DADDY IS A COPYWRITER for a big advertising agency that specializes in television commercials. When Karen and I were younger, he took us to the studio where they do the shooting and we met that fat lady who crosses her eyes when her cat won’t eat and the man who eats like a pig and then needs Fizzies to “calm an outraged stomach.” Daddy is a group head, which means that he has other writers working for him, and he has to approve everything before it’s used. Some of the kids at school tell me how lucky I am because my father is in television. But Daddy always plays it down. He says it’s a grind and not what he’s really going to do someday. Because Daddy wants to be a serious writer. Someday he’s going to stay home and write a wonderful and important book. In the meantime, he’s the one responsible for that ad for Cavalon Shoes (“If the shoe fits, it’s Cavalon. Wear it!”) and the one for baby food that says, “Listen, your baby is trying to tell you something!” Then they have a lot of goo-ga sounds which are supposed to be a baby gurgling but are really done by a fifty-year-old actor. Then, “Translated, that means, buy Bubba’s Baby Food, for my sake!”
Of course Karen thinks it’s very glamorous. She talks about getting her “big break in show biz” through Daddy. But who wants to be on television telling everybody how to keep toilets fresh and clean or which girdle makes you look younger than your daughter?
Karen and I met Daddy at the agency one Friday and he took us back to his apartment to have supper. Shelley acted happy to see us, the way she always does. She kissed Karen, who kissed her back, but somehow she knew enough to just touch my arm and not get too close. She had prepared a wonderful supper. You could see that she had gone to a lot of trouble making little radish flowers and carrot curls, and Karen-Aurora wanted to know how to do them too. After the dishes were done, Shelley demonstrated with ice water, and I went into the living room with Daddy.
When we’re alone, he often asks questions about Mother, about how she’s doing, and if I think she needs anything. Then he asks me about school and about Maya and the Terrible G.’s, as he calls her parents. He sits in one chair and I sit in another and sometimes I make believe I’m being interviewed for a job and I feel very cool and matter-of-fact. But other times my head is crammed with thoughts about the days when Daddy was home, about eating breakfast together and going to look at model homes on Sunday.
Now Daddy asked about my different subjects in school, if I liked French and if I still hated Health.
“It’s okay, I guess,” I said, thinking of myself sitting on the floor in the closet and reading the love letters to my mother. I didn’t want to look at him.
“And how is Mademoiselle Gruber?” He always remembers everything you tell him, even the names of your teachers.
“All right,” I said, looking fiercely at a flower on the Oriental rug.
“Voulez-vous un bonbon?” he asked, offering a silver dish of chocolates.
“I can’t,” I said, pointing to this month’s horror on my chin.
“Oh,” he said. “Well.” I could see he didn’t know what to say to me, and I didn’t know what to say to him. It was as if we were strangers in a dentist’s waiting room, trying to make polite conversation. As if we had never lived in the same apartment, as if he’d never come into my room during the night when I was little and put the covers back on after I kicked them off in my sleep. If this had been a television play, I think the author would have had the father say, ‘You’re very angry with me, my dear, aren’t you?’ And then the girl would burst into tears and rush into his arms. She would feel much better even though nothing had actually changed at all.
But Daddy didn’t say anything. He just tapped a little rhythm on the arm of his chair until Shelley and Karen came into the room.
“Dan,” Shelley asked. “Do you think you and Karen could go out and get us some ice cream?”
I guessed it was my turn to be alone with her now. But Karen didn’t seem to see anything wrong. She ran to get her jacket like a little kid being promised a treat.
When Shelley and I were alone in the apartment she crooked her finger and asked me to come into the bedroom with her. She wanted to show me something. Then she opened her closet and there were lots of dresses and gowns and a double row of shoes. “If you want to try anything on, Teddy, just be my guest.”
I only shrugged, not able to say anything. The clothes looked so lovely, all those beautiful colors and delicate fabrics.
She pulled out a pale-green fuzzy sweater and held it out to me. “Try this,” she said. “I think it would be gorgeous on you. It’s simply not my color.”
Little wisps of wool from the sweater drifted up and tickled my nose. It was beautiful. “It makes my nose itch,” I said, rubbing it for emphasis.
“Oh.” She opened a drawer in her dresser and took another sweater out, a white one this time, with darling little flowers embroidered around the neckline. “Look,” she said, “if this fits you, you can have it, Teddy. It’s a tiny bit too tight on me.”
I took the sweater from her and traced the outline of one flower with my fingertip. “I have too many sweaters as it is,” I said, but my voice came out all hoarse and funny, as if I had a sore throat.
She folded the sweater and put it back in the drawer, where it rustled in tissue paper: I guessed that she had bought it for me in the first place and only pretended about it not fitting her. She was trying to give me something or make me take something from her, as if it was very important.
Suddenly it was just as important to me to turn everything down, as if the acceptance of a gift from Shelley was the same as doing something against my mother. It didn’t seem fair, but it was up to me to choose sides. It would have been easier if she were more like a mean old stepmother in a fairy tale who plots against the kids in the family and tries to keep the father to herself. But she wasn’t. She was always thinking up little treats and surprises for Karen and me, and always inviting us to sleep at their apartment. The nicer she was, the worse it all seemed. She was the enemy, even if she was pretty and had such a soft voice and such a good disposition.
And my mother ... well, she was my mother. I had to be loyal to her, didn’t I? And I could see that Shelley understood. She didn’t say another word about the sweater. She shut the drawer and the closet and sat down on the edge of the bed.
But I couldn’t seem to shut up. “My closet is jam-packed at home,” I said. “I have to throw a lot of junk out.”
“Yes,” Shelley said sadly, and I felt so bad that I sat down next to her on the bed. She reached out carefully and pushed my hair back from my forehead. “Do you know,” she said, “you have a very interesting face, Teddy. If you wear your hair like this, you show off your bones.”
“My bones!”
“Oh, good bones are everything,” she said seriously. “Not everybody has them. Look.” She took me to the mirror that hung over the dresser. “See? Structure is everything.” As she said it she moved my hair back again and I could see that I did look better, and older too. I peered in, wondering about my bones, seeing that stupid pimple popping out on my chin.
I rumpled my hair back the way it had been before. “Everybody wears it this way,” I said. “I like it this way.”
Then Daddy and Karen came back with the ice cream, and he and Shelley looked at one another the way people do when they want to send messages back and forth without speaking. “I tried,” Shelley said with her eyes, and he smiled at her and squeezed her arm.