Stash (7 page)

“No, you don’t need to.”

“Although who’s that guy Aaron?”

“You met Aaron?”

“At the party. Well, in the kitchen anyway. He was standing in the doorway eating.”

“Did he know who you were—I mean, my daughter?”

“I don’t think so, but who is he?”

“A new produce supplier,” Jude said, the first thing that came to his mind.

Aaron’s presence at Gull last night was Jude’s fault because one of the well-wishers at Dana’s party had been Brandon Marks, a regular customer at Gull and a personal client of Jude’s who phoned him the afternoon of the party and asked for more than Jude had on hand. He had to call Aaron to drive it down. Jude let
him grab something to eat in the kitchen before heading back but didn’t invite him to join the party.

Dana said, “He asked me if I wanted to smoke a bowl.”

Jude slapped the steering wheel. “See, this is exactly the kind of situation you need to watch out for. A guy with a bad offer.”

“He seemed harmless enough.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Don’t let anyone pressure you to change your good judgment.”

“Dad, have we had this conversation like fifty times already?”

“That’s because I don’t know if you’re listening. I’m not saying you should turn down a beer at a party, but you don’t have to be one of those students who gets roaring drunk and passes out. You don’t have to be the pothead. There are plenty of other people to play that role. You can nurse a drink along, you can still have a good time.”

“Have you ever seen me drunk?”

He hadn’t. She was an athlete, always training. He doubted she’d ever gotten high. His daughter hadn’t inherited her mother’s deadly weakness for excess.

Yet he pressed on with his mission. “You’re going to meet other boys, and you’ll be attracted to them.”

“Not that they’ll be attracted to me back.”

“Don’t fool yourself. You’re a beautiful young woman and like I said, you’re going to meet new people from all over the country. It’s going to be very different from high school.”

She made her “yeah right” face, the one that made him feel as if she were pointing to her eye and saying,
“Hello?
Have you seen this?”

He was sorry for the mark on her face and how it had shaped her life. A darkened eye that was the first impression she made on anyone. How many people had assumed he was beating her? How
often did she answer the same questions, hear the same stupid jokes? She shouldered it, mostly with dignity, although in January she was scheduled to have surgery to shut off the veins feeding it, and the doctors said the color should fade and swelling go down.

“You remember how babies get made, right?” he said. “You know to be safe.”

“Dad,
please
.”

“I’m just saying—be prepared, use your head. Don’t rush into things.”

“Why aren’t you reminding me to hand in my research papers on time?”

He turned and smiled at her. “Because I know you will.”

“Well, trust me, I’m not rushing into anything.”

“I just want you to remember that you can tell me anything. There’s nothing you need to hide from me.”

“Like the same way you don’t need to hide anything from me?”

Her comment came from nowhere. He didn’t answer.

“At least with me out of the house you can bring your girlfriends home now. You do, don’t you—try to hide them from me?”

She held her chin up when she spoke, as if challenging him, but still her cheeks flushed.

She went on before he could respond. “You did it when I was little and you still do it today. You think I don’t see women coming in the restaurant asking for you? Do I ask where you’ve been all night when you stay out? Why shouldn’t I hide things from you if you’re going to hide them from me?”

It’s true, he never brought women home. His last overnight woman had been Gwen, years ago. Technically she had been at his house as a babysitter, at least until he got home and they ended up on the couch. He remembered Dana coming downstairs and waking them, asking Gwen:
Are you going to be my new mommy?
He’d never forget his daughter’s face at that moment—as if she’d been
thrashing in deep water about to drown and help finally had arrived. From mortal terror to sweet salvation. A look he never wanted to see again.

It wouldn’t have been right to bring women home, having Dana get to know them and start thinking, wondering, yearning: Will this one be my new mom? Because none of them were going to be.

“I never brought anyone home because I wanted to protect you. I didn’t want you thinking that a woman friend of mine was going to be your new mother.”

“Who said I wanted a new mother? I’ve managed pretty well without one.”

“It was different when you were younger. It would have been a natural reaction on your part.”

Jude passed a double tractor trailer on a long uphill, flooring the gas pedal to give the van momentum. He said, “Do you know who I saw recently? Her name is Gwen; you probably don’t remember her, but she used to work for me at the Patriot and she would help you with your homework sometimes.”

“I think I remember her. Why?”

“Nothing, just thought I’d mention it. She came in the restaurant, it reminded me of when you were little.”

“Are you going out with her or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” Jude said. Then added, “You see, I’m not trying to hide anything; it’s just that adults have personal lives, too, separate from their children.”

“If we’re not going to talk about your personal life, then why should we talk about mine? I’m an adult now, too. I’m eighteen.” As if to emphasize her right to privacy, she put in her music earbuds and turned her gaze out the window. Conversation over.

Maybe he had pressed her too hard. Another parenting mishap. He waited a few seconds, then said, “I don’t have anyone I
want to bring home. The house is going to be very quiet without you around.” Quiet without the daughter he had not wanted, yet the one he’d gotten anyway, the one who’d helped him stay in control of his life.

Of course he had wanted Claire to get an abortion. He’d just been through one stunning thunderclap in his life: getting married to the woman. He didn’t need another. They had flown to Las Vegas to gamble, stayed at Bellagio, and burned through a ton of cash because Claire looked so hot sitting at the blackjack table and he kept paying out chips to watch her, even if she was losing. If you counted the number of cocktails consumed on the house, they might have broken even. Between the coke and the cocktails, they stayed pretty shitfaced the entire three days. Claire was the girlfriend who was both gorgeous
and
liked to party; usually the two didn’t mix, not in Jude’s experience. They mixed so well in this case that he married her at midnight in one of those Vegas chapels, and though he remembered it the next morning and said what a hoot, Claire told him to stop kidding around—she had a headache.

As soon as they got back home, Jude eased back on the drinking and coke and weed. Being out of control wasn’t such a thrill anymore. You do crazy impulsive things, like get married. But while he eased up, Claire pressed the accelerator. It wasn’t fun cleaning up her puke from his car seat or having her pass out while he was having sex with her. He didn’t mind her partying but did she have to be so excessive? Did she have to raise her voice during minor disagreements when they were having dinner out? Did she have to stick her tongue down his throat when kissing him in public places?

When he tried to talk to her about it, she ridiculed him for getting stodgy overnight. “I thought I married a sexy man who liked to have a good time.”

As for Jude, he didn’t know what he’d married.

He focused on managing the restaurant and the niche dealing he did on the side; he selected customers and suppliers carefully, stayed low-key. He’d do a little, sell a little, risk a little, make a little. Enough to build a cushion. It was all about maintaining control. He didn’t keep anything around the house because of Claire, but she would go out on the nights he was working and score something with her friends or even strangers in other bars.

When she told him she was pregnant, Jude said, “We’ll get it taken care of.”

“I think a baby would be nice to hold. They’re really cute.”

“It’s not a doll, it’s a human,” he shot back at her. “We’re not having a goddamn baby.”

“It’s what we need, to bring us closer together,” Claire said.

“What we need is for you to get your habits under control.”

“I will, sweetie, I promise. I won’t put another bad thing in my body—I can’t, I have a little baby growing in there.” She knew she could do it, she just hadn’t been motivated in the past, hadn’t a reason to come clean. Now she did. Now they were going to have a baby.

He actually let himself believe that Claire would stop drinking and smoking and snorting and popping because she was pregnant. Strike that: he didn’t believe it; he hoped the way a dying man hopes for a miracle cure. The miracle they got: Dana wasn’t born with a bent spine or mottled brain. Yes, she had the vein problem with her eye, but at the time it seemed like a tiny birthmark, and one the doctors predicted would fade.

Then for Claire it was on and off the wagon for the next seven years. Jude didn’t buy in to addiction as a disease and instead
attributed Claire’s problems to weakness of character. He could control and moderate himself; why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she do
one
line of coke,
one
bong hit? He got her into a rehab program after she’d washed down a handful of Fioricet one night with a bottle of tequila while Dana was taking a bath and Jude was at work. Dana had called for her mother to drain the bath and got no response; she discovered Claire on the floor in her room.

Claire insisted she wasn’t trying to kill herself, she just had a terrible headache and didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, so she took something and lost track of how much. But she agreed to a three-month stay at a rehab clinic two hours away in White Plains. One night while there she tried to hang herself with a coat hanger in a maintenance closet left unlocked. That was the trip to the emergency room the night Gwen babysat for Dana. Jude knew by then the clinic was a waste of money and time—Claire was an incurable addict. He was raising a daughter by himself. He privately regretted that Claire’s coat hanger episode hadn’t succeeded, but a month later Claire disappeared from the clinic, managing to escape by getting one of the night orderlies to lead her out a locked back door in exchange for a blow job. She could be anywhere now. She could be dead, hopefully.

They arrived on campus in Canton, an outpost of brick and stone buildings among the lowlands west of the Adirondacks and east of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Parents unloaded gear from cars and trucks and trailers parked in front of the dorms. On a grassy area surrounded by paved walkways, students played Frisbee; others sat on blankets and picnic tables. A conglomerate of music could be heard coming from many windows.

Jude parked near Robert Hall, Dana’s dorm, and they shared unloading duties, shuttling back and forth from dorm to van, climbing to the second floor each time. Her roommate, Jen, had already moved in with her own supply of lamps, books, favorite mementos, and boxes. That left little room for Dana’s stuff, but Jude made trip after trip to the van and piled everything inside the room. Let the girls sort it out from there.

Jen appeared just as they had finished unloading. A round-faced girl from Boston with a wide smile, she sported a nose ring and a New England accent. Dana had been corresponding with her all summer, sharing photos on Facebook, text messages, and phone calls. They greeted each other like longtime friends and Dana introduced Jude.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gates,” Jen said. “I’ve been waiting and waiting for Dana to show up.”

Jude was about to respond but Jen didn’t allow it. She turned to Dana and started telling her about all the great things she’d done in the twenty-four hours since her parents had dropped her off; not once did she stop talking during the entire walk to the dining hall where the university was hosting a dinner for entering freshman and their parents. At any moment, Jude expected Dana to tell her new roommate to close it, but so far his daughter let it flow downstream to her, taking in everything Jen had to say, smiling and nodding in all the right places.

In the dining hall they stood in a buffet line and chose brisket of beef or broiled salmon, with salad, rice, and rolls. They filled their plates and sat at a long table with other students Jen had already met, some of them solo and others with their parents. The tables were set with cloths and cloth napkins for this event. Jude introduced himself to the parents sitting across from him, who had come from Buffalo with their son Cal. The father was a chemical engineer employed by DuPont, the mother a high school
teacher, and Jude a restaurant owner. What did Jude think of this meal? A question he always got once someone knew he owned a restaurant. Very nice, he said, especially considering how many people they were serving. The salmon tasted fresh and was still moist. The engineer said that for forty-five grand a year they’d better get fresh fish, although he had chosen the beef. They agreed the campus was beautiful. Jude forgot their names. He kept looking at Dana to see how she fit in. She didn’t talk much, but seemed pleased with the people around her and being part of this new group. There were Jen and Cal and three other students who were without parents. Their conversation jumped from what classes they had registered for to their hometowns to favorite bands and what sports they would play. They didn’t exclude the parents who were sitting at the same table with them; they simply didn’t see these people who were no longer part of their world.

Then it was 7:30 and time for Jude to go. The dorm welcome party began at 8:00.

“You want to walk me out?” he said to Dana.

She turned to Jen. “I’ll meet you back at the room. Wait for me.”

Jude had moved the van to the parking lot after unloading and he walked now holding his daughter’s hand through the courtyard and along the path out to the parking lot behind Robert Hall.