Read Online Parts Unknown by S.P. Davidson - Free Book Online Page A

close all through our childhoods, but I knew why he was avoiding me now, when he’d finally been able to get away.
    But I kept showing up, for winter break, for spring break, for summer break. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And I hated myself for my weakness, for the fact that I kept coming back, kept phoning home, kept hoping for the love and apologies that never came.
    On the phone with friends, when Mom was finished with her Alex spiel, and moved on to talking about me, it always went: “Oh yes, Vivian, she’s the artist in the family. A future investment banker and an artist—isn’t it funny how two kids can turn out so differently.” And there I was, dispensed with, in one sentence.
    Mom never talked about Marty in those phone conversations. As if, by not mentioning him, he might disappear. Then she and Dad could go back to golfing and gardening, without continual Marty-made disasters forcing them to interact. They could return to colliding only every Friday night for their traditional Friday night dates. That one night, they’d dress up, go out, and display to the friends who always dined that same night, at that same restaurant, every week, how committed to each other they both were, after more than twenty years of marriage.
    My dad had recently decided to go into politics. Starting from the ground up, he was a city councilman, and he was often at nighttime council meetings, planning meetings, or out with work friends. This was intentional. And it worked out great for Mom, because she could tell her friends, winding the phone cord obsessively around and around her finger, “Have you heard—this weekend the mayor himself invited Howard to golf with him. Well, Howard and the other council members too. But I mean, what an honor!”
    And I could just see Dad driving there smugly in his Cadillac, golf clubs in the trunk. It was an impulse purchase from ten years ago that he’d driven home one day, straight from the dealership. He’d known Mom had her eye on a used Mercedes: as posh as a new Cadillac, but half the price. Whenever she saw his car, her fingers would nervously pluck at the sides of her always-matching outfit, and she’d talk about her shopping list, the store vacancies on Lincoln Avenue, the price of milk, faster and faster, hardly stopping to take a breath. I figured, if she spoke fast enough, she might forget how much she hated that car, the wrong car that my parents couldn’t afford, that they had only recently finished paying off. Dad avoided car confrontation most days by pulling straight into the garage.
    They covered it up pretty well, but my parents were barely middle class. They owned a few single-family home rentals, along with Dad’s pay as a city council member and Mom’s seasonal work as a substitute librarian. They made sure to look and act as wealthy as they could, without actually spending much money to do so. Mom and Dad might write our private-college tuition checks, but they used the special checkbooks from our trust accounts to do so. They paid for college with Uncle Paulie’s money.
    They’d had a plan once, to make a lot of money without a lot of work, but it hadn’t worked out. It had been a total disaster, in fact, and nothing at home had ever been the same again.
    ~ ~ ~
    I was jolted out of my reverie by the sight of a smiling face peeking out from around one of the doors. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. Josh has said so many wonderful things about you,” said a very dark man with a lovely meld of an African and British accent.
    “Hi, you must be Trevor,” I smiled back. “I’m Vivian.” He was impeccably dressed in an ironed white polo shirt and navy-blue shorts with a sharp crease down the front.
    “Welcome,” he said. “I must cook you dinner tonight. If Josh has been feeding you . . .” He shook his head darkly.
    “What, a person can’t live on pizza and noodles alone?” I laughed. “Thanks for the invite. Josh is working tonight, so I’d