Deena Goldstone: Surprise Me

“Use your imagination,” he presents to her.

“Okay, Dad, thanks, I’ll try that.”

And her father is pleased, she can tell. He thinks he’s come up with an idea to help his daughter.

But of course Isabelle has been trying to use her imagination all day, with no success.

Stefan Jablonski is sitting high up on the steel bleachers inside Townsend Gym watching the Chandler Coyotes at their basketball practice — passing, dribbling, shooting, a slam dunk every once in a while from their very tall center, Marcus Mohammed. He could play with them, Stefan thinks, although his only basketball skills are those honed on playground courts. He checks his watch from time to time. He knows he has to be at his father’s office at 5:30.

That was part of the deal they made when Stefan showed up with no warning at his father’s house two months ago. He could stay, but he had to have responsibilities. The first: he had to get a job, which so far he hasn’t managed to do. And second, he had to walk his father to and from campus.

Stefan readily agreed. He had no choice. His mother, Stephanie, and his stepfather, Simon, had kicked him out. They’d had enough of his drifting, they said. He wouldn’t go to college, even community college. He wouldn’t work at any of the menial jobs open to him. And they would no longer put up with a twenty-three-year-old who was quite content to stay in his room playing music and increasingly violent video games.

Stefan has never lived with his father. Oh, the first two years of his life don’t count, because he can’t remember them. And once his father left, two days after his second birthday, when his sister, Alina, was five, they saw each other sporadically, only when Daniel was in town. Of course. Even Stefan understands that nobody stays in Erie, Pennsylvania, who doesn’t have to.

What he doesn’t understand is what’s wrong with his father. How can a grown man, a man who’s lived more than fifty years and been successful — hell, he’s written four books — be afraid to walk outside his door? His dad told him what it’s called, this thing he has, but Stefan lacks the empathy to truly understand it. And Daniel doesn’t like discussing it, so it’s there, in the middle of their lives together — immutable, it seems, and confusing.

At a quarter to six Stefan still hasn’t arrived. Goddammit, the kid’s always late. Daniel turns from the window where he’s been keeping a vigil and tries to calm down. He eventually gets here, Daniel reminds himself. But then: What if he doesn’t? It infuriates him that he has to rely on his less-than-dependable son to get home. But there it is — his life as it’s now configured. Daniel paces, and suddenly Stefan is opening the office door with his customary “Hey, Dad,” and Daniel grabs his jacket. It’s late January, and contrary to his expectations before he arrived in Southern California, it can get cold in winter.

They walk across the rapidly darkening campus, two tall men keeping pace, Stefan thinner and rangier than his father. Daniel walks with his head down, concentrating on his feet. The last thing he wants is for some student to stop and talk to him. That would be a disaster, Daniel believes. The kid would be able to see the panic in his eyes, fear that has no cause he can pinpoint, no cure he can find.

“So I was like, killing time, you know,” Stefan tells him tentatively, still unsure how to relate to this large presence walking beside him, “before five thirty when I had to be here, and I went in to watch the basketball team practice, and here’s the thought I had, Dad — I could play with them.”

“You’d have to attend college first. Something you refuse to do.”

“No, I’m just saying that I’m like…well, good enough to play with them. Well, maybe except for that Mohammed guy. He’s awesome. He’ll be drafted first round for sure.”

More walking. More silence from Daniel. Stefan steals a sideways look at him and ventures a suggestion. “Maybe we can take in one of their games.”

Daniel looks up at his son and his expression says it all: Are you crazy? And Stefan immediately understands his mistake and backtracks. “Oh, okay, right, too many people at a game. I get it.”

Daniel nods and grunts. He quickens his steps. He wants nothing more than to be inside his house.

“When are you going to get done with this thing, Dad?”

“When are you going to get a job?”

Stefan shrugs. He has no idea.

“And there we have it — two unknowables.”

—

THE NEXT TUESDAY MORNING Daniel finds himself eager to get to campus, a feeling he can’t remember having had in the more than three years he’s been at Chandler. He has a hunch, or maybe just a gleam of a hope — something that’s in short supply in his life — that Isabelle will bring him pages he’ll be glad to read.

“Let’s get a move on,” he tells his son, who is hunched over, elbows on the kitchen table, reading the sports section of the L.A. Times. It’s basketball season, and there’s plenty to read.

Stefan glances at the clock above the stove. “We’ve got time,” and goes back to reading all the box scores of all the basketball games played anywhere across the country.

Daniel doesn’t argue. He simply takes the paper from his son’s hands, folds it, puts it on the pile of the rest of the unread paper, and says calmly, “Time to go.”

—

ISABELLE CAN’T MAKE HERSELF LEAVE the bathroom. She hates the way she looks this morning. Well, okay, she hates the way she looks most every morning. She’s too tall, ungainly, she thinks. She wishes her hair weren’t such a nondescript brown and that it was thicker. She’d kill for some natural highlights. Her mother is beautiful. Every relative from the Abramowicz side of the family, her mother’s side, will sooner or later come forth with the same sentence: “Oh, Isabelle, your mother could have been a movie star!” But Isabelle came out looking like her father. Yes, Isabelle tells herself as she stares back into her own brown eyes, you look just like a tax attorney.

She pulls her hair away from her face and wraps it up against the back of her head. No, she decides, and brushes it back into its customary curtain, which hugs both cheeks and is her fallback position. More hair, less face — much better.

You’ve got to get out of here, she tells her reflection. You’re going to be late.

The last thing she wants to do today is face Daniel Jablonski. She is certain, absolutely certain, that although she’s rewritten the first twelve pages, she hasn’t come up with anything that will surprise him, and the idea that she may, almost certainly will, disappoint him is unbearable to her.

Only Jilly, knocking on the bathroom door, forces her out into the hall. Jilly, whose attire of choice seems always to be pajamas, is half asleep as she brushes past Isabelle, muttering, “Gotta pee,” and closes the bathroom door.

In the kitchen, Nate is peeling an orange, drinking a mug of coffee, and studying. He says “Hey” to her without looking up from his book. “I’ll be ready in, like, five minutes.”

And suddenly Isabelle can’t bear the thought of walking to campus with him, listening to him talk about the test he’s studying for, because she knows Nate well enough to know that if there’s a test waiting for him, that’s what he’ll talk about. She needs to get her head straight before she enters Daniel Jablonski’s office.

“I’ve got to go now,” she says without waiting for his response and is out of the kitchen, down the hall, out the front door.

—

DANIEL IS READY FOR ISABELLE, sitting at his desk, when she knocks lightly and walks in. He watches her come in, does a quick inventory of how she looks. Without a word from either of them, she hands him the new pages, his eyes eager to read what she’s brought.