by Carol Weston
“What a pain,” Kiki said. “Still, it might go better than you think.” She pointed to a cheesy poster that read, “The most important thing you can give someone is a chance.” She made a face. “See? The universe is speaking to you.”
“What if I don’t feel like listening?”
“Maybe you and the MW and the daughter will all hit it off.”
“Or maybe we’ll all hate each other, and the lady will decide that free gyno appointments aren’t worth it.”
Kiki laughed, and I wondered if I should have been rooting for Lan all along. Mom had liked the saying “Mejor lo malo conocido que lo bueno por conocer,” which she translated as “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
Thing is, I didn’t want any devils in my life.
Kiki and I hurried to Spanish class and sat down with a dozen other girls in pastel polo shirts and khaki pants. Because of our school dress code, we all basically matched except on Fridays, which was dress-down day.
The teacher asked me to read a passage aloud, then explained that the reason “cuando nos veamos mañana” (“when we see each other tomorrow”) is subjunctive is that “no one can ever be certain about what will happen the next day.”
Yeah, yeah, I knew all about that.
• • •
Dad and I walked to our parking garage on Ninetieth off Amsterdam. The attendant drove up in our car, and I opened the back door the way I used to do when Mom rode up front. To cover my mistake, I dumped my bag on the backseat, then opened the front door. Dad didn’t say anything.
In the car, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and kept peering over at me. I guess he was nervous too. When we got to 684, Dad said, “Cupcake, now I really have to tell you: My girlfriend? You’ve already met her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember Katherine Baird?”
“No.” I picked at a hangnail. “I mean, the name sounds sort of familiar.”
“Dear Kate?”
“Dear Kate?” I repeated.
“The woman who spoke at Halsey.”
Goose bumps formed on my arms. “What about her?”
“She’s the one.”
My neck tensed up, and I couldn’t swallow.
“I wanted to tell you before, but you never let me.”
I stared straight ahead.
“You’ll like her. You liked her at school, remember? You’re the one who told me to go hear her. Lan said Kiki’s her biggest fan.”
“Kiki is, but…”
“But what?”
I shut my eyes and turned away. “It’s just…weird.” Weird because I thought Dear Kate was on my side. Weird because it felt like she was being a traitor. And weird because I didn’t want my father’s girlfriend to know my deepest, darkest secrets! Oh God, what had I written to her about? Kissing and lying! Grief and bisexuality! Stuffed animals! I’d even vented about hating her guts! And oh no—that stupid, stupid pimple!
Just shoot me now! I thought.
Dad stole a sideways glance. “Weird isn’t so bad, is it? Katie knows what we’ve been through. She’s an expert at this sort of thing.”
I wondered when Dear Kate had become Katie, and when our devastating personal tragedy had become “this sort of thing.” I slumped in my seat. “I didn’t know she was single.”
“Divorced.”
“How old is her daughter?”
“Sixteen.”
Sixteen? If she were ten, the daughter might think I was cool. But sixteen? She might not want to have anything to do with me!
“Have you met her?”
“Once, briefly, the first time I went to their house. That’s when Katie and I realized we’d known each other years ago.” He told me that when he was a boy in Chappaqua, his high school girlfriend was best friends with Dear Kate’s big sister. “I knew her back when she tagged along on our Trivial Pursuit games. Katie had pigtails and her last name was Dibble. Isn’t that funny?”
Ha-ha-ha.
“We didn’t recognize each other at HSG,” Dad continued, “because I remembered her with braces, and she remembered me with long hair and a mustache!”
“A mustache?”
“A mustache! Actually, she did seem familiar, but of course, I can never ask a woman, ‘Do I know you?’ because what if she’s a patient?” He shrugged. “After her talk, I walked out behind her and saw her get in her car but then get out again, looking distressed. I asked if something was wrong, and she said her car was dead. Well, I flagged a cab so we could use the cables, and I got in with her and helped her jumpstart her car. And she was grateful. We had only a minute or two inside her car, but we realized we are both single parents and…”
Stop! I did not want to hear Dad’s new how-we-met story! I preferred the story of how he and Mom met—in the hospital where Dad was a resident and Mom was an interpreter. He always used to tell people that a Peruvian woman went into labor, and next thing you know, he was delivering twins and falling in love.
I also did not like that Dad had known Kate before he’d even met Mom. It didn’t seem fair. “What’s the daughter like?” I asked. “Is she nice?”
“With Dear Kate as a mom, how could she not be?”
“Dad, teenage girls are not known for their niceness.” Her kid’s niceness was not a given any more than kids of teachers were all geniuses, kids of ministers were all kindhearted, or kids of shrinks all had their heads screwed on straight.
“I’m sure you two will get along,” Dad said and patted me on my knee as if I were eight.
At least Kiki would be impressed. She’d pee in her pants if she knew I was on my way to Dear Kate’s—or that Dear Kate and Dr. Eligible were an item.
But I didn’t want to have lunch with Dear Kate. I had assumed our paths would never cross again, which is why I’d always typed away, uncensored. Now what? Would she recognize me from the Halsey stage, where I’d stood, moronically mute, next to Kiki? Should I hint that she and I had a history of our own?
• • •
We drove and drove, and the city highways soon became country roads, and buildings gave way to trees wrapped in a soft, green haze.
By the time we got to Dear Kate’s house, I was a nervous wreck. She was going to think she was meeting me for the first time when actually she knew my inner thoughts better than anyone.
She walked out to greet us wearing tan slacks and an apricot sweater, and she didn’t seem to recognize me as Kiki’s silent sidekick.
An old, white cat trundled across the lawn like a moving pillow. Kate introduced the cat as Coconut, and I heard myself saying, “I lovvve cats! I just lovvve cats!” And then I couldn’t stop! I kept talking about cats—their cat, my cat, cats in general, and how much I lovvved them. Part of me must have wanted to get everything out in the open so Dear Kate would realize that I was Catlover99 and that she didn’t just know my dad—she also knew me.
But the saner part of me wanted the idiot part to shut up. It would have been different if we could have started from scratch and if Dear Kate could have gotten to know me on less humiliating terms. I wanted her to think her new boyfriend’s teen daughter was a nice, normal girl, not a whack job with crushes on the wrong boys and pimples in the wrong places.
Inside the house, Dear Kate picked up an old scrapbook with yellow-and-black flower power stickers all over it.
“Groovy!” Dad said. “Far out!”
I looked at him. “Dad! Stop!”
He morphed back into my father and asked, “Are those Peter Max stickers?”
“Yes. This was my big sister’s. But wait till you see what I found inside. You ready?” Dear Kate showed us a photo of three teenage girls with poofy hair and a long-haired boy making rabbit ears behind one of them. “Look closely,” she said.
“Whoa! Dad, is that you? Ms
. Baird, is that you?!”
“Call me Kate, though back then, I was Katie.”
“Okay,” I replied, though there was no way I could say, Okay, Kate.
She said the photo was taken at a high school football game. “Maybe even on the day we met!” She smiled at Dad, and I felt like I had to sit down.
Next, she gave us a quick tour of her downstairs, including her office. On the shelves were teen diaries and different editions of Girls’ Guide, half in English, half in other languages. On the wall was a framed photo of Kate with the ladies on The View. There was also a note that said, “I was a screwed-up teenager and your book saw me through.” Next to it were a list of numbers, starting with 1–800-SUICIDE. On Kate’s desk, one letter began, “Dear Kate or Whoever Cares…” On her screen were opened emails. I pictured her reading my emails at that very desk.
It was so strange. Under normal circumstances, I’d have been excited to be standing next to Dear Kate. But these were abnormal circumstances!
“Shall we have lunch?” Kate asked. She walked to the front hall and called up, “Alexa! Our guests are here.” After a few minutes, she said again, “Alexa! Lunchtime!” Two minutes later, she called, “Alexa!”
Clearly, Kate’s daughter was in no rush to meet me either.
When Alexa finally came down, she was wearing a Byram Hills volleyball sweatshirt. Like her mom, she had blue-jean eyes and strawberry-blond hair. But Alexa’s was straighter and longer. She was pretty but not Kiki pretty or Madison pretty. More like athletic. Strong. Tough. “Hey,” she said without smiling.
We followed Kate into the dining room and sat down, and Alexa started ladling out chicken soup. “Mom and I made it this morning,” she said.
“Looks delicious,” Dad said, but when he tasted it, he made a face and said, “Oh, this is spicy! Did you try it, cupcake?”
Cupcake? Did Dad really just call me “cupcake” in front of Dear Kate’s sixteen-year-old daughter? I could feel my face flushing—whether from soup or embarrassment, I wasn’t sure.
“I think I added a tad too much chipotle,” Alexa conceded. She stifled a smile and added, “But maybe food should bite back.”
Dad and I exchanged glances.
“I’ll get some ice water,” Kate said. She scowled at Alexa as she pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen.
Alexa seized her opportunity. “So, Gregg, Mom says you’re a gynecologist. Sofia, is he your gynecologist?”
“I go to a pediatrician,” I said, then wondered why in God’s name I hadn’t just said no.
She turned toward Dad. “Aren’t most gynecologists women? I go to a woman.”
“Nowadays, yes. When I started my residency, it was about fifty-fifty.”
“What made you pick gynecology?” Alexa said. “I watched this old movie, Animal House, and one of the frat boys becomes a Beverly Hills gynecologist, a gyno to the stars!” She laughed.
Kate came back with a pitcher of water. “What Alexa means—”
“Fair question,” Dad said, unruffled.
“You’re interested in the female body?” Alexa inquired, all innocence.
“Alexa, if you can’t behave—”
“Behave?” Alexa repeated. “Mom, I can leave. My friends are celebrating Nevada’s birthday, remember?”
Kate frowned as she served cheese quesadillas, but Dad said, “In med school, we did a round of obstetrics, and after my first childbirth, I was hooked. Doctors speak of deliveries as being ‘uneventful,’ but they really are the main event, an everyday miracle. What’s more beautiful than childbirth?”
“Sunsets? Rainbows? Hockey players? Help me out here, Sofia.”
Huh? Alexa was looking at me for backup? My mouth was still on fire from her poisoned soup.
“Gregg, how many babies do you deliver each week?” Alexa asked.
“Well, there are more births around the full moon and in the summer,” Dad began, “but actually last spring, after nearly twenty years, I gave up obstetrics.”
“Why?”
“After Maria died, I didn’t want to be on call all the time. If a baby arrived at 3:00 a.m., I didn’t want to have to race out with my catcher’s mitt. And if Sofia needed me or was in a musical, I didn’t want to miss it.”
“Paternity leave from the maternity ward?” Alexa quipped.
Dad smiled. “Exactly.”
“I didn’t know that’s why you stopped,” I mumbled.
“My colleagues have been happy to fill in.”
“But, Dad, you love delivering babies.” Every year, he showed me all the holiday cards with baby photos that his patients sent him.
“I’ve taken my practice in new directions,” he said. “And now I do that pro bono work with teens.”
I felt guilty. I hadn’t realized Dad had made this change partly because of me.
“Isn’t it funny?” Alexa said, looking at me. “Your dad and my mom have young women all figured out, inside and out, body and mind?”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s nice that we share interests,” Kate said and went into the kitchen. She returned with mango sorbet and a plate of Easter Peeps.
“Look how smooshed this Peep is,” Alexa said, lifting up a misshapen yellow marshmallow chick. “More like a poop than a Peep!” She turned back to Dad. “I read that OB/GYNs get blamed for doing too many C-sections but that it’s not their fault. It’s because of rich moms who want to schedule their kids’ birthdays and obese moms whose ginormous babies would get stuck coming out the regular way. Do you think that’s true?”
Was Alexa always like this, or was this a performance for our benefit?
“I think that’s an oversimplification—” Dad began.
Kate hopped up. “Shall we take a walk?”
“Great idea.” He stood and put his arm around Kate’s waist.
Alexa and I both did a double take. I’d never seen Dad put his arm around another woman, and maybe Alexa wasn’t used to seeing her mom coupled up either. Kate must have sensed this because she slipped out of Dad’s grasp and walked toward the sliding glass door that opened onto their deck.
“Look at the deer!” she said. Outside, two speckled fawns lifted their heads, vaguely curious. “We see deer every day,” Kate added. “They’re incredibly tame.”
We walked toward the ball field behind their home.
“They eat everything but daffodils,” Alexa said. “That’s why my dad built that fence around the garden.” She pointed, and I wondered where her dad was now.
We were heading toward Windmill Club, which was just beyond the ball field. The parking lot was empty, and Kate said the club was closed until Memorial Day. We started walking on the narrow road around the lake, Kate and Dad taking the lead. Alexa fell behind with me and announced, “In half an hour, I’m meeting my friends.” I wondered if she’d promised her mom that she’d spend precisely thirty minutes with me—and not a nanosecond more.
After a silence, Alexa said, “What’s it like going to an all-girls school?”
“I’m used to it. I’ve been at Halsey since kindergarten. And we hang out a lot with guys from coed and all-boys schools.” A lot? Did I just say a lot? Why not say 24/7? Why not say we have boy-girl slumber parties every weekend? No. Orgies!
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“On again, off again.” She picked up a pebble and threw it into the woods.
“Do you ever ask your mom for advice?”
That cracked her up. “God no! Do you ever ask your dad about periods?”
She may as well have pointed a remote control at me and pressed Mute.
After a while, she bent to retie her sneaker and said, “You’re fourteen, right? And half Spanish?”
“Right.”
“Are
you going to have one of those quinceañera things? We learned about those last week, the ‘transition from childhood to womanhood.’”
“No, no, those are big in Latin American, not Spain.”
“See that red-winged blackbird?” Alexa said, changing the subject. “In the tree? Around two o’clock.” She pointed to a blackbird with a splash of red on the top of its wings.
“Yes,” I said, adding, “When I was little, I thought all birds were pigeons. I’d see a duck and say, ‘Pigeon!’ I got bees and flies confused too.”
“Not too bright, huh?” Alexa said, which shut me up again.
A few minutes later, a rabbit froze in front of us, and I forced myself to break the silence. “It’s cool that you have bunnies and deer around here.”
“What do you have in the city? Rats and roaches?” I must have looked stricken because she said, “Kidding, kidding.”
We walked along and she pointed out some robins, and then, for Kiki, I asked, “What’s it like having Dear Kate as a mom?”
Alexa shrugged. “You know, reporters always ask my mom what it’s like to have a real, live teenager,” she began, “but no one ever asks me about living with the Answer Woman.”
“So tell me about it,” I said. During my quiet months, I’d learned that if I could just say, “Tell me about it,” I could keep a conversation going.
“It’s pretty screwed up, actually. A lot of kids get all starry-eyed around her. Like, last Halloween, a ghost, a mermaid, and Little Bo Peep came trick-or-treating, and when my mom opened the door, the mermaid whispered, ‘I told you she lived here!’”
“Aww, that sounds cute.”
“I guess,” Alexa admitted. “But for me, the whole Dear Kate thing has gotten seriously old. My mother must have a million little pen pals who are convinced that she’s their new best friend and that they have this meaningful relationship with her. It takes up way too much of her time. This morning, she and I were supposed to go for a run, but some sniveling kid emailed her from a ledge, so my mom was like, ‘Alexa, I need five more minutes.’ I wanted to say, ‘Oh, Mom, tell the brat to jump!’”