This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  Courtney, looking scared, appeared in the doorway, pulling on her jacket.

  “Does she know I’m coming?” Courtney asked.

  “It’ll be okay,” Amanda said. She rammed her heel into her shoe. “Come on. She’ll love you.” She headed back down the hall. “Wait a sec, I’ll be right back, I’m getting my jacket,” she called back to Courtney. Her mother’s bedroom door was closed, and on her way back from her room, holding her jacket, Amanda stopped outside it, listening.

  The door was paneled and solid. The white surface was smooth and gleaming. Amanda put her cheek next to the wood. She held her breath. There was no sound at all from inside. After a moment Amanda straightened up and stepped back from the door.

  “Mom?” she called, as if from a distance, her voice hurried. “We’re leaving now. I’ll be back in an hour or so. See you later.”

  Amanda stood, her head down, frowning, waiting for an answer. She put two fingers into her mouth. Her tongue sought bare exposed nail. She found a tiny half-moon strip and closed on it with her teeth. She tore it off, feeling the soft peel of it curling away. She waited, blinking, wincing, for a moment, longing to leave, hoping to hear nothing. She never said the name Emma to her mother. She had never heard her mother say it.

  “Okay, bye,” she said loudly. She turned and went noisily on down the hall, her footsteps heavy. Courtney was waiting by the front door, her face subdued.

  “Is it okay?” she asked.

  Amanda nodded, then shrugged her shoulders: as if she knew.

  In the lobby, Emma was standing by the door. Her dark hair was short this year. She wore black pants and a quilted jacket. She had gold hoop earrings in her ears, and she looked irritated.

  “Hi, Amanda,” Emma said, and kissed her quickly, hard, on the cheek. Amanda did not kiss her back.

  “Hi,” Amanda said, moving away from her. She nodded at Courtney. “This is my friend Courtney Miller. This is my stepmother,” she added.

  “Hello, Courtney,” Emma said, wheeling to face Courtney at once and smiling. “I’m Emma Chatfield.” She shook hands with Courtney. “Nice to see you. Are you at school with Amanda?”

  “Yes,” Courtney said.

  “That’s nice,” Emma said.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Courtney said, shy.

  Amanda stood without speaking, waiting. Her shoulders were slumped, her face passive and blank.

  “So, Amanda,” Emma said briskly, “where shall we go first? Who do you need to get presents for, and where would you like to go?”

  Amanda gazed at the front door of the lobby. “Well,” she said, frowning slightly, “I don’t really care where we go.” She paused. Finally, when Emma seemed about to speak, Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “Wherever you want.”

  Emma waited for a moment. “Well,” she said, “this trip is for you. I thought we’d go wherever you need to go. Who do you need to buy presents for? Who’s still left on your list?”

  Amanda stared out the lobby doors as though she were hypnotized by the evening traffic outside. She shook her head slowly. “No one really,” she said. “I have something for everyone.”

  Emma paused for a moment, then said, “Well, okay. You’re very organized.” She smiled at Courtney. “She’s much more organized than I am.”

  Amanda, still looking out the doorway, said, “Courtney still has shopping to do, though.”

  Courtney looked stricken; Emma did as well.

  Emma looked first at Courtney, then at Amanda.

  “Did you invite Courtney to come with us, Amanda?” she asked.

  Without speaking, Amanda nodded slowly. Then she said, “Courtney has a lot of shopping to do.”

  There was a pause.

  “Not really,” Courtney said anxiously. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She slid her hand behind her neck, under her hair and shook it free, down her back.

  Emma looked at her and smiled. “Well, how nice,” she said. “We’d be glad to have you. Where would you like to go, Courtney?”

  Amanda’s gaze unlocked from the door and slid to Courtney’s face. Courtney stared at Emma like a deer trapped in headlights.

  “Who’s still on your list to buy presents for?” Emma asked.

  “My mom,” Courtney offered desperately.

  Emma turned to Amanda. “And what about your mom?”

  “I already have something.”

  “Good for you,” said Emma, pleasantly. “What did you get her?”

  Amanda frowned. “A silk blouse.”

  “Oh, nice,” said Emma. “What color?”

  “White,” said Amanda.

  “That sounds very pretty,” Emma said. “Well, what do you think? Shall we just start meandering and stop when we see someplace that looks interesting?”

  Courtney looked anxiously at Amanda. Amanda nodded blankly, and they pushed out through the door.

  They set off into the darkening evening. It was turning cold; Emma hunched her shoulders. They walked to Lexington and walked south, against a steady tide of people. Men were coming home from work, carrying briefcases, their overcoats buttoned, the collars turned up. Women passed, wearing bright wool coats, scarves at their necks. A cluster of girls approached, Amanda’s age, in uniforms and jackets, walking fast and talking loudly; behind them was a cluster of boys, parkas over their blue blazers, talking more loudly, and roughhousing.

  Emma and the two girls walked abreast until they passed another group of girls, who walked in a ragged line across the sidewalk. Emma stepped back to let them past, and at that moment Amanda nodded coolly to one of them. The other girl nodded just as coolly back. Amanda pulled Courtney to her side and whispered in her ear. Courtney giggled loudly and said something Emma did not hear. The two girls kept their heads together, walking closely, shoulder to shoulder, just in front of Emma. Emma tried once to catch up and walk abreast again, but the oncoming stream was too strong.

  They crossed the next street, with Emma an awkward step behind the girls. Waiting at the red light was a high-wheeled Jeep wagon, shiny black, with dark tinted windows. The windows were closed, but pounding music pulsed through them. The giant wagon throbbed with malevolent energy. Drug dealers, thought Emma, sweeping through the city streets, chemically crazed, impervious to humans. She felt the chill of their nearness. The light changed, and the wagon surged forward, blasting across the avenue. Emma looked at the girls ahead of her: did they see the wagon as part of their world, their ally? When she, Emma, had been a teenager, the dealers were casual—usually friends—and the drugs were benign—grass, a little hash. Now it all seemed terrifying. The drugs themselves were so dangerous, and the dealers were killers. But perhaps Amanda saw it all as simply exciting, her generation’s escape, their secret bliss.

  Passing a tall black woman in a dark coat, Emma was reminded of Rachel: she missed her. Rachel was now living in Brooklyn, where she worked as a word processor. Emma didn’t know exactly what that meant but assumed it was sort of like a secretary. Rachel seemed happy, when she called. They exchanged Christmas cards and occasional telephone calls, but Rachel almost never came into Manhattan anymore. Their friendship, their time of closeness was over. When Rachel did come into New York, it was clear that everything had changed. The person she had come to see, the person she had loved, was gone. Tess was different. She was now shy in front of this tall black woman who smiled at her with such affection.

  But right now Emma missed her: Rachel had been the only person who knew what it was like with Amanda, how bad. Loyalty to Peter kept Emma from telling her friends, and she could not tell him. She could not tell her parents, who still disapproved of her divorce, to say nothing of her remarriage and her stepdaughter. She could not tell Francie, who had herself suddenly remarried at City Hall and moved to Minneapolis so both she and her new husband, Carlos, could go into rehab. Now she was a model mother, spending all her evenings at either AA or PTA meetings. She was full of advice on parenting, talky and smug.

&
nbsp; But Rachel: Emma hadn’t had to tell Rachel about Amanda. Rachel had seen everything. Rachel had heard Amanda’s sullen answers, she had whisked the plate away when Amanda refused Emma’s food. She had looked at Emma over Amanda’s head and slowly shaken her head at Amanda’s behavior. Emma had not had to speak a disloyal word, she was wholly understood. Right now, walking down this crowded sidewalk, she wished Rachel were striding purposefully along beside her.

  The wind was chill against her face, the night was deepening around her. Emma pulled her scarf closer around her throat. How had things gotten so bad, that she was here, walking along this cold street, struggling against the passersby to keep up with this hostile child who was no kin to her?

  If she had known how bad it was going to be, would she have gone through with the second marriage? But she would never have believed how bad it would be. She couldn’t have believed it, because she had faith in herself. She’d believed she was a good person, kind and warm. She’d felt sympathy for the child, and she’d believed that she could heal the wound. Love, understanding, sympathy: these were all that was needed, and she could supply them. She had been confident in herself. And she’d been wrong.

  After a few blocks she called to Amanda. “Amanda, where shall we start? Do you want to try Chez Vous, at Seventy-sixth? They have some funny things.”

  Amanda looked back at her. “Funny?”

  “Well, you know. Amusing.” Emma waited. “If you want. It’s right near here. Or would you rather go somewhere else?”

  Amanda turned away. “No, that’s fine,” she called over her shoulder.

  Amanda wanted the whole ghastly afternoon, the sham treat, to be over. She wanted to be back at home, lying on her own bed, reading an old comic, alone. She closed her eyes, willing the trip to be over, as though by blotting out the long dark sloping avenue before her, the steady rush of car lights moving south, the grid of traffic lights extending downtown, the pedestrians pushing past them, the chill creeping inside her open jacket, Amanda could blot out her own life, the things that made up her own landscape, endless and excruciating.

  Chez Vous was small but brilliant. Its window was filled with light, and piled with luscious, whimsical objects: flowered porcelain, lace-edged pillows, beribboned bath salts, tortoiseshell picture frames. The two girls went inside, Emma behind them. The shop owner stood behind a counter.

  “Hello, good evening,” she said, smiling at them. The woman was in her fifties, not tall, with dark brown, henna-tinged hair, piled up loosely in a knot. She wore dangling earrings and glasses with big square red frames. She was plump, and her clothes were loose and woven, dull colors. Her smile was professional. “How may I help you?” she asked.

  The girls did not answer, turning away at once.

  “We’re just looking, thank you,” said Emma, smiling back at the shopkeeper. She looked down at a little table covered with a starched linen cloth. On it was an old-fashioned bureau set made from fake ivory: a round hand mirror, a soft-bristled hairbrush, a shoehorn. Emma picked up the shoehorn. Hard to imagine, now, a shoe so rigorous in its fit, that you needed this curve to gain access. Hard to imagine hair so smooth, so fine, that these yielding bristles, caramel colored, weak, would take it in charge, would have any effect at all on tangles. Nowadays people were kinder to their feet and crueler to their hair: they wore big soft-soled sneakers, and combed their hair with vicious-looking metal-toothed dog brushes. She set down the shoehorn.

  The shop owner moved in on her. “Lovely, isn’t it,” she said. “And perfect condition.”

  “Very nice,” Emma said, not meeting the woman’s eye. She drifted sideways, away. The woman smiled into space.

  Across the room Amanda and Courtney stood before a table. Amanda picked up an object and showed it to Courtney, saying something Emma could not hear. Courtney snorted with laughter and the two of them leaned against each other, giggling. The shopkeeper turned to glance at them.

  Emma moved away from the bureau set. The shop owner looked back at her, hovering. Emma gave her an oblique undirected smile, and picked up a pottery teapot in the shape of a pumpkin.

  “What about this, Amanda?” she said, holding it up.

  Amanda and Courtney turned around to look. They stared at it and said nothing.

  “Don’t you think it’s funny? And kind of sweet, I think.”

  The girls did not answer, and Emma held the teapot up in silence, twisting it in her hand as though she needed to examine every inch. “What about this for your mother, Courtney?” she said finally, brightly, looking at Courtney, smiling.

  Courtney nodded politely. “It’s nice,” she said. Amanda stared at the teapot, her face blank. There was a silence and Courtney added, “I think she has one, though.” The girls did not look at each other.

  Emma put the teapot down and turned away.

  They’re teenagers, Emma told herself. It’s no fun to shop with grownups. It’s no fun to be with grown-ups at all. This behavior isn’t aimed at me. They just don’t want to be with grown-ups. It’s their age. She looked at the flowered pot holders, the old-fashioned lace pillows mounded into a luxurious mountain, the fringed hand-woven angora wool throws in jeweled colors.

  It was a failure, of course.

  Lying awake at two o’clock in the morning, Emma had imagined it differently. She had imagined that, alone, without Peter or Tess, she and Amanda would be able to lay down their weapons, approach each other. Lying in the dark, Emma had pictured the two of them doing what Amanda and Courtney were doing: walking shoulder to shoulder, looking at things and laughing. She had imagined taking Amanda afterward for hot chocolate, the two of them sitting knee to knee in a small steamy coffee shop. She had imagined them, alone, talking, making each other laugh.

  “That’s a lovely one,” said the shop owner loudly, nodding and smiling at what Emma was holding.

  Emma looked down. She was standing over a wicker basket full of lacy white pillows, each with a cross-stitched motto. She had been picking absently through the pile. The pillow she held said, in valentine-red letters, I LOVE MY MOM.

  18

  Their car, a white Volvo station wagon, was one of the last to drive onto the ferry. There were already twenty or thirty other cars on the deck, gleaming in the late afternoon sun, set out in a tight grid like a game of metallic solitaire.

  On board, Peter turned the car around and waited. At once a grizzled ferryman advanced on them, his face red-baked from the sun, sea-grimy jeans hanging below a pendulous belly. Standing before the Volvo he raised his hands and began to direct it, like a conductor with a familiar score. His gestures were rapid, practiced: finger twirls, brisk two-handed shunts, the beckoning flap, the palm-upright halt. Peter focused only on the gesturing hands, ignoring the perilous closeness of the gleaming cars on either side. He cut, straightened, rolled forward, back, without once looking around. It was an act of faith. The Volvo, flawlessly conducted, slid neatly backward into its own slot, a perfect ten inches from its neighbors on all sides.

  Peter turned off the ignition, yanked on the hand brake and said with finality, “Okay. We’re here.” He was still in his gray business suit, wrinkled and sweaty from the trip up, but he had unbuttoned the collar of his crumpled shirt, taken off his striped silk tie and folded it into his breast pocket.

  His voice was filled with relief, and he raised his arms and stretched, as far as he could in the cramped space, though they were not really anywhere yet. They were only parked on the deck of the ferry, a forty-minute passage across the sound still ahead of them. But for Peter the real trip was over. The deadening high-speed drone of the highway was behind him. Now, as the little ferry begin to move beneath him, he felt a loosening, a lifting of his heart. The things that furnished his mind—that consumed it—at work, during the week, were gone. He was here, the damp breeze against his skin, heading out to sea.

  Peter and Emma had first come to Marten’s Island five years earlier. It was a small place, quiet, peaceful, full of
families. There were two shops and a post office. Most of the summer people were from New York, and Peter and Emma had first visited friends there, then rented their own house. Two years ago, they had bought a small piece of rising ground, inland but looking out on the ocean. Last winter they had built a modest shingled house. They had come up several times, during the winter and spring, while it was being built, but Amanda had been away at boarding school. She had never seen the house, and she had never spent a whole month with them on the island, in one of their rentals. The year before this she had gone to tennis camp, the year before that they had gone down the Snake River together, and come to Marten’s only for a week.

  For this first summer, they had rented the new house out during July, to defray the building costs. August was their first whole month in it, and Amanda would be there with them. Emma had left the magazine and was in graduate school. She would be there all the time. Peter would come up on weekends, and stay for the last two weeks, through Labor Day.

  Thinking about the new house pleased Peter. He loved so much about it, its simple lines, the bright shingles that would turn soft and various grays. He loved the interior spaces, the tall handsome windows looking out toward the water, the big stone fireplace. He felt exultant, that he was responsible for these spaces, that he had contributed this to the sum of the earth’s shelter.

  He felt buoyant and hopeful about this month with Amanda. It was true that she had been sulky for several years, but she was an adolescent. They all were like that. The dyed hair, the little row of miniature gold rings in the ear, the unsmiling face, the baggy pants that dragged on the sidewalk, those frightening black boots: they were all fads. They were required to look like this.

  He remembered the girls of his adolescence: then the look was ethereal, great spills of shining hair, hanging down bare backs, that English model with those huge wistful eyes, endless legs. Elvira Madigan: virginal and flowerlike, that was what they had been like, or trying to be. Tender glistening mouths, dewy yearning eyes, His girlfriend, Annette Stevenson, had ironed her hair to make it flat and lustrous. He’d seen her do it, in her family’s laundry room, kneeling on the linoleum, her ear pressed against the edge of the ironing board, her eyes screwed anxiously shut as she pressed the iron dangerously close to her skull. She brushed her hair out then, and it was straight. But afterward, at Singing Beach, where they sat around a fire and smoked dope, her long brown hair did just what it always did: turned soft and fuzzy in the damp air, growing a fine misty halo around her thin face.