Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,19

kind of homemaking impostor.

My mom drove me to his condo and rolled to a stop at the curb. “What, you’re not coming in?” I asked her. I half wanted her to because she looked pretty today. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and curled to frame her face, and she had on an old Chicago Bears V-neck. She was going to a how-to seminar at the library, something about computing, and was excited, so her eyes looked bright, too. Kind of interested and ready, not the eyes of someone who’d grown tired of her life, which was how they’d looked when she was married to my dad.

It wasn’t that I wanted my parents to get back together. I’d never looked at my mom and dad and thought they were some amazing love story that needed to be saved. They were just people who talked to the same kids every day and shared a television. But I did think my dad’s leap into a new relationship was sort of his mild revenge on my mom and that my mom deserved some equally light retribution on my dad, in the form of looking good on a Sunday afternoon.

“Ha, ha,” Mom said. “Just because I don’t hate your father doesn’t mean I want to pal around with him. But they invited you, and I don’t want you pulling anything like not going inside. You owe him that.”

“Well, I don’t owe Polly anything,” I said.

“She’s obviously trying,” Mom said. “She was very pleasant at our dinner.” That was one of the divorce contingencies: that before either of my parents introduced me and my sister, Tonia—who had only had to hear about Polly over the phone since she calls herself Chartreuse now and lives with some guy in Venice Beach, California—to a new love interest, the other one be present. I had no idea how they’d come up with that rule, but based on the really awkward meal we’d all shared at a steakhouse in downtown Chicago, I’d thought it would be better if my parents could hate each other a little more post-split.

“Okay, Gandhi,” I said and hopped out of the car to head up the walkway. The newish condo complex was called the Elm Tropics, which I found hilarious. There was nothing remotely tropical about Elm Ridge, or Powell Park, or any city in Illinois as far as I knew. But someone had put flimsy effort into the “tropical” vibe by placing potted palms—that would surely die by November—on each side of the glass door.

I pressed the buzzer for Klintock/Jeffries (Polly’s last name) in 3A, and Polly’s voice lilted over the staticky crackles of the intercom: “Susan, is that you?”

“Me” was all I said, and she let me into the vestibule, where I trudged up the stairs.

Polly already had the door open and had come to the landing, where she watched my progress. She had her arms out for a hug before I had even cleared the steps. “Oh, we’re so happy you’re here! We have NEWS!” She sprang at me for the waited-for hug and then pulled me into the condo by the arm. Her perfume was floral and not obnoxious. I would have liked it to be obnoxious, but I can’t lie, it was nice.

Nice, like Polly. Polly, who put a dish of seashells in the bathroom. Polly, who squeezed orange juice. Polly, who probably never masturbated and would be appalled by the wave of feeling in my fulcrum when I thought about Coach McMann. Bobby.

The living room was the first thing you saw when you entered. Dad was there, sitting on the couch, watching a football game. “Hi, Dad,” I said. He didn’t get up, which was kind of annoying, but at least it made him feel like the same old dad.

“Hi, Susie,” he said, tipping his beer can to his mouth and then yelling, “Come on!” at the screen.

Polly looked from him to me and back at him. “Albert? Can you take a break so we can share the news with Susan?”

“Share the news” sounded vaguely like they were now in a cult and were going to ask me to join.

“Yeah, okay,” Dad said. He stood up, following Polly as she led us through the kitchen, where something in the oven smelled delicious. He was looking back at the TV the whole way.

The dining room had been empty last time I was here, but now it was filled by a new table that was ever so slightly too