39.
We got a cab with as much stuff as we could carry, and I sat holding Ian and watching the trees thin out as we made our way west toward Dad’s place on the river. Mom called when we were stopped at a light on Tenth Avenue.
“I can’t find my black leather belt with the rivets,” she said. “Do you have it?”
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I’ll double-check when I get a chance,” I said, moving Ian’s fingers away from his mouth. “I’m with Dad, on my way to his place, actually. Will and I had a fight.”
“Oh no …,” she groaned.
“What do you mean, oh no?” I asked. “You want us to stay together now?”
“I just … Wait, how did Daddy end up in the middle of all this?” she asked.
“He brought over a high chair,” I said.
“And?”
“And I agreed.”
“Agreed to what?”
“We just decided that I should stay with him for a while,” I said. “It’s not forever, it’s just a break.”
“You could have called me, you know,” she said, sounding strangely forlorn.
“I know, it just happened.” I couldn’t tell if she really wanted me to go home to her or if she was simply miffed that Dad had “won.” “Anyway, we’re here now, let me call you later.”
“Okay, don’t forget,” she said.
My room was dark, and as I walked in, I could see the mean queen, elongated by the light from outside, sneering at me from the ceiling. I dumped my bags onto my bed, thinking of all the times I’d dragged Vanessa with me to Dad’s to avoid being alone with him. Vanessa always lightened it up. She was so good that way. “Where are we going to find you a good woman, Mr. Galehouse?” she’d say. “What’s your type?”
Dad would wince and make a pathetic attempt to play along. “I don’t know, uh, Vanessa, your guess is as good as mine.”
She set him up once, with Jana, a very blond Czech masseuse. We told Dad she was a physical therapist, and that she worked with people with sports injuries.
“Honestly, it made me want a drink,” he said when I asked how it went. Vanessa’s mom said Jana thought he was cute but that they didn’t click and that Jana didn’t like that Dad didn’t throw his popcorn box into the garbage when they left the movie theater.
“So what? Who cares?” I said, thinking, How cruel. My poor, hopeless, littering father.
When Dad dated Nancy, the violinist, Vanessa and I had made fun of the way her nose twitched like a nervous rabbit’s, and the fact that she was twenty years younger than Dad and not even remotely hot.
“He’s handsome and rich,” Vanessa said. “He could have anyone he wants, and look what he does. Goes for the cellist with stringy hair. King of the midlife-crisis freaks, that one.”
I put my mess of underwear in the top drawer, before Dad could see it strewn all over the bed. I stacked Ian’s Pampers in a row on top of the dresser, thinking about all the nights sophomore year Vanessa and I did our faces in the bathroom and drank vodka out of Diet Coke cans until I was spinning by the time we went out the door, only to stand in line at some club, get in and walk around, dancing and scream-whispering and drinking more vodka Diet Coke, until we stumbled home. Dad waited up at first, but by the end of sophomore year he was always in bed, Nancy long gone.
And now Vanessa was gone too. I had a flash of her slumped in the corner, drunk and sneering, the tinkling sound of bangles on her wrist as she rolled a joint. Dad tiptoed into my room with Ian’s Pack ’n Play. Ian kicked his legs at the ceiling from a blanket on the floor, and for a second I thought Dad wouldn’t see him and would step on him.
“He’s a happy little guy, isn’t he?” he said, hunching over at him. “You done with these?” He straightened up and pointed to the empty duffels.
I nodded and he picked them up and folded them until they were a quarter of their size, then lifted them to a spot in the hallway closet. The room was a large rectangle, one you could easily fit two double beds into, and I wondered what would happen when Ian got older, whether Dad would let Ian take the third bedroom or whether we’d still be in there like siblings. Or whether Will would come to his senses and rescue us. Dad tiptoed into the kitchen and I stayed in the bedroom as long as I could, feeling how slowly the minutes went by when you were stuck in a house with someone who believed you lived your life carelessly.
I called Vanessa and immediately started sobbing.
“I took Ian to Dad’s,” I said. “I left Florence’s.”
“Oh no,” she said.
“He wants to give him up for adoption,” I said.
“Can you believe that?” I said. I put my hand on Ian’s stomach as he squirmed and gassed on the floor. “He said that ever since the accident, he hadn’t felt right, or whatever. Vanessa, he can’t make me give him up, can he?”
“Jesus,” Vanessa said. “It’s like he has postpartum depression or something. Crazy. No, he cannot make you give him up. No matter what.”
“Really?”
Dad appeared in the doorway, looking like a timid puppy. “I was going to make some penne with pesto,” he said. “That sound okay?”
I nodded at him, trying to smile.
“Really. You’re a great mom.” Girls laughed and doors slammed in the background.
“What’s that noise?” I asked.
“Nothing, some idiotic tea party. Have I mentioned I hate it here?”
“Vanessa, what am I going to do?” I whispered.
“I’m so mad at him.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Thea.”
I hung up, wondering if Will had gotten home yet, whether he realized I was gone. I couldn’t imagine speaking to him, so I sent him a text. Whenever I thought about what he had said, about giving Ian up, I felt sick to my stomach. “We went to Dad’s,” I typed. “Don’t do anything. Let us go.”
Out in the kitchen Dad blasted water into a pot and the showering sound filled the apartment, drowning out my shaky sense of connection to anything.