“Girl!” Stepmother was yelling again, but Girl pretended she couldn’t hear her.
“Father? Are you still there?”
“Anyway,” he went on like nothing had happened, “Dr. Wu went through my desk drawers when I wasn’t there. He found some movies I was using to teach the class.”
“Uh-huh.” Girl lay on her back and put her feet on the underneath of the tabletop above her—she sucked at sitting still. The carpet smelled like dog. Girl didn’t know why one dog smelled more than two cats, but it did.
“He said it was pornography and he brought me up on charges. Man, I hate him. I have no idea why he hated me so much. Maybe he was envious, because I was such a good doctor and all the patients loved me.”
“I don’t get it. How could a doctor think educational movies were dirty?” Girl rolled over to her stomach and blew her hair out of her eyes again.
“I don’t know, Girl, he just had to make up something to get rid of me.”
Whatever, Girl thought, though she didn’t dare to say it aloud. This was stupid, and Girl didn’t know why he wanted to talk about it. It wasn’t the truth. It didn’t help anything.
“I gotta go. I gotta help Mother make dinner.” Mother wasn’t actually calling her, but Girl was tired of the pretense of talking.
“I so love you, Girl.” Father was always overly affectionate on the phone, maybe to make up for only calling every couple of months. It made her stomach ball up inside. His words didn’t mean anything.
“Love ya, too.” Girl pulled on the phone cord to bring the base of the phone close enough to hang up. Girl left the phone under the table and went in the kitchen to find her mother. Let the next person follow the cord when the phone rang. Girl didn’t care, though she would catch hell if the call was for Stepmother.
“Off the phone, honey?” Mother asked.
“Yeah.” Girl sat down at the table and fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers, just moving them around.
“What did your father say?”
“He told me some stupid story about why he left Rochester. It was dumb, it didn’t make any sense.”
“I never knew why your father got in trouble,” her mother said. Girl watched her mother’s hands chopping carrots. Her hands were big, her fingernails bitten back. Her engagement ring had a little gold hook that wrapped over the top of her wedding band. Girl knew her mother hated her hands. They looked strong, just like Girl’s.
“My cousin Iris used to work for him back then, in the pediatric clinic. She might know what happened.”
Girl sat at the wood-grained Formica table fiddling with the napkin holder. The paper napkins were always falling out. She took out the stack and lined up all the dimpled paper edges.
“Why did he have to move so far away?” Girl asked. She might have been twelve, but her voice sounded young and whiney even to herself.
“Well, after he left the hospital, he tried to go into private practice. You could ask his old partner, Dr. B, if you want. I could look her up. I always liked her. She was one woman that I knew for sure never slept with your father. She has horses, I bet she’d take you riding.”
“That’s okay.” Girl folded the stack of napkins and slid them back into the plastic holder in the middle of the table. Girl didn’t want to ask anyone about it, not cousin Iris, who Girl barely knew, and not some other pediatrician, even if she had horses.
“Anyway, no one would refer patients to him. He really didn’t have a choice, honey. There was no way he could make it here without referrals.”
Rochester wasn’t that big of a city: four hospitals, a couple colleges, and the world headquarters of both Kodak and Xerox. It wasn’t a small town, but it wasn’t big enough for a professional sports team, either.
“But why did he have to go so far?”
“I don’t know, honey. I wish he hadn’t. Before he left you used to go see him every other weekend. Do you remember?” Girl shook her head. “You would have been so much better off if he stayed. Your father is a truly brilliant doctor. He could have been a leader in the field, if it wasn’t for all his women problems. When I was with him he was on the verge of making an international name for himself—even traveling to speak in Argentina—but he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Whatever trouble he caused in Rochester was bigger than just an average affair or jealous coworker. It ruined him here. It was too bad, really.”
Mother scraped the carrots off the cutting board with the side of her knife and deftly chopped the celery. Her hands rocked the knife smoothly and it sounded like tiny people knocking on the door. Girl watched the short black hairs at the back of her mother’s head tremble as she cut.
“Did I tell you about the time he fooled around with my cousin’s wife?”
“No.” Girl took off her big, plastic-framed glasses and polished them on her shirt. Mother and Girl had the exact same frames—golden-brown on the sides fading to clear by the nosepiece.
“Hey, will you peel me a couple of potatoes?” Mother asked.
“Sure.”
“When my cousin found out that your dad was sleeping with his wife, my cousin said that he was going to shoot your father. We both had to go into hiding a few days. Then there was the time, after he left, when some woman was throwing rocks through the windows on Mulberry Street.”
“I thought you left him?” Mother was the only woman to ever leave her father, and Girl was proud of that. The rest of his wives put up with his shit until
