And then later that same week at the grocery she saw her manager and turned to go the other direction. She stepped into an instant noodle stand, knocking a few of them down, and began to walk quickly out of the aisle, but then realized that she’d see her manager the next day, at work, and so turned back. He was about twenty feet away and looking at her, and she waved.
“Chelsea,” he said.
“Hi,” Chelsea said. “I’m just here — for buying some things.” He looked a little bored, or else tired, and he gazed at her, a bit meanly, without smiling. She was holding a plum and a toothbrush. She’d been driving around, feeling a little empty, and had wanted a plum, and then had decided to buy a new toothbrush. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to buy this — fruit.” Her face was red, and she stuttered a little — something that hadn’t happened since high school, she knew immediately.
In the car, she thought about how she’d wanted to go to San Francisco. No one knew because she hadn’t told anyone. She thought about some other things — her dad and mom and Bernadette; college and childhood; how when you were two-years old you didn’t know what a friend was, but mostly just observed things, without any sadness, and didn’t feel alone, even when you were — and then wanted to cry; but it wasn’t happening, so she sort of forced herself to, and it worked. She cried a little, then stopped and ate her plum, slowly, in a daze of chewing and swallowing, and then took her new toothbrush out of its packaging and looked at it and put it in her pocket, and after that cried for a longer time and loudly, shaking a bit.
Before going home, she drove around a while — singing along to songs, not thinking anything at all, and with the windows down, to let the wind at her face — so that her dad wouldn’t see that she had been crying. In the garage, sitting in the car, she laughed a little, thinking of what she’d said to her manager, then felt nervous and afraid, anticipating when she’d see him again, but the next day he was kind and approached her first, smiling and with a small bag of plums, of which Chelsea, on her break and then after work, ate the entire thing of, as she didn’t want to have to explain all this to her dad, or else bring the plums home and have her dad not say anything about them — she didn’t want that either.
In December, for her 23rd birthday, Chelsea went bowling with her dad. It was a strange, woozy night, both of them trying for enthusiasm, but trying halfheartedly, or else too hard, or perhaps not even trying anymore — when did trying try too hard and escape itself and fly away, leaving you there, below and shrinking? — and ended up with a low-level, unwanted sort of sarcasm; the kind where you smirked a lot.
There was an arcade there, and first thing, before bowling — before bowling two games and stopping for ice cream on the way home (Chelsea’s dad insisting on buying a cone and bringing it back to the car, as a sort of surprise, as he felt bad for not getting Chelsea a real present but just a card with money in it; and Chelsea, waiting in the car, looking through the windshield, at her dad in the store looking down through glass, at all the bright and oozy ice creams, to choose something for his daughter, for herself, and feeling, then, in the bones of her face and the dusk of her chest a chill of something casual and temperatureless) — before all that, Chelsea’s dad saw the arcade and went in there and beat a teenager in a fighting game.
“That’s not right,” the teenager said. “You were lucky. Rematch.”
“Good job,” Chelsea said. There was something dark and tall in the far corner, past a few billiards tables, and she glanced at it.
“Skill,” said Chelsea’s dad.
The teenager had a hand in his pocket, low and feeling for quarters, and he looked at Chelsea, and Chelsea looked down at the teenager’s shoes — they were green — then elsewhere, and then made eye contact with her dad, by accident, and looked away. But he’d been watching her, so Chelsea looked back; he was grinning, and she felt sorry for him, for having created her — for having brought such a shy and cheerless thing into this quickly passing world — and wanted to go away, for three months (three would be enough, if she really tried, and worked hard), to learn about talking and feelings and relationships, and come back, then, confident as a friend, real and laughing as a daughter.
“I won,” said Chelsea’s dad, and went to give Chelsea a high-five, but missed, as they were standing too close.
“My fault,” he said. “That was my fault.”
“Oh,” Chelsea said.
And he stepped back a little and tried again, but Chelsea, distracted now by something — maybe the plant in the far corner, standing and waiting like a person in a dream, or maybe the green shoe or some other thing that was out there and longing, to be looked at, and taken — wasn’t ready, and their hands, his then hers, passed through the air in a kind of wave, a little goodbye.