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She says it gently. “I think he already told you everything you need to know when he didn’t reach out when your mom died. I honestly don’t know how he lives with himself.”
“He did reach out.” With another one-liner, but still. “It’s just the way he is.” I don’t know why I’m defending him. Cleo’s right. This is probably an epically bad idea.
“Exactly.”
If it was just me, I wouldn’t be here. Dad didn’t come to my graduation or to our mother’s funeral, but he did send me an email when my debut single hit the Billboard Top 100. That, he cared about, apparently. “Josh is just so angry, Cleo. It’s not healthy. I worry about it.”
“He’s seventeen, Ivy. He’s a mess of angst and hormones. He’s also smart and successful and he’s about to start college. He’s going to be fine.”
“I know he is. And that’s the thing. I’m so proud of him. I want our father to see what a cool kid he is.”
“No thanks to him,” Cleo points out scathingly. “Basically the only thing he’s ever done for Josh is to donate a DNA sample.”
“Ew.”
She laughs. “Sorry. But seriously, you’ve done a good job, Ive. You’ve worked like hell to make Josh’s life easier, and you’ve done that. But he’s a big boy now.”
“I just don’t want him hating me ten years from now when he’s talking to his therapist and they’re discussing why I didn’t try to do more.”
Cleo twirls a blond curl around her finger. “Maybe it’s time for both of you to just let it go, honey, and get on with the rest of your lives.”
“I know. I will let it go, I promise. After this.”
Something in me is burning to tell my father face to face that we did it without him. We made it. We’re successful people. Our mom and her sister did everything they could to make a life for us after he traded us in for a newer model. They lifted us up. And we lifted each other up. Even without him, we didn’t just survive, we thrived.
Sort of.
“I want him to remember, even if it’s for one miserable second of his carefree new life, that he left us behind. I also want to watch him squirm when he’s forced to look me in the eye as he makes some excuse to miss his oldest son’s high school graduation.”
“Well, I wish you luck, babe. If you need some support after, come see us. We’ll be back around three.” She glances at her iWatch. “I better go. Sam will be back from the gym any minute and if I’m going to sell the idea of going downtown, I need to be on my A game. I might even have to resort to bribery. But call me later, okay? I want to hear how it goes.”
“Of course. Good luck with the registry.”
That’s another thing about Cleo that puts us in different universes. Not only does she have the perfect family, she has the perfect fiancé. She and Sam met as juniors in high school and have been sweethearts ever since. They haven’t set a date yet, but they’re in the process of planning for their wedding, which will no doubt also be picture perfect.
It’s icing on the cake that she also has a job she loves, as the assistant for Noah Maddox. He’s the CFO of Invested Enterprises, one of the hottest companies in the city that literally everyone wishes they worked for.
I’m beyond happy for my best friend. She deserves all of her good fortune.
But I also know she doesn’t entirely get some of the grittier details of my life, because she seems to have been born under a lucky star.
I’ve had to make my own luck, and I have, but it’s taken 24/7 of grit and hard work, every single day of my life, to get here.
We end the call, and I pull my baseball cap even lower, sliding on my sunglasses as the train slows to a stop. Stamford station comes into view.
I get off the train and order an Uber.
It’s a ten minute ride to my dad’s house, through streets that get progressively leafier, more manicured and lined with bigger and more ostentatious houses.
I’ve never been to Stamford before, or at least not that I can remember. Josh and I were both born in Bridgeport, where my parents lived together when we were very young. I have a few hazy memories of a white house. And slamming doors.
Only a few months after Josh was born, my parents went through a bitter, messy divorce. And then, after the three of us were cast out, we moved into my mom’s sister’s basement apartment in Bushwick, which is where we lived until around a year and a half ago, when I was able to buy the two of us our very own apartment.
Being both an asshole and a divorce lawyer, my dad was able to manipulate the child support payments into something that covered only our absolute basics, as he meanwhile married his pretty young secretary and continued to live a progressively more and more luxurious life. They have seven-year-old twin sons named Aaron and Adam who go to some elite private boarding school and who I’ve never actually met.
My father’s neighborhood definitely has that safe, privileged family feel that the wealthy suburbs are known for.
Oh the irony.
