“Laurence,” Dad said, clapping him on the shoulder. Laurence clearly wanted to disappear. “You think about what I said?”
Laurence nodded.
“And? Dallas is a lot bigger than Tulsa. You can’t find a job here?”
Laurence shook his head.
“What’s there to do in Oklahoma anyway?”
Laurence shrugged.
“It’s just a construction job,” Dad said. “It’ll be over in a few months. What are you going to do then?”
It took my brother a moment to answer, and when he did, it was with a sigh, like being forced to actually say something was tiresome. “I guess I’ll find a different job. Or move somewhere else.”
A look crossed Dad’s face, like he was both surprised and dismayed. “I don’t know where you think you’ll go,” he muttered.
I realized suddenly why Dad was trying to convince Laurence to stay. He wasn’t going to miss him; Laurence could barely muster up the energy to be marginally polite to Dad. There was no love lost there.
Dad was scared that his son would be better than him. Dad had never been anywhere. He grew up a few blocks from where we lived now. He visited Austin once with Mom and declared it “terrible.” He was a plumber, a job that only required travel within the Dallas–Fort Worth area.
Mom had him beat; she was born in Mexico and immigrated here with her parents when she was six years old. She’d traveled around the southwest states and Mexico a lot in her early twenties, before she met Dad. Maybe I even had him beat, with my one trip to Guanajuato.
Dad shifted his attention to me. He laid a hand on my shoulder. I tightened my fingers around my wrist. “Clara.” His voice shook with emotion. “I’m so sorry about losing my temper.”
I’d never understood the phrase losing my temper. It was never lost. Dad kept his temper with him always. He managed to hide it from everyone—from his coworkers, his friends, from the cops I’d called once, only to have Mom tell them I was a liar. He could keep a grasp on his temper in all those situations, so that meant he chose to free it at home. He hadn’t lost anything.
“I hope you can forgive me,” he said.
His face was open and sincere. He thought he meant the apology. He didn’t. He always did it again, and you can’t be truly sorry for something if you turn around and do the exact same thing, repeatedly.
He stared at me anxiously. I was expected to be a bottomless pit of forgiveness. No matter what he said, what he did, I had to forgive or I was a horrible person. Everyone forgave Dad. Those were the rules.
I broke the rules last time. No forgiveness. He flew into a rage within two hours of returning home, because he said I was being rude to him.
There was no reason to believe that this time would be any different. Mom was widening her eyes at me, silently asking me to play nice. The smart thing to do here was to force a smile and say I understood. Yes, Dad. It’s fine that you called me a moron and bashed my head into the wall. It’s OK, even though I know you’ll do it again.
I said nothing. I was not a bottomless pit of forgiveness; I was a screaming ball of resentment. There were two options here—silence or hysteria. I chose the former, always.
Dad’s contrite look faded. His jaw twitched. His apology only applied if I accepted it. I didn’t think apologies were supposed to work like that.
He turned on his heel and grabbed his bags. “There’s something wrong with that girl,” he muttered to my mom. I’d heard him say it before. Do you think she has feelings at all? he whispered once to Mom, with an actual edge of concern in his voice.
I had feelings. He just didn’t like any of the ones I had for him.
Dad deposited his bags in the bedroom and returned to join Mom in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, and she smiled as she leaned into him.
She loved him. It defied all common sense and logic, but she really did. And it made me feel like a crazy person that I didn’t. Was I overreacting? Did I expect too much? Was this how fathers were, it was just that no one talked about it?
I had loved him once, as a kid. I remembered the feeling of relief when he was happy, the certainty that this time would be different. I was sure that if I was good enough, everything would be fine.
But there was no such thing as good enough. It was embarrassing how hard I’d tried, looking back now. I never wanted to be that dumb again.
“Clara.” My name was disappointment on Dad’s lips. He stepped away from Mom, his hand lingering on hers a moment. I watched the way their fingers clung to each other for a few extra seconds before splitting apart.
“We need to talk about your grades,” he said.
Mom’s demeanor completely changed. Her shoulders tensed, her eyes going a little wide. She was still trying to be good enough.
“She got an A in history and combat class!” she blurted out. “I should have mentioned that before.”
“That’s great about history, Clara.” Dad smiled at me. I didn’t return it.
I’d liked history this semester. We studied recent history, up to the first scrab attack in Scotland. That’s how they got their name—the first sighting was in Scrabster, Scotland.
I’d never even known how they got the name until Ms. Watson took us through their history and the various conspiracy theories about their origin and how they ended up in the US. She’d made a strong argument that someone must have smuggled a few into the country and lost control of them. Scrabs could reproduce, so she reasoned that all our scrabs could have come from just one male and one female brought
