“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go do that.” I turn to Pepper. There are probably half a dozen things I need to say to her, but all that comes out is a thick, “Thanks.”
I turn back around before she can answer, mostly because I don’t trust my face to keep what little amount of composure it has left in it. I climb back up the stairs and let myself into the apartment, my blood rushing in my ears, my eyes still blinking like they made Pepper up. I’m so distracted, it doesn’t occur to me until I’m opening the front door that if my mom is downstairs, it can only mean my dad is up here.
I full-body flinch at the sight of my dad sitting on the couch in the living room, which somehow feels more jarring than what’s happening downstairs. And maybe it is — I’m so used to my parents being down in the deli during daylight hours, it seems strange to see him up here right now, in the middle of a day when he would usually be in the corner office in the back and I’d be sitting behind a desk. It feels like we’re looking at each other through a different lens, on unfamiliar ground, even though this is the place we call home.
My dad’s eyes lift to meet mine, and I brace myself all over again. I almost want him to yell at me, just to have the relief of it being over, but he doesn’t seem angry. He seems like something I don’t know how to navigate, something soft in the eyes and hard in the mouth that makes me waffle at the door like I came in here by mistake.
“How’s Grandma Belly?” I finally ask.
My dad nods toward her room. “Taking a nap.”
I nod back. An excruciating quiet settles between us, and I’m already counting the seconds it will take for me to get to my room and close the door on him when my dad says, “Why don’t you sit down?”
He motions to the space next to him on the couch. I walk over and take it, even though the middle cushion is Ethan’s spot, not mine. I look at my lap for a beat, resenting that even in a moment like this, I can’t think for myself without making space for him too.
“When you were little, you hated this apartment. You told me you wanted to live under the table in the Time-Out Booth.”
“I did?”
My dad’s lip quirks.
“We might have let you too, if we didn’t catch you trying to peel used gum off the bottom of it.”
It cuts through just enough of the tension that I stop waiting for some other shoe to drop. “Well, that explains a lot.”
He lets out a breath, leaning in a little closer. “What I’m trying to say is — you loved the deli. Right from the start. Loved being down there, and getting to hit buttons on the register, and nipping at the heels of everyone in the kitchen.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, like he’s giving me space to cut in. But I am suddenly too desperate to know what’s on the other side of those words to say anything myself.
“I don’t want you to think I pushed you into it because I thought any less of you,” says my dad, lowering his voice. “If anything, it’s the opposite. I guess I pushed it because — well, your brother and your mom, they’re so alike in a lot of ways. And I’ve always — maybe it’s selfish, but I’ve always seen a lot of myself in you.”
The words feel like they burn on the way down. “Well, not so much anymore, I guess, huh?”
“No. The way you step up for this family — not just with this silly Twitter thing,” he says off my look, “but every day. You’re here. You show up. Without being asked.” He runs a hand through his hair, staring at Grandma Belly’s door. “Even I wasn’t half as dedicated to this place growing up, and your grandma can speak to that. You’ve always been above and beyond. More than we could have ever asked for from a kid. And I’m sorry if I ever made you feel less than for it.”
The words settle in between us, my dad gruff but earnest, me near paralyzed. I have this sudden feeling of wanting to grab the words from the air, put them somewhere permanent in me, like they can anchor me in a way nothing else has. I want to remember this feeling — the strange, happy crush of it in my lungs, the pride, the relief, even the mingling guilt.
“And for what it’s worth — your mom had an eerily similar talk with Ethan earlier today.”
I find this hard to believe. So much so that I almost snort. “She did?”
“He was all bent out of shape. Seemed to think you were the — how’d you put it? — golden twin. That we trusted you over him, with everything to do with the shop and Twitter and everything else.” My dad’s voice is wry, but also a little bittersweet. “If that helps you … put things into perspective at all. I think maybe you both need to understand that you’re good at different things, and stop beating yourselves up about what you think you’re not good at.”
I cringe, unsure if it’s for my sake or for Ethan’s. It’s always been like this — even at my most embarrassed, I’m never quite sure what part of it ends in me and begins in him. Even knowing that, I didn’t think it extended this far.
But maybe it makes sense, even if I don’t want it to. The way Ethan was so touchy about the Twitter page. That weird, unresolved fight we had outside of the community center after Pepper hacked the account. I was so wrapped up in how I thought of Ethan that it never once occurred to me what he thinks of himself.
We’ll talk about it, someday, maybe. For now I know what will happen: my dad will tell my mom about this conversation the way they tell each other everything, and she’ll tell Ethan, and the two of us will quietly know what we know and feel how we feel until it either goes away or doesn’t. But right now, having this long overdue conversation with my dad, is the first time I’ve ever been confident that someday it will.
“He’s sorry about that tweet he sent. And he called Pepper this morning to say so. He was just upset about the timing of it with what happened to your grandma, and … I think he was trying to be helpful. More like you.”
This time I really do snort. My dad nudges my shoulder with his.
“Truth is, you’re both pieces of work.” He pauses, a wince starting to take shape on his face. “But since we’re on the topic of that … Twitter thing.”
Oh, man.
“I don’t know what is or isn’t going on between you and Pepper, but since it is or isn’t happening, I feel like I owe you a bit of an explanation. And from the looks of things, Pepper’s mom might owe her one too.”
I nod. “You guys know each other.”
“Yeah, well. That, and … we dated, briefly.”
My eyes widen to the approximate diameter of those useless dollar coins the MTA card machines are always spitting out. “Oh.”
My dad raises his hands up in defense of himself. “A long, long time ago. Like, long.”
I try to picture my dad and Pepper’s mom in this “long, long” time ago, but my imagination refuses to de-age them. My dad is just my dad, the way he is right now, and Pepper’s mom is — well, terrifying. But also such an unknown quantity to me, it’s hard to imagine anything about her at all.
“How long is long?”
He has to think for a moment. We both raise our hands to scratch the backs of our necks, and I hide a smile at my shoes and stop myself just in time.
“It was — well, it was just before I met your mother.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Did you dump Pepper’s mom for our mom?”
My dad stares at the coffee table.
“It didn’t — happen—exactly like that.”
Which is to say, from the rueful look he is not doing a very good job of suppressing, that’s exactly how it happened.
“Dad.”