Three
“Missy?” My father’s voice is disapproving as I try to act as sober as possible. That’s another thing my father doesn’t like:
drunk women.
“Hi, Marty,” I kiss him on the cheek, trying desperately to remember how I would act if I were sober. “What are you doing
here?” I congratulate myself on how normal I’m sounding. I’m pulling it off.
My father peers at me, then asks “Are you drunk?”
“Not at all,” I lie. I hope he believes me, but this is Marty Cooke. He didn’t get to the top of his profession by having
the wool pulled over his eyes.
“Missy!” Clara Woodlander walks up, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. She is my father’s first employee, technically
now the head of Global Expansion at ipryy, but many would say she’s pretty much the COO. She is the diametric opposite of
my father in every way, and I adore her.
Where my father is handsome, in great shape thanks to his obsessive working out in the gym, always clad in the best T-shirts and sneakers money can buy, Clara doesn’t care about gyms, or clothes.
She is brilliant, and refreshingly normal; ambitious, but always supportive of me.
She is the woman I aspire to be. She can argue like a man, then soften the blows with her feminine charm.
She never worries about people-pleasing.
She doesn’t care. Clara softens my father’s sharp edges, smiles where my father scowls, makes conversation where my father listens.
She has been my favorite adult (even though she is only ten years older than me), for as far back as I can remember.
When I started working at ipryy, I decided I had to stop calling her Clar, and tried calling her Clara in a few meetings,
but it felt completely weird. Eventually, she appeared in my office and said she felt as weird about it as I did. She would
always be Clar to me, she said, even in the workplace, so please would I respect that. I laughed, and I try, but she will
always be Clar to me.
“What are you doing here?” Clara finally disengages.
“Getting drunk.” My father rolls his eyes.
“As she should.” Clara starts to laugh, which is one of the many things I love about her. She’s one of the few who isn’t frightened
of my father, who will always tell him the truth. It isn’t always advisable. Back in the early days, Clara once told my father
his ideas were shit, and my father cut her off. They didn’t speak for six months. He wouldn’t fire her, but he refused to
speak to her directly. They literally had an interpreter. As it happens, the idea he was playing with at the time was shit,
and now Clara can do no wrong.
“Of course she’s getting drunk.” Clara’s eyes crinkle as she smiles at me. “That’s exactly what every twenty-nine-year-old
is supposed to be doing at a party like this.”
“More to the point, what are you two old people doing here?” I look at them and Clara laughs.
She isn’t old, she’s thirty-nine, although she regularly refers to herself as an old lady.
My father responds with a restrained smile.
Fifty-nine is hardly old, but he is significantly older than most of the crowd tonight.
“Marty, you don’t even like vodka.” Somehow, even though there is nothing other than vodka to drink at this Virtuoso Vodka party (Lucy brought her own tequila), my father is holding his favorite beer, a Corona.
Mocked by the media for having such pedestrian taste in alcohol, it is nevertheless a well-known fact that this is my father’s drink of choice, and it magically seems to appear wherever he goes.
“We’re trying to find the people from Inferno,” says Clara, as I down the rest of my drink, only catching my father’s frown
after the fact.
“Come and dance!” Preeti appears, not noticing my father or Clara as she tugs me back to the dance floor. I grab another vodka
from a passing waiter holding a tray, when I feel arms around my waist, and I turn to see Jerome.
“Jerome!” I fling my arms around his neck, spilling my drink all over him, apologizing as I kiss his cheek. “How are you here?”
“How am I here? I think that’s my question. Didn’t you say we wouldn’t see each other tonight because you needed a night in
at home by yourself?” His voice is amused.
“I did, but you know Lucy and her powers of persuasion. I couldn’t resist. Come and meet Preeti!” I turn, but Preeti has disappeared.
It strikes me suddenly that it’s weird that Jerome just showed up. It’s almost midnight. He never stays up this late. “Did
you follow me?”
“Of course I didn’t follow you.”
I stand back and look at him, then turn my head to see that my father has wandered over and is watching us. Of course.
“My father called you, didn’t he? He told you I was drunk and that you had to come and get me and take me home.”
Jerome has the good grace to blush ever so slightly.
In an alternate universe, I might say something to my father.
In an alternate universe, I might even start a fight.
I am twenty-nine years old, and do not need looking after; I certainly don’t need my father calling my boyfriend to take care of the problem, and I know he sees it as that: a “problem.” He doesn’t like his daughter being drunk, worries about how that might reflect on him.
But this is not an alternate universe, and I have spent my entire life trying to please my father, so rather than being outraged, as I know I should be, I am instantly embarrassed, allowing Jerome to take my hand and lead me mutely out of the party.
Jerome tucks his fleece around me as I snuggle in the front seat, suddenly tired, and grateful at being looked after. It is
not often that I feel taken care of, and this small kindness, having a soft jacket tucked around me before Jerome kisses me
on the forehead, smiling affectionately at me, brings back a childhood memory that I haven’t thought about for years.
I was supposed to be with Marty every other weekend, but most of the time he canceled, claiming unexpected travel, or a work
crisis. I wasn’t going to let a small thing like illness get in the way of a weekend with my father that he hadn’t actually
canceled.
My mother always described Marty as a germophobe, who lived in fear of getting ill. He had a fridge in the garage filled with
vitamins and supplements, medications, just in case. If he ever felt the hint of a scratchy throat, he would down boatfuls of zinc and vitamin C, refusing to be ill.
If anyone working at ipryy was sick, they would be sent home. Masks were kept at reception for anyone to take should they
feel anything less than a hundred percent.
My throat had been sore and scratchy for a day, and it was painful to swallow.
I could feel my lymph nodes were swollen, and my head felt thick and heavy, as if I were moving through the world under a weighted blanket.
But I didn’t want to cancel on my father.
He had been traveling, I hadn’t seen him for two weeks, and even when he was here, there was such scarcity that being with him was a magical experience, one I looked forward to all week.
My father was freedom, and fun. He may have been difficult, had his own quirks, but they were so very different from my mother’s,
they felt manageable; interesting, even. He had told me many times that if I was sick, I wouldn’t be able to come and stay
for the weekend, but this wasn’t sick. I hadn’t thrown up. I just didn’t feel like myself, but if I didn’t tell him about
the sore throat, my thick head, he wouldn’t know.
Marty had picked me up—he was driving a convertible Porsche with a sound system so loud, Led Zeppelin drowned out any signs
of me not feeling well. Marty always played old music loudly, singing along at the top of his voice, even in traffic when
people would stare at him and laugh. There are now countless videos online of Marty Cooke singing his heart out at traffic
lights all over Silicon Valley, but he doesn’t care.
We got to the house and Marty ordered pizza for lunch. Sausage and pineapple for me, which was my favorite at the time, and
a salad pizza for him—his food phase then was no dairy and no meat, which gave way to lots of meat, and no bread; it was always
hard to keep up with his food fads, but he never imposed them on me.
I had no appetite at all. The thought of eating anything turned my stomach. All I wanted was to crawl up to bed and go to
sleep, but if I did that, he would know I was sick. I forced myself to be normal, but when the pizza arrived, I couldn’t pretend
anymore. I picked up the slice my father had put on a paper plate for me and lifted it to my mouth, only to have my throat
close up. I put it back on the plate and looked up to see my father staring at me, his eyes narrowed.
“What’s wrong, Peanut?” He seemed to take in my drooping eyes and pale face. “Are you sick?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m just not hungry.”
“You look terrible,” he said, noticing for the first time how unlike myself I seemed. “You look sick. Do you have a headache?”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently to prove it.
“Sore throat?”
I just stared at him. I was a horrible liar, even then. It was one thing to omit information, but quite another to lie about
it, and I wasn’t practiced enough to get away with it; I am still not practiced enough to get away with it.
“Jesus. You are sick.” He took my plate away, the pizza slice I hadn’t eaten, had only breathed upon, and even that is debatable. He slipped
the entire thing into a new trash bag from underneath the sink, tied it tightly, and took it outside so it wouldn’t contaminate
the house, as I sat miserably.
“Can I go to bed?” I said, eventually, unable to continue the pretense, and he nodded.
“Absolutely. Just not here. I’m taking you back to your mother’s.”
Now, tucked in the passenger seat of Jerome’s Porsche, his fleece wrapped around me, my forehead still tingling from the feel
of his lips, I smile to myself sleepily.
“What?” Jerome looks over at me from the driver’s seat as he starts the engine.