment to apartment, I peer into
kitchens and dens, but most are dark. A TV’s on in one den, but there’s just an old guy inside, watching a fishing show.

“Andrea, what did I tell you—”

“I’ve tried, Dr. Hank. I have.”

I follow the voices around to the back of the building, to a door with a spiky cactus plant in front of it, next to a recycling bin filled with cat-food tins and empty bottles of Wellness Tea. Through the slatted window beside the door, I can see a tiny bathroom cluttered with candles. A shower curtain covered in cartoon cats hangs over the tub, and inspirational messages cut out of magazines are taped to the mirror.