How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) by Ann Hood Page B

against the crack between the seats. “I hate those stupid rice cakes you always pack and I hate that bread with the cream cheese.”
    â€œGood,” my mother said, leaning toward the crack. I could smell her coffee breath. “You can go to the diner car and get whatever it is you do like.”
    â€œI want an Am on Rye,” I said. When she didn’t laugh, I said, “Get it? Am instead of ham because we’re on Amtrak. And Rye because we go through Rye, New York.”
    â€œThe pun,” she said, “is the lowest form of humor.”
    She opened her book then. It was a mystery, set in England, her favorite thing to read. She always liked trying to solve the murder, and the foreign setting, which somehow made everything even more ominous and seemingly impossible to solve. She always used to tell me the plots of these novels and together we would try to figure out who the bad guy was. But lately, I’d lost interest.
    â€œWant to know the setup?” she asked.
    Even though a little part of me wanted to say yes, I leaned back in my seat and said, “No, thanks.”
    â€œIt’s a good one,” she said.
    I looked out the window at all the trees whizzing by. “I’m not in the mood,” I said finally.
    Her seat seemed to sigh as she settled herself into it for the four-hour ride to New York City and Dad.
    At Penn Station, we made our way through a confusing stairway to the arrivals board where our father always met us. On the train, our mother had gone into the bathroom right before we arrived and put on some more lipstick and a big spray of Chanel Number 5. “For Jessica,” she’d said. “I need to look professional.”
    After twenty minutes beneath the clattering arrivals board with no sign of my father, she asked me, “Is he always late like this?” When she asked things like that I always felt like she was keeping notes somewhere of every single thing he did or didn’t do.
    Cody said, “He’s always standing right here when we come up the escalator. He always has flowers for Madeline and a new Brio train for me.”
    â€œWhat?” she said.
    A few years ago, when she had wanted to get Cody a trainset for Christmas, our father had called it an extravagance and refused.
    â€œSo you have a train set at Daddy’s?” she asked.
    â€œYeah. And it’s got a drawbridge and two tunnels and about fifteen hundred trains,” Cody said. “Where is Daddy, anyway?”
    I was just about to strangle Cody when I saw the most beautiful sight: Ava Pomme. She was walking toward us, her hair shiny and her clothes perfect.
    I waved like mad. “There’s Ava!”
    Our mother spun around to look.
    â€œWhy’d he send her?” Cody mumbled.
    Ava and our mother had never actually met. This was the first time I’d seen them side by side like this. Ava was a good five inches taller, with long rich brown hair falling over the collar of an oversize, below-the-knee camel cashmere coat, the sight of which made me embarrassed by my mother, standing there in her meager Old Navy pea coat. Ava wore black cigarette pants and boots with heels that my mother couldn’t walk on to save her life. She wore stupid shoes that she bought in Chinatown—fat black things with a strap across the instep. My mother looked short and dumpy. AsAva got closer, she reached out her hand, her legs so long and thin that all I could think of were deer running through meadows. My mother was more like a chipmunk.
    â€œIt’s a real pleasure,” Ava was saying.
    â€œWhere’s Daddy?” Cody demanded.
    â€œHis plane is late,” she said with a shrug. “He’s coming in from Chile and he has sweaters for all of us.”
    She said Chee-lay as if Spanish were her true language. I practically swooned.
    â€œOh, goodie,” my mother said sarcastically. “Even me?”
    Ava laughed. “Maybe. You can