Page 36 of The Ghostwriter

He nods, growing animated, and picks his fork up again. “I’d just gotten back from a trip, and I wanted to do something special for you. I remember coming up with the idea on the plane ride back. You always got so mopey when I’d travel, and I wanted to get you excited about something.” He chews, looking at me, waiting for me to pick up the thread. To agree with him about how much fun that treasure hunt had been.

I stare at him, wondering how he could possibly think that was ahappy memory for me. I remember how I’d held that clue close to me all afternoon. How I’d hoped my father had sensed my loneliness and planned one of his grand adventures for the two of us.

But with my father, it was always good to keep my expectations low. His success had changed him, his new money not only buying us a new house, but a flashy new Mercedes for himself. Hiring Melinda, who sat in a small office under the stairs managing my father’s calendar and telling me he was too busy to eat dinner with me. Dropping a McDonald’s hamburger on the table, still in the bag, and letting me eat it on the couch while I watched90210, not even noticing when I switched over toTwin Peaks.

“‘Meet in front of the school at three,’” I say now, my voice low and robotic.

But my father doesn’t notice. “Yes! That was the clue.” He finishes his food and pushes his plate aside, pleased.

But it’s like he’s recalling something from a story he’s told himself so many times, it’s crystallized into something that never happened. Eliminating all that came before and after.

“I remember waiting impatiently for school to let out,” I tell him. “I spent the afternoon imagining how you must have snuck into my room after I’d gone to sleep to pencil those clues into the margins, knowing I’d find them the following day. Planning a fun afternoon just the two of us.” I wait, wondering if the rest will come to him or if I’ll have to tell him the story again. Remind him of the many ways his memory is failing him, forcing me to relive another one of his disappointments. “Finish your protein drink, take your pills, and let’s finish your documentary,” I say.

He stares at me, and I can tell that the events from that day are lost to him. Finally he says, “Tell me the rest of it.”

I shake my head and gather his plate and fork, crumpling his napkin on top of it. “It doesn’t matter, Dad. It was a long time ago.”

“Tell me, Olivia.” His voice is commanding, and I freeze—old habits dying hard—sinking back down into my chair again.

“When the bell rang, I lost my nerve,” I tell him. “All afternoon I’d been imagining what we’d do. Where we’d go. Ice cream and a drive-in movie. Or a trip to Santa Barbara for dinner at a fancy restaurant. But as all the kids rushed out around me, I couldn’t picture you out there with the rest of the parents, milling around waiting.”

“I showed up,” he says, his tone slightly unsure. As if even he couldn’t count on his former self to do the right thing.

“I saw your car parked down the street, that silver Mercedes you bought, remember?” He nods, and I continue. “I felt excited. Hopeful. Thrilled that you’d come for me. Imagining your laughing face, happy that I’d cracked the code, assembled the clues you left for me in the margins of my book.” I stop talking, reliving that moment, how a bright, white joy seemed to carry me down the sidewalk, the sun glinting off the windshield of my father’s new car. “It was a fun afternoon,” I finish, standing again. Carrying his dishes into the kitchen and setting them in the sink. Filling a glass with water and bringing it back to him where he’s still seated, staring at me.

I gesture toward his pills and slide the water toward him, but he ignores them. “You’re lying,” he says.

“I’m not,” I insist, looking past him and into the living room where the penguin documentary is paused on the screen.

“Why won’t you just tell me?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” I say back, my voice rising. “It’s just one example of many where you let me down.”

“But I showed up,” he insists. “I was there—you just said so.”

I shake my head, incredulous that he can latch on to such a small detail—the fact that I was picked up that day—and spin it into a narrative where he comes out looking like a loving father. “No, Dad. You didn’t. When I opened the car door, it wasn’t you behind the wheel. It was Melinda. You’d sent her to take me on a shopping spree.”

I can see the moment he remembers, and I wonder what’s playingthrough his mind. Perhaps a last-minute conference call with his editor that he felt was more important than I was. Or his first drink of the afternoon stretching into two or three, taking school pickup off the table. “Is that such a bad thing?” he asks. “Surely Melinda was a better person to take you shopping for clothes than I was.”

Even now he can’t own it. He can’t see how heartbreaking it was for me to open that car door and see the person he’d essentially hired to parent me so that he didn’t have to. “Sure, Dad. You’re probably right,” I tell him. Knowing there’s no use trying to explain it to him. Knowing he’ll never fully understand what I needed from him.

Just then, Alma returns, dropping her purse on the floor. “A fractured wrist and a red cast,” she announces. My father and I turn to face her, torn from our conversation and forced back into the present. “Did he eat everything?”

“Plate’s in the sink,” I tell her. “Protein shake consumed, meds done.” I grab my phone from the table where I’d left it and head toward the back door. As I’m closing it behind me, my father says, “I’m glad you remember.”

Poppy

May 8, 1975

Every year on my birthday, my father gives a toast. “When Poppy was born, she was beauty and grace and light. And she continues to be that, all her beautiful days.”

But my father doesn’t see me for who I am. In his mind, I’m his baby, his little girl. Smiles and laughter andlight. But light casts shadows. And it’s always been the shadows that interest me the most. The idea that certain things thrive there, that the dark is where secrets live, and I want to understand them. To seek them out. To peer into people’s darkest places and bring the truth out into the open.

For my fourteenth birthday, I asked for a Super 8 camera. I told my parents it was so we could record family memories—birthdays, holidays, special events. My mother was skeptical. My father was amused.

But film won’t lie the way memories do. I want a record of things that happen so people can’t brush off my feelings and tell me I’m overreacting, or I don’t understand.

I want to document my brothers fighting.All boys love to rough and tumble.

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