My fate was decided when I decided to go off to college in another city. My mother was too paranoid to allow me to stay in a dorm room five states away, so she called my father on the phone and arranged for me to stay with him while I was in school.
I had not seen him in eight years and I expected that he would vehemently refuse, but he disappointed me on that point too. He had talked to me as my mother looked on and told me how much he had missed me and that he was really looking forward to my coming to stay with him. I wanted to ask him why, if he had missed me, he rarely called and never came down to Baltimore to see me, but I couldn't with my mother standing there staring at me and listening.
That was in my mind as the plane landed, leaving an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the signs came on as we were herded like cattle out of the pen. When I went through the terminal, the first person I saw on the other end was my father in a nice pen striped suit.
He was slim with slightly graying hair and he had a cool smile attached to his lips. He looked very different from the man with the beer belly who came home every night only to yell at anyone, and anything, that got in his way. I moved to him quickly and when our eyes locked he smiled widely and suddenly ran towards me. He the hugged me so tight around the waist that he picked me up. When he put me down, I was smiling despite myself.
"Daddy, you look different," I told him.
He smiled and did a dramatic turn for me. "Do you like the changes I've made, pumpkin?" he asked as a struck a pose.
I laughed and clapped my hands at his antics. "I like the changes very much, I just hope they go more than skin deep."
My father, suddenly serious, looked me in the eyes. "I have changed a lot, Brittany, and I think you are going to like all the changes my therapist and I have worked hard on these past eight years."
I nodded. "Well, in that case, Daddy, I think I want to see my new home now," I told him.
He smiled again, held out his arm to me, and when I slipped my arm into his he escorted me to the baggage claim. I was laughing all the way and all the thoughts of him not coming to see me and my mother staring at me flew out of my head. We picked up my few bags and as I pulled the strap of my pink tot bag over my shoulder, by father feigned pain when he picked up the two suitcases.
I laughed again and when he was done goofing around, we walked out of the airport and into the parking lot where he headed for a black Oldsmobile. It was a nice car, but what I was really looking at was the redheaded woman who was in the passenger seat. My father opened the door for me to get into the back seat and proceeded to stow my bags in the trunk with no explanation. I climbed into the seat and arranged my skirt around me.
"Nice to meet you, Brittany," the woman said as she turned around.
She had an annoyingly high voice and I barely wanted to answer, but I also did not want to be rude. "Nice to meet you too, Ma'am, though I have no idea who you are," I told her.
"Your father must have told you all about me, I'm Rachel, his fiancée," she insisted.
"He never told me he was engaged," I admitted.
She pouted and turned back around. I looked back at my father, who had just shut the trunk and was walking back to the driver's seat. When he sat down, he pulled the door closed and leaned over to kiss Rachel on the cheek. She flinched, but she allowed him to do it. "What's wrong, honey?"
"Your daughter has never heard of me," she whined.
"I'm sorry, honey, I must have forgotten," he explained.
Rachel continued to pout, but instead of trying to make her happy my father shook his head and started the car. I smiled to myself at my father's nonchalance as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto an almost empty street. It was a long drive to my father's house and somewhere along the drive I must have leaned back and dozed off.
I didn't remember doing that, but I must have because the next thing I remembered was my father shaking me awake in the darkened garage of his house. I sat up groggily and guessed that Rachel had already gone into the house since I was alone with my smiling father. His smile brightened as I stopped yawning and smiled back at him.
"I was tempted to let you sleep forever, pumpkin, you look just like a little angel when you sleep," he told me as he mussed my short hair.
I laughed. "A perfect Angel?" I asked as I climbed off the seat only to jump into my father's waiting arms. "I think I just dived out of heaven," I told him as he put me down in the floor.
"Good thing you kept your wings because now you're in my heaven," he answered without missing a beat.
I slipped my arm through my father's and we walked together through the spacious garage, through an open doorway and into a large, bright kitchen. The kitchen was painted a soft yellow and as my father let my arm go in order to do something on the counter, I thought about my mother saying that a kitchen always looks nice in any shade of yellow.
The shade she had picked, however, was garish and took far too much away from the dark wood and I had always hated it. My father's colour of choice was more neutral, however, and it read more as a neutral amongst the light cabinets and all the gleaming ceramic surfaces that were spread throughout the room. Even the floor, which was a brown, red, and black pattern of pretty tiles, was pretty and warm in the room.
I immediately liked the room and slid comfortably into one of the high chairs that stood on the side of the counter that faced the sitting room. My father smiled at me from the other side as he hurriedly made sandwiches for what I supposed would be our lunch. What surprised me was that he had remembered my favorite ingredients when my mother, who saw me everyday, could not.
He was spreading mustard on top of ham and mozzarella cheese as he prepared to put dill pickles in the shape of a smiley face. He was feeding me one of the pickle slices when Rachel appeared again in a very skimpy bikini and flip-flops. Her body matched her voice. She was tiny everywhere, with dull blue eyes, pale skin and a dopey smile.
"You two catch up now, I'll be in the pool if you need me," she said.
My father barely glanced at her as I chewed on the pickle he had given me, but he nodded his acknowledgement and she flopped on out of the room after flashing me a bright smile. I smiled back, but was more interested in my father.
"How long have you two been engaged?" I asked.
My father looked at me with humour in his eyes. "I've never been engaged to Rachel, pumpkin. Is that what she told you?" he asked.
I nodded. "Well, if you're not engaged then how long have you been with the Barbie doll?" I asked and immediately wished I could take the words back.
Surprisingly, my father laughed. "I've been with her three years and sometimes I slip up and call her Barbie myself. That's why she dyed her hair that horrible red in the first place," he admitted.
I laughed then too. "I can't believe you remembered how to make my favorite sandwich when even Mama forgets on the regular."
"I can't forget anything about you, pumpkin. I wasn't around for so long that I had to create a permanent picture of you in my mind," he told me as he slid in the chair beside me and handed me one of the sandwiches.
"I'm really glad you aren't engaged to that Barbie doll out there, Daddy," I said as I bit into my sandwich. "I mean, she is Mama's opposite with her deep voice, serious demeanor and all her curves, but I don't see why she should appeal to you."
My father was silent.
