I checked my cell phone again. Still nothing. “It was nice,” I said.
“Oh.” Dad cleared his throat. “I’m still working on it.”
I had missed my cue somehow. I could tell. “I think it’s going to be really good, Dad. I think the hippies at Solstice Fest will eat it up.”
He half smiled and ran his thumb over one of the guitar strings. “Hey, do you want to go with me? To Solstice Fest.”
“Um, when is it?”
He gave me a weird look. “During the solstice.”
I guessed that made sense.
“We could drive up on Friday night and camp out. I think the Dukes’ slot is around noon on Saturday.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Oh,” Dad said. “Of course, you probably already have plans. Are you and Sally and Chava going to that school dance?”
I had told my parents about Sally and Chava because I wanted them to know that I was a normal person with friends. I had never told my parents about the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal because I wasn’t insane. Apparently my father had been reading the PTA newsletter.
“The dance is that night,” I said noncommittally.
“Do you have a date?” Dad asked.
“God, Dad. No.” I thought about what that could possibly look like: Char showing up on my doorstep in a tuxedo, slipping a corsage around my wrist, posing for photographs in front of the fireplace? He wouldn’t even call me.
Dad nodded sagely. “We guys, Elise, are easily intimidated. When I was sixteen, I would not have had the guts to ask a girl like you to my school dance.”
This was a lie on multiple levels, since 1) the reason why boys weren’t asking me out was absolutely not because they were intimidated by me, and 2) by the time my dad was sixteen, he was already playing sold-out shows at his local concert hall, and any girl in Philadelphia would have given her left arm to go to a dance with a Duke.
“Dad,” I said, “would it be okay with you if I spend Friday night at Mom and Steve’s house?”
He paused in his strumming. “You mean the weekend that I’m at Solstice Fest? Of course that’s okay. I was going to suggest that myself.”
“No, I meant, like…” I hugged my knees into my chest. “Every weekend.”
He set his guitar down. “So I would only get you on Wednesdays? And you would stay with your mother six nights a week? Every week?”
“Well … We could rearrange things so I could spend some other weeknight with you … like Tuesdays?”
“Why?” Dad asked, his voice raw.
I couldn’t answer that. I opened and closed my mouth, but I had nothing to say.
“Okay,” Dad said, “forget ‘why.’ How’s this? No.”
“What?” I stared at him.
“I said, No. No, you can’t stay with your mother six out of every seven nights. No, I am not going to rearrange my work schedule just because you feel like it. I don’t care if you don’t want to be here, or if when you are here you don’t want to talk to me, or if your mother’s house has all sorts of marvelous puppies and children and swing sets and fresh-baked goods. I am your father, and that means I am every bit as much your parent as she is. No, you can’t spend Fridays there, too.”
I stood up. “Look, this has nothing to do with Mom or swing sets or anything like that. It’s just that her house is a lot more conveniently located to … well, to … stuff.”
Dad stood up, as well. “I don’t really care,” he said. “What I’m hearing you say is that you don’t want to spend time with me. And what I am saying to you is, you don’t have a choice.”
I felt panic bubbling up in my chest, and my breath started coming out in short gasps. What was I supposed to do, go to Start next Thursday, hope that Pete was there, and tell him, “Hey, look, my dad won’t let me go out on Friday nights. Good luck finding another DJ!” I might as well just wear a sandwich board proclaiming, I AM ONLY 16. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to do that.
“You can’t stop me,” I said, my voice shaking. “Don’t you love me at all?”
“Don’t I love you?” Dad’s words got louder and louder. “Jesus Christ, Elise, are you kidding me?”
I felt my face puckering like a prune. “Mom wouldn’t keep me from doing something I care about.” And even as I said it, I knew it was a cheap shot. One of the unspoken rules that I did understand was that my parents were not supposed to criticize each other in front of me, and I was not supposed to play them off each other.
Plus, Mom would absolutely keep me from doing something I cared about, if it came down to that. The only reason why she hadn’t stopped me from going to Start was because she didn’t know that was happening. Not because she was the superior parent.
“So that’s why you want to spend Friday nights with her, too?” Dad asked. “Because she doesn’t get in your way as much as I do?”
“No!” I protested. “It’s just that … this is important to me. You don’t understand.”
“I don’t,” he said. “Explain it to me.”
He looked at me closely, and I thought for a moment about telling him everything. What Start was, why I needed it. After all, he was on national tour with his band when he was just two years older than me. Maybe he would be cool with it.
But what if he wasn’t?
I shook my head. “I can’t explain it to you.”
Dad kicked his guitar, and I flinched at the sudden atonal squawk as it hit the ground. “You know what, Elise?” he said. “Do what you want.”
I stood still, hardly breathing.
“You want to spend every single night at your mother’s house? Fine. I’ll be here if you ever decide that you need me.”
He lunged to pick up his guitar and lifted it over his shoulder like he was about to smash it into something. I clapped my hand to my mouth. Then slowly, painfully, he laid the guitar down on the armchair and walked out of the room. I heard his footsteps hard on the stairs to the basement. And a minute later I heard the sound, unmistakable to anyone who has heard it before, of a softball bat whacking a futon.
“Look, if you want to go to Start tonight, you should go,” Vicky said over the phone the following Thursday evening.
I lay down on my bed, my cell phone pressed to my ear, and glanced at the clock on my bedside table. Nine o’clock.
“I think I want to stay home,” I said.
“If you want to, sure.” I heard the sound of spritzing through the phone, like Vicky was putting on hair spray or perfume. “But you shouldn’t not come tonight just because of Pippa. You’re the DJ. You do what you want.”
“Does she want me there?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Well, whenever she’s mentioned you over the past week, it’s been as ‘that slag,’ so I’m thinking probably not.”
“What’s a slag?”
“I asked her that,” Vicky said. “It’s British for slut.”
“How am I a slag? Char is the first and only guy who I have ever…” Kissed. Seen naked. Slept in a bed with. “Anything,” I finished.
“I don’t think she means it literally,” Vicky reassured me. “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m on your side. They weren’t together. Pippa can’t call dibs on every guy who she thinks is hot, because that would be every guy. Except for the Dirty Curtains. She thinks Dave looks like a caveman, and not in an ‘I will protect your young’ way. And Harry isn’t ‘man enough’ for her. You know, because he’s not actually a legal adult.”
“Oh, so speaking of the Dirty Curtains,” I said, “I have a proposal.”
“Shoot.”