“Are they making plans for Christmas too?” He didn’t like the sound of it for her, and felt sorry for her.
“My father is. He wants to go to Aspen to meet friends of theirs and go skiing. My stepmother says it’s not definite yet, but my father really wants to go. I could probably tag along, but it sounds uncomfortable. It’s all couples their age. I’ll feel like hair on the soup, as the French say.”
“Great expression.” He grinned. “My family is completely nuts, but they would love to have you. The more the merrier is their theory about everything. You’ll never be able to keep straight who’s who and who’s married to who. But I would love it if you come home with me. Consider it a firm invitation. There will always be room for you at my house. My family’s not going anywhere. They’re too dysfunctional and disorganized to move our whole army on Christmas. So definitely plan on Christmas in San Francisco.” She smiled and looked relieved. She didn’t want to screw up Lara and her father’s plans, or force her way into anything. And it sounded like fun for them. Jake’s invitation was hard to resist.
She called Lara and told her the next day, and she sounded unhappy about it. She was afraid that would happen, when Brandon talked about wanting to go to Aspen for Christmas.
“We don’t have to go,” she emphasized to Antonia. “Your father was just talking. You know how he is.”
“He sounded like he really wants to go. And it’ll be fun for you too. We can have dinner and celebrate some night before you leave, or when you get back.”
“Antonia, I don’t want you to feel that you don’t have a home anymore, and that we’re not here for you, on holidays or any other time.” But that was the truth. They weren’t. Her father had a home office now instead of a bedroom for her, and the freedom he had dreamed of for years. She was no longer an intruder, and barely a guest in their home. It had come as a shock when she saw the evidence of it, but it wasn’t entirely a surprise.
Lara reported it to Brandon that night, and he wasn’t embarrassed or remorseful. He was pleased, even when Lara expressed her concern. He brushed it off.
“Don’t be silly. She’ll have a good time in San Francisco with her friend, and we’ll see her when we get back. It’s not like she believes in Santa Claus anymore. She’s a college girl, Lara, she needs her freedom too.”
“She needs holidays with us, and a home to come back to. I don’t want her to feel like she doesn’t belong anywhere. And you were already talking about Greece next summer. How do you think that makes her feel?”
“Like a free woman, and all grown up. She’s not a baby anymore.”
“We all need to feel like babies at times, and she needs a home. She’s not gone yet. I don’t want her to feel we’re pushing her out the door.”
“There’s a bed in her room, isn’t there? She can sleep here whenever she wants. And the new home office works for me. I get to spend more time at home with you. That’s a valid reason for changing her room around.”
Lara didn’t argue with him, but she hated how insensitive he was at times, and she knew he was always ambivalent about his daughter. Half of her was his, and the other half was Fabienne’s, which he couldn’t stand. But you couldn’t split the two. She was one person, and while he was rejecting the part that reminded him of Fabienne, even though Antonia was nothing like her, he was rejecting the side that was him too. And to him, going to Aspen with friends was a way of avoiding the issue entirely, and having a good time. She didn’t believe in Santa Claus, as he said, but Lara knew that Antonia needed a father. He felt he had given enough for eighteen years, and now it was his turn to enjoy himself. Lara loved him, but she hated the excuses he made for himself sometimes, especially at his daughter’s expense.
But the die was cast now. Antonia was going to San Francisco for Christmas with Jake. They were going to Aspen. Lara just hoped that Antonia would have a good Christmas. It was the least she deserved. She’d had so little from her father until then. And no family life whatsoever.
Chapter 6
The day after the Thanksgiving weekend, Antonia booked a reservation on the same flight as Jake, going to San Francisco before Christmas. He was flying business, and her father agreed to do the same for her. It was going to be fun flying together, and she was excited to meet the family he insisted was crazy, the parents and stepparents and all five of his siblings. His sister had graduated from Harvard Medical School, and had just started her residency at Stanford Hospital. He said that it was a miracle she wasn’t on duty on Christmas Eve or Day, and was coming home for a night with her boyfriend, a resident too. He explained that he and his sister, Eloise, were the oldest of the kids, and the others were all younger. His half-brothers, Jamie and Seth, whom they referred to simply as brothers, were twelve and fourteen, and were just reaching the right age to get into trouble. They were his mother’s children with Jake’s stepfather, the novelist, Ian. Jake’s “real” father, Bob, was the publisher of the largest San Francisco newspaper, had written a novel himself （he said his mother liked writers）， and had married a woman, Genevieve, who had been a talented graphic designer and retired to devote herself full-time to the identical twins she had decided to have at forty, before she married Bob, using both an egg and sperm donor and a surrogate to carry them. She had married Jake’s father when they were a year old. They were six now, and monsters, according to Jake, Dennis the Menace times two. And for recreation, now that she had two full-time nannies thanks to Bob, his stepmother had become addicted to plastic surgery, and had Botox, fillers, duck lips, and a new chin. She’d had breast implants put in, and liposuction twice. According to Jake, she looked like a Barbie doll, but beyond anyone’s comprehension, his father seemed happy with her. Even though the twins, Zane and Zack, were little terrors, his father claimed that having small children again made him feel young.