Tart by Jody Gehrman Read Free Book Online Page A

been quicker to go to Mom’s in Mill Valley, but thinking of her latest husband and her spoiled, Britney Spears-clone stepdaughter makes me want to yuke, so I opt for Dad’s.
    â€œClaudia,” my father says, opening the door. “You’re—wow. You’re here.”
    â€œYeah. Sorry I didn’t call.” We just stand there awkwardly, surveying each other, and for an agonizing second I think he’s not going to ask me in. Then, as if reading my thoughts, he steps back and gestures toward the living room a little too eagerly, like a waiter in an empty restaurant. “Come in, come in,” he gushes. And then, his tone going puzzled again, “You’re really here.”
    â€œDidn’t you get my e-mail?”
    He just looks confused. “Oh, you know me—I haven’t really adjusted to all of this technology stuff.”
    â€œDad, can I let Medea out? She’s been in this stupid box all day.”
    â€œWho?”
    But I’m already releasing the poor thing; she circles my legs, blinking into the light, looking a little crazed and disoriented. “My cat,” I say, and sigh. “It’s been a very long day.” I say that a lot, lately.
    He squints down at her as she rubs against his shin. “Hello, kitty,” he says doubtfully. “What’s her name?”
    â€œMedea.”
    â€œOh,” he says, stiffly. “Hello, Maria.”
    And then he starts to sneeze. Five times. With increasing volume and violence. Jesus, what is it with men and cats? Clay’s the only guy I ever met who didn’t practically disintegrate in the face of a little cat fur. No. Don’t even think about Clay Parker.
    â€œAh-ah-ah-allergic,” my father manages to articulate between sneezes.
    â€œOkay. I’m sorry. Um, can I put her in the guest room fornow? I’d put her out, but she’s so disoriented I’m afraid she might wander off—”
    â€œGarage,” he says, yanking a handkerchief from his back pocket and sneezing some more. So off she goes, into the garage, mewing in protest until I fetch her a bit of tuna fish and a saucer of milk. I sit there with her for a while, playing absently with her tail and watching her eat, enveloped in the cool, cathedral-like stillness of my father’s garage. As my eyes adjust to the shadows, I gaze around at the meticulously organized shelves and file cabinets, the worktable with tools hanging on hooks, arranged categorically: drills here, saws there. It occurs to me that these may even be alphabetized, which I find more than a little depressing. The air is scented not with the usual grease-and-grime smell of most people’s garages, but with my father’s favorite all-purpose cleaner for twenty years now: Pine-Sol. Parked in its usual place—dead center—is Dad’s 1956 Dodge Plymouth convertible. It gleams with spotless pride in the dark, never having known a dirty day in its life.
    I find Dad in the kitchen, cutting up celery. The house, like everything in my father’s life, is so clean you could eat off any surface, including the tops of high cabinets and the icy-white linoleum floor. He bought a tract home soon after I moved to Austin—one of those creepy, cookie-cutter models that scream “No Imagination.”
    â€œSo,” he says, handing me a glass of milk with ice in it. I don’t usually drink milk, but I sip politely, anyway. “How long are you here for?”
    â€œYou mean, here, at your house? Or…?”
    â€œWhen do you go back to Texas?”
    â€œPop, listen. I got a job in Santa Cruz.”
    He smiles. He has very white teeth, perfectly straight; my mom says he was still wearing braces when they got married. “You’ve got a Santa Cruz in Texas? Isn’t that funny. I guess all those saints really made the—”
    â€œSanta Cruz. California, Dad. I got a job at the university.”
    He stops cutting