12

Harper

“What do you mean she’s Jewish?” I stick my head out the bathroom door. I’m standing in my bra and panties, brushing my teeth.

“Harper.”

“She’s not Jewish. She was baptized Catholic at St. Louis Cathedral, like you were. Like all the Broussards.” My voice squeaks. “You held her in your arms, Remy, when the priest—”

“Harper, she doesn’t remember any of that.” He’s sitting on the edge of the bed in his boxer briefs. He lowers his head to his hands.

I stand for a moment in the doorway. It’s been a really long day and I feel as if I’m on the verge of tears. I step back into the bathroom and spit into the sink. Today, our first whole day as a family again didn’t go anything like I thought it would. Nothing like I dreamed it would be on the days I wasn’t planning for the funeral we would have at St. Louis Cathedral when someone found Georgina’s remains.

I run the water. Rinse out my mouth. As I swish my toothbrush through the stream of water, I stare at myself in the mirror over the sink. She hates me. My daughter. Actually, as of today, both of my daughters hate me.

I started out this morning so hopeful. I came downstairs to find Remy and Georgina at the kitchen counter sitting side by side, drinking coffee and eating waffles. It was one of the million family scenes I’d imagined. He was reading the newspaper; she was reading a Smithsonian Magazine. When I asked Georgina about the article she was reading, she actually answered me in multiple syllables. Apparently my daughter likes to cook and likes to read about the history of foods. I didn’t even know that was a thing. She told me that she’d read how the General Tso’s chicken dish originated in an expensive restaurant in Taiwan. The chef was originally from Hunan province and supervised banquets for the Chinese Nationalist government. When the Communists took over in the late forties, he, like many Nationalists, fled, and he wound up in a restaurant in Taipei. He created the dish there.

I sat down to join them with my coffee. That was when things started going downhill. Georgina told me she didn’t like shopping. I was immediately annoyed with Remy for telling her my plans. Georgina announced she wanted to stay home for the day while Remy went to work and Jojo and I went shopping. She avoided calling me “Mom” or Remy “Dad.” Jojo was the only one she referred to by name. Of course there was no way I was letting her stay here alone. Not after she told us at lunch yesterday that she wanted to go home. What if Georgina ran away?

When the social worker was leaving yesterday, she said, privately, that I shouldn’t be too worried about Georgina running away. She said Georgina was a smart girl; she knew there was nowhere for her to go. She said it was actually good that Georgina could express wanting to see the woman she’d thought was her mother and her anger about what had happened to her. I knew I should listen to Katrina. She is, after all, the expert. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. Or leave Georgina home alone so she can get lost or kidnapped again.

In the end, it was Remy who basically told Georgina she had to go shopping with us. So she went. But Jojo didn’t want to go, either, so she spent the day texting on her phone, and when she wasn’t texting, she was sulking. I wish Georgina had sulked. Instead, she walked around like a zombie all day. We bought almost nothing. Georgina refused to try on any clothes. The only thing she bought all day was a little leather notebook and she insisted on using her own money to buy it. The trip ended up being as painful for me as it apparently was for the girls. No one ate their lunch, their expensive lunch. And later, when we got home, dinner conversation was stilted and no one ate then, either. I drank two glasses of wine and pushed my stir-fry around my plate.

I look at myself in the mirror again. I look tired. And old. With the makeup washed off my face, my eyebrows are almost nonexistent. No one looks good without eyebrows.

“What are we doing about Mass in the morning?” I return my toothbrush to the drawer in the vanity.

Remy doesn’t say anything.

“I think we should all go to Mass together.” I stare at my eyebrowless face and wonder if I should look into the cost of having my eyebrows tattooed on. Ann had her lips tattooed last year. They’re a gorgeous shade of natural-looking mauve. She says it’s the best eight hundred dollars she ever spent in her life.

“Remy?” I grab the door frame and lean out the door. He’s still sitting there with his head in his hands. I’ve always been amazed by how much time he can spend doing absolutely nothing.

Slowly he sits up. Exhales, as if I’m annoying him. “Maybe you and Jojo should go. I’ll stay here with Lilla.”

I flinch when he calls her that. But we’ve already had that argument once today so I decide not to revisit it. Not tonight. His reasoning is that we can’t hit her like a brick wall, that we have to help her ease into her new life. And she’s only ever known the name Lilla. I don’t care how logical it is. I can’t call my daughter by the name that woman who’d better spend the rest of her life in prison gave her.

“We go to Mass on Sunday mornings. That’s what our family does.”

“I don’t go every Sunday,” he says. “And neither do you,” he adds.

With one last glance in the mirror, I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and shut off the light. I walk into our bedroom. “It’s part of who we are, Remy. We’re Catholic. Our faith is what’s gotten us through this nightmare. And . . . and she’s a part of this family now and we need to do things together that define us as a family.”

“But she’s Jewish, Harper.” He says it quietly.

“She’s not!” I snap. “Stop saying that.”

He looks up at me. His dark eyes are pleading. He wants me to let it go. “But she thinks she’s Jewish,” he says. “It’s the way she’s been raised.”

Of course I can’t let it go. I can never let things go. It’s why we ended up in his sister’s office signing divorce papers. “She was raised?” I point as if I could possibly know where Sharon Kohen is right now. “That woman took her, Remy! She—”

“Lower your voice.”

I press my lips together. He means so Georgina doesn’t hear me.

I stand in front of him, looking down at him. I’m trying not to cry.

After a long moment, he grabs my hand and pulls me down to sit beside him. His olive branch. He slips his arm around me, resting his hand on my hip, below the hem of my long-sleeved T-shirt, above my panty line. We just sit there.

“I had an awful day,” I finally say. “She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“You heard her yesterday. She doesn’t want me. She doesn’t think I’m her mother. She wants that woman.”

“She understands that’s not going to happen.”

“But she wouldn’t even talk to me today, Remy. The most I got out of her was what she told me about a Chinese chicken dish.” I rest my cheek on his shoulder. “Did she talk to you? This morning?”

“Not really.” He leans his head against mine. “A little.”

“What did she say?”

He’s slow to reply. “She asked me what I do at Tulane. She likes numbers, too. Maybe she got that from me.”

I smile at the thought and then murmur, “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean? We’re going to love our daughter. That’s what we’re going to do.”

I close my eyes. “I mean about the Jewish part. About the she-wants-to-see-that-woman part. About the fact that she doesn’t want to go to Ursuline. She doesn’t like my lasagna or my stir-fry.”

My husband—technically, my ex—sniggers.

I lift my head from his shoulder, fully intending to be annoyed with him. He’s not taking any of this seriously enough. But then I can’t help myself. The sound I make is more like a snort than a laugh. But then he starts to laugh and I can’t help it. It’s probably just that I’d rather laugh than cry.

I grab him by the shoulders and push him back onto the bed, laughing with him. “I’m serious,” I say, but I’m still laughing.

The back of his head hits the mattress and bounces up a little. He kisses me, a quick peck, and lets his head fall back again.

“Remy,” I say, leaning over him, my hair falling over my face. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no guidebook for this.” He looks up at me. “We’re just going to have to figure it out as we go.”

I lie on my back, beside him. “I think she should go to Mass with us tomorrow.”

“And I think you’re expecting way too much, way too soon.” He looks at me. We’re serious again.

I turn my head to stare at the punched-tin ceiling. “And what about school? She thinks she should be allowed to go to the school she was attending. A public school. I’m not driving her to Bayou St. John every day. That’s the one thing she did tell me today. She said she would take the streetcar across town and then walk to school.”

“What did you say?”

“Something about over my dead body,” I answer, realizing it wasn’t one of my best parenting moments.

“I think she’s a pretty independent girl. Single mother who worked long hours. Makes sense,” he says thoughtfully.

I choose to ignore his reference to that monster as a mother. “Georgina is not riding the streetcar. Not alone. Absolutely not. And it doesn’t make sense for her not to go to school where Jojo goes.” I gesture. “It’s down the street, for heaven’s sake.”

“So we’ll tell her that. We’re her parents. We have the final say.”

I look at him. “You’ll tell her?” I feel like a coward saying it, but right now, I don’t want to be the mean parent. I know it’s selfish of me, but if he’s willing to be the bearer of bad news, I’m willing to let him.

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he agrees, turning his gaze to the ceiling.

“But I don’t think she should go this week.” I’m staring at the ceiling again, too. It needs painting. In a house this old, something always needs work. I want to paint Georgina’s bedroom, too. It’s still the pale lavender I painted it before she was born. “I took off from work,” I go on. “And I told Elaine at choir I’m going to take some time off.”

“I don’t know that that’s a good idea, baby. I think we need to go on with our lives and let her find her place in them.”

“I thought we could do some things together,” I say, ignoring his suggestion. “She and I. While you’re at work and Jojo’s at school. Get to know each other.”

He sits up on the edge of the bed. Stands. “Okay. She can start next week at Ursuline.” He walks toward the bathroom. “But I don’t think we should make her go to Mass. Religion isn’t something you force on people.”

“My parents forced it on me,” I call after him. “Yours certainly forced it on you.”

He goes into the bathroom and I know that conversation is over. Whether I want it to be or not.