by K. C. Maher
Sterling had a theory about the apex of girlhood, which she shared with me now. She’d seen her friends’ daughters undergo an astonishing transformation during preadolescence. Before puberty, she said, some girls, not all, suddenly possess a striking, evanescent beauty, although for a lucky few, it can last most of their lives. At their peak, many girls also discover an intellectual acuity, with accelerating thought patterns. The apex of girlhood, she said, gives them tremendous physical allure and mental agility—right before the arduous trek of adolescence. Their hair sweeps over their guileless faces with a foreshadowing of womanhood. Their eyes burn vividly as their curiosity (if nothing else) becomes aroused. Their gestures and motions become distinctly feminine. Their gorgeous complexions (not a spot of acne yet) and confidence are compelling.
I pulled her closer to me and positioned her head against my chest. ‘Why haven’t I ever heard about the apex of girlhood?’
Possibly, she said, because nobody else talked about it. When she did, people sometimes looked at her as if she’d brought up an ugly taboo. ‘But it’s nothing like that.’
Sterling pulled away to look at me. She saw this metamorphosis occurring in both Olivia and Amanda.
‘Was it like that for you?’
She kissed the palm of my hand and gazed down. ‘It didn’t happen like that for me. Remember? Fat girl.’
‘So you became beautiful later.’
‘We’re not talking about me.’
Sterling wanted us to be alert to Olivia and Amanda’s transformation. Because, she said, if she noticed this burst of feminine prowess—imagine how men would react.
A figure appeared in the doorway. ‘You’re not allowed in there. Come with me.’
We stood and saw that it was Allison Wright, the organ player. ‘Walter, Sterling?’ she said. ‘I thought you were kids sneaking up here.’
‘Were we noisy?’
‘Enough so that I knew you were here. But you’re right. Kids would have banged the bench.’
We hurried home. Inside, Sterling said she was tired and poured herself a goblet of wine, while I started the car to fetch the girls.
Summer 2013
When the days grew longer and warmer, I registered the next progressive loosening of the once tightly wound coil that held Sterling and me together: I overheard Nina Malloy ask her if she thought Kevin was attractive.
‘Don’t you?’ Sterling asked.
In and of itself, this wasn’t surprising. Kevin Dalton was attractive. Sturdy and ruddy, he had an outgoing, friendly personality that must have seemed fun compared to mine. I didn’t blame Sterling. Our relationship wasn’t built for sweeping passion. As long as she was in our bed at night and responsive to me, I wasn’t going to overreact to a temporary flirtation.
One night in August, right before the girls started seventh grade, I got off the 9:40 Hudson Line and saw Amanda across the street, her long legs straddling her rusty second-hand bicycle. Under the streetlamp, she waved at me. I crossed the street.
‘Hi Amanda, what you are doing?’
‘This summer? I’m helping out at the Y.’
‘No, I mean now.’
‘Olivia and I were riding bikes but then she got invited to hang out with a bunch of eighth graders.’
‘Didn’t you feel like going?’
‘I wasn’t invited, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway.’
‘Would you like a ride home?’ She nodded, and I said, ‘Here, let me put your bike in the trunk.’
‘Did you see the ring around the moon?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘It’s huge in circumference but skinny and red.’
‘Ice or dust refraction,’ I said, closing the Mazda’s trunk. ‘Will you show me?’
‘What?’
‘The moon, when we get home.’
She nodded.
Driving up Main Street, we saw Sterling and Kevin drinking outside the Italian restaurant. I beeped the horn and Amanda waved.
Christmas 2013
Sterling and I had both noticed that Amanda’s mother was showing up for fewer visits than usual. By Sterling’s count she had been present with her daughter for fewer than ten days all year. So when Amanda told us that her mother had set aside extra time to spend with her during the winter break, Sterling decided to invite them to Christmas dinner.
‘The girls aren’t close at the moment,’ she told me later, ‘but really that’s even more reason for me to have a word with Amanda’s mother.’
At first, I wasn’t sure what Sterling meant by ‘the girls aren’t close.’ But on second thought, I realized that Olivia hadn’t mentioned her friend for a while. In any case, I was relieved that Sterling intended to speak with Cheryl Jonette. For as often as I cringed at Sterling’s suburban persona, she continued to speak her mind.
We listened for the Jeep Wrangler starting up the hill and when it eased into the driveway, Sterling stood waiting in front of the garage, her hands on her hips. Cheryl emerged, looking unkempt. I watched them talking and, when Sterling returned, asked what happened.
‘I invited her to four o’clock dinner along with Amanda. But the woman swore her schedule made any get-together impossible. I said, “Name the day and time. Breakfast, lunch, a nice glass of water if that’s the best you can do. Five minutes to celebrate the season with our daughters.” But she claimed it wasn’t doable. She’s home for the morning to celebrate Christmas with Amanda, the morning being the important part. When they open presents. Then she’s meeting her boss, who is also apparently her unofficial fiancé, whom she’s decided Amanda shouldn’t meet until he makes it official.’
Sterling had been leading me upstairs as she recounted all this. Her voice low, she said, ‘I came this close to telling that bitch that it takes more than occasional visits to be a mother!’
Between our room and Olivia’s, I kissed Sterling seriously. ‘I loved your no-nonsense attitude from the moment I met you.’
*
At four, Amanda arrived bearing gifts. For Sterling, a set of gold beaded napkin rings, which she had made at school.
‘They’re perfect,’ Sterling said, leading her into the dining room. ‘Look how well they go with the china.’
And for Olivia, a big dark-red velvet bow. ‘Headband or a neck tie,’ Amanda said. ‘Your choice.’
‘Yeah? Cheryl just gave this to you, didn’t she? It’s your Christmas present.’
Amanda dipped her head. Her hair had become tawny that year, rich and lustrous, every strand a different shade of rose gold.
‘I didn’t think you’d mind me re-gifting it,’ she said, ‘because it will look so much better on you.’
‘You got that right.’ Olivia wrapped it around her black curls—and Sterling grabbed her elbow and hauled her from the room.
Amanda handed me a small gift-wrapped box. Inside was a three-inch-long Swiss Army knife, two blades.
I laughed, I was so pleased. ‘Every man should have one of these.’
Sterling returned and said, ‘Please excuse Olivia. She’s staying in her room until dinner. And if she’s rude to you again, she’s not going to Madison’s slumber party tonight.’
‘Oh no,’ Amanda said, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘You can’t make her be my friend.’
‘She’s not allowed to be mean,’ Sterling said.
‘She’s not mean. She has some new friends, that’s all.’
‘The cool kids are nobody’s friend.’ Sterling took me aside. ‘Watch a movie with her while I finish cooking.’
In the TV room, I looked for the complete DVD sets Olivia had unwrapped just hours before. I picked one plastic case from each box. When I glanced up, Amanda was tiptoeing toward me. ‘Something from the Harry Potter series or one of the Twilights?’
‘Which do you like?’ she asked.
‘To be honest, I tend to like vampires better than boy wizards. But I believe Twilight’s a love story, so it might be kind of sick.’
�
��Every love story’s sick,’ Amanda said. ‘And why even have vampires except for especially sick love stories?’
I smiled, thoroughly enchanted. ‘In real life, love stories aren’t necessarily sick. Some might be, but most are not.’
‘Depends,’ Amanda said, ‘on who you are and what makes you sick.’
I smiled at this, suppressing a laugh.
The movie I’d selected was New Moon, which Amanda said was the second in the saga and better than the first.
I sat back, sipping Dewar’s. Sterling appeared with an icy long-stemmed champagne glass for Amanda, which she carefully filled with sparkling grape juice bottled like champagne.
Amanda stood still, tasting it. I watched her take two delicate sips before forcing my eyes back to the screen. Then she set the glass down, twirled through the room, and mock-stumbled, landing on her stomach. Her elbows on the rug, chin in her hands, she crossed and uncrossed her ankles, her pink socks worn through at the heels. She glanced over her shoulder at me, before losing my interest (not a chance, but she didn’t know that). A minute later, Amanda rose in a graceful column to drink her ‘champagne.’
‘Whoa,’ in a squeaky, high voice, she said, ‘the bubbles are filled with helium! They tickle my nose.’ Setting the glass on its coaster, she spun and stumbled again, but this time sat up, facing me. ‘I’m so happy I feel like I must be drunk.’
Soon Sterling called us to the table. Olivia stomped downstairs wearing a long filmy skirt, Doc Marten boots, a cropped denim jacket, and the hair bow set at a jaunty angle.
Sterling lit candles throughout the dining room. At each place setting was a last present: braided leather bracelets for the girls; a rare translation of Dante’s poems to Beatrice for me. And for Sterling, the red gloves Santa forgot to put under the tree.
I sliced rosy roast beef. Sterling passed a platter of twice-baked potatoes and tried making conversation. Olivia answered in monosyllables. Amanda answered shyly.
What had happened to their private language?
Olivia pushed her salad away. ‘I hate this.’
‘I love it,’ Amanda said. She’d never tasted ‘on-deev’ before.
Sterling offered no dessert, although yesterday I had stood in line to buy little lemon tarts. Olivia slumped in her chair and Sterling asked, ‘Are you packed and ready? Because in another ten minutes, I might not allow you to go.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
Sterling asked, ‘Are you ready, Amanda?’
Turned out, Amanda hadn’t been invited to the slumber party. Sterling and I looked at each other, equally disturbed. But Amanda, apparently, didn’t mind. She told us she wasn’t friends with Madison and offered to clear the table.
Driving Olivia to Madison’s house, I was stupid enough to ask if she and Amanda had grown apart.
‘What does that mean, Daddy, “grown apart”? I fit in with this group and Amanda doesn’t.’
By the time I returned, Amanda had gone.
Sterling and I sat at the bay window, eating lemon tarts. She said, ‘They’re mean at this age. But if it doesn’t last long, they learn to be friends who really talk to each other, as opposed to the typical male friendship, which consists of fantasy football.’
The real meanie, Sterling said, was Amanda’s mother. ‘Why can’t that woman buy her gorgeous child a pair of skinny jeans? Of course, that would involve taking the girl shopping.’
‘Skinny jeans?’
‘Amanda doesn’t have the right clothes. And among seventh-grade girls in Westchester, wearing the right—ridiculously expensive—clothes is everything.’
‘Olivia wasn’t wearing jeans.’
‘That’s beside the point,’ Sterling said. ‘All Amanda needs is skinny jeans and a pair of slouchy boots.’
I kissed the inside of Sterling’s wrist. ‘How did you find those Dante poems?’
‘Amazon. Secondhand.’
I was halfway upstairs when she called, ‘Walter? No meddling!’
‘Don’t worry.’
I stood at our bedroom window and gazed at the light from Amanda’s room spilling onto the asphalt between our houses.
Seven
New Year’s 2014
Sterling said she wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve only with me, no one else. Olivia had just announced she was invited to a sleepover by a girl whose parents Sterling knew from the country club—big money on big display.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Sterling? I would have booked a suite in the city. You know what? I’ll get us a reservation off someone’s last-minute cancellation.’ Early in our marriage, we used to ring in the New Year by hiring an overnight babysitter and going out for dinner and dancing. Near dawn, we would shake the glitter from our hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s just spend a quiet evening at home.’
While waiting for Olivia to get ready for the slumber party, I asked what Kevin Dalton was doing for New Year’s.
‘Visiting his brother in Waterville, Maine.’
‘Is he the reason you didn’t mention New Year’s sooner?’
A bit sharply, Sterling said that she had mentioned it—sooner.
I told her then, as I had before, that while I wasn’t happy about her spending so much time with Kevin, I trusted her to do as she liked.
What she liked, she said, was snuggling next to me on New Year’s Eve.
On the way to a multi-tiered granite mansion, Olivia chatted happily about the sleepover. Everyone at school had been texting about it. She hadn’t been invited until today, but wasn’t worried. Someone would ask if she was coming and Melissa would immediately invite her—which is exactly what happened. So, Olivia had put together the perfect outfits and had even brought two packs of gold-foil cardboard tiaras, which were either fun or stupid. ‘TBD before midnight.’
‘I’m sure they’re fun, Olivia—at a New Year’s Eve party.’
Returning, I backed into the garage and noticed Amanda’s light shining in her bedroom. Sterling was waiting for me in a red velvet dressing gown. She had ice-cold Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label ready to open.
She didn’t listen to music at home, normally, but had given me a box of re-mastered John Coltrane CDs for Christmas. Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and McCoy Tyner filled the room with On Green Dolphin Street.
We sat on the couch, sipping the champagne. Apropos of nothing, Sterling wondered if we had planted in Olivia seeds of jealousy against Amanda. How many times had we praised Amanda’s spirit and sense of fair play, her natural beauty, and her unwillingness to complain—without thinking to compliment Olivia as well?
Soon we returned to the kitchen so Sterling could refill her glass. When she was drinking freely, I held back, not that I ever drank very much. But Sterling loved to drink. It made her feel fun and free. She didn’t care if she slurred her words, talked too loud, and laughed even louder. Perhaps if I drank to keep up with her, I wouldn’t care. But if she was getting drunk, I wanted to be sober enough to drive, in case of emergency. She drank a second glass standing up and, after pouring a third, sank heavily into her place at the kitchen table. We stared through the bay window at Amanda’s house.
Seeing the light on in her bedroom, I recalled the New Year’s I was twelve and alone at Exeter. All the other kids were home for winter break. My sister had died the year before and, as always, my parents were traveling. I had sat at my desk, studying mathematical conjectures and the history of zeta functions where non-trivial zeroes were real and trivial zeroes were imaginary. I had spoken out loud just to hear my voice, which sounded muffled. And I wondered if I was non-trivial or trivial.
Sterling guzzled her champagne and regretted the few times she’d mentioned ‘Daddy’s Amanda fixation’ to Olivia.
‘Christ! If you think that, Sterling, why didn’t you tell me instead of her?’
‘But I have told you—often. Of course, I should have kept it to myself. One, because you’re not exactly fixated. And two, if you were ever to hide your fondness f
or Amanda, she would lose the only affection she gets.’
‘‘‘The only affection she gets?” Where do you come up with this stuff?’
‘From Olivia. She always used to say, “Imagine how lonely Amanda must feel.” So, I did imagine it, and I told her that anyone in Amanda’s position would need a father figure. That probably ruined their friendship then and there.’
So, Sterling and Olivia had seen through me. I hadn’t realized anything showed. Had I known they would notice how Amanda beguiled me, I would have tried harder to hide it.
Sterling leaned across the table to stick her face right in front of mine. ‘Amanda idolizes you, Walter. She seeks and needs your approval. When she and Olivia make up, as I’m sure they will, you must continue being the one grown-up man Amanda can trust.’
‘She does not idolize me.’
‘She adores you. And you know it! To my mind, if Olivia’s jealous, too bad. Amanda needs more attention and Olivia would benefit from less.’
It didn’t occur to me then, but if I had paid as much attention to Sterling as I did to the girls, I would have asked my wife if, growing up, she sometimes felt left out. I had the impression her father had worshipped Kaye. I knew he had taught Sterling to think for herself, and he had been a generous and affectionate father. But I doubt Sterling had been a miracle to him, as the girls were to me. Perhaps Kevin gave her a semblance of that kind of attention.