MEREDITH AND ALLY ARE SET TO BE discharged from the hospital the next afternoon. As soon as I get home from school, I sit by the living room window, a one-girl welcoming committee, keeping an eye out for the Durango. I smile when I see Marcy, pulling Mrs. Tate along by the hand. They scamper through the rain and into our yard, speedily tying pink-and-yellow balloon bouquets to our mailbox and a few of the leafless shrubs in the soggy flower beds. Marcy stakes a garish wooden stork holding a swaddled baby in its beak. Though I’d die before admitting as much out loud, the decorations are sort of cute.
When the Durango finally pulls into the driveway, Dad climbs out, takes Ally’s carrier from the backseat, and hurries toward the house. When he opens the front door, his hair shimmers with raindrops and the shoulders of his jacket are polka-dotted by the drizzle. He leaves Ally in the living room with me, then jogs back outside to help Meredith out of the car. He walks beside her, his hand clasped around hers, until they’re through the front door.
It’s official: We’re a family of four.
For the next couple of hours, neighbors cycle through—Marcy, the Tates, the Rolons, others—all bearing slightly varied versions of the same casserole, all eager to lavish Ally with attention and compliment my parents on their baby-creating skills.
I’m not sure if Dad and Meredith have settled their argument, but they’re civil. They cooperate through what sounds (and smells) like a particularly messy diaper change, and Dad brings Meredith a mug of tea while she feeds the baby on the living room couch. They both catch a quick nap during Ally’s snooze in the baby swing. I ride out what’s left of the afternoon by whipping up a dulce de leche cheesecake, hesitantly optimistic. Maybe the crazy’s ceased.
Before dinner, Kyle and Leah stop by to meet Ally, who’s asleep in Meredith’s arms. Kyle takes a quick peek, mutters his congratulations, and backs away, but Leah’s smitten, full of starry-eyed murmurs like, “Aww, she’s so adorable.”
“Thank you,” Meredith keeps saying, radiating pride.
Dad, on the other hand, has barely looked up from his laptop.
My friends and I head for the kitchen, where I dole out slices of cheesecake and pour Cokes over ice. We sit at the table, and Leah holds her glass in the air. “To Jillian,” she says formally, “the world’s latest and greatest big sister.”
“Thanks,” I say with a smile. The three of us clink our glasses in a toast and for a second, everything’s perfect. Then Kyle opens his mouth.
“I hear you weren’t very nice to Max yesterday.”
I nearly choke on a sip of soda. “What?”
“We hung out last night.”
“And?”
“And he said you wouldn’t to talk to him at the hospital. He said you grabbed your jacket and bounced.”
“Jill.” Leah’s voice is gently admonishing. “I thought we agreed to be there for Max.”
“I am there for Max.” On Monday, I picked him up, drunk, off the side of the road, I want to tell them. What are friends for? Instead, I exhale a weary breath. “I was tired. I’d been up the entire night before, and then there was the birth, and my dad, and everything was just…” I’m making zero sense, I realize, and my friends are staring at me like I’ve got chocolate chips for brains.
Leah glances at Kyle. He gives her a subtle nod, and she says, “We get that things have been chaotic, but you heard about him and Becky, right?”
“Uh … no.”
“They’re through.”
“What?”
“Broken up,” Kyle says, grinning like the demise of his buddy’s relationship is the world’s best news.
It’s a struggle to maintain a politely bland expression. “When?”
“Last week,” Leah says. “That’s why she was such a mess when she crashed Movie Night—she was in denial about the whole thing. Then, Monday at school, Max marched up to her and told her he really was done, and that he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. It was a spectacle. I can’t believe you missed it.”
I can’t, either. God—Monday. That was the day Becky rammed into me on the quad. The day Max guzzled whisky at the river. No wonder he couldn’t call her for a ride—they broke up.
“Max didn’t bend,” Kyle tells me, swirling the tines of his fork through the caramel left on his plate. “He kept saying, ‘We’re over,’ and ‘There’s nothing between us.’ He wasn’t a jerk about it, but you could tell he’d had enough, you know? For the first time in a long time, I was really proud of him.”
“I’m so glad he finally cut it off,” Leah says. “Jesse is, too. Max is better off.”
“Agreed,” Kyle says.
I mumble my assent because in theory they’re right. But if Max is so much better off, why didn’t he tell me about Becky during Movie Night, or our forlorn walk through the neighborhood? Why’d he leave school to get wasted at the river?
You don’t know anything, he said when he called to ask for a ride. I countered with a diatribe about what an asshole he was. At the hospital he tried again, and I shut him down.
I blink, trying to make sense of it all.
“Max has a good heart,” Leah’s saying.
“He deserves to be happy,” Kyle agrees.
I nod, because yes and yes.
* * *
After my friends leave, Dad and I head out to pick up a late dinner. He suggests I drive, and I’m glad. When my hands and head are busy, it’s easier to keep from fixating on what he pulled the other night. We never did get to “talk later” like he promised, and while I’m hopeful he and Meredith are on their way to working things out, my worries haven’t gone anywhere.
“Chinese?” I ask, braking at a stoplight.
“Whatever you want.”
The quiet pulls thin. Dad fiddles with the heat and the defrost, then checks the glove box to make sure all the proper documents are there. A wall of discomfort stands between us.
It’s clear he senses it, too, when he says, “Thanks for being there for Mer at the hospital.”
“Where else would I have been?” I don’t mean it as a dig, but it comes off as one, and I don’t feel sorry. I stare straight ahead, unblinking, until the stoplight looks like red smears in an impressionistic painting. The wipers swish across the windshield, back and forth, back and forth.
“She’s still upset,” Dad says.
The light flashes green and I stomp down on the gas pedal. “Can you blame her?”
“I was working.”
I recall a drizzly afternoon several years ago, when Max and I discovered Bill’s old record player in the Holdens’ garage. Having never seen a record, we had no idea how to set the needle, but we got a laugh trying. The songs skipped and popped and jumped, and the two of us cracked up listening to phrases repeating. I was working—I was working—I was working. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard Dad use that phrase over the last few months, well, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to fund my culinary education.
“What are you thinking, Jillian?”
That you’ve been really self-centered.
That there’s more to your “I’m working” story than you’re letting on.
That I’m too scared to ask the important questions.
“Nothing.”
“I love Meredith.”
I nod, because I have no concrete proof against his claim. I’ve seen their affectionate moments: Dad’s hand on Meredith’s previously pregnant belly, her brush of a kiss across his cheek as he rifles through case files. And I’ve witnessed their more significant gestures of love: Dad driving Meredith to countless fertility appointments, writing checks to chip away at mounting debt. And Meredith, managing the Eldridge household with zeal. Still, I’ve seen enough reality TV to know that love doesn’t stop some people from exploring other avenues.
“I imagine this is hard for you to understand,” Dad says, reaching over to pat my knee.
I cannot believe he has the audacity to be so condescending.
“I understand more than you think,” I shoot back, making a hairpin turn into the parking lot of the local Chinese restaurant. An enormous neon panda rotates lazily on a signpost; its cartoonish apathy amplifies my irritation. I throw the car into park and yank the keys from the ignition.
Dad backpedals. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that marriage takes effort. Sometimes it’s wonderful. Sometimes it feels like a job—like the most tedious job in the world.”
His honesty dampens my frustration. “I know about effort, Dad.”
“You do—more than I did at your age, that’s for sure. You’re growing up, and that’s hard for me to come to terms with. You did good, though, stepping in to help Meredith.”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“You did. She’s told me time and again that she couldn’t have done it without you. Plus, you’re staying focused on school, and staying away from Max.”
On one hand, I wish I could tell my dad what I really think: There’s not an excuse in the world good enough to pardon what he pulled on Ally’s birthday. And I’m focused on school because I suddenly need scholarship money, in large part because of him. And his assumptions regarding Max are unfounded and stupid. On the other hand, this exchange, his honesty and warmth, the bountiful compliments he’s sending my way … I’m clinging to all of it, tucking it away for safekeeping.
“Anyway,” he says. “You’re a good kid, Jill.”
He gives my hair a ruffle before climbing out of the car and heading into the restaurant.