This Is My Daughter

by Robinson, Roxana;

  He thinks of the Knickerbocker, wonders how it will feel to stay there. Wonders what the bedrooms are like. He does not know what will happen. Perhaps this is the end of his marriage. Will he be allowed to see Tess again? When she gets well, will he be allowed to see her if he and Emma divorce? He cannot imagine it. It tears at him. Will Tess know he loved her, even if he is not permitted to see her? Does Amanda know he loves her, even though he has forced her to see him?

  When they reach Sixty-second Street, he stops. “Come in with me to the Knick,” he says. “I want to see if they have a room.”

  The entrance hall is lofty, dim, cool. The pale stone staircase rises toward the reception rooms in a great neoclassical sweep, as though the entire eighteenth century waits upstairs. It’s quiet now, the big rooms are empty. Well, it’s the end of August. Most of the members are somewhere else—by the sea, in the mountains. Somewhere with lawns and porches, a silent breeze.

  Peter and Amanda come inside and stand at the desk by the coat check. The bedrooms are being renovated, Peter is told, but there is one available. He thanks them and says he’ll be back.

  Outside on the sidewalk they stand still.

  “I’m going to go home and pack,” Peter says. “But would you like to have dinner later? We could see a movie if you want. You choose.”

  Amanda hesitates. Frowning slightly, she gazes past him, down the sidewalk. He wonders if it’s over, her openness, the moment of trust between them, friendship.

  “I don’t want to see a movie,” she says. “Let’s just have dinner.”

  Peter feels his heart lift. “Lovely,” he says. “Where would you like to go? You choose.”

  Amanda frowns again. “Harry Cipriani,” she says.

  Peter laughs.

  “Why are you laughing?” she asks, her eyes anxious. “Isn’t that a good place?”

  “It’s terrific,” Peter says, still laughing. He steps forward and takes her head between his hands. He kisses her carefully on both cheeks. “You’re terrific. Shall I come pick you up or shall we meet there?”

  “There,” says Amanda. “What time?”

  “Eight o’clock,” says Peter. “See you there. And dress up. It’s fancy.”

  Her face breaks into a smile, shy and charming, nearly flirtatious. “I know that,” she says. She lifts her hand and gives her wrist a flick, her little finger raised. “Ta ta,” she says. “Pa pa.”

  His elation lasts until Peter reaches the apartment. Inside it is bleak and dead. He walks swiftly back to the bedroom. From the top of his closet he takes down a suitcase. It’s canvas, trimmed with leather and embossed with his initials. Emma gave it to him for Christmas years ago, one of their first Christmases together. It’s fraying now along the lower seams; when he’d noticed that he’d thought he’d tell Emma, so that if she wanted to replace it for Christmas, she could. Is all that over, that business of marriage, the luxury of taking affection for granted?

  He is packing for three days. By then something will be different. He will have moved back, or he will be coming back to move out for good. He moves fast, packing sloppily. He hates this. While he is setting the first layer of things in the bottom of the suitcase—running shoes, shorts, socks—the telephone rings. He stops, looking at it. He wonders if it might be Emma. She might be trying to reach him, to say she is sorry, to give him news of Tess. But she wouldn’t think he was here, right now, he thinks. It would be a call for her; he will let the machine in the library take it. He can’t face talking to someone else just now, pretending everything is all right, promising to carry a message from a friend, thanking someone for calling. He can’t do it. It had been bad enough before, doing that while he and Emma were pretending to be a team. Though, tossing one shirt after another into a pile, he thinks back to the beginning of this. Even at the scene of the accident, from the first moment of Tess’s being hurt, Emma had turned against him.

  He puts in his toilet kit, its soft leather stained with shaving cream, with water from a hundred hotel bathrooms. Emma had given this to him too. She had turned against him at once, as though she had been waiting to blame him. It seems as though she has blamed him as much as she blames Amanda. She is so angry at him he wonders now if she might have turned against him even if Amanda had had nothing to do with it. She has turned away from him and toward Tess. That’s how she sees them, him and Tess, as competitors in her life. He comes second. He doesn’t mind coming second, after a child, but he minds being a competitor. Angry, he throws clean underwear into the suitcase, on top of the shirts.

  He has married a coldhearted woman, rigid, intolerant. He looks around. What else will he need? Ties. He strides back to the closet. He wonders what they will do tonight, Emma and her parents. Wander in circles until they faint from hunger, he thinks: not one of them has ever made a restaurant reservation in their lives.

  He’ll go back to Marten’s Island for Labor Day, he decides. He’ll leave New York. Let her stay here and not speak to him. What’s the point of his staying? Unless she’ll let him see Tess. He doesn’t want to leave Tess. But perhaps she won’t let him in to see her. She would hardly look at him. Maybe he’ll take Amanda away for Labor Day. They’ll find a hotel somewhere in Maine, or on a lake in New Hampshire. He’ll take her away, and they’ll go on long walks together. They’ll find a museum: carved wooden ducks, Indian birchbark canoes. Goddamn Emma. He zips the suitcase shut and sets it on the floor.

  He sits on the unmade bed to call Harry Cipriani. As he dials he wonders if it had been Amanda, calling before. Was there a problem? He makes the reservation for eight o’clock, hangs up. He wonders what Amanda will do if her mother says she can’t come. But this new Amanda, this young woman who likes museums, would be able to deal with this, he thinks. He can imagine Caroline’s face closing and tightening at the sound of his name. Amanda cannot mention him to her mother, he supposes.

  How had her life turned out this way? No wonder she has become adept at breaking rules, sneaking out, not telling the truth. Everything she feels, she has had to conceal from one of them. They have given her no choice.

  He thinks of Tess, and the pupillary response. It’s good news, whether or not the doctor wanted to permit them to think so. It is good news, no matter whether or not it was early days. That careful little bugger, with his polished head. Peter knows it is good news. He feels a surge of hope. He wishes he’d had more time there, he wishes he could have leaned quietly over Tessie’s face and talked to her, looked deep into her eyes himself. Her brave silent eyes. That’s how it will begin, the recovery. Improvement of the pupillary response. Then she will squeeze a hand.

  He wonders about Emma’s parents. Will they have spent the afternoon there, in awkward silence? He can’t imagine Everett Kirkland sitting there hour after hour, without being the center of attention in some way. Making a fuss over something, complaining about the nurses, the doctors. And where would they stay? Emma hadn’t even told him they were coming, he’d had to drag it out of her. Rage rises again in him. She wants to cut him out of her life. It’s what she has been trying to do. She has done it. He will not prevent her.

  Peter picks up his suitcase. He feels sick at heart. He wonders if he is really leaving. More second marriages end in divorce than first ones, maybe you see it as easier the second time. The phone rings again. He stands listening to the rings, looking around the room. He is walking out, perhaps his marriage is over. He thinks of Tess’s face, he longs for her; he feels he is losing everything. He leaves as the phone is still ringing. He hears it cut off suddenly as the machine in the library picks up.

  Amanda is late, but for the first time this doesn’t bother him. Peter waits at the table, with a glass of white wine, watching the door. Harry Cipriani is glowing, bustling with black-jacketed waiters and tall blond Italian women. The surfaces are polished, the linen crisp. The pace here is faster, and has more flourishes, than in a French restaurant. Around Peter there is rapid Italian, flowing energetically through the air. />
  The door opens and a young woman comes in, wearing a black dress and a white blazer. Peter notices her because of her eyes, which are startled, anxious. Her mouth is a gash of dark red, and her eyes are heavily made up. She has short dark hair, brushed back: with a shock, he recognizes the green streak.

  “Amanda,” he says, standing up, waving. She looks around and sees him; her face lights up. He is surprised that she is so pretty.

  “Hi there,” she says, coming over.

  The waiter draws her chair out with a bow. “Signorina.”

  Amanda sits down with a small graceful flump, smiling at the waiter to thank him. She hangs her bag over the back of the chair and puts her hands in her lap, like a little girl. She sits up very straight, and looks at her father, smiling. Her skin now glows, in the candlelight. She looks radiant. He realizes that she is wearing powder, makeup; it gives him an odd thrill, pride. Her eyes are black rimmed, the lids dark and smudged, the lashes thickened. Above her eyes stretch the long cool curves of her brows. Her black dress exposes her pale throat, surprisingly broad and handsome, a lovely column rising to the shadows beneath her jaw. At the base of her neck is the modest pearl necklace Peter gave her for Christmas. She wears big pearl earrings, rimmed with gold. Her odd spiky hair stands straight up as it always has, but now, here in the candlelight, with the earrings, the makeup, the black dress, it looks jaunty, insouciant. Chic.

  She looks so different from the Amanda he knows: she looks grownup, and—even more interesting—fun. He can’t stop smiling at her, it’s like falling in love. He is touched that she has taken such trouble to get ready for this. He imagines her leaning toward the mirror, marking the long line of her upper eyelid, as he has seen Emma do. Amanda looks now so elegant, or actually, almost elegant, which is even more touching. There is the faint wobble in her high-heeled step, the slight wrinkle in the black dress. Peter is so proud of her. He beams. She’s so pretty: she will be a beauty. He has not seen this before, not been able to.

  He’s not sure what to offer her to drink. Would he be irresponsible, offering her alcohol? Would that be urging her to be an adult before she’s ready? Would he be absurd not to offer her alcohol, pretending she had never had any, was still a child?

  “I don’t know what to order you to drink,” he says candidly. It’s a relief to say this. He feels he’s gone as far as he can, deciding all these things by himself. He admits that he didn’t know how to be a father, hasn’t done much of a job. Tess’s face comes into his mind. He did what he could, and most of it seems to have been wrong. He’s quitting taking charge of everything. He’s trying a new way. “What do you think is the right thing? What would you feel happy with?”

  “I’d like one glass of white wine,” Amanda says firmly, “and some mineral water. With bubbles.” She has clearly thought about it.

  “Waiter,” Peter says, holding his hand up, pleased. Why hasn’t he thought of this before, asking her? What a relief, what a lightening of the load.

  “You look very elegant,” he says, when they’ve ordered their drinks.

  “Thanks,” she says happily.

  “I like your earrings.”

  She touches one with her fingertip, her eyes closing with delight. “Chanel,” she reveals. “Mom gave them to me.”

  There she is, curdling every conversation: Caroline. She lies between them like a deadly stream, always there, divisive, malign. Chanel earrings, he thinks, automatically critical, for a fifteen-year-old. How inappropriate.

  “What did you tell your mother you were doing?” he asks.

  Amanda sighs, and stops smiling. “I just said I was having dinner out.”

  “Didn’t she ask who with?”

  “No. I wouldn’t have told her anyway.” She looks at him directly. “Every time you say that, ‘your mother,’ you sound mean.”

  Peter says nothing for a moment. He’s tempted to deny it, but it’s probably true. His new plan is to deny nothing. “I suppose I do,” he admits. “Every time I think of her, it upsets me.”

  “Why still? You’ve been divorced for eight years.”

  “I don’t know why,” Peter says. “I suppose it’s that she’s still there. She’s living proof of my mistake. And if she’s a warm wonderful person, then how can I justify what I did? I have to make sure she’s bad, and that everyone around me knows it.”

  Amanda looks at him, considering, her brow troubled.

  “That’s not really true,” he says quickly. “Your mother isn’t bad. Don’t think I mean she is.”

  But Amanda says nothing, and he feels judgment in her gaze. I suppose this is what we fear the most, he thinks, being judged by our children. It’s why we put it off until the last possible moment, allowing them their own thoughts, their own points of view. They can turn pitilessly upon us, having seen us at our worst.

  The waiter appears, with their menus.

  “Have you been here before, Nanna?” asks Peter. He wants credit for something, he wants the upper hand again. He is her father. “The food is wonderful. And look at this announcement: ‘Patrons are respectfully requested not to use cellular telephones, because they interfere with the making of risotto.’” Peter looked up, smiling. “No one is more graceful than the Italians.”

  Amanda doesn’t smile. “I’ve been here once,” she says, and does not explain.

  Chastened, Peter does not ask. When they have ordered, Amanda leans back in her chair and looks at him again.

  “Did you know from the beginning that you and Mom wouldn’t stay together?”

  Peter thinks about it, remembering. “No, I don’t think so. Or if I did, I didn’t know I knew it. I didn’t know how you were meant to feel, so I didn’t know I didn’t feel it. Why?”

  “I just wondered,” she says. “If you knew from the beginning you wouldn’t, I wondered why you had me.”

  Peter leans forward and touches her cheek with the back of his hand. “We were married, and your mother got pregnant. It wouldn’t have occurred to either of us not to have you. And we both loved having you. We’re both glad we did.” It feels strange to say “we both” and mean him and Caroline.

  Amanda says nothing. She looks at him steadily.

  “I hope you know that,” Peter says, but he can see this is not her point. It strikes him suddenly. “Don’t say you wish we hadn’t,” he says.

  Amanda takes a sip from her white wine. “I can’t imagine that,” she says. “But it would have been easier, for me, if you hadn’t.” She speaks without self-pity; an observation. She’d have been spared misery, had they thought about it, had they been kind enough to keep her from being born.

  It’s insupportable. Peter sets down his glass and folds his hands on the table, looking at her. He feels that something has arrived, this is a moment after which everything will have to be different. It’s up to him.

  “Amanda,” he begins.

  He can’t now imagine how he felt a month ago, two weeks ago, toward his daughter. He knows it was different, he remembers feeling distant, impatient. He can’t now imagine not understanding her. How could he not have known then, as he does now, the sorrow that fills her eyes? How could he not have felt this great enfolding sympathy for her, as well as love?

  But as he begins to talk, Amanda waves her hand, as though sweeping something away. “Don’t tell me you love me again,” she says. “I know you do. At least I know you think you do, you believe it. But you don’t like me. And neither does Emma.”

  31

  After dinner, Peter takes Amanda home in a cab. At her building he gets out with her and steps under the awning to say good night. He has said all he can say to her; he doesn’t know if she believes him. He’s done what he can.

  He takes gentle hold of her by her upper arms, which are soft and surprisingly dense, forceful. He kisses her twice, once on each sweet cheek, and smells her perfume: flowery and warm. He strokes her funny spiky hair upright. The mad green streak is now lighthearted, charming. How could he have tho
ught it threatening?

  “Good night, Nanna,” he says. “I like your hair.”

  “Thanks. Good night, Dad,” she says. “Thanks for dinner. I love you.”

  He is grateful for this. “I love you,” he says.

  She walks inside, turns at the door to wave, and blows him a kiss. She disappears inside.

  His room at the Knick is on the top floor, looking north over Sixty-second Street. There is a brass bed with round knobs; at the window are long light curtains. A battered dark-stained wooden desk with one drawer stands against the wall, across from a white upholstered armchair. The room is both comforting and strange, as though he’s in the guest room of someone he doesn’t know.

  Peter undresses quickly. He wants to be in bed, in the dark, invisible. He wants this room invisible. He is in exile: his own apartment, his own life, is right across the park. He could nearly see it from this window, if he tried. He is not welcome there.

  He wonders where Emma is, after dinner with her parents. Did she go back to the apartment with them, or to the hospital? He wonders if she will think of his being here, if she will try to find him. He wonders if this is the end of his marriage.

  “Emma likes you,” he had told Amanda at dinner, but as he said it he wondered. Did Emma like Amanda? Had she ever? All he could remember now were the moments Emma had been unkind. Once in the car, when Emma let Tess sit on her lap, and told Amanda she was too big. Emma scolding only Amanda for something both girls had done. Emma making critical comments about things Caroline did. Emma looking at Peter, her lips pursed, when Amanda did something wrong, waiting for his response. The year they went to Aspen, and nine-year-old Amanda asked Emma to ski with her, and Emma refused, claiming that she had to stay with Tess. All Peter can remember now are moments like this: Emma punitive, cold, intolerant. Amanda had been a small child, how could Emma have treated her like this? And how could he have let this happen? How could he have let his daughter be mistreated?