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SHAY:This was before that. In elementary, she worked retail—Payless, then Walmart, too. Looking back, her getting a second job should’ve been a clue something had changed.
JAMIE:What happened when she came home?
SHAY:She was tired. She came home with her clothes wilted, carrying weight in her shoulders. It made me nervous right off the bat. I should’ve listened to my instincts. But instead, I followed her. That annoyed her. She stopped in the living room and snapped, “What?”
I said, “Mrs. Carroll says I’m not allowed to go to the lock-in because you haven’t done your PTA hours.”
I knew immediately I’d said the wrong thing. She slammed her purse on the coffee table and said, “Is that right? I dropped the ball, huh?”
Her tone was the one she used whenever she argued with my dad—Nina, the self-righteous martyr. I said, “I’m the only person who can’t go.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “I’m trying to make rent, Shay, so we’re not sleeping in the street. Trying to keep you in clothes when you grow like a weed. I have to take care of you all by myself, since your father decided we weren’t worth his time. And this lady says I’m not doingenough?”
My vision kind of tunneled. I remember fixating on the scratches on the coffee table. I said, “Dad’s on a work trip.”
For some reason, that made her angrier. She wrestled out of her jacket, threw it on the floor, and said, “Aworktrip. Let me tell you a secret about Peter Herazen. Peter Herazen has better people to spend time with than us. More beautiful, sophisticated women. Your dad’s not on a trip, Shay. He left us. Because you and me are small potatoes.”
I said, “He didn’t.”
My mom always hated when I was soft. She said, “News flash. Welcome to men. This is what they do. They take your heart and your body, use it all up. And in return, they refuse to marry you. No Herazen name for us, oh no, god forbid. And they step out.Everytime. They’re the ones who get to come and go. We’re the ones who are stuck.”
I was acutely aware she meant she’d been stuck with me.
She started rooting around in her purse and said, “Here I am, mending a broken heart, and they want me to volunteer for the f-ingPTA?”
I was certain of one thing: my dad might leave my mom—they did argue a lot—but he wouldn’t leave me. He and I had a tradition. Whenever he got home from a trip, the first thing he’d do was take my hand and walk me across the street to the park. He’d play any game I made up. For hours, I got his undivided attention. Most of the games I invented ended with him chasing me. He’d give me a head start, count until ten, then sprint after me around the park. I can still feel my heart pounding, my feet slapping the grass, that joy and the tiniest sliver of fear every time he caught me. I always screamed.
I loved it. For a few hours, I was my dad’s sole pursuit. We usually stayed at the park until the sun went down and the air was blue and dense like water. I can picture it so clearly.
JAMIE:So can I.
SHAY:Then he’d put me on his shoulders and carry me home. I was always a little scared up there, so he’d tease me, call me Shay, Queen of the Playground, to make me feel better.
He loved me. He would never leave.
I told my mom that, and she stopped searching in her purse for a cigarette and bent over until we were eye level. She said, “It’s hard now, but one day you’ll thank me for ripping off the Band-Aid. Your dad never wanted us, Shay. He used to leave for months at a time, and I wouldn’t know if it was for work or for play. When he came home, all he wanted was someone to wait on him. I had to beg him to spend time with you. Beg him to take you to the park, because you adored it. If your father did ever love us, it was never enough.”
It was 9:38 at night. I know that because I couldn’t look at my mom, so I stared at the clock on the VCR. Nine thirty-eight on a Tuesday night, ten years old. That’s when my life carved into a before and an after.
JAMIE:You never told me.
SHAY:Imagine meaning so little to your dad that he left and never came back. Not once, even to see who you grew into.
JAMIE:I can’t.
SHAY:My mom called Mrs. Carroll, and I don’t know what she said to her, but I got to go to the lock-in. I spent the whole night in my sleeping bag with my book, watching the chaperones with their kids. Rolling their eyes, shouting after them, laughing. And I thought,What makes some people worth loving, but not others?
JAMIE:I remember now. You wouldn’t leave your sleeping bag, even for the scavenger hunt.
SHAY:After they turned out the lights, you and I lay in the dark, listening to kids giggling, and you whispered, “What’s wrong?”
JAMIE:You said you were sad because your dad had to leave. But it was okay because he was on some secret mission. Practically a hero.
SHAY:I invented a story that he left because he had to do something important. It was a stupid lie.
JAMIE:You could’ve told me the truth.
SHAY:I wasn’t lying for you. It was the only thing I could think of to keep my heart in one piece.
