The Van Pact

11: Stevie

I think Mom was shocked when I chose to stay with Dad, in our ranch house (the only crap-shack on our block), with the small vinyl-linoleum-everything kitchen. That I chose Linden Valley, where every street has a pothole. Where, over the past century and a half, working class rejects from all parts of Europe and Latin America had gathered around a steel mill (now bankrupted and rusted over). Where everyone still wears their great-grandparents' malnutrition on their faces, in the form of weak chins and overbites and crooked teeth and asymmetrical noses. (Valerie says she can pick out the New Yorkers who moved into the Valley after the economic recovery, when suddenly our town- and it's low living expenses- became cool. Because they're hipsters? I ask. No, she says, because they're not uggos like the rest of us).

The reason why I chose to stay was simple. I was twelve, and I lived across the street from the best friend I will ever have. When I think about it logically, I should have gone to Connecticut with my mom. I would probably be able to get into Dartmouth's pharmacology program that way (because God knows Linden Valley Central isn't an Ivy feeder school). But then again, how many Valerie DiPaolo's are you likely to meet in Connecticut? Lightning strikes maybe once, maybe twice.

I'm sorry. I can't take credit for that line. That's ripped from possibly my dad's favorite Fleetwood Mac song. Don't ask me how a townie like him got interested in Fleetwood Mac. I don't have the answer. The band is a decade or two before his time. Maybe because he's got his moon in Pisces? He's secretly sensitive? When I think about it, that's probably why my mom left him (she's a Leo with her mars in Sagittarius. I don't know why they ever thought it would work). He falls into these moods where he doesn't want to do anything. That's the primary reason why this date utterly shocked me.

"A date?" I managed to spit out. "With whom?"

"With whom?" My dad chuckled, "Where did you learn to talk like that?'

"Whom's an object of a preposition," I regurgitated the most useful thing Herr Norwood taught me in German class last semester, "so it's in a different grammatical case than who. Who is in the nominative-"

My dad pulled his thin lips into his mouth, widened his eyes, and nodded at me like he was listening. I could tell he wasn't. He was making the stupid Irish face, which, if you have any proficiency at reading body language, might as well be a neon sign saying 'I'm not listening.' I know this, because I make it all the time.

"Fine then," I interrupted myself, "with who?"

"A friend of Joe's," my dad answered. "It's a blind date. It'll be a disaster, but Joe won't buy me dinner again unless I go."

And then there was a third voice in the room.

"Mr. O'Shaughnessy, look at you! Getting back on the market!"

Valerie appeared behind my dad in my doorway. She had startled him. His shoulders jumped up when she first called his name.

"Sorry for letting myself in," Valerie squeezed between him and the opposite door frame and flopped onto my bed. "Stevie wasn't answering my snaps so I thought I'd see if she was still alive. We got some big plans for tonight."

This was the first I had heard of these big plans for tonight. I checked my phone. Sure enough, ten notifications had collected on my lock screen. Each snap and text a message from Valerie D.

"Mhmm," my dad again made the Irish face, "nice van by the way, Valerie. Anybody at school shampoo your hair in the toilet yet?"

Valerie giggled, Daisy-Buchanan style, as per usual. My dad melted, like everybody else on earth who's heard her laugh. The lips came out and he was smiling.