Girl Most Likely

Seven

Keith was sleeping on the couch in the den when he heard Krista come in. He didn’t remember stretching out, but at some point he obviously had — the last he remembered, he was in the middle of Two Mules for Sister Sara on the Starz western channel and now something with James Stewart and Audie Murphy was on the screen. He’d seen it before, but didn’t remember the title. The TV was muted, which he must have done before flopping on the couch.

He sat up, quickly awake, running his tongue over his teeth in a not entirely successful effort to get rid of the sleep taste. The French doors were open and he could see Krista hanging up her fur-collared bomber jacket in the closet opposite the front door she’d just come in.

He checked his watch — not even eleven yet. What was she doing home so early? And what was he doing falling asleep like an old man in front of the television? Had he really slept through a car pulling up just outside his window, doors closing and good-night conversation included?

He wandered into the living room and he and his daughter met halfway.

“Wasn’t expecting you yet, honey,” he said.

She smiled a little. “Does that disappoint you?”

She sat on the sofa, which was one of Karen’s favorite pieces. It had taken his wife some real convincing to get the antique leather cushions restuffed to make them as comfortable as they were now. That had been twenty years ago.

He sat next to his daughter, somewhat sideways, studying her. She was clearly upset, though not on the verge of tears. Like any father might, he hoped her unsettled condition meant she had finally dumped that louse Jerry. Never occurred to him that a Jerry might dump a Krista.

His daughter, in her red sweater, had looked very young before she went out tonight. Now she looked twenty-eight, and nothing wrong with that. Such a pretty thing. The Danish coloring and hair and eye color were all courtesy of his genes; the shape of her face and its beauty were her mother’s Irish doing.

“This,” he said, “is where a more sensitive father might ask, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’”

“... Nothing’s wrong, Pop.” She smiled but it was little pitiful, though not self-pitying. “It’s just... I finally ended it for good with Jerry.”

“Much drama?”

“No.” She told him how Jerry had been boorish at the brewery, and had gone running up to Astrid Lund to make a fuss over the very girl who’d come between them, a hundred years ago.

He said, “Jerry doesn’t sound very sensitive either.”

“No kidding.”

She shared the way he’d treated Josh and how that had irritated Jessy.

“The frustrating thing,” she said, “is I agree with Jerry about Josh’s stupid homophobic opinions. But Jessy’s my friend, and they saved seats for us, and... let’s just say I didn’t think much of Jerry’s social skills.”

Keith knew that his daughter and her friend Jessica were on the opposite side of the political fence on some issues. Jessy was a conservative Republican and Krista was a very middle-of-the-road Democrat. He had voted straight Republican ticket all his life, till some of the choices offered him had made him sit out the last couple of national elections.

But Keith knew that Krista steered clear of certain topics with her friend — gay marriage and reproductive rights, for example. Jessy was a devout Catholic, and her husband was, too, Catholic anyway — Keith didn’t figure Josh was devout about anything except maybe selling popcorn and fudge to tourists.

Krista was saying, “I kind of had a rude awakening.”

“How so, honey?”

“Well.” She sighed. “Do you know just how long Jerry was, uh...”

“Your houseguest?”

She nodded, smiled awkwardly. “I have a feeling you think him living here was a pretty recent thing.”

“I guess I did.”

“He lived here six months, Pop. I put up with that self-righteous, self-centered SOB for six months!”

That did surprise him. Almost shocked him. And hurt him a little, too, because it meant his daughter had been keeping something significant from him all this time. Not lying to him, but... not being honest either.

Of course he hadn’t bothered once to drive the twenty or so minutes across the river to see his daughter during that same six months. There was plenty of mea culpa to go around.

She reached for his hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

She rarely called him that.

He said, “You’re a big girl, honey. You can make your own decisions.”

“Jerry was a bad decision. I can’t explain myself, really...”

“You don’t have to.”

She was still holding his hand but looking across the room. “I hadn’t dated anybody in a while, and Jerry came along, hauling so many memories, mostly good ones. He’s smart and he can be funny. We have a lot of shared interests. Do you know how hard it is to find a guy who isn’t into sports and nothing else?”

“Probably pretty tough. Gems like me, who like sports and John Wayne movies, don’t come along often.”

That got a smile out of her, a brief one. “Jerry and I would go to concerts and plays and movies — movies that didn’t have a single thing blowing up in them! We went to museums a couple of times. We both like the BBC-type mysteries, and would sit over in the den watching them for hours. I’d make popcorn, and...”

Was she almost on the verge of tears? He really couldn’t tell. And it hit him that now he was the one sitting next to her in the den watching TV.

“I had no idea,” he said quietly, “that you’d been in that relationship so long. That it was so serious.”

“Pop...”

He held up a hand. “I would never move in and cause a breakup. Listen, I’m fine. Everybody has a bad day now and then, and since your mom passed, that’s bound to happen. Particularly with us Nordic types. You have no responsibility, no need to babysit me, to keep me from blowing my stupid head off. I mean it!”

“I know you do,” she said, looking right at him, her smile faint but loving. “I’m just being straight with you. You deserve that.”

“I want that.”

She was sitting sideways too, now. “You have to believe me, then, when I say this was coming. That Jerry was a bad idea. That the worst thing that could have happened was not coming to my senses about him. Okay? Okay?”

“It just wasn’t my intention...”

“Stop it. Just stop it.”

“If I thought I was a burden to you—”

“You want to do something for me?”

“Anything, sweetie.”

“Do your own laundry.”

He started to laugh. “Done deal.”

She was laughing, too. “Also, go fix me some hot chocolate. I see you bought some Danish butter cookies. That’ll be a good fit.”

“Okay. Work me to the bone. See if I care.”

Soon they were in the big kitchen with a little plate of the butter cookies and two mugs of hot chocolate.

“I hope,” he said, “you got to spend some time with your high school pals, before you left Jerry in the lurch.”

“Oh I did. Casual night was in the party room at the brewery — you know that little side room? And when I was on my way out, in the outer restaurant area, I ran into some overflow of my classmates, drinking, talking. I did some mingling before I walked home.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Oh, you know them all. Jeff, Emily, Daniel, Jake, Nicole...”

He did remember them. Most still lived in the area.

She nibbled a butter cookie. “You know who everybody wanted to talk to me about?”

“Me?”

“Not hardly. Mom. She was everybody’s favorite teacher.”

Karen had taught third grade at Galena Primary till her illness forced an early retirement.

“She was my favorite, too,” he said. Taught him more than he could say.

“They did ask about you, Pop. I mean, you’re well known around here. After all, you made the papers a few times.”

“Once with you,” he reminded her.

She sipped hot chocolate. “Emily told me she thought I was the luckiest person she knew.”

“Oh?”

“To have two great parents like you and Mom.”

“Emily sounds very wise.”

“She also has two really, really awful parents.”

They both laughed.

He asked her, “Did you get a chance to talk to your friend Astrid, or did Jerry’s bad conduct get in the way?”

Her forehead frowned while her mouth smiled. “She wasn’t exactly my friend, Pop.”

“She was for a long, long time. Going back to grade school.”

Krista nodded, eyebrows up. “And in middle school, and through a lot of high school, too. Till she stole Jerry away from me.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

Again they both laughed. Not hard. But they laughed.

Keith said, “I always felt a little sorry for Astrid.”

Krista almost choked on her hot chocolate. “What? Are you kidding?”

“No. Remember, she was pudgy and kind of homely in grade school. Took her till middle school before she blossomed.”

Krista’s eyes popped. “And, brother, did she blossom!”

“Yes, but a person who starts out one thing and nature or puberty or whatever turns them into another... that can be tough. I always felt the homely little girl was still inside there, making everybody, oh...”

“Pay?”

“Maybe in a way,” he admitted. “But some of the most confident, secure people on the outside are the opposite inside.”

She smirked. “If you say so.”

They talked some more. He was suddenly glad to be here in this house with her. No, not suddenly — he was already glad, but he just hadn’t thought about it that way. He and his daughter were closer now. They’d always loved each other. But something like... friendship? Something like that had opened up between them.

They went upstairs to their respective beds. Krista took a shower first, and Keith got in bed, on his own side (knowing he would drift to Karen’s in the night), and began reading the novel he’d been working on since he got here.

One of the things his daughter had done, preparing for his arrival, was unpack some of the boxes of his books. In the guest room, where he’d started out, she filled a bookcase with his Civil War collection. He was less than a buff, but when he first came to Galena, the General Grant connection had got him started reading.

A local used bookstore, Peace of the Past on Main, had fed his interest. Nonfiction titles by Bruce Catton, Garry Wills, Shelby Foote, and more lined the shelves, with fiction by Foote again, John Jakes, and Gore Vidal, among others. As he settled under the covers, in pajamas Karen had bought him, he began in the nightstand lamp’s glow to read the next chapter of MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville, his second trip through the novel.

A knock at the door interrupted him just at the point he was about sleepy enough to put the book down. His daughter, in her blue bathrobe, had reached in to knock on the open door, her smiling expression somehow tentative.

“Hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.

“Not at all.”

“You always got along with my friends, right?”

He noted his place, closed the book, and set it on the nightstand. “Not as well as your mother did. And of course I loathed Jerry, or really any boy who thought he was good enough for you.”

She smiled and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “How would you like to say hello to some of the kids?”

“Why, are they going to drop by? Tomorrow, I hope. This day is over for me.”

“Me, too. And I am talking about tomorrow.”

He sat up straighter. “Honey, if you want to have some of your friends over, and want me out of here, that’s no problem—”

“No. It’s just... I don’t have a date for tomorrow night, now. Since the breakup and all. It’s a chance for you to see the kids, and... How about going with me? Filling in for a lousy no good son of a bitch?”

“I guess I could manage that,” he said. “Maybe not the son-of-a-bitch part...”

“Good,” she said with a little laugh. Then she noticed Andersonville on the nightstand. “Is that what you’re reading? About a nasty Confederate prisoner of war camp?”

“Seems to be.”

She slipped off the edge of the bed. “No wonder you almost blew your brains out.”

She kissed his forehead, and went out.