Stacy's Dad Has Got It Going On (2 page)

“Hello, roomie,” Stacy’s dad replied.
He reached across the couch and tossed the throw cushions to the floor so
Savannah wouldn’t have to sit on his lap. That, she perceived, was highly empathic
of him. She expected every older man she encountered to have no respect for
women, but maybe that view was a little too harsh. She ought to give Stacy’s
dad the benefit of the doubt. 

“Thanks,” she said. Curling into the
very corner of the couch, she placed her plate on the armrest and tried to
watch TV without looking too much in his direction. The sitcom Stacy had turned
on was way too risqué to be watching with somebody’s father in the room, and
everybody very obviously stifled their laughter at the crudest of the jokes.
Awkward!
 

After five of the longest minutes of
her life, Savannah couldn’t take the tension. Grabbing the remote from the
coffee table, she said, “Let’s see what else is on.”

“Good idea,” Stacy’s dad said.
What
the hell was his name?

Savannah flipped through the channels
until she came across the familiar face of a young red-head. “Oh my god,
I
Love Lucy
is on!”

Stacy groaned from the corner chair.
“Seriously? Dad used to put this on after school when I was a kid and I always
hated it. I wanted to watch reruns of
Night Court
.”

“You weren’t old enough to watch
Night
Court
,” he said.

“Yeah, you probably don’t think I’m
old enough to watch it now,” she muttered.

Savannah didn’t want to delve into
their familiar discord. She swayed the conversation back to Lucy. “I used to
watch this show after school too. I had a babysitter named…oh, what the hell
was her name? Anyway, she was Indian with a British accent, which I thought was
too cool for school, and she let me watch one half-hour of TV before starting
my homework. I always picked Lucy.”

“It’s a classic,” Stacy’s dad agreed.
“You know, when I was a kid this show was considered risqué. Lucy and Desi were
the first TV couple to sleep in the same bed, if you can believe that. Watch Dick
van Dyke or…let’s see…The Honeymooners, I think, or any of those shows. Married
couples all slept in twin beds like Bert and Ernie.”

“Now that show I did like,” Stacy
said, but the conversation no longer involved her. It had coasted to Savannah
and…
what the hell was his name?

“But your parents did let you watch
Lucy, or they didn’t?” Savannah asked. She turned to face Stacy’s dad, bringing
her knees up onto the couch and setting her plate in her lap.

“They were fairly progressive, in that
regard. But, god, I was one of those kids who sat three inches from the
television, you know? They were constantly telling me to move back, move away
from the TV. ‘Eric, twelve inches,’ they’d say.” 

Eric!
Finally, Stacy’s dad had a name!

He laughed and repeated the phrase, “
Eric,
twelve inches
. Also, by strange coincidence, the caption under my picture
in Gigolos Weekly.”

For a split second, Savannah wasn’t
sure if that was a joke, but then Stacy moaned, “Eww, dad, what the fuck!”

He blasted a grave look across his plate
of half-eaten dinner. “Language, Stace.”

“Penis jokes, dad!” she shot back.
“God, I’m trying to eat, here. Show some respect!”

But it was Savannah Eric faced to say,
“Sorry if I’ve offended.”

“No,” she chuckled. “I think it’s just
Stacy who’s offended.”

Stacy nodded. “Sh-yeah I am! You’re
grossing me out. Talk about something else, will you?”

“Okay, okay,” Eric said. He took a
mouthful of rice while he searched for a new topic of conversation. “Savannah,
where are you from?”

Her fork fell from her fingers. It
landed with a clang on her plate before tumbling to the carpet. For a moment,
she just looked at it. Savannah didn’t like to think of herself as easy to
offend, but it really bothered her when people figured she was not from this
country just because her skin wasn’t as snow-white as Eric’s or Stacy’s, or
Stacy’s mother’s for that matter. Not that she’d had much interaction with
either Stacy’s father or her mother, but she remembered thinking Eric and his
wife had that “brother and sister couple” look about them. They were both
light-skinned with hair so blond you’d swear it was bleached. Though she was
pretty sure Eric and his wife weren’t actually fruit of the same loins, their
whole little family looked nearly albino.

“Sav,” Stacy said. “My dad asks
everyone he meets where they’re from. He works as the Director of Development
for the IHAO.”

Savanna laughed at her overreaction to
the simple question. “That’s the International Humanitarian Aid Organization,
right?” she asked as she bent down to pick up her fork.  It was covered in lint
and other grossness, so she put it down on the coffee table and ate her kebab
with her fingers.

Eric nodded as he did the same.
“That’s right.”

“Wow.” She didn’t even try to hide how
impressed she was. “Development…that’s essentially fundraising, right?”

“Yeah,” Stacy laughed. “Dad’s a
glorified panhandler.”

“It’s true, and I’m never off the
clock, so if you’ve got any spare change lying around, I’d be glad to take it
off your hands.”

“Students aren’t the best demographic
to hit up for cash,” Savannah replied. But she felt a little guilty giving
nothing when she reflected on the four dollar latte she’d downed between her
microbiology lecture and her bio-chem lab. “I’ll see what I can dig up after
dinner.”

Stacy and her dad finished their meals
at exactly the same time. She cleared their plates while he explained, “That’s
why I always ask people where they’re from…”

“I’m from here,” Savannah quickly
interjected. She didn’t want the assumption that she was born somewhere else to
remain hovering on the air.

Eric picked up the TV remote and
turned down the volume. “Well, ‘here’ is a place. We fund projects all over the
world, including ‘here.’”

“Really?” Savannah asked. “That seems
weird to me. This is an affluent country we live in. Shouldn’t our money be
going to people who need it more than we do?”

With a nod, Eric grabbed his water
glass from the side table and took a sip. “Good question. I feel like I’m being
interviewed.”

“Oh,” Savannah said. Had she been
rude? “Sorry. Inquiring minds are always humming.”

“No, it’s good to ask questions,” he
said. “And yes, you’re right. Most fundraising dollars do go to developing
countries with world majority populations, but I always like to tell people
what’s going on close to home. Here, we don’t feel the government is doing a
great job in supporting the First Nations and Inuit populations. In fact,
they’ve really dropped the ball.”

Savannah nodded. “Amen to that.”

“There are reservations in this
country akin to shanty towns, where clean water is not always available and
disease is rampant. And those who hold the money all live in urban centres, so
they never see this level of poverty first-hand. It’s out of sight, out of
mind.”

“That’s one thing about studying
biology,” Savannah reflected. “You get so caught up in the internal lives of
individual organisms—you know, on an organic scale—that you sometimes forget to
look out into the world. What other work do you guys do?”

“Lots,” Eric began. “Let’s try this:
where are your parents from?”

Now that she realized why he was
asking, she didn’t mind telling him. “My mother was born in Laos, but her
parents came here when she was little.”

“Laos?” He looked at her in a way she
couldn’t quite decipher. It wasn’t sleazy or dirty or anything along those
lines, and yet his gaze warmed her in a way she couldn’t quite describe. “Our
big project in Laos is bomb disposal. The Americans dropped hundreds of
thousands of bombs on Laos during the Vietnams war…”

“Yeah, I know,” Savannah replied.
Unzipping her grey hoodie, she slipped it from her shoulders and tossed it over
the arm of the couch. “That’s why my grandparents left the country. A lot of my
relatives were killed in that senseless war.”

Eric nodded. “And those bombs are
still killing Laotians to this day. The countryside is ridden with undetonated
explosives, and in the rural areas there’s a thriving black market for scrap
metal. That’s a lethal combination. In poor villages, people—adults and
children alike—come across old bombs and try to dig them up to sell. Quite
often, the jostle reactivates the detonation device and…”

“God. Those people could be my
cousins.” Savanna fished all the change from the pocket of her jeans. “What do
you guys do about the bombs?”

“We have teams,” he told her. “Bomb
disposal teams. They go into these areas and safely dispose of the explosives.
Can you imagine? All these years after the war, and innocent people are still
being killed.”

Savannah took a deep breath as she
considered Stacy’s father. He looked so much younger than her parents, though
they must be roughly the same age. He had a vibrancy to him, as well, that
seemed nothing if not youthful. She’d already forgotten the reason for his
visit, but when it stormed to the forefront of her mind, she felt a surge of
discomfort. She hoped he wouldn’t mention his wife’s affair to her. She’d feel
really awkward hearing about it. “What about Africa?” she asked. “That’s where
my father’s ancestors were from.”

“We have a number of projects going on
in Africa, as you can imagine. Right now we have a big push on promoting the
rights of women and girls. This campaign’s gotten a lot of great press.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it for sure. It’s
about helping women work for themselves in sustainable industries, and
encouraging families to let their girls go to school.”

“Right!” Eric said. He seemed very
pleased his message had reached all the way to his daughter’s house. “As
ruefully as we may look at corporate sponsorship, it’s a necessary evil at
times. Did you know we’ve teamed up with purveyors of sanitary pads, who help
us by donating money and product to help keep girls attending classes?”

Stacy crept back into the room and
took a seat in her favourite chair, but neither Eric nor Savannah acknowledged
her. The conversation had gotten too interesting. “Yeah, you know, I actually
did hear about that,” Savannah said. “Because a lot of girls there, especially
in the villages, aren’t allowed to go to school when they have their periods.
They fall behind after a while, and then a lot of them drop out.”

“What the hell are you people talking
about?” Stacy asked, grabbing the remote from the coffee table.

“One of the IHAO’s projects in Africa
involves…”

But Stacy wasn’t listening. She upped
the volume on the TV to drown out her father’s voice. He looked to Savannah and
shrugged. “We’ll finish this conversation some other time, I guess.”

The guy had a really nice smile—she’d
give him that much. “For sure. I have a lot of reading to do for Physiology of
Neural Systems.”

Eric laughed. “Sounds like fun.” And
then he looked to his daughter. “Stacy, don’t you have reading to do too?”

Rolling her eyes, she tossed the TV
remote back on the coffee table. “Yes, father.”

When Stacy marched to her room and
closed the door with a little more force than was necessary, Savannah went to
the kitchen to clear her plate. Through the serving gap, she watched Stacy’s
dad pick up the remote, flip past documentaries and round-table news programs,
and finally settle on one of those irritating fat-husband-pretty-wife sitcoms.
A man as smart as Eric would really have to be suffering to fill his mind with
that crap.

“Can I get you anything?” Savannah
asked him.

“No thanks,” he said without turning
around. “Stace showed me where you keep everything and…oh, I won’t eat any of
the food with your name on it. She told me not to.”

Her heart panged for the guy. “No…”
she muttered. “It’s okay. Eat what you like.”

When Savannah got to her room, she
spent a good half hour scouring her bookshelf for something Eric might be
interested in reading. Anything would be better than sitcoms, but she doubted
he’d be interested in her old Genetics text, or even the vastly more jejune
Pharmacokinetic Principles. She didn’t own many novels, but she did have the
autobiography of a young Somali woman. With his international aid work, he’d
surely find it as interesting as Savannah had. She set the paperback by her
door to give him when she left her room for the nightly nine o’clock tea break.

Chapter Three

Savannah closed her eyes and listened
to this week’s favourite song on the radio. She fully acknowledged her
commitment issues with regard to music and bands. What she loved this week,
she’d hate next week. She didn’t like anything after it became popular. Would
she drop Chris so easily once she got to know him? Would she love his band for
a week and then start searching for the next big thing?

It was nine o’clock on the dot. She
felt cross-eyed, glancing down at the printed words on the page of her textbook
and the hand-written words in her note book. Break time hadn’t come a moment
too soon.