Dad doesn’t look down or up or anywhere else.
He furrows his brow and tries to remember. Seeing him try to remember is almost as good as him remembering. I think he’s about to apologize. Or tell me he remembers. Or tell me that he believes me, that it happened and that it mattered and that it changed everything.
“We’ll work through this,” Karissa says, “as a family. We can go to family counseling. We’ll talk about it. Okay? We can consider it. Bernardo is a really nice guy. So now we’re all on the same page, and I think we can all agree that Montana shouldn’t be seeing this Natasha woman, and then everything will be fine and she can make a nice, clearheaded choice with her family.”
Karissa’s voice sounds so different. Unnatural. Like a cartoon version of a mother. Swinging and singing and old.
Bullshit.
Even my dad feels it. He clears his throat.
Maybe he even pauses to hear the things I’ve been saying in this kitchen, about her lies. About not knowing who she actually is.
Maybe he sees how much he’s chosen not to see over the years.
He shuffles his feet and looks from me to Bernardo to Karissa and back around again. He pours himself a coffee and lets Bernardo pass him the milk. We all listen to the endless racket of the city outside the window. The noises we don’t usually even notice because we’re so used to them, but sometimes, at the most important times, we hear them like strangers would. Like tourists in a strange land, we finally see where we live and who we are.
It’s the eye of a storm, but I don’t know what’s on the other side of it. I’m no meteorologist.
“That’s not actually right, Karissa,” he says. He clears his throat again, and I wonder if he’ll be able to get the words out at all. I’m stunned into silence. “This is between me and my daughter.” It’s a squeaky sound. And sad.
“Our daughter,” Karissa says. I don’t even recognize her. I squint, to see if that will help, but she’s not a girl I know anymore. She’s grasping.
She was never the girl I thought I knew. She is only an invented person. It’s terrifying me still, the casual way she lied about something so large. And now she’s lying here too. Calling me her daughter. Changing her face. Pretending to be someone else.
I wonder what we’ll look like in her retelling of this part of her life. Because I know now, with a fierce certainty, that she will retell this to someone in five years or ten and it will be entirely changed. Resculpted for her purposes. More dramatic or tragic or beautiful than it really is.
She has a lot in common with my father, in some ways. They both reimagine reality to be something different. My father creating people anew just as Karissa creates her life anew.
“No,” Dad says, his voice growing louder. It feels like a door has opened between us. “She’s not your daughter at all. In any way. She’s mine.” He’s talking to Karissa the way he’s talked to me and Arizona in the past. Deliberate and sure. Inarguable.
Karissa slams down her coffee mug and storms upstairs.
“You should go too,” Dad says to Bernardo. For sure Bernardo’s adjusting his body into the shape of an anchor so that he can stay, but Dad taking a sudden stand makes me want to follow suit. I have to do the same.
“I’ll meet you later,” I say.
“I don’t want to leave you with this,” he says, and rubs his tattoo like it’s a genie’s bottle that will grant him the wish of staying with me, but I don’t want anything but to stand in the moment where my father declared me to be his family over Karissa.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I promise.” He leans in to kiss me, but I’m so afraid of wrecking what’s happened that I only let him kiss my cheek. This moment is made of glass. It is not a durable thing.
And like that, it’s me and my dad drinking coffee in the kitchen. Like fathers and daughters do.
July 17
The List of Things to Be Grateful For 1 Showing up at our bench at the park to discover Arizona and Roxanne are there even though we didn’t talk about coming. The way they shove over to make room for me. Remove their purses. Recross their legs.
2 The fact of Bernardo at his bench, with his friends, like we could take it all back and do it all over and it would be just as magical but maybe different too.
3 Staying at our own benches. Talking with our own friends. Making eyes at each other. The romance of saying nothing.
forty-four
There are two bridesmaid dresses laid out on my bed three days later—one for me and one for Arizona. There’s a note from Karissa about being sorry but also proud and on a quest to do the right thing.
It tells me not to drive a wedge between her and my father.
It tells me to be careful.
It tells me she hopes I like the dress.
I promised my father we’d come to the wedding when I sat with him in the kitchen the other day.