Upstairs, a thud and Nathan’s voice, words indistinguishable but the tone clear: Goddamnit, the tone says.
Ginny smiles, because she remembers how her father and Jane spoke to each other the first night. Simpering singsong voices about stories. They were pretending. Ginny was not pretending, so tonight she is not bellowing. She is apart from that.
A boy on the screen kisses a girl on the screen and gathers the back of her dress in his fist, and the girl has her hands starfished on the sides of the boy’s face. Ginny makes a note of this. She is trying to learn how to kiss from a television show. When they break apart, the girl’s face is glistening with fake tears. They weren’t supposed to be kissing. The bellowing happens once more and a door slams. Nathan is back.
“Turn off that crap,” he says to Ginny. “Go to bed.”
Jane’s demand: if she has to go to bed, so does her sister.
“No,” Ginny says. “I want to finish.”
“Bed,” Nathan says.
“No,” Ginny says.
“Please?”
Ginny turns down the volume.
“How’s that?”
Jane is behind her father.
“She has to go to bed too. It’s not fair.”
“I’m older than you. I will always be older than you.”
“It’s not fair.”
Jane pushes her father, who stumbles and submits.
“Fine. No one goes to bed. We all watch television.”
Jane blinks a little but deposits herself in an armchair. Ginny curls up in hers. Nathan lies back down on the couch with a wineglass cloudy with fingerprints, and the whole family watches the inappropriate television show. They watch another. Nathan passes out. Jane falls asleep. Ginny eventually goes to bed, and leaves the television on.
Marion at Twenty-Two
Marion at twenty-two feels no hope for her future. She works six shifts a week at the restaurant, and when she returns home, she must sit in a dark room and watch television. If it’s a comedy, she won’t laugh at the jokes. If it’s a crime show, she won’t be bothered by the murder. If it’s about a relationship, Marion switches the channel. Marion at twenty-two will be either at the restaurant or watching television.
The café has several regulars, and they pride themselves on their regularity above all else. They know how the café works, and even more impressively, they remember the names of the waitstaff. They have tables they like and are offended when they are not available.
Marion tries to fit in. She mimics the enthusiasm of the other waiters and waitresses. She practices making her face smile when a regular walks in, as if it’s spontaneous. She’s not certain whether it’s spontaneous for the others but knows it’s not so difficult for them either.
When Marion makes a mistake with an order, she fails these regulars in an indelible way, and they must let her know. These regulars must be unhappy, Marion tells herself, but their pathetic maneuverings enrage her. She hates the way they tip. These regulars slide the bills over the bar to her as if they are both members of a secret but fun club. As if Marion’s livelihood is a made-up construct of some game they are both playing. Where do these pitiful people make their money? Who would give these wretches a livable income, and why won’t they give one to her? She and Nick are living off credit cards and leftover food from the restaurant. Nick’s boyfriends seem to enjoy this young poverty. They are artists or musicians, or they have been to college or are in college, and plan on growing up eventually. Marion doesn’t know how to say This is me grown up. This is as good as it’s going to get.
When the owner storms into the restaurant during one slow Tuesday morning shift, the waitstaff freeze like frightened rabbits, and she screams that they should be working faster. It’s comical in the abstract, but the reality is debilitating. The owner swipes her finger over a petal from the floral arrangement and cries out that it is dusty. Marion snaps to attention and begins to run a rag up the stems. The flowers are not dusty, so Marion is pretending to dust. The owner must notice, because she snatches the rag out of Marion’s hands and says, “Are you stupid? Are you deficient? What specifically is wrong with you?” The head chef pours Marion a glass of Barolo when the owner leaves. She gulps it back and asks for another.
That night as she counts the drawer, she thinks about dusting and finds herself writing a fictitious receipt for window washing. She slips $20 from the drawer in with her tips. She puts the rest of the cash in an envelope, except for the $150 that remains in the drawer, and she puts the envelope in the safe along with the fake receipt, with a rubber band around it all. She puts her tips and the twenty in her purse and feels, fleetingly, vindicated.
Nathan’s Insomnia
Nathan wakes up once more with the television on. His younger daughter sleeps in the chair beside him. Nathan carries her to her room and puts her to bed. His head hurts; his tongue is dry and rough. He gulps water, takes three Advils, and climbs into his own bed, but Nathan Palm can’t sleep. It’s like he’s not allowed to. His thighs itch. This is just guilt, he thinks. Go to sleep.
He wasn’t guilty when he called Denise. His wife wasn’t there anymore, perhaps not even in the same state, and she wasn’t calling him back. He needed to feel better, and calling Denise would help. He even reasoned that it would make him a better father, better able to present a calm front to his daughters if he accepted that he had been left.
But when he and Denise were fooling around in the kitchen, it did not feel like he had been left. It felt like he had a wife who was visiting a friend in Tarrytown and would be back in a week or so. Denise made Nathan feel like an opportunist.
Three years ago, Marion went through a phase when she seemed frightened all the time, and Nathan couldn’t understand what she was frightened of. He wanted her to get over it. It was scaring the girls. He watched as they squirmed away from their mother and she gripped their little bodies all the tighter. She had panic attacks in the early hours of the morning, and he would find her balled up at the foot of the bed. Nathan suggested she see a therapist.
“I’m from Sheepshead Bay—I’m not like you, I’m not like your family.”
Marion’s accusation had stung. He had seen a therapist. He’d been sent there by his mother.