by Sara Shepard
“I don’t know, honey,” my father said wearily.
“You should try and call her,” I suggested.
“She’ll call when she’s ready.”
“Mom probably wants you to call,” I said. “She could be surrounded by younger guys, wherever she is. She could get tempted, just like Mrs. Ryan was tempted by that younger Frenchman.”
My father set down his fork. Even Steven, who had been poring over advanced calculus problem sets—he was a freshman at New York University, but lived in our apartment instead of the dorms—looked up with mild interest. “Excuse me?” my father sputtered.
I repeated what I’d heard from the girls in French class. “She had an affair with a younger Frenchman from their local boulangerie. Claire caught them. And that’s why she’s so fat: she ate to console herself. It makes perfect sense.”
“That’s ridiculous.” My father looked aghast. “And Claire’s not fat. She looks fine.”
“Fine?” I echoed. “Fine?”
He sighed wearily and excused himself to the bathroom, squeezing down the narrow hall next to the brick oven, which was covered almost entirely with black-and-white snapshots of scowling old women in aprons. My mother once remarked that it was disgusting how many people in New York City—in the whole of America, really—were getting so fat. My father retorted that obesity sometimes wasn’t someone’s fault. What about genetics? What about depression? And my mother sighed and said, “Honestly, Richard, what would you do without me? You can’t go telling Summer being fat is okay!”
I wanted to call my mother now and tell her that I would never, ever believe being fat was okay. And if only she’d seen me doling out coffees to the French class girls in the courtyard this morning—there were such grateful smiles on their faces, and we’d all walked to French class together in a happy, laughing clump. She could’ve dropped by the school; other parents did it all the time. That’s my daughter, she would’ve thought, if she’d have seen me. And maybe her mind would’ve changed about us—about everything—just like that.
When I came home from school the next day, my brother was sitting at the kitchen table. He was always parked at the table doing math, even though he could’ve used NYU’s facilities instead. His glasses made his eyes look enormous.
“Did anyone call?” I asked.
“Nope.” He didn’t raise his head.
My smile drooped a little. I continued to stare at Steven until he finally looked up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then go somewhere else!” Steven had my mother’s angular face, but we both shared my dad’s oversized nose. When we were little—when Steven and I were sort of friends—we started a secret club called The Schnoz. Our father mystified us both back then, with his brilliant white lab coat and all his tics—the specific pastries for breakfast, the long runs often at night, the dark, dreary moods that would come over him like a thick wool blanket. We decided that he was secretly a superhero, a mix between a mad scientist and a stealthy G.I. Joe—Steven was obsessed with the military. Our club mostly consisted of spying on my father while he watched television in the den, looking for superhero clues. But then Steven turned ten and announced that if he didn’t win a Nobel Prize by twenty, he was going to enlist in the Special Forces. My father laughed and reminded Steven how clumsy he was—he’d probably shoot himself in the hand while trying to clean his gun. The Schnoz disbanded pretty much after that.
When he got older, Steven went to Stuyvesant High, the smart math and science school in the city. My mother didn’t ask if I wanted to take the test to go to Stuyvesant. My parents had a huge argument about it—my father said Stuyvesant was the best place for me, but my mother insisted that Peninsula was better because it encouraged the liberal arts. “But she’s not interested in liberal arts!” my father bellowed. “She likes science! She won three elementary and middle school science fairs at St. Martha’s!” My mother rolled her eyes. “We should let Summer choose for herself,” my father bargained. “She’s going to Peninsula,” my mother said. “End of story.”
Even though my father was right—I wasn’t that into art or history or English—I liked Peninsula fine. And anyway, girls who went to Stuyvesant were nerds who never got boyfriends. Everyone knew that.
“Do you want a soda?” I asked Steven, turning for the fridge.
“No.”
“We still have the orange stuff Mom bought for you.”
“Mmm.” His pencil made soft scratching sounds against the paper.
“It looks like you’re running out, though. But Mom will probably be back in time to buy a new case.”
He kept writing. Steven had hardly said a word about her since she’d left, so I didn’t know what I thought I was going to achieve, fishing. Steven had hardly spoken to her anyway, except to ask if she could wash a load of his whites. He probably didn’t even care that she was gone. Although, was that possible? Yes, she and Steven were very different—she was so glamorous—but Steven had to have some thoughts about it. Just one teensy feeling, somewhere.
“Summer, there you are.” My father appeared in the doorway. “I have a favor to ask you.”
He led me to the living room, and we sat down on the couch. “Mrs. Ryan just called. She wanted to know if I could tutor Claire in biology.”
I stiffened, surprised. I’d looked for Claire at school today but hadn’t seen her anywhere. “You said no, right?”
“I said I was too busy.”
I tried not to laugh. Lately, my father’s version of busy was piling magazines for recycling and watching the home shopping channels—he liked the old people that called in. He probably hadn’t even gone to the lab all week.
My father picked up one of the little plastic figurines from the toy ski slope he’d bought on a trip to Switzerland. It came with four little Swiss skiers, each with a blanked-out, stoic Swiss expression. Steven had been obsessed with the ski slope when my parents brought it home, but it had become more of a Christmas decoration. Last night, on the walk home from dinner, there were suddenly fairy lights on our neighbors’ banisters and Christmas trees in their front windows. It made our naked, untended-to tree in the living room seem so obviously neglected, so I went down to our basement storage space, found the Christmas box, and brought everything up myself—the ornaments, the Santa knickknacks, the ski slope, even old holiday photos of all of us unwrapping Christmas gifts, my father inevitably wearing a gift-wrap bow on the top of his head. The stuff wasn’t that heavy. And it was sort of fun to decorate on my own.
“Perhaps you’d like to tutor Claire instead,” my father suggested.
I shook my head. “I’m kind of busy, too.”
He rubbed his hand over his smooth chin. “Busy with what?”
I didn’t answer.
“Well, I’ve already set it up,” he breezed on. “She’s coming over in ten minutes.”
“Dad.”
He placed the plastic skier at the top of the hill and let go. The skier zipped down. My father caught him at the bottom, tweezed his little plastic head between his thumb and pointer finger, and guided him back up the side of the slope, simulating a chairlift. He made a brrr motor sound with his lips, impersonating a motor.
When I was down in the basement getting all the ornaments and stuff, an invitation fluttered out from a box. It was for a Christmas party at Claire’s house from that first year I’d attended Peninsula. The night of the party, my mother asked why I wasn’t getting ready. When I said I’d rather watch the Christmas marathon on TV—they were playing Rudolph, Frosty, and The Year Without a Santa Claus back-to-back, a stellar lineup—my mother blew her bangs off her face. “It’s not a crime Claire has other friends,” she chided. “It wouldn’t kill you to be friends with them, too.”
As if it had been my decision. As if I’d orchestrated things that way.
The doorbell rang. Mrs. Ryan stood in the hall. “Claire’s down at the deli,” she said, walking right in. “Thank you so much for doing this, sweetie. It
’s a huge help.”
I grumbled tonelessly.
“Is your dad home?” She looked around. “He invited me over for coffee, but I wasn’t sure if he was mixed up, since it’s so early. I didn’t think he’d be back from work yet.”
I felt a flush of embarrassment. “He had a half day.”
Mrs. Ryan walked into the foyer, smiling at our family pictures on the wall, many of them over ten years old. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a disposable camera. It was covered in green paper, and there was a picture of a woman and a little kid, probably meant to be her daughter, sitting on the edge of a motorboat, smiling so blissfully their teeth gleamed blue-white. Fun Saver, the camera was called.
I pointed at it. “My mother uses those, too. But she also has a Nikon. That’s probably what she’s using for her trip.”
Mrs. Ryan advanced the camera slowly. “How are you holding up, Summer?”
“I’m great. Really excited for Christmas.”
“Your mother…” Mrs. Ryan shook her head. “It’s so unexpected. I mean, I just talked to her a month or so ago. She gave no indication…”
I stared her down. “She’s on a trip. No big deal.”
Mrs. Ryan blinked hard, as if she’d just run smack into a wall without noticing it was there.
“I mean, it’s not even worth talking about,” I went on. “Like, not to Claire or anything. She probably has enough on her mind anyway, right?”
Mrs. Ryan shifted her weight. Then she peered into the hall. “Oh. Here we are, honey.” She gestured Claire inside.
Claire wore a heavy blue polo shirt and a long black crinkle skirt. The elastic band stretched hard against her waist. There was a blossom of acne around her mouth. Before she left, Claire’s skin had been clear and glowing. Maybe France had poisoned her.
“How about I get a picture of you two?” Mrs. Ryan suggested, holding the Fun Saver to her face. “The friends reunited.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “God, Mom. No.”
“Come on. Just one. Stand together.”
There was a frozen beat. Finally, I took a step to Claire. We used to pose for pictures with our arms thrown around each other, our tongues stuck out. Now it felt like the corners of my mouth were being held down by lead weights. Claire gave off a heated radiance, as if shame had a temperature. There was a fluttering sound. When the flash went off, bright burnt spots appeared in front of my eyes.
“Beautiful.” Mrs. Ryan advanced the film and placed the camera on the little table in the hall. Claire and I shot apart fast.
My father emerged, saying, Hi, Liz, and that he’d put a pot of coffee on. The adults migrated toward the kitchen. Suddenly I didn’t want my father hanging around Mrs. Ryan. Sometimes he gave up too much of himself. And Mrs. Ryan was tainted with marital strife. Some of it might somehow rub off on him, like a grass stain.
Claire disappeared down the hall to the bathroom, but I stayed where I was, glowering at the Fun Saver on the hall table. I wanted to tear off the wrapping and rip it into thousands of pieces. I slid the camera into my pocket. If Mrs. Ryan asked, I would tell her I had no idea where it went.
I found Claire standing in my bedroom doorway. Her eyes swept over the piles of clothes in the corner and the holiday trees and singing Santa Clauses on my dresser—I had Christmasized my room as well. “I forgot how big your room was,” she said after a pause. “My room on Avenue A is so small. And my room in Paris was even smaller.”
There was a flowered bra on the floor, the kind that hooked in the front. I noticed a gray flannel nightgown, too, the one with the kitten silkscreened across the chest. A speech bubble above the kitten said “I love to sleep.” I stood on top of it.
“So,” I muttered. “Biology?”
Claire shrugged. “Sure, if you want.”
“So what’s the deal? Didn’t you take it last year?”
“Yeah. But I totally sucked at it.”
But you used to be so good at everything, I wanted to say.
I looked around my room and realized there was nowhere for us both to sit. This probably would’ve made more sense at the kitchen table. Finally, I pulled my chair over to the bed, and Claire sat down. I plopped on the bed, pulled my biology book out of my bag, and opened it. “How far behind are you?”
“I got lost around cells and genetics.” Claire sat very upright in the chair, her hands folded in her lap.
“Because it was in French?” I asked.
“No.”
Because you’re fat? I pictured fat clogging up her brain, impairing her memory.
I flipped to the start of the genetics chapter. Claire leaned over and tapped a drawing of a tightly wound coil of DNA. “I heard a Peninsula sub freaked out about genetics on Monday.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Kind of. I was in the class.”
“What happened?”
“It was this guy, Mr. Rice. He was subbing for Mrs. Hewes—she’s on maternity leave. He told us that DNA is magnetic. We’re stuck with our parents, and they’re stuck with us, whether we like it or not. DNA can explain everything we do, except we’re too stupid to understand that yet. Only the aliens can understand it.”
“Aliens?” Claire giggled. “Even my teachers in France weren’t that messed up.”
“He didn’t seem messed up, really.” I clutched a pillow close to my chest, curling away from Claire. “Maybe our school is just being narrow-minded.”
Claire stared at me. “You believe him?”
“I just think it’s an interesting theory. I don’t believe the part about the aliens.”
She shifted positions, moving closer. “So why do you think it’s interesting?” Her tone of voice was curious but delicate. It was the same voice she’d used when we were friends, as if I were the most fascinating person in the world.
After a thoughtful moment, Claire added, “Is it because you like the idea of everything happening for a reason? Or that if you looked hard enough, you’d be able to understand why people do the stuff that they do? Like why they go away without telling you where they’re going?”
If she said one more thing, I would punch her puffy face. I would point out that she wasn’t one to talk—she’d found her mother fooling around with that young Frenchman, after all. I pictured Claire throwing open the double doors to her parents’ bedroom, seeing Mrs. Ryan and the boulangerie baker tangled in bed together, the sheets on the floor. The baker was wearing a black beret and nothing else. The soles of his bare feet were dirty, and so were his hands.
Claire pressed her lips together coyly. Even in her current state, she could be her old self with me—the one who always said, It’s okay. You can tell me. I’ll still like you. But she didn’t like me in the end, did she? She didn’t let me into her world; there was something horribly wrong with me. Maybe it was an obvious thing, something a lot of people saw.
Still, I thought about the thing bumping around inside of me. The thing I was afraid to admit, even to myself. Part of me wanted to tell her. Part of me needed someone to tell.
“Do you remember when we used to roll down the hill in the park?” Claire asked quietly.
I bit my lip hard, startled. “We used to have races.”
“Rolling races.” Claire made a small smile. “That was fun.”
“And we used to play a lot of Monopoly,” I said, as if just recalling.
“You were always the guy on the horse.”
“And you were always the shoe.”
“And I used to tickle you.” Claire giggled.
“I hated that.”
“C’mon. It was so much fun.” Claire looked thoughtful, then wily, almost like she was considering tickling me right then. She moved toward me. In anticipation, I moved back on the bed and jerked my foot away quickly, sideswiping the softness of her stomach. It felt substantial and…mushy.
Claire jumped back and crossed her arms over the spot on her stomach that I’d kicked. I tucked my foot underneath the bed skirt. “Sorry.”
The mood changed fast, from light to awkward. Claire sat back down and we went through the rest of the biology chapter on genetics and then I took her through cells. She got it right away, which made me wonder if she’d really failed biology at all. I dully explained mitochondria, the nucleus and vacuoles, evolution and natural selection, the chemical composition of proteins and carbohydrates. I left out fats on purpose. Claire pretended not to notice.
When my father was young, he was in a car accident. He and his friends were driving home from a party, and they were going down a twisty road and hit a deer. This was when my father lived in western Pennsylvania.
It felt like a story I’d learned in history class, repeated again and again each year. My father’s friend’s name was Mark, and Mark’s girlfriend’s name was Kay. Kay was sitting in the front passenger seat. The car crashed in such a way that her side was crumpled, but Mark and my father were unharmed. My father got out of the car and saw the deer, dead and bloody on the ground. Then he ran over to Kay’s side and took one look at her and passed out. He woke up later in the hospital. Kay was in a coma. Later, she died.
My father brought it up at the oddest of times. The last time he talked about it, we were walking into the Village Vanguard jazz club—I was the only one in the family who would go there with him. “I basically saw the girlfriend of my best friend die,” he whispered, just as an older black man hobbled onstage to the piano. “Sometimes I think about how different my life would be like if that accident hadn’t happened.”
Different how? He wouldn’t have gone to Penn State or met my mother? He had been a senior, and my mother had been a freshman. They’d met in line at one of the university’s dining halls. But my mother paid my father no attention. Even though he was handsome, he had a strange accent. He was from a part of Pennsylvania that people from the Philadelphia area shunned.