If You Never Hear From Him, That Just Means He Didn’t Call - continued, page 3

      My parents were due to arrive the day of the dance; even though they had recently separated they were coming together for my graduation. I decided I would not tell them about Alan, I would just let him show up at our table, whisk me onto the dance floor. It would be too hard to explain everything beforehand. But as I walked from my dorm room to my parents’ hotel I realized I was crying. I wanted to have Alan on my arm. I wanted some protection from my childhood.
When I got to my parents’ room, my mother opened the door and threw herself at me; she had a drink in her hand, and some of it ran down my back. She was more than halfway to drunk. I kissed my father next and he whispered in my ear, “Your mother’s been like this since we split.” Later, on the walk over to the dance, I said to him, as my mother danced drunkenly up ahead,       “So does that mean it was her idea or yours?”
      “The divorce?”
      “Yeah. Does she drink because it was your idea or hers?”
      “We told you, Jessica, the divorce was mutual.”
      I stopped and looked at him. How could it just then have occurred to me that Alan was the same age as my father? “Daddy,” I said, “I am old enough now to know that nothing is mutual.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, “It’ll all work out.”

      At the dance, I got a beer and wandered around looking for friends. Two of my old roommates were huddled in a corner crying. “What if these really are the best years of our lives?” they wailed as I sat down with them. My father had, of course, told me the same thing when I had left for school four years ago. “If that is true, then we are in deep shit,” I said.
I got up and moved on. It was nearly ten o’clock, my mother was so drunk she could barely stand up, my father looked ready to burst into tears himself and Alan was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly I heard my mother say “Oh, my God, who is that gorgeous man?” Alan was hurrying toward us. He was dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt. His hair was a mess as though he had been running his fingers through it for hours.
      “Mary’s disappeared,” he said. Mary was one of his adopted daughters. Apparently she had run away because she was upset about his divorce, he said. He and his wife had called the police but he felt that they both should be at their respective houses in case she decided to come home to one of them. She was only ten. They had adopted her from Ghana. She was, Alan, said, not very street wise.
      “Mother, Daddy, this is Alan, a friend of mine,” I said. “I’ll go with you,” I said to Alan.
      “No, no,” he said. “You stay here. I’m sorry, Jessica,” he said, and he did, for a moment, look truly sorry. “I’ll call you later. All right?”

      I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. I knew I would never hear from him again.
      “Good bye, baby,” I said, in my best grown-up voice.
      My mother leaned into me. I could smell the Scotch on her breath and wondered where she had gotten it after she had left the hotel. Only beer was being served at the dance. “Who did you say that man was?” she asked me, “Who did you say that gorgeous man was?”
      “He’s my lover, Mother,” I said. Then I turned to my father. “Wanna dance?”