Penny
I’m barely out of the shower when I hear the first notes of “Daddy’s Little Girl” from my phone on the counter in the kitchen. Wrapping a towel around my head and grabbing my robe from the hook, I rush to catch the call before it goes to message. This can’t be good. Dad never calls this early in the morning.
“Dad, please slow down.” My father has two speeds: completely relaxed or utterly panicked. He spends ninety percent of his life in the first. So chilled out he lets nothing get to him, but lately things have been unraveling and that usually means he’ll spiral out. It’s hard for me to see him like this but I know he needs me. I’m all he has.
“Penny Pot, it’s really bad. They say I’ve got less than a week to pay off the back taxes or I’m going to lose the building. I’ll lose everything.”
“We’ll figure something out, Dad,” I start, hoping practical advice will just pop into my head. It doesn’t. “Take a deep breath. I can give Kylie a call. I know if I ask—”
“No,” he sighs. “No, I don’t want her to know how bad it is.” As his voice trails off I try to dissect if he means it. Before I can press harder I hear his familiar chuckle. “You remember that time you came into the office asking if I could find you a job?”
I feel my shoulders relax some as his voice settles. “Yes. I was seven years old, and I wanted you to find me a job as a unicorn.”
“You were endearingly serious.” I can feel him beaming proudly through the phone.
“You made me a horn out of a paper towel roll, wrote up my résumé, and had your friends play along and interview me.” I get a little misty at the memory.
My father made my childhood one of dreams. While my sister was visiting my mother at the office and learning all about stocks and bonds, my father and I were staying up all night waiting for meteor showers and pretending we were vampires allergic to the sunlight. Every day was a celebration of some kind. National Pancake Day. National Drive-In Movie Night. I’m positive he made most of those things up, but it didn’t matter. Every second was important—and that’s how he made me feel.
Nutrition wasn’t high on his priorities. Some days I’d eat a whole jar of pickles or an entire box of Popsicles. My hair was never brushed. My clothes were always in disarray. There were no rules. No punishments. It was fun, and I was free.
Getting older opens your eyes to some things. With all that fun and excitement there was also uncertainty. My father’s mismanagement of money sometimes meant that the box of Popsicles was the only thing in the house to eat. Transitioning back to my mother was difficult because every failing she saw in him she also saw in me.
I loved my childhood, I love my father and my mother, but there are days I wonder what life could have been like if we had a little more balance. Did my mother have to see Kylie as a success for turning her back on our father and me as a failure for not wanting to?
My father is the best man he knows how to be, and judging him for it only makes him sad. So instead we laugh about my first job as a unicorn. And all the times he let me scale the cliffs and dunes at the beach even though the sign said not to. Kylie refused to go, just as she often refused her visits with him. She didn’t see his magic, and over time we lost a middle ground. Everything was either about Mom or Dad. I was either going to graduate from a top school and rule the world, or become as pathetic as my mother said our father was.
It took me a long time to realize there was a third option—I could simply be me.
“I miss you,” my father says warmly.
“I’ll come by this morning,” I promise.
“You don’t have to,” he protests half-heartedly. “Coming across town in the morning is a nightmare, and it’s raining.”
“I’m very familiar with the bus.”
“Where’s your car?”
“In the shop.” I could have told him the truth and possibly asked him for advice, but that wasn’t how our relationship worked. I didn’t lean on him for support. Instead, I chose to remember how he’d removed my fear of public transportation by calling it the ultimate adventure.
Looking into Dad’s glittery gray eyes made me smile. In a house filled with serious business, smiles mattered to him. So every time I smiled at him, he gave me a penny. They piled up fast. I saved them in a penny pot, and when there were enough, we’d ride the bus to our next adventure. Just Dad and me, his Penny Pot.
He’d circle a spot on a map, and we’d hop on and off buses until we found wherever it was we wanted to go—which sometimes was a music shop from a flyer stapled to a corkboard. If we didn’t find the place, we enjoyed wherever we ended up. That was my father at his best. He could fill even the coldest, dreariest day with fun.
Unlike my mother, I didn’t want to change him. Reality was a challenge for him. Asking him why he avoided facing it until it was too late was like wondering why a butterfly would avoid battling a cat. He’d tried to be the man my mother had wanted him to be and failed.
“I’ll get there soon as I can. We can figure it out.”
“Bye, Penny Pot,” he says in his very familiar way. I once asked him why he called me Penny Pot and he said it was because I knew how to value even what others might overlook.
I sit in the living room of my sister’s expensive apartment and wonder if my own paycheck has cleared this week so I can take the bus across town. The cost of one vase on my sister’s stone mantel would probably solve my father’s financial issues.
He wouldn’t take her money, though. Kylie couldn’t give it without a lecture and a plan to prevent him from ever finding himself in that situation again. But he would stumble, and I’d find myself in the middle once again.
It’s not something I can solve, so I push it from my mind. I promised my father a visit, and now I have to make that happen. Glancing out the window I watch the rain come down in sheets, blown by the wind. There’s a thud on the other side of the wall, the one that butts up to Dalton’s apartment and I try to remember which direction his office is. I could ask him for a ride at least that far. But something tells me there would be strings attached to that request.
I’m still reeling at his blatant pronouncement that he wants to fuck me. And confused at how abruptly our evening together ended.
There’s a sadness to him that makes me wish I knew how to show him that not everyone is money driven. After hearing about his childhood, it’s not surprising he’s afraid of caring about anyone. I bet he did care about some of his father’s wives. No one starts with a closed-off heart.
Each time they left his father—they left him too.
My heart aches for the young boy that must have been devastated.
He’s not a child anymore, though. He’s a grown man, and even though I want to help him, I refuse to fall into the trap of thinking I could change him. I’m not my mother. I don’t believe my way is the only way.
Dalton is successful in his field. If his claims are to be believed, he doesn’t lack for companionship. He’s fine.
I definitely don’t need his help getting across town.
But I can’t stop thinking about how our night together ended. For someone who talks shit and blatantly announces his intentions, he didn’t make a move on me. He helped me get my card key, thanked me for the meal, and walked me to my door.
Just as sweetly as any of the nice guys I’ve dated would have. We’d stood at my door, looking into each other’s eyes, our attraction pulsing between us.
I’d expected him to ask to come in.
I’d half hoped he would kiss me mindless and we would both get swept away in the passion, no words necessary.
I hadn’t expected him to kiss me lightly on the cheek before turning away.
Yes, I can take a bus to see my father, but I want to see Dalton again. There, I said it.
Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
I need to see him.