The Girl in the Glass (7 page)

But I didn’t know any of that on that day. All I knew was my dad was taking me to Disneyland and my mom couldn’t go because she had been to the doctor’s a few days before and wasn’t feeling well.

Dad took me out of school on a sunny Friday—the most amazing thing a parent can do when you’re nine. We went on all the big rides, twice. The Matterhorn, three times. It was the most magical day of my life up to that point. Maybe it still is.

I still remember sitting in a giant, pastel-pink teacup and holding on to the disc in the middle as Dad and I spun and laughed. On the other side of the ride, the world was a kaleidoscope of rushing colors, sounds, and smells: the calliope from the nearby carousel, the aroma of hot popcorn, and Nonna’s blurred image under the shade of the Alice in Wonderland ride as she watched us. I was amazed that the world could seem like it was spinning far too fast with the colors of everything familiar slamming together, but it was perfectly fine if you were with your father and you were both laughing. After our tummies recovered, we ate Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes
for dinner. We didn’t leave the park until the announcement came over the loudspeakers that the park was closing for the night and guests needed to be making their way to the exits.

On the way home I leaned my head against the car door window in the backseat and closed my eyes, reliving every fabulous moment of the day in my head so that I could tell my mother about it when I got home. Nonna and my father naturally assumed I was asleep. They began to talk about me as if I weren’t there, saying things I understood perfectly, like “Meg sure had a good time” and “Wasn’t Meg cute talking to Cinderella?” and “Meg sure can put food away.” But then they started talking about things I didn’t get at all. Not at first.

My father asked Nonna if she’d given any more thought to his idea. Nonna seemed to hesitate before replying that Therese and Bianca didn’t think it was a good plan. I didn’t know what idea they were talking about. But I knew who Therese and Bianca were. They are my aunts; my dad’s older sisters.

“Why did you have to bring them into it?” Dad seemed angry. He kept his voice low, but I could hear the frustration in it. “They don’t have anything to do with this. This is between you and me.”

Again my nonna waited a second before answering. “You asked me to take out a mortgage on my house—the only thing I have left to leave you children—so it does have something to do with them. You know it does.”

“But it isn’t going to change anything for you, Ma. I will pay the bill every month. It will be just like it is now. Like the house is paid for. You won’t have to pay a thing extra.”

This time my nonna did not hesitate. “I admire your optimism, Nick. You know I do. I know you think this idea will work and that nothing stands between you and success. But the world is an uncertain place. And you have had other ideas that never really—”

“But this concept is completely different!” Childlike longing hung in my father’s voice. It so surprised me that I opened my eyes. I didn’t understand at the time what my father was asking for—the word
mortgage
meant nothing to me—but I knew it was something Nonna could give him and my aunts didn’t think it was a good idea for him to have it.

“Yes, this idea is different. But the odds are just the same,” Nonna said.

“Is that what Therese and Bianca told you? Did they tell you that?”

“They did not have to. I can see the risk, Nicky. And you haven’t paid back the ten thousand you borrowed two years ago. That concerns them.”

My father swerved the car a little. “You told them about that?”

“I didn’t tell them. They asked. I am not going to lie to my children.”

I heard a swear word fall off my father’s lips. “They asked? They
asked
if I owed you money?”

“They asked if this was the first time you had asked me for money. I couldn’t tell them it was.”

My father swore again, and my grandmother shushed him. My magical day was ending, and I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t. I wasn’t sitting in a pink teacup and laughing. I was in the backseat of my father’s aging Volvo listening to adults argue about money. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard my father have a conversation with Nonna about money. Nor was it the first time I’d heard him talk that way about his sisters. My aunts had always come across to me as kind of bossy with their immense brown eyes, pointy eyebrows, and stern mouths. I thought my dad didn’t care much for his sisters because they were always trying to tell him what to do. That night on the way home from Disneyland, I wondered if maybe the aunts had a reason for being mad at my dad all the time. And it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Nonna loved Therese and Bianca like she loved my father. The aunts weren’t annoyed with Nonna or their husbands or their own children. Or even with me. But they were with him. Almost all the time.

When I was older, I understood that my father was a fabulous idea man but terrible at follow-through. He would see a business for sale, like a little candle store or a sandwich shop, clearly at the end of its rope, and he could vividly imagine hauling it back from the edge of the abyss. But he couldn’t forge his noble ideas into reality, and he didn’t have the money to keep trying. I would think of that night often, whenever I felt cheated out of a simple desire. I grew up wishing the odds weren’t so stacked against people with dreams.

Whatever it was he wanted money for as we drove home from Disneyland, he wasn’t going to be getting it from Nonna. He would have to stay at the insurance company doing whatever it was claims adjusters did. I didn’t know what he did all day long; I just knew he didn’t like it.

“It’s none of their business, Ma. When they asked, you could’ve told them that. You could’ve—”

I didn’t want to hear any more. I closed my eyes again and made a little sound like I was waking up, and my father immediately fell silent.

“Are we home yet?” I asked sleepily.

“No, angel. We’re not home.” But he said it quietly, as if not to me.

The morning after the epic evening at the Melting Pot, I awoke well before my dad was supposed to be there with poppy-seed bagels. And since I hadn’t stayed for dinner with my mother and Devon, nor had I eaten much after I got home cranky and disillusioned, my stomach was growling. I pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, grabbed a Pink Lady from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, and went for a walk along the beach.

I knew deep down that it shouldn’t matter that my mother was dating a man thirteen years younger than she was. In the morning chill off the
frothing surf, my face warmed as I remembered liking the idea that Mom had set me up with Devon right about the time I realized he was
her
date, not mine.

It was dumb to relive those stirrings, and yet I did anyway. I hadn’t been attracted to a guy that quickly in I don’t know how long. It was exhilarating and yet embarrassing since he clearly hadn’t felt the same instant attraction for me. After the walk I came back, showered, and waited for my dad to arrive, which he did, half an hour later than he said he would.

My father’s blend of mutt American on his dad’s side and Nonna’s pure Florentine heritage had created for him a nice, light-olive-skinned complexion, an average stature, large brown eyes, and curly hair the color of maple syrup. When he married Allison after my mother divorced him, he became a stepfather to her two sons, who were six and eight at the time. I think in the beginning he liked having boys around him, but it seemed to me, from my safe distance, that he learned soon enough those boys had a father whom they loved very much. The difference was those boys spent an equal amount of time with their real father and with Allison. Michael and Ross never called my father Dad or went to him for advice or money or car keys. Michael is married now with a baby. But it doesn’t mean my father is a grandfather. He is Nick to Michael and Ross, and I suppose he will be Nick to their children too. Secretly, I have always been fine with this. When I still lived at home, I was intensely jealous that Allison’s boys got to spend way more time with my dad than I did.

Even now, as he stood on my porch with a bag of bagels and whatever news he had to tell me, I was still secretly glad that the attachment to his second marriage didn’t extend to the sons. Not that my dad doesn’t care for them—I know he does—but he isn’t their father. They already have one of those.

“Hey, angel.” He stepped into the cottage and took me into his embrace,
a white paper sack sandwiched between us. He smelled like morning air, leather, and the sea. I could smell the Pacific Coast Highway on him.

“I’m glad you’re here.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was true and not just a nice greeting to extend to him. My arms tightened around him.

“Sorry it’s been so long.” He pulled away and the bag with the bagels made a crunching sound in protest.

I reached for the bag. “I made some coffee to go with these, if you’re interested.”

“Definitely.” He bent to scratch Alex, who was looping himself in and out of my dad’s legs.

In the kitchen I grabbed two mugs out of the dish drainer with my free hand.

“I’ll pour the coffee.” My dad reached for the cups, anxious, it seemed, to be doing something.

“Toasted?” I lifted the bagel bag and he nodded. In the lemon-yellow sunlight dumping into the room from the kitchen window, I saw lines of worry on his face, hidden minutes before. He looked tired as well as anxious.

“Drive down okay?” I asked.

“It was perfect.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” I sliced a fat bagel in two and shoved the two halves into my toaster. Released poppy seeds fell to the counter like confetti. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father take the cups to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.

“So how was your week?” he asked nonchalantly, the way you ask someone how they are when you really don’t expect them to say anything other than “Fine.”

I opened the fridge and pulled out a container of strawberry cream cheese. “Most of it was okay. Yesterday wasn’t that great.”

I hadn’t thought my answer through. I wouldn’t have minded talking about Miles getting married yesterday, but I didn’t want to tell him about Mom and the boyfriend I’d mistaken for a setup for me.

But he just said, “Yeah. Fridays can be like that.” He sipped his coffee.

I said nothing else and waited for the bagels to pop up. The tiny kitchen filled with their fragrance. I heard my dad speak endearments to the cat as I spread the cream cheese and set the bagels on a plate. When I set them down on the table, he smiled at me.

“Poppy-seed bagels.”

I smiled back. “Yes.”

“They’re not your favorite, are they? They’re your mom’s.”

I shrugged. “I like them too.”

He laughed and grabbed one. “It didn’t occur to me until after I paid for them that it was your mother who used to ask for them, not you.”

I reached for the other bagel. “But they’re good. That’s why she likes them. And I was just happy you were coming. I didn’t care.”

He took a bite and so did I. We chewed in silence. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, set the bagel down, and inhaled deeply. I could tell he did not want to begin with small talk, so I decided to make it easy for him.

“So what is it, Dad? Is something up between you and Allison?”

He looked up quickly, relief and surprise both playing across his face. “Not exactly.” His voice cracked a little; not like mine would if I was on the verge of crying, but more like a splinter in his resolve to keep things from getting too serious.

“Are you … are you seeing someone else?” I asked.

When he quickly shook his head, I asked if she was.

“No. No, it’s nothing like that. It’s … I just … Look, I didn’t come down here to talk about Allison. I really just wanted to tell you I was sorry, Meggie.”

He took a quick sip of coffee and then looked up at me. Regret etched the contours of his face, and I didn’t know why.

“Sorry for what?”

“For all of it.” He put the mug down. “Not just the divorce but everything that happened afterward. Actually everything that didn’t happen afterward. I know I wasn’t around much for you. I know I told you I’d take you to Florence. And I know you still want me to. I just could never get that kind of cash together. Allison’s got money. Allison’s always got money, but she’d never … I mean, I’ve already spent money she didn’t want me to spend, so there’s never been any way I could …”

He broke off, and I immediately felt stupid for assuming the reason my father hadn’t taken me to Florence yet was that he found it easy to postpone. I’ve always known he has a hard time managing his money. I should’ve offered to go dutch long before this. Go dutch to Italy. We could each pay our own way. I actually could’ve saved up enough for us both to go by now if I had just thought to.

“It’s okay, Dad. I can start saving up to pay my own way, and then you—”

He raised his hand. “No. I promised Nonna I’d take you. She’d never forgive me if I let you pay your own way. That’s not happening.”

I paused for a moment. “But she’s not here, Dad. And I just want us to go.”