I was simultaneously repulsed and intrigued. I guessed my role was to watch and note how much he adored her, even though it gave me a strange feeling to be near them when they did this. The act was exaggerated like a performance; it did not seem natural or real.
Why didn’t she stop him? Maybe because she was very young, and in love.
“Why did you two make out in front of me?” I asked Tina at some point much later.
“It’s what he did when he was uncomfortable,” she said. “He was uncomfortable around you because he didn’t know how to relate to you,” she said. “The charm that worked on adults didn’t work on you, a child. You saw through it. So he would lunge toward me to ease his own discomfort.” The idea that my presence was the very thing that made him seem to be unaware of me was almost inconceivable, because in those moments I felt like nothing, a speck, not worth a look. It was so extreme, Tina said, that when we returned from Hawaii, she decided not to come over when I was around so that he might learn how to be with me on his own.
Mona and my mother had also noticed the way my father made out with Tina, sometimes for minutes at a time, moaning—it wasn’t just me, he did it in front of adults too. But I was a child, and this behavior was inappropriate. My mother and Mona were concerned about his jokes and public displays, and this had been, in part, the impetus for Mona’s insistence, not long after we returned from Hawaii, that as the child of a single mother without a continuous fatherly presence, it would be a good idea if I saw a male psychiatrist, in order to have the experience of forming a close relationship with a good and stable man.
My mother agreed it was a good idea, and my father agreed to pay. My mother drove me to meet Dr. Lake, a therapist, recommended by Mona’s in New York, whom I would continue to see once per week, starting at age nine, for many years. My memory became clearer after I started seeing him, perhaps because I was older, or because during our weekly sessions I tried to put my life into words.
When he was done kissing Tina, my father righted his chair, sighed, and ate.
“You know,” he said, “Tina was on television once. In a commercial. When she was a girl. Younger than you.”
I was impressed. Later my father played it for me, a blonde girl standing beside a boy who opens his fist onto the counter of a beach shop, releasing pocket change and a marble to pay for a box of Cracker Jack.
After dessert, he took Tina’s hand and looked at her palm.
“I don’t know what the lines are supposed to mean,” he said.
“I’m not sure either,” Tina said. “If only we could tell our futures.”
“I know how to read them,” I said to my father, “Give me your right hand.”
“How about the left,” he said, because it was closer.
“No. That’s the destiny you were given. I want to see the right one: what you will make of it.”
“Okay,” he said, and stretched it across his body.
His palms were flat, without the knuckle hills that poked up around the finger joints, a quality my mother and I had talked about along with others, like the zipper teeth. The inside of his palms glowed pale yellow, the lines deep orange; he ate and drank carrot salad and carrot juice the color of wet clay on the hillsides in such great quantities they tinted him from the inside out.
“So this one’s your lifeline,” I said. “And this one’s your mind. This one’s your marriage, and this one’s your heart. See?”
“Okay, so what does it mean?” he said.
The line curved from below his index finger to his wrist. “It’s a pretty long life,” I said. “But your mind line isn’t long. See, it’s here. It cracks, splits open.”
I was predicting what I knew he’d like the least—to live a long and intellectually middling life. It would puncture his arrogance, the way he seemed magnanimous but disconnected, his feeling of his own tragic greatness so strong he had less energy to notice others. I knew he wouldn’t be aware that I already knew this about him, because every time he told me a story about himself and what he wanted, he’d forget he’d told me before. He wouldn’t know that I understood he was sad to die young, but he also found it glamorous.
“All right,” he said, and pulled back his hand.
Tina sat still while my friend Lauren and I French-braided her hair beside the pool. Lauren showed me how to save hair as we wove down to the nape of her neck.
After we were done, my father pulled me onto his lap. He was sitting on a lounge chair and Tina was sitting beside us on another. He told Lauren he wanted some time alone with us, and she left to find her family. I wanted to play but he held me.
“Look how we both have eyebrows that come together in the middle,” he said. “And how we have the same nose.”
He ran his index finger down the bridge of my nose.
“No, we don’t,” I said. “Mine’s smaller. Mine doesn’t point down like that.” “Just wait,” he said, “it will.” Like he knew the future. He grabbed my ankle and held it in his hand, inspecting my foot.
“Looks like your second toe might become longer than your big toe,” he said. “It’s a sign of intelligence,” he said, to have the longer second toe. “Maybe yours will grow if you’re lucky.”
“Ha,” I said, as if I didn’t care.
“Uh-oh,” Tina said, looking at her foot on the ground. I could tell she was joking.
“Did you know I’ve got narrow feet?” he said. “It looks like you do too. And look at your fingers—they’re like mine too. Our nails are shaped the same.”
We held out our hands. I couldn’t tell about the nails; mine were so much smaller that it seemed impossible to compare. My heart beat like a bird’s heart, quick and light in my chest: it was what I wanted, all his attention focused on me, all at once.
“You’re my kid, you know,” he said, holding me even though he’d stopped looking.
“I know,” I said. I wasn’t sure why he said it. He stopped speaking but kept his hold. I was hoping the moment would end, the heavy, oppressive feeling of being held like that.
“Let’s just sit here,” he said. “Let’s all just be quiet for a minute and sit here.”
His arm was like a seat belt around my waist. “Lis, you’re gonna remember this,” he said, full of feeling. I sat still, hardly breathing, hoping it would be enough and he’d let me go. Lunch was being laid out, vats of fresh salads and fish, avocado, grapefruit, crab claws on ice. A separate table just for cakes.
Finally he said, “Let’s get lunch,” and released me. I took a huge breath and a running leap. They lingered behind, walking slowly toward me and lunch.
After dinner that night, we walked back to our thatched huts, called hales, on the white-sand path. The tiki lanterns along the path flickered and cast patterns of light and, in pockets, the sour kerosene burned my nostrils. Geckos chirped like metal birds, wound around the poles of black lights stuck in the ground, and spun away when I tried to touch them. The forest was thick with veined, waxy leaves wrapped around leaves wrapped around other leaves. The fragrance was stronger at night, sweet and cool, as if the flowers were exhaling. The air smelled of flowers, decay, and salt.