Prettiest Doll (15 page)

The air got very still. I was afraid to breathe.

“Sorry,”
Dan said.

“And don't go all sullen and misunderstood on me. What, you think you can just show up here, first time I see you in, what, ten years, and pull that teenage horseshit? No way, buddy. No goddamn way.”

“Whose fault is that?” Dan's eyes were brimming with tears. “Who just left? Who called twice a year, on Hanukkah and maybe my birthday, if you remembered? Who just sent money, like that was enough to make up for everything?”

He was really yelling. Usually, I hate yelling, but now I thought,
Damn right, asshole.

“I asked you to go with me. I
asked
you. I tried. Come on, I said. It'll be fun, us boys on our own.” His daddy was shaking his head, looking out the window. “Don't say you don't remember that!”

“I was four! ”

“Are you saying you don't remember my asking you when you were six? And again, when you were nine? Is that what you're telling me?”

Tears ran down Dan's face. “I couldn't. I was all she had. And the only reason you wanted me was to get back at her. That's all you really cared about.”

“Not true.”

“Well, that's what it felt like. To me. You just asked once in a while to scare her, to let her know you hadn't given up, that she could never just relax, that it was always in the back of your mind. A possibility. And then”—he wiped his cheek with the flat of his hand—“you just stopped asking.”

“You made your choice.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“And what was I supposed to do then? Keep asking you? Beg? I
had
a family. I
had
kids. And at some point. Well.” He looked out the window. “That had to be enough.”

Silence. I studied the carpet, the intricate, interconnected weave of vines and flowers on the blue background.

“I could come now,” Dan said, almost whispering.

Somewhere outside, I heard the sound of a leaf blower.

“No. It's too late for that,” Mr. Jacobson said. “No. I'm sorry.”

“God,” Dan whispered, to just himself and me. Then, “Please?”

I knew it dang near killed him.

“What happened?” Mr. Jacobson said. “She getting to you? Showing her true colors?”

“Don't say anything about her,” Dan said. “Don't say one word.”

“Don't you be giving me orders in my own house!”

“You know what? I shouldn't have asked.” Dan shook his head. “Never mind.”

“You don't know,” Mr. Jacobson said. Then he paused for so long that we both looked up. “How much I wanted you to ask me that.”

I was stunned. People can say one thing and then turn around and say another and you're thinking,
Wait a minute. What about that thing you just said a minute ago?

You just don't know about people.

“Forget it,” Dan said.

“For a while it was all I thought about. Getting you out of there. No, really,” Mr. Jacobson said, seeing Dan's face. “It was.

“But after a while, I stopped asking, because you'd made up your mind. And then I stopped thinking about it, because it was settled, and, you know, how much can you torture yourself with something? At a certain point, you have to take your marbles and go home.”

I thought of the marbles in Turner's General Store, plunging my hands into the full bin of them, pretending their coolness was water.

“And now.” He was looking just at Dan. “Things are—well, you know. Up in the air.”

“Forget it, I said.”

“She's halfway out the door. And I've got to worry about the other two. She wants them. And I work for her father. Jesus,” he said, a hand on each thigh, holding himself up, but head down, sagging with the weight.

Dan swallowed. “It's all right, Dad.”

“Jesus,” he said again. “But you know, it's just too hard right now. To accommodate something like this. Everything is very fragile. Even you just showing up. It's put me in a very awkward position.”

Dan stood up, so I did, too. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Mr. Jacobson leaned around and opened the desk drawer. He pulled out a checkbook.

“No, don't,” Dan said.

“No?” Mr. Jacobson put the checkbook back and stood up, then reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Take this, then. Take something,” he said, holding out a small wad of bills.

Dan took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. I knew he was thinking what taking it meant: that he was forgiving his father, saying everything could go back to the way it was, and hating himself a little for it.

At the door, Mr. Jacobson said, “I hope you understand.”

Dan nodded with the smallest possible movement of his head, the way a man does, not letting anything out.

“You going to be all right? You got a place to stay?” Mr. Jacobson asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well.” Out of questions to ask, things to say. He smiled, ready to let it go at that, and I thought,
A real daddy would want to know where.

He held out his hand to me. “Nice to meet you, Liv.”

I shook his hand and said, “Thank you,” knowing Dan wouldn't want me to make a scene.

“Danny?” he said.

Dan looked at the outstretched hand and then met his daddy's eyes. “It's Dan,” he said, keeping his hands jammed deep in his pockets.

“Well.” Mr. Jacobson flushed. He pulled open one of the massive front doors. “I'll call you.”

We stepped out into the deep, gray morning cold.

“You know how to get back to the station?”

Dan turned around and nodded yes, his chin just barely tilting up.

“Safe travels, then.” And he disappeared behind the closing door.

We hiked back out to the sidewalk on the gently curving driveway. I looked Dan's way, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. “Asshole,” he said, his breath a cloudy puff of steam.

 

On the train, he said, “Do you think it was bad I didn't shake his hand?”

“No.”

“You think maybe I should have said I was sorry for not calling first?”

“No.”

He kept his eyes on the passing landscape: cars spewing exhaust, the ghostly trees. “I don't even know those two kids and I feel sorry for them.”

Everyone has something horrible in life to get over: a mean daddy, a dead daddy, being short, singing lessons. Not being beautiful. I said, “They'll be all right. Nobody's going to have to work two jobs, paying for things.”

“I still feel bad for them.”

“They'll be all right.”

“You don't know that.”

“I guess,” I said, letting him be sad, because that was what he wanted. But I was thinking that they
would
be all right because most people are, eventually. And that struck me as amazing—s taggering—t he kind of thing you can think a million times and not even notice and then think once more and be shocked.

Later, as the train slowed at the Belmont station, I said, “What do you want to do now?”

He puffed out his cheeks, sighing, tired. “I want one of those pretzels.”

“That sounds good,” I said. The train doors whooshed open, and a few people entered the car, the cold on their coats. “We have to watch out. There are a lot of policemen down there.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and I could tell from the way he said it that he was almost done, too tired to care.

 

Navy Pier was now a place I knew, a place I was coming back to. The lady at Auntie Anne's smiled as she handed me my sour cream and onion pretzel. “I think she remembered me,” I said after we paid. It felt good, being remembered. It made me think of Chicago in a different way, as thousands of Luthers Bridges that just happened to be close together, each one full of people who could be neighbors, friends.

We smiled at the man dressed in a dog costume, wearing pirate clothes and an eye patch, patting little kids on the head with his big paw-hands. I saw a couple of policemen as we strolled along, but they didn't pay any attention to us. “Maybe they've stopped looking for us,” I said.

“Too many real criminals,” Dan said. “And they weren't looking for us. They were looking for
you
.”

I was going to argue with him, but then I thought, Maybe Dan's mama was like his daddy, not really wanting to know where her boy was, glad it wasn't her having to be responsible. Without thinking, I grabbed his hand and held it. He didn't say anything, but he closed his eyes for a second, reminding me how long his lashes were, and that, even though he didn't want to be found, there was pain in not being looked for.

I knew we were heading to the Ferris wheel without either of us having to say so. In the gondola, we sat close together, holding hands, facing forward, both of us tipping our heads up at the sky as we started to move. We climbed and climbed, and there was a second at the very top that was like taking a breath, and then we skidded around and down. I was dizzy with joy, with not thinking, not wanting anything else except this.

Then the wheel began stopping, letting each car have a turn at the top. I missed the moving, the flying feeling, but I knew we were heading toward the highest point. It reminded me of Carson Jeffries painting New Faith Gospel, sitting on top of the scaffolding at lunch, seeing Luthers Bridge in a whole new way.

“It was really good today, the way you talked to Suzy,” Dan said as we lurched upward. “It was amazing.”

“Thanks.”

“If you hadn't done it, I never would have gotten to talk to him.”

“That's why I kept talking. I don't usually do that.”

“I know. I just wanted you to know I knew.” He paused so long that I turned to look at him. He said, “The reason I'm thinking about getting the shots is that I thought, maybe, you might like it if I did. If I was taller.”

“I don't care anything about that,” I said.

He kissed me. He kissed me for so long that, when he finally stopped, I realized we'd already had our time at the top and were heading back down to earth.

“We missed it,” I whispered, not even caring.

“Let's go again,” he whispered back.

We rode the Ferris wheel for over an hour, until it started to rain and the operator made us get off so he could shut the ride down. The pier was almost deserted. We ducked into King Wah to get out of the rain and ordered pot stickers. We found a table in the back corner and sat next to each other. The pot stickers were sweet. When he kissed me, his lips tasted like soy sauce.

“We can't stay here too long,” I said. “Two kids kissing. Someone's going to complain.”

“I don't care,” he said.

So much happiness. I thought I would burst from being so full with it; I had to smile just to let some of it out. It was the happiest I'd ever been. Winning pageants? That wasn't happiness. Now I knew.

“But I have to go back to Uncle Bread's,” I said. “Even if the police are there. Even if he calls my mama.”

“I know,” he said.

He didn't know, not really, but he said it as if the only thing he was thinking about was making me happy, doing what I needed him to. I kissed him again and knew that we were coming up on the end, whether we wanted to or not. And I thought that, for the rest of my life, that was what the taste of soy sauce would remind me of: a mixing on my tongue of happiness and the knowing that happiness can melt away in an instant, leaving just the slightest hint of itself behind.

 

It was almost dark when we got back to the apartment. I let myself in with the key Uncle Bread had given me. He wasn't home. I went into the bathroom and toweled off my wet hair. In the mirror, my skin looked pink: rain washed, scrubbed clean.

When I came back to the living room, Dan was sitting on one of the love seats, waiting for me. He'd turned on the lamp. The low yellow light warmed me like fire. I settled in close to him and we kissed a little, but not the way we had before. Now it felt like gratitude.

I heard the key in the lock, the door pushed open, Uncle Bread saying, “Liv! Is that you?” Before I could say “Yes,” he'd come into the room, still holding his briefcase, water dripping off his raincoat. “My God, Liv!” he said, dropping the briefcase, pulling me into a hug. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I know,” I mumbled into his wet shoulder, “I know. I know,” a part of me wanting to say
I'm sorry,
but I wouldn't let myself.

Finally, he pulled away and said, “Oh, God. Look at me dripping all over you.” I went into the bathroom to use the towel again, and when I came out, he had taken off his raincoat and was sitting across from Dan, who was saying, “We're fine. Really.”

“But where did you go? Where were you?”

Dan looked at me, not sure if he should say. And I realized I didn't want him to, that I wanted our night in the movie theater to be just ours, something only we knew. I wanted to be able to remember it when I was an old lady and know that, somewhere out in the world, Dan was remembering it, too, and that it was just us.

“Liv. Dan. I want an answer.”

He said it as though we were kids who'd lost our backpacks or come home after curfew. And I didn't feel like a kid. I was someone who'd kissed a boy I really, really liked, who had just made a memory that would last me all my life. I didn't need to be lectured or given a talking-to. I felt a wave of anger wash over me.

“Uncle Bread, I need to talk to you,” I said. “Alone.”

UNCLE Bread closed the door to the guest room and looked at me like,
Do you have any idea what you've put me through?

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Suddenly, I was speechless. My nerves gave out.

He sat down on the straight-backed chair across from the bed. He looked pale and weary. “Does this have anything to do with you disappearing last night?” he asked.