by Amanda Stern
Before this house, and before Sallie, my dad lived in another apartment where we also shared a room, but it was our own, and had a triple bunk bed. That’s when he had a lot of different girlfriends. I can’t remember all their names. One good thing about the maid’s room, though, is that there’s a telephone in the kitchen, which I secretly use to call my mom and tell her to come get me. This is something my dad does not like about me.
Taking our picture is one of the activities we do with our dad when we go uptown. He’s a really good photographer, which is why it’s okay that he takes thousands of pictures. The ones he likes best go up on the wall. In some we’re laughing, running in a field, curled up and sleepy, or sunburned on a hotel chair. The ones with the three of us together are always the same: Kara, and Eddie with his pillow, standing loose next to each other; and then me, pressed into Kara’s side, as close to her as possible. The bump on my middle sucking-finger has grown really big. In every picture, I have to check if it’s visible. If anyone else sees it, they’ll know I suck my fingers like a baby, and I’ll be humiliated for the rest of my life.
My dad loves practical jokes. He’s not gullible like my mom. His favorite musician is Tom Lehrer, who sings funny songs about math and Jews, and his favorite prankster is Hugh Troy. My dad and Hugh Troy went to the same college. I don’t know if they knew each other. Once, Hugh Troy walked into the Waldorf Astoria with a friend, both carrying ladders and dressed like city workers. People moved out of their way as they climbed carefully to the top of their ladders and removed all the lightbulbs from the ceiling. When they were done, they folded their ladders and made their way out of the darkened hotel lobby, taking the lightbulbs with them. This story is supposed to be funny, but I always worry a little for the people stuck in the dark hotel with no way out.
When we’re on the street, or in a store, and a little kid calls out, “Mommy!” my dad yells back, “Yes?” This either scares them or makes them laugh, depending on the kid, but even if they cry and run away, my dad thinks it’s hilarious and keeps doing it. In the summers, after telling us that yes, we can go swimming, he’ll wait until we’ve jumped up and off the diving board and are in the air before yelling out—“Just don’t get wet!”
The first time he says this, I panic, paddling the air before slamming down into the cold chlorine. When I’m underwater, I know I did the wrong thing by getting wet, even though he said I could go swimming, and I worry that once my head pops out into the air, he’ll yell at me, and I’ll get spanked. In the car, he tells us we should hold our breath when we pass a cemetery if we don’t want bad luck. So we suck in all the air and hold it while our dad drives past, slowing down halfway through. We gesture, wave, and flap at him to hurry, pointing to our puffed-out cheeks, and he pretends he doesn’t understand.
“What? What’s the matter? You want me to slow down?” He slows down more.
We shake our heads no, pushing our hands to indicate hurry, pointing forward.
“Yes, I should slow down?” he asks, lifting his foot off the pedal even more, and we jump up and down in our seats until we exhale and say, “Dad, no, we wanted you to speed up.” Then he says, “Oh, why didn’t you just say so?” and hits the gas and flies past the cemetery. Bad luck forever.
I know how to make my dad laugh. I know how to make my mom laugh, too, just not the same way. My dad loves when I curse. He thinks it’s really funny, and sometimes he records me cursing. I know more curse words than anyone my age. Maybe more than people of any age. More than my grandmother Puggy, who didn’t even know the word “asshole” until I taught her. She’d never even heard it before, and I was proud that out of all her grandchildren, I was the one to teach her something, and I’m the youngest.
But even though we sometimes laugh together, I don’t feel safe at my dad’s house, because he makes fun of my worries. I know it’s a joke when my dad says that I was hatched, but it’s funny only to him. Also, I don’t understand this joke because chickens are hatched and I am not a chicken. Maybe because my hair is soft and woolly like a chickadee’s, my dad thinks I look cracked out of an egg. Or because I don’t look like Kara and Eddie as much as they look like each other. The three of us match because we’re all small and skinny, but Kara and Eddie have bright red hair—his straight, hers frizzy—and skin so white they look like brand-new lampshades. My hair is sandy blond and feels like quilt batting. My skin is olive-green in winter and honey-tan in summer, and when you put my arm next to Eddie’s or Kara’s, we look like different races. I don’t act like them either. Eddie is wild, and Kara is very grown-up and polite.
Dad took a picture of me hugging Nana, his sheepdog, which makes him laugh and say we’re siblings. I don’t think I look like a dog. Being hatched means I am not related to Kara and Eddie. It means my mother isn’t my mother, and I’m not human, which is sometimes how I feel, and now I worry my feeling of not being like everyone else isn’t as secret as I thought. The joke is saying something about me, but I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s not just my inside that’s wrong but my outside, and I never knew. Maybe it’s not that I have fuzzy hair, or that I’m little, but that I’m fuzzy and little in the wrong way. Maybe I’m not a person. I worry my dad can see something about me I don’t want anyone to see.
He doesn’t want me to be different either, which is why he tells me to eat more brussels sprouts. He says brussels sprouts make your boobs grow. Even though I like doing boy things, and I am too young for boobs, I want to make sure I get my puberty. That’s why I take extra helpings of brussels sprouts.
When we are not home, Kara is my home. She knows it, too. She might leave me out of things downtown, but at Dad’s house, she takes care of me. I follow Kara and do what she does so I can try to get things right. She is my protection. I make sure I can smell her hair because her hair smells like home.
Uptown, a weekend lasts an entire month.
Psychological Test: Thematic Apperception
“I’d like to show you some pictures.”
“Okay. I like pictures.”
“Good. I’d like you to tell me what they’re about, all right?”
“All right.”
“Here is the first picture. Can you tell me the story of what’s happening in this picture?”
“Yes, I can tell you. The dad is carrying the daughter back to her mom. The daughter is dead. She died from having to leave her mom and visit her dad. She didn’t want to go. She knew she would die if they made her leave, but they made her even when she tried to explain, even when she screamed and cried. They didn’t listen to her; they never listen to her, and so, when she got to her dad’s house she died, and he didn’t know what to do, so he brought her back to the mom who is the only person who knows how to fix her. Once the mom gets the daughter alive again, the parents apologize for not listening to her, for making her leave, which is what killed her. They promise they’ll never send her away again.”
The Underside of Perfect
Choosing the right someone to make a family with feels like trying to answer a timed test question everyone else but me can hear. Long after the sand’s run out and everyone’s gone, I’m still shouting guesses. But, just like the homeless lady on the corner, no one has ever told me how to make a family. How do you get close to someone when you’re always worried about the end when you have to continue on without them? And what happens when you actually want to be free, but your anxiety can’t let you go? All I want is to know that this is the one, this is the relationship that will work out, but that’s the information no one has.
When I turned thirty-four, the universe cracked itself open and handed me what I thought was the answer.
Since I was a kid writing plays for my mom and the garden kids, I’d wanted to be a writer. In my late twenties, I wrote a novel and got a literary agent. In my early thirties, I got a book deal. My life was going surprisingly well. But the thought of entering the literary world, where I had no footing or friends, was daunting, so I decided to create a
community where I might belong. Two months before my book came out, I started a literary event, the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, in which I challenged authors to take risks onstage and musicians to a sing-along. Every week, in a small red velvet bar in Chinatown, I invited different authors, artists, and musicians to converge and together we’d put on a show for the crowd. It wasn’t until the third year that I realized what I’d truly done—re-created the secret garden on the street side of life.
Peter was a literary agent and we’d been flirting on and off for years. After my novel came out, we found ourselves single at the same time. At first, Peter had come to Happy Ending events only when a client read, but soon he was showing up every week.
There were many arguments against dating him, including how often he flirted with me even when he wasn’t single. But he was unlike anyone else I’d dated. For starters, he wore a suit. He was old-school and masculine, and I felt protected. He walked curbside to protect me from splattering mud; rented us cars and fancy hotel rooms; took me on trips, to spas, to concerts; bought me expensive presents and dinners. He spent money like it self-replicated in his pockets. Two weeks in he told me he loved me. Two months and he moved in, called me his home, his everything, told me we were getting married, that I was perfect, made lists of our future wedding guests, noting possible venues, and named our babies. I worked hard to overlook the sexism of his romantic gestures, the speed and fury with which his affections were being thrown at me. He didn’t just sweep me off my feet, he swept me off-balance, right past the awful uncertainty of a slow and steady beginning and into a happiness that made me feel crazy. He spun me hard, and I suffered real moments of terror that he would be taken from me as quickly as he was given. No one had ever courted me that way, and I was ashamed of how much I liked it.
“Why do they say relationships take work?” he asked. “This is so easy.”
I felt slightly possessed by my love, and I was so glad I didn’t listen to my fucking gut. Stupid idiot. This guy was everything. I’d never had anyone be that attentive to me. Is this what real love feels like, off-kilter and semi-insane, or is this something beyond even that? Had we stumbled upon a love dimension no one had ever before experienced?
I’m the one, I’m the one, I’m the one. I loved hearing it. He said he’d been waiting his whole life for me. He wouldn’t stop telling me I was perfect, so I started adding “for you,” and he said, “No, you’re perfect.” Full stop. Period. This made me uneasy; I’m fond of myself, but I also know I’m the underside of perfect.
“I’m very emotional,” I said.
“I love that about you,” he told me.
“I can be very sensitive,” I added.
“My kinda girl!”
“I have a lot of anxiety. I’m in therapy. I’ve been in therapy a very long time,” I explained, not wanting to fall too far from his pedestal should he ever witness a panic attack.
“That means you have depth,” he said. “You’re the one. We’re getting married and you know it,” he said, winning the conversation.
I called everyone I knew and told them I’d found the One.
“What’s the rush?” my therapist asked.
“When you know, you know,” I told her.
“Tell me what it is you know,” she asked.
“I can’t explain it,” I said.
Peter and I talked about everything, foot to foot on the couch. I lobbed him soft test questions.
“If your partner wanted you to go to couples counseling, would you do it?”
“Of course. I’ve already done it,” he said. “It works. I’m a big believer.”
This was my guy. He was forty years old, never married, never even lived with anyone. Everyone told me that was a red flag, but I broke the mold; he told me that himself. “I’ve been waiting forty years for you,” he said. “I never thought I’d find you, but here you are.”
We nested, and ordered in every night and watched movies. We barely left, got fat, and suddenly it was winter, nearly Christmas, when he said, “Let’s dress up and go shopping on Fifth Avenue.” He took me to Tiffany, Cartier, and Harry Winston, asking me to show him what I liked. Were we ring shopping?
“What about that one?” he asked, pointing to a diamond engagement ring. Holy shit. He was going to propose to me on Christmas. He didn’t know my style, so I took him downtown and chose a more bohemian-looking ring from a store called Fragments.
Everything was in fast-forward, skipping over the discomfort of getting to know someone else and deciding, at a more natural pace, whether you even liked them—thank God. Even if my therapist said Peter seemed to talk out both sides of his mouth and my gut was jazz-handing for my attention, I ignored both, seduced by his promises of certainty and security.
I’ve only ever experienced the world with my body, but growing up I was told my experience wasn’t true, that the world was safe and nothing bad would happen, that my feelings were a learning disability. I was conditioned to trust people older than me, especially those in authority, to believe what people said at the expense of my intuition, actions be damned.
At Christmas, there was no ring. Instead he gave me a laptop, which made me uncomfortable because it was so expensive. As I studied my new computer, I sensed an old, familiar feeling. A tightening below my rib cage warned me I was entering Deep Countdown, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. My body had more to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear what it had to say. I wanted to make a joke. I wanted to say, this laptop isn’t my ring size. Instead, I thanked him, and I installed everything I could get my hands on, overstuffing my computer with information, making it eat its emotions in megabytes.
It was springtime and we’d barely left the house, but I felt ready to advance from nesting. I wanted to go outside. I made plans for us to see my friends, ignoring my vibrating worry when he seemed put out. We met my friends at a bar and he was rude and silent the entire night. I fought off the prickling heat until at home he said, “Well, that was three hours of my life I’ll never get back.” I wrote my friends apology emails. What happened to the charming guy from a month ago?
On my thirty-fifth birthday Peter lifted a black velvet box from a Fragments bag and placed it on the bed. Oh my God, I’m getting married. I’m going to have a family. We’ll make friends with other couples, and their babies, and join playgroups and throw pirate-themed birthday parties. Here I am, getting what I thought I’d have to trick someone into giving me. This is actually happening and I thought it never would. I’m not defective. He sat down next to me on the bed.
“Holy shit,” I said, and looked at him.
“Open it,” he said, smiling.
As I pulled the lid off the box, he said, quickly, “It’s not what you think it is.”
Inside was a silver necklace shaped like a crescent moon. Not what you think it is.
“Do you like it?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, confused. Something is wrong with this picture. Can you tell me what’s funny about it? Can you tell me what’s missing? Heat had concentrated itself in my face. He said one thing but did another.
“Should I read into this?” he asked when I exchanged the necklace for something else.
“Should I read into it?” I asked.
“I’m not ready yet,” he said.
“But…you were ready months ago,” I said.
“That was the beginning.”
“So?”
“In the beginning people say things they don’t mean,” he told me.
Was it possible I fell in love with someone I didn’t even like? We never went out unless it was with people who could advance his career. His clichés and aphorisms made him sound dated. He was forty years old, but he still talked about high school. I worried I’d heard everything he had to say. Middle Countdown washed over me.
He drove me to and from my reading series, which I had to host even when it was hard to get out of bed. When I wanted to go alone, he insisted on bringing me
. I was not allowed to say no. Like being uptown, there was always something I was doing wrong. I have bad allergies, and one day he stormed down the hall of our apartment, stared at me, enraged, and asked, “Do you need a tissue? You’re sniffling.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Just blow your nose.”
We went to a movie, and when we got there, we discovered it had started a half an hour earlier. He was infuriated.
“What’s the big deal? You got the time wrong. We’ll see the next one.”
He spun on me. “I love how you just automatically blame me. I’m not the one who got it wrong; the newspaper printed the wrong time. Do you think so little of me that I can’t even get the time right?”
“I…I’m not blaming you.”
“Well, you’re blaming someone, and it sure isn’t the paper,” he said, storming home.
When I eventually admitted to him that I felt like I was walking on eggshells, he exploded at me.
I said, “I think we should go to couples counseling.”
“No fucking way.”
I felt kicked off reality. “Why not?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in it,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
I woke up every night at 3 a.m. and couldn’t breathe. I was in Shallow Countdown. I had to get out of this relationship, but I didn’t know how. I only know how to avoid what I’m afraid of by staying. Leaving is death. I couldn’t get out of bed.
Or stop crying.
Or staring at the wall.