"Well, I imagine you don't have much else going on in the evenings, so that works out nicely. Or buy a few more pairs of shorts at the store. You have your allowance. This is what it's for — solving problems with the resources you have, not calling me to make them go away."
I wipe my face. The wine is warm now and the cheese is sweating. Meanwhile, my father is delivering life lessons from the comfort of his own home and I want to scream.
"Can you at least send someone to pick me up on Friday? So I can come home and sleep in a real bed and eat real food and feel like a human being over the weekend?"
"You have your allowance," he says again. "If you want to come home on your days off, you can take the bus to Bakersfield and the train from there."
"The bus. And the train. Dad, that would take —"
"Several hours. I know. People who don't have a driver or the option of chartering a helicopter do it all the time, Sloane, and they manage."
"I wasn't going to say helicopter."
"You were thinking it."
Damn it. I was thinking it.
"Look. I know this is hard," he continues. "Your mother and I are only doing what's best for you. I know you can't see it now, but one day you'll thank us for this."
I highly doubt that, but I don't have the energy to argue. Nothing will change his mind.
"Your mother's out for dinner with friends but she'll be home soon, so keep your phone on. She really wants to speak to you. Goodnight, Sloane."
He hangs up and I sit there thinking about my mother. Out for dinner with her girlfriends, which means they're at Matsuhisa on La Cienega. She'll be sitting at their usual table by the window in one of her silk blouses, ordering the black cod miso and a glass of Sancerre, trying not to think about her own daughter's latest contribution to the family legacy.
She's asked me to join them so many times. Every few weeks —Sloane, come to dinner with us. You'd enjoy it. It'll be fun. Girls' night. Brenda's daughter is joining too.And every time I said no because I had something better to do.
What I would give to be at Matsuhisa right now. To sit in an air-conditioned restaurant with cloth napkins and a wine list. To wear something nice. Even with my mother's opinionated friends who brag about their offspring's achievements.
I peel the last slice of Monterey Jack off the packet and fold it into my mouth. I'm sitting in my underwear, eating cheese like a raccoon. If Brenda could see me now, she'd never have to brag about her daughter again. She could just point at me.
12
MAGGIE
Sloane is in the pig barn and she's doing it all wrong. She's holding the pitchfork like it's a weapon — too high on the handle, too rigid in the arms, jabbing at the straw instead of scooping under it. Every forkful she lifts is half the size it should be and she spills a third of it next to the wheelbarrow.
I'm watching her with my coffee. I watch her most mornings, not because I enjoy it — though there's a grim satisfaction in seeing someone learn the hard way — but because I need to make sure she's not doing anything that could harm the animals. So far she hasn't. She's slow and she's clumsy but she hasn't been careless. She's just bad at it. Spectacularly, impressively bad.
Normally I help with the pig barn. When Luis is here, or when one of the other volunteers shows up, I work alongside them. But with Sloane, I've made an exception. I've let her do it alone as it's the closest thing to real punishment.
But the problem is, she's so slow that we're falling behind. The fence line needs repairing and Luis is coming this afternoon to start on it. He'll need Sloane to help him with holding posts, passing tools, and stripping old wire. If she's still in the pigbarn at noon, scooping thimble-sized forkfuls of straw, that's not going to happen.
I put down my coffee and walk into the barn.
She doesn't hear me come in. Her T-shirt is dark with sweat and her ponytail is coming apart and she's got straw stuck to her arms. She's on her eighth wheelbarrow load. I'd normally be on my fourteenth and nearly done by now.
I pick up the spare pitchfork from the hook on the wall and start on the far end of the barn without saying anything. For a minute or two, neither of us speaks.
Sloane glances over and watches me — the way I angle the fork, the way I scoop low and lift in one motion — and then she goes back to her own section.
"I can't believe you do this every day," she says eventually.
"Every day," I say.
"For how long?"
"Started helping my mom when I was a teenager. Took over when I was twenty-two. So about eight years on my own now."
