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The next photo was a close-up of a shop window. Inside the window glowed a pink neon sign spelling out the word warm in lowercase letters. The glowing word took up most of the frame: it was impossible to tell what sort of store it was.
Another close-up: an eraser-colored rose, its petals halfway unfurled.
A panorama: the sky at sunset.
A shot of her dog, Bob, curled up like a cinnamon bun on the pleated, peachy expanse of her bed.
And then an earlobe—was that what it was? Soft, rounded, partly in shadow.
He closed his eyes and put down the phone.
His daughter was nearly twelve, and difficult to talk to.
* * *
Normally she rode the bus home from school, but now that she had to do physical therapy twice a week, he had been picking her up and taking her to the appointments. He felt responsible. These problems with her joints—runner’s knee, Achilles tendinitis—were undoubtedly a handicap she’d inherited from his gouty side of the family. In ballet class, she could no longer do grand pliés or go up to relevé. In the middle of the night, she would wake up in pain. He kept a tin of Tiger Balm on her nightstand so that she could find it easily in the dark.
The physical therapist was a young woman dressed as an older one, in ironed slacks and support shoes. She had a secretive smile and a stiff demeanor. The dad didn’t always feel comfortable asking her questions, but his daughter seemed to like her. “Hi, Ivy,” the therapist would murmur as they entered the office, her little smile widening, and the two of them would disappear into the equipment. From the waiting room, the dad could hear the whir of the stationary bicycle and the sound of their voices, his silent companion from the car suddenly talkative. It made a kind of music, the wheel spinning and her talking.
* * *
Correction: his daughter wasn’t entirely silent in the car. She sang along to songs on the radio, songs patchy with blanked-out words that she made a point of mouthing but didn’t say aloud. A billboard might prompt her to ask a question like Why is she drinking out of a paper bag? Sometimes, gazing at her phone, she would let out a low, triumphant hiss. Yesssss! She’d got every answer right on the Kylie Jenner quiz. Received seventy-four likes on her ice cream photo. Set a new personal record on her Snapchat streak with Talia. Other days her phone lay inert in her lap. Only last week she had asked, eyes brimming and fixed on the dashboard, “Dad, can I be homeschooled?” Undone, he’d answered, “Sure.”
* * *
After physical therapy, in the elevator heading down to the parking lot, he gave her a squeeze and said, “You’re quite the conversationalist in there.” His daughter looked at him with alarm. Of course it hadn’t come out the way he’d wanted it to. “I’m glad,” he tried again, “that there’s an adult you enjoy talking to.” Which was true, although it sounded as if he meant the opposite. Even to his own ears he sounded sorry for himself. But his daughter, good for her, was not thinking about him or his feelings. She stared at the elevator doors. “You’re making me feel like I talk too much!” she whispered furiously, deep in her own embarrassment.
* * *
New Instagram post: a peeled-off pair of ballet tights, splayed on the white tiles of a bathroom floor.
* * *
Some days his daughter’s quietness in the car felt blank and mysterious; but some days it felt excruciatingly full, like an inflamed internal organ about to burst. On one such afternoon the dad said carefully, “I’m not going to look at you. I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to keep my eyes on the road. I’m going to keep driving, and, when you’re ready, you say whatever you want.” After a moment of silence, she said, “I’m considering it.” And then, “Can I curse?” He nodded. She asked, “You won’t make any noises, or have any expressions at all on your face?” He nodded again. They drove for several more minutes. The effort was killing him. Also the dread. He wasn’t sure if he had the capacity to receive whatever feeling it was that she was full of. When they were only three blocks from the therapist’s office, she said to the windshield, “I have no friends.” As he eased into the parking lot, she said, “And don’t tell me, ‘But you were just at Annie’s house last Friday.’ I know that’s what you’re going to say. But you can’t make me feel better. People only hang out with me because there’s nobody else around. I’m not their friend.” She opened the car door slowly. “I’m their second choice.” She heaved her backpack off the floor while he stayed behind the wheel, noticing his breath and absorbing the punch in various parts of his body. Why hadn’t she cursed?
* * *
New post: a hamburger with lettuce and Thousand Island dressing, cut in half, cooked medium rare.
* * *
The physical therapist recommended a series of exercises to do at home. Some, like the calf raises, were straightforward, but others had names such as Clam. Studying the printout, with its unhelpful black-and-white drawings, the dad asked, “You understand what all of this means?” Fire Hydrant. Dipping Bird. Short Bridge. Clock. His daughter didn’t glance up from her phone: “Uh-huh.” He stuck the paper to the refrigerator with a magnet. It looked somewhat quaint there. All her handouts from school were now distributed digitally, for environmental reasons. “You know you’re supposed to be doing these every night?” No answer. Marooned on one side of the island, he wondered, not for the first time, if open concept was such a great thing after all. Was she in the kitchen talking with him, or was she in the family room, on the sofa with her phone? Unclear. Without untying the laces, she scraped off her sneakers, toe to heel. Two consecutive thunks. “Your recovery depends on it. You know that, right?” Elegantly, she lifted her long legs up and out of sight. “Ivy?” She sank beneath the horizon of the sofa. “Hello?”
* * *
Guess what: her only homework was to watch TV. This was what his daughter announced when he picked her up from ballet class. In a series of texts, he and his wife agreed that they would order ramen and watch the presidential debate as a family, and though it took them a while to get settled—the restaurant had sent only one spicy instead of two, and when they sat down on the sofa Bob kept jumping into their laps and had to be crated—once they finally organized themselves, with their drinks and their bowls and their napkins and their chopsticks, it felt warm and momentous being there together in front of the television. Dorothy muttered encouragement at the moderator. “Keep at him,” she said, bent over her noodles. “Keep the pressure on!”
As long as Dorothy was leaning forward, he could now and then steal a sideways glance at his daughter. She appeared to be paying attention, her eyes slightly widened and her bowl sitting neglected on the coffee table. Then suddenly she leapt off the sofa and ran upstairs.
“You all right?” he called. “Ivy?”
“It’s making me uncomfortable!” she yelled from the top of the staircase. He could picture her standing there, one foot raised, ready to flee. “Tell me when this part is over, okay?”
He wanted to share a commiserating look with Dorothy, but she was still watching the screen, sawing her little pendant back and forth on its chain. “So much for current events,” he said.
* * *
His daughter had a pretty collection of pens and pencils. A tiny roll of tape, a pink pocket stapler, and a packet of candy-colored paper clips. All these items lived inside a sleek gold pouch with a zipper, and were brought out into the open when she was doing her homework at the kitchen table. Her tapered fingers danced over them in search of the right highlighter. Her fingernails sparkled. Her school supplies sparkled. She had affixed very small puffy stickers in strategic places to her notebooks and binders. Watching her at work, he realized with pride that his daughter would have been one of those girls who intimidated him when he was that age.
When he was that age! A slight prickling, like sensation restoring itself to a numb hand. Was his old self considering a return? To his surprise, he had trouble recalling his thoughts and emotions from sixth grade. Surprising, bec
ause he remembered the fact of having felt things; it was the point at which his parents took to calling him Heathcliff.
There were a few standouts, to be sure—the memory of being lifted into the air and carried on a gurney, after he’d badly sprained his ankle on the basketball court, and noticing how far away the ceiling of the gym appeared, and the menacing pattern of the rafters—but, in terms of day-to-day twelve-year-old feelings, he had, strangely, lost access. And the access needed to be only temporary: all he wanted was a point of comparison. Was what she was going through normal? In the afternoons he held his breath, never knowing which girl was going to climb into the passenger seat: the happy one, braces flashing, asking if they could make a really quick stop at Baskin-Robbins; or the other one, the one in pain. Had he ever felt that way, too? If only he could remember. All that came to him were the first and last names, in no particular order, of every kid in his homeroom: Steven Burke, Tracy Mayson, Derek Wong, Billy Flanagan, Dawn Littlejohn, Josh Tokofsky, Luke Mandel, Rafi Moncho, Danielle Blood … And sometimes along with the names the faces would materialize, like mug shots.
* * *
New post: a pair of lips, shining wetly.
* * *
“Try not to internalize,” Dorothy whispered to him, taking his hand as they waited in the dank hallway outside the Nutcracker auditions. “Practice wearing a neutral expression.” They stood in silence for a while, trying to hear what was going on behind the closed doors. When their daughter finally exited, looking a little dazed, they gently shepherded her to the car. Did she want lunch? Starbucks? “If it’s okay, I think I’d just like to go home and watch YouTube,” she said quietly.
* * *
From the depths of the sofa, a now familiar voice bubbled: “Hi, guys! I’m back, and I’m so excited because today I’m going to be talking about room decor. As you guys know, I love being creative when it comes to doing DIY decor, but today is extra special because I’m going to be showing you my mini HomeGoods haul! I got so many amazing things, but I think the thing that I love the most is this incredibly fluffy pillow—as you can see, it’s huge, and I’m pretty sure it’s real sheepskin. Yeah, it says here 100 percent wool from New Zealand, but don’t worry, no sheep were killed or anything—I don’t think so, right? It’ll just grow back. But the best part is how good it goes with these other decorative pillows I got at HomeGoods—that place is so amazing! Their selection is always changing! I went in thinking I needed picture frames and a dog bed but then I turned down this one aisle and I saw the pillows and I went crazy!”
* * *
By nightfall his daughter seemed to have revived. She practiced her jazz turns on the slick floor of the kitchen; she winked and dimpled at her reflection in the sliding doors, as if for an audience stretching into the darkened backyard. The dad, rinsing dishes in the sink, had to keep dodging her left foot, which she kicked, without warning, high into the air. She always kicked on that side; it was naturally the more flexible of the two. To the dad, it would have made more sense to practice kicking on the less stretchy side. I am the best, she sang tunelessly, the best, the best, the best. You can’t beat me, no you can’t, so don’t even try, because I am the best. The song sounded as if it had been made up on the spot.
* * *
Later that week, the physical therapist came into the waiting room while his daughter was still whirring away on the bicycle. For a moment, he thought she was there to grab a magazine, but then she perched on the chair beside him and started speaking. “I’m wondering,” she said, wearing her small, formal smile, “if Ivy has been keeping up with her exercises at home?” His chest began to tingle, the Ivy-vise squeezing. She wasn’t improving. She wasn’t going to get a decent part in The Nutcracker. She’d have to spend a second year in the angel corps, shuffling across the stage in the Snowflake scene while holding a battery-operated candle from Home Depot. He felt totally defeated. “I think she has,” he said. “I’ve been telling her to.” Then he admitted, “But I really don’t know.” To his shame, he heard himself adding, somewhat sulkily, “Maybe you should ask her.”
* * *
Another not-great day at school. His daughter buried her chin and mouth into the folds of her scarf and stared unseeingly at the road, not bothering to change the radio station. Election coverage continued unchecked in the background. Beyond the windshield, a vapor trail bisected the blue sky. Closer to the ground, block after block of residential development streamed past. As they merged onto the highway, she asked, “Do you think I cry too much?” He sat with the question for a handful of seconds and then inquired, evenly, “Who told you that?” When she didn’t answer, he asked, a little less evenly, “Who said that bullshit to you?” Also, “When did it become a crime to feel things?” She retreated deeper into her scarf. “Oh, God, Dad. Forget I asked. It doesn’t matter,” and he glanced down at the insulated cup resting in the holder between them. That fucking coffee! He’d been suckered by the promised ease of “drive-thru” and ended up arriving ten minutes late for pickup. Only ten minutes, not even a quarter of an hour, but long enough for someone to have said something awful to her. If that indeed was what had happened. Who knew what really went on in the cluster of low-slung buildings that she disappeared into and emerged from every day? He had the urge to carry her far away from them, as far as possible. The value of peer interaction was definitely overstated. He could fill the tank, surprise Dorothy at work, load the trunk with nonperishable groceries and supplies, and then it’d be just the three of them, the open road. Not like free spirits, exactly, more like refugees from the zombie apocalypse, but, still, they’d be together. Plus Bob. He’d almost forgotten the dog.
* * *
New post: a cupcake, frosted to look like the cute face of a pig.
* * *
In late October, unexpectedly, a stretch of sunshine. First off, she’d been cast as a dragon dancer in the Chinese Tea scene, and even though only the lower half of her would be visible, she was coming home from the rehearsals in high spirits. Which she attributed to teamwork, telling him, “You see, it is like playing a sport.” And then, in the space of a few days: an Evite to a disco-themed murder-mystery party; an afternoon working with her partner on a social studies project that turned into a movie night and a sleepover; a plan to go with three girls from her Girl Scout troop to the outlet mall. The dad stood on the front walkway and watched her slide into the back seat of the troop mother’s minivan; as it pulled away from the curb, he waved to the shadowy parent behind the wheel. Their neighbor Marcia happened to be dragging in her trash cans. He waved at her, too. “I can’t believe how big she’s getting!” Marcia called. “Tell me about it,” he said. “Always running off somewhere. I can’t keep up!” He knew he sounded like an ass but he couldn’t help it. He floated up the walkway and in through the front door, and finding Dorothy upstairs, shaking out the bedcovers, he hugged her from behind and made her topple over.
* * *
On Tuesday, the physical therapist greeted them as usual. “Hi, Ivy,” she said through her little smile, as if he were merely the hulking, nameless attendant who traveled alongside the patient. But today it didn’t bother him, because right away he saw that she had done her duty and voted. He pointed to the oblong sticker on the breast pocket of her gray grown-up-looking blouse, and then pointed to the same sticker attached to his own chest. Earlier, he had debated whether he should wait until after school and take his daughter with him—it’d be something that she could tell her daughter about, had been his thinking—but then he remembered that she had therapy and during his lunch hour went ahead on his own to the polling station, which was in the cavernous basement of an Armenian church. After pointing to their matching stickers, he gave the physical therapist a grin and a thumbs-up. Uncharacteristically, she returned the gesture with open enthusiasm. Oho! Maybe he’d stumbled upon the best way to communicate with her—through hand signals. He swelled suddenly with positive feelings for her. This competent young woman, who
was helping his daughter; those nice Armenian congregants who volunteered for long shifts at the polls; the sensible, civic-minded men and women who patiently waited with him, giving up their lunch hours as he had—he felt good about them. He felt good about humanity in general. Basic decency would prevail, and this exhausting, insane election season would soon be over, and by tomorrow he could commit his energies fully to planning the Thanksgiving menu and making sure that his daughter did her Fire Hydrants every night and got better.
* * *
New post: a black square. Not a photo of a black square but a photo of total blackness. As if the camera had misfired, or the film had been accidentally exposed.
* * *
The whole family had a hard time getting up the next morning. The dad felt as if he had been run over by a truck, a big shiny pickup truck that had come swerving out of the darkness and mowed him down, and now had backed up and was waiting for him, its engine revving. His daughter crouched by his pillow and asked, as she often did, “Do I have to go to school today?” Her eyes had turned narrow from crying, then sleeping; her nightshirt had a silvery unicorn on it. They had let her stay up to watch the results with them, and even in the dim light she looked haggard. “No,” he said, placing the pillow over his head. “Go back to sleep.” It was what he intended to do. He had a very small window in which he could slip back into unconsciousness and then wake up in a world where the election hadn’t happened. He tried the trick he’d developed after the first of several basketball injuries, the trick where he would slow his breathing and lie perfectly still, and the throbbing in his ankle would cease, and he could fool himself into believing that he was strong and well before finally relaxing into sleep. He imagined himself in his old bedroom, on his single bed, wearing nothing but his Celtics shorts. He repeated to himself, Fit as a fiddle. Fit as a fiddle. But he was agonizingly awake. Dorothy’s body heat beside him was throwing him off. He pushed away the pillow and sighed, and was startled to see his daughter standing in the doorway, fully dressed, with her backpack on. “What are you doing?” he groaned. “Why aren’t you in bed?” She took a nervous step backward. “Daddy,” she said. “I thought you were joking.”