Note: The annotations at the end are long again.
Act III.
Where the Riverboat Sails Tonight
The first ten minutes in the car back to the city are quiet. Pony pretends like he doesn't know why, but he does. If Veronica ever learns to trust her intuition, one of them is a goner. He's just not sure which one of them it's going to be.
There's that horrible clicking noise from Veronica's iPod. Pony grips the steering wheel and tries to bear it. Ultimately, of course, he can't.
"Hey," he says. "Are you gonna pick somethin', or are we gonna have to listen to clickin' and scratchin' for the next hour?"
"Sorry," Veronica mutters. "Sometimes I just … I zone out."
Pony grips the steering wheel even tighter.
"I know what'cha mean," he says. "Still don't wanna listen to the clicking, though."
"Sorry. Would you rather listen to something enjoyably bad? Or genuinely bad?"
He smiles (a little). Sometimes, it's a little charming when Veronica reminds him of people she's never met.
"And good?" Pony asks. "That ain't an option?"
"Not really," Veronica says. "Keep in mind, I made this playlist with the expectation that Mom would be the one driving, and Mom loves irony."
That makes him laugh.
"And what about me?" he asks. "What do I love?"
"Oh, that's easy," Veronica says. "You're exactly the opposite. You love sincerity."
He conceals a small smile. Veronica isn't wrong. For a guy who's full of shit, he's always been genuine about it. He doesn't make a lot of sense, but he figures nobody worthwhile ever does.
(Does he really believe he's worthwhile?)
"You still haven't answered my question, though," Veronica says. "And if you don't, that just means there's going to be a lot more clicking."
She slowly turns the wheel, and the sound is enough to drive him out of his mind. He throws one hand off the steering wheel and onto her iPod to make the noise stop. She giggles. She's adorable, and he rejected her.
(He rejects her right now, even as he drives her back home.)
"Fine!" Pony says. "Make it enjoyably bad."
"You asked for it," Veronica says. "You got it."
She clicks the big button in the center, and a vaguely familiar song comes on. It takes Pony a minute to figure out what the hell it is and how the hell he knows it.
"What is it that makes me just a little bit queasy?"
He snaps his fingers in the air a couple of times.
"Oh!" he says. "This is from a long time ago. Well, I guess it ain't that long ago. But it feels like it was. I remember hearin' it, and … I was in a place where somebody said somethin' to me. Narrows it down, don't it?"
Veronica laughs.
"Sure does," she says. "It's called 'Afternoons and Coffeespoons.' The band is Crash Test Dummies."
"Shit, you're right," Pony says. "Wouldn't have known it off the top of my head or nothin', but I could've sang it all night. How do you know that?"
"Well, I've got all the information in front of me, see. Plus, I've known this song forever. Mom said she bought the tape when she was pregnant with me. She said she heard this song when it dropped around the end of '93, but it took forever for her to figure out what it was called. It's one of our favorite ironic tracks."
Pony nods. The back of his neck is freezing. Of course he knows the song from Elenore. Anything that makes him feel youthfully nostalgic for the nineties is something he knows from Elenore. He was middle-aged; she was just getting started. She taught him more than he'd ever be willing to admit out loud. She taught him this song. He remembers New Year's Eve at Lucy and Dally's place clearer than almost anything he's ever been through. He remembers that after Lucy and Dally snuck off, Elenore turned on the radio, and it was this song.
A pop song about T.S. Eliot, Elenore had said. It's almost like it was written just for you.
I ain't no T.S. Eliot.
Maybe not, but I like to look at you that way. It's fun to pretend you know somebody who's an old classic.
He'd been so flattered by it then. It's only now that he drives home from Princeton University in 2012 with the words popular literature swimming in his brain that he wonders if maybe Elenore meant it to sting.
(Then again, of course she didn't. With every breath she took back then, Elenore Winston loved him. She told him so. He told her so, too. The difference is that she was the only one telling the truth. He, like always, was lying; he, like always, didn't believe him.)
"I'm curious," Pony says. "If I picked the one that was genuinely bad, what would I have gotten?"
"Oh, that's easy, too," Veronica says. "Right after this track, it's 'The Sign.' Ace of Base."
Pony laughs, but it burns again. He remembers that song too well. He wonders if Veronica knows it was especially popular in 1994. She probably does. She's going to Princeton, and she knows how everything works. But Pony certainly remembers the song, too. He remembers it was playing at a bar he and Elenore went to one night because he liked to pretend they were super secret lovers who met at super secret speakeasies, but he knew anyone could see them if they squinted hard enough (or not very hard at all). He remembers the way Elenore took a sip of her club soda and threw her head back like it was something – anything – strong. She looked him in the eye.
This, she'd said. This will be our song.
He didn't know what to do, so he just let Elenore grab his hands and danced with her from his stool. She seemed to be having fun. He remembers how he thought about the way Sadie used to take Elenore's arms when she was a baby and make her dance along with "Young girl, get outta my mind …"
He remembers how it wasn't enough to send him running – how he'd willfully refused the irony like it meant nothing to him.
"You got real into music, didn't ya?" Pony asks. It's a stupid question, but he's running out of things to talk about, and the GPS tells him he still has fifty-eight minutes in this car.
Veronica nods.
"I don't want to be a musician or anything," she says. "I'm still a story kind of writer. But music … it helps get me there. You know?"
"Oh, sure I know," Pony says. "When I was workin' on my second book – the one that took me four years to write – Carrie used to wake me up everyday with that Donna Summer song. You know, the one that starts all slow, and then it's all, 'Let's dance the last dance?'"
Veronica nods like she's listening to him lecture. Maybe she wishes she were. Pony sometimes wishes it. It's easier to talk to people when they're sitting across from him, taking notes. It's easier to talk to people about problems that don't exist.
(He's a wonderful instructor, they say, but other professors warn their graduate students about choosing him as a committee chair. He can do it, but he loses paperwork easily and might not sign your defense form on time. The students all say that brilliance and responsibility never really go hand in hand; the other faculty members hold their tongues because they know it's a myth as classic as Hades and Persephone.)
(He can't believe he has the audacity to think of himself as Hades.)
He fixes his eyes on Veronica again.
"It's called 'Last Dance,'" she says. "I've got it somewhere. I've got a little bit of everything in here."
She goes to play it, but he shakes his head.
"Please don't," he says.
"Because you really can't stand the sound of the click wheel?" Veronica asks with the sweetest laugh he's heard in ages.
"Because I'd rather not get it stuck in my head, 'f I can help it," Pony says. "I'm tellin' you, sweetie. It was everyday."
Veronica smiles, but Pony isn't quite sure what she's smiling about. Maybe she likes to think about how happy he and Carrie were back then. And they were – they are, still, just differently. He's not bad with understatements.
He is best at understating the four years between his first book and his second. When he started his first book, his life was about him. All he had to do was write. When he looks back on the writing he did in his early twenties, he knows it's kind of shitty, but girls continue to like it, so maybe it matters. It doesn't matter what he wrote. It only matters that he could write like water.
And then Cordelia was born.
Like Veronica, Cordelia had been an accident, albeit a less devastating one. He and Carrie had been married for a little while (because she proposed, because it occurred to her that it was something to do); he forgot a condom on a random night in the middle of the week. He was happy when he found out Carrie was pregnant. In theory, he wanted to be a dad. After all, it looked like his dad had enjoyed it. Why wouldn't Pony? He was happy when Cordelia was born, too. The sight of her tiny pink face brought him to tears. It wasn't hard to move him to tears when he was twenty-two.
He did not cry when Elenore let him hold Veronica.
When Cordelia was born, Carrie was working harder (and out of the house more often) than he was. He was living off an advance he didn't deserve because he was supposed to be writing, but instead, he was looking after a baby. It's amazing what you can't write when you're responsible for a very small baby. Everything was on Cordelia's terms. He couldn't eat because she had to. He couldn't sleep because she wouldn't. He couldn't write while she was sleeping because what if something happened in her crib? Cordelia wasn't his excuse for not writing. He wanted to look after her.
He just wanted to write more, and she was in the way.
He had the thought in no uncertain terms one morning when she was three. It was one of the first days in spring. He was making her breakfast and wishing he were more like Soda, whose little girls looked at his bright blue pancakes like they were made and served by Zeus himself. Cordelia loves him, but it's different in a way he can't quite articulate (because it scares him – because everything scares him). When he had the thought (Cordelia is in the way.), he dropped the whole carton of eggs on the ground – a bizarre fusion of foresight and déja-vu.
Clean it up, Daddy, Cordelia had said with the sweetest laugh he'd heard in ages.
Clean it up, Daddy.
He wrote 10,000 words that day, and the book was done in a year. He dedicated it to Cordelia Frost Curtis, the girl of his dreams. He really had written it for her … because of her. She was equal parts inspiration and its very killer. At four years old, she knew no better. She took a magenta crayon and colored all over the first chapter, and he tried not to be upset.
(But he was.)
Pony looks at Veronica now, out of the corner of his eye. Her hair is in front of her mouth again, and he still doesn't know what that means (He never will, either.). He smiles a little at her, and she notices. She looks over at him with those eyes – their eyes. It almost makes him crash the car. No matter how many times he sees his eyes right there, on Veronica's face, it scares the hell out of him. He plays out old proverbs in his head, each one shittier than the last.
"Hey," he says (because he's a dumb old man who can't think of a better way to get his daughter's attention).
"What?" Veronica asks.
"Play me somethin'."
"I'm playing you something right now."
"Yeah, but this is shit. We both know it. And that's fine. Everybody's gotta like their own shit. For me, it's 'These Eyes.' The Guess Who."
Veronica bursts out laughing, which makes Pony's ears turn pink.
"What?" he asks. "I've always been one for melodrama. You can't really be surprised, can ya?"
"No, of course I'm not surprised," Veronica says between her sweet little giggles (the ones he rejected). "I'm just picturing it. You're young – maybe eighteen or nineteen. You and Carrie have just gotten into a big intellectual fight about … I don't know, whether or not it's ethical to read Kant. She storms off, and you're sad about it. But since you're Ponyboy Curtis, the prototype for John Cusack in Say Anything without even knowing it, you can't let it go. You show up at her window, warbling like Burton Cummings, but worse. She's both embarrassed and impressed by your commitment, so you make up on the spot."
Pony sighs and grips the steering wheel. It's his only defense.
"It was a fight about Thus Spoke Zarathustra," he says. "But other than that, you nailed every detail."
Veronica whoops and claps her hands together like an adorable seal. After a laughing fit that turns to coughs and gasps, she takes a long sip of the Diet Coke she's still nursing because she's something of an aspartame addict (which he wonders if he should do something about, considering she's his daughter). She looks at him, and her eyes still twinkle.
"Dammit, Ponyboy," she says. "I swear, the longer I live, and the more I see you're just a parody of yourself."
She laughs, but it makes Pony's blood run colder than it has all day (which is saying quite a bit). He knew Veronica's laughing and coughing fits seemed overly familiar. Now that she calls him a parody of himself, he knows exactly where his memory is: sitting across from twenty-six-year-old Elenore Winston, thinking about how she's a pretty girl who's always dreamt of falling in love with him.
How dare he think of her now?
"Yeah, well, I'm predictable," Pony finally says. "What about it, huh? Play me somethin'. Play me somethin' that means a damn thing to ya."
Veronica sighs, and the click wheel comes back on. He cringes, and she giggles. But the clicking doesn't last for very long. She's able to choose a song very quickly.
"This is from my most private and personal playlist, just for songs that I feel really get me," she says (and when she does, she is painfully seventeen). It takes Pony until the lyrics to recognize it.
"I'm so happy 'cause today I found my friends / they're in my head …"
"Aww, c'mon, Veronica," he says, and Veronica looks at him with disgust on her face.
"What now?" she asks. "I didn't ask for your disapproval."
"It ain't disapproval," he says. "It's … I guess you're just at that age."
"What age?"
"The age where in order to like a book or a movie or a song, it's gotta be depressing."
Veronica's jaw drops in hyperbolic offense. She's the sweetest thing he's ever seen, right next to Cordelia.
(He owes them both an apology, but it always gets stuck in his throat.)
"Don't gimme that look!" he says. "I ain't sayin' it to be a jerk. I'm sayin' it because I know it's always true. It was true for me when I was seventeen. My favorite book was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. My favorite movie, if you could guess, was also The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. My favorite song was 'The Sound of Silence.' Simon and Garfunkel."
"But that's from The Graduate," Veronica says immediately.
"Yeah. I know. I'm the one who lived through '67, not you."
"I know that. I just expected, and forgive me here, that you'd follow up with another answer from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter."
Pony laughs.
"Yeah," he says. "Sometimes, things don't follow that pretty rule of threes."
"Well, they should," Veronica says. "It makes things nice and neat."
"Since when do you care about nice and neat?"
"I don't, but I like to pretend I do. If I pretend I do, I'm more likely to get into Princeton. They won't take me if they think I'm a mess."
"And what'll happen when ya get there, and they find out you are a mess?"
"Well, I'm sort of hoping they can teach me. I think that's what you're supposed to do when you go to school – get taught."
"Or are you supposed to learn?"
Veronica nods. She gets him (because she is him).
"A world of difference," she muses. "I like it."
Pony lets a small smile curl up in the corner of his mouth. There's just so much he wants to ask her. He wants to ask her if she's read Alexander Pope (though he knows she has – this kid's read everything at least twice). He wants to ask her if she's more interested in learning or teaching. He wants to ask her what Cal is like when he's not around. It bothers him that he'll never be anything but a first-person narrator. It's why he cut it out after his first book – why his voice is always omniscient now. After he became a father, first-person narration didn't feel like it was enough.
He wants to say so much, but he can only focus on Kurt Cobain singing on the radio.
"I'm so horny / but that's OK / my will is good."
That makes him laugh. Of course, it's the kind of laugh that leaves him cold. He's stuck in New Year's Eve in 1993 for the second time in less than ten minutes. Had he actually wanted to be with Elenore that night? It's been almost nineteen years, and he's still not sure. He wanted to, eventually, of course, so he did. He loves doing whatever he wants. It's why he's never understood Darry and Sadie as well as he thinks he understands Soda. But that night, when Elenore sat across from him in a little black dress and asked him about Soul Asylum, did he want to be with her? Or did he just want to know if she was willing? The question turns his stomach into a hackneyed knot. He could have picked any woman in the world to make him feel like something. The girls in the Princeton library today are proof enough, and he's older now than he was before (a phrase that feels profound when he thinks it but is, in fact, shallower than a high school senior's first syllogism). In 1993, he could have had any woman he wanted. He shouldn't have picked Elenore.
(But he did, and he knows why. Elenore thought he was perfect, and he wanted to agree with her.)
(For what it's worth, too, he liked her. He just didn't love her.)
He thinks beyond Elenore and her little black dress for a moment, and he realizes he doesn't want Veronica to turn out like him - doing things just because you think you should and just because that's what all the good books are about (and some of the bad ones). Maybe that's how Cal feels now.
He can't remember if he told Carrie he loved her when he was sixteen, though he knows he did, even though he was sixteen and dumber than a post. All he remembers is that he said they could be like Beauvoir and Sartre. He remembers, too, the way he surprised himself that night. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it before – he had (every damn day after he found out about Johnny and Sadie). It was that he always thought he'd think more. In the end, he just felt a lot like Dally.
It's funny, even today, as he drives back to Manhattan with his daughter (Dally's granddaughter), how things shook out. When they were all just kids, Pony knew Dally was supposed to be the one who couldn't resist – blood, sex, and booze, to borrow from the song playing now, from Veronica's painfully seventeen playlist. Dally's supposed to be the one who lives for his flesh and little, if anything, more. He's not supposed to read more books than Ponyboy. He's not supposed to be a decent husband, a decent daddy, or the kind of guy who brings in enough money to take care of them (and Pony's daughter, too). Dally's not even supposed to be alive today. But he is. Dally knows when he has to be smart – real smart, too, not just the kind of smart that can rattle off pretty words about Beauvoir and Sartre. Dally knows how to use his head for himself, for Lucy, and for Elenore (and for Pony's daughter, too). Pony doesn't know how to do that. His inner monologue is a tornado warning: a protracted beep that sounds just like his name.
But he's not supposed to be that guy. Pony's not supposed to be the guy who gets so caught up in what he's doing that he ends up walking right into his own destruction. Then again, that's the thing of it: He's always been that guy. For as long as he can remember, he's been the kind of guy who thinks so deeply he digs a hole and buries himself in it without realizing that's what he's done. Carrie's usually standing over him, extending her hand to pull him back up. She's like that.
Pony's will is good. He gets whatever he wants, sometimes without even trying. Carrie says it's because he doesn't know he's handsome, but that's a lie. He knows. His will is good, but his willpower is shit. Didn't Darry want him to be better than this? Why didn't he listen? Why did he get worse?
Dally is supposed to be the guy who uses girls for their lips and their attention. He's the one who's supposed to peel out of bed after he gets off. He just isn't.
Pony is supposed to be the guy who holds you and cries like Danielle Steele brought him to life in a Barnes and Noble bargain bin. He just isn't.
And it's not that Dally is that guy. They didn't trade places, which is probably a good thing. Pony just grew up to be a lot more like Dally than, as a kid, he'd hoped. He thinks back to the sketchbooks he kept when he was thirteen or fourteen – all the pictures he used to draw of Dally. He didn't even really know why until Lucy asked him and he said, I guess it's so I know what I don't wanna be. Lucy took the sketches off his hands after awhile. He figured they were better off in her hands, anyway. The older Pony got, the more uncomfortable the sketches made him, like if The Picture of Dorian Gray had been unsuccessful.
Maybe the guy in the sketches wasn't exactly Dally, anyway. Maybe they were just impressions (another worn-out metaphor. He's really getting old.). Maybe the guy Pony drew in his first sketchbooks – wrote about in his first novel – wasn't so much Dally as he was Pony.
The thought still chills his blood, but it does explain why there's a Veronica in the passenger seat.
He goes to swallow when he remembers she's there, but his mouth is dry as it can be. Thankfully, Veronica does the talking.
"Before I forget," she says, "I really wanted to say thank you for taking me today."
Pony is finally able to swallow and speak.
"Aww, hey," he says (and hates the sound of his voice). "You're welcome, sweetie. I'm just glad … I'm just glad to spend a few hours with ya."
(He rejected her. The hours have to be enough.)
"I really wasn't sure if you'd be able to, or if you'd even want to," Veronica continues. "But after Mom suggested we ask you, I just trusted her judgment."
Pony's heart drops below the gas pedal.
"This was your mom's idea?"
Veronica nods.
"Well, yeah," she says. "You know me, don't you? I'd never ask anybody to help me out in a jam like this, let alone you. You've got a whole life! You've got a whole life, and it's not about me. I have to let you have that, even if I …"
Her voice trails off, but it doesn't matter. They both know what she wants to say.
It snaps his heart in two when he hears her talking about how he has his own life, and it isn't about her. That was what he told himself after Elenore told him she was pregnant. He'd just reconciled with Carrie – just moved from the couch back into their bed – and he didn't want anything to get in the way of that. It should have changed the minute he held Veronica. It just didn't.
He tries to respond to Veronica, but she's on a mission.
"She used to like you, you know."
The color rises in Pony's cheeks.
"What?" he asks, even though he's not sure he has to. "What're you talkin' about?"
"My mom," Veronica says. "She used to like you. I'm not supposed to know this or anything, but I know it. When my mom was a teenager, she had this huge crush on you. I'm not supposed to know that, but I do."
Pony gulps without even recognizing it. If he were writing this scene (and he's always writing somebody's scene), this would be the buildup. This would be how Veronica eases him into telling him that she knows he's her father, dammit, and she's pissed about his rejection. But that's not Veronica, the sweetest thing he's ever seen. She just looks out the window and keeps on talking.
"I think that's why she gets mad at you sometimes," Veronica says. "I know I'm not supposed to know that, either, but I do. I see the way she rolls her eyes at you when you're just being you."
"What's that mean?" Pony asks. He's almost offended, but not quite.
"I don't know," Veronica says. "When you misplace something or when everybody else is talking about one thing, and you're talking about part of it that no one else would have ever thought about. It's funny when she gets mad at things like that because she's like that, too."
Pony nods, but it hurts. He knows Veronica is right. Elenore is a lot like him. He's not really sure how that happened, since they only saw each other a few times a year until he and Carrie and Core moved out to the city, but it's true. Elenore's got the kind of brain that spirals and dovetails into connections nobody would have seen before. It's hard to keep up with either of them. They could keep up with each other.
(That never made it right.)
"Anyway, I just think she's a little embarrassed," Veronica says. "Everybody's a little embarrassed of what they were like when they were teenagers."
"I ain't," Pony says, and it's only halfway true.
"You wouldn't be. You have to be in touch with the way you felt when you were young. That's how you write, isn't it?"
Pony sucks in the air between his two front teeth and ends up coughing. His lungs are for shit. He can pretend like he's the fastest guy on the track team until the day he dies, but he can't ignore how he's falling apart, even when he just sits behind the wheel of his old car.
Especially when he just sits behind the wheel of his old car.
Veronica deserves better than an old man for a dad.
(There he goes, martyring himself again. If Veronica deserved better than an old man for a dad, you know what he shouldn't have done? Elenore.)
"Sure," he finally says. "Gotta stay in touch. That way …"
"That way young girls at Princeton still flock to you like you're a big movie star?"
He feels himself turn pink for about the millionth time today. Veronica slowly grins, and he feels a little bit better. Everything is better when Veronica smiles.
He rejected her.
"I have to say," Veronica suppresses a laugh. "Riley and her friends are going through a big One Direction phase right now, and the way those girls in the library were looking at you … it's the way Riley looks at … ugh, I don't know their names. But I do know their entire album."
"You're gonna play it for me, ain't ya?"
"Oh, obviously. This is what you get for chipping in to get me an iPod with too much memory."
The click wheel comes back on, but then it's the tamest pop music he's heard in decades. When they start singing, he laughs.
"This is what they got little kids listenin' to?" he asks.
"Yeah," Veronica says. "When I was a little girl, it was *NSYNC and their dumb, pointless asterisk."
"And when I was a kid, it was The Monkees. There's always a boy band, and if there ain't, you're doin' something wrong. It's always the same."
Veronica leans her head against the window like she's the protagonist in a movie Pony pretends not to like but secretly wishes he would have made first. He's never made a movie, but he did make Veronica. He wishes it made a damn bit of difference. He's never been good at making himself care.
"You're sort of like a boy band, too," Veronica says. "Aren't you?"
"Me?"
"All of you – you, my grandpa, your brothers … all of you. You're all a little like a boy band."
Pony snorts.
"We ain't no boy band," he says. "Boy bands walk around lookin' clean."
"That's not what I meant," Veronica says. "I mean … I've met all of you. And I read the way you wrote about them when you were still a kid. Everybody's the something one. You know. Soda was the cute one, Two-Bit was the funny one, and my grandpa was the bad boy. You were the artist. You get me?"
He exhales, and it burns, just like always.
"You ain't wrong," he says. "And you're totally wrong, too. It's both."
"How can it be both?"
"When I was workin' on my first book – the only one anybody seems to care about – my editor said he knew who we could sell it to. Teen girls, he said. Girls who liked The Monkees. I wasn't sure what he meant till he asked me to boil everybody down into one word. And it worked. That's why I got girls linin' up to talk to me in Firestone fuckin' Library."
Veronica suppresses another laugh.
"I don't know if I would call two girls a line," she jokes. "But I take your point."
"Boxes sell," Pony says, and it makes his stomach hurt. "I didn't wanna write it that way, but I was gettin' married."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
Pony gives her the side eye. Here sits Jack Bennet's great granddaughter, and she's not thinking of Jane Austen. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe Veronica is the first Bennet to feel like something other than a Bennet.
(Like a Curtis.)
"It has everything to do with everything," Pony says. "I write 'cause it's art, but when art is your work … you see how those two words don't quite go together?"
Veronica nods.
"When art is your work, and you got somebody like Carrie dependin' on you, you start to make a lotta sacrifices," Pony continues. "Book's gotta sell so you can help feed her. So, you take a guy like Sodapop, and ya whittle him down till he ain't much more than a poster on a little girl's ceiling. It wasn't that simple. I just had to make it that way."
He fixes his eyes on the road. He's not sure why the thought makes him so angry. He wrote a good book. He still gets letters about it every now and then. Not every word of it is based on what he remembers, but he's got no problem with folks reading it … except when one of those folks is Veronica. He hates the thought of her reading that book to try to figure out what the world was like before she and her mother were in it. There's nothing there but half-truths, exaggerations, and a death scene for her grandfather that ole Dally still resents (Kill that guy, they said, for the tears.).
That call hadn't been difficult to make. In fact, back then; Pony was pretty glad to do it.
"Listen," he says. "'F you ever read that book again – don't treat it like a history book. You dig?"
"I wouldn't," Veronica says.
"I'm just sayin'. If you ever wanna know what things were really like 'fore you were born … you can ask. I'll tell ya for real. I hate the idea of you tryin' to find out about us from somethin' that ain't even all that real."
There's a strange smile on Veronica's lips.
"What?" Pony asks.
"Pony, I appreciate what you're trying to say, really," she says. "But I … you're not the only connection I have to the times before I was born, you know. I talk to my grandma and grandpa all the time."
"Right."
It's another moment where he's glad his editor told him he should kill off Dally.
But what right does he have to be jealous of Dally? The thought still feels laughable, though it's been decades since the holy-shit-Dally's-still-alive joke was funny (And, in hindsight, it never really was.). Dally's been there for Veronica when Pony never was, but it's not like Elenore told him he had to stay away. He's always known that if he asked to be Veronica's daddy, Elenore would have let him. When he broke her heart, there was still a crack for him to slide on in. He could have fought for that place in their world – for Veronica – and he didn't. He has no reason to be jealous of Dally for being with her everyday of her life. When Pony rejected Veronica, he fucked ole Dally right over. Pony and Carrie got to pick up and move on. Dally and Lucy had to suit up and start over. He did that to them.
He did that to them, and what does Veronica have to show for it? What does Cal have to show for it?
He wishes there was somebody he could talk to about feeling this way. There's just not. Darry and Sadie love him dearly but hold him at an arm's length. Darry says, you held Elenore when she was born; Sadie says Elenore was not your rag doll. Carrie gets too quiet any time he brings it up. You made choices, she always says, and that's always the end of it. He can't talk to any of them the way he used to or the way he thinks he'd like to.
It's Soda that kills him the most.
Soda was the first to figure out the truth about Veronica. He and Jane came to the city about a month after she was born just to meet her. Dally's granddaughter, they thought, was surely a sight to behold. They were in the city for a few hours before Soda put two and two together and before Elenore told him the truth. When Soda confronted him about it a little while later, Pony remembers he was jealous that Soda had gone to Elenore first.
(There's a part of him that's always been jealous of Elenore for that. As soon as she was born, it was like Soda let himself become her whole world. That wasn't fair. He was supposed to be Pony's whole world.)
Pony still remembers the way Soda showed up at his door back in '95. It was a Sunday morning. Cordelia and Cal were staying over, and she'd just gotten him to go to sleep. Soda was real mindful of that when he walked in. Even though he didn't yell, Pony felt his brother's words slash and dig under his skin – more than Darry's ever did when they were all just kids.
You shouldn't have done it 'cause you shouldn't have done it. Ain't much more to say.
You knew how much she loved you, and ya took her heart and broke it, anyway. Always expected more outta you, Pony.
You really oughta know how Elenore feels. She feels things like you do. I know how you'd be wailin' in pain 'f somebody left you after you did nothin' but love 'em. Don't ya see that?
Thought you understood people better. Goddamn it, Pony, do ya really only understand yourself?
She's Dally's baby. Just 'cause she ain't spittin' up and learnin' to walk don't mean she's not Dally's baby. That's the same little girl you used to read to on your knee – same little girl I used to play zoo animals with. She didn't stop bein' Dally's baby just 'cause she stopped bein' a baby. Goddamn it, Pony. Goddamn it.
I don't know how I'm gonna look at'cha
No, it ain't that ya screwed her. It's that ya hurt her, and that's worse.
Soda barely spoke to him for over a year. They finally came back together because Soda's got the best heart Pony has ever known. Maybe that's why he spent so much of his youth looking up to him. He wanted a heart like that, too – a kindness that seemed so unique to the twins, and to Soda, in particular. They're all old now, but Pony still admires Soda's heart. He knows Veronica must admire it, too, because he sees it in the way she smiles.
(There's also the matter of how it all shook out after Dally and Lucy got married, and Soda chose Dally over him. It wasn't a fight, but for Pony, it always felt like one – still does.)
Veronica abruptly stops the music, and it brings Pony out of his thoughts – a good thing, indeed. She clears her throat before she says anything.
"I'm tired of One Direction," she says and starts clicking that forsaken wheel again. "I only have them here because my mom made me do it for Riley."
"You're a good big sister," Pony says. "'S that what you are? A big sister?"
"Of sorts," Veronica says. "I hope Riley likes me as much as I like her. We don't see each other too much, since John only gets her a couple of days a week, but she … she's a good kid. Definitely a lot like John. She's got that energy."
Pony nods. He doesn't usually wonder if he'd be a better person if he were somebody's big brother. He knows he almost tried to step in and be that guy for Johnny, despite Johnny being more than two years older. Back then, he had some bullshit idea that because he could read and write faster than Johnny ever could, then he could "help him" or something – not with schoolwork but with culture. Pony was naïve enough to believe it was working until he found out Johnny was reading Emily Dickinson and watching every version of Cinderella just to impress Sadie. Maybe he would have been a better person if he had any practice looking after somebody younger, instead of always being the one everybody looked after. He always pretended like he hated that, and maybe sometimes he did. At least they were all paying attention.
(He tries to forget that just before he turned sixteen, the universe did give him somebody to look after, sometimes.)
"I'll tell you what," Veronica says. "I'm going to turn on a playlist I spent a lot of time making. I think you'll like it."
"Oh, really?" Pony asks. "What makes ya say that?"
"I don't know. Just a feeling."
"I know all about those."
Veronica lets out a breath that sounds a little like a laugh, but the kind of polite laugh you make when someone you don't like (but are obligated to love) is trying to be funny. He hopes she doesn't see him as an obnoxious great uncle. But if she does, how could he blame her? When she was born (of him), that was the role he asked to play.
She turns on a song he recognizes.
"There's a light / a certain kind of light / that never shone on me …"
He wrinkles his nose.
"Really, Veronica?" he asks. "You like The Bee Gees?"
"I like a little bit of everything," Veronica says. "It just so happens The Bee Gees have some good stuff. You ever sat with your eyes closed and listened to 'Lonely Days?' It'll do something to you."
Pony smiles at her, and by the look in her eyes, it's clear she doesn't exactly know why. He can't tell her, either, without giving up too much. It scares him when she acts this much like him. He's not even sure how it's possible. He and Elenore have a lot in common, but Elenore is passionate, loud, and out of her head more than she's in it. How is it Veronica takes after the father she never had? How is it Veronica takes after the man who held her in his arms, felt her brand new beating heart, and asked to be her friend? He does not deserve this. He does not deserve a child like her, who takes after all the best parts of him and makes them better.
He's jealous of Dally again.
"So, why this song, huh?" Pony asks. "Why did ya think I'd like this one?"
Veronica shrugs.
"I think it gets feeling in a way that a lot of other songs don't," she says. "Kind of like you do."
His heart gets cold again.
"You don't know what it's like / to love somebody / to love somebody / the way I love you …"
If he'd written this scene, his editor would have crossed it out with red pen just to write HEAVY-HANDED on it in big block letters. It doesn't change the way it makes him feel – doesn't make the hairs on his forearms settle down. He misses Veronica, and she's never been anywhere but down the block. She sits next to him, and she feels like a stranger with his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, his throat dry. "You got anything else on here?"
"Sure."
She clicks over to the next song. It's not better. It might even be worse.
"From this day on, I own my father's gun …"
He gives Veronica another side eye. She rolls hers, and she is beautiful.
"Now you're gonna tell me there's something wrong with Elton John?" she asks. "Look, I get it. 'Crocodile Rock' is basically a Muppet song. 'Bennie and the Jets' drones on and on, and it's not much more than some … I don't know, some weird Fourth of July barbecue song. But this one's good. Don't you think this one's good?"
He lets go of a long, long breath.
"I dunno, sweetie," he says. "I don't think there's much that can make up for 'Crocodile Rock.'"
She giggles. The sweetest thing.
"Fair enough," she says. "You want me to pick something else?"
"Go for it."
She pauses the song to change it. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices what she's scrolling through. It's just a list of names of people she loves. Mom. Grandma. Grandpa. Sadie. Soda. Carrie. But then there's the one she's playing from.
Ponyboy.
He almost pulls the car off the interstate to ask her what she thinks she knows. But he doesn't. Veronica turns on "Alive and Kicking," and they both know exactly what the other is thinking.
He'd say he's the world's worst dad, but there are too many reasons why that's not true.
When they get back to Elenore's place, Veronica unbuckles her seatbelt (less defiantly than she did before). She looks at Pony with a tired smile, and he loves her so much that he wants to ruin everything (which he's already doing).
"Hey, Pony?" she says.
"Yes, Veronica?"
She bites her lip nervously, and she looks so much like him.
"Thanks," Veronica says. "I know I said that already, but it just doesn't … I'm not done. Thanks. For driving … for taking me around even though I messed up. It … it means a lot."
He grins, but he knows this is wrong. Your daughter isn't supposed to politely thank you for taking her on a college tour, even if you did have to pull the tour out of thin air (and even if it did end up being much more about you and your popular literature than about her). She's supposed to know this is a given. You're supposed to head upstairs and make her dinner (or order her a pizza) and talk about how wonderful it is that she's smart enough to go to a school like Princeton. She's not supposed to thank you like this is a big sacrifice. It's just supposed to be.
Pony puts one hand on Veronica's shoulder and squeezes like she's just some kid. It's enough for her, which makes him want to die. She should know better.
(She does know better. She has to.)
"Sweetie, trust me," he says. "There's nothin' in the world more fun than hangin' out with you, even if I gotta go to New Jersey to do it."
Veronica giggles, and Pony squeezes her shoulder one more time. It's all he can do. Much more, and he's sure he'll blow it all, like he always does.
"Well, I appreciate it, anyway," she says. "And if Mom couldn't be the one to take me … well, other than Mom, I don't think I would have wanted anyone more than you."
"Why?"
Veronica furrows her brow. Pony covers his mouth like that's going to reel it back in. He's just as stupid as he was when he was a kid – just as stupid and twice as selfish.
"Well," she tries. "I just think … you and me, we're a lot alike. And I don't know. I love to spend time with you. The more, the better. Is that … I don't know, is that weird of me to say?"
(It shouldn't be.)
Pony doesn't answer her question directly. He unbuckles his own seatbelt, leans forward, and kisses her on top of her head, just like Elenore would. She beams, and her willful ignorance blinds him.
"I love you," he says. "You know that, don't ya?"
(How could she?)
But Veronica nods (because she's not sure what else she should expect).
"Of course," she says. "I love you, too. You're my Pony. Every little girl in my kindergarten class wanted one, but I was lucky. I actually had one."
It makes him laugh; although, in the same breath, he wonders how many little girls in her kindergarten class would have been jealous if they'd known Veronica's daddy was a Pony.
"All right," he says. "You better go on. Your mom probably misses you a lot."
"We've only been gone a few hours," Veronica says.
"Yeah, but you know your mom. She wants ya wherever she goes."
(But I can't.)
"You're right," she says. She smiles one more time before she gets out of the car. When she turns back around, Pony expects her to wave. Of course that's not what she does. She walks around to the window on the driver's side and rests her chin right there.
"Yes?" Pony asks.
"Aren't you coming in?"
His breath turns to ice. The same thing is true now as it was this morning. He can't turn down a look of desperation in his own eyes.
When Veronica walks through the front door, Elenore pops up from her blanketed position on the couch. She wraps her arms around Veronica and sways along with her (not even really noticing or caring that Ponyboy is there, too).
"'If you ever change your mind / about me leaving, leaving me behind,'" Elenore sings.
"Mom!"
"Shh, beautiful. Don't cut Mommy off in the middle of her solo. 'Baby! Oh, bring it to me …'"
"Mom! Do you want me to get sick?"
Elenore holds Veronica closer.
"Hmm," she says. "Let's see. You gave me episiotomy stitches. Isn't it only fair I give you a cold?"
Both girls are giggling as Veronica twists out her mother's embrace.
"It's not funny," she says (but still giggles, anyway).
"I don't know," Elenore says. "I'm pretty sure it's hilarious."
That's when she locks eyes with Ponyboy, still standing in the doorway, too afraid to come all the way in. He knows what Elenore must be thinking. It's never a good sign if Ponyboy Curtis hangs out for just a little too long in her doorway.
"Or not," she adds.
She gives him a nod that tells him he can come in, so he does. He looks around. Elenore's apartment hasn't changed much since John moved in, except for the fact that there is now a comically oversized print of their prom photo right in the middle of their mantle. I'm kitschy, and I'm proud, Elenore had said when they put it up shortly after the wedding. It's a very Elenore and John thing to do.
The photo itself is from 1987, but you couldn't place it there. Elenore looks a little more like she's going to the Academy Awards in the late forties, which Pony tries hard not to think about very much. He remembers the first time he saw that photo when he and Carrie and Cordelia moved to the city shortly after Elenore's high school graduation. He thought it looked nice then – nothing more, just a guy thinking his friends' daughter looked happy in a pretty dress. He's not sure how he feels looking at the picture now. He just wonders why he didn't think of her the same way on New Year's Eve in '93.
"Hey, Pony," she says.
"Elenore."
Veronica steps in between them, almost like she knows she has to. She probably does. Veronica always knows more than she ought to.
"We had a great time," Veronica says. "Pony took me to all the best places for reading and ignoring everybody else."
"Did he?" Elenore asks. "Well, I can't say it doesn't sound like Pony."
He can't help but laugh and rub the back of his neck like an awkward teenager. Whenever he's around Elenore, he always feels like the childish one.
"We had somethin' of a mix-up," Pony says. "Tour was yesterday."
Elenore turns to Veronica with narrowed eyes.
"Told you!" she says.
"I really thought I read it the other way!" Veronica says. "Besides, what kind of Ivy League school has their official campus tour on a Friday afternoon? Don't they know we have classes to go to?"
"I don't make the rules, kid, I just predict them."
Elenore sighs. She looks at Pony, and her eyes are somewhere in between grateful and exhausted. He'll take it. He'll take anything from Elenore that's not vitriol. Then again, there's a part of him that sort of misses her bile. When she spat at him, he could pretend like she was still hung up.
"Well, I'm glad Pony came through for you," Elenore says (without taking her eyes off Pony himself).
"Me, too," Veronica says. "If it hadn't been for Pony, I don't think I'd have known that the best place to study the humanities is in a building as far away from the humanities as possible."
"Little known facts."
That's when John walks in the room. The sight of him is enough to sink Pony's heart straight through the floor. He knows he's jealous of John, and it's not because John gets to go to bed with Elenore.
As soon as Veronica sees him, she darts toward him like she's still a little girl. He twirls her around his index finger like a makeshift ballroom dancer.
"Hey, Veronica," John says. "How's Princeton? Lost without you?"
"They're lost for now, but they'll soon be found," Veronica says. "How was picture day at Riley's studio?"
"Pretty sure I've got permanent dents in my fingers from opening bobby pins all day long. But it's OK. As long as Riley's happy, it's worth it."
When Veronica smiles at John, it's so much different than the way she smiles at Ponyboy. She smiles at Ponyboy like a friend. With John, it's different. It's the kind of different he can't bring himself to put into words.
Elenore notices. She sniffs once and then looks right into his eyes. She does not feel sorry for him, but she does feel right by his side. She always has.
"Listen, I was thinking you and me could grab dinner," John says to Veronica. "Give your mom a couple of hours to blow her nose and watch The Goodbye Girl?"
"My sick movie," Elenore says. "Who gave you the right to know me so well?"
John says something, but Pony doesn't hear it. All he can think is that he knew the answer to that one, too.
Before he really sees what's going on, Veronica's on her way back out of the apartment. She kisses his cheek and thanks him one more time, as though he's not her dad at all. He tries to say something back, but she's on the move. He lets her go. It's what he's best at.
Once Veronica is gone, Pony knows he should probably go. Elenore is sick, and she doesn't want to have to put up with him. But he doesn't leave. Elenore doesn't even ask him to. They're alone together again, as they've been a million times before. It never gets easier to stay there. It never gets easier to walk out the door.
"So," Pony says. "Did you really know the tour was yesterday?"
Elenore nods.
"Why didn't you correct her?"
"Why would I?"
"I dunno. Darry would've corrected me."
"Well, in case you couldn't tell by the way I stand at five-foot-two with red lipstick, I'm not Darry. Plus, I think it's important to trust her judgment."
"Even when it's somethin' important like this?"
Elenore gets a strange twinkle in her eye. Pony's not sure how it makes him feel. It's like he recognizes a part of her that he hasn't seen in a very long time. She looks like a Winston with those eyes.
"That's the thing, isn't it?" Elenore says. "This isn't important. It just looks that way."
Pony wonders if it's a metaphor while they stand there, parallel in silence. Then he remembers of course it's not, and why should he care? He writes popular literature.
It's funny, of course, that he would care.
"I was going to have so much fun with her," Elenore says and takes a seat back on the couch. "I … I'm glad she was able to have some of that fun with you."
"Least I could do," Pony mutters. "I guess … I guess I would've been the first runner-up, wouldn't I? If I'd …"
Elenore looks up at him, and he swears he can see a few tears start to form. He clears his throat and backs off. Regrets don't make a difference. They just martyr you, and that's worse.
"Yeah," Pony says instead. "I'm glad I could take her, too."
"She loves you," Elenore says.
"I know."
"She thinks … she thinks the two of you have what I've got with Soda."
"I know that, too."
"Is she wrong?"
Pony sighs. He hates that it's his only defense.
"I wish," he says. "But no. She ain't wrong. And I didn't really give her another choice."
It's Elenore's turn to sigh.
"She's the most incredible person I've ever met," Elenore says. "I know how that must sound, given she learned so much of who she is from watching me watch Star Wars and listen to Wish You Were Here, but it's more than just her tastes. You know? She's so curious. Nothing ever slows her down. She's got a wicked sense of humor, and since she's so quiet, you don't see it coming. It makes her funnier. And the way she's always looking out for people, even without knowing that's what she's doing – she's a little like my dad in that way. She's a little bit like all three of us, but when she acts like my dad … I don't know. It's really something."
Pony knows Elenore said it to boil his blood, and she succeeds. He doesn't put up a fight. He deserves to simmer until he bubbles over. He's been trying to be cool for too long.
"She's one hell of a kid," Pony says. "One day with her in the car ain't …"
Elenore's eyes turn into daggers. Pony backs off. He only had one word left to say, but it doesn't matter. His eyebrows said it for him.
"Elenore?" he says.
"Mmm?"
"Thank you."
Elenore lets out the smallest snort. He keeps waiting for her to say something snarky – for her to call him Richie Rich 'cause that's the richest thing I've ever heard outside a failed Macaulay Culkin movie or something. It never comes. It doesn't need to. He just mutters some halfhearted goodbye that sounds nothing like a word, and he's on his way.
When he gets back into the car, he decides to turn the radio on. Though he hopes for something random, he realizes he should have known better.
"'Cause there's fighting there and the company needs men …"
He turns off the radio and drives home in silence. As he pulls out of the parking garage, he imagines the sound of Veronica's click wheel over the speakers.
He misses it.
One day with her in the car ain't enough.
Pony returns home to find Carrie at the kitchen counter, drinking from the tallest bottle of expensive water the drugstore around the corner has to offer. She's still editing. When Pony walks through the door, he walks over to the counter and gives her a quick kiss, but she doesn't ask him about his day. She's elbow deep in criticism of Gender Trouble, and when Carrie's elbow deep in criticism of Gender Trouble, Pony knows better than to bother her.
He takes a Pepsi out of the fridge (as though he's still fourteen years old, which is what he gets by being named after two diminutives in a row – is he sure his father loved him?) and wanders into his bedroom. Between sips, he traces his finger along their bookshelf. The shelf in the center is just for their books: hers from a university press, his from something popular. His eyes stop when he reaches the spine of his first. They always do.
This time, he pulls the book out of its usual spot and opens it up. He's surprised when a picture falls out of it. It's a picture of Cal on his first birthday with bright blue frosting all over his face. It's enough to make Pony smile for a moment. Then, the moment passes, and Pony realizes he doesn't actually remember much of Cal's first birthday.
He realizes he also knows why.
For a moment, he thinks about calling Cal so he can ask him about whether or not he's dating Jenny and what classes he's taking other than AP Studio Art. But he doesn't. Cal is seventeen years old, and to get a random call from Grandpa on a Saturday evening would be just that: random. Pony's never been the kind of grandpa who just calls to check in. He's a nice man, really. He's just not thoughtful, and there's a difference.
He slides the book and the picture back in their place and falls down backward on the bed. Whatever this is, it is not enough.
The day just sort of ends. The sound of Veronica's click wheel becomes a distant memory, and Pony doesn't think twice about the girls from the library or the boy who hit on Veronica in the windowsill. The day just ends because that's what days do. They end, usually without much fuss or satisfaction. Saturday begs no denouement.
Nothing does, really, when he thinks about it. Everything just clicks on and on until it ends.
He hears a knock on the doorframe. When he sits up to see that it's Carrie, he's not really sure why he feels surprise.
(He was hoping she might be Veronica, and he might be able to apologize.)
"Hey," she says. "Do you hear that?"
Pony leans forward and tilts his ear toward the door. Sure enough, there's music playing faintly from the kitchen radio.
"What a day for a daydream / what a day for a daydreamin' boy …"
He furrows his brow at her.
"I don't get it," he says.
"It's The Lovin' Spoonful," Carrie says. "What's there to miss?"
"Do we have somethin' to do with this song? Somethin' I'm forgetting, like I always do?"
But Carrie shakes her pretty head.
"No," she says. "I just think it's pretty. And I thought maybe if I came in here now to tell you about it … well, maybe we could make a kind of memory. Move on with it."
Pony's not sure he has another choice. He rises from the bed, walks right over to Carrie, and kisses her like he never thought there would ever come a day when they would be apart. For a moment, when her lips touch his, it's easy. For a moment, when her lips touch his, she's the only thing in the world that matters. He kisses Carrie like they're still teenagers pushing their tongues down each other's throats, glasses over their noses, and misinterpretations of Beauvoir and Sartre. He kisses her, and as he does, he remembers what he thought just before he saw her in the doorframe. Everything clicks on and on until it ends.
Except Carrie. Carrie does not end. She wouldn't know how if she tried.
He stops the kiss. When he does, Carrie frowns in a way that still makes her look seventeen.
"What's the matter?" she asks.
"Nothing," Pony says. "Just needed to take a breath. Lungs ain't what they used to be, and since they were shit before …"
Carrie grins.
"I get it," she says. "Breathe away."
He takes a comically deep breath, and Carrie chuckles like he's much funnier than he is. On the exhale, Pony realizes that Veronica does the same thing. They laugh politely at him as though they don't know him. They're his wife and his daughter, and they laugh at him like he's a stranger.
(But isn't he?)
"There," he says. "That's enough."
Carrie wraps her arms around him like a sweetheart at the high school dance.
"You sure?" she asks.
He's not, but that doesn't keep him from nodding.
"Sure," Pony says. "It's gotta be."
Chapter title is a quote from "My Father's Gun" by Elton John. Sometimes, it is appropriate to be unsubtle.
As for the more obscure references: The "young girl, get outta my mind" song is "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. It was quite popular when Elenore was a baby. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a famous philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. The song Veronica turns on from her most private playlist is Nirvana's "Lithium." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a 1940 novel by Carson McCullers, which was made into a film in 1968. Alexander Pope was one of the most important poets in eighteenth-century England, best known for his satirical work. Soul Asylum is a band, fairly popular in the early nineties. Beauvoir and Sartre are Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two twentieth-century philosophers who were also a romantic couple (I could talk forever about the way Pony and Carrie compare themselves to Beauvoir and Sartre because they're just so … wrong.). She Came to Stay is a novel by Beauvoir. "Blood, Sex, and Booze" is a Green Day song because of course it is. The Goodbye Girl is a wonderful movie from 1977. Wish You Were Here is a Pink Floyd album. Gender Trouble is a seminal text in contemporary gender studies. The song at the end is "Daydream" by The Lovin' Spoonful.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. I own half a pack of peppermint gum.