—I always have nightmares if you’re angry at me. Daddy would tell you to read me a story and make it better.
—Why isn’t your father here and do it, then?
—Because. Grandma.
—Go to bed!
—Don’t you love me, Mommy?
My mother turned to face me. I wasn’t going to get the answer I wanted. I remember the feeling inside my heart. It was shocking how cold she could be. As a child in rural Italy, she’d been very sick and her parents had put her in a sanatorium, hours away from the family home, where she was quarantined in a sick ward with other children, coughing blood and not getting outside. Nurses with masks treated her brusquely, washed her in ice water to curtail the infection. They left bowls of farina with lumps for her to eat. They didn’t care if she didn’t eat. For nearly a year she was in that hospital and her mother came to visit her only once. It was a long trip and they were very poor and my mother said she didn’t blame her. She accepted it without reservation. In their bedroom in New Jersey my mother had a shrine for the woman who left her in the sanatorium. She told me I didn’t understand how hard life could be. That I was lucky.
Silently she taught me that we are all monsters, we are all capable of monstrosity. Unforgettably and unforgivably, she taught me several days later that there is always a reason behind the monstrosity. So all my life I have never had to wonder, How did that thing happen? With a mother killing her toddler, with a girl texting her boyfriend into committing suicide, with a child blowing the priest. Other people wonder why. I know exactly why.
—There are no stories or cocoa this late, my mother said instead of answering my question.
—But Daddy lets me when I’m scared. Daddy said—
—Your father is going to ruin you! she snapped.
I have long puzzled over that response. Somehow, because of how much warmer my father was on the whole, I think I metabolized it to mean that men can ruin you in wonderful ways, like lurid, bright white jawbreakers with beautiful rainbow specks.
17
I WOKE IN THE MORNING to two text messages. The first had come in the middle of the night, from Vic’s wife, very long and all in capital letters. She must have been drunk or on pills. I thought of her dead husband and especially of her boy, how it was exponentially easier to go on if you decided to go mad.
JOANNN. COME IN JOAN. WHERE ARE U? ARE U WITH A NEW HUSBAND? ARE YOU GOING TO TEAR ANOTHER FAMILY TO SHREDS? MY DAUGHTER HATES ME AND SHE HATES HER FATHER. SHE THINKS ITS MY FAULT THAT A WHORE WAS ABLE TO STEAL HER FATHER FROM ME. WHAT DO U THINK JOANNN? DO U AGREE? ARE U A WOMAN OF GOD? DO U PRAY TO A HIGHER POWER? WE USED TO GO TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY AND AFTER TO THE ROSE GARDEN AND HE PICKED ME ROSES AND WE PUT THEM IN A VASE AT HOME AND THEY LIVED UNTIL THE NEXT SUNDAY. I WAS ONE OF THE LUCKY GIRLS. HE WAS THE LOVE OF MY LIFE. I WONDER IF HE GOT U ROSES. I HAVE ALL THE BILLS HERE THE CREDIT CARD I WASNT SUPPOSD TO KNOW ABOUT. ALL THESE FANCY DINNERS! U ARE A LUCKY GIRL TO. HE NVR GOT ME CAVIAR.
I read it a few times. I’d begun to tremble, though I didn’t realize it until I saw the phone shaking in my hand.
The other message was from Alice.
Your day off right? Come by for a comped class at 10? Then ill take you to the farmers market on trancas for banana blossoms.
FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THE CLASS, I checked my face in my rearview mirror. Why do some straight women need to be beautiful in front of other women? If men were wiped from the planet, how long would that need linger? At what point would we just focus on becoming strong?
Inside the studio Alice was seated in lotus pose. Her hair was all the way down. She winked at me as I unrolled one of the rental mats near the window. She led us in sun salutations to Dylan’s “Mozambique.” I wondered whether any of these tight-faced women were thinking anything other than how beautiful Alice was. How stable yet dainty her wrists looked on the mat and how demure her rear was, high up in the air, in downward dog. There is so much power in the way we obsess. If we could only harness it. If we would only redirect it.
I watched Alice’s body move and willed my bones to lengthen like hers. When I shot my legs behind my hips into chaturanga, I felt as light as I had ever felt.
At the end Alice readjusted me in corpse pose. She smelled like pears. I was the first to get up and quietly roll up my mat. I didn’t look at her as I left the space. I waited outside on one of the benches. The front-desk girl came outside to ask me whether I had paid for the class, whether I would like to purchase a membership. I told her the class was comped. I felt like a wrinkled thief.
When Alice came outside, she regarded me with a queer smile on her face. I worried that maybe I’d acted needy in the studio. It was impossible for me to know the right way to be around a woman.
We drove too fast in the left lane of the Pacific Coast Highway with the windows down. We passed several empty garden centers, we passed the stone pillars of the Getty. That stretch of Malibu felt void of animals. The wind was too hot, the cars were too fast. Only crabs thrived.
Alice played
