I bought Eleanor a pack of white briefs and several pairs of shorts and t-shirts, a yellow sundress that I’d seen her admiring. I bought her pajamas as well, but she wore mine nearly every night.
—He took it out on us because you didn’t love him back.
—How did he do that?
—There were just nights he’d come home and he was depressed. He’d say something went wrong at work, or when our grandpa—his dad—died, he said he was depressed about that for a really long time. Then he just started drinking a lot. Most nights he’d come home after Robbie was put to bed. A couple of times I heard my mom ask him to go in and kiss him good night. And Dad would say he did. But I knew he didn’t.
Vic never told me about his father’s death.
—I really don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am.
—Sometimes I hate you so much. Other times I think it’s not your fault. Like that stuff my dad wanted—you, whatever—he wouldn’t have done what he did if it wasn’t for how miserable he was at home. He was unhappy. I guess he always was, when I think back. He never loved my mom. I mean, he cared for her, like you care for anyone you live with or anyone who loves you. But he didn’t love love her. And after Robbie…
I took her hand in mine. I didn’t want to but felt I needed to.
—Before Robbie, he came to my softball games. Every single one. He wore a dumb PROUD DAD hat or whatever. We played catch every day after school. We made meatball sandwiches at night, after Mom went to bed. I knew he wasn’t totally happy, but he was happy with me.
I walked to my little tin and brought out three one-milligram Xanax pills. I swallowed two dry and offered her the third. Perhaps it was irresponsible of me but I didn’t see any reason for someone in her kind of pain not to take pills.
She took it from me. She had never done any kind of drug, had never smoked a cigarette. She told me she was a virgin, that she thought she would wait until marriage. And now she didn’t want anything. In one day, she told me, she’d gone from wanting a love story for herself to not believing in love at all.
—What about God? I asked.
—What about Him?
—Do you still believe in God?
—Of course, she said. Don’t you?
—No. I don’t.
—That’s weird to me. That’s kind of totally nuts.
—Why?
—Because how else are you going to see your parents again?
26
I’D BEEN WRITING TO ALICE for two weeks and she would write back sometimes an entire day later. Her replies would be friendly but distant. They were the sorts of replies I’d gotten from Big Sky toward the end.
It made me remember the way all my female friendships had exasperated me. I realized that was how Alice now felt about me. It was hard to believe. In the past, if a woman didn’t immediately hate me, then she would eventually develop an unsavory need for me.
There was Carly from college, whom I reconnected with during a dark spell, in between lovers. On my way back across the country, I stopped to see her and we spent a week pretending we were better friends than we’d been in school. We ate pressed sushi and read the same biography of Jackie Onassis on Butterfly Beach. She wanted me to sleep in her bed, but I took the couch every night, peppery with sand.
She had a crush on the bartender at the sushi place. That was what made him attractive to me. He was good-looking but not tall and not clean. She introduced me to him at a party. When she went to tap the keg, I let him bring me to a filthy couch with a bedsheet over it where we kissed. I wasn’t even a little drunk. I felt someone poking my arm and looked up to see it was Carly, rage and disbelief on her face. She downed her drink. The cranberry froth clung to the fine hairs on her upper lip. I’m going home, she said, waiting for me to follow.
I’m not finished with you yet, the young man whispered into my ear, gravelly, like a junkie. I was disgusted and humiliated. With the last spittle of my inheritance, I got a bungalow at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara. I drove us there in my rented car, leaving Carly to cab home. We didn’t fuck, I was too afraid he might carry disease. I halfheartedly blew him and let him finish on my chest. I remember the color was a terrible greenish hue.
In the morning I called my friend. I didn’t apologize but asked her to come to the pool. She was over in a flash.
It was one of those pools that impresses people. Olympic and clean with coral grounds and white umbrellas and the private beach just below. I found it depressing and wished it were half the size. We ordered mimosas and shared a club sandwich. But eventually Carly couldn’t take it. She wanted more from me and tried to pick at my insides to get it. She didn’t know anything about my history—nobody did besides Gosia and, later, Vic—but anyhow turned to me with a piece of sandwich in her mouth and said, Are you the way that you are because of your mom or your dad?
I stood up. I was twenty-six and wearing a red bikini, my body was
