5
SUTTON
PRESENT DAY
Dinner with my dad and Lily is awkward. They feel more like distant relatives than parents.
The last time I saw them was a year and a half ago. They drove to Chicago for the performance there as part of my last world tour. My dad’s idea of good music is a country ballad, preferably one about broken-down trucks and empty beer cans. Lily exclusively listens to Aretha Franklin.
My music—some combination of pop and indie and folk, depending on which album I’m promoting and what my label thinks is “trending”—is the sort of mainstream music neither of them would voluntarily choose to listen to.
Not to mention the “three-ring circus”—as my father likes to put it—of backup singers and choreography and costume changes and colorful lights and press and paparazzi that are all part of what’s become a normal day in my life.
It all feels very far away in the quiet dining room.
My relationship with my father is…cordial. My parents married young when my mother got pregnant with me. As I grew up, they grew apart. I’m not surprised their marriage fell apart. It was only the ending that took me off guard—how she walked away so easily. How she never looked back.
Her leaving affected me and my father in different ways.
I relied on music and the boy next door.
He immediately replaced her.
I have nothing against Lily. She’s quiet and calm, mild-mannered. Better suited for my father than my flighty, flaky, gregarious mother ever was. Lily and I have never had anything resembling a mother-daughter relationship. But I’m glad she and my father still seem to be happy. I gave up more than they know to try and protect that happiness.
Lily isn’t quite as good of a cook as she is a baker, but it’s close. She made roasted chicken and green beans and rice pilaf, which we sit and eat in between stretches of forced small talk.
Halfway through the meal, my father throws a curveball into the conversation. “I’m considering selling.”
I chew. Swallow. “Selling…this farm?”
He nods. “It’s a lot to manage.”
“I know.”
I think my father thought Grandpa Joe was overreacting when he said the farm was a lot for him to handle—up until my mother left, he and I moved north, and my father took on some of the responsibility.
“And now, with Joe gone…there doesn’t seem as much of a point. You and Ellie are both grown and gone.”
“Where would you move?”
“Chicago, probably. I know the city, and Madison has some tough memories for Lily.”
Lily’s first husband, Ellie’s father, was from Madison. They lived there until the divorce, when Ellie was eight. Lily moved to Brookfield and opened her bakery for a fresh start.
“Do you, uh, do you think it will sell?” I can’t imagine the market for run-down dairy farms in the middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin, is booming.
My father grimaces. “I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to a real estate agent yet. I was actually considering asking Teddy.”
“TeddyOwens?”
“Yeah.” He cuts some chicken. “He’s helped out around here since high school. Knows his way around the place. Seems set on sticking around. Settling down.”
Teddysticking aroundandsettling down—presumably with Tanya and her bright smile—on a piece of property that’s been in my family for generations shouldn’t bother me.
But it does.Alot.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad.”