The other day I was FaceTiming with my father and stepmother. I can’t be sure what we were talking about, but it was evening and I was sensing, more so than usual, the current of daughterhood. It sneaks up on me when I can spot in the background, perimetered by my screen, their umbrella tree, for instance, and how it reinvents them, outside of me. Living their routines, watering their plants, going about their days. The phone will ring at theirs and it’s Ray. Who is Ray?
After we did some catching up, I could tell my parents were about to turn on the television and watch the news, so I said—though it wasn’t true—that I was meeting a friend. I pushed my face closer to the screen and waved like a maniac to suppress those tears that aren’t tears, exactly, but a warming of my face, because my body reacts disobligingly, and confounds goodbye with just bye. Though I’d hoped to say, in jest, in some wimpy grown-daughter way, how this evening I was feeling vaguely miz-uh-rull, the call was already over. They’d pressed END, and the rude slight of my face was reflected back to me. How is it that coming upon one’s likeness, my own face, can feel like an unsolicited affront? Vulgar. A harsh blow, not just to my vanity but also to my personhood. My screen-lit contours—somehow soupy—and the blunt quiet in my apartment were, momentarily, impassable. Those seconds that followed the call were a miz-uh-rull of seconds. A reminder of how damning too late can feel.
4
Gone!
I WAS seven years old, missing my two front teeth, and slowly recovering from a self-inflicted haircut that, looking back, produced a fantastically witless smile in pictures—a lunatic glint some of us harvest briefly in childhood—when one afternoon, someone stole my fish.
We were an hour southwest of Montreal, where Lac Saint-Fran?ois, a tributary of the Saint Lawrence River, streams. And where if you’re quiet, you can still conjure the sound of traffic. Sort of. Close enough for city kids to get wowed by a dragonfly’s spangled wings; to feel the itch of tall grass and knock our knees on the pebbled sides of a cooler while carrying it from the car to a picnic table, as if being reminded how awkward we become when we are an hour southwest of our home.
It was me, my brother, my father, and Mark, our close family friend. If I recall, he’d just returned from a fishing expedition in the Yukon, or maybe it was nearer, like the Quebec-Ontario border. Mark is an outdoor photographer. Or is it outdoor with an s? The outdoors. The numerous, ambiguous outside. He’s also an actor, and one summer—the one my family met him—he was a counselor at the YMCA day camp I attended, teaching drama. I must have come home and gushed, describing him as “so cool,” and “really nice,” and “soooo funny,” because soon my father and Mark became friends. Eventually, they started working together on projects, writing scripts and putting on plays with the theater company my father founded.
When my parents separated, Mark found it hard to stay neutral, I think. He was my father’s friend and collaborator after all. And anyway, these situations are too involving for everyone uninvolved.
But just like that, and as I witnessed somewhat amazed, when my parents split, a far bigger parting occurred. An entire social circle divided. Some friends, not Mark, were particularly awful and self-important about picking sides. How often I heard those words: picking sides, choosing sides. To settle the unease that had since become my constant attendant, I resolved that it was a dance. The “pick-sides.” Like the fox-trot, like bhangra, the jive, a waltz. The pick-sides was, plainly, a variation of ballroom tango—head-snaps, staccato steps, operatic turns. Footwork that mimicked all the talebearing and, in some extremes, slandering that these adults who frontiered my childhood were now involved in.
During the 1998 ice storm, when a chain reaction of collapsed transmission towers shut down the entire city for a couple weeks, Mark stayed with me, my brother, my father, my grandmother, and my now stepmom, Lisa. One night, the fire alarm went off in my father’s apartment building and Mark and he carried my grandmother down five flights of stairs in her wheelchair. I remember watching their arms buckle and my father’s brow sweat, and his pants slide down his waist just enough so that instead of being helpful and hurrying in front to open the emergency door, I was telling him I could see his underwear. Baba! I shouted. Pull up your pants! Even worse, my grandmother was panicked and mumbling what sounded like prayer or distress—it was hard to discern between the two—and all I could focus on was how, without hot water, I hadn’t showered for days.
Even the day we went fishing—five years prior to the ice storm—my attention was selfishly turned inward. How this was possible so young still startles me. On our way to the river, I remember feeling humiliated by Mark’s enthusiasm for the day. Here we were, a father and his two kids who know zilch about fishing, accompanying this pro. Anytime Mark shared with us what he was looking forward to, how special this spot was, or what kind of fish we might catch, I grew more and more ashamed of how inadequate we looked in the adult-sized, mesh-lined fishing vests he’d lent my brother and me. How utterly foolish and useless one could look in badly fitting water-repellent gear.
Watching Mark turn around in the passenger seat and passionately go on to us as my father drove was—though of course no fault of his own—embarrassing for me. Even very young, I was aware of how inclusion, no matter how warm, alerts me to further ways I might need to catch up. Though Mark was just trying to be kind, all I could focus on was how I grew up in a house where nobody ever owned the right shoes for participating in activities like hiking or camping. Like, whatever you need for cross-country skiing. We had to borrow. We knew nothing about sleeping bags and building tents. I’ve never owned a fleece. And now of course I’m smiling because the last thing I ever want to do is climb mountains or push tent poles through grommets and worry about overnight rain. I find myself deeply hostile, even, toward the word activity.
When we reached the river, it was colder than we’d expected. I was shivering and got bored, quick. My rain boots were too big, so I felt—again with the clothes—stupid. After lunch we agreed it might be best to head home early, fish or no fish.
Just a little longer, my brother proposed. He’s never minded waiting. So long as it doesn’t involve waiting for people. My brother is patient for snow to melt, for meat to cook just right, for scars to heal. But people. People drive him mad.
I asked if I could sit in the car, knowing full well the answer would be no. All I wanted was to be inside. All I wanted was a window to look out from; the swath and sound of water, faraway and hushed. All I wanted was some remove. On most days, that’s still what I want. Because I’ve always enjoyed watching people I love do what they’re doing, but from a distance. Far enough so that bodies become blemishes but that a person’s gait remains familiar.