Page 20 of Tributary

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Diana

I’VE BEEN USING my parents’ shed to age the beer for Hunter’s party. I realized there’s no good reason for me not to do it back in my lab—there’s nothing I can grow back there legally at the moment. But I started hauling cases of bottles over as I finished brewing and it seemed better to just keep them all in the cool dark along with Dad’s trowels and tomato cages. I’ve been making excuses and skipping dinner invites the past few weeks. I figure my mom is probably going bonkers nervous about Hunter anyway, but Dad can always tell when something’s bothering me and I’m just not up for one of his pep talks.

But I do need to make sure none of the bottles exploded or something.

I walk over to their house along the creek, cutting through their back fence and letting myself into the shed to check the bottle caps. I run my fingers absent-mindedly along the bottles, wondering what I’m going to do about work. About my inability to stop thinking about Asa. My dad startles me when he creeps up behind me. “That’s a heavy sigh you’ve got there, daughter.”

I try to change the subject. “Still no word from Fletcher about making it home?”

Dad slips an arm around my shoulders. “He’s wrapping up filming some documentary in…Madagascar, I think. But Hunter said he understands.”

“Hngh.” I hope, weakly, that my noncommittal grunt sounds like the conclusion to our conversation, but Dad nudges me with a squeeze.

“Heard you’ve been meeting with Archer in a professional capacity.”

“He’s not supposed to be sharing details about that.”

“Come on and sit with me, Diana.” Dad walks out to the bench beneath the dogwood tree that’s just starting to bloom. The forsythia are speckled with yellow, too. “The yard will be a rainbow by the time Hunter rolls in,” he says, smiling. He pats my leg. “You used to come to me for advice when things went wrong.”

That was years ago, before the weight of shame settled permanently on my shoulders for trusting the wrong man, for so utterly misinterpreting my relationship until my live-in boyfriend managed to slowly siphon away all my research while playing me like a violin.

My parents never approved of Jay. I saw them greet him during visits with pinched-lipped smiles. How do I start explaining to them that they were right, that I messed up so badly I threatened my livelihood? That I fell for some guy pretending I was beautiful? That him telling me that made me open up my heart, my legs, and my laptop password?

Dad sits patiently, waiting for me to say something, and I can tell we aren’t going anywhere until I give him at least a kernel of information. I consider his situation. He gave up his career to support my mom in hers. Once Hunter was born, he never worked again, not even when the four of us were grown and independent. “I just don’t get how you let yourself depend on Ma so fully,” I spit out.

He seems perplexed and nods slowly, thinking. “Tell me more about that,” he says, finally.

“Oh my god, you and Ma and your psychology degrees. Tell me more,” I mock. But, again, he stares. “You’d be totally fucked if she left you,” I say. “How can you put yourself in that position?”

He raises an eyebrow and squeezes my leg. “I wonder why you’re not asking your mother the same thing…how many times does she come home and ask me where she’d be without me.” He looks over my shoulder at Oak Creek bubbling past behind the property line. “We made this life together, Diana. You see me as fully dependent on her, but I see us as interdependent. And I know we aren’t just talking about finances here, even though I know you’re struggling with those right now.”

Slowly, painstakingly, he rehashes to me his process with my mother, deciding once Hunter was born that one of them would need to be available to meet the needs of the mysterious baby who refused to adapt to the schedule of two rising academic stars. Ma was appointed president of the college by the time I came around, and Dad founded the Saplings cooperative play group.

“I know all that, Dad.” I stare out at the water.

“Well it seems like you’re thinking about how you fit into our story, Diana. And you know you are going to make your own mold, set your own parameters when the time comes. But you’re right about one thing,” he says, “even though you didn’t say it out loud. It’s written plain on your face. It’s a big risk to trust someone the way Rose and I had to trust each other.”

“Well,” I stutter. “How did you know she was worthy of your trust?”

He smiles and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “She brought me a pineapple,” he says. When I make a face, he explains how they’d had a long talk about the food choices in the dining commons on campus while they were in graduate school at Penn. Neither of them had had anything fresh with vitamin C for weeks, when Rose had visited the market in town to buy a ripe pineapple. “She told me she didn’t want me to get scurvy,” he says, laughing. He shrugs. “That’s when I knew she was it for me.”

I try to remember whether Jay had ever bought me anything to demonstrate he really knew me, and I come up short. When I got to Princeton, I was the rough, nerdy scientist who’d grown up with 3 brothers and attended school where her mother was president. I didn’t make friends easily, and my classmates all thought I was a know-it-all. I see now that Jay knew I knew it all, and decided he’d find a way to profit from it. What made me trust him to begin with? “I’m such an idiot,” I mumble.

Dad sighs and looks up to the sky. “Your brother is up there right now,” he says. “I’m going up to your mother’s office to check in and make sure he lands safely.” He pats my leg and walks off toward the woman he trusted with his financial well being, his emotional comfort…his whole, private self. How could I grow up with them as a model of companionship and trust and manage to choose so poorly? I don’t let myself think about the one plant in my shop that someone gifted me. A tiny seedling I never asked for, but one that has grown to flavor the drinks I’ll enjoy for months…maybe years if I treat it well. I feel my tummy tighten at the thought of being known like that, of being seen by someone again. There’s too much power in that, too much risk. I remind myself what I decided when I returned to Oak Creek after my disgraceful departure from Princeton.

“I’m better off alone,” I say, walking back to my plants.

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