In the course of my father’s ramble, his eyebrows had danced up and down on his forehead, his cheeks growing pink, while he kept a delighted smile from broadening into a maddening grin and I accepted another glass of champagne from my mother. His eyes were really sparkling now; truly, that’s what they do, they sparkle. It’s not a figure of speech with him. That sparkle is what allowed him to get away with what he did. I have his eyes, but not the sparkle. Still, everyone tells me they’re my best feature.
“Well, maybe you’ll get a chance to go back one day,” I said, draining the rest of my champagne.
“No!” shouted my mom in a childish, high-pitched voice. We ignored her, as we often did when the three of us were together.
“Well, the sad truth is the DA’s got a grudge against me. I don’t know why. It could be that his wife has taken a liking to me, I don’t know. Did you see her in court? Oh, she’s got legs! Oh, she does! And I’ve got experience to know when a woman is ogling you, and let me tell you, she was ogling me right there in court—”
“Honey, why don’t you sit down?” my mother asked me in a lowered voice so as not to disturb my father’s soliloquy, patting the couch next to her. Instead, turning my back to her, I lifted the champagne bottle by its neck, refilled my glass, and walked a few paces away, where I leaned against the wall, regarding my father.
“So, you know, he’s got a bee in his bonnet, and you know what they say: bees make you crazy. The man is like a mutt with a bone, and don’t get on me for being racist; I know he’s half something, but that isn’t what I mean, I mean mutt in the sense of a determined beast. I’ve got nothing but respect for him. Mutts are scrappy, aren’t they? No, I like a good mutt, I do. But this mutt’s just on the wrong track, that’s all I’m saying.”
“So are they refiling charges?” I asked.
My father shrugged dramatically, then motioned for me to refill his champagne glass. I did. After taking a large gulp, he went on, “They tell me they’re refiling, I don’t know. But what I do know is: I’m never going back to jail. You can mark my words.”
“That may not be up to you.”
He downed the rest of his champagne, and let out a monstrous burp. “There are ways,” he said, “of making sure. Every man has at least one option.”
I didn’t press him on it, and neither did my mother. It was difficult to think in his presence. I felt like a pile of leaves that had been blown by a sudden gust of wind and formed into a small eddy, with scraps of garbage getting mixed in. At the same time, I felt heavy, as the weight of the past bore down on me. I had stopped thinking of myself as his daughter, but now, faced with him, there was no avoiding it; I felt myself inexorably drawn in, confined to the role I had always played: dutiful listener, sometime accomplice, a pretty doll to be put on display at parties. I managed snide remarks here and there, but I’d never stood up to my father. On some level, I had hoped that this time it would be different, but that hope was quickly draining away.
* * *
—
When the champagne was gone, we headed downstairs. The restaurant was cavernous, bathed in beige and dominated by a massive art deco chandelier that gave off a golden light. Its carpet was so thick, I felt myself sink half an inch with every step and had to fight the impression I would soon be swallowed up and disappear beneath its plush pile. We were seated at a square four-top table, replete with a crisp white tablecloth and three place settings. My father promptly ordered a bottle of white wine, and when the waitress poured him a taste, he made an impatient gesture with his hand for her to continue.
“I trust you, my girl. No time for that. Fill it to the top.”
The waitress, blushing slightly, did as he asked. My mother unfurled her napkin and placed it delicately on her lap. I used the opportunity to check my phone. The photo I’d put up had 4,170 new Likes. I scrolled through the hearts and Comments. Damn girl, get that money, someone had written. If you were my boss, I’d work for free—from an unknown male. And, from an earnest-looking young woman, So inspirational! I love it. Some woman had had DRAKE tattooed on her forehead, in homage to the rapper. Gwyneth Paltrow had gotten married. Karma Black was standing on a street corner somewhere, holding a cardboard sign that read Protect Our Future.
“Mickey!” my father exclaimed, aghast. “Now, don’t tell me you’re one of the zombies that terrorizes my dreams.”
His grubby fingers plucked the phone from my hand but, being clumsy and ill-coordinated, he dropped it and it tumbled to the carpeted floor. I snatched it up.
“No idiot boxes at the table,” he said.
“Dad, it’s work.”
“Yeah, okay,” he scoffed.
“It is.”
“Michaela’s a really big influencer now, Pete, she’s doing really well. She’s got—I mean, hundreds of thousands of Followers or something like that.”
“One hundred and twenty-six thousand,” I said proudly.
“You know, your mother explained this to me, but I still don’t understand it.” My father cut me off before I could answer. “I know, I know, an influencer. But an influencer of what?”
“That’s just what it’s called. Influencer.”
“I know, but of what, Mick, that’s what I don’t understand. What exactly are you influencing?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Dad.” He was probably the only person I knew with whom I could use that word, and I did so with relish, feeling deliciously smart.
Meanwhile, he had begun absentmindedly cleaning his fingernails with a fork. “I mean it,” he said, studying his work as he talked. “Who’re you influencing? Other zombies glued to their idiot boxes?” He smiled ruefully. “Isn’t that a little bit like saying you’re Leader of the Lemmings?”
“It’s a billion-dollar business—”
“Garbage removal is a billion-dollar business.”
“Yeah, but this is a platform that people, whoever, can build their careers on. It’s a tool—”
“It’s a figment, Michaela,” he said, putting the fork down. “It’s just another gymnasium for the masses to exercise in, so they don’t become disgruntled and rebel against their overlords. It gives the appearance of power, but don’t be fooled, daughter of mine, there is no power there.”
“Kim Kardashian has 151 million Followers on Instagram. How is that not power?”
“I don’t know who this person is, but I’m guessing she makes her living, at least in part, from having all these Followers, right?”
“Exactly. She’s a millionaire now. You can get rich—”
“So,” he began, looking down at the silverware and straightening it so it lay perfectly parallel to the table’s edge. “In a sense, this woman is being paid by her Followers.”
“Sure.”
“So her Followers pay her money, and she—Kim, you said it was?—works to please her Followers so they will continue to give her their attention and their money.”
“I guess so,” I said uncertainly, sensing despite his even tone that he was cornering me.
“And who generally pays whom? The boss or the employee?”
I sighed irritably and looked at my mother, who quickly avoided my gaze. Whenever my father and I tussled like this, she remained utterly silent, a tight smile on her face. I took a large sip of wine and held it in my mouth in an effort to cool down.
“Kim whoever has no more power than a bottle of Coca-Cola sitting on the shelf. She is a slave to her Followers, as the factory worker is a slave to his boss. She is dependent on them.”
A waiter placed a bread basket at the center of the table, and my father, hardly waiting for the man’s hand to withdraw, flicked away the white napkin covering it and extracted a roll.
“Real power comes from breaking the mold,” he went on, slathering his roll with butter. “Although of course, the establishment will use any chance it can get to silence such innovations—just look at what ha
ppened to me.”
“That’s not why—”
“It’s a conspiracy against free thinking,” he went on, not looking at either of us, his concentration bound up in carefully coating his roll in butter.
“No, Dad,” I said quietly. He bit into his roll. Grease shone along his lips and on his chin as he chewed, the roll still in one hand, readied for the next bite, and the knife still poised in the other. He saw me glaring at him and opened his mouth into a wide grin to show the macerated bread. Then he swallowed with dramatic effort.
“What was that?” he asked. Up until now, his tone had been almost exaggeratedly pedantic; annoying, to be sure, but not dangerous. Now, as he straightened up and stared at me, I could see the familiar flatness in his eyes that always presaged an outburst. I knew it was unwise to go on, but the words fell out of my mouth anyway, like hot bile. He wasn’t just attacking me, he was also attacking Gemma.
“You didn’t go to jail for ‘free thinking,’ ” I said.
“Oh no?” Though he was not looking at me, I could feel his building anger in the intensity with which he was now slathering butter on the innards of his bread roll, the white stuff he’d revealed after he’d bit into it.
“No,” I said flatly, knowing all too well what was to come and yet unable to stop myself. “It was theft. You stole. You committed a crime.”
My father shoved the remainder of the roll into his mouth with such violence, I flinched. He stared at me, and this time I could see the fire burning in his nostrils. I remembered the first and only time he had hurt me physically—after coming home drunk one night, he’d slammed me against a cupboard, making lewd jokes. You like this? he’d said, and then, to my horror, he’d ground his pelvis against mine—only for an instant, though, and then he’d burst out laughing.
I suddenly wished I could take back what I had just said. Desperately, I tried to think of how I might walk back the statement as I watched my father force the lump of bread down his throat. He put his knife down carefully at his side.
“You know what,” he said, his voice almost playful as he flicked the napkin aside on the bread basket and picked up another roll. “Why don’t you fucking eat something.” He slammed the roll down on my plate, making the silverware clink. Immediately, and without thinking, I brushed it away with the back of my hand. It bounced onto his thigh, then fell to the floor, where it rolled along the thick carpet.
“No,” I said.
He was already bending over to pick up the roll. He plopped it back down on my plate and then, with surprising agility, grabbed my wrist as I went to flick it away again, and brought it to rest on the tabletop.
“You will fucking eat this,” he said through clenched teeth, his face close to mine. I could smell his familiar smell of soured wine, and saw the spittle that had accumulated in the corners of his mouth.
“I won’t.”
He tightened his grip around my wrist.
“Michaela,” he said, slowly and seriously. From an outside perspective, it might have looked as though we were only holding hands. I looked down at the roll, on which I could see small threads of carpet fiber, black. My mother whimpered beside me. It was for her sake, and for the sake of avoiding the stares of other diners, that I begrudgingly muttered, “Fine.” My father let go of my hand and, through increasingly blurred vision, a hot fear burning in my chest, I picked up the roll and ferociously shoved the entire thing into my mouth, eyes bulging.
“Oh, honey!” my mother said, fingers rising to touch her mouth in surprise. She reached for me, and I swatted her away roughly, fleeing for the bathroom. The carpet was so cushy, there was no noise as my chair fell away behind me. I heard my father say, in mock innocent surprise, “Yeesh, what’s the big deal?”
In the bathroom, I hung over the toilet and spit out what was still in my mouth, retching painfully. After, I did what I often did when I was feeling out of control. I stared at my reflection for a long time. But this time, it brought me little comfort. All I saw were my father’s eyes staring back at me. I put on another coat of Glossier Generation G Sheer Matte Lipstick in Zip. The counter, the floor, the walls, were all marble. It was so quiet, and the marble so cold, I felt like I was in a mausoleum. I opened up Instagram, and my fingers blindly typed out a name, her name, as if feeling a face in the dark. I knew it was stupid, that it would yield nothing. If anything, it would only open back up the door to a room I’d decided would be best shut off. Still, I felt the heaviness of my disappointment when those paltry gray words appeared on my screen again. No user found. I was frustrated. I wanted to see her, as if seeing her might reveal something to me—might help me know her and therefore become a little more like her, which was to say, a little less like my father. I scrolled through my camera roll, searching for the photos of us at the Strand bookstore—until I remembered bitterly that I had deleted them. I flew through more of my camera roll, looking for a distraction. Eventually, I landed on a photo Julia had taken earlier that month of me suntanning in the park, a book—Bukowski’s Hot Water Music—half shadowing my face. At the time, I had decided not to post it, since it was too literal a copy of a photo Gemma had posted a month before. Now, it occurred to me that if Gemma’s Instagram account actually had been deleted, if she was not returning, I could post the image and no one would know that I’d copied her. I thought for a moment, then uploaded the photo to Instagram with the caption Gemma had used, to the best of my memory: Can you miss something before it’s even gone? Already mourning the end of summer. #tbt #takemeback
I knew the image would perform well, and I was not disappointed. The second I refreshed my screen, the heart that my hopes were forever pinned to pulsated and bore the numbers of Likes and Comments my post had already elicited. I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt I’d been restored to myself.
When I returned to the table, my mother had moved her chair closer to my father’s, and was giggling like a teenager in love. He was stroking her hand, speaking in low tones. I wanted to wrench my mother away from him. How could she accept him, how could she—after everything he’d done to her, done to me—still allow him to touch her? The one piece of comfort was that I was not confined to the same duty.
I sat back down stiffly.
“Are you feeling better, sweetheart?” my mother asked me, as if I were a child that had just had a temper tantrum. Without waiting for my response, or perhaps with the knowledge that I wouldn’t respond, she went on. “We ordered you the salmon. Is that okay? You were gone for a while.”
“It’s fine.”
“Well, you certainly are emotional, my girl,” my dad said, pinching me lightly on the shoulder and laughing. Seeing me recoil, he went on, “I mean that as a compliment! A woman with emotions. I approve.”
When I continued to stare at him stony-faced, he added, in a tone that was either pleading or mocking a plea, “Oh, come on, please? Humor your dear old dad. Forgive me.”
I glanced at my mother, who was watching me anxiously, her hand clutching my father’s forearm.
“Fine,” I said, through gritted teeth.
“Oh good,” my mother said, her body immediately relaxing. “That makes me happy.”
My father raised his glass in a grandiose gesture. “We have a lot to celebrate.”
My mother quickly followed suit. “We certainly do.” Reluctantly, I raised my glass to meet theirs. I was thinking of the JOY shoot next week, how excited I’d been about it only just that morning, and how small it now seemed next to the grief which my parents always drew from me. I knew they were not thinking of my own imminent success and I didn’t want to remind them of it, since I suddenly felt that anything they knew about my life would be irretrievably tainted.
“To freedom,” my father said, and we all touched our glasses together. He drained his glass, then signaled with a twirl of his hand for our waiter to bring another bottle.
“I do hope we can go on being friends, M
ichaela,” my father said tenderly. His eyes were watering again. “Because, well, I’m your father. And it’s only natural.”
I smiled and squeezed his hand. “Of course, Dad.” Hiding my true feelings was innate, it came naturally to me, especially with him. Being false, letting someone think one thing while privately you schemed another: I’d learned it at his knee. Everything was calculated performance.
The new bottle of wine arrived, along with our dishes.
“Oh, yum,” my mother said. She’d also ordered the salmon. It was a golden-skinned filet swimming in a pale-yellow sauce and topped with three slender asparagus spears. I sliced into its pink flesh with a knife. It came away easily and my stomach turned over. The meat, which was slick and dotted with white slime, trembled at the end of my fork as I slid it into my mouth, and I swallowed almost without chewing. I didn’t want to taste the food, I only wanted it as an excuse not to speak. Though I had calmed down somewhat since our altercation, I could still feel a chaotic mix of emotions churning just below the surface. My phone was resting in the palm of my hand on my lap, and surreptitiously, while my father was absorbed in draining my mother’s glass of wine, I checked it: 421 new Likes. I resumed eating, nodding along to my parents’ chatter and saying a word or two where appropriate. My knife scraped against the plate, making me shiver, and goosebumps sprouted along my arm, but I remained silent. I checked my phone again: 120 new Likes.
Soon we were finished, and a waiter was clearing our plates. My mother excused herself for the bathroom, my stomach lurched, and I was left alone with my father. I felt nervous, as if we were strangers and the person who had introduced us had just left. My father, perhaps sensing this, cleared his throat and attempted to smile. He leaned back in his chair and, lowering just his bottom lip in a familiar, efficient gesture, let a burp escape his mouth. I scowled at him.
Like Me Page 20
