Zen and Xander Undone (24 page)

“Actually, girls, I would like you to take it.”

“No,” I say. My voice sounds very loud in this tiny room. “Mom wanted you to have it.”

“It meant enough that she remembered me at the end.” He pushes the box into Xander's stomach and closes her hands around it, folding her fingers gently around the corners of the cardboard. “I mean it. I've got a family now. And a wonderful wife. I shouldn't let my house get crowded up with ghosts.”

I want to tell him no again, but Xander nods. “I understand that,” she says.

He leads us to the front door and opens it for us. John's little boy turns around when he sees us and yells, “Swimming, Daddy!”

“Five minutes,” John tells him. He turns to look at me and Xander, his sad eyes darting between us. “You both look so much like—”

“Thanks,” Xander interrupts. It's too painful to let him finish.

He nods in understanding. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

“Goodbye,” Xander says, and turns to go to the car.

Something pulls me, or pushes, and though I don't want to do it, I step forward and kiss John on the cheek. His stubble tickles my bottom lip, and a spark of electricity snaps from my fingers to his shoulder. If I hadn't stopped believing Mom was still in the world, I would imagine that spark is a message for him from her. When I pull away, his face is rubbery and undone. I can't make myself speak, so I run to the car.

We drive off without looking back.

We've gotten what we wanted. We have the answers. And considering what it might have been, the story came to a conclusion that I can live with. Mom didn't cheat on us for years. She slipped up for a couple days. So why don't I feel better?

I look at Xander in the rearview mirror. She's squinting through the bright windshield at the street, looking sullen and angry. She doesn't feel any better either.

Adam knows enough not to ask us about it right away. He just drives, waiting patiently for us to tell him when we're ready. But what will we say?

That Mom didn't have an affair so much as a couple days of temptation. That she came to her senses and ran back to Dad, who forgave her. It doesn't really matter, in the end, how many men Mom loved, because it turns out we don't feel any better. We solved the mystery, got the answers we were looking for, and now we're back where we started.

Mom is dead. John Phillips was just one facet of her life that we didn't know about. But there were a million facets to the diamond that was Marie Vogel, and the only ones we ever got to see were of her being our mom. The mischievous teenager, the brilliant academic mind, the confused lover, the torn heart, all of these were parts of her too, but we never knew these sides of her, and we never will. No matter how many mysteries we solve, no matter how many road trips we go on looking for the key to Mom's past, she's never coming back. Except for the letters she wrote to us, there's no way we can ever know more about her than we already do. Mom's life is a closed book we can never read.

It's like we were trying to build a bridge to wherever Mom is. But that's impossible. Not only did we lose Marie the mother, we lost all of her, and we lost the chance to know the rest of her. Forever.

I've been talking to her in my mind since she died, trying to convince myself it wasn't true. But it is. Mom is gone.

I let out a little groan and lie down on the seat, shielding my eyes with my arm. I hear Xander's breath come in starts and hiccups, and I know she's buried her face in Adam's shirt and she's quietly crying, just like I am.

D
AD LOOKS LIKE HE'S AGED
about twenty years when he comes through the airport gate. His eyes are baggy, and his hair hangs in his eyes. He walks bent over, looking at the floor, so that he almost bumps into us before he notices we're standing right in front of him. Xander and I smile sheepishly, but he doesn't return our smiles. He seems brokenhearted, and I feel even worse about making him worry so much. Adam takes his garment bag from him and we lead him out to the parking garage. He walks to the driver's side and snaps his fingers. Adam gives him the car keys without a word.

We're on the highway, on the way to the hotel Nancy booked for us, before Dad finally says a direct word to Xander and me. “I really don't know what to say to you.”

“Daddy, I'm sorry,” Xander pleads. She's in the front seat next to him, and she leans forward, trying to get him to look at her, but he won't. “We tried to get permission. We really did.”

“And I said
no!
” Dad punches the steering wheel. The car swerves, and the driver next to us honks his horn. Dad tries to calm himself down with deep, shaky breaths. “I lost my wife, not even a year ago! For twenty-four hours you made me think I might have lost the two of you as well. Do you know what that did to me? Do you?”

Xander shrinks back into her seat. She almost never has this look on her face, but it's written all over her profile. She's totally ashamed.

“Adam, your mother has been through enough without you wandering off.”

“I know,” he says. He's staring at the back of Xander's head with worry.

We all brood as Dad pulls in to the hotel parking lot, and we pile out and go check in to our rooms, Adam and Dad in one, Xander and me in the other. It's a nice room, decorated with burgundy and gold curtains and plush, squishy carpeting. It's almost nine o'clock, and I'd love to ignore my empty belly and crawl between the sheets, but Dad knocks on our door and calls, “Let's go have some dinner.”

Xander and I follow him down the hallway. The carpeting is so thick, I can't hear our footsteps. Dad seems a little less furious now, but he still seems heartbroken. I'm starving, but I'm so filled with dread about what he's going to say to us, I can't imagine eating a big heavy meal. What I really want is Cream of Wheat, the way Mom used to make it when we were little. She would drop cut-up dried apples and apricots into it, and drizzle honey on top. I've tried making it for myself, but I can never make it taste the way Mom could. That's one more thing I wish I'd asked her. How did you make that Cream of Wheat?

“Vanilla,” she whispers in the sound of the elevator doors opening for us.

Of course. Vanilla.

But that wasn't Mom. It was my subconscious or something. Wishful thinking. And I've got to let that go. I can't keep hurting like this, and talking to a figment of my imagination isn't helping me.

“Where's Adam?” Xander asks worriedly.

“He's getting room service,” Dad says. “He thought we'd want to be alone to talk.”

Xander rolls her eyes. I know just how she feels. I sometimes wish Adam weren't so damn appropriate all the time. Now Dad can really let us have it without worrying about appearances.

We are seated at a comfortable corner booth, and we can hear the fountain that's in the middle of the room, drizzling water over mossy, jagged rocks. The waiter is very soft-spoken and polite, and he takes our drink orders right away. Mint tea for me, Diet Coke for Xander, and a martini on the rocks for Dad, which shows how upset he is. He hardly ever drinks hard liquor.

He weaves his fingers together and looks at us. We stare at one another long enough for the waiter to bring our drinks and take our orders. When he leaves, Dad takes a sip, and another, sets his glass down, and finally speaks. “Why didn't you come to me about Phillips?”

I look at Xander, who is staring into her lap as though she's making a breakthrough about the construction of blue jeans. So I say, “We were afraid that Mom had an affair with him, and if that was true, we didn't want you to know.”

His eyes are electrified with rage, and his voice seems to crackle. “You imagined that you knew something about my relationship with your mother that I didn't?”

“We wanted to protect you,” Xander says quietly. “You've been a little . . . fragile lately.”

“This is how you protect me? By disappearing for two days . . .” He breaks off, his tired eyes wandering over the table.

Two days. Xander and I look at each other, and I can tell she's realizing the same thing I am—that our leaving reminded him of how Mom left with Phillips all those years ago. And when he finally found us, who had we gone to see?

How could we have been so selfish?

“I'm so sorry, Dad,” I whisper.

“Me too,” Xander says.

“We just thought—”

“What?” he spits angrily. “That your mother was a cheater?”

“We could never have imagined that there was another man in Mom's life, and when we found out there was . . .” Xander trails off.

I can't stop a tear from falling down my face. “I felt like I didn't know her all of a sudden.”

Dad glares at us both, but when he sees the pain on our faces, his anger seems to melt away a little, and he lets out a long, low sigh. “Girls, your mother was exactly who you thought she was. She never misrepresented herself to anyone. She was always honest with me about her feelings for John, and when those feelings faded away, she was honest about that too.”

I lift my eyes to Dad's. He's still angry, but at least now he's trying to do something. He's trying to be our dad, maybe for the first time in almost a year.

Xander must see it too, because she says, “I missed you, Dad.”

This does something to him, and he leans back in his chair as though he's suddenly too tired to sit up straight. For a second I have the insane idea that Xander has ruined it and with a few short words Dad has gone back to being the same boneless heap he's been for the past year.

The way we're all sitting here, dazed and sad, reminds me of how we all looked the night after Mom's funeral, when everyone had left and we were all alone, the three of us, newly aware that one of us was missing, and would be forever. Xander was pale and wan, Dad looked gray and angry. My eyes looked huge and shocked, as though the rest of my skull had shrunk from sadness. I remember I felt that something in the world had gone terribly, terribly wrong, and that we had lost our chance forever to fix it.

Soon the waiter brings our orders, which surprises me because I don't really remember ordering. BLT for Xander, French dip for me, grilled cod for Dad. I eat mechanically. I can hear Xander chewing and swallowing, and I want to tell her to stop being such a pig. But I hold my tongue. At least everyone is eating, proof that this isn't really so bad as the night after Mom's funeral. Nothing could be that bad.

“Look, girls, I know deep in my heart that your mother loved me totally, and I her.” His eyes flash with the passion of what he's saying. “We loved each other more every day. I have absolutely no doubt about that. Okay?” he says sternly.

“Okay,” we both whisper.

Dad pushes his plate away. He leans his elbows on the table and looks at Xander with a steady eye, and then at me. “I'm sorry, girls.”

Xander looks up from her half-eaten dill pickle. I put down my sandwich, which is clammy and cold.

“I've been so sad.” He rubs his whole face with one big hand. “I haven't really been there for you.”

“That's okay,” Xander tells him. She reaches across the table and rubs his shoulder. “We understood.”

“You needed me,” he insists. “I shouldn't have left you girls alone to figure out what to do with all your grief.”

“Is there any other way?” I ask.

He crinkles his eyebrows, not understanding.

I remember the portraits Aunt Doris painted of Mom, and it helps me formulate the idea into words. “I think everyone does their grieving alone.”

Dad's face softens. In spite of what I've done to him over the past forty-eight hours, he seems proud of me. “You might be right about that.”

Xander makes a face. “How come she always gets to be the wise one?”

Dad smiles a real smile. “Because it's your job to be the smart-ass.”

We all laugh, weakly. Dad doesn't seem furious anymore.

The waiter comes to take our plates away and asks if we want dessert. Xander nods emphatically, and soon we're eating enormous hot fudge sundaes, extra nuts for me and Dad, extra whipped cream for Xander. She has a dot of white on the end of her nose because she always takes too big of bites, but Dad and I don't tell her. We smirk at each other as she prattles on about how she can hardly wait to get some lab time at Caltech, she just hopes they let freshmen use the electron microscope or the particle splitter or laser doohickey. Something like that—I'm not really listening.

After we finish our ice cream, we all lean back. Xander rubs her belly unabashedly. Dad burps kind of loudly, then whispers, “Excuse me,” his face red.

We feel like a family again. One of us is missing, but somehow we closed the circle.

What is it about ice cream that can do that?

“So, Dad, who's sending our letters?” Xander asks. She leans forward, testing her boundaries, as always.

I elbow her in the ribs. She can never let go of anything.

He looks at her, his eyes narrowed, and he clips his words as he answers. “Your grandmother. Which you probably could have found out had you visited her on Mother's Day as your mother asked you to do.”

This shuts Xander up for a good long time.

I
T'S SO EARLY,
the robins aren't singing yet. I can hear a warbler in the oak tree by Adam's house. One by one, more birds answer his call.

Xander and I are standing on the front porch with her mountain of luggage between us. Most of the clothes in her bags are new from a shopping spree we went on last week. The shirts she bought have a plunging neckline, and the pants are snug around the hips, but it's a vast improvement over the ripped jeans and halter tops she's been wearing lately. “I'm de-skanking for college,” she announced to one saleslady at Macy's, who kept her distance after that.