The Seven Month Itch (13 page)

‘Did Marc say anything today when he called?’ I ask after a while.

My dad shakes his head. ‘No, not really. Oh wait … He did leave a message. He said something about a blonde and a computer screen and whiteout.’

I groan. ‘How can you tell if a blonde’s been using your computer?’ I translate.

‘How?’

‘There’s whiteout on the screen.’

Beside me, my dad laughs.

‘You can’t tell me you’ve never heard that one before?’ I say to him, at the same time thinking that it’s strange Marc left a dumb-blonde joke for me. Almost as if he was trying to apologise for yesterday. I guess he probably feels a bit bad about it. I mean, some of the things he said …
they really hurt. And whether they were true or not, I’m sure he knows that.

‘Did you need to talk to Marc about something?’ Dad asks, returning my thoughts to the present. ‘And is everything okay with Holly, do you know? She was supposed to call this afternoon, but she didn’t, and when I called her, her mobile was turned off. All afternoon, in fact, and early this evening. Which is quite strange, because she distinctly said that –’

Stangely enough, it’s a cell phone that cuts my dad off mid-sentence. My one. ‘Sorry,’ I say to him, pulling it out of my back pocket. Oh. The caller ID reads ‘Marc’.

‘There you are. It’s Marc again,’ my dad says, reading the screen over my shoulder. I bite my lip. Well, I guess I’ll have to answer it now.

‘Hello?’ I answer the ring, hesitantly, not really knowing what to expect.

‘Nessa? Finally! I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.’

‘Oh, um …’ I glance up at my dad. If Marc starts yelling at me again, Dad is going to hear it for sure.

‘I really want to apologise,’ he continues. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did.’

Phew. I’m so relieved, I stop walking. ‘But it was true. What you said was true.’

‘No. No, it wasn’t.’

‘Yes, Marc. It was.’

‘Look, Nessa, it doesn’t matter right now. We can argue it out later. As it turns out, you were definitely right about one thing, and now we’ve got bigger problems.’

‘Bigger problems?’ Now I really freeze, right in the middle of the sidewalk, while, beside me, Dad looks at me quizzically. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s Kent. You haven’t seen the news yet?’ Marc asks.

‘Well, no. We’ve just been out to dinner at Ghenet.’

‘Ghenet …’ Marc takes a quick detour from whatever problems we’re facing with Kent and cruises onto the highway of Vera-style food love. ‘Did you have the Kitfo Tiklil?’

‘And the Yebeg Tibs.’

Marc groans. ‘I’m totally jealous. It’s alfalfa-sprout city out here.’

I laugh. ‘Well, you’ll just have to bring yourself and Holly home again, and you can have all the Kitfo Tiklil and Yebeg Tibs you can eat.’

Marc sighs. ‘Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. Yes, yes, okay …’ he says to someone in the background. ‘That’s Heather, Nessa. I’m going to have to go. Just go home and switch on the news and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re about to have a meeting here to decide what we need to do and then we’ll call you after that, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I reply, but I’m frowning now. ‘Is everyone all right?’

‘Everyone’s fine. Just fine. I’ll talk to you soon. Oh, and Nessa?’

‘Yes?’ I say quickly.

‘Why should blondes not be given coffee breaks?’

Here we go again …

‘Because it takes too long to retrain them. Okay, Heather … Sorry, Ness. Gotta go.’

I’m still frowning as I stick my cell back in my pocket and then look up at my dad. ‘Apparently we have to go home and watch the news,’ I tell him. ‘Something’s going on with Kent.’

Dad shakes his head. ‘That Kent. He’s such a … loser.’

My eyes widen the second the word leaves his lips. A loser? That’s, like, a word from the twenty-first century.
Go Dad! ‘Come on,’ I say, grabbing his arm. ‘Let’s go find out what Kent the loser is up to.’

Well. As it turns out, Kent Sweetman isn’t just up to something, he’s up to something BIG. Something five storeys high, in fact. Because Kent has declared his love for Holly by covering up the ‘wood’ part on the Hollywood sign with some sheeting on which he’s printed the words ‘come back to me’. The sign now reads:

It’s there, for all the world to read. For anyone out in space to read, even. (And unrequited love is so much worse when it’s visible from space, wouldn’t you agree?)

Dad and I sit on the sofa and look on in horror, flicking from channel to channel, watching Kent on the various
entertainment programs and current affairs shows he’s been able to get on that afternoon. In every single one, he turns his revolting face to the camera, smiles his too-white-toothed smile and begs Holly to, as the sign says, come back to him. To reconsider getting married on Saturday. Deep in her heart, he says, she must know that they’re meant to be together.

‘That … that loser.’ My dad’s eyes narrow as he views the spectacle for the umpteenth time.

‘I’ll say.’ I reach over and grab his arm. Still watching the screen, I don’t turn to look at him for a few more seconds, but when I do, I see that his face is all red. ‘Hey, are you okay?’

He pauses. ‘Yes … No.’ He frowns again at the TV.

I turn around properly to face him now. ‘Dad, you
know
what Holly thinks of him. She only keeps in contact with Kent because she feels sorry for him.’

‘I know,’ he says miserably.

‘And it’s a horrible thing that he’s doing now. He must know it’s going to wreck how happy everyone is with the wedding coming up and all. It’s hardly going to impress her. In fact, I don’t think he’ll even be getting his sympathy contact after this stunt.’

‘I know,’ my dad says, but somehow he sounds even more miserable this time.

And he looks terrible. What can I say to cheer him up? ‘Remember, it’s
your
cute butt she’s interested in.’

And this, at least, changes my dad’s facial expression. ‘Pardon?’

I wave my hand. ‘Um, nothing.’ A phrase like that, said in complete and utter depressed-Dad desperation, should never, ever be repeated. Not unless someone wants to be cleaning vomit off the rug, that is. ‘Marc said he and Holly and Heather were about to have a meeting to decide what to do,’ I continue. ‘And they’ll call us back when they’re done.’

Dad nods slowly at this.

‘I guess they’ll be wanting to avoid the media. I mean, Holly’s not really going to want to comment on this. It’s pretty embarrassing.’

Again, Dad nods.

‘Maybe they’ll come home early?’ I add cheerily. ‘Like tonight or first thing in the morning.’

He brightens a bit at this. ‘That would be nice.’

‘I know the plan was for Holly to stay at the Mercer
tomorrow night, so we wouldn’t see her before the ceremony, but I guess things are different now. Plus –’ But just as I seem to be making some progress, I’m cut off by my cell phone ringing. ‘Hello?’ I say, answering it as fast as I possibly can.

‘Nessa? It’s Heather, honey. How are you doing?’

I shrug. ‘We’re okay.’

‘Listen, things are going insane over here,’ Heather begins. Not good. ‘We’re really going to have to move into damage control. The media know, of course, that the wedding is on Saturday, but thankfully no-one’s worked out where, thanks to you. We really need to keep that under wraps if we can, because if anyone finds out, it’s going to be a nightmare. What we’re going to do is whisk Holly away to a secret location. Now, it’s going to be quite secluded, so it probably won’t have a phone and we may be out of range to use our cells as well. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that you may not hear from us for a bit, but don’t worry about it. Just go ahead with all the plans as normal and we’ll all be there. And remember, Nessa, whatever you hear, don’t believe it. You two just be there. As planned. Got that?’

I nod. ‘Got it. Listen, Heather, is Holly okay?’

‘She’s fine, sweetheart. But we don’t have much time. Put your dad on for a second, will you? And don’t forget what I said.
Don’t listen to anything.
Go ahead as if everything’s normal and just be there …’

‘As planned. Okay. We will. Thanks, Heather.’ I hand the phone over to Dad, who gives me a ‘What’s going on?’ look.

‘Yes. Right …’ he says, obviously in response to the publicist’s instructions. ‘Of course … Certainly … I will … Thank you, Heather.’ His brow furrowed, he finally hangs up before passing my cell back to me again with a shake of his head. ‘This is all most unusual.’

‘I think Heather’s just trying to make sure Kent doesn’t ruin everything. She knows how much getting married means to Holly.’

Slowly, my dad’s head moves in agreement.

‘And you,’ I add.

He nods again.

‘This way it’ll all probably die down quicker. If they can’t be reached, and everything. If no-one knows where she is or where the wedding’s being held.’

Silence. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ Dad says eventually, still
looking extremely miserable. ‘It would have been nice to speak to her, though.’

Again, I reach out and touch him on the arm. ‘It would’ve, but it’s for the best, Dad. Really. Like Heather said, we just have to be there. On Saturday. And everything will be okay.’

‘I hope so,’ he says with a sigh.

But I just smile back at him. ‘I
know
so.’ And strangely, I do. After a week and a half of not being certain about very much at all, I finally feel completely sure of something at last.

Getting through Friday, the day before the wedding, is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I think it may be one of the hardest things Dad’s ever had to do, too, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so miserable.

I call Vera up early in the morning and tell her not to bother coming in. I don’t think either of us could stand a morning of cheery French-toast pushing. ‘You change those sheets, Va-nessa?’ is the response I get.

What really worries me about my dad’s misery, though, is that he doesn’t go into the sulky kind of mood that he usually falls into, say, when he doesn’t get a grant he wants or his projects aren’t given the go ahead. Now it’s more like a proper bout of depression and, as the day wears on, he just sits there watching more and more Kent and Holly footage on TV, mindlessly flicking from channel to channel to catch as much as he can. I try to stop him – believe me, I do – but it’s hard to pull a remote control away from a growling grown man who can ground you at any time. And regardless of his mood, watching all this TV isn’t good for him. It just makes him more depressed as the stories become wilder and wilder: Holly and Kent have run away to a secluded island to try to work things through … Kent’s been arrested for tampering with the Hollywood sign, and Holly’s bailing him out … Holly’s going to have Kent’s baby … Kent’s going to have Holly’s baby. (Okay, so that last one was from the tabloids …)

As the day progresses, I start to find the situation more and more ridiculous. There’s no way in the world Holly would ever get back together with ‘loser’ Kent (as Dad puts it). I’m not worried at all any more, which is pretty
weird considering the head-trip vacation I’ve been on recently, freaking out about the wedding at every possible opportunity. But now, I have another one of those gut feelings (dangerous, I know) and, thankfully, this time it’s a good feeling. I just know the wedding’s going to go ahead. That everything’s going to be all right. This time, my gut is giving signs for good, instead of evil.

In between news programs and entertainment shows, my dad tries Holly’s and Marc’s cell phones over and over again. Neither of the numbers work, and he can’t leave voicemail because it seems to have been disconnected. After watching him dial each number for about the millionth time, I decide to grab the phone and the TV remote off him when he’s busy with one of his long sighs.

‘Aha!’ I say, leaning over the sofa and stealing them both from beside him. ‘You’re not getting these back. Not till after the wedding.’

‘Nessa Joanne Mulholland …’ he starts.

‘No!’ I take a step back.

‘Vanessa!’

Ooohhh, my real name. He must mean business.

‘No way, Da –’ But this time I’m cut off by the sound of the intercom buzzing. Who could that be?

I go over to the video-phone system on the wall and speak to the doorman, who tells me there’s recently been a number of deliveries for us. He’ll send someone up with them right away, he says.

Deliveries? I glance over at Dad, who just shakes his head; he hasn’t ordered anything. I didn’t think he had. He doesn’t exactly look like he’s in an ordering-in-food mood.

Just minutes later, the deliveries are lined up, one after the other, across the kitchen bench. Together, Dad and I stand back, surveying them, not quite knowing what to make of it all. It’s an interesting assortment of items in front of us … A big box of our favourite City Bakery cupcakes (boy, are we ever going to be cupcaked out after this wedding). A big bunch of white gerberas, Holly’s favourite flowers – Dad’s always buying them for her. A styrofoam cooler, which we open up to find contains six tubs of our favourite Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavours: four of mine – chunky monkey, fudge central, the gob-father and marsha marsha marshmallow – and two of my dad’s – strawberry no sugar added (oh Dad …) and
vanilla light (what? I don’t understand). Finally, resting on the end, there is a Trapeze School of New York T-shirt in Dad’s size. This last item might seem truly strange, but it’s not to me. As a Christmas present, but mainly as a joke, I sent Holly and Dad to trapeze school and, frighteningly, they loved it.

Now, I go over and pick up the T-shirt and smile, knowing exactly what this weird and wonderful assortment of things means. ‘They’re signs, Dad!’ I tell him. ‘From Holly. She can’t contact us, but it’s her way of telling us everything’s okay. And that she’s thinking about us.’ When I realise this, I’m so excited I really have to pull myself together to stop from jumping up and down. Suddenly, though, my excitement fades. ‘Dad?’ I say, looking at my father’s face.

‘Hmpf,’ he says, Vera style (who, incidentally, on hearing of his melancholy, threatened to come over and force-feed him homemade muesli this morning). Then, before I can stop him, he picks up the phone off the bench and starts trying Holly’s number once more. When that doesn’t work, he tries Marc’s number. ‘Hmpf,’ he says, again, when this doesn’t work either.

‘Dad … come and have a cupcake,’ I try. But it’s too late, he’s already rounded the corner and has disappeared into his and Holly’s bedroom. And even from here I can hear the beep, beep, beep as he keeps right on pressing the buttons on the cordless phone. I’ve tried telling him that the numbers are programmed into the phone, so he could speed-dial instead, but there’s no reaching him right now.

It’s hard to believe it’s possible, but as the evening wears on, Dad just gets more and more depressed. Holly’s and Marc’s cell phones remain switched off and we don’t hear from them. No phone calls, no faxes, no texts, no emails, no IM. No communication whatsoever. Dad doesn’t want to eat and he certainly doesn’t want to listen to me.

I try pleading with him a number of times, going over what Heather said. Going over the deliveries that Holly so obviously sent – I mean, why on earth would anyone else send us a Trapeze School of New York T-shirt? But whatever I say, whatever I do, however much I jump up and down, he just can’t see that it’s all going to be okay.
He mopes around the apartment, refusing to go out and ringing those stupid cell numbers over and over again.

Dad ends up falling asleep on the sofa at just after 1 am, and when this finally happens, I stumble my way to bed and collapse, exhausted. And, just before I fall asleep, I realise that, with all the fuss going on, I haven’t been able to speak to Alexa yet. I’ve called her twice today, but she seems to be strangely busy, always out of her family’s apartment, with her cell diverting to voicemail each time. We need to arrange things for tomorrow – the bridesmaid dresses, our shoes. And she still has the wedding folder, of course. Plus, I have to record the message to be sent to the guests at the Mercer, and then there’s the …