The Trade

She sat in the back seat and waited for her to shut up.

“Has he found a new floozy?” her mother asked from the driver’s seat.

She kept her face a neutral mask. “How should I know?”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.” She stared straight ahead, willed her mother to silence.

“Why not? Didn’t I ask you to ask him?”

“Yes.” More a sigh than a word. She wished she could stay home and watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, like a normal kid.

“So ask him. I have a right to know. But don’t let him know that I asked you to ask him. Have you seen anybody with him?”

She wished she could seep out of her body, rise into the air.

“Sweetie? I asked you a question.”

“Not that I’ve noticed, Mom.”

“You’ve never seen anyone with your father? Never?”

“I don’t really pay attention.” She wanted to spin a black shell around herself, something through which no one could see her.

“I’ll tell you what,” her mother said. “I’ll write down everything you should ask him. You have to make it sound like you thought of the questions, yourself. Will you remember what he tells you?”

“Yes, Mom.” Invisible. She wanted to become invisible.

“And you have to remember how he says it. What sort of facial expressions he makes.”

She redirected her stare out the window, watched the trees fly past her mother’s car.

“He never was the faithful sort,” her mother continued. “Heavens knows I tried to look the other way when he and I were married, but I could only ignore so much . . .” She continued to talk.

The girl continued to stare out her window. Her parents had completed their divorce over a year ago. They had, ever since, traded her every Saturday morning.

Whichever parent had her would drop her off at the McDonalds halfway between their homes. They wouldn’t wait with her. They didn’t want to see each other.

She listened, half the month, to her mother bitch about her father. She spent the other half of the month with her eyes closed while he father bitched about her mother. If even one of them spoke true, half her genes proved tragic.

They arrived at the McDonalds.

Her mother scribbled furiously on a sheet of paper. She passed it into the backseat, into her daughter’s hand. “Here are the questions you should ask him, sweetie.”

She took the paper, got out of the car, and went inside to wait for Dad.

She sat at a booth, watched her mother drive away. Her father would arrive soon. Soon, she would sit in a car with him, listen to him tell her about her horrible mother who drove him out of the house.

She stepped out the door, found some bushes, and squatted behind them. She heard, after a few minutes, the familiar cough and sputter of her father’s engine. She peeked through the bushes and spotted her father’s beaten car.

The engine quieted. The door opened. Her father stepped out, marched into the restaurant.

She waited. Her fist squeezed the list of questions her mother had given her.

He came back out, circled the building, and went back inside it.

. . . He stepped outside about ten minutes later, a cellphone pressed to his ear. He waited. Frowned. Pocketed his phone. Got back in his car. Waited some more.

Go, she begged. Leave.

An eternity crawled past her before he finally started his engine and drove away. She watched his car grow smaller and smaller, until she couldn’t see him at all.