"Uh-huh. Like fire hydrants-"

"No they don't. They're a calm pair of red pants, a nice shade."

"Like something a dog pees on," I finished.

"Let's call him Mr. Fire Engine Pants until I find out his name," Nicole said. I could hear her chewing. She told me she's eating Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. She already had three bowls of Corn Flakes. She can eat anything and stay ridiculously skinny. She was probably chomping on a Certs in between ravioli bites. She's addicted to Certs.

"Isn't that too long? Mister Fire Engine Pants."

"Okay, it does take too long. Let's call him the Fire Man."

"That's good," I said. "It makes me think of emergencies."

"Like the emergency of love. I'm in love. Hear the sirens of my heart? Whooo. Whoo. He is so cute, isn't he?"

"Uh-huh," I said. "That siren of love stuff is too corny."

"Love is not corny."

"Sure. Did you get a topic for your New England History paper?" I asked her this while she was quiet and thinking of the Fire Man. Mr. Johnson has given us our topics for our quote-unquote term paper for New England History. It's supposed to be fifteen pages long and is due right after Thanksgiving weekend.

"Oh. My. God." Nicole paused to slurp whatever she was drinking. She drinks everything with a straw, even milk, and I could hear that she was at the bottom of the glass. I knew that pretty soon she'd excuse herself for a minute to go refill the glass. "Oh my God, you will never believe what that idiot assigned me. It's the worst topic in the universe. It's horrible. And fifteen pages. I don't know how I'll ever write fifteen pages on anything, let alone on what he gave me."

"I bet you could write fifteen pages on the masculine attributes of Fire Man," I said.

"Masculine attributes? You sound like a Cosmopolitan article."

"Not Seventeen?" I said.

"No, they aren't intelligent enough to use the word attributes. They'd think we wouldn't understand it. I hate Seventeen."

"Me too," I said. "So, what's your topic?"

"Some old logging company on the Union River. Jordan Brothers Logging or something like that. I wrote it down. Isn't it awful?"

"Uh-huh." I waited for Nicole to ask me what my topic is.

"I can't believe he gave me that. Fifteen pages on loggers. Do you think anyone will ever like me? I can't go all the way through high school without anyone liking me. I'd go out with anyone, even Travis Poppins."

"That's disgusting. He's your brother's best friend. That's like incest or something."

"No, it isn't. It's just a last resort thing."

"You'd rather go out with a jerk than go out with nobody?"

"Yeah." She munched on something and circled back. "I can't believe I have to write about a logging company."

"Mine's on Hannah Dustin," I said, since I'd realized Nicole wasn't going to ask.

"Who's that?"

"She's this old, odd-stick colonial woman who got-"

"Odd stick? What the hell is odd stick? Are you talking cowboy again?"

"No. It just means eccentric."

"Eccentric?"

"Weird, okay? Whatever. She got kidnapped by Indians and then killed them all." Hannah Dustin is my ancestor, but I don't tell Nicole that.

"No way."

"Uh-huh. She scalped them."

"No freaking way! You already know that?"

"Yeah, we learned about her in seventh grade," I lied. "Don't you remember?"

"No," Nicole said. "I probably wasn't paying attention."

And when she said this I felt all mudsill for lying, because I could tell (because I know her so well and because she's my best friend) that Nicole just remembered she's supposed to be smart this year.

"I should go," she said. "I have to do homework."

When we hung up, I looked at the clock and saw I only had ten minutes before my mom came home from the Sheraton, where she's the secretary to the personnel manager. I hadn't cleaned anything.

"Crap," I said and went to the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink where my mom keeps all the cleaning stuff. I grabbed some Windex and a cloth. I don't think Windex glass cleaner is what you're supposed to use to clean radiators, but I couldn't remember what my mom used. I don't think she'd ever done it before. It's all for this stupid man from Oregon.

I pray every night that he's cool, like you, Mr. Wayne. Sometimes I worry that he's the type of man who wears pocket protectors in case his pens leak. Sometimes I worry about those newspaper headlines. I told Nicole about those at school. She wiggled her fingers and said, "FREEE-AAKKK-YYYY."

Then she changed the subject, and talked about whether we'd be cooler if we highlighted our hair.

I didn't tell her what Paolo Mattias said about my dad. I haven't told anyone about that, other than you.

Let me tell you, Sunday mornings are the worst. You'd think they'd be great. My homework is done, and you'd think I'd have a whole day to do nothing except maybe ride my bike or gab with Nicole on the phone or watch your movies.

This is not the case.

My one day of freedom, Saturday, is over and I'm forced to wait, all morning, for my father to call. Sundays are our days together. When I wait, I watch your movies. I have thirty-six of them, which isn't good enough to be a real collector, but I'm halfway there.

Most of the time my dad calls around ten, right in the middle of a movie. That's what he does this time. I'm full into Hatari! and ring, there goes the phone. My mother makes me answer it.

"Liliana?" he says.

"Hi Dad."

"How about I come pick you up around eleven thirty?"

"Okay."

"Anything special you want to do today?"

"No," I say, and I think, not with you. This is an awful thing to think, I know, but I can't seem to help it. Sometimes when I think that way, I feel so bad that I imagine I'm on this sinking Navy boat and the men are running frantic, the waves leaping up over the hull, and there I am standing there yelling, "Hold on, men! Hold on!" But there's no point. There's nothing to hold onto because we are sinking, sinking fast.

"Well, let's see," my dad says, and he pauses all namby-pamby. I go and open the silverware drawer. In the background, I can hear Grammy talking to him. She's telling him to take me to a movie or the mall.

"Do something girls like," she yells.

He doesn't listen. "Why don't we go to an engine show up in Blue Hill?"

"Okay."

Grammy moans so loudly I can hear it through the phone lines. I look at my reflection in the handle of a knife. I'm warped, all nose and zeppelin-shaped eyes.

We hang up the phone and my mom comes in, real chipper, like she's a sitcom mom, only in sitcoms parents are never divorced and if they are, the stepfather doesn't die. And the reason the sitcom mom is chipper isn't because the dad called and she knows they'll get a check this week. You weren't ever on The Brady Bunch, were you? It's an ancient sitcom they run on cable. I hate The Brady Bunch even though it's all retro campy. Which means, according to Nicole, that it's now cool. The first time I ever saw you was on the oldies channel, and you were on a Carol Burnett show, guest starring. You looked strong and so tall. Six four is big for a man, Mr. Wayne, which I'm sure you know. I'm only five feet. That's not good even for a girl. My mom's even shorter.

"What are the plans for today?" she asks as I balance the knife on the palm of my hand. It tips over and clangs onto the kitchen floor that my father put in when he still lived here.

"An engine show," I groan, and go into the living room to flop on the couch.

"Oh. Well, maybe it'll be fun."

I raise my eyebrows at her.

"You never know."

I turn away and stare at the back of the sofa. There's no point in watching the rest of the movie. I know it by heart anyways. I listen to the gunfire, your words comforting slow out of your mouth, and examine the threads on the sofa that are woven together all yellow and gold and white. I wonder how my father and mother could have agreed on this couch. They bought it together. It's older than I am. Now my body is as long as the couch when I lie on it. I remember when I didn't even take up one cushion. I'm getting old. Too old to go to engine shows with my father. Too old to have to do anything with my father on Sundays.

My dad belongs to this group for divorced people called Parents Without Partners. They do all these group activities with their kids. This was okay when I was little, but now I feel like the biggest dork mini golfing and bowling with these traumatized six-year-olds while their divorced parents all make goo-goo eyes at each other and set up dates. None of the men talk to my dad at these things. They all wear nice corduroy pants that don't expose their blue underwear, unlike my father. None of them chew toothpicks like him and they all look at me like I'm poor, which I am, sort of, but I don't need to be looked at that way.

At least the engine show isn't a Parents Without Partners expedition.

An engine show.

I will have to pretend to care.

I hate that.

"I don't want to go," I say to my mother, arching my back and stretching down the length of the couch.

"Don't whine, Liliana. You look like a cat, stretching like that." She sits on the armrest of the couch and puts her hand on my forehead. She starts smoothing back my hair. It feels nice.

After a minute she adds, "I know you don't, honey. But he's your father."

I sit up. "You always say that. Like it's the excuse for everything."

"Well, he is."

I clomp into my room and close the door. I won't come out until he cruises up the driveway and honks the horn for me the way a date does in movies; a date that's already met the parents and is way too cool to come inside. My father is definitely not too cool to come inside. He's the kind of man whose pants fall down and you can see his bottom. When you tell him this, he blushes and pulls them up. This is called having a working man's smile or the plumber's drip. It happens all the time, and still he doesn't buy pants that fit. What does that say about a person? What does that say about me? My genetic legacy? A scalper (via the lovely Hannah Dustin genes) and a working man's smile. Jesus. I bet your daughters never had to go to an engine show, Mr. Wayne. I saw that picture of one of them-what, was she maybe four years old and in Cosmopolitan wearing $800,000 worth of diamonds for some Cartier's ad? She was beautiful, Mr. Wayne. She must have loved you.

When I get in the car, my father pats me on the knee and leaves his hand there waiting for me to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. I do. One good thing about my father is that he smells nice, the way fathers are supposed to, of minty aftershave and hair stuff, sometimes with a little cut-grass scent underneath. My stepfather smelled like that too, with Old Spice deodorant thrown in.

My father turns the car around at the top of the hill and heads down the driveway. It's easy for him to turn the car around. He's used to tractor trailers, eighteen-wheelers and all that. It must be strange for him to drive something so small.

"How was your week?" he asks me.

"Good."

"First day of school go okay?"

"Mmhmm."

"Things going well?"

"Yep," I say, because I am a woman of few words.

We start down 101 towards Blue Hill and the engine show. I wonder if he'll remember to get me lunch. There aren't many places to eat on the way to Blue Hill. Maybe they'll have popcorn or something at the show. They do sometimes, popcorn in the boxes like they have at the movies and Coke in those little red cups that have wax on them. The wax always comes off on my lips when I'm drinking, and it makes me think I'm drinking candles.

"So, how's your mother?" he asks, biting the edge of his fingernail while we drive past the OK Corral Redemption Center.

"Good."

He always asks how my mother is. For a second I feel bad for him. His big blue eyes stare out the car window at the traffic. He pats my knee.

"She's excited about Mike O'Donnell coming to visit," I say, staring out the window as we drive past an Exxon gas station. I bet they have food in there, Doritos or something toxic like that. Twinkies maybe? I'm so hungry I'd eat anything.

"Mike O'Donnell?"

"Uh-huh."

"Mike O'Donnell from town?"

"Yep. You guys used to know him and his wife or something." I pick at my fingernails because it's something to do. We drive by a horse farm. Horses stand waiting for something to happen. I want to jump on and ride off into the sunset, but it's only noon.

"How's Jean? Is she coming too?" my father asks, smiling and all excited now. He's a social butterfly. He loves all the old friends from his married past. Most of them are still his friends, too. They all gave up on my mother. They don't mind the toothpicks and the falling-down pants, it seems. They prefer it to my mom, the adulteress, who left my dad for my stepdad who died on her.

"Goes around comes around," they say when I go visit them with my dad. They think I can't hear. So stupid. It's too bad that there aren't more people of few words, you know?

"Don't need 'em," my mom always says, swatting her hand through the air like she's swatting flies. She talks real big for a woman that's all alone.

My dad isn't like that. He talks small. My mom doesn't need friends. He does. She drives fast. He drives too slow, usually at least ten miles under the speed limit. I count the cars as they pass us on the left as soon as the spotted highway lines appear. Five pass. It's a good amount of time to let thoughts sink in. You don't want to go at things too fast, right?

"Saddle up," I whisper to my dad.

"What?"

"I think they're divorced or something," I say after a second. "The Mike O'Donnell guy and his wife."