“Huh?”
“Are you trying to tell me to be more like Meryl Streep and less like the Method bros?”
She cracked up. “I wasn’t trying to tell you anything. But ‘Be more like Meryl Streep’ is probably good life advice for anyone.”
He could not disagree.
They sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes until she said, “What was it like growing up with your dad?”
It was the question everyone asked him, the question that made him bristle.
Usually.
It wasn’t bothering him tonight. Perhaps because she’d asked about his mom days ago. Or maybe because her question was actually about him. Asking what it had been like growing up with his dad was different from asking what his dad was like. Regardless, the question didn’t feel prurient like it usually did.
“I mean,” she added, “aside from when you weren’t allowed to knock on his door.”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any basis of comparison. He was never at my band concerts.”
“Band!” She spilled a little of her drink. “Shoot. What did you play?”
“Trombone, initially, but then I ended up being the kid they tapped to play all the weird brass instruments no one wanted. Tuba. Euphonium.”
She was blinking rapidly. Fair enough. The image of him with a tuba probably took some adjusting. “Wow, so this was a band teacher’s pet–type situation?”
“I was definitely a music nerd.”
“And here I would have thought it’d be the school newspaper or literary magazine.”
“Nope. I was all music, all the time. Regular band, jazz band, but choir was my main thing.”
“Choirwas your main thing. Hold on. I need a moment to recalibrate my whole mental picture of you.” She put on a face of exaggerated horrification. “Were you… in musicals?”
“God, no. I didn’t do musicals. It was classical singing. We did theMessiahat Christmas, that sort of thing.
“But I guess, to answer your question…” He didn’t know why he was steering the conversation back to life with his dad. They’d gotten sufficiently off the topic that it would have, he was pretty sure, been forgotten. “It’s as if there are two versions of my dad: the novelist and the father. It’s hard to separate them sometimes.”
“I imagine especially because you’re also a novelist.”
“I suppose.”
“Though quite a different one than he is.”
“You’ve read his books, you said.”
“I have. For me, they’re a little too…”
“What?”
“Sorry, I don’t need to give you the Goodreads review of your dad.”
“Oh,pleasegive me the Goodreads review of my dad.” He had never wanted anything more.
“Well, they’re very masculine. And before this descends into an argument about women’s fiction, let me explain what I mean by that.”
“I think I know what you mean. My dad’s characters could deliver roadkill to their costars.”
She smiled. “One of his characters actually did leave a bunch of dead fish on a neighbor’s property.”
