The Moon and More (8 page)

I held up my hand. “Stop right there. Remember what I told you. I don’t want to hear about you and Morris.”

“I’m not talking about
me
,” she replied, offended. “I don’t sneak around like that.”

“You do it in the car or dunes instead?”

“I don’t do
it
, period. You know that.” This was true. Daisy was a virgin, and planned to remain one until marriage. While the reasons for this tended to vary from person to person, among the people we know it was usually religion based. Daisy, however, was not a churchgoer. But her family was her faith. Mr. and Mrs. Ye, first-generation immigrants, were upstanding, hardworking, morally centered people who expected their children, especially their oldest daughter, to follow suit. In their family, there was no rebellion, no back talk, no sneaking a boy home at lunch. These things just Did
Not Exist. My mom, battling with my sisters and me throughout middle and high school, once asked Mrs. Ye how she managed to keep her kids so in line. She just looked at her. “They are children,” she said. “You are adult.” It was just that simple. At least at their house.

“Order up!” Eddie yelled, hitting the little bell by the register. Daisy started to move but I shook my head, going over to pick up our slices and her mom’s sandwich. I was just sliding into my seat when the front door beeped again. Looking over, I saw my dad, Morris, and a couple of other guys from Dad’s crew coming in. Morris headed right over, but my dad just waved en route to the counter. I waved back, wondering if my hair looked damp from a distance.

“Hey, girl,” Morris said as he plopped down beside Daisy, sliding an arm around her waist. She presented her cheek for a kiss. Two months together and they were like an old married couple.

“Morris!” my dad called out. He and the other guys were up at the counter ordering. “You eating or what?”

“Yeah,” Morris replied. “Get me—”

I kicked him squarely in the shin, as hard as I could. He squeaked, then looked at me. “What?”

“Are you seriously asking him to order for you?”

He glanced at my dad, who I could tell, even from this distance, was annoyed bordering on irritated. Next step was pissed, and nobody wanted that.

“
Go over there
,” I said, my eyes level on him. “
Now
.”

Morris slid away from Daisy, shooting me a look, then loped back to the rest of the crew. My dad watched him
approach and order, his expression flat. When Eddie was done ringing everyone up, my dad slid some bills across the counter. He’d told me a million times there was no such thing as a free lunch, but somehow Morris managed to get one. If it wasn’t too much trouble to order it himself.

I looked at Daisy, who was chewing a bite of pizza, her eyes on the parking lot. “Don’t say I’m too hard on him,” I told her. “He needs to learn this stuff.”

“I’m not saying anything,” she said. I was never that fond of any of Daisy’s other boyfriends—a volleyball player, a guy who may or may not have been gay, a creative-writing student at Weymar who wrote about nothing but aliens—mostly because I never thought any of them were good enough for her. Times like this, though, I would gladly have welcomed any or all back.

“Emaline.”

I turned to see my dad a few tables away, standing while the rest of his crew, Morris included, got settled with their slices and drinks. “Yes?”

“Got a minute?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

As I got up to follow him outside, I was braced for any number of conversational possibilities. There was my damp hair, and the fact that I might be busted, again. Also, there was Morris, who had provided yet another reason he should never have been hired. Both were uncomfortable topics, but at least Morris was secondary shame, so I knew which one I had my money on. Once we were face to face by the newspaper boxes, though, he broached neither, instead handing
me a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it.

“What’s this?” I asked him, as that same moped whined past, going the other way.

“Your father’s number. He called again when I was just at the house.”

There was always a weird moment when he referred to anyone else as my father. Like we’d entered an alternate universe, or something. “I have his number.”

“That’s his cell. I was going to drop it by the office with your mom to give you on my way back to the job.” When I just looked at him, confused, he added, “He said it was important.”

Important. I had a flash of my graduation invitation, never responded to. It was like I hadn’t even sent it.

“Just call him, get it over with,” my dad said. “Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, as he pulled the door open. “I’ll do it right now.”

“Good girl. See you tonight.” I watched him go back inside and cross the restaurant, his walk slow, but not for the same reasons as Morris. Twenty-plus years of carpentry and roofing had taken a toll, although his body wasn’t as broken as some. At my age, he’d worked days framing, then played guitar in a bar band at night, one good enough to get close to a record deal. But close is just close, especially in Colby.

Inside, Daisy was looking at me, so I pulled out my phone and held it up so she’d know what I was doing. She pointed at my mostly empty plate. When I shook my head, she gathered it up, along with her own, and tossed both in the trash. I was just starting to dial the number when she came outside.

“Everything okay?” she asked, putting on her sunglasses.

“I’ll let you know in a minute.”

She nodded, then started walking back up to the salon, the bag with her mom’s lunch hanging from her hand. In my ear, the phone was now ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. I was expecting a voice-mail greeting, but then, suddenly, he was on the line.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I said. “Um, it’s Emaline. My dad said you called?”

“Yes,” he replied. A pause. “You’re a hard girl to catch up with.”

“Sorry,” I said, then immediately regretted this easy, knee-jerk apology. “Is everything … okay?”

“Benji and I are headed your way,” he told me. “We just crossed into Virginia, should be there in … four hours? Five?”

“You’re coming here?”

“My aunt passed away a couple of months back. We’re cleaning out her place to get it ready to go on the market.”

“I’m sorry.” This time I meant it. I’d met her a few times. She was always nice to me.

“She’d been sick awhile. It was for the best.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I figured it would be a great opportunity for a road trip. A pilgrimage of sorts, just us guys.”

“Leah isn’t with you?”

A beat. Then, “I figure we’ll be crossing over the bridge right around dinnertime, give or take whatever traffic holds us up. I know it’s short notice, but I was hoping you could meet us for a quick bite.”

I wanted to tell him no, make an excuse, then get off the phone. But it was one thing to be cold over distance, another
entirely when they were in your same zip code. “Um … sure. Just call me when you get close.”

“Will do. See you soon, Emaline.”

And with that, he was gone, again. The great disappearing act, that was my father. No mention of school, plus he didn’t answer any of the questions I asked him. It made me think of Mrs. Ye and all the things she said that I couldn’t figure out. She and I at least spoke different languages, though. With my father, the words themselves were clear. I got every one. But somehow, I still didn’t understand.

News travels fast in a small town like Colby. Between my parents, though, it was more like warp speed.

“You need me to do a towel delivery?”

My mom glanced at me, then put down the pencil she was holding. “Oh, right … yes. Towels. I do.”

I just looked at her. It was not exactly a bad trait, but my mother was the worst liar ever. “Where?”

She swallowed, then pushed a few papers around on her desk, searching for a Post-it or piece of paper I was almost positive did not exist. “Let me see … I think it was over in Sandbar Cove. …”

Behind me, I heard Margo, who was in the next office, snort. One look at her face—biting back a smile as she studied her computer screen—and I knew my hunch was correct. I turned back to my mom. “He told you about the phone message, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“Mom. Come on.”

Finally, she stopped pretending to look, instead sitting back in her chair. By now Margo had moved to the doorway as well, all the better to hear every word. “He
might
have mentioned that your father had something important to tell you.”

If hearing this made me nervous, I can only imagine what it did to my mom. In fact, if I’d opened up her top desk drawer right then, I knew I’d find all the saltier, crunchier offerings of the office vending machine, partially consumed. She was a stress eater from way back. Lucky for her, worry also boosted her metabolism, so it usually balanced out.

“He’s on his way here,” I told her. “With Benji.”

She just looked at me. Margo said, “That’s the kid, right?”

“What about Leah?” my mom asked.

I shook my head. “Didn’t mention her. All he said was that his aunt died and they’re putting her house on the market.”

“Miss Ruth passed away?” my mom said, looking genuinely sad.

“Do they have a realtor?” That was Margo. Because of course this was the most pressing question.

“She’d been sick awhile,” I told my mom. “Apparently.”

“Who’s Miss Ruth?”

I turned, and there was Amber, holding a paper sack from Amigos, the Mexican place up the road. “What are you doing here?”

“I got an SOS call,” she replied, pushing past me to walk over to my mom’s desk, where she deposited the bag, which
already had grease staining the bottom. “Someone needed a taco, stat.”

“You deliver now?” I asked.

“If someone else is paying. I’m broke and hungry,” she replied, plopping down in the chair opposite my mom. “Who’s Miss Ruth?”

“Emaline’s father’s aunt,” Margo informed her.

You could literally see Amber figuring out this relationship, her brain wheels spinning. Then she said, “The one he used to stay with, in North Reddemane?”

My mom, unwrapping a taco, nodded. “Such a nice lady. She made the best chicken salad. It was to die for.”

“How long’s he staying?” Margo asked me.

“He didn’t say.”

Silence. Which was rare when we were all together, if not unheard of. “Maybe,” Amber said, “he’s planning to apologize for being such a jerk about the college thing, win you over, and be your favorite parent again.”

My sister did not have that many talents. One she
had
cultivated, however, was the ability to zero in on the single thing someone absolutely does not want to hear and then say it aloud. I looked at my mom, who, sure enough, was already stuffing the back end of her taco into her mouth.

“Not happening,” I said. “And besides, this isn’t about me. His aunt died and he’s taking his kid on a road trip.”

“Do they need a place to rent?” Margo again. Who else?

“I’m sure they’re staying at Miss Ruth’s,” my mom told her, chewing.

“She’s dead,” Amber pointed out.

“But her house isn’t,” Margo replied.

“Maybe,” Amber said, “we should offer them
our
guest room.”

“Stop it,” I told her, and she snorted. To my mom I said, “Do you have a delivery for me to do or not?”

A pause. Then she shook her head, slowly, still chewing. I sighed, turned on my heel, and headed for the door. “I’m sorry,” she called after me, once she’d swallowed. “I just really wondered what he wanted.”

“If he needs a good realtor,” Margo said to me as I passed her, holding out a business card, “put him in touch with me, okay?”

“You people are ridiculous,” I said, but I took the card, stuffing it into my pocket.

“Don’t be mad!” my mom yelled, halfheartedly, as I walked across the office. I didn’t answer her.

As I headed out the door, I saw an older guy in cargo shorts and a
COLBY BEACH
T-shirt opening the complimentary ice-cream cooler in our lobby. He reached in, helping himself to a Popsicle and a Nutty Buddy cone, then held them both out to a little girl in a pink bathing suit and princess cover-up.

“Which one?” he asked. She pointed at the cone. After he unwrapped it, handed it to her, and opened the Popsicle for himself, they both wandered over to the big map on the wall, staring up at it as they ate.

WHERE’S HOME FOR YOU?
said the letters over the map, this year in bright yellow. The previous year it had been red.
You could still see tiny traces of the color, like faint shadows, especially around the curvier letters. Scrape down to the wall itself, through the fifty years of layers, and you’d surely find every other color of the rainbow as well. Not too much changed in Colby or even our office itself, but the map was new and the letters freshly painted, every single season.

It was my grandfather, way back in the day, who had first put them there. Then he added a
YOU ARE HERE
over Colby’s spot, put a cupful of pushpins nearby, and let people leave their mark. Pretty soon, for many families, it was part of the vacation tradition, just like getting ice cream when they got their keys, and coffee when they dropped them off. You just had to put in a pin, marking the place you would return to when your time with us, in this place, was over.

As the man and his daughter headed into the office—her ice cream dripping, also per tradition, across our floor—I stopped by the map, checking its progress so far this season. Like normal around this time of the summer, there were a lot of pins within our own state, several in the ones above and below, and a scattering of others beyond. Someone had been here from Los Angeles; another, from Austin, Texas. There were several, all crammed together, in western Illinois—a wedding, most likely—and two placed neatly, meeting at the tip, over Toronto, Canada. So many different places, different routes to and back from this same place.

As for Colby itself, though it was my home and everyone else’s that worked here, there was no pin. Just a circle, a star, and the
YOU ARE HERE
I’d written myself when I repainted the
sign back in May. I
was
here, always, and in many ways loved it. But every time I passed the map and this reminder, it kind of made me sad.