by K. C. Maher
‘Do you wish you hadn’t?’
I smile because it does sound that way. ‘I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t have gotten away with it if I were conceited, although teachers aren’t always the best judges of that. But I wasn’t conceited. I had reasons for wanting to race ahead even if doing so left me with social gaps. I thought then, and still think, that if I had followed the usual route, I would have ended up with more serious troubles.’
Amanda says that I sound like a genius to her. She’s circling around and I glance at her bare legs and feet.
‘Go borrow some more socks, honey.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘If Olivia left them here, she doesn’t want them.’
Amanda goes upstairs and I lean back and close my eyes. Without meaning to, I recall my life before being sent to boarding school. I played soccer and basketball and lived at home with my sister, who was in high school.
Emily loved me. She drove me to the ice rink for hockey practice and attended all of my games. She bought my clothes and fixed my meals. She knew my friends’ names. We went to the movies once a week—films that we could laugh at together. Just before my eleventh birthday in December, she was picked up by the police for acting up in public. She had taken psychedelics and gotten separated from her friends.
My parents could not tolerate an unruly, law-breaking daughter. Emily might tarnish their reputations in the scientific community. Although I never learned the whole story, I have always believed that their intolerance killed her. So, no wonder I’m lenient. No wonder I’m too tolerant.
In whatever institution my parents placed her, Emily was a prisoner. No phone calls, no mail. And I was promptly shipped off to Exeter. By February, Emily was dead.
The headmaster took pity on me. My parents paid my tuition and board through vacations, glad to fund extra courses as recommended. Studying sealed me off from grief—and from myself. Physics and math kept me from pondering unsolvable problems like life and death. I studied mathematics at Yale when I was fourteen and was accepted into a Ph.D. program at Harvard when I was sixteen.
Over the noise of the dishwasher, I don’t hear Amanda return to the kitchen. But then I feel her presence beside me. She taps my knee and I open my eyes.
‘Walter, you look so sad.’
I say her name but am not sure if she hears it. Time rushes even as it freezes solid.
‘Sometimes,’ Amanda says, ‘I’m so happy for no reason I think I’ll die. What I feel is so much—so much more—than just me.’
This arouses such terrible affection in me that I stand up and pace, making my way to the back door, to avoid looking at her beautiful, bewildered face.
Outside on the deck, I search for the moon. Inside, Amanda’s sitting on the couch, ready to start a new season of The Real Miranda. I enter through the sliding glass doors and she says, ‘Just until ten, then I’ll go home and flick the lights.’
*
At daybreak, I charge through a high-splashing, ankle-deep mud puddle, jump over some small ones, and skirt others. Today I’m running the ten-mile loop at Rockefeller Park, which is mostly level, unlike the eight-mile circuit with its loose scattered steps, or the five-mile steep grade that descends to a pond. I have decided not to do anything about work or school for a year.
Having shot past the phase of youth when you think your day will last forever, I now wish these days could last forever. Despite the anxiety, I want to plummet through endless mirrored tunnels, hand in hand with Amanda.
When I’m ready, I’ll get a law degree and work toward a position that allows me to help regulate banking. I know how investment bankers scam the system. I know every tranche and trick on the bond-trading desk and want to see bank fraud defined as the crime it is. With commensurate, mandatory punishments.
But right now I’m living in, and for, the present. Within a year, Amanda will start high school and leave me behind. This unnerves me even more than my struggle to protect her—from myself.
Two strides and I leave the park, crossing the highway onto the aqueduct, where I race through sunlight. Home, filthy but refreshed, I leave my muddy, drenched clothes in the laundry room and dash upstairs to shower. I’m dressed and considering breakfast when the phone rings, and—for once!—it’s Olivia.
‘How are you, sweetheart?’
She doesn’t answer but I hear worry within her shallow breath. Before long I learn Sterling has told her to ‘ask her father’ if she can skateboard with Karl and his friends. I tell her, ‘Yes’ in a heartbeat, followed by, ‘Wear a helmet.’
She says, ‘Without fail.’ Karl will make sure. ‘I’m the only girl in the group.’ Karl and his friends skateboard at events. She’s learning just enough to keep up when they’re traveling on flat pavement.
‘I’m Karl’s disciple.’ She giggles at that. ‘Next week I’m meeting his father, who’s a famous skateboarder. He and Karl’s mom are divorced, too.’
‘Your mother and I are not divorced, Olivia.’
‘But you will be.’
‘Did your mother tell you that?’
‘No. But Granny says it’s just a matter of time.’
‘Is she there?’
‘Yeah, hold on.’
‘Wait. Talk to me first. I miss you.’
‘I love you, Daddy. But I’m happy here.’
I hear her handing the phone to Kaye, and in my head, I shout after my daughter, ‘I love you, too.’
Kaye stays quiet for several seconds, before saying that Susie knows she’s running away from her greatest blessings: Olivia and me.
‘What do you think, Walter? Do you think she’s been a good mother?’
‘Is Olivia still there?’
‘Of course not. Susie will regret this. When the pieces finally hit the ground, I hope you’ll visit me.’
‘Do you approve of Olivia skateboarding?’
‘Yes. She’s not the daredevil she used to be, and a sense of freedom is essential to her right now. That’s why she’s here. Susie may have brought her here to rile you, but I think, deep down, she knew it would be good for Olivia.’
Kaye says she loves seeing her voluptuous fourteen-year-old granddaughter act like a tomboy.
I laugh at that.
‘An old lady’s vision,’ she says.
‘Let me guess. Sterling disapproves.’
‘Skateboarders aren’t student council material. But I bet Karl plays it both ways.’
I say nothing about broken bones but Kaye tells me not to worry. (Although, maybe she means don’t worry about Sterling.) In any case, I tell her that hearing from her reassures me. ‘That’s good, Walter,’ she says, and she hangs up.
Twelve
Each night, I try to forestall turning on the television. I use Amanda’s homework to lead us into discussions—about anything; her curiosity is boundless. Amanda’s shyness as a little girl sometimes camouflaged her superior intelligence. Now her mind is expanding at a fantastic rate.
Tonight, when I remark on this, she says, ‘I know!’ Anything she needs to know is just available to her the moment she needs to know it. ‘Without looking stuff up,’ she says, ‘the answers line up inside my mind, waiting for me to use them.’
‘It’s exciting when nothing’s missing. All the pieces fit.’
‘That’s exactly what it’s like!’ It amazes her that I accept her experience as real.
I have also introduced reading aloud to each other after dinner. This new routine began when I insisted she hear the original Hans Christian Andersen stories behind the Disney movies we’ve watched. We sit in the living room armchairs. The large furniture makes us feel significant. Amanda declares that The Snow Queen isn’t at all like Frozen. She can’t comprehend why anyone connected them. And, the Little Mermaid is so sad! It was never her favorite movie, but now the cartoon version insults her, because it ‘totally insults the real Little Mermaid!’ The story makes her cry. I comfort her and her tears dampen my shirt. After a second’s hesit
ation, I stroke her head.
Our voices resound throughout the house and possibly into the night. Tall trees on the other side of the road are visible through the windows. The living room light is soft. Facing me, she takes my hands and presses them against each side of her face. Her hands stay on mine, yet the temptation to stroke her impossibly soft skin besieges me. (My palms and fingers burn for control.)
And she says in a very deep voice, ‘Look into my eyes.’
‘No.’ It’s the right answer, I think. She’s teasing. My hands slip free and my eyes shift from hers. We laugh. And I tell her that she can’t hypnotize me. Nobody can. I’m resistant.
‘That’s just like you, Walter! Nobody can hypnotize you because you won’t let them. So, you’ll have to hypnotize me. Come on—make me enchanted.’
Shaking my head, I laugh. ‘You know, I lost my job because I refused to try to control people.’
She nods. ‘But that was at work. Isn’t it different between you and me?’
‘Different how?’
‘Because,’ she says, ‘we care for each other.’
Up and pacing, I look away and suddenly suggest that tomorrow evening we stay in our separate homes. ‘Just once. For a change.’
Amanda laughs and stands. Hair sweeps across her forehead and she extends her arms toward me. If she hasn’t been acting beyond her years ever since Olivia left, she certainly is now.
‘Shall we pretend our front yards are an ocean, Walter? Shall we reach for each other across half the world?’
I suspect she’s imitating an actress, but if so, not one I know. She pouts, either as part of the act or for real. Her damp lower lip and welling eyes bewitch me.
‘Give me a minute.’ I go upstairs, fill the sink with cold water and put my face in it. If our magical circle of two is so magical it never changes, I’ll embrace the limits. But all magic is a trick. I can love and protect her but only briefly, only while we remain here, the two of us alone.
Face dried, hair combed, I return to the living room and say I didn’t mean it. ‘About staying in our separate houses. That’s stupid. But what about this weekend? Don’t you want time with your friends?’
‘I see them all week long, Walter.’ She and Madison work on the newspaper before school. Madison’s family, she says, has their own secret right now. The older sister, Margo, is taking a year off from college. Nobody knows why.
‘Does Gil—I mean Madison’s father—know that Olivia’s in Maine?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Our pact exists so that I can take care of you. It’s no reason to avoid your friends.’
‘Why can’t we keep things the way they are? Just you and me.’
‘We can do our best, honey, but things change. Did Cheryl call this week?’
Amanda waves her hand as if waving away the question. ‘She says she’s coming home for Thanksgiving.’
‘For a week?’
‘She plans to stay from Thursday through Sunday. Please don’t tell her she needs to spend more time with me.’
‘I won’t, not specifically. But I need to explain the situation, honey. Your mother must realize what’s going on.’
I manage to convince Amanda that if I can talk to Cheryl first thing, I’ll explain her new clothes and the streamlined new blue bicycle, for which nobody owes me a dime. (I couldn’t stand watching Amanda struggle with the rickety hand-me-down and its ill-fitting chain.)
Ever since I was fired, I’ve been contemplating the best way to tell Cheryl Jonette that my feelings for her daughter are dangerous.
Thirteen
The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I’m a month overdue for a haircut and stop by the barbershop. Hot towels cover another customer’s face. A timer sounds and the barber, Leonard, lifts the steamy wraps—and it’s my old friend, Wayne from the firehouse.
‘Walter,’ he says, ‘long time.’ He pats his pink cheeks and asks how he looks.
‘Smooth. You look smooth.’
He laughs. ‘Ya think?’
Leonard clips Wayne’s eyebrows. Neither of them asks about my family or my job. Everyone knows that Sterling, Olivia—and Kevin Dalton—are in Maine.
Whenever I oblige Sterling by picking up her call, she mixes weepy confusion with a plea that soon becomes a command: Get to work. Before I hang up or she resumes crying, she describes some perfect little office space that her friend Nina Malloy has waiting for me. Why don’t I open a ‘consulting practice’?
‘If nothing else,’ she says, ‘get an office and hang a C.P.A. shingle.’
While in graduate school, I acquired C.P.A. licenses in three states. I’ve worked hard my whole life—until Bank of America fired me. Because of that and my immoderate compensation at the bank, along with consistent, careful investments, I’ve left my trust fund untouched. I never mention, and rarely even think about, my inheritance. Last year, my mother sent documents showing that vast sums from my parents’ share of drug patents have been added to the trust, which I keep for Olivia.
But Wayne doesn’t even ask what I’ve been up to, just, ‘How ya doin’?’
‘Good. How ’bout you?’
‘Busy,’ he says. His kids are growing up.
Just then, Amanda and Madison ride their bicycles past the barbershop. Amanda sees me and I see her, although she ignores me. Immediately, the girls are gone.
Wayne’s fifteen-year-old son thinks Amanda’s hot. ‘Amanda Jonette,’ Wayne says to my surprise, ‘makes us proud.’ The middle-school faculty, the school board, and the P.T.A. (of which Wayne’s wife is president) are proud of her transformation.
‘Transformation?’
‘Until recently, she was “at risk.” Or so my wife says.’
‘Really. She was always my daughter’s best friend.’
‘Well, with Olivia at your side,’ Wayne says, ‘nobody looks lost.’
I laugh, genuinely pleased. ‘True. Olivia’s no waif.’
His wife pulls up and honks the horn. Wayne sees her and waves. ‘Just so you know, Walter, you’re welcome to drop by the firehouse any time. I’ll tell Dennis and Pete—’
‘Tell them hello for me.’
Wayne pays the barber and bumps his fists on my shoulders. His wife honks from the car again, and he’s gone.
*
After watching The Real Miranda together, she rests her lovely, quick fingertips on my thigh. I should probably move them, but Amanda’s playing Inch-Me, Pinch-Me. Her fingers travel inch by inch up my leg and onto my stomach.
‘Inch-me and Pinch-me went out in a boat. Inch-me fell out and who was left?’
‘You tell me.’
She flashes that irresistible grin and mock-swoons, her hair sweeping over me.
‘Amanda.’ I say her name in warning but it sounds more like awe, which she takes as encouragement to continue pressing her fingers against my stomach and chest.
‘Come on, Walter. Who was left? Inch-me or Pinch-me?’
Her fingers land high on my leg, prompting my eyes to close. But I resist and manage to grab her hand. She laughs and escapes my hold. ‘Pinch-me!’ she says, pinching my inner thigh. ‘Now you do me.’
‘No, honey.’
‘Walter, please.’
‘I’m sorry but it’s unthinkable.’
‘Nuh-uh—I’m thinking it.’
My breath is low and slow. And Amanda’s saying, ‘Tickle, tickle on the knee, if you laugh, you don’t love me!’
You cannot imagine the sensations, despite thick jeans covering my kneecap. I shiver and remember playing this game at the beach when I was nine. I tickled Cecilia de Grazia’s smooth, bare knee, both of us digging our toes deep in the sand.
Amanda tickles my knee, up my thigh, my torso, neck, and—bam! I trap her shameless fingers beneath my chin. She squeals and her warm, fast breath moistens my cheek. No! Absolutely not! Relax one cardinal rule and the rest become elastic.
‘No more tickling. Let’s go look at the moon.’
Since October, I’ve been walking outside with her before she goes home to sleep. Our first breaths in the cold air appear as ghostly plumes. The moon is full and rising over the northeast line of trees. We walk toward the woods beyond the Point.
‘Walter, can we hold hands in the moonlight?’
I start to take her hand but draw back. ‘Aren’t you afraid we’ll turn into werewolves?’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
Amanda’s indignation is so beguiling I almost want to tease her more. But I apologize. It was a stupid joke. Still, she refuses to hold my hand, claiming it wasn’t a joke but an excuse.
‘That’s not so. If I could, I would always hold your hand.’
‘Unbelievable,’ she says, and cartwheels in a wide circle around me. The feat exhilarates her. Her hair is tangled and her energy so high, she laughs. Ha! She hugs me and I’m forgiven.
I resist the urge to lift her in the air. Instead, I step backward and kneel on one knee. ‘Please, give me your hand.’ I kiss her knuckles goodnight, making her giggle. She’s still giggling when she runs to her front door, calling, ‘Stay there and I’ll flick the lights.’
*
While running before dawn, I ponder Wayne’s easy friendliness. He knows I lost my job. Nina Malloy has no doubt told everyone that I’m not doing any business anywhere. So, Wayne knows I’m idle and absent and had the courtesy not to mention it.
Following our brief conversation in the barbershop, I can’t help wondering if he suspects I’m caring for Amanda. And, granted, this is radical speculation, but perhaps by saying that Amanda makes him proud, he was implying approval.
He and everyone else around here have noticed the difference: A magician waved his wand and the poor shivering urchin became the smartest, prettiest girl in town.
Yet, she won’t ride her new bicycle to school—too many questions. Besides, she likes walking. She meets Madison on Main Street for breakfast. For lunch, she takes a sandwich she fixes in my kitchen.
This morning, she slices homemade bread and spreads it with almond butter and tamarind chutney—a treat she discovered in my refrigerator.
