As my brother slept one weekend afternoon, my father, Laurene, and I went to sit outside at the table in the courtyard. Laurene cut watermelon and brought it out on a plate. Before she ate each piece, she rubbed it around her lips like a gloss, wetting them with the juice.
My father was sitting beside her, watched her wet her lips, then grabbed her shoulder and pulled her toward him, leaning across the chair. I wanted to leave, but my feet were heavy on the brick, as if some invisible external pressure compelled me to stay. The two of them formed a tableau; him pulling her in to kiss, moving his hand closer to her breasts and the part of her leg where her skirt ended, moaning theatrically, as if for an audience. He’d done the same with Tina. Why didn’t these women push him away, I wondered. I felt my aloneness in the courtyard acutely, how there was no one else there to say, Stop.
The emotions didn’t feel real, but like a performance. Like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, kissing Eva Marie Saint on the train.
I could see a scythe of her white cotton underwear between her legs under the hem of her jean skirt. My mother had taught me to close my knees when I wore a skirt; I wondered, did her mother not teach her that? I was angry that she was doing something like a child and an adult at the same time, letting him kiss her like this in front of me, and that she didn’t know, or care, to close her knees.
I started to rise, finally, and moved toward the door of the house. They detached. “Hey, Lis,” he said. “Stay here. We’re having a family moment. It’s important that you try to be part of this family.”
I sat still, looking away as he moaned and undulated in the side of my vision. It was not clear how long it would go on. I looked into the grass of the courtyard, at the blooming crab apple tree that grew beside the curving brick path, a profusion of tiny white and pink blossoms hovering above the trunk.
Although I couldn’t have known it clearly then, I hoped Laurene would fix our family, pry my father open, demand his full heart and attention, and get him to acknowledge what he’d missed.
If I was angry, now, that she was also human and flawed—she didn’t close her knees, didn’t push him away in front of me—it was because of the immensity of the job I had in mind for her. She was the last resort, after everyone else had failed. But in this girlish lapse, I saw hints that she might not choose or even be able to inhabit the role I’d assigned her, that she was not here to fix my father for me.
My mother and I planned to meet for brunch on a Saturday. Since our reunion at Christmas, we’d seen each other twice, but these visits had devolved into fights. I picked Il Fornaio because it was close enough that I could get there and back on my own—a twenty-minute walk to my father’s house. I didn’t have a new bike yet. If she lost her temper, I could leave. When I arrived, she was already waiting. We hugged. She was wearing a new dress. The maître d’ with the gray mustache said, “Follow me,” and walked us into the courtyard, past the fountain, to a round metal table near a potted tree covered in purple flowers. He didn’t seem to recognize me, even though I’d come here many times with my father to pick up marinara pizzas with onions, olives, and oregano.
My mother faced out and I faced the back of the courtyard, where there were no more tables. We put our napkins in our laps. We weren’t connected anymore but separate. I wasn’t sure how to let her know that I was still her daughter. If she yelled, I would get up and leave; just imagining it, the boldness of it, made me feel giddy and guilty both.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. I miss you. How do you like Paly?”
“It’s all right.” It was terrible. “I mean, I think it will get better,” I said in a cheery voice.
The formality could not continue. I knew she would break it.
“So it sounds like everything’s just great,” she said—a hint of sarcasm.
The waiter came and asked if we were ready to order, jolly, as if he was interacting with any mother and daughter on any morning. I ordered the pancakes with stewed peaches and whipped cream.
“You just seem like this strange, distant person,” she said, when the waiter left. “Completely different. It’s like you’re not even my daughter anymore since you moved out.” She sounded curious about it, and the curiosity hurt me—as if she noticed but didn’t care. I wondered if it was true; I might be worse than I thought, irreparably changed. Near her I was a perfect shell that even I could not break.
“I moved out because we were fighting,” I said. “I didn’t want to.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You just worry about yourself. Your perfect life. Things get tough and Lisa goes with the rich people. Poof.”
My life didn’t feel rich; maybe it looked rich, or richer, from the outside. It was true I had nicer clothes now. Not a lot of clothes, but better ones, and newer. When we went for Indian food at the mall, my father would sometimes guide us into Armani Exchange, where he would buy me a T-shirt or a pair of trousers. Before this, when I got something new, I’d wear it a lot and wear it out until it looked like the other things in my closet, but shopping with them worked differently: small and more frequent renewals, nicer fabrics, and because most of the clothes came from the same shop at around the same time, they went together. Blue, white, charcoal. For the first time, when I looked into my closet, I could find something newish that fit and could be worn with something else newish that fit. I knew my mother would have loved to have this same feeling, and I felt guilty to have it first. “You have a real problem, Lisa,” she continued, growling through her clenched teeth. “You know what’s wrong with you? You want to be like them so much that you have no idea what’s important in life.”
In fact, I wanted to be just like them, but it wasn’t possible, hard as I tried. I stuck out. I did not blend, needing more than I was given and hoping to hide it.
My mother began to speak in a high, piercing voice meant to mock mine.
“I’m just so delicate, such a princess,” she said.
“You’re like them,” she said. She began to raise her voice and speak angrily. “Cold, and heartless, and phony. I guess you might as well be with them.”
I looked around at the other tables—no one was sitting too close, but a few people looked. “This isn’t okay,” I said, standing. “You can’t yell at me anymore. I’m leaving.”
She looked at me, stunned. I walked through the courtyard, through the belly of the restaurant past the row of chefs, the bustle, the warmth, and din. I was self-conscious about my back and my legs. Everything she could see as she watched me go—the way I moved, my clothes, the way I walked—might confirm what she’d said about me. I tried to walk as I’d always walked, the way I’d walked when I was with her, so that she would see this walk and understand that I was still who I was before. I quickened my step as soon as I was out the door, in case she was following me to yell more. I wanted her to follow me; I was terrified she would.
I walked home. My hands were shaking. I’d abandoned my mother. I’d left her all alone. The street was empty and peaceful. I felt a strange sort of calm, too calm; I was a girl walking and a girl who watched a girl walking. I was what she said I was, the kind of person who left the people they loved.