Earth to Skye

6

6Dad, aka Mark, had moved out with just a suitcase a few months before, leaving most of his clothes and books and CDs at home. His apartment still had no furniture, except a kitchen table and two beds, one single (my room was small) and a queen size. I wondered why he needed such a big bed. It took up most of his room.

When he was in town, which was about half of the year, I was supposed to stay there every Thursday night and every other weekend. That’s just what they do with kids in California when their parents divorce. But I was always anxious to get back home, where my stuff was. I missed my piles of clothes and books.

“So, what do you want to do?” Dad said. We’d just come back from Target where we had gotten me a second set of sheets and bought a barbecue that I thought was just for us.

“I don’t care.” I wished I could get out of there and go to the Promenade.

“You want to see a movie?” Dad asked.

“Like what?”

“The original Superman is playing at the Ark,” he said. “The one with Christopher Reeve.”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ve got homework.”

My phone rang and it was Skye, begging me to help her babysit her little sisters.

“I’m still at my dad’s,” I said. “I promise I’ll help next time.”

“You’re never here for me when I need you.”

“I’m never there for you?” I said, standing up. “Oh my God, Skye, I’m like a really good friend to you. Don’t make me feel guilty. I’m just at my dad’s. It’s just for the night. I don’t even have a ride.”

“Whatever,” she said and hung up with no goodbye.

I knew from my yearbook that Javier Morales was a fan of Pablo Neruda’s, so I started reading Twenty Love Poems. I had actually found it in the bookcase at home, with “To Kath” written on the title page, signed “Love Forever, Mark.”

Dad was on the phone and continued to talk, in a low voice, for over two hours. It wasn’t a business call. His voice could fill a 300-seat theatre without a mike, so even at practically a whisper I could hear him clearly from the other room. “I’ll be free after tomorrow.“ Then I heard him say something about buying plane tickets to meet him when he played in New York City. Mom could never go on the road because of me. Evidently, whoever the hell this was didn’t have kids.

“Let’s set up the barbecue,” he said when he finally got off the phone. Suddenly, he was a camp counselor.

We put the barbecue on the patio outside the kitchen door. Dad lit the charcoal and sent me into the kitchen to husk the corn. On my way back out, I noticed three little sunflowers next to a freshly planted patch of purple pansies.

“Nice flowers,” I said. I couldn’t imagine Dad gardening. He couldn’t even figure out what color flowers Mom liked after fifteen years of marriage. She hated red. She loved yellow. But whenever he brought her roses, they were always red.

“I’m going to burn the corn like they do in Mexico, with lime. The way you like it.”

“I remember, Dad,” I assured him. “You’re a good cook.”

He only cooked two things, but he did a good job when he tried. Mom just knew how to cook soup and cornbread. Growing up with them reminded me of a parenting book I had seen – Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday? We ordered in a lot.

When I went back in the kitchen to get the fish, I noticed a red wooden cross on the table. I picked it up and held it. It was handmade and decorated with glitter and glass tiles.

For a moment I thought it was a present Dad had gotten for Mom. She had a collection of crosses from all over the world. Mexican ones made from bottle caps, a Tahitian one carved from beautiful wood, a mosaic cross, made of broken china.

But then I turned the red glittery cross over. On the back, it was signed, “Love, Debra.”

I knew in an instant who Debra was. She was a rock journalist who wrote a chapter about Dad in a book on punk rock and a glowing review in Rolling Stone of his entire career. Whenever we ran into her at Dad’s concerts, she looked up at him with goo-goo eyes and totally ignored Mom and me.

It didn’t take long to put all the pieces together. So that was the reason Dad recorded his latest album in San Francisco, where Debra was from. When Mom and Dad and I were still together. When we were a family.

I shoved the cross into my backpack. No way was I going to let him keep it. The fact that it was so beautiful made me even angrier. I thought about painting over the Debra and giving it to Mom as a gift from me. But I decided it would bring bad karma home. Instead, I put a hex on the sacrilegious gift and burned it in our fireplace, beneath the crosses Dad had given Mom throughout their sixteen years together. Gifts that proved I was conceived in love.