“Sweetie,” Margo says, handing me a napkin, “you know I’ve done my best to never say a bad thing about your father. You search back and think on what I’ve said and you’ll be hard-pressed to find many ill-meaning words.” She sighs. “I did that for you and I thought I was doing the best I could. But not now when you’re beating yourself up. He made this choice. He chose not to get treatment and push everyone away. He made the choice to not go after you when you left.”
“Gary told him not to,” I say. “I begged you, so you got Gary to tell him to let me go. It was me. He was just doing what I wanted.”
Margo takes a deep breath and presses her lips together, like she’s holding back her words until they get in line. “When Gary went to talk to him that time, it wasn’t so he’d give you the car. It was to make him come get you. Gary told him that no man lets a little girl go out on her own like that. No man lets his responsibilities pass him by. That’s what really happened.”
I feel the same drop in my stomach and flush in my veins that I get when I’m driving away and realize I’ve left something behind. Margo pulls another napkin from the holder on the table and gives it to me. Mine is soaked already.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought I was protecting you. I tricked myself into thinking you wouldn’t notice what a bad father he was if I didn’t point it out too much. I thought it was better for you to think he was letting you go because he thought it was best than for you to know that he wasn’t even thinking. Don’t you go feeling responsible for his failings. They aren’t yours, April.”
“When both parents crap out on you—I’m the common denominator, you know.”
Margo grabs my hand and squeezes. “You’re the gift that came from two broken people. They were weak, and hurt, and cowardly, and somehow managed to make this miracle girl who is so full of piss and vinegar that she survived it all. Maybe you need to mourn who they weren’t. Maybe that’s what you’re here for now.”
“You’re too good to me, Margo,” I say, wiping my face with the napkin.
“I don’t think I’ve been good enough,” she says, and I realize she’s crying too.
— Chapter 63 —
Margo is gone before I wake up. She told me last night she was headed out early to make egg casseroles and crumb cake for anyone who stops by the diner after the funeral. Said she didn’t want “that poor Irene” to feel like she had to feed people on top of everything else.
I call to her anyway, wishing for an answer, hearing only the rattle of the heater. I have a crying hangover. Puffy face. My nose feels like it’s filled with cement. It’s strange to be in Margo’s apartment alone. When I walk into the living room her cat jumps off the coffee table to hide under the couch.
In the kitchen there’s a note, a strawberry Danish, and a glass of orange juice on the counter. The kitchen smells like coffee, but she didn’t leave me any. I’m sure it was on purpose. There’s a navy blue maternity dress hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The note says: Thought you might need this. Love, M. I wonder if it was one of Irene’s maternity dresses. It has a drop waist, a pleated skirt, and a square flappy collar with white trim like a sailor’s uniform. You know, because of all the pregnant ladies in the Navy.
I think about cutting the collar off and trying to make it something else, the way Carly would, but my father never cared what I looked like when he was alive I don’t think it’ll start to matter now. My long skirt with the stretchy waist is good enough.
On the back of the note she’s written the calling hours and the funeral time. There’s a viewing this morning. Like I’m supposed to go down to the church and have people stare at me while I look at his dead body so they can spend the next three years talking about how I didn’t react the right way. So they can pretend they know more about me than they really do.
I take the note with me so I'll remember what time the service is. I know enough to know it won’t feel good to see the motorhome, but I can’t stop myself.
— Chapter 64 —
Mrs. Varnick’s place is abandoned now. Margo says they had to put her in a home last year. Her son wanted her to live with them, but after years of Mrs. Varnick calling her daughter-in-law “the fat cow,” she was what Margo called “persona not gratas.”
Weeds grow up fast. There are sumac saplings where Mrs. Varnick used to park her car. Virginia creeper curling into a broken window.