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My mother is very, very into fairness. Like, to the point where she will ke
“I’m sure Dad will understand,” I told my mother, even though 1) I was not at all sure of this, and 2) that completely did not address her question.
But Mom said, “Well, it’s all right with me if it’s all right with him. We’ll be glad to have you around more often, sweetie.”
And that’s the thing about my mother and fairness. She really wants to be fair to everybody. But if she can’t be fair to one person, then she wants that person to be my father.
My parents separated when I was four years old, and Mom blames the dissolution of their marriage entirely on Dad. At her lake house last summer, I guess she felt that I was now old enough to understand what went wrong between them—which is reprehensible, by the way. You are never old enough to hear details about your parents’ marital problems.
Regardless, Mom told me, “We weren’t happy together. We both knew we weren’t happy, but he was the one who brought it to that breaking point. I was so ambitious, and he was so … well, he was content with what he’d already done. He was happy to rest on his laurels. When I wanted to create more, build more, start BOO OIL, have more kids, renovate the house, he wouldn’t get behind it. He wouldn’t get behind me. I would have done anything to make our marriage work. But your dad has never liked anything that requires work. I’m telling you, never fall for a music man. It only ends in heartbreak.”
Her whole story made it sound to me like Dad had done her a favor. Why would she have wanted to stay with him if they were that unhappy? But that is not how my mother sees it.
So even though Mom got Steve, and two adorable new kids, and two adorable new dogs, and a way bigger house, and a lake house, too, even so, she has never felt fully compensated for the way my dad treated her twelve years ago.
And I think that’s why she didn’t protest now, when I told her that I wanted to spend more time with her. Instead she said, “Just check with your father, and then I’ll tell the rest of the family the happy news.”
So later that night, after I knew he would be home from work, I closed myself into my bedroom to call Dad.
“Elise!” he answered. “Good to hear from you, honey. How was your weekend?”
“It was fine,” I said. “Hey, have you heard of a band called Big Audio Dynamite?”
“Sure,” he replied. “That was Mick Jones’s band after the Clash. Good stuff. Why?”
“I heard one of their songs today,” I said. “I liked it.” That was about all I felt like telling my dad about my afternoon at Char’s apartment. Then I took a deep breath. “Daddy,” I began, which is not something I’ve regularly called my father since I was Alex’s age, “would you mind if I started staying at Mom’s house on Thursday nights?”
There was a brief moment of silence on Dad’s end of the line.
“Maybe I could switch it for another night at your house? Like Tuesdays?” But even as I said this, I knew it wouldn’t work. Dad has to work at the store until closing every night of the week except Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. That’s why those are my nights with him. The rest of the time he comes home so late, and sleeps so late, that I could stay with him and never see him at all. And my parents are not okay with that, especially not since I cut myself. After that, I haven’t been allowed to stay at either parent’s house if there aren’t going to be adults home at a reasonable hour. I don’t understand that rule, since the time when I cut myself was the middle of the afternoon, but whatever.
As predicted, Dad said, “No, Tuesdays wouldn’t work, I have to be at the store until late.”
There was another pause.
“It’s just that there’s this new extracurricular activity I want to do,” I tried to explain. I stared out my bedroom window. “But it’s on Mom’s side of town, so—”
“Was this your mother’s suggestion?” Dad broke in.
“That I stay with her on Thursdays?” I asked, surprised. “No. She had nothing to do with it. It was my idea.”
“Oh,” my father said. “Well, if it was your idea, then that’s fine.”
“Really?” I squealed.
“This is what you want?” he asked.
“Yes! Thank you so much, Daddy. I’ll see you Wednesday. Love you!”
And that is how I got a weekly guest DJ slot at Start. It wasn’t pretty. But that’s how I did it.
* * *
There are some people who want to win at whatever they do, even if the things they do are not the sort of things one wins at.
I am one of those people.
When we had a gardening section in fifth grade science class, I wanted to be the best gardener. When I learned how to do embroidery at day camp, I wanted to be the best at embroidering. And I realized, during my second time playing music at Start, that I didn’t just want to be a DJ. I wanted to be the best DJ.
I played a half-hour set. Char was very encouraging—he helped me plug in my laptop, and adjusted the monitors for me, and reassured me that he wouldn’t leave the dance floor, not even to use the bathroom, so he would be right there if I needed him. And it went okay. I only tried to beat match twice, and both times the songs overlapped in a jarring, earsplitting way. The second time Char even climbed up to the DJ booth to help me, which was mortifying, so the rest of the time I focused on simply playing one song after another without leaving any moments of silence. I tried to read the crowd, like Char had told me, but all I could read was that the crowd did not like “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” It seemed like half the room filed outside to smoke when I played it. I couldn’t tell why. I had heard Char play that same song two weeks earlier, and everyone had danced.
Char relieved me at one thirty, full of compliments and encouragement. Then I packed up my computer and found Vicky, who was smoking outside, near Mel.
“Hey, lady,” she called when she saw me. “You were awesome up there.”
“I was all right.”
Vicky shook out her long, thick brown hair. “Please. Give up the false modesty and just take a compliment.”
With all the words I would use to describe myself, falsely modest had never been among them. “Thank you,” I said. “But I could do better. Char is better.”
“But you’ve been doing this for, what, a week?”
“Two weeks.”
“Right, and he’s been doing it for years. Cut yourself some slack. Anyway, Char’s a dick. Don’t aspire to be like him.”
I didn’t think Char was a dick, considering that he was not only teaching me how to DJ, but also letting me play at his party. But I could guess why Vicky might think so. “You mean because of Pippa?” I asked.
“Because of lots of things.” She exhaled a ring of smoke, and we both watched it swirl up into the night sky.
“Where is Pippa, by the way?” I asked. I hoped the answer was not “passed out on a bench” again.
“Manchester,” Vicky replied.
“Oh, cool. Will she be back for Start next week? I want her to see me play. I swear I’ll be better at it next time.”
“You were fine at it this time,” Vicky reminded me. “And, no, I don’t think she’ll be back next week.”
The way Vicky said that did not sound good.
“Her parents thought she was partying too hard,” Vicky explained, crushing her cigarette butt under the heel of her gray suede boot. “Her mom freaked out because she had given Pippa, like, two hundred dollars to buy a new winter coat, and then she somehow found out that Pippa spent all the money on alcohol and basically froze all winter long. So they made her take off the rest of the semester and go back home where they can ‘keep an eye on her’ or something.”