“What is this?” I ask. A spectacularly huge Ferris wheel presents itself at the end of the long alley, its cars like a ski tram, little bubbles. The alley is lined with gift shops, bars, restaurants, specialty clothing stores, and—
Ice cream.
“I found it this morning when I was walking around. After I shook off the nice young lady who chatted me up. Friendly, but a bit persistent.” Dad’s face looks troubled. “I asked her for the nearest sweet shop and she kept saying she could give me a ‘strawberry shortcake’ for an extra fifty. Why would she want a little girl’s doll toy? Or did she mean the dessert? Do you know what that means?”
“No.” I shudder. “And I don’t want to know.”
He laughs and points to a restaurant down the alley. “How about a hot dog first?”
My stomach grumbles. Aside from lunch and a latte made for humans without teeth, I haven’t had much to eat all day.
“A hot dog and ice cream? It’s like we’re at a Paw Sox game.”
The grin he gives me makes the bridge of my nose tingle with tenderness. “You girls loved going to minor league games.”
“I still do, Dad,” I say softly. “We need to do that again sometime.”
“Jeffrey and Tyler like it,” he says, not quite picking up on my emotional storm. “But not like you and Amy always did.”
“It’s a date. We’ll go to a game when we get home.”
“Would Declan enjoy going?”
I start to say that Declan would just take us to the Anterdec suite at Fenway Park to catch a major league Red Sox game, but I stop myself.
“I think he would.” A brewing conflict inside me pings, as if it’s all a mist inside, obscuring a beacon that delivers me to a place where I can find the answer. Declan’s world is so different from my family’s, as divergent as can be. For Dad, those minor league games were a fun treat, a place to bring us and share experiences he never even had as a kid.
For Declan, going to a baseball game means something qualitatively different. The imprint of how you define that experience—go to a live baseball game—is a different socio-economic language. I can understand that language when it’s spoken to me, but ask me to speak back and my tongue ties itself in knots and I stare, mute and anxious, choosing inaction because action is too unbearably confusing.
Dad and I order hot dogs and sodas and have a seat, munching happily until we’re done.
“Only one?” I tease, knowing how much he loves them.
He pats his stomach. “Saving room for burnt caramel ice cream.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I thought you just found this place this morning?”
He shrugs. “Had to sample it to make sure it was good enough for Marie and you.”
“You’re such a sacrificer, Dad.”
His laughter is love in auditory form.
The ice cream shop is so trendy they have a schedule for which ice creams are offered on which days. When I order the chocolate mint I’m admonished that I must do a taste test because the flavor is so bold it will pull every hair out of my head by the follicle while blasting the 1812 Overture in my ear.
Or something like that.
The clerk is sweet and peppy, and gives me a description of the various flavors like a sommelier. She’s an ice cream steward, and in the end I pick a peanut butter concoction with a cupcake on top, while Dad gets his burnt caramel.
We go outside and find a quiet table under a large umbrella, the shade and ice cream making the mid-day heat bearable.
“How are you?” he asks, just after I’ve shoved a giant spoonful of gratitude in my mouth.
“Mmmup,” I answer.
He acts like he understood that. “No, honey. I mean really. How are you? That was quite a stunt you and Declan pulled two days ago.” I can’t read his eyes. He’s gone blank. Not the same way Declan turns into a statue, though.
Daddy’s not judging. Just asking. And trying to decide how to respond along the way.
I finish my mouthful of ice cream and realize I’m in safe territory here. I can actually tell the truth.
“I’m a mess.”
“I figured.”
“I know Mom and I need to have it out,” I say with a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“No. I mean—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not stepping in sooner and reining her in. She can be...monomaniacal at times.”
“Ya think?”
“But she means well.”
“A thousand-person wedding with my nemesis as an invited guest and a cat as flower girl doesn’t exactly translate into ‘means well,’ Dad.”
He tilts his head and breathes slowly. In Declan, this is a form of control, a calculated gesture designed to make you think he’s unflappable. In Dad, it’s just how he is.
“Did we ever tell you the story of our wedding?”
“Mom said you guys eloped.” A prickly feeling makes my neck tingle. Or maybe it’s just sweat. Vegas in July is a miserable sheet of reflective heat.
“Sounds like you don’t know the whole story.”
“I guess not.” Why didn’t I pry? Mom’s so free with information. She overshares all the time, but as Dad looks like he’s fighting with himself to figure out how to say what he needs to say, I run through my memory. Mom’s never told a story about their wedding.
“You remember your grandma, Celeste?”
“Sure. We didn’t really see her much, but yeah.” She died a few years ago from a heart attack.