This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  “It’s the last one for the summer,” Emma said. He was here now until Labor Day. She patted his leg. She felt happy: maybe everything would be all right, now Peter was back. “I’m glad you’re staying.” She did not add, “to take charge of Amanda.”

  But Peter heard it. “You’ve had everything on your shoulders,” he said at once. He patted her leg. “You’ve been great.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Emma said uncomfortably, knowing she had not. “I’m glad you’re here now.”

  Their car was part of a slow vehicular mass, all converging on the exit at the far end of the parking lot.

  “Tell me what’s been going on,” Peter said.

  “Not much,” said Emma. “Carol Morris told me she supports Bush.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “I guess I just assume that women will be Democrats,” Emma said.

  “Even I couldn’t vote for Bush,” he said. “The convention was sickening. Not that I think Clinton is a whole lot better.”

  “I know,” Emma said. “He’s so obviously unprincipled.” Those badboy blue eyes, that self-consciously charming smile. The awful blow-dried hair, like a dentist. “He has that ‘come on, honey,’ look. But he’s still better than Bush. He’s pro-choice, and he’s better for poor people and the environment.”

  “Did you tell Carol that?”

  “She says he’s going to ruin the economy. She says it like that, ‘Oh, Clinton’s going to ruin the economy.’ I don’t think Carol knows anything about the economy. I think that’s what she hears Ted say.”

  Emma looked at Peter, waiting for him to laugh with her, but he looked out the window.

  “Just because the people here are Republicans,” he said, “it doesn’t mean it’s a terrible place. You’re so intolerant, Emma.”

  “I am not,” Emma said. “I don’t think all Republicans are terrible. I like you, for example.”

  “Thank you,” said Peter. His mouth was still tight.

  “Peter, that was just an idle comment,” Emma said. “I like it here. I like my friends here. You don’t have to defend Marten’s to me, you know.”

  “It was my idea to come here,” Peter said. “If you make fun of it, I’m unhappy.”

  “I agreed to come. And now I like it. We’re here together.”

  He looked at her. “I hope so,” he said.

  “Everything is not on your shoulders,” she said. “You feel responsible for everything. You take on too much.” She stroked the back of his head, and after a moment he yielded, leaning his head toward her palm.

  “On the train I was planning things we could do together, these two weeks,” Peter said. “I thought we could play family tennis, doubles. What do you think?” He looked at her hopefully.

  “Fine,” Emma said. “Let’s.” She wondered what Amanda would say.

  “Will Tess be up for it, do you think?”

  “Tess will be fine about it. She’s not a star, but she’s a trouper. She’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Peter, encouraged. “Amanda ought to be pretty good by now, after all these clinics. Actually, she was always pretty good. She always walloped the ball.”

  Emma glanced at him: this happened every Friday. In New York all week, away from Amanda, Peter created in his mind another daughter. He was thinking now of that longed-for child: how good she was at tennis, how much fun it was to be with her, how sweet she was at being a daughter, how loving she was.

  A car slid up next to them: the Morrises. Ted was in the passenger seat, and Emma smiled, lifting her hand. Ted waved back energetically. His tortoiseshell glasses slid down his nose as he smiled, and he pushed them up sloppily with his middle finger, the other fingers splayed across his face.

  “There’s Ted Morris,” Emma said.

  “I saw him on the train,” Peter said, not turning. “He’s got some terrible deal he wants me to look at.” Peter thought Ted was a fool.

  To make up for Peter, Emma smiled again at Ted. Past him was Carol’s profile, her chin high and firm.

  “Carol won’t let Ted’s daughter come to Marten’s. She’s too difficult.” Emma spoke without turning. “She says Ted can see her in New York.”

  “Nice of her,” Peter said.

  “She says Ted didn’t like it, but he’d learned to live with it.”

  “Aren’t I lucky,” Peter said, looking at Emma. “Is that what you want me to say?”

  Emma said nothing.

  “Well, it’s true, I am,” Peter said. “I know you wouldn’t ever do that.” He leaned back, stretching his neck. “Ahh. I’m looking forward to these two weeks. It’s the first time we’ll all have spent any time together in the new house.” Emma heard in his voice his anticipation. He saw them all happy there.

  They had reached the mouth of the parking lot and passed through it. Now they were in a line of cars, winding slowly in single file along the narrow road, under a canopy of trees.

  “One other thing that happened,” Emma said carefully. “Amanda and I had a discussion at breakfast.” She paused. “It got rather heated, I’m afraid.” As soon as she had spoken she regretted it. It was a poor moment to tell Peter this. But she was driven by guilt: not telling at once made her feel as though she were concealing what had happened, lying by omission.

  Peter did not answer.

  “She got upset,” said Emma.

  Peter waited. The line of cars moved ceremonially along the road.

  “It was about coffee,” Emma said. “Whether she should be allowed to drink it when she’s here. I think she’s too young for it. Apparently she’s allowed to have it at home.”

  Peter looked out the car window.

  “At fifteen,” Emma said.

  Peter turned to her. “I know how old Amanda is,” he said.

  Emma looked straight ahead.

  They did not speak again until they were home. Emma jogged up the steps without looking back, and held the screen door for Peter without turning.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” said Emma, still not looking at him. The girls were upstairs. She went straight to the kitchen and listened to Peter slowly mounting the stairs. She had gotten everything ready before she left, and now she took from the refrigerator the covered bowl of sliced vegetables, the bag of washed feathery greens, the pale blubbery slabs of swordfish.

  When Peter came down, he was showered and changed, still angry.

  “How do you think it makes me feel when you say things like that?” he asked. He opened the refrigerator and stood before the cold glowing interior, staring into it. “Do you think I want to hear about how badly Caroline has brought Amanda up?”

  “Is that what you think?” asked Emma. “That Caroline has brought Amanda up badly?” It gave her a thrill to say this.

  “Don’t ask me,” Peter said, “to criticize the mother of my daughter.” He took out a bottle of white wine and set it loudly on the counter. “But if Caroline is doing a bad job, I can do nothing about it. Do you understand that? Caroline makes the decisions. She has custody. She pays no attention to what I say.”

  Emma said nothing. She was standing in front of the stove. In one pot was rice, in another a summer stew: glistening strips of peppers—gray-green, yellow, deep red—and slivers of translucent onion. Below the pots trembled low blue circles of flame. The rice simmered beneath its lid, the vegetables were slowly approaching a hiccupping boil.

  “But even if Caroline did listen to me, that’s not what you want,” Peter went on. He set the corkscrew onto the neck of the bottle. “You want Caroline to listen to you. You want her to take your advice about coffee, not mine.”

  “But you don’t think Amanda should drink coffee?” Emma asked. “At fifteen?”

  “How should I know when Amanda should drink coffee? I don’t give a damn when she drinks it,” Peter said angrily. He screwed the cork violently out of the bottle. “I think there are more important things to argue about.”

&nb
sp; The rice, suddenly, boiled over. Water foamed furiously under the lid, hissing and steaming. As Emma slid the pot off the burner the broth slopped down the side, sizzling against the stainless steel.

  “Of course there are more important things than coffee,” said Emma, angry now herself, and flustered by the rice. “It’s just an example: Amanda has no rules. She’s allowed anything she wants.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Peter said. His voice was loud and angry. “Or maybe Caroline has her own rules, ones you don’t know about. But in any case, please stop complaining to me about it. I can do nothing. Just as Warren can do nothing about how you bring up Tess.”

  “I listen to Warren about Tess,” said Emma.

  Peter made a skeptical sound in his nose. He banged open a cupboard door and took out two wineglasses.

  Emma put down her spoon and turned to face him.

  “Peter, who am I supposed to be, with Amanda? Am I meant to be the mother? Am I meant to be in charge, here in my house?” Emma paused. Her own voice rose. “I’m not in charge. I have no authority over Amanda, she won’t permit it. If I say, ‘Don’t put your shoes on the bedspread,’ she puts her shoes on the bedspread. If I say ‘You shouldn’t have coffee,’ she says, ‘Then I won’t have breakfast,’ and she walks out the door. Everything here is temporary for her: she doesn’t care. She’s just killing time, she’s waiting to go home. I’ve never had much control over her, and now I have none. Now I feel how precarious everything is. At any moment she may blow everything up.”

  “You’re just feeling sorry for yourself,” Peter said.

  “Maybe I am,” Emma said. “But I’ve tried feeling sorry for her for years, and it doesn’t help. The only way I can think to help her is to be a mother to her, and neither you nor she will let me do that.”

  There was silence. They stood looking at each other.

  When they had arrived from the ferry, there was still light in the fading evening. The windows had revealed shadowy trees, the darkening lawn, the mysterious descending undulations of the distant golf course. Now the evening was over, and the summer dark was settling heavily around the house. Through the broad kitchen archway, the big dining room windows were gray and opaque. They had become ghostly mirrors, reflecting the bright colors of the interior in pallid grisaille. Outside, the damp night air pressed against the panes.

  “What do you want me to say?” Peter asked, his voice quieter, but not friendly. “I can’t control any of you. Do you want me to say I wish Caroline were more strict? I do. And I wish you were less strict. I wish Amanda were less resentful. I wish she were happy here with you. I wish you were happy here with her. I wish you loved her.” He laughed suddenly, unhappily. “Christ, I wish you liked her.”

  “Don’t try to blackmail me,” Emma said, in a fury. “Don’t you try to bully me into feeling the way you want me to feel. I can’t control how I feel. I can control what I do, but not what I feel. Don’t do this to me. I never did it to you.”

  “Don’t you tell me that my daughter feels being here with me is temporary, and that she hates it,” Peter answered.

  “When have you ever given her a choice?” Emma asked. “You’ve never given either one of us a choice, a chance to decide for ourselves what we’d like. You’ve forced us on each other from the beginning. You’ve forced us to do what you wanted us to do, and now you’re trying to force us to feel how you want us to feel.”

  “Don’t hide your behavior behind mine. Don’t pretend that I’m to blame for what you’ve done,” Peter said. He had picked up the wine bottle to pour it, but now stood holding it in the air, gripping the neck of it, as though he could strangle it. “And don’t try to tell me that you’ve tried to be a mother to Amanda.”

  Emma did not answer.

  “This is the worst thing in my life,” Peter said. His voice was terrible, now, filled with grief. “You and Amanda.”

  The stew had just begun sloppily to boil, and Emma turned back to it. She stood over it, thrusting the spoon against the dead weight of the vegetables, their slithery mass. The heat now rose from the big iron stove in dense, suffocating waves. It was hard for her to breathe.

  22

  The four big windows were wide open, and the sweet night air moved freely through the bedroom, filling the space of it. Earlier the room had been shelter, enclosed and private, filled with lamplight and conversation. It had been transformed. Now, in the silent dark, the windows wide, it was as though the walls had dissolved, and the room was opened up to the night. Now it seemed a part of something larger. Now the room was an open space in the midst of the grand passage of the cool nocturnal wind, sweeping across the body of the small island before it moved beyond the land and, out over the water, rising, into the slow movement of the upper airs, lifting across the spaces of the night sky, shifting and tingling above the silent ocean.

  Emma became aware that she was awake. The room was dark. There was no sound. Peter lay next to her, asleep. She heard his slow quiet breaths. Her eyes, she found, were open, and she lay still. She was waiting for something. She could see the muted glow from her tiny clock on the bedside table, its private illumination: the radiant numbers announced three-fourteen. Beyond the bedside table, the curtains shifted faintly.

  Emma listened; she felt the cool drift against her face. Outside, the trees moved slightly in the night air. There was another sound, something else. Someone was in the room with them. Emma raised her head, trying to see. A darkened patch hovered next to the bed.

  “Tess?” Emma whispered.

  The patch nodded. Emma pulled back the covers and slid over toward Peter. Her gesture drew a swirl of cold air into the cave of warmth beneath the covers. Tess climbed in, and Emma pulled the covers down again, close. Tess curled tightly inside the curve of her mother, drawing up her cold feet, huddling hard against Emma. Emma felt the bony ripple of Tess’s spine against her own front. Tess no longer fit neatly against Emma as she had as a child; her torso was beginning to lengthen toward adulthood.

  Emma whispered into Tess’s ear. “Did you have a bad dream?” She mouthed the words, her voice a faint thread of sound. She was afraid of waking Peter.

  Against her face Emma felt Tess’s nod. Emma said nothing, but folded herself more tightly around the child. She heard the faint words.

  “Rabbit dog,” Tess whispered. She shivered.

  Emma hugged her again. What was a rabbit dog? she wondered. A mix, half dog, half rabbit? Or a dog bred for killing rabbits? Was there such a thing? Some kind of terrier? A rabbit dog. She rubbed Tess’s forearm, slowly, soothingly. But Tess stayed tense, her limbs taut. From time to time she shivered, and then Emma kissed the back of her head, and hugged her more closely. The top of Tess’s hard head was her chin, strands of Tess’s fine dry hair lifting against her face. Finally Tess’s trembling ceased, and Emma began herself to tilt slowly toward sleep. Rabbit dog? It was not until sleep was partly upon her, not until she found herself, confusingly, in two places at once—a chaotic picnic on a hillside somewhere, under dark skies, and also here, in bed, against her pillows—that the word drifted into her mind, suddenly clear: rabid. Rabid dog.

  In the morning, Emma woke to daylight. Tess, beside her, was stretched out, her limbs now loose and sprawling. Behind her Emma could feel Peter, awake and disapproving. His body touched hers nowhere. Emma lay still. Peter sat up, then went into the bathroom.

  Emma picked up Tess, still sleeping, and carried her back to her own bed. Tess’s room was no longer frightening. It was day-safe; the sun glowed boldly around the edges of the window shades. When Tess woke again, alone, she would not be afraid.

  In her room, Emma shut the door quietly behind her and sat down on the bed to wait for Peter. He emerged, shaved and clean. His face shone with dampness. His hair lay in cold wet furrows. He was naked, his pale pelt glistened across his chest, down his flat belly, down to the fat slack curl, dangling over the jostling pink pouch. Emma averted her eyes. Ordinarily it seemed unkind, unfai
r, to look when everything was so limp. Now, when Peter was angry, it seemed dangerous to look, bad luck somehow. Peter strode to his bureau, his heels thudding on the wooden floor. Loudly he opened and shut the drawers, his movements brusque.

  He spoke with his back to her. “She’s too old for that, you know,” he said.

  “I know you think so,” said Emma.

  “I do think so,” Peter said forcefully. He shut a drawer hard.

  “I know,” Emma repeated.

  “I see,” said Peter, turning around. “You know how I feel, but you ignore it.”

  “I know how you feel,” Emma said, “but I disagree with you.”

  “I see. And when we disagree, we do what you want. Is that it?”

  “No,” said Emma. “Not always.”

  “She only does it because she’s allowed to,” Peter said.

  “She hasn’t done it in a long time,” said Emma.

  “She’ll go on doing it as long as you let her. You have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “I don’t think you draw the line across fear,” Emma said. “I think that if a child is frightened you comfort her.”

  Peter rolled up his sleeves fastidiously. “It’s a question of discipline,” he said. He left the room.

  Emma went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her, closing herself off from Peter’s disapproval. She felt the burden of his dislike, the familiar fear that it would turn against her daughter. She stood before the mirror in her crumpled lavender cotton nightgown. She stared at her thin neck. Her hair was wild from sleep. There were bluish shadows beneath her eyes, and a frown line between her eyebrows.

  She turned on the water and took her toothbrush from the glass. A line of anxiety ran down inside her, like a ribbon unrolling, glittering, rapid.

  At breakfast Peter did not speak to her. He was sitting at the table when Emma came down, eating his grapefruit. Without comment he finished it and carried his plate to the sink, stepping carefully past her, drawing politely back so she could move by. He made himself real coffee, and sat down with the paper. He did not look at her. Emma made herself toast and instant coffee and carried it into the living room to eat. When the girls came downstairs, Peter and Emma looked up and smiled. They became animated, each talking cheerfully to the girls, though not to each other.