by Jael McHenry
We make casseroles and soups. Things that will keep. Things that will freeze. Things easily retrieved and reheated. Chicken soup with the matzoh balls the red-haired woman makes. A vegetable-filled lasagna with carrots and peppers and cheese. Beef stew, heavy with garlic and thyme and tomatoes.
For once, I don’t disappear into the recipe. I enjoy the feeling of cooking, and everything comes out as it should. But there’s a whole process running in the background. The whole time the thought of my father’s ghost is bubbling up like the air in the simmering broth, dad dad dad, filling every moment.
Mix dough. Cut noodles. Poach chicken. I try not to think of Dad, and put my mind on the little girl whose family we’re helping. She’s a sick little girl, and I hope what we’re doing is enough to help her be just a little girl again. I don’t know what she looks like, so I guess it’s unavoidable. When I think of her, I picture Shannon.
We pack the trunk of the car with food in coolers, and I ride in the backseat to a brick two-story house, larger than I expected. The first thing I see is a tricycle in the flower bed and then I just look at my lap. I don’t get out of the car. Gert does, but only to stand on the porch for a moment. This time, we drop off the dishes without going inside. Our food pays the visit on our behalf. Being there in person would be less welcome. We would be a distraction, and they don’t want a distraction.
I look up at the house and see the shape of the father in the window, looking out at me. I don’t have to read his face or talk to him to know how he feels. I put myself in his shoes. He has a small daughter who loves and trusts him, and he wishes more than anything he could help her, but he’s powerless. I realize I don’t need to talk to Gert, I don’t want her advice. I already know what I’m going to do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Homemade Play-Doh
Everything is sitting on the counter, ready. Flour. Salt. Cream of tartar. The boiling water, already rolling, will soon start to boil away.
I can do this if I want. I can put the dough together. And maybe, if I do that, Dad will appear on the stool in the corner of the kitchen. I will see him in the clothes he was wearing when he died. I won’t be able to put my arms around him but I could pretend. If I let my arms hover in the air near where he appeared. It might be almost as good as a hug.
The recipe is set far away from anything that might stain or stick. Next to it is Dad’s letter to Ma, the one asking for forgiveness. Next to that are the pictures, all twenty-nine photographs of Evangeline, in the right order. Ma said she was just a nurse at the hospital and nobody important. Now I can ask someone else’s opinion.
Quick as I can, I pour in all the powders. A cup of flour into a cup of boiling water. The cream of tartar, the salt, the oil. The powder swirls in the water, at first separate and then coming together. The salt cuts down and through. The oil bubbles and fights and pulls into itself before surrendering into the rest of the ingredients. The recipe only says to combine. I don’t have instructions. So I stir and stir in the hope everything will come together into a paste.
I breathe shallowly, up in my throat, and look at the stool.
Nothing.
I look back at the recipe, checking over it, though I’ve checked over it a dozen times. A dozen feels like a thousand. I check it once more. Concentrate. Read it out loud. Two teaspoons of cream of tartar. Half a cup of salt. One teaspoon of oil.
I stir again. I look over the spoons and the half-cup measure and the spatula and the pot. The heat. It’s all what it’s supposed to be.
But the dough won’t come together. And on the stool, nothing. No one.
There must be a mistake somewhere.
I wake up the computer, tap one two three four five four three two one while I wait for Kitcherati to load. Even the moment it takes feels too long, and I try to settle myself down with the thought of brown, rich, nutty sesame oil again, but the mental image of the vegetable oil dripping into the failed dough keeps intruding. I search for a thread that talks about homemade modeling clay, hoping maybe that will give me a clue.
There are several, and I read them all. Advice on what to do, what not to do. Don’t add too much salt. Don’t add liquid food coloring because it throws off the proportions, use gel or paste instead. Don’t let your pets eat it. I find a recipe that’s very similar to Dad’s, but instead of teaspoons of cream of tartar, it calls for tablespoons.
I look at Dad’s scrawled recipe again.
It looks like a small t, which means teaspoon. Big T means tablespoon. I only confused the two once, when I was nine. But maybe Dad didn’t know. How would he? This is his only recipe.
I can picture his handwriting perfectly, but right now, I don’t need to. I reach for the letter.
it’s not so great
can’t pretend it’s not
take responsibility
anything between us
The crossbars on his Ts are high up, sometimes all the way on top. Most of the time it wouldn’t matter. In this case it does. If these are tablespoons, it makes all the difference.
I boil the water again. Set the powders out again. Try to control my breathing again. Fight the ache and the rising panic again.
A cup of boiling water swallows a cup of dry, soft flour. Drinks in two tablespoons of cream of tartar, blazing white. Absorbs half a cup of salt and turns grainy against the stirring spoon. A tablespoon of oil sits on top of the paste and then, with repeated stirring, slowly starts to sink back in. The spoon is pushing against something now solid.
It’s sticky and unpleasant. The smell of the flour isn’t a delicious one. It’s functional. But it’s a smell.
Dad resolves on the stool.
He is wearing an old pair of his scrubs, soft with age, most of the blue rubbed right out of the fabric. Ma could never get him to wear pajamas. He is solid. Feet and legs and arms and hands and head. All there. Dad.
He says, “Hey, uccellina.”
Cropped white hair, small ears, tomato juice voice. Exactly as I remember. My father, here in the kitchen.
I can barely put the words together to say “Hi, Dad.”
He says, “I’m so sorry, Ginny. I hope everything is okay. I hope you are okay. I didn’t mean to leave you for good.”
I know his voice so well but this is the first time I understand it. His voice reminds me of tomato juice because there’s a metallic note to it. His words are even, measured. I look into his face and he doesn’t meet my eyes.
I never realized.
I can’t spare the time to think about it. I don’t know how long he’ll stay. I thrust the pictures in his direction and say, “Dad, who is this?”
“Why would you want to talk about her?” he says. “This was a very long time ago. Twenty years.”
“But who was she?”
“She was a nurse at the hospital. Evangeline.”
“Why did you take pictures of her?”
“She was nice, she let me,” says Dad.
“Let you what?”
“Take the pictures of her. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“But why did you want to?”
Dad puts the heels of his hands down on his knees and stares at the floor between them. His lips are moving slightly and I think he may be counting the squares.
“Dad?”
He says, “It was for practice. This is how I pretended there was someone looking at me, and I practiced looking back, until it didn’t feel so strange anymore. I never got to like it, but it bothered me less.”
I’ve gotten it all wrong. The pictures are important, but not for the reason I thought. Ma was right. I didn’t understand.
“So … you weren’t unfaithful to Ma?”
“I was faithful, always!” he says. “I was full of faith! Caroline loves me and I love her. Other women, they thought I was being mean to them on purpose, or I was stupid, or other things. I never got it quite right.”
“Because you’re … you were … like me.”
“You
always knew I was like you. We were like each other.” He smiles, mouth closed, lips turned up at the right corner. I love that smile.
I say, “But not in this way.”
“Not in what way?”
I clarify, “The syndrome.” It’s exhausting to lead the conversation. I feel like I’m dragging him along, word by word.
I can’t tell if he’s even heard me. His gaze is on my shoulder, the cabinets, the doorway, anywhere but my face.
He says, “I guess that’s right. It didn’t exist when I was a kid. They hadn’t come up with it yet. So I never had a diagnosis, and they never put a word on me, and I turned out fine.”
“Better than fine,” I say.
“Caroline helped me,” he says. “She was everything. Still is.”
I have to stay focused. He could disappear at any moment. I say, “Dad. I have something else to ask you.”
Dad says, “I could never say no to you, uccellina.”
“Okay,” I say. I hold the letter up, right in front of his face, so I know he sees it. “Why did you ask Ma to forgive you?”
He says, “Ginny.”
“I just want to know what happened. What did you do?”
“Ginny.”
“Dad.”
He glances at my face for just a moment and then settles his gaze back on my shoulder again. “It’s hard to talk about things like this. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it either.”
“THEN DON’T ASK!” he shouts, louder than I’ve ever heard before. The words echo around the tiles and metal and up to the glass of the skylight.
We’re both silent for half a minute. I can’t stay quiet longer because I’m so afraid he’s going to disappear.
“Dad,” I say, “this is hard for me too.”
He seems to consider this. He taps his fingers on his thigh, in a pattern, one two three four five four three two one two three four five.
I say, “Dad, please tell me. What were you sorry about?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“Ginny.”
“Dad.”
“You,” he mumbles down at the floor.
I don’t know what to say. “Me?”
“You,” he says, “I was sorry about you. That you’re like me. Instead of like your mother.”
“Instead of … normal?” I ask.
“No, you know, your mother never wanted to say it like that. She knew things were hard for me when I was young. So she was afraid for you and that’s why I was so sorry I messed you up.”
“Dad,” I say, “you didn’t mess me up.” If he messed me up it means I’m messed up. Wrong. Not normal.
“I was afraid of it when I wrote the letter. But that was so long ago. You were only a year old then, but you were so sensitive to being touched, like I am, I thought it meant that you’d turn out exactly like me.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad to be exactly like you,” I say, my voice coming out strangled.
“But I was lucky,” Dad says. “I kept skipping class because I never saw the point of school, and they were going to kick me out, I was on my last warning and I went to science class and we were doing a dissection and it was all so clear to me. I could look at any part of any body and I could see how it fit together. But I especially liked hands. The superficial transverse ligament, here, the synovial sheath of the palm and the slip of the superficial fibers. It’s very plain to me but everyone kept making me repeat it and then I realized it made me special. They said I was a genius, and I went through medical school, and your mother fell in love with me and taught me how to be more comfortable. And the hospital was very good to me because I’m so good at what I do and I made a lot of money for them. I got to a good place. But I didn’t start out there.”
“Dad—”
Dad says, “You seem okay, though. Maybe I didn’t mess you up too much. I hope I didn’t.”
And then, terribly, too soon too soon too soon, he is fading.
I say, “Dad, I’m not messed up, Dad—”
And too soon, he is gone.
HEARTBREAK IS STUPID and impossible. Hearts don’t break. Hearts squeeze, they wrench, they ache, they shrivel. Hearts pull apart in wet chunks like canned tomatoes. I go as deep as I can into the closet. It isn’t enough. I wish there were a closet behind the closet, somewhere deeper to escape to. I turn my body toward the back of the closet and place my hands and forehead against the back wall. Turn my back on the world. Hide from the slightest hint of light.
I don’t cry, but I ache. I ache because my father was sorry I was born, because I’m the way I am, and that’s what he needed my mother to forgive him for. Me. I ache because I feel hopeless and sad that people were keeping so many secrets from me and I never knew. I ache because Ma spent all that time with me making sure I was okay and now that she’s gone I’m falling apart.
I don’t know how long I’m in the closet. Minutes. Hours.
But it doesn’t matter. I don’t leave the closet because I feel better. I don’t feel better. I leave the closet because I need to take action, and there’s only one way to do it. I make up my mind and squint into the light.
I may be strange and hopeless. I may be a disappointment to my father, the one person I thought always loved me exactly as I am. But now I know something I didn’t know before, and I know who else needs to have that information. Dad had the syndrome and he found a way to succeed anyway. He found something he was good at and he used it. Maybe I could do the same. Cooking, I’m good at it, maybe I could use that to connect with the world instead of hiding away. But it’s Shannon I’m thinking about. It may be too late for me. It’s not too late for Shannon. If Amanda can help her, if she thinks about possibilities instead of diagnosis, Shannon could be okay.
My dad was normal in his own way and so am I and my heart is wrung out like wet cheesecloth and I am going to do something normal about it.
I dial Amanda’s number, and it seems like it takes a long time for her to pick up. When she does, she asks, “Are you calling to apologize?”
“Apologize for what?”
“What you said about Shannon.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said you think she has the syndrome.”
It takes me a few seconds to remember she hadn’t read the e-mail last time we talked. It seems like forever since I sent it, so much has happened since. “I wondered if she might, and it wouldn’t be so bad if she did maybe, and that’s not the point.”
“Oh, it’s not? Then what is the point, Ginny, since you know so much, tell me, what’s the point?”
“I don’t know whether I have this syndrome or not,” I say. “But if Shannon has it, you should—”
“If what? If Shannon what?”
She doesn’t understand. And I’m so exhausted I don’t know if I can make her understand anyway. I want to curl up on the closet floor. I find words. I don’t know if they’re the right ones.
“If Shannon has Asperger’s.”
“She doesn’t,” says Amanda. “My daughter is not … like that.”
“If she is, it’s okay.”
“Okay?”
“It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal?” Amanda’s laugh sounds red and raw like ground beef. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t understand … who just … you don’t understand anything at all. Not what it’s like to deal with you, and not what it’s like to be a mother.”
I can’t tell her what I want to tell her if I can’t make her listen to me. I have to defend myself. “Of course I don’t know what it’s like to be a mother. I’m not one.”
“That’s right. So don’t try to interfere with how I raise my children.”
“I’m not trying to interfere. I’m just trying to—”
She cuts me off. “You know what? You’re so all-fired excited to be left on your own, I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just leave you on your own for a while. Like maybe for
ever. Maybe you can just live in that house that you’re so attached to, and you can leave my family alone, and you can forget about me trying to help you get better and have a better life because I am just done with this, you understand me, Ginny? I am done with you.”
She hangs up.
I’m scared, that’s for sure. I know rage when I hear it. I heard it in Evangeline’s voice and now I’ve heard it in my sister’s voice, and it’s so far from anything I’ve ever heard from her before.
It takes everything I have not to run straight to the closet but I clench my fists and plant my feet and don’t let myself. Instead of giving in to the anger I analyze it. Take it as a given. If the milk goes sour, you use it like buttermilk. Pancakes, biscuits, things that need its acid. She’s angry, I’m angry. She’s furious, I’m furious. She doesn’t know what’s best for me and I can’t communicate with her. If we were calmer I could tell her.
This syndrome, it affects our family, but it doesn’t make us helpless. I’m not helpless. Dad wasn’t helpless. If Shannon has it, she doesn’t have to be helpless either, but the way to deal with it is to deal with it, not to hide her away from the world. I got hidden away and now it’s harder to break out. I think I can. I don’t think it’s too late. The Normal Book had the right message, but I can’t just read the message. I have to live it.
I go upstairs and retrieve the pictures of Evangeline from under the bed, and I leaf through them. She’s not who I feared she was. My father didn’t have an affair with her. Her ghost was terrifying, and I don’t know what kind of person she was all her life, but once she was a young nurse who did someone a favor. She stood in the courtyard behind the hospital with an awkward young doctor she knew and looked toward him, looked away, let her picture be taken, because she wanted to be nice. There are people like that everywhere. People who will overlook my awkwardness. People who understand, like Dr. Stewart, that the word normal is inclusive. Maybe I can live in the world, and be who I want to be, after all. But what about Amanda? If my sister hates me, and my whole family’s gone—
A memory comes to me. Five years old. Sitting on Nonna’s lap and leaning against her soft angora sweater. I am telling her all about round things, a biscuit cutter is round and the sun is and so is the moon, and a ring like you wear on your finger, and picking bright, crunchy, candy-covered sunflower seeds out of her outstretched hand. I remember how much I loved that sweater. Six months after that she didn’t wear the sweater anymore and I asked her why. She said, When you cut yourself, you remember? The hand you cut. You went looking to find your father, you were hiding in the hospital. But anyone who try to help you, you no let them touch you. They tell me, after. You are so quiet until they try to look at your hand, and then you scream and run. They call me, I come. I hold you on my lap. And we wait until your father come. Hours we wait. But you are happy because of the sweater. And then when your father look at you, your hand, it is too late. He clean it out, sew it best he can. On the sweater, after, there is too much blood. It never come out.