Days That End in Y (13 page)

I could wait out here for him to come out to the car, but I don’t want to get caught loitering around the parking lot. People could get suspicious and call the police, mistaking me for a car thief. I could go in and ask for him at the desk. Maybe they could call him for me. But then I would have to know exactly what I want to say.

I take a deep breath, sucking in thick, soggy air. So much
for deep, cleansing breaths.

It’s dim inside, the lobby lit with a ragtag collection of lamps in corners and on the front desk. A man with a walrus mustache and a belly that is barely contained by a sickly orange shirt is slumped in a chair behind the front desk.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could call Bill Davies for me?”

“Did you try his room?” the Walrus asks.

“Actually, I forgot his room number, which is why I was wondering if maybe you could call him?”

The man harrumphs into his mustache and reaches for the phone. Even this small movement is almost too much for the buttons of his shirt, which are threatening to pop right off. I take a step back and to the side, out of range.

Every part of me feels like it’s on high alert, like one of those wind-up toys full of gears and things that whir and spin. My nerves are jangly and my knees feel like jelly. It’s impossible to get myself together. I tell myself to keep breathing as the Walrus waits for Bill to pick up on the other end. When he hangs up without saying a word, I deflate a little, like a day-old balloon.

“Not in,” the Walrus says.

“But I saw his car in the parking lot,” I say.

“Must be in the bar then.” The Walrus gestures with his head to an even darker room just behind him. The only thing that separates it from the lobby is a podium with a
Please wait to be seated
sign stuck on the front. Beyond the podium, I can see tables, a bar and two TVs mounted in the corners of the room. It’s dingy, but it doesn’t look that bad, which is a relief. There are a few people seated at the bar, but I can’t tell if one of them is Bill.

“You going in?”

It’s now or never.

“Yes,” I say.

I wait at the podium as the sign instructs, but after a minute it becomes clear that, in fact, no one is coming to seat me. So I shuffle in, hoping I don’t look as lost as I feel.

Technically I am in a restaurant, not a bar, but I still feel like I am in some place that I shouldn’t be. Even the smell of french fries can’t hide the underlying musty stench of the place, which smells like an old couch someone has left outside in the rain. An older man and woman are sitting at a table staring up at one of the wall-mounted TVs. They don’t talk; they just sit and watch the baseball game, occasionally picking at the food in front of them. A pair of men are chatting with the bartender; both are wearing baseball caps and holding tall glasses of beer. A fifth person sits alone at another table, fiddling with his phone, an untouched beer and an open newspaper in front of him. Bill.

I make my way to his table, willing him to look up and see me, but he is wrapped up in whatever he’s doing on his phone. If he would just look up, surely he would see a resemblance between us and instantly know that I was his long-lost daughter, come to find him.

“Mr. Davies? Mr. Bill Davies?”

Finally he looks at me. We make eye contact, and I almost lose my nerve. Then he smiles at me, and I start to thaw out.

“That’s me. You look a bit young to be a waitress,” he says, but I can tell by his tone that he knows I’m not the waitress, he’s just teasing me. Charming, I think. Denise said he was charming. I try not to fall under the spell of his smile, which is as warm as the midday sun, and probably just as bad for me. My tongue feels heavy, and my throat
feels gummy. I can’t seem to get any part of my mouth to work. This is going to be even harder than I thought.

“I’m not the waitress,” I manage to say.

“Okay, then. This is a strange place for a young lady,” Bill continues, not unkindly. “Are you lost?”

“No,” I manage to say.

“Well, then what can I do for you?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

He smiles again and says, “I always find the beginning is a good place.”

I sort of thought by now he would recognize me, or at least see some of himself in me. “I’m Clarissa,” I say. Then I puff myself up with a big breath and go on, “Clarissa Louise Delaney.”

I wait for recognition to flash across his face, change his features, indicate in some way that my name conjures up something other than the blank smile that he keeps giving me.

“Delaney?” I repeat. “As in, daughter of Annie Delaney? As in, your daughter?”

After all this time, after all my agonizing over the perfect wording, that is not what I wanted to say. It was too dramatic, too sassy. I feel like a bad actress in a soap opera. But now that it’s out there, I can’t take it back. Bill laughs, takes his hat off and smooths his unruly hair back. I want to tell him not to bother; we have the same bouncy hair and nothing will hold that curl back for long. But I can’t, because I’m confused by his laughing. It doesn’t seem to be out of joy or relief.

“All right, you got me. Who put you up to this? Was it Stookey? Tyler?” Bill looks around as if expecting ghosts from his past to jump out and yell
gotcha!
But it’s just me, stupid me, and I wonder if I’ve made a huge mistake.

“No one put me up to it. It’s me, Clarissa. Your daughter.”

Bill squints at me, like he needs glasses. “Don’t tell me it was Annie, not after all this time. She made it clear she was done with me when she ditched me for Jack Handover.”

Jack Handover?

The Jack from the yearbooks?

“I don’t know any of those people,” I say, trying to think over the sound of my brain screaming WHO’S JACK HANDOVER? “I’m Annie’s daughter. I’m your daughter.”

“Okay, look, haven’t you heard of taking a joke too far? You couldn’t possibly be my kid. Annie would have told me — I would have known!” Bill says, charming smile completely gone. It makes him look older, more haggard than handsome.

Even though I knew that Mom had never told him about me, a little part of me thought that maybe he had known all along, deep inside — that maybe the feeling had grown so big, that he’d done a little research and found out about me and came to town to find me. That part is thoroughly and utterly squashed now. All I can say is, “You really didn’t know?”

“You’re not kidding?”

“No!”

Bill swears under his breath, though not so quietly that I can’t hear him. “Jesus, Annie!”

“I’m Clarissa,” I whisper, feeling the last of whatever pride I had shrivel up and die.

Bill gets up abruptly, bumping the chair behind him. It totters but doesn’t fall. He rubs at his cheeks, as if they have answers.

“Of course you are. I just mean — Jesus, Annie! She could’ve told me! Called, or even sent a goddamn email after all these years!”

“Then why are you here? Who did you come out to see?”
I ask.

“My nephew’s in a baseball tournament. He asked me to come see him play, so I decided to make a trip out of it. I don’t get out here very often.”

You can’t hear a heart break, but you can certainly feel it. I know this, because I feel mine shatter into a million pieces that lodge themselves all over my body. In my fingers, in my toes, especially in my cheeks, which are burning red and smarting with embarrassment. All this time, that little part of me thought that maybe he was back because of me, but he was back for someone else. It wasn’t me he was looking to get some face-time with, it was his nephew. I had the whole situation wrong.

“Does your mother know you’re here?” Bill asks.

I shake my head no.

“Look, you shouldn’t be here. Let’s go call your mother, and we can all sit down and talk about this.”

My vision blurs as the tears I’ve been trying to hold back take over. Bill sees this and touches my elbow gently, as if he’s never comforted a kid before and is afraid I’ll bite him.

“Please don’t cry. I’m sorry I got all crazy. This is news to me, too, okay? But we’ll work this out. What did you say your name was again?”

I can’t help it, I am crying. I back out of the dark, dingy bar and run to my bike. I don’t know if Bill is behind me, because all I can hear is my heartbeat. It feels like it’s taken up residence right between my ears. I jam my helmet on my head, kick at the kickstand and book it out of there as fast as I can, far away from Bill and the Lilac Motel.

I can’t go home, and I can’t go to Benji’s. He is too busy with his new hair and Dean and the stupid showcase. But I do need somewhere I can go and be alone.

So I bike all the way to Michael’s house, let myself into the backyard and head for his brothers’ tree house. I climb up, not caring as the branches etch my skin and pull sharply at my hair. It’s like I can’t feel pain anymore. When I finally pull myself inside, I lie face down, spread-eagle, and pray for the horrible spinning sensation to stop.

What’s wrong with my mother? She’s the one who fell for him and got pregnant. How could she be so stupid? Didn’t she know a snake when she saw one? Is that why she didn’t tell him about me? And who’s Jack Handover?

The last question makes me feel queasy. What did Bill mean when he said that my mom ditched him for Jack Handover? I’ve never even heard of him before. Then I remember I still have the yearbook in my backpack. Part of me wants destroy it — throw it into the river, or rip it apart page by page and feed each one to the barbeque — but first I need to find out.

It’s dark, but I know David and Solly keep flashlights in the tree house — they showed me on one of my non-dates with Michael. There isn’t a lot of room for storage up here, just a shelf with all the tree house necessities: flashlight, binoculars, comic books, balloons for making water bombs.
I find a flashlight and flip through the incriminating yearbook, my nervous stomach turning somersaults in my belly.

I find him quickly. In his school photo, Jack Handover looks like a jock with a serious streak. His hair is perhaps a bit too gelled and stiff, but it looks like a respectable haircut, not wild and rebellious like Bill’s bad-boy mop. His face is square, and he is gazing into the camera with a determined look on his face, like he can see his future and is just about to grab it. Did that future include my mother?

I don’t have to search too hard to find out more about him. Jack Handover is splashed all over the yearbook. He played senior football and was on the wrestling team, so I was right about him being a jock. He was also a member of student council and the debate team. There is a candid photo of him painting a mural that features the school mascot, a fierce-looking badger. There’s another of him posing with a group by a pick up truck, which is all dolled up as a float for the Santa Claus parade.

Bill wasn’t in any club pictures. Aside from the mandatory school photo, the cheeky prom photo and his dedication page, he was absent from the yearbook. I should know: I have been searching every page for him for weeks now. Unlike Jack, he wasn’t much of a joiner.

My mother was a member of both the spirit committee and the prom committee — not very serious clubs, like debating, but they are something. Is that how she met Jack? The autographs are sadly lacking in information. No one mentions Jack at all, and the only message that could potentially be from him is a bit of a stretch:
Hey, Annie! You should come out for student council next year! You already have my vote! –J

“J” could be anyone, and according to the club picture, there were tons of people on student council. Probably more than one of them had a name that started with the letter J. Or maybe “J” wasn’t even part of student council, but just thought that my mother should be. I feel like I’m going crazy. I thought that talking to my dad would finally complete the picture, not bring up all these other questions.

I start to snuffle, and then snort, and then I’m crying. Soon I’m bawling like a baby in my maybe-boyfriend’s little brothers’ tree house. I’m pathetic, unwanted. No wonder Bill freaked out. What father would want me as a daughter?

Then I hear a screen door slam. My sobs dry up as I watch a beam of light bob cross the backyard toward the tree house.

“Hello? Is someone up there? I suggest you show yourself before I call the police,” says Mr. Greenblat.

I stay absolutely still.

“I have no problems setting our guard dog loose,” he adds.

Well, that’s a joke. Rambo may be named after some terrifying killer from a movie, but unless being covered in wet puppy kisses is torture, I’m not in any real danger. Still, I am technically trespassing.

I drag myself to my knees and stick my head over the edge of the tree house. I blink down into the light from the flashlight, which is surprisingly strong.

“It’s just me, Clarissa,” I call down, knowing full well that the rest of the Greenblats (and probably the neighbours) are watching this spectacle from their windows.

“Oh, Clarissa,” Mr. Greenblat is taken aback. The violent flashlight beam lowers in surprise; then he aims it directly at my eyes, but I’m too tired to shield them from the light.
“You shouldn’t be here so late.”

He thinks I’m a bad influence. One of
those
girls. The kind that sneaks out in the middle of the night to prey on unsuspecting boys in a tree house. The kind that cheats on her boyfriend, or gets pregnant in high school. Like my mother.

“I know, I just needed to think,” I say, feeling about a hundred years old. “Michael doesn’t know I’m here. I came here on my own.” At least he didn’t know before. He probably does now.

“Oh.” Now Mr. Greenblat is even more confused, probably sensing that there is some major girl stuff going down. The beam of light disappears again as he considers my fate.

Suddenly Mrs. Greenblat’s voice cuts through the darkness. “Oh for goodness sakes, Mitchell! Leave the girl alone! She’s not a prowler. Michael, are you just going to let her sit there all night?”

There is some shuffling as Mr. Greenblat goes back to the house, the screen door slams again, and then there is the sound of branches protesting as someone makes his way up to the tree house. I rub my cheeks, dry my eyes the best I can and hope I don’t look as terrible as I feel.