‘It’s Friday night, honey!’ my dad said. ‘Just let it go. All that work stuff will still be there on Monday.’
‘Yes, but –’ Heidi replied as her phone rang again. She glanced at it, then put it to her ear. ‘Hello? Leah, yes, what’s… oh. No, I’m aware of it. Look, are you at the branch just down from the shop? Okay, then just walk over and I’ll meet you there. I’m remedying it as we speak.’
‘These girls she hires,’ my dad said, nodding at Heidi. ‘Typical teenagers. It’s always something.’
I nodded, as if I were not, in fact, a teenager myself. Then again, to my dad, I wasn’t.
‘Their paychecks bounced,’ Heidi told him. ‘It’s kind of a serious situation.’
‘Then call your accountant, let him deal with it,’ he replied, making a goofy face down at Thisbe, who was drifting off to sleep. ‘We’re having family time.’
‘He doesn’t do payroll, I do,’ Heidi said.
‘Well, then tell them to wait until we’ve finished dinner.’
‘I can’t do that, Robert. They deserve to be paid, and –’
‘Look,’ my dad said, annoyed, ‘weren’t you the one who said I wasn’t spending enough time with you and the baby and Auden? Who insisted that I stop working, and have a family dinner out?’
‘Yes,’ Heidi said as her phone rang again. ‘But –’
‘So I knock off early. On my best day yet, I might add,’ he continued as we rolled up onto the boardwalk, ‘and now you’re not willing to do the same thing.’
‘Robert, this is my business.’
‘And writing isn’t mine?’
Oh, boy, I thought. Change a few details – professorship for business, committees for employees – and this was the same fight he’d had with my mom all those years ago. I glanced at Heidi: her face was stressed, as Clementine’s now came into view, Esther and Leah standing outside together. ‘Look,’ she said to my dad, ‘why don’t you and Auden take the baby and get a table and I’ll meet you there. This will only take a few minutes. Okay?’
‘Fine,’ my dad said, although clearly, it wasn’t.
He wasn’t the only one not happy. Twenty minutes later, just as we were about to be seated at Last Chance, Thisbe woke up and started fussing. At first, it was a low, rumbling sort of crying, but then it began to escalate. By the time the hostess arrived and began to grab menus for us, she was pretty much screaming.
‘Oh,’ my dad said, moving the stroller forward and back. Thisbe kept wailing. ‘Well. Auden, can you… ?’
This was not followed by a verb, so I had no idea what he was asking. As Thisbe kept crying, though, now attracting the attention of pretty much everyone around us, he shot me another, more panicked look, and I realized he wanted me to jump in. Which was ridiculous. Even worse? I did it.
‘I’ll take her,’ I said, grabbing the stroller from him and backing it up to the door. ‘Why don’t you –’
‘I’ll sit down and order for us,’ he said. ‘Just bring her back in when she’s calmed down, all right?’
Of course. Because that was going to happen anytime soon.
I wheeled her out onto the boardwalk, where at least the noise wasn’t enclosed, then sat down on a bench beside her. I watched her face for a while, scrunched up and reddening, before glancing back into the restaurant. Past the hostess station, down a narrow aisle, I could see my dad, at a table for four, a menu spread out in front of him. I swallowed, then ran a hand over my face, closing my eyes.
People don’t change, my mother had said, and of course she was right. My dad was still selfish and inconsiderate, and I was still not wanting to believe it, even when the proof was right in front of me. Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing. Beside me, Thisbe was now screaming, and I wanted to join in, sit back and open my mouth and let the years of frustration and sadness and everything else just spill forth into the world once and for all. But instead, I just sat there, silent, until I suddenly felt someone looking at me.
I opened my eyes, and there, standing next to the stroller in jeans, beat-up sneakers, and a faded T-shirt that said LOVE SHOVE across the front, was the guy I’d seen at the Tip and the boardwalk. It was like he’d appeared from nowhere and now was suddenly right there, studying Thisbe. As he did, I took the opportunity to do the same to him, taking in his tanned skin and green eyes, shoulder-length dark hair pulled back messily at the back of his neck, the thick, raised scar that ran up one forearm, forking at the elbow like a river on a map.
I had no idea why he was here, especially considering how he’d blown me off the last time we’d met, in this same place. But at that moment, I didn’t have the energy to overthink. I said, ‘She just started screaming.’
He considered this but said nothing. Which for some reason, God only knew why, made me feel like I needed to keep talking.
‘She’s always crying, actually,’ I told him. ‘It’s colic, or just… I don’t know what to do.’
Still, he was silent. Just like he’d been that night at the Tip, and on the boardwalk. The sick part was that I knew he wouldn’t answer, but still insisted on talking to him anyway. Which was so not like me, as I was the one who usually –
‘Well,’ he said suddenly, taking me by surprise yet again, ‘there’s always the elevator.’