Note: It occurs to me that because I am writing Gen-3 characters, people might be wondering what happened to my initial iteration of those Gen-3 characters, AKA the murder mystery fic. I've gotten a number of questions about it since the summer, and though I've cleared it up in other places, I want to clear it up here as well. I retconned and deleted that fic. It is permanently gone, and it's never coming back. I don't want to write it. I changed my mind. I will never pick it or anything like it back up again. Anything you remember from it does not occur in this universe as it is now written. The characters' names and familial relationships are the same, but other than that, these are completely different characters. I retconned all of the previous information in favor of a more hopeful story with more optimistic characters, which is much truer to myself than the narrative I previously tried to force. Now, here we go!
Act I.
I Know I Have to Go
The rain mists outside the big window in Pony's East Village apartment, and he tries to come up with something – anything – to say about it. Every now and then he tries his hand at being a poet. It always ends with wads of paper littered on the floor (because he likes too much to be a cliché) and an Earl Gray mug gone cold (because on the days he decides to be a poet, he decides he should also learn to like tea, and it never takes). He sits at the kitchen counter and drums a pencil against the legal pad. It's almost nine o'clock in the morning on Saturday, April 14, 2012, and he's already broken three pencils. There are five rejected free verses at his feet.
Carrie walks into the kitchen from the bedroom. She's beautiful and unfazed as she pulls the refrigerator door open and finds her way to the orange juice. She's always loved orange juice, but she's loved it even more since they went to Paris for the first time years ago and found out they love it, too. There is something cool about Carrie – cooler now that she's sixty-two, even more than when she was sixteen. He tries to write about that, too, but he just ends up writing her name: Caroline, Caroline, Caroline.
"Sweet Caroline?" Pony asks.
Carrie snorts from behind her glass.
"Is this some kind of weird pet name?" she asks. "Or are you talking about Neil Diamond?"
Pony rips another piece of paper from the legal pad, crumples it up, and lets it fall to the floor.
"Aww, fuck," he says. "That's where I've heard it."
Carrie chuckles and comes around to his backside. She rests her chin on his shoulder and then kisses him right on the blade. When she kisses him like that, it's like they never stopped being eighteen and nineteen years old, figuring out how their bodies worked. When she kisses him like that, it's hard to believe there was ever a time when he thought she wouldn't anymore.
"Honey, baby, sweetie," Carrie says. "I love you. But let's face the facts. When you applied for your MFA, you had to choose between poetry and fiction. And for good reason …"
"Hey!" Pony objects.
"For good reason, you chose fiction. You got in with fiction. You write fiction. You teach fiction. When this … Bizarro Pony comes out of the woodwork, I never know what to do with him. I've got to say: I like my fiction-writing, Pepsi-guzzling husband much better than his Earl Gray-puking evil twin."
"I don't puke."
"No, but you make this adorable little face like you're going to."
He smiles and grabs Carrie around the waist. She giggles like she used to when they were kids. It's good, he thinks. It makes him feel like they've always been OK.
"Behave, will you?" Carrie says. "I've got a lot of work to get done today."
"Factor me into it?"
Carrie rolls her eyes in jest. She is every bit as adorable as she's always been.
"What?" Pony asks, chasing her with his gaze. "You know me better'n anyone. You know I am just tirin' enough to count as work."
"It's true," Carrie says. "I'll see what I can do."
"Better'n no."
"If that's what helps you sleep."
Carrie waltzes into the living room and sits down behind her computer. She's editing a collection on new feminisms and epistemology. Carrie is so incredible he almost doesn't know how he wound up with her, except he does. For as many men as Carrie could have twisted the hearts and minds of, from the time she was six years old, she only had eyes for Ponyboy Curtis. He knows he doesn't deserve her eyes (or her heart and mind), but he's glad he has them. He's glad he got them back. Life without Carrie is just breathing, and that's stupid.
Of course that's when his phone starts to buzz on the kitchen counter. And of course, that's when it's Elenore Winston.
Elenore used to call more often. In the last two years, it's been less and less. There are a number of reasons why, one of which is the scar on Ponyboy's bottom lip from the summer of 2010. But when Elenore calls, she usually means business. When Elenore calls, he has to at least pick up the phone. So, he does.
"Hello?" he says. "Elenore?"
Elenore doesn't answer at first – at least, not with words. Instead, he hears a loud sneeze followed by a tiny cough. Then:
"Hey, Ponyboy."
He wrinkles his nose with confusion even though he knows she can't see it.
"What's the matter with you?" he asks. "You sick or somethin'?"
"Oh, no, sneezing is a really hot trend this spring," Elenore says. "Vogue says that from here on out, each spring season's fashion will be inspired by one of the seven dwarves. God only knows why Sneezy is first, but …"
"I'm sorry you're sick, Elenore."
"Thank you."
"See your cold ain't turned your wit into delirium."
"Mmm, my wit is always delirium, so really, I don't feel a change."
Ponyboy bites his tongue and stifles a laugh. All these years later, and he still thinks Elenore is the funniest person he's ever met. He can't let her know that: Elenore or Carrie.
"What's the matter?" Pony asks again. "Why'd ya call me 'f you're sick?"
"Because I need a favor," Elenore says. "Well, it's not a favor for me, exactly, but it's … it's me-adjacent."
Ponyboy nods even though he still knows Elenore can't see him. He knows exactly what she means.
"Veronica," he says. "Is she OK?"
"She's fine," Elenore says, and Pony feels his pulse begin to calm down a bit. He hadn't even noticed it was rising until it began to fall.
"So, then …"
"So, then you know what we were supposed to do today. She mentioned it to you on Monday when she was with you and Carrie. This afternoon, there's that prospective students tour at …"
"Princeton. Yeah, I … I remember."
Really, what he wants to say is that he couldn't have forgotten, but they both know that would be a lie. He's Ponyboy Curtis, and Ponyboy Curtis forgets everything that's supposed to be important to him. He can remember all the details of his dream last night, but when it comes to his daughters, Cordelia and Veronica, he's a bundle of hot air.
The bad part is he knows he's a shitty father.
The worse part is he doesn't make the time to fix it.
With Veronica, he can get away with being shitty. She's seventeen but doesn't know that he's her father – never has, and as far as Pony's concerned, she probably never will. He wishes it bothered him more (more deeply and more often). He loves Veronica with all his heart, and he does what he thinks he can. Other than that, he's shallow and hollow. Other than that, he's not the son his father would have raised.
He doesn't like to think of it that way. It's just hard not to.
"Right," Elenore says. "Well … the thing of it is, I am really not up to driving to Princeton feeling like yesterday's Dumpster diving. See? Even my snappy simile didn't make sense. That should tell you I'm in no shape to operate a motor vehicle."
"I believe ya," Pony says. "So, what're you callin' me for?"
Elenore sighs.
(Believe it or not, Ponyboy Curtis is this stupid all the time.)
"Look, it was Veronica's idea, because she loves you," Elenore says. "And she would have called you, but you know how awkward she gets when she wants something."
"Wants what?"
"Keep in mind, please, that she is your daughter, and she has never asked you for anything for as long as she's lived. Considering she's almost a legal adult now, I'd say that's pretty good."
"What are you talkin' about?"
"Veronica wants you to take her on her Princeton tour today."
His heart clenches a little. His first thought is that he'd be honored to take her to visit the school she's been talking about since she was eight (or nine). His second thought (his much more real thought) is that he shouldn't go. There are places he doesn't belong, and this is almost certainly one of them.
"I dunno, Elenore," Pony says. "You really want me to be the one to take Veronica on her Princeton tour?"
He phrases it like that so that it gets Carrie's attention. Sure enough, it does. She rises from the couch and makes her way back to the kitchen. She grabs a permanent marker and scrawls TAKE HER on the legal pad. When she shoves it in Pony's face, he nods.
In truth, Carrie has been a better father to Veronica than Ponyboy has ever been. Years ago, when Veronica was accepted to a prestigious prep school with a 75% scholarship, Elenore could only make up 15% of what was left over. Pony never offered to contribute to his daughter's education (It just didn't occur to him that it was something he could do.), but Carrie did. Each semester, 10% of Veronica's tuition comes out of Carrie Curtis's paycheck. She's one hell of a woman. Pony knows he doesn't deserve her. He knows he doesn't deserve any of them.
He wonders, then, why they insist on loving him.
"No, I want to be the one to take Veronica on her Princeton tour," Elenore says. "But I feel like I'm about to cough up both of my lungs, and I really don't want that to be her first memory of a rock-and-roll collegiate lifestyle. And yes, I do know that rock-and-roll collegiate isn't a lifestyle, but if anyone could make it into one, it's my baby."
Pony finds himself smiling a little. Elenore is right. As she's aged into her late teens, Veronica has come back out of her shell, if only a little bit. She's embraced the longstanding Bennet woman tradition of red lipstick and dark nail polish, and she makes damn sure to make everything political. In the fall, she asked Carrie to sew a patch reading NO RACISM NO SEXISM NO HOMOPHOBIA into a jacket that used to belong to Dally. Even ole Dally thought it was pretty cool ("He's well trained," Lucy teases, just to get his goat.). Veronica paints her eyelids with purple glitter and calls herself pop punk these days. As far as Pony can see, she's the same sweet Veronica with sharper incisors. He's proud of her, but he's never told her that.
Maybe he should.
"What about your folks?" Pony asks (mostly because he knows Veronica deserves better than him – today and everyday).
"Mom's working a conference in Belgium, and Dad went with her," Elenore says.
Instinctively, Pony laughs out loud.
"What?" Elenore asks.
"I'm sorry!" Pony says. "I guess … OK, you gotta know that Dally and Belgium in the same sentence is fuckin' outta this world, right?"
"He's been plenty of places."
"Belgium? How'd Lucy get him to go there?"
"Well, I'd imagine the usual way."
"Please don't say showed him her boobs."
"Showed him her boobs."
Ponyboy turns bright pink like he's still fourteen. Talking to Elenore often makes him feel that way. He wishes it didn't, but he's not sure what else he can do. Elenore has a terrible habit of making him feel too young.
(Of course, it's not really Elenore's problem at all.)
"Well, there's gotta be more than me," he says. "Violet and Steve? Anna?"
"Violet and Steve are back in Tulsa for the weekend, to see Jane and Soda," Elenore reminds him. "Anna's too poor to have a car."
Pony sighs.
"Well, ain't you married?" he asks. "What about your husband? Can't step in and be a man?"
"John promised he would volunteer for picture day at Riley's dance studio months ago, and that's today," Elenore says.
Pony doesn't know why his heart drops a bit when Elenore talks about her husband, John. Like everybody else in their little corner of the world, he knew they'd find their way back to each other eventually. They found their way to each other while Elenore was still with Pony, too. Elenore and John have been in love since they were in the eighth grade; more than thirty years later, they're still in love everyday. They spent decades apart, just calling each other best friends, and about two years ago, Elenore almost married somebody else who treated her even worse than Pony did. After she called off the wedding, it didn't take more than a few months for her to find her way back to John – this time, for good. They got married at the courthouse (just like Lucy and Dally) in June 2011. When Pony heard the news, he found himself in a nameless state between happiness and jealousy. He didn't want Elenore back, and he was happy she was happy. He just wanted … something.
"Hmm," Pony finally says.
"I couldn't just ask him to leave his daughter hanging," Elenore says. "And since Veronica is your daughter, I believe we've come full circle. Either that, or my head is spinning. I should probably lie down."
Pony looks up from the pencil in his left hand to find Carrie shoving the legal pad in his face one more time.
TAKE HER.
He sighs. It's not really out of defeat. Just … something.
"I'd be real happy to take Veronica on her Princeton tour," he says.
"Oh, good," Elenore says. "I was really hoping you'd say that."
"How come?"
There is a knock at the door. Ponyboy is stupid enough to wonder who it could be.
"Because I was feeling lucky, so I told her you'd definitely agree," she says. "And if you didn't … I wanted you to feel the pain of having to say no to that beautiful, beautiful face."
"Veronica might have a beautiful, beautiful face, but you, Elenore, are an evil, evil woman."
"What'd you expect? I'm Dally's kid."
There is another knock.
"Might want to check your front door."
He hangs up the phone, sighs a little, and makes his way to the living room. Sure enough, when he pulls open the door, there's Veronica – his daughter – in the doorway. She's wearing a leather jacket that used to belong to Elenore and is totally unsuitable for rain. There's no doubt about it: She shares his blood.
"Hey, Pony," she says. "Did my mom call you?"
He nods and thinks that he's really glad he said yes just a minute ago. Elenore is right. It would have been much too hard for him to say no to this beautiful, beautiful face. It would have been much too hard for him to turn down a look of desperation in his own eyes.
Veronica says the tour begins at two in the afternoon; it takes just over an hour to make it to Princeton, but Veronica is paranoid about being late, so they leave right away. On their way out, Carrie grabs him by the shoulders and gives him a quick kiss. Veronica laughs and says, "For luck," but Ponyboy doesn't really know what that means.
"See?" Carrie asks. "Aren't you glad I finally convinced you to get a new car? We both know you'd never feel good about taking Veronica in a rickety old thing from 1989."
"Yeah, I know," Pony says. "I miss it, though."
"You only miss it because you get used to things."
"It was a good car!"
"Mmm, no, and you know that. It was an affordable car. Hence, you only miss it because you get used to things."
"Don't you get used to things, too?"
Carrie sighs. Pony hadn't expected it to be such a touchy question. In retrospect, of course, he should have known that everything is touchy. Ponyboy is always smarter in retrospect. It's not a deep observation, but it feels like one.
"Be careful," Carrie says. "I love you. Both of you."
"We love you, too, Carrie," Veronica says. "We'll tell you all about it."
"You better."
They walk out the front door and make their way into the parking garage in mostly silence. Pony notices that Veronica is wearing some fashion boots that want to look like biker boots (but really aren't). He points at them.
"Hey," he says. "You always wear boots like that?"
Veronica nods.
"Yeah," she says. "In part because I think they look cool, but in part because … well, I think Chucks look cool, too, but I've got this fine motor skill problem, see. Makes it hard to tie my shoes without … well, without help, to be honest."
Pony nods. He knows all about Veronica's fine motor skills. When she and Cal (his grandson, born on the very same day and in the very same hour as Veronica, his second daughter) were in kindergarten, Cal used to tease her for not being able to color inside the lines. Veronica almost decked him that Christmas when they made snowflakes in class, and she couldn't figure out where and how to cut the paper. Veronica's fine motor skills haven't improved since Christmas in 2000, but at least her relationship with Cal has.
(Cal knows that Veronica is his aunt.)
They get into the car, and as Veronica struggles a little to untangle her seatbelt, she says, "How pathetic is that? An Ivy League contender who can't tie her shoes without Mommy's assistance."
"Actually, I think it's pretty common," Pony says. "I read that kids at MIT gotta take classes in stuff like that. They're so smart at what they do, the rest of their brains haven't caught up with 'em."
"Well, I don't want to be a kid at MIT. I just want to wear cool shoes."
"I think ya wanna do a little more than that."
"A little."
Pony puts the key in the ignition, and when he does, it turns the radio on. Carrie has been listening to Tea for the Tillerman again.
"I was once like you are now / and I know that it's not easy / to be calm when you've found something going on …"
"Sorry," Pony says. "That's …"
"Cat Stevens," Veronica finishes for him. "I know what music is."
Pony laughs.
"Yeah?" he asks. "Seems pretty hard to know. Kinda like knowing what blue is."
"Well, I've got no plans to major in philosophy, so I think I'll just stick to making my phrases as funny as possible. It works for my mom."
That makes Pony laugh, too, though he wishes it didn't.
"Yeah," he agrees. "It does work for your mom."
Cat Stevens keeps singing on the radio. It takes Pony a few seconds longer to realize what this song is about. When it clicks, he turns the radio off immediately and turns to Veronica with panic in his eyes – her eyes, too.
"Uh, you can put on whatever ya want," he says. "Cal left one of them cords in here. You know, the ones you can use to hook up that iPod you take everywhere you go?"
Veronica is already hooking up the cord to her iPod.
"Way ahead of you, old man," she jokes. "I can't stand Cat Stevens. I don't understand how Carrie likes that stuff so much. I, for one, vote for moving on."
So, of course, Veronica promptly turns on "Hush" – Deep Purple. That makes Pony laugh, too.
"What?" she asks. "Do you have a problem with a classic?"
"Naw, of course not," he says. "I just think it's real funny you gettin' miffed at Carrie for listenin' to Cat Stevens for forty years just to turn on a song that's almost as old."
"So?"
"So, what happened to you, kid? I thought you were the kid who looks forward. No nostalgia and all that. What happened?"
Veronica shakes her head as though she's responding to something a little different than Pony's question. She's a weird kid, but he expected that. He was a weird kid, too.
(How is she so much like him when he never lifted a finger in bringing her up?)
"I know the difference between nostalgia and a classic," Veronica says with a wisdom that makes it sound like an old adage, even though it clearly isn't.
"Oh, yeah?" Pony asks. "What's that?"
"Classics are like water. They're good for you, but you move through them. Nostalgia's like spilled Coke. It gets sticky."
Pony nods. He's not sure if that's profound, though by the look on Veronica's face, she's pretty sure it is. He smiles to himself and grips the steering wheel a little tighter. Profundity at seventeen is something special. He remembers. He thought he could make linoleum sing when he was seventeen. Carrie made him feel like he could.
Veronica, it seems, feels the same way. She's almost through her junior year of high school, and she still wants to be a writer. She's just not sure what kind yet. When she was in junior high, her teachers used to urge her to take her talents and go into journalism, but as soon as she got that mock-up junior high diploma, print journalism took one hell of a nosedive. Pony remembers that Veronica was relieved when journalism seemed to fall. He remembers what she said as they stood over her graduation cake: And now that I don't have to be practical, I can breathe.
She sounded so happy about it.
He's read a few of her short stories, and they're damn good – better than his were at her age; then again, he didn't have a literature professor for a grandma (not like Lucy would have looked over his work back in the day, anyway). He admires Veronica's clever turn of phrase and knows if she's this good now, at seventeen, she'll surpass him in no time at all. He just doesn't tell her to her face. He's too proud.
"So, Princeton?" he asks.
"Yes," Veronica says like she's almost annoyed with him. "It's always been Princeton."
"I know. But … you sure? You sure this is your first choice?"
"Am I sure that the best university in the United States is my first choice? Am I sure that my first choice is the school I've been fantasizing about since the third grade?"
"I know. I know. Relax. I was just thinkin'."
"Thinking what?"
"Well, orange ain't the most flattering color."
Thankfully, Veronica chuckles. She leans back in her seat a little more. It's a good sign. Pony knows Veronica's idiosyncrasies better than he'd like to admit, and he knows what it means when she lets her whole back touch the seat. Good. He relaxes his grip on the steering wheel just a little bit.
"Orange looks pretty good on me, actually," Veronica says. "I think it's my eyes. Orange and green are …"
"Complementary colors," Pony says. "Yeah, I know. I'm kind of an artist, too, when I ain't writin'."
"And as a writer, how often are you not writing?"
"Oh, most of the time."
"That's what I thought."
Veronica smiles a little more, but Pony's not really sure what she's smiling at. All he knows is that she sure looks pretty when she does. He's not sure what's more difficult to believe: that Veronica is his daughter or that she's Dally's granddaughter. When she's in a bad mood, she looks remarkably like Dally – the same scowl Elenore got from him, too. But then there's this mysterious sweetness to Veronica that she almost certainly doesn't get from anyone on her mother's side of the family. She doesn't even really get it from Ponyboy himself, but he knows it's a Curtis thing. When Veronica smiles, it's like she knows something nobody else could ever dream of knowing. Pony isn't sure whether he should be impressed or jealous.
"You'd look good in orange, too, I'll bet," Veronica says. "You have green eyes like I do."
Pony tightens his grip on the steering wheel and doesn't say anything for a long time. He just thinks about his eyes. When he was a teenager, he hated green eyes, and as hard as he's tried to figure out why, he comes up empty. Darry's eyes have green in them, too. Maybe that was part of it. After their folks died, Darry's eyes got colder – meaner, too, from the place Pony stood when he was fourteen. When he was fourteen, he didn't want to end up like Darry because he thought Darry was in love with the quotidian and had all the life sucked out of him. Maybe he did for a little while. Maybe he just did when he got around Pony. It doesn't matter anymore. They're old men, and they've gotten along just fine since Pony was still in high school. His hatred for green eyes never changed. They don't look good on him.
(Really, he just wants his father's eyes. Maybe then he'd learn something other than what he makes up inside his head.)
Cordelia was the first person with green eyes Ponyboy ever loved. He counts himself in that. He's never been able to like or love himself very much. He's obsessed with getting other people to love him – to notice him and to praise him. But Cordelia … he loves her in a way he's never been able to put into words, which as a writer drives him mad. He knows he's never done right by her. He's lived too much in his head and not enough in her world. Even when they'd spend time together – just the two of them – when she was a kid, he was more concerned with pulling her into his world than letting himself be pulled. The very first movie he took Cordelia to see was Gone with the Wind. Cordelia has green eyes, and in that way, Pony always wanted her to be a better version of himself. He always wanted her to be a version of himself that he could love from the outside in. It didn't work, and instead, he just loves Cordelia because she's Cordelia. He doesn't get around to telling her very often. It's even less often, he worries, that he gets around to showing her.
Veronica has green eyes, too. If it's possible, her eyes look more like his than Cordelia's do. It seems wrong. Even though he knows that both girls have exactly the same amount of his blood in their veins, it's always seemed like Cordelia is more related to him than Veronica is. It's not hard to see why. Ponyboy raised Cordelia, in a manner of speaking. He wasn't a great father – didn't always notice the small-but-important things, forgot to come to parent-teacher conferences, and the like – but he saw her everyday. She lived in his house. They had dinner together, and when she was very little, he was the one who tucked her into bed every night. They were pals, and he thought, for a little while, that it was enough. Then Veronica was born.
He loves Veronica, too. He can't run away from that, even though he tried. He can still remember the way it felt when he held her in his arms for the very first time. She was two days old, wide awake, and calm as ever. She looked up at him, and her eyes were already green. She already had his eyes, just as Cordelia had more than twenty years before. He remembers that he knew two things as he felt Veronica's tiny heartbeat: First, he loved her. Second, he couldn't ever be her father.
It was a combination of things. For one thing, Pony was afraid that Dally would kill him, since there's nothing more horrible to think about than the idea that Dally's got a grandkid in common with Mr. and Mrs. Curtis. (It never stops being true, but it hurts more when you say it that way. Sometimes, Pony wants it to hurt more.) Every time he thought about trying to acknowledge Veronica and trying to take responsibility for her, he thought about the way he groped Elenore Winston at the dinner table … down below the tablecloth where Lucy and Dally couldn't see. He didn't want to think about being all hot and bothered for Elenore (which he was, and he can't run away from it, even though it makes him feel sick now) when he was trying to pull his head out of his ass for Carrie.
Besides, Pony knew he'd never be able to do right by Veronica. Ponyboy Curtis is not built to be a dad. He's not a bad guy – not really – but he doesn't have the patience to look outside himself for longer than a few minutes at a time. It's why he does best on excursions and adventures with his girls. It's why it works when he can teach them something but only if that something belongs in a pretty museum. When he held Veronica in his arms for the very first time, he knew she deserved better than him. He could be her friend, but he didn't want her to have to know he was her father. If he was just her friend, then he could never really let her down. If he were just her friend, then she'd never have to get her heart broken like Cordelia did every time Pony was late to pick her up from ballet. In a way, he thinks he did Veronica a favor. In a way, he likes to think that Veronica was the lucky one.
But beneath the martyrdom and the self-deprecation, what it really is … is that he just doesn't have it in him to think about anyone else. And he doesn't even want to try.
Veronica has green eyes, and Pony hopes she doesn't turn out a damn thing like him otherwise.
"Purple's a good color for green eyes, too, ya know," Pony finally says. "What am I sayin'? Of course you know. You got purple on your eyes today, and you look pretty as you ever have."
Veronica bites her lip and smiles. Even now that she calls herself pop punk, she's still the sweetest girl Pony's ever known.
(She is his daughter, but perhaps it's more obvious she is Soda's niece.)
"Thank you," she says. "But I know what you're trying to get me to do."
"What?"
"Don't be that way. I know you have a plan."
"Veronica, ain't you ever met me?"
"Well, obviously."
"Then you know I ain't one for comin' up with a plan – about anything."
Veronica laughs a little and crosses her legs in her seat. Pony remembers when and why she started crossing her legs while she sat. She was in the first grade, and apparently, she thought it would make her seem more grown up in the school library. If she seemed more grown up, then she'd be allowed in the section for older kids' books. They let her in, anyway, because she was the smartest kid in her class and would have been bored by the shorter books. But to this day, she still believes it was that crossing her legs helped her pass for a fifth grader.
Ponyboy only knows this because of Elenore.
"Well, then, it's just my grandma, then," Veronica says.
"Now, there's a planner 'f I ever met one," Pony says. "Lucy's worse than Darry."
"Maybe a little. It just doesn't make any sense. When I was a kid, she used to let me talk her ear off about going to Princeton. She was excited, too! She got me Princeton merchandise all the time. She even helped me gear my application for my high school toward my interest in Princeton so they'd know that I'm serious. But then, as soon as junior year started, Grandma kept going on and on about money and time and family. She thinks that because she could get me free tuition at NYU, that I should just go there and forget about the place I've been dreaming about since there were only five Harry Potter books."
Pony takes a breath. He remembers about thirty years ago, when the conversation was about Elenore and Harvard. As a child, Harvard was Elenore's fantasy school. It was easier to go Ivy back in the mid-eighties, especially for somebody like Elenore (white, relatively rich, great in school, and with both a mother and a grandfather working in academia). But Harvard was going to cost, and even if Lucy did pretty well for herself in the eighties, Harvard was going to put quite a dent in things. She sat Elenore down and all but ordered her to put her crimson dreams aside and turn them violet for NYU and free money. It was the fight that started to tear Lucy and Elenore apart. Pony remembers it as well as he does because he remembers that Elenore called him to talk about it.
It was strange to get a call from her back then. They weren't estranged when Elenore herself was seventeen, but Pony knew that when Elenore was feeling hopeless, she reached out to Soda before anybody else. Elenore is the only person in the world who loves Soda as much as Ponyboy does – maybe more. But it was strange to get a distressed call from Lucy and Dally's daughter, who'd always had a crush on him and got shy around him because of it. When Elenore, the least shy out of all the kids, got quiet, you couldn't help but wonder why.
When she called him back then she said it was because she knew he'd had battles like this with Darry, and she wanted to know if it ever got better. He doesn't remember what he said, but he wonders now if he should regret having answered the phone.
But he doesn't – not really. If he hadn't taken that call, there's every chance in the untouchable universe that he wouldn't be on his way to Princeton with Veronica, and Veronica is wonderful. He's just not sure if he has the right to say so. When he held her for the first time – she of his blood, flesh, and bone – he asked to be her friend.
He inhales once before he can speak to Veronica again.
"Free tuition, though," he says. "That ain't really somethin' to sneeze at, especially in this day and age."
"Oh, don't you start!" Veronica pleads.
(She sounds just like him.)
"I ain't startin'," Pony says. "I'm only sayin'. I know about Princeton. They don't even got a major in creative writin'."
"I don't need to major in creative writing. Plenty of successful writers got by on other degrees, if they had degrees at all. You didn't major in creative writing, and you did OK."
"Little more than just OK."
"Well, you studied literature. I had hoped you'd take the meaning of my understatement."
Pony conceals a small smile between his lips. When Veronica talks like that, she doesn't sound like him at all. She sounds like Lucy. Maybe that's better. Lucy's been there for her in a way that Pony never has. Everybody's been there for her in a way that Pony never has.
"I'm just sayin' you'll wanna go to a school that's gonna make you happy," he says. "What if you make the wrong choice just 'cause you got a vision?"
"My gut tells me this is a good vision," Veronica says. "It tells me I'm going to get into Princeton, and I'm going to go there. And when I do …"
Pony waits for her to finish her thought, but it never comes. He doesn't ask her what it is she's thinking of. He knows what it's like to want to keep things to yourself, even if you started to let them go.
"My mom went to NYU," Veronica says.
"Yeah, I know," Pony says. "I went to her graduation. They wore purple robes. I'm tellin' ya. Purple's a good color."
(He knows it's gross that he went to Elenore's college graduation only to grope her less than five years later. He knows it's gross that he used to babysit Elenore only to get her pregnant with a baby of her own. He's always known, but he can't change it. So he pretends like it never happened – like Veronica's not his.)
"My mom went to NYU," she says again. "She went there for her bachelor's degree and for her law degree. And my grandma – she got her Ph.D. from there and then she got hired there. Do you know how rare that is?"
"I do."
"Well, of course it happened in my family – the family where nothing makes sense and everybody does exactly the opposite of what everybody expected they'd do. I mean … when you think about it … Two-Bit's right. I'm the little girl who shouldn't exist!"
That makes Pony's heart drop right into his gut. He's heard Two-Bit make that joke for decades already – since Elenore was born and Dally stuck around to be her daddy. It's 2012, and he still doesn't know any better. When he makes that joke, he thinks about how rip-roarin' hi-larious it is that Dally lived long enough to make a baby with Lucy Bennet, a broad so frigid you'd think she would have turned him impotent. That's all it means to him. It's just a joke about ole Dally. There's no way it could ever be a joke about little Pony, middle-aged and out of his mind, hating himself and getting with the one woman in all the world who could make him feel like he was worth more than cigarettes and cheap candy. He's Ponyboy. He picks up shards of glass in the parking lot because he's afraid somebody will get a flat tire. He'd never do that. It's hideous. It's unthinkable.
And yet, here's Veronica, riding shotgun in his car.
(She is beautiful and fathomable, but he can't tell her that.)
"But that's not my point," Veronica says, and Pony is relieved. "I just … what if I don't want to do things exactly like my mom and my grandma did them? What if I want to forge my own path, even if that path is at Princeton?"
Pony sighs (but quietly enough so that Veronica won't hear him). It's scary when she sounds this much like him, especially when he, too, was seventeen. He remembers being in the middle of his gen-ed courses when Darry asked him what he was planning to major in with his fancy full scholarship. When Pony said, "I don't know. Probably English," he remembers the way Darry implored him to do something that made more sense – something safer. Darry was obsessed with being safe until he married Lynnie. But Pony told him he didn't care about being safe as long as he got to explore his art and learn something about something. He was painfully seventeen. They fought about it for a little while until Darry finally gave in; said, "'S long 's you're safe with Carrie, I don't care what kinda art you think you're gonna make."
(Is that something he should talk to Veronica about, or is she covered? He's her father, and that's how she got to be here.)
(He might be her father, but he is not her dad. This is not his place.)
"I think you're incredible," Pony finally says. "Princeton's gonna be lucky to have ya."
"Thank you," Veronica says and clicks through the songs on her iPod. The sound is awful in the car's speakers.
"But NYU would be lucky to have ya, too."
"Ponyboy!"
"What? I'm just sayin'. Anybody would be lucky to have Veronica Winston walkin' through the door on the first day of the term."
Veronica smiles again, and she looks just like she's not supposed to. He wonders if he knows who she looks like when she grins like that. Elenore surely does.
"I know I'm lucky just to have you in this car," he adds.
He immediately regrets it. People think he has no sense of self-awareness. They're wrong. What he actually has is worse: retrospective self-awareness.
(It's actually just stupidity, but he doesn't have it in him to call himself stupid, even when it's true. He still lies to himself all the time. Now that he's old, he's gotten better at believing him.)
The wheel on Veronica's iPod finally stops clicking when she chooses a new song. The opening sounds familiar, and then he places it.
"There was a guy / an underwater guy who controlled the sea …"
"Really?" Pony asks. "'Monkey Gone to Heaven?'"
"Yes," Veronica says. "Is there something wrong with The Pixies?"
"No, of course not. You're a little young for 'em, ain't you?"
"You're a little old for them, aren't you?"
He laughs a little.
"Hey," he says. "When your kid grows up in the eighties, you get to hear a lot of different music. And if you're smart, you can add it to your collection, too. Music ain't just for bein' young, ya know."
It feels profound to him, but Veronica looks bored. She's seventeen and perhaps only interested in her own acuities. Pony sighs and tightens his grip on the steering wheel again (as though white-knuckling ever really does anything).
"I put this on the 'Princeton Tour Road Trip' playlist ages ago," Veronica says. "You know … because they talk about sludge coming in from New York to New Jersey?"
"Are we the sludge in this metaphor ya got goin' on?" Pony asks.
"I guess."
"Hmm."
He thinks for a moment. He's not bad at making connections when he gives himself the time.
"Hey, 'f you picked all these songs ahead of time," he says, "how come it took you so long to pick one just now?"
Veronica sighs like this is something Pony never should have touched. It seems to be a theme.
"I was supposed to take this drive with my mom," Veronica says. "And a lot of the songs I picked … they're songs that feel wrong to listen to with anybody but my mom. I know that must sound kind of silly."
"It doesn't," Pony says right away. "Hey, I'm real sorry your mom got sick today."
"Why're you apologizing? It's not like it's your fault."
(It is, of course, in so many ways.)
"This felt like a good compromise," Veronica says. "Of course, Jenny loves this album, and I'm not really …"
Her voice trails off and fades out in the same way Pony's does when he realizes he's said too much of the wrong thing. His stomach feels sick. He's not sure what he can or should do. Clearly, Veronica needs someone. He's just not sure if it can be him. They're close – almost always have been – but it's not like it could be if he'd been her daddy all along. If he steps in now, then he'll be waltzing in after all the heavy lifting. Veronica is raised. Veronica is raised, and he had nothing to do with it except for the occasional hug and too-expensive birthday present. He wasn't around to listen. He wasn't around to memorize all the little details about her. If he steps in now, then he's still just getting the goods – just like Elenore yelled at him about when Veronica was ten years old. If he steps in and accepts her now, and Veronica finds out she's blood of his blood, it will be like rejecting her all over again.
(He did not want to be her father. He has to repeat it until it's a mantra. If Elenore spent sixteen years of her life hating herself, then Pony has to hate himself for twice as long. He knows that. He's a goddamn martyr, and he can't turn it off.)
But he can't just sit here while she stews in adolescent awkwardness. He knows what it feels like. He knows it all too well. Even though he's nearly sixty-one, he lives everyday like his age is transposed. Part of him thinks it makes him a better artist. Another part of him knows it makes him a shitty father.
(Johnny tells his kids to stay gold until they have kids of their own. Ponyboy can't do that. It feels like a secret, and he's damn good at keeping secrets.)
"You're not really what?" Pony asks.
"Huh?"
"You were talkin' about Jenny, and then you said you're not really … and then you were all quiet."
Veronica shrugs.
"I don't know," she says. "You don't want to hear about dumb teenage girl stuff."
"Ain't no such thing!" Pony says. "Try me."
Veronica lets out a long sigh. She grips both of her knees through her jeans like she's worried about something. At least she's not sitting on her hands anymore. It feels like progress. It also feels like progress that Ponyboy is not allowed to be proud of. He didn't raise her. Why should he get to celebrate the ways she's come back out of her shell?
(He loves her.)
(He loves her, but he held her in his arms and turned her away.)
"I'm kind of avoiding Jenny right now," Veronica says.
That's about the most surprising thing Pony's heard all day – including the part where Elenore called and asked him to take Veronica on the Princeton tour. He's never seen friends closer than Veronica and Jenny except for maybe Sadie and Lucy. He wishes he could include himself and Johnny on the same list, but he knows better than that. The only place where Johnny Cade is still his best friend is in his imagination, where everything is still gold, and nobody has to sacrifice a thing.
(That's why they're not friends anymore … in so many words.)
"What?" he asks. "Why? It's … it's you and Jenny. You ain't supposed to avoid each other. You're supposed to be joined at the hip! Well … as much as you can be joined at the hip with somebody as short as Jenny. Is she even five feet high?"
"No," Veronica says. "And that's part of what makes this so weird, even though I know it shouldn't make a damn bit of difference."
"Part of what makes what so weird?"
He watches as Veronica wipes the sweat from her palms on her jeans. She fiddles with the clicking wheel on her iPod again and settles on another song.
"Can't stay at home / can't stay at school …"
If he weren't driving, Ponyboy would have figured out the connection between Veronica's lament and her decision to turn on The Runaways. Instead, he just steers the car along, waiting for her to say something. She finally does, and when she does, her face turns bright red.
"Jenny thinks she's so cool just because she lost some of her virginity a few weeks ago," Veronica says and rolls her (green) eyes. She tucks her hair behind both of her ears, which Pony's observant enough to know she does when she gets nervous.
Meanwhile, as Pony drives, he's mortified. Perhaps he deserves the awkwardness. He's the one who pushed. He wracks his brain for something – anything – to say. But, of course, he comes up with the worst possible response.
"Some of it?" he asks. "What happened … where's the rest?"
"I don't know," Veronica says. "The ideological ether, I guess – in the company of our old imaginary friend, Bobo the Ballet-Dancing Bear, and however gerrymandering supposedly works."
Pony laughs a little too hard, but Veronica doesn't seem to notice. She's got her hair in front of her mouth. He thinks this is something she does when she gets nervous. He's only partially correct.
"She didn't go all the way, if we want to use old euphemisms," Veronica clarifies. "Which, given present company …"
"Yeah, yeah," Pony says. "I'm old enough to … yeah, yeah."
He was going to say he's old enough to be her grandfather, which is neither true nor false. Veronica doesn't seem to notice. She's on her own train of thought, and God help Ponyboy Curtis's kid while she's on her own train of thought. She'll run it into the ground. It's in her blood.
(Where does Pony get it from? He thinks it might be his father, who seemed to run on 100% imagination power, but it's harder and harder to remember. He's not sure how much of his parents he really knew. He wonders if they're somewhere in Veronica's ideological ether, thankful they didn't get to know very much of him.)
"She just went … I don't know, some of the way, I guess," Veronica says.
She's blushing harder than Pony did the first time he heard Bacall tell Bogie to put his lips together and blow. He wants to save her, but he wouldn't even know where to begin. He's not sure he has any right to comment on this at all – not just because it feels wrong to play the role of supportive dad when he's spent the last eighteen years being the deadbeat, but also, because he wonders how it will look if continues to ask about Jenny and some of the way. He's already crossed a line in the Winston family, and he's not itching to cross another. Sixty-one isn't old enough to die.
(He has a scar on his lip now from where Dally did him in two summers back.)
"I'm not jealous or anything," Veronica continues, and Pony feels he has no choice but to listen. He looks at the GPS. They've got fifteen more minutes before they get to Princeton.
"Keep talking," he says, absent as ever, not even listening to the sound of his own voice.
"I'm not jealous," Veronica says. "I'm a year older than Jenny, and if I think I'm too young to be losing some or all of my virginity, then I think she's way too young. Plus, I've got plans, baby! Princeton-sized plans! I can't let anything get in the way of that!"
"You know what you're about," Pony says (and hopes to high heaven he's not overstepping, even though he almost always is). "You don't need to do anything you don't wanna do."
"I know that," Veronica says. "I watched enough reruns of Full House and had enough lectures from my mom to know that. But … well, sometimes, even when you know something, isn't it hard to convince yourself it's true?"
Pony nods and doesn't say anything. He's afraid if he opens his mouth, he'll say too much, and he won't be able to take it back. He looks at the clock on the GPS again. They've got twelve minutes left. They can make it.
"Well," Veronica says. "That's kind of how I feel about Jenny and … having sex now as opposed to, like, later – college later, I think. I don't know. I shouldn't be talking to you about this."
"It's OK," Pony says, even though he's not sure it is. He thinks that's what a dad is supposed to say when his daughter is clearly in distress, but even if she's his daughter he is not her dad.
(He should know how to do this. He had Cordelia.)
"I just feel like everybody's moving, and I'm standing still," Veronica says.
"What're you talkin' about?" Pony asks. "You're on your way to Princeton! That's goin' somewhere! That's goin' somewhere big!"
"I know, but it's … school. My whole life has been about school."
"I thought ya liked it that way. You love readin' and writin' and learnin'. I don't think you're all that crazy about the arithmetic, but who could blame you?"
"I do love school. I love it, I want to do well in it, and I want to go to Princeton and do even better there. I don't want anything to come into my life and ruin that for me. But when I hear about the two of them, I just think … what if I'm doing everything all wrong? What if I should want something different? What if there are bad decisions I should make? What if, instead of Princeton, I should want … whatever Jenny tried to describe to me the other night?"
Once again, Ponyboy is lost for words. He white-knuckles the steering wheel and looks at the time on the GPS for the third time in what feels like three seconds. They've got ten minutes until Princeton.
It occurs to him, some time between looking at the clock on the GPS and registering that Veronica is now playing "How Soon Is Now?" on the speakers, that when Veronica says the two of them, she probably means Jenny and Cal. He knows that Cal has (indignantly) liked Jenny for years. Initially, Pony wanted to discourage it. Cal and Jenny aren't related by blood or even by marriage (That got complicated after Elenore, the only baby they could rightly call an outsider.), but there's something about Pony's grandson and Steve's granddaughter that seems like it ought not to be. He'd wanted to discourage it, but it didn't take long for him to just give up. But he didn't give up because love will keep us together or some other romantic gesture he would have believed in when he, himself, was seventeen. He gave up because he forgot.
He wonders if he should talk about it with Cal now. Like Veronica and Jenny, Cal has no father. Cordelia dated a shitty guy in college (an angel, admittedly, compared to himself that year) and never told him she was pregnant. Cal has no father, but he has a grandfather. That's supposed to mean something. For Veronica, it does. Dally's always around. Dally's a decent old man – still bad and bitter after all these years, but not without love, as Ponyboy once believed. Dally's been there for Veronica when Pony's been … around.
It would be one thing to say that while Veronica's own grandfather stepped up to take care of her, Cal's grandfather did the same for him. But that's not true – at least, not in the same way. Pony's been there for Cal like he was there for Cordelia. He loves him dearly. He'd take a bullet for him in a heartbeat. But as the quotidian goes, he just floats. He has a vague idea of what classes Cal is taking at school this year and a vague idea that he might be kind of dating Jenny. They're close but not so close that it would feel natural or expected for Pony to pull him aside and talk to him about Jenny or anybody. He hasn't been a standup, standin father for Cal at all. He's just Grandpa, the guy who takes you to see The Death of Socrates at the Met and gives a speech about mortal souls and hemlock so pretty, you sign up for AP Studio Art in your junior year of high school (the only class he knows for sure that Cal is in because it's the only class that interests Pony, personally).
He's not the kind of guy who throws a condom at his grandson and tells him to be careful, like Darry did with him when he caught him with Carrie in the last week of summer before their senior year. He's the kind of guy who takes you to see a Caravaggio and waxes for an hour about how the body is a thing of mystery and beauty. Pony's not the kind of guy who tells his grandson to hold off even if he thinks he's on fire, but maybe he should be.
(Veronica's alive, after all.)
In the end, he probably just won't do anything at all. It's what he's best at.
"Pony?"
He jumps out of his thoughts and notices Veronica looking up at him with those big green eyes – his eyes, noticeably his eyes, that shock him every time he meets her gaze. She looks like Elenore in every way except for the eyes. Surely, they're there to torture him.
"What?" he asks.
"I was … I don't know."
He remembers what Veronica asked before: What should she want? He sighs. It's a question he still asks himself everyday.
"I think you're Veronica, not Jenny," he finally says. "And if where you are don't look a thing like where she is, that don't make it wrong. It just makes it … Veronica."
Veronica murmurs something that doesn't sound like a word and gazes out the window. Pony doesn't blame her for pulling away. It was a shitty response. He's the king of the shitty response.
Thankfully, that's when the GPS tells him he's there.
Pony parks the car and asks Veronica where they're supposed to go next. She opens her backpack and pulls out an itinerary, crumpled up and smoothed over, just like all Pony's official school papers used to look. Once, when he was Veronica's age, the school told him he couldn't go on the junior field trip because his permission slip was so crumpled, it rendered Darry's signature illegible. Veronica's a little too much like him in that way, but Pony can't lie. He's charmed by it.
(He rejected her. He held that baby in his arms and rejected her.)
"Let's see," Veronica says. "The prospective students' tour …"
Her face turns white.
"What?" Pony asks. "What's the matter?"
"The prospective students' tour was yesterday at two," Veronica says.
She balls up the piece of paper one more time and throws it at the windshield.
"Dammit!" she snaps. "I always do this. My mother is right. How am I supposed to make it at an Ivy League school if I can't even read the schedule?"
Pony reaches out and clasps her shoulder, much like he thinks a father should do. He would have done it for Cordelia.
"Hey," he says. "The smartest people in the world make mistakes, 'specially mistakes like that. You read what ya wanted to read."
"Exactly," Veronica says. "And that makes me irresponsible."
"No, it makes ya really good at readin' like an English major."
A small smile curls up in the corner of Veronica's mouth. It disappears as quickly as it forms. Pony loves it to see it, anyway.
"I transposed the days and events," she says. "Yesterday was the tour. Today is some sort of social hour."
"So, then, what?" Pony asks. "Do we go to that?"
"Are you kidding? Fuck no. The social hour is going to be packed with the same kids from the prospective students' tour. They're going to notice me. They're going to notice the interloper. They'll ask. Overachievers always ask. They'll want to know where I was. Now, I could lie – say I was speaking on a panel or doing something related to debate. Debate is a good cover. It makes you look like a shark. But this is the Eastern Seaboard prep school circuit. People talk. And even if there's nobody from my class here, which there will be, people will know I'm lying. People will know that Veronica Winston forgot to show up to the tour at her dream school, and I'll be lucky to get into … I don't know if clown college is a thing, but that's where I'll be if I go into that social hour today."
Pony's eyes nearly fall out of his head and onto the ground. Sometimes, Veronica manages to sound like both Lucy and Dally at the same time. He wouldn't have thought it possible before, but there she is.
Veronica blushes. Maybe she knows who she sounds like, and maybe she's not proud. Elenore sure wouldn't have been when she, herself, was seventeen.
"Besides," she says, shyer this time. "I kind of hate mingling with strangers."
(It's heartbreaking when she sounds like Pony, too.)
She flattens her hands on her jeans, and Pony takes the key out of the ignition. He sits back in his seat for a moment, and then it clicks.
"What if we don't need a tour?" he asks.
"We have to have a tour. A tour is important. A tour shows me where everything is, and a tour allows me to meet people in an official, non-mingling setting. I love to meet people if there's a structure and a purpose."
That might be the funniest thing Pony's ever heard.
"Come on, Veronica," he says. "What if your mom were here instead of me? Would she just let ya miss out? Or would she plan her own tour just for you 'cause she knows you best?"
Veronica grins a little.
"Mom would plan her own tour, just for me, because she knows me best," she says.
"I know she would!"
"But how can you do that? You're not Mom. Nobody knows me like Mom."
Pony decides to ignore that. He doesn't want to beat himself up over the fact that he hasn't spent the last eighteen years beating himself up.
"Your mom knows you best," Pony agrees. "But I know ya pretty well, and I'm here. Whaddya say? We get outta this car and do Princeton, Winston-style?"
Veronica beams. She's beautiful.
(He rejected her.)
"I don't think anybody in the world ever anticipated the phrase, 'Princeton, Winston-style,'" she says. "Maybe some highfalutin Winstons in jolly old England …"
"But not our Winstons, who mostly avoid gettin' shot?"
"Something like that. So, in that case …"
She unbuckles her seatbelt like it's a big deal, and Pony bites his tongue to keep from chuckling too loud. The first Winston he ever knew slashed tires and beat up drunks for nothing other than kicks (and all the attention). The last Winston he knows thinks that unbuckling her seatbelt in a parked car is a great act of rebellion.
She's wonderful, and he rejected her.
"Let's go," she says. "You think we can start with a library?"
Pony smiles to himself and steps out of the car, double-checking that he locked it and triple checking that he has his keys. He can't afford to be Space Pony when he's with Space Veronica. He knows it's not the same as being a dad, but it feels like something. He wants it to feel like something.
"I think if we start with a library," he says, "you'll never wanna leave."
"Good thinking," Veronica says. "I knew there was a reason we kept you around."
Although Pony smiles at that one, too, he can't help but wonder: Why does Elenore keep him around? When he's the worst father in the gang by far, and he knows it, why does Elenore keep him around? Why does she let Veronica come to his place every Monday night and trust him to get her to and from Princeton without killing both of them first? Why does Veronica's mother let her father love her when he's done nothing to earn it?
And then Veronica looks up at him with those eyes – their eyes – and he doesn't need an answer.
So, yeah … my favorite episode of Gilmore Girls is "The Lorelais' Road Trip to Harvard." Influences!
Chapter title is a quote from "Father and Son," AKA the Cat Stevens song on the car radio. I know Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 played it first. Intertextuality!
As for the more obscure references: The reference to Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and put your lips together is a reference to the film To Have and Have Not, a very famous film that Ponyboy would absolutely have seen. The Death of Socrates is a painting by Jacques Louis David (1787). Caravaggio was a Baroque painter. I think I explain the musical references in the context of dialogue, but Cat Stevens is a big name in seventies folk rock. "Hush" by Deep Purple is a pretty popular song, but it's from 1978. The Pixies are an alt-rock band from the eighties. The song by The Runaways (the band featuring Joan Jett and Cherie Curie) that Veronica plays is "Cherry Bomb." "How Soon Is Now?" is by The Smiths, also an alt-rock band from the eighties.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. I own another massive anxiety attack.