Page 6 of Play Nice

I kneel before my open suitcase, contemplating its contents. Working in fashion has ruined my ability to be spontaneous, to be nimble even under these circumstances. What I wear matters, how I’m perceived matters. Sometimes I think it’s all that matters. Sometimes I know it is.

Dad comes back and waits impatiently as I finish packing, as I check and double-check that I have everything I could possibly anticipate needing or wanting. He carries my suitcase out to the car, griping about its heft as I lock up. When I get to the car, I throw my duffle in the trunk and slide into the passenger seat, putting my purse between my feet and shifting the seat back. There’s an unopened bottle of water in the cup holder, and I help myself, assuming it’s for me.

“Probably warm now,” Dad says. “It was cold when I got here.”

The plastic is wet with condensation, the label soggy. “That’s okay. Thank you for bringing it. And for driving me. And for waiting. And carrying my suitcase.”

He massages his shoulder before starting the car—perhaps an attempt to guilt me. He’s a six-foot-four Viking, and his hair has been salt-and-pepper for as long as I can remember, so it’s easy to forget that he’s creeping toward his mid-sixties, that he’s not indestructible. “What do you do when you go on all your trips? If this is what you bring for a few days.”

“Maybe a few days. I don’t have enough information,” I say, adjusting the vents so the heat isn’t blowing directly into my face. There’s still glitter on my hands. There will always be glitter on my hands. Glitter is permanent.

“I don’t either,” he says. “Helen didn’t call me. She called Leda.”

Not surprising. Aunt Helen, Mom’s older and only sibling, hates my father. Hates. Amy is a close second on her hit list. To say my parents did not have an amicable divorce would be like saying the Challenger did not have a pleasant flight.

“They have lunch sometimes,” he says, turning onto Flatbush Avenue. “Helen and Leda.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

He doesn’t respond, so I don’t respond. I know Leda has met with Helen, they both live in Boston, and Helen has been trying to get back in touch with us for years, and while Leda, a chronic overachiever with an iron will, could probably stop the earth on its axis if she put her mind to it, Tommy is a soft kitten who grew up in a normal family. He’s her well-adjusted Achilles’ heel and never approved of her steadfast disavowal of our mother. And while he couldn’t get her to budge on the issue of Alexandra, he could talk her into a lunch with Helen, which turned into several lunches, because Leda and Helen are cut from the same glorious rigid bitch cloth.

I know all of this, but I don’t know if our father does. It could be a trap, so I don’t confirm or deny.

“Can I put on some music?” I ask, already reaching for his phone.

“Sure, Cli,” he says. “Not too loud.”

I put on some Quiet Riot because Mr. James Arthur Barnes can’t resist some glam metal. Their cover of Slade’s “Cum on Feel the Noize.”

“Hell yeah,” he says, head bobbing. “Turn this up.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

I continue to DJ for the rest of the car ride. We get stuck in traffic, so it takes longer than it should to make it to New Jersey, to my father’s house. Leda’s Mercedes is parked on the street, perfectly parallel to the curb. Daphne’s Subaru is parked haphazardly in the driveway—the beat-up hatchback she’s had since high school. She can afford a new one, but since Leda and I are materialistic, she decided not to be. Dad is careful as he pulls around her car into the garage, which is unnecessary. What’s another dent?

A simultaneous feeling of relief and unease rushes through me. It happens every time I step foot in this garage, in this house. Considering it’s the childhood home of mine that wasn’t haunted or cursed or whatever, I shouldn’t feel so haunted coming here. The feeling is fleeting, it never lasts, but it always happens. A swell of memories, the ghosts of past me, the precocious kid who was glad to be out of Mom’s house, where the atmosphere was tense, and there were no snacks, and everything stank of cigarettes and Chardonnay. But then also the guilt, confusion, missing her, unsure which parent I loved more, which parent I trusted more.

It’s child-of-divorce syndrome. It’s so annoying.

Dad lugs my suitcase out of the trunk, I gather all my bags, and Amy opens the door into the mudroom for us. She wears a face of pity, though I know she’s probably happy my mother is dead. Maybe not happy, but something in the vicinity.

“Oh, come here,” she says, pulling me in for a hug. Her signature smell is comforting, too sweet and too much and yet somehow just right. It’s like inhaling caramel, snorting straight sugar. When she was our dance teacher, everyone wanted to smell like her, to look like her, be like her. Whenever I conjure up her image in my mind, it’s the box blond twentysomething in leg warmers and a leotard, not the stepmother who stands before me, with dark roots and skin specked from gratuitous time unprotected in the sun, wearing kohl eyeliner that’s sunken into her crow’s-feet, and an unflattering sweater tucked into low-rise jeans. Her style never evolved past 2010. I find it equally tragic and endearing.

“Hey, Amy,” I say.

“Let me take your bags,” she says. “Your sisters are in the sunroom.”

“Then that’s where I’m headed.”

She leans in for another hug and says, “I made them some sangria. They might be a little tipsy.”

“Good. They’re more fun that way,” I say, hoping they left some for me.

3

Leda and Daphne are indeed in the sunroom, each holding a near-empty glass with shriveled pink fruit settled at the bottom. There’s a pitcher on the coffee table between them resting atop a cluster of coasters. Leda stands in the corner, a hand on her hip, looking like a mannequin at an Ann Taylor. Her back is to me, her platinum hair in a sleek low bun. She started dyeing it blond in high school to look more like Amy and to spite our actual mother.

Daphne kept her hair dark but chopped it all off into a short wolf cut—close cousin of the mullet. She lies across the couch, her legs draped over the side. She gnaws on an orange rind.