Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn Page A

settle in."
    '"Whoa there, pardner'?" I asked.
    "It's a saying," he said.
    "On what planet?"
    Frank sighed. Only two minutes into my reunion with Frank real-dad, and already I had exasperated him. I suspected this time was a new personal best for me.
    'Are you hungry?" he finally said.
    Since I figured maybe after a good meal he would be more likely to tell me the important details about, like, everything--my family history on his side, how he came to know my mom, where had he been all my life, who was he, really?--I figured it was easier to let him off the hook for the time being.
    "I am so always hungry," I told him. Which is true. If I'm not hungry for food, then I'm hungry for something
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    bigger: answers to the secrets of the universe, true love, a more substantial bustline.
    Frank real-dad's shoulders seemed to relax a little, like me being hungry was something he could actually deal with, part of the known universe that was Cyd Charisse, progeny.
    "Well, all right then." He placed his briefcase on the Scrabble table and walked past me toward the kitchen. He was careful not to stare at me like I was staring at him. He smelled like cigars and martinis, like Sid-dad. I wanted to shout at him: HALT! Stand before me and let me look at you. Let me understand who you are. Let's make this connection NOW Even though I was supposed to spend three weeks with him, I still wanted time to freeze, so I could soak in everything about him, before he disappeared again like he had when I was five, at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, when he gave me Gingerbread.
    I followed him into the kitchen and he handed me a stack of delivery menus for a rainbow coalition of foods: Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, soul food, pizza, Vietnamese, Texas BBO, Mexican, Irish pub, Jewish deli, Greek diner. Each menu offered food Nancy would never let into her fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free House Beautiful, and bonus, most of the restaurants delivered until about three in the morning. I thought of the C-spots Sid-dad had snuck into my handbag at the airport in San Francisco and was psyched that if I woke up starving in the middle of the night (which, since Blank dumped me, happened a LOT), that I could order yum food and not have to ask Frank for money and not have to worry about Leila complaining in the morning about how I messed up her kitchen.
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    "What'U it be, kiddo?" Frank said after I had salivated over the menus for probably ten whole minutes, during which time Frank had turned on the stereo and was now blasting Frank Sinatra, that good lookin', smooth soundin' "Chairman of the Board," as Sid-dad says. Sid-dad thinks Francis Albert Sinatra, born December 12,1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey, and died May 15, 1998, whose birthday our household is forced to celebrate and whose death we mourn every year, is the sun around which we mere earthlings revolve.
    "What's with the 'kiddo' thing?" I asked. "My name is Cyd Charisse."
    "Your mother chose that name," Frank grumbled, like he was embarrassed by the name.
    "I think it's a nice name," I said. Who ever thought I would enter a zone where I would defend a choice of Nancy's? I'm actually impartial to my name. It is what it is: mine, and that dancer movie star's. "Even if I am not a dancer person and even if when I say my name people say back, 'Oh, and I'm Greta Garbo,' or 'Oh, and I'm Grace Kelly."
    "Grace Kelly," Frank real-dad said, "now she was a looker."
    What-ever, dawg!
    I made my dinner choice and handed Frank the menu for Miss Loretta's House of Great Eats. Frank laughed.
    "Why is that funny?" I asked.
    "Because you chose the one restaurant from over a dozen menus that is run by our friend Loretta Jones. She used to be our housekeeper. My son and I helped her start this business."
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    I instantly made the connection. "She made the gingerbread!" I exclaimed.
    "Well, yes, gingerbread is her specialty ..."
    "... no, she made the gingerbread that time ..."
    ... what time?"
    "The time at the airport in