Mom had him beat; she was born in Mexico and immigrated here with her parents when she was six years old. She’d traveled around the southwest states and Mexico a lot in her early twenties, before she met Dad. Maybe I even had him beat, with my one trip to Guanajuato.
Dad shifted his attention to me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. I tightened my fingers around my wrist. “Clara.” His voice shook with emotion. “I’m so sorry about losing my temper.”
I’d never understood the phrase losing my temper. It was never lost. Dad kept his temper with him always. He managed to hide it from everyone—from his coworkers, his friends, from the cops I’d called once, only to have Mom tell them I was a liar. He could keep a grasp on his temper in all those situations, so that meant he chose to free it at home. He hadn’t lost anything.
“I hope you can forgive me,” he said.
His face was open and sincere. He thought he meant the apology. He didn’t. He always did it again, and you can’t be truly sorry for something if you turn around and do the exact same thing, repeatedly.
He stared at me anxiously. I was expected to be a bottomless pit of forgiveness. No matter what he said, what he did, I had to forgive or I was a horrible person. Everyone forgave Dad. Those were the rules.
I broke the rules last time. No forgiveness. He flew into a rage within two hours of returning home, because he said I was being rude to him.
There was no reason to believe that this time would be any different. Mom was widening her eyes at me, silently asking me to play nice. The smart thing to do here was to force a smile and say I understood. Yes, Dad. It’s fine that you called me a moron and bashed my head into the wall. It’s OK, even though I know you’ll do it again.
I said nothing. I was not a bottomless pit of forgiveness; I was a screaming ball of resentment. There were two options here—silence or hysteria. I chose the former, always.
Dad’s contrite look faded. His jaw twitched. His apology only applied if I accepted it. I didn’t think apologies were supposed to work like that.
He turned on his heel and grabbed his bags. “There’s something wrong with that girl,” he muttered to my mom. I’d heard him say it before. Do you think she has feelings at all? he whispered once to Mom, with an actual edge of concern in his voice.
I had feelings. He just didn’t like any of the ones I had for him.
Dad deposited his bags in the bedroom and returned to join Mom in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, and she smiled as she leaned into him.
She loved him. It defied all common sense and logic, but she really did. And it made me feel like a crazy person that I didn’t. Was I overreacting? Did I expect too much? Was this how fathers were, it was just that no one talked about it?
I had loved him once, as a kid. I remembered the feeling of relief when he was happy, the certainty that this time would be different. I was sure that if I was good enough, everything would be fine.
But there was no such thing as good enough. It was embarrassing how hard I’d tried, looking back now. I never wanted to be that dumb again.
“Clara.” My name was disappointment on Dad’s lips. He stepped away from Mom, his hand lingering on hers a moment. I watched the way their fingers clung to each other for a few extra seconds before splitting apart.
“We need to talk about your grades,” he said.
Mom’s demeanor completely changed. Her shoulders tensed, her eyes going a little wide. She was still trying to be good enough.
“She got an A in history and combat class!” she blurted out. “I should have mentioned that before.”
“That’s great about history, Clara.” Dad smiled at me. I didn’t return it.
I’d liked history this semester. We studied recent history, up to the first scrab attack in Scotland. That’s how they got their name—the first sighting was in Scrabster, Scotland.
I’d never even known how they got the name until Ms. Watson took us through their history and the various conspiracy theories about their origin and how they ended up in the US. She’d made a strong argument that someone must have smuggled a few into the country and lost control of them. Scrabs could reproduce, so she reasoned that all our scrabs could have come from just one male and one female brought over from Europe or Asia.
“What do you think went wrong in English and physics?” Dad asked.
“I’m dumb. I failed. As expected.”
“You’re not dumb,” Laurence said. I threw him an annoyed look. There was no need for lies just to make me feel better.
“Spare us the pity party,” Dad said. “You just need to focus on studying, not . . .” He trailed off, because he had absolutely no idea what I liked to do. I’d been marathoning all eight seasons of Game of Thrones when I should have been studying for my physics final.
“Boys?” I guessed.
“Exactly.” He held out his hand. “Your phone, please.”
I peered at Mom. He gave me a concussion, and the first thing he did upon returning was punish me?
Mom twisted a towel in her hands and swallowed.
“Come on,” Dad said, opening and closing his fingers.
I stared harder at Mom.
“Clara, maybe it’s better if you don’t have any distractions this summer,” she said quietly.
Behind Dad’s shoulder was a framed picture of a stream, and I couldn’t remember which hole it covered. I didn’t know if it was the time he punched it in a rage about something Mom had done, or if it was the time he’d hurled a chair at the wall when I came home late. I wondered if, one day, I’d forget what the painting of Texas was covering up. Would I be like Mom, who swore up and down that Dad hadn’t been aiming that chair for my head? I already wasn’t sure if I had really ducked, because she so adamantly claimed it didn’t happen. How long until my reality bent the same way Mom’s did?
I dug my phone out of my pocket and put it in Dad’s outstretched hand, but my eyes stayed on Mom.
She looked away.
4
After midnight, when Mom and Dad were asleep, I slipped out of my room and into the backyard. I sat on the edge of the porch, feet in the grass. It was early enough in the season for the weather to be pleasant this late, almost cool now that the sun was gone. In a few weeks it would be miserably humid every hour of the day.
France probably had better weather. It was a terrible reason to run off to fight scrabs, but I’d always hated the summer. I hadn’t even known that other places were cool at night, even in the summer, until I visited Mexico.
The door slid open behind me, and fear gripped my chest so intensely that I couldn’t breathe until I turned to see that it was just Laurence. I let the air out of my lungs slowly.
Laurence had something square tucked under his arm, and he used his elbow to keep it steady as he lit a match and held it to the cigarette in his mouth. He hadn’t noticed me yet, sitting at the far edge of the porch.
“Laurence,” I said.
He jerked like I’d startled him and almost dropped whatever he had under his arm. He adjusted it and tucked his lighter in his pocket.
“Hey,” he said, blowing out a breath of smoke. “What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing.”