If You Only Knew Page 12

  Down the hall from Dad's office suite was a storage room, not much bigger than a closet, filled with dental supplies--boxes and boxes of toothpaste, floss and toothbrushes, canisters of nitrous oxide, extra scrubs and boxes of masks and latex gloves, syringe tips and bib clips, plastic chair covers and Dixie cups. Rachel and I loved to play in there, tucking notes for Daddy in between boxes of his supplies, or just hiding.

  Lena, his younger hygienist, got engaged right there in the office, and Dad was in on the whole thing. Lena's father had died years before, and she asked Dad to walk her down the aisle. Rachel and I got to go to the wedding, and it filled us with pride, Dad being acknowledged like this. "I can't wait to get married," Rachel whispered to me, even though she was only fourteen at the time. "I want it to be just like Mommy and Daddy." I didn't share the same sentiment, not yet--I was eleven and still in love with horses. But I knew what she meant, even if at that time, my vision of adult life entailed living next door to my parents and owning a lot of cats.

  Rachel was Mommy's girl; they both loved the domestic arts of decorating and baking and gardening. Me, I liked to think of myself as more like Dad. I'd sit next to him in his big chair, his strong arm around me, and breathe in his comforting dad smell--Dial soap, freshly cut grass and Crest toothpaste, the original mint flavor.

  So you see, life was both normal and remarkable, banal and utterly happy, and more than anything, safe. Our parents loved us and each other, my sister was my best friend and we had plenty of everything a child never knows she needs until it's gone.

  Then, two things happened. Dad's practice was thriving to the point where he hired another dentist. Dr. Dan Wallace, my first crush. He looked like Johnny Castle from Dirty Dancing, and what girl didn't love Johnny? Dr. Dan was just out of dental school, funny and wore an engraved silver ring on his right hand. I had never met a man who wore a ring that was purely ornamental, and it made Dr. Dan seem unbearably hip.

  I wasn't the only one who thought so; Rachel couldn't go into the office without being struck dumb and blushing the entire time, and God help her if Dr. Dan spoke to her. Mom would invite him over for dinner, and it was an agony of pleasure and mortification, having him see us in our natural habitat, me trying to seem more interesting and exotic than I actually was, Rachel almost paralyzed with shyness, our father chuckling at both of us, Mom rolling her eyes but making sure she served an extra-complicated and delicious dessert.

  I did manage to talk to Dr. Dan about school and playing the clarinet, as he had when he was my age. Finally, at the advanced age of eleven, I had found a man I could picture marrying; move over, Bono, and hello, Dr. Dan. At night, I'd picture our life--I'd be a full-fledged adult at twenty-one, a mere ten years from now, and we'd do a lot of hugging and hand-holding, a few chaste kisses on the lips--sex to an eleven-year-old was still incredibly disgusting. We'd host glamorous parties and go sailing and take trips to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.

  It was right around that time that Dad seemed to change a little. One Saturday afternoon, he and I went to the pharmacy so I could buy maxi pads for Rachel, who was unable to face the humiliation of buying them herself--or even being in the store when they were purchased. I got the brand she requested--two giant packages to stockpile--and went through the aisles looking for my dad.

  There he was in the skin care section, studying a jar of moisturizer.

  "Dad. That's for women," I said patiently.

  He flushed and put the box back. "Right, right," he said. "My skin's been a little dry, that's all. You all set?" He headed up to the register.

  I looked at the box he'd put back. Age-Defying Overnight Serum.

  And when we got in the car, Dad told me he'd forgotten to get razors, ran back into the store and came back out with a bag that clearly contained more than razors. I didn't say anything, but later on, I checked in my parents' medicine cabinet. The serum wasn't there. I found it under the sink, hidden behind a package of toilet paper. Not only that, he had hair dye. Hair dye! For men! How embarrassing! Why would Dad care about defying age? He was old. He knew that.

  Then Lena the hygienist had a baby and went out on maternity leave, and Dad hired someone to take her place.

  I barely noticed Dorothy, too busy being sophisticated around Dr. Dan when I went to the office. But her name began cropping up at the dinner table, and my antennae twitched, because something else was happening, too--my mother was irritated.

  Dorothy hadn't been able to find a steady job as a hygienist, Dad said. "What does that tell you?" Mom said, uncharacteristically judgmental. Dorothy was widowed and struggled financially. "Is she already nosing around for a raise?" When Dad suggested that they fix Dorothy up with my uncle Greg, Mom said, "Rob. Be serious. Greg's not going to date a dental hygienist." Even at age eleven, I recognized the put-down in my mother's voice. She did tend to worship her little brother, who went on to marry an unemployed stripper, for the record.

  Talk of Dorothy continued, almost as if Dad couldn't resist mentioning her. I didn't know why. She sounded pathetic to me. Dorothy had a daughter a few years younger than I was. The two of them lived in the grittier town of Brooks Mill, in an apartment. No one I knew lived in an apartment--just in houses.

  "I thought we could give her some of the girls' clothes. Stuff that they've outgrown," Dad suggested. I looked up sharply, not sure if I wanted to part with anything, especially to an unknown stranger.

  "How old is she again?" Rachel asked.

  "She's six," Dad answered. "First grade." The fact that he knew that made me jealous. Dad had two daughters. He shouldn't care what grade someone else's daughter was in.

  "She can have my yellow dress with the daisies on it," Rachel said. "That was a pretty one. Remember, Mom? I wore it to Science Night when I had Mrs. Norton. And those overalls with the pretty pockets. Oh, and that red velvet dress! I loved that dress!"

  Thus shamed by Rachel's kindness--as was often the case--I went up to the attic and dug out some of my clothes for this poor and mysterious child and added a few stuffed animals and books, too.

  Summer turned to fall, that season of golden leaves and gray skies. I played soccer; Rachel was in high school and getting pretty good at horseback riding, showing on the weekends, bringing home ribbons. Mom had been promoted to a full-time position as activities director at the nursing home, and she got home just before dinner, stressed and moving at a hundred miles an hour, trying to throw dinner together and arrange a car pool for Rachel and make cookies to show that she was still that kind of mom.

  She loved her new job and had a lot of stories to share, which was different--before, she'd talk only about her clients, whom I viewed as tragically old. Now she had stories about the haughty yoga instructor, or the wardrobe consultant who cried when Mr. Zeigler flashed her, or the kids who came up to play violin and piano or sing for the residents. For the first time, it seemed that Mom was suddenly the more interesting parent. We knew Dad's staff and clients...but Mom had a whole new cast. Not that I still didn't love him best, of course. He was just a little...predictable.

  One Friday night, it was just Dad and me, that rarest of treats, and he said he had to make a quick phone call before we could watch our movie. He went into the den, and I waited in the living room, patiently at first, then not so much. Our movie was Edward Scissorhands, and Lisa, my best friend, had seen it twice already, and said I'd love Edward because he was so beautiful and strange, and I'd had the movie on the waiting list at the library for months, and finally, finally, it was here.

  So I sighed hugely and agreed to wait. "Ten minutes, honeybun," Dad said.

  After twenty, I went down the hall.

  "I know, I do....Well, it wasn't quite the same, but...Yes! Exactly....Really? You did?" He chuckled, that low, wonderful sound, and I felt an instinctive flash of jealousy.

  "Daddy," I said loudly. "Are you gonna be much longer?"

  He looked up. "Oh! Hi, honey," he said to me. He held up a finger. "Listen," he said, "I s
hould go. My princess and I are watching a movie. Edward Something."

  "Scissorhands!" I said. How he could forget the title...

  "Scissorhands....I don't know. I'll ask." He looked up at me. "Think a six-year-old would like it?" he asked.

  "No. It's too sophisticated."

  "Oh," he said with a wink. "You hear that? Too sophisticated....Okay." He laughed again. "Bye. See you Monday." He hung up. "Want popcorn?"

  "Who was that?" I asked.

  "Dorothy. From the office."

  "It's the weekend, Dad," I said.

  "I know, honey. But she's lonely. She only has her little girl for company."

  "So?" I said. "She could get married if she wants. Maybe she likes it being just her and her daughter."

  "Maybe so," he said. "Come on, let's have popcorn. As long as you floss afterward."

  *

  Not long after that came the day that changed everything. My soccer practice had been canceled due to rain, and I was looking forward to being in the house by myself. Rachel was at her riding lesson--she took a different bus on Tuesdays to get to the stable--and Mom was still at work.

  But the spare house key wasn't in the fake rock in our flower bed; the little space was empty, which meant whoever had used it last hadn't put it back.

  Feeling deliciously aggrieved and martyred, poor latchkey child that I was, without so much as a key, I walked around the house and tried the windows. All locked. Our neighbors had a key, but I didn't want to go there. Mrs. Donovan was very nice, but Richie, her son, had just turned nine and asked if I was wearing a bra every time he saw me on the school bus.

  I decided to walk downtown to Dad's office, the better to martyr myself on the cross of adolescent suffering. It was quite possible that Dad would take me to the Corner Cafe and buy me a hot cocoa to make up for this sorry state. Even better, maybe he'd make Dr. Dan take me! Not that this had ever happened, but it could, at least in my imagination. Also, I might trip on our way there, coming dangerously close to an oncoming car, and Dr. Dan would grab my arm, pulling me out of harm's way, saving my very life, and his hand would rest on my shoulder, warm and strong and comforting...

  Of course, nothing would happen; that would be so gross. No, he'd just say something about how ten years could fly by, and he wasn't going anywhere and he hoped that I'd come down to the office every week for cocoa, so we could talk. He'd smile at me, then go back to his lonely house--where we'd live someday as a married couple--and wait out the years.

  Filled with this lovely dream, I walked in the cool rain toward downtown. My dad's office was housed in the tallest building in Cambry, and the thrill of riding in an elevator had never left me. I pushed the button for the eighth floor and mentally reviewed stories I could tell Dr. Dan to entertain him and show him I was mature and insightful. Caleb Johnson's spoiled tuna fish sandwich? No, too disgusting. Sydney Dane dating a ninth grader? No, because that might make me look a little young. Oh! Mr. Heisman's limp, a subject of great speculation today at lunch. I could express my compassion for those less fortunate. "I think it's a war injury," I could say to Dr. Dan. "But he doesn't like to talk about it. Understandable, of course." As it turned out, Mr. Heisman sprained his knee while in a bouncy house with his daughter, but I didn't know that then.

  I got off the elevator and went down the hall into my dad's suite. Dr. Dan was right there in the reception area, leaning on the counter where Lizzie the receptionist sat, a very handsome smile on his Swayze-esque face. "I'd go wherever you wanted," he was saying. "Le Monde is fine with me, if that's where you want to eat."

  Le Monde was a fancy restaurant on the Hudson River. My parents went there for their anniversary.

  I felt the burning prickle of humiliation in my face before I completely understood that he was asking Lizzie on a date.

  "Hey, kiddo," Dr. Dan said, turning to me. "How's it going?"

  Kiddo? Kiddo? Not what you'd call the girl you were going to wait for. A spear of pain slammed through my chest, snapping ribs, crushing my heart. Even worse, I felt the burn of tears in my eyes. In a second, I'd be crying, and Dr. Dan would know. And so would Lizzie. And so would everyone.

  "Is my dad here?" I blurted. "I--I have an emergency."

  "Are you okay?" he asked, frowning.

  "Where's my dad?"

  "I think he's in the storage room, honey," Lizzie said.

  The storage room was down the hall, back toward the elevators. I pushed through the doors and ran, my wet jeans flopping against my skin, which felt raw and cold. Stupid, stupid, stupid, imagining someone like Dr. Dan would think I was interesting. That he would wait ten years for me! I was an idiot.

  I burst into the storage room and saw a man and a woman kissing, their arms twined around each other. At my entrance, they jumped apart.

  The man was my father.

  The rush of my heartbeat thrummed through my ears.

  One second. Two seconds. Three. The silence spread like melting tar. Dorothy--Dorothy? He liked Dorothy?--twisted the hem of her jacket in her fingers, biting her lip.

  "Pumpkin!" my father said, far, far too late. "What a nice surprise! Is, uh, is school over? Why are you all wet?"

  "It's raining," I said. My eyes felt hard and dry.

  "Of course, of course it is. Um, Dorothy, did you find what you needed?"

  "Yes, Dr. Tate," she said, then slithered around us and out the door.

  "Soccer practice was canceled," I said, accusation knifing through my tone.

  "Sure, honey. Come on. Let's go get a hot chocolate. My poor Jenny! You're soaked! You must be freezing." He almost made me feel better.

  "You were kissing her."

  His face wriggled as he searched for an answer. "She...she was upset. That's all."

  "You were kissing her."

  Dad sighed and crouched down to my eye level. "Yes. I was. Because she was upset. But I love Mommy and you girls, and if you tell your mother or sister, they'll just be upset. Don't give it another thought, Jenny. It was nothing."

  Except I knew. There was no nothing about it, and the wrongness shimmered in the air. Dr. Dan's betrayal evaporated in the heat of that wrongness.

  "Let me buy you a hot chocolate, sweetheart," he said, and his voice, his dad voice, was the same as always, warm and low and loving, and I hated him in that moment.

  But I went with him, and I drank my hot chocolate and ate two madeleine cookies, and when Mom harped on me that night for not eating my dinner, he told her to go easy on me.

  I didn't forgive him. I knew. He liked that Dorothy. How dared he?

  From that day on, true adolescence in all its sulky, consuming power burst out of every pore, seeped into the air around me. I didn't speak to Rachel when she asked in her gentle, sweet voice if something was wrong. My mother muttered something about another menstruating female in the house, and I stormed out of the kitchen. When Dad asked if I wanted to go for a bike ride that weekend, I said no and stayed in my room, furious that he'd then asked Rachel and actually gone and had fun. The nerve. The betrayal.

  The next week, Mom asked Dad how Lena and the baby were doing. They were great, he said. Lena would be back next week.

  "What about Dorothy?" Mom didn't look up from her plate.

  His eyes cut to me. "Well, I don't need another hygienist. I'll give her a good recommendation, though."

  He took another bite of potatoes and chewed. The skin on his throat was lax and swaying with the motion of his jaw. Funny, how I'd never noticed that before.

  My father was getting old.

  Of course, to a sixth grader, "old" is anything north of eighteen. But in that moment, I felt two things--a savage, hot triumph that Dorothy was out of our lives, and an overwhelming disgust for my father. Just because she was gone didn't mean I was going to forgive him.

  And then, three months later, my father was shot in the face and killed, and he never got a day past forty-four years, six months and one day.

  *

  Death af
fects everyone differently. For me, I became more protective of my sister. Rachel had always struggled, too tender, too giving. After Dad died, she became even sweeter, and more shy.

  Mom became someone entirely different. She was now a professional widow. Gone was the busy-bee mother, the art therapist, the committee chair for every committee that ever existed. Instead of World's Best Mother, Mom became World's Most Grief-Stricken Wife.

  A creeping dread--and disgust, I'll admit--grew in me like mildew as my brisk, capable mother devolved into someone who fell asleep in her chair every night, clutching a picture of Dad and her on their wedding day. She stopped coloring her hair, gained weight, started wearing Dad's clothes. Work, which she'd so loved the past year, became too much, and she demoted herself back to art therapist, then cut her hours back to just a few a week. "I can't bear being around all those old people," she'd say. "Why was Rob taken so young? Why not one of them instead?"

  All she could talk about was how happy they'd been, how blessed, a word I'd never before heard her say. "I wish it had been me," she said one night, her tone sticky with self-pity. "You girls would've been better off if it had been me instead of Rob."

  That was another thing. There was no more Daddy, or Dad, or even your father when Mom spoke. There was only Rob, her husband. She was a pale comfort to us in our grief, but "at least you two have each other." Meaning she was suffering much more than we were. And maybe she was, but it didn't seem fair for one of us to burst into tears and then have Mom cry harder, and longer, and louder.

  That's how I changed. I became cynical and tougher, though really, the change had started in the dental supply room.

  A conglomerate bought Dad's practice, and Tate Dental Offices became Oak Hill Dental. The hygienists stayed on, a sixtysomething-year-old woman who didn't believe in nitrous oxide was hired, and Dr. Dan moved down South a couple of years after Dad died.