Please Ignore Vera Dietz(56)
Author: A.S. King

“I really loved Charlie, Dad.”

“I know,” he says, rubbing my back.

“I really wish I could have saved him,” I say.

“I know. But it was out of our hands.”

“I really wish I could have stopped the whole thing,” I say, still unable to erase the image of the barking puppies and the screeching birds and the mewing kittens and the fish, belly-up, floating atop the water. No matter how many police I tell, these images will always be with me.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says. “You just did something most people can’t do.” He holds my chin in his hand and wipes my tears. I take a deep breath.

I say, “Is that why I’m so hungry?”

Ten minutes later, we’re in the local diner. It’s slow—between breakfast and lunch rushes. Dad orders a sunny-side-up platter with whole wheat toast, and I order scrambled.

“It must have been a hard year for you,” Dad says.

“Yeah.”

“I wish you would have told me about that creep.”

“I know,” I say. I look at him. “I just didn’t think it was something to bother you with at the time—or Mom. You know how she got when I’d come to her with stuff.”

He nods, staring out the window with that look on his face. Either he’s still thinking about John the pervert or he’s remembering how hard it was to talk to Mom about anything.

“I’m sorry, Vera,” he says.

“For what?”

He looks into my eyes. “I wish I could have been a better parent—you know—to fill the void.”

“You did fill it.”

“But I couldn’t be your mother.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “You were a better mother than Mom was. Can’t you see that?”

He shakes his head.

“I think you’ve got it all wrong,” I say, eyeing the approaching waitress. “You’ve always been the one I could count on.”

Two plates are placed before us, and we say thank you in unison.

He looks at me and says, “I tried to compensate.”

“For what? Mom didn’t want to be here, and we all knew it.”

He shakes his head again, so I say, “The void was inside her. When she left, she took it with her.”

He puts his elbows on the table and rests his mouth on his knuckles and looks at me. I know what he wants to say—stuff about being proud of me and how much I’ve grown up. It probably sounds stupid, but I want to tell him that, too. It’s like we were both living inside a lie and now we’re free. Isn’t it funny how we live inside the lies we believe?

Halfway through the meal, he says, “You knew she wasn’t really there?”

I nod. Anyone with eyes would have seen she wasn’t really there.

He sighs. “I thought there was something I could do, you know?”

I shake my head. There was nothing he could do, and he knows it.

“I just wish it had been different.”

I say, “For the record? I liked it just the way it was.”

He is emotional through the rest of the meal. He mentions twice more that he’s pissed off that I never told him about John the pervert. He apologizes twice for never doing something about Mr. and Mrs. Kahn. A few times, I see him take his napkin from his lap and dab the corners of his eyes. I realize that all he ever wanted was someone to love him. So when we’re a few steps out of the diner, I hug him and tell him how much I love him.

Once I pull out of the parking lot and head down the main strip, he says, “We’re going home now, right?”

This makes me laugh. Like—maniacal laughing.

He says, “We aren’t?”

I put on my shades and smile. “I told you that we were about to live a little, didn’t I?”

An hour later, when we’re both done packing an overnight bag, I make a sign on a large index card and ask Dad to tape it to my back. It says: EX-STRIPPER’S DAUGHTER.

He wants to make one for himself, but doesn’t know what to write on it, so I help him. PARSIMONIOUS. I tape it to his back.

Here’s me using tandem in a sentence.

We will learn to forgive ourselves in tandem.

EPILOGUE—ROAD TRIP

“I haven’t done anything daring since I met your mother,” Dad says, slurping a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

We’re on I-95, headed for a beach. James Brown is blaring. Dad’s eyebrows look worried.

“Stop worrying about your clients,” I say. “They’ll live two days without you.”

I peek at him from the corner of my eye. He still has his sign taped to his back: PARSIMONIOUS. I still have mine on, too.

We hit the Beltway around Washington, D.C., and roll down the windows. Dad sits forward to put on his sweatshirt. His sign flaps in the wind, then detaches and is sucked out the window.

“Shit,” he says.

I see it as symbolic. The label no longer fits. His emotional parsimoniousness just got sucked away by the beautiful blue sky. I lean forward and reach my hand behind my back, then take my sign off, and I toss it out the window, too. I am no longer an ex-stripper’s daughter, either. I have gone from invisible Vera Dietz to invincible Vera Dietz.

Five hours later, we’re eating seafood at a little shack on a North Carolina beach, looking out to sea, licking tartar sauce from our fingers.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you about drinking,” I say. I am apologizing to myself as much as I am apologizing to him.

“We all find our own way, Veer. I’m glad you finally figured it out.”

“Yeah,” I say, and crack open another crab leg.

“I’m sorry about Charlie,” he says.

“Me too.”

“I’m sorry he got caught up in that mess,” he says. “And I’m proud of you.”

It’s been a long day. I look at the ocean and take a deep breath. I feel like an adult—his equal, and his friend. I feel like we’re in this together, and I’m glad for that. I can’t think of another person I’d want on my team. He’s a good man.

“I’m proud of you, too, Dad.”

He looks at me as if he’s expecting me to say more, but I don’t know what to say. So I ask, “Can I have your pickles?”