“It’s fine, Dad.” Linus downs his coffee and picks up the duffel. “It’s whatever.”
Later, when Mom gets home, I notice the two of them on the couch, talking quietly. The TV is on but they’re not watching. Mom is saying something, a hand on his arm. Linus’s head is hanging, listening. Because Dad is bellowing something at me from upstairs, I almost miss it.
May 15
We’ve done it before, obviously, but now we’re unsure how to inhabit this house together—Dad, Linus, and me. In the living room, Dad asks Linus about his studies and receives terse responses. In the kitchen, Linus occasionally says, “I can help you with that,” when he notices Dad reaching for something in a cabinet or bending over to get something.
“It’s a late birthday present.” Linus hands Dad a small wrapped package.
It’s a crossword puzzle book.
“Keep me sharp?” Dad laughs.
Linus bristles. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” he says, hurt. “I don’t care.”
“Hang on,” I say, running upstairs to get my pencil with the orange eraser. I hand it to Dad. “For the crosswords,” I say.
May 18
Joan is on the phone, and she’s saying, “Would it be okay if I spoke to your father?” To me!
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I say.
“I understand,” she says. “But—”
“Look, I’m his daughter,” I say.
“He doesn’t remember me,” she says quietly.
“What doesn’t he remember?” I say, and Joan gets very quiet.
“It’s the short-term memory,” Lung had said, that’s the first to go.
May 19
Now she has the nerve to give me a note for him. She’s left it in the mailbox, addressed to me, but inside my envelope there’s a sealed envelope for him.
Which of course I throw away.
May 21
Today Mom announces that some students of my father’s are coming over and hands me a grocery list. When I get home, Joan is there and so is Theo and they’re arranging crackers on a platter.
“Ruth!” Joan says, and hugs me.
I pull out the Brie—misshapen because it was bagged, unwisely, at the bottom—and Theo helps to reshape it.
Who invited her? and Why is this happening? are questions I am dying to ask him, but I don’t have a chance to. He seems grateful to be in my father’s company—eager to be forgiven.
Dinner is take-out Thai. The curries have been transferred to bowls, the papaya salad to a platter, and there are place mats and forks and knives and napkins: Joan sits across from Linus, who has no idea who she is besides a student, or what she means; I’m across from Theo; my parents are at the table ends.
Dinner proceeds as though Joan and Theo are a girlfriend and boyfriend Linus and I have brought home from college and introduced. My parents ask about their upbringings. My parents tell them stories about Linus and me as kids, for their benefit. Joan and Theo laugh appropriately, because how cute those people were, who were us and who are not us, and now they know about the time Linus and I were in the bathtub together, and a piece of poo floated to the surface, and each of us pointed to the other, and to this day they haven’t gotten a straight answer about who’s to blame. We’ll never tell. I’m watching my father, to see where he’s looking, but it’s normal. He’s not paying any particular attention to her; he’s looking at whoever’s doing the talking. Meanwhile, I can feel Theo’s eyes on me. I can’t bring myself to meet them.
They leave together. After Linus hastily loads the dishwasher and retreats upstairs—to watch TV on his laptop, we can hear it—Dad retires for the night, and it is finally just my mother and I who remain in the kitchen, wordlessly drying the dishes. She’s drying a large white platter, making circles on its surface with a white dishrag. Holding the platter, she looks so small. When she says something finally, it’s to call Joan lovely, as in, “She was lovely.”
“Damn it, Mom,” I say, unable to help it—the anger that’s rising.
“Damn what, Ruth?” she says, quietly, and already I regret what I’ve said—what I’m about to say.
“What,” I say, “are you trying to accomplish here?”
She puts the platter down. It seems as though she might smash it, but instead she takes a glass from the table and begins polishing that.
“I don’t appreciate that tone, Ruth,” she says, very calmly, the way she always used to say it.
“She doesn’t mean anything to him anymore,” I say.
“And what,” she says very flatly, “could you know?”
“I know you don’t deserve this shit,” I say. “Things are over between her and Dad. Whatever the things were. None of this is your fault.”
Mom doesn’t respond. She looks only a little ruffled, as though someone has unexpectedly handed her a warm water balloon.
“He doesn’t. Even. Remember,” I say.
She says nothing. I know this means: But I do.
She ignores my question. What she says, instead, is: “You have no right.”
And it shouldn’t surprise me—this asserting of herself—but it does.
“Why couldn’t you visit, Ruth?” she asks, quietly. “Why couldn’t you manage to visit?”
This, I don’t know how to answer.
Truthfully? I didn’t want to see you suffering. I didn’t want my fears confirmed. It was less terrifying this way: not helping you, not saving you, just leaving you all alone.
And then quietly, she adds, “This wasn’t how I thought it would be.”
“It?” I say.
“Having a daughter,” she says.
She removes her gloves and hands them to me, all without saying a word. “It’s fine,” she says, quietly, leaving me to finish the dishes.
May 22
Today, home from work, she skips dinner and retreats to the master bedroom. She’s put a comforter on the couch in the study, for my father. No pillow, so I give him one from my bed. He seems genuinely confused.
May 23
She leaves the house for work and gets home after dinner.
I ask where she’s been and she says only, “Swimming,” and locks the bedroom door behind her.
May 24
Night three and my dad bangs on the door and shouts, “ANNIE, I LOVE YOU,” like it’s a dorm building, and he’s nineteen and declaring his affection dramatically. But it doesn’t open.
We think maybe she’s crawled out the window.
It’s always this: someone on one side of a door, someone on the other.
I remember one late night in college, I was in the dining commons, bracing myself for the long night of studying ahead, putting a tea bag in the mug of hot water to steep. Outside it was snowing, which was a marvel for that first year of college—having just moved from California—and tedious for the other two and a half. I was watching the snow.
Linus had called, upset, because my father wasn’t coming home, and my mother was being her usual self, too patient and too forgiving, and Linus thought she was being unreasonable—being unreasonably patient—and Linus really, truly wanted to do something about it, but he didn’t know what he could do, and neither did I.