Still, I should have known better, especially after last summer. That was when I’d had the bright idea of convincing my dad to hire Morris to tote boards and supplies and be a general gofer on his job sites. He’d had back surgery in the spring—twenty years of driving nails takes its toll—and the doctor told him he needed to take it easy, or at least easier. Morris had just been let go from his job at Jumbo Smoothie for eating too many toppings, among other things, so I went to bat with my dad, convincing him to give him a shot. The first day, Morris backed the company truck into a gas pump, left half the crew’s lunch order on the counter at Sliders & Subs, and took, by my dad’s count, approximately fourteen water breaks. I wanted to die.
“He moves so slowly,” my dad said that evening, popping his ritual first beer. He still seemed incredulous, even hours later. “It’s like he’s got a disease or something.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And you have to tell him everything,” he continued, not hearing me. “Not just, say, ‘go fill the gas tank.’ More like: ‘Park the truck. Remove gas cap. Fill tank with gas. Remove pump. Replace gas cap. And don’t hit anything on your way out.’”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
He shook his head, downing another sip. “I was going to let him go, but I told him he needed to work off the cost of getting that dent fixed. So I guess I’m stuck with him.”
“I’m—” He gave me a look, and I stopped myself from apologizing again. “I’ll pay the dent cost. It’s my fault he was there in the first place.”
“No, no,” he said, waving me off. “You’ve done enough for him. I’ll deal with it.”
I expected Morris to be fired by the next week. But he wasn’t. Instead, my dad kept him on, which was worse, because I had to hear him complain about Morris every single night. How slow he was. How he couldn’t bang a nail without hitting his own hand or someone else’s. He couldn’t dig a decent hole, remember a simple order, drive a stick shift. The list went on and on, and every item on it made me cringe.
“So fire him,” I said finally, over dinner in mid-June. “Please. I’m begging you. I can’t take this anymore.”
Across the table, Amber snorted. If Margo was the goody-goody and I was the perfectionist brain, she was the wild child. Prone to tattooed older boyfriends, never making it home by curfew, and blowing all her money on beer or clothes, she was usually the one getting it from one or both parents, and loved it on the rare occasions when someone else was.
“Oh, I will,” my dad said. “I’m just waiting until I find someone else to replace him. He’s better than nothing.” A pause. “I think.”
The weird thing was, he never did let him go. The excuses evolved: it was too much trouble to train someone new, another guy quit, and then the summer was practically over. But even after all the complaining, Morris was still doing odd jobs around the house after school and on weekends. Maybe my dad kept him around because he knew his backstory—no father in the picture, Mom less than invested, to say the least. Or perhaps he just had the same helping gene I did, even though we weren’t blood related. Whatever the reason, I didn’t question his tolerance of Morris, if only because of how much I hated it when anyone did the same to me.
Now, I glanced over at him. He was putting forks in a basket, one at a time. “Morris. Please. Just dump the box in, okay?
“Huh?”
“Forget it.”
I could see Luke now, pulling up with the ice. He parked, then got out of the car and went around to the trunk, laughing as someone called out to him. It’s funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you’d think.
“You sure you’re okay?” Morris said, opening another box of forks. “You seem . . . weird.”
I swallowed, glancing over at Robin, who was barking orders. “My father called today.”
“Really.” I nodded. “What’d he want?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t called him back.”
He considered this, then said, “Maybe he has a graduation present for you.”
I made a face. “Kind of late, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “Better late than never.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, was basically Morris’s mantra. But that was the weird thing: I could handle him being slack because, well, it was just how he was. I expected more from everyone else. Especially my father.
With the college issue finally settled, life had slowly gotten back to normal, as much as it could with the final days of high school winding down. Even though we’d left things awkwardly weeks earlier—to say the least—my father had been instrumental in my college process, and I’d always intended to invite him, Leah, and Benji to graduation. So in late May, I wrote their address on one of the thick, creamy envelopes and popped it with the others into the mailbox. He never responded. Whatever it was we’d shared all those months, clearly, it was over.
Or so I’d thought. Call when you get a chance, the message had said. I could understand my mother’s first instinct, to toss it away. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I was just a fool. This was the girl I was, this was where I was from, and East U was where I was going. What could he possibly say that would change any of that now? Nothing.