was looking at me the way he often looked at me—a little starry-eyed, his lips curved in a half smile. His long-sleeved T-shirt looked stiff, almost starched, with a neckline that was too high. He always looked nice when he was going to work, but when the weekend came, and he had to go casual, he had trouble dressing himself.
“You sure you didn’t hit your noggin on the steering wheel?” He reached over and lightly mussed my hair. “I wonder if we should go get you checked out. We can stop by one of those walk-in clinics and just have them take a look at you. Sometimes you can have a concussion and not even know it.”
“I’m just tired.” I looked over my shoulder, searching for the waitress. I was hungry. I was more than ready to eat.
“You look like you have a rash or something on your chin. What’s that? And you cut your lip.”
I moved my finger to the cut on my lip. “That was later,” I said. “Not from the car. That was when I fell. On the ice.”
His nostrils flared. He set down his water glass. “Right. When you were getting out of the truck. The truck driven by that degenerate…” He paused, pointing at me. “…who, so help me God, if I ever find…” With his other hand, he squeezed his napkin, which, being paper, didn’t put up anywhere near the kind of fight the actual truck driver might. Still, I was touched by the sentiment. He seemed anxious, his eyes moving in a repeated circuit—over the salad bar, across my face, and then left, to the neon letters in the window, and then up to the sky beyond. It was a bright and sunny morning, cloudless; but outside, the branches of trees were newly bare. The wind was blowing hard and cold.
“So…tell me again.” He put his napkin in his lap and moved his hand over his mouth. “Tell me again what happened after you got out of the truck.”
I cocked my head. I was unclear on why he needed this information again. I didn’t see why it would matter, what it had to do with the identity of the truck driver, or the likelihood that my father’s insurance would cover the bill for Jimmy’s car. But I knew, from vast experience, that my father didn’t like to be thwarted from a particular line of questioning. “I…” I shook my head at him numbly. “I fell on the ice. I got up, and he was already driving away.”
He made a quickening motion with his hand, as if I were purposefully delaying what was important. He was about to speak when the waitress appeared, setting a plate before him.
“Sir? The Maverick? Well done?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she had already turned toward me. “Seven-ounce?”
I nodded quickly, hoping to give her time to flee.
“Erin, I think we’re out of steak sauce here.” My father loosened the half-empty bottle from its little cage in the middle of the table. “Other than that, we’re all set here, Erin. It all looks very good.”
I shielded my eyes so he wouldn’t see me wince. It would do no good to tell him to stop. When I was seventeen, my mother had tried to convince my father that people who worked in restaurants didn’t necessarily appreciate it when he read their name tags and used their names casually, as if he’d known them forever. She’d been met with strong resistance.
“You sure about that, Natalie?” he’d asked, putting his hands behind his head, an elbow jutting out on each side, the left one accidentally nudging Elise’s head. We were all in a booth, having brunch at a pancake house, and everyone was a little tense; earlier that morning, we had gone to my grandmother Von Holten’s nursing home to wish her a happy ninety-first birthday. My grandmother hadn’t recognized anyone except my mother, which made sense, as my mother was the one who had looked in on her the most for the previous three years.
“You’re saying working people don’t like to be called by their Christian names?” He’d looked at my mother through narrowed eyes, his elbows moving farther out. Elise, home from college for fall break and already feeling claustrophobic in every sense, growled under her breath and pushed his elbow away from her head. My father apologized and looked back at my mother. “You basing that claim on any actual evidence? Or are you just, you know, more