A Good Man Page 9

  Now, of course, I hate myself for ignoring her loneliness. There was so much that I didn’t see—that I refused to see.

  Ava was wailing too now. I went upstairs to her room and gathered my daughter in my arms, came down and paced the living room with her, singing softly even as her mother continued to moan, a song about two people who promised to be together forever despite the trials they would face, despite the unforgiving passage of time.

  You and I, together forever, I whispered. You and I.

  When I moved back toward the table Miriam left her chair and staggered upstairs into our bedroom, where she collapsed facedown onto the unmade bed. I followed her, still carrying Ava.

  Look, I said to Miriam. Look. She’s perfect. She’s perfect and she’s ours.

  Don’t bring her near me. Take her away.

  No. I want you to see her.

  I don’t want to!

  I lay down beside Miriam, balancing Ava on my chest. I began to coo to her, my daughter.

  Mommy loves you. She’s scared right now, but she loves you.

  Miriam shuddered beside us, her back turned.

  Everything is going to be okay, I promise.

  We lay like that for a long while, until Ava’s wet breaths grew slow and even against my throat. I carried her back to her room and set her down in her crib, then returned to our bedroom. I lay down again next to Miriam and wrapped my arms around her, trying to hold her quivering body still.

  I know it’s hard right now, I said into her ear. I promise nothing will ever be this hard again.

  Up to that point, our life together had been safe and warm, the doors of our happiness sealed against the world outside. But now a draft had forced its way in, the first dissipation of ease, of security, of perfection. For the first time in my married life, I felt threatened by something I could not control. It didn’t matter that I had a good job, or that I had secured us a home. I saw that my girls were vulnerable to mysterious and external forces, forces that could destroy us if I wasn’t careful.

  But I was stronger than the threat. I scheduled an appointment for Miriam the next morning, and the doctor put her on medication immediately. I made other changes. I put more work into the house on the weekends, so that it finally felt like home. I began to take night duty almost every night, waking up to cradle and feed Ava, soothing her when she cried. Sometimes I’d take her downstairs, and we’d fall asleep in front of the television, the damp ballast of my daughter against my breast. Other nights, when she wouldn’t settle, I’d walk around with her, whispering.

  This is your room, I’d say. This is your crib, and these are your books, and these are your toys. This is the hallway. That’s Mommy and Daddy’s room. This is a window. Out there is our street. There’s the tree you’ll climb when you’re older. I’ll show you how.

  Day by day, life regained its idyllic glow, the photographs no longer falsehoods as the years went by. There they are, my girls, sitting on our front stoop in matching sundresses. There they are in the backyard, tanned arms slung around a homely curly-haired mutt—our dog, Beau. There they are in the pool at my mother’s house. There they are in cream-colored sweaters, gazing up in open-mouthed awe at a glowing Christmas tree. There they are in red velvet seats at little Ava’s first opera, my girl yawning widely before the second act of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. There they are at a picnic table, Beau at their feet, the heavy shadows of an overhead trellis falling in dark bars against them.

  I must have taken most of the photographs. That’s why I’m not in them. We must have asked someone to take that family portrait on the beach at sunset. I must have given my phone to some stranger to capture our joy, allowing another person into our intimate orbit for just a moment.

  No. That couldn’t be it. Looking at it again, I can tell I must have taken the photograph myself, that I must have stretched my right hand as far away and above as I could to keep us all together in the frame.

  We would never have looked that happy—that open—for anyone else.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  When my daughter was born, I was stunned by the realization that she was mine. First it had been just my wife and me, and suddenly there was another person in the room with us—a new presence that had come from us.

  She hadn’t come from my body as directly as she had from her mother’s, but when I held her I could feel the ways that she was part of me. We breathed together, her small being swaddled by my chest and arms.

  The epiphanies only accelerated as she grew. There—the infant rolling herself over—she’s a part of me. There—the toddler with the dark curls reaching for my hand, pronouncing her first words—me. There—the girl reading chapter books on her own—me. I was reminded afresh each day that she was an individual, a separate person, but part of me still. I could remember her at every size, the different ways she used to fit against my chest and lap, how she slowly grew away from my body’s walls and corners. A small and perfect satellite.

  I can still see her now. Not just her face, her gestures too—all those little idiosyncratic movements that made her. They come over me like a wave.

  * * *

  —

  Ava never had to try to make friends. From the first day of preschool, other children were drawn to her dark prettiness, her impish smile. But there was something else about her. She didn’t throw tantrums. She didn’t show need. She’d always been self-assured. Let them come to me—she seemed to know this intuitively. And she was magnetic. Even as children, we are helplessly drawn to the ones who don’t need us.

  She wanted to be popular, and she was. Adored by her peers, she was invited to every party, never excluded or shunned. She dispensed hugs with deft efficiency, decorated birthday cards with intricate designs in rainbow gel pens, posted effusively captioned photos of herself with her friends:

  ilu

  bff

  soooo happy we’re friends

  u are flawless

  ugh so freaking cute

  omg adorable

  princess

  slay queen

  xoxo

  She ruled over her cohort as a benevolent empress, deciding when and how they would coordinate hairstyles, which teachers they liked and didn’t like, which foods they would deign to eat, which topics they would gossip about over lunch, and whether boys as a concept were cute or gross in a given week. Her amiable exterior masked an unshakable sense of self-confidence, a conviction that she was the starlet in the movie of her own life. We could see it at home sometimes in the way she’d disregard us if she didn’t care to hear what we were saying. She wasn’t rude about it—she’d just tune us out, turning her face, letting her eyes drift to something else in the room. Like an icy society matron, intent on keeping up appearances, even as she froze you out.

  I’m thinking, she’d retort when we pressed her to answer us. Or she’d just change the subject and babble on about something else.

  That was the Ava I knew: self-assured, unflappable. My own little Princess Turandot, that imperious beauty and executioner of unworthy suitors—though my daughter was more real and dear to me than any Puccini heroine.

  Now, banished from school for her scandalous act, my daughter’s cool-girl facade was crumbling before my eyes. She ran on ahead of me toward the parking lot, her hands pressed to her reddening face as she dodged a posse of older girls on their way to lunch, squealing in exasperation as she found the passenger door locked. Finally, safe inside the Mercedes, she slumped in her seat and sobbed, all her careful polish melting to reveal an uglier, more vulnerable core.

  Ava, I said sternly. Listen to me.

  She cried harder, mashing her pretty face against her knuckles.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  I can’t.

  You have to stop crying and listen to me.

  I can’t.


  How could you do this? How could you?

  I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t mean to! It was just a stupid joke!

  She wept bitterly, spitting her words. The hair around her cheeks and brow frizzed with the hot moisture of her face.

  You’re crying like this because you don’t want to take responsibility! You need to stop it, right now!

  She began to gasp, over and over again, and suddenly I thought of my father, of Evie—suddenly, I was afraid that my daughter would seize up and stop breathing, and that it would be all my fault.

  Sweetheart, don’t, I said. Please don’t. You’ll make yourself sick.

  I laid my hand on her back, and she took a few deep inhales, the bones of her shoulders rising and falling against my palm.

  It’s okay, I said. It’s okay. Calm down.

  Now you won’t love me anymore, she whimpered.

  What?

  You and Mommy, she said, turning to give me a baleful look. You won’t love me because of what I did.

  Of course we still love you. But you made a very big mistake.

  Don’t tell Mommy. I don’t want her to know what I did.

  I have to, sweetheart.

  Please don’t tell her. Please. She’s going to be so angry at me.

  The real problem, I knew, was that my wife wouldn’t be angry enough. Her natural inclination was to smooth over conflict with affection. Though she could be strict about quotidian, inconsequential matters—like Ava wearing a coat in cold weather, or eating everything on her dinner plate—when it came to big-picture issues Miriam could be hands off to the point of neglect, saying Ava should be free to make and learn from her own mistakes. Apparently that was how they parented in France.

  That wasn’t the way I parented, especially not in a situation this serious, when there was no room for such maddening inconsistency. Now that my daughter was no longer in hysterics, I knew I had to get through to her and make her understand the gravity of what she’d done. I had to take control before my wife had a chance to undercut me and kiss it all away.

  Listen, I said, my hand resting on the back of my daughter’s neck. Let’s go for a drive, okay? We don’t have to go home yet.

  Aren’t we going up to the country house? Ava asked, skeptical.

  Not until later, I said. We have time to kill.

  Where are we going to drive?

  Where do you want to drive? We can go wherever you’d like.

  I don’t know.

  She had taken out her phone again—last year’s AiOn, with the bigger screen and better camera, a relentlessly begged-for birthday present—and was scrolling through something, her half-closed eyes glazed by the diamond light of the screen. She sighed heavily.

  What? I asked. What’s wrong?

  One of the Kitty Angel’s baby kittens is sick.

  What?

  The Kitty Angel. She rescues tiny baby kittens when they’re, like, only a few days old and takes care of them until they’re old enough to be adopted.

  She held up her phone so that I could see the photo: a buxom, heavily tattooed redhead holding what looked like a potbellied mole in her manicured hands.

  And one of the new babies is sick. The Kitty Angel needs a thousand dollars for special surgery or something. There’s a page where you can donate.

  You know, there are people who need that kind of money.

  So?

  The phone dinged in her hand, a text message bubble popping into view.

  Hold on a second, Ava said.

  She groaned, then began typing furiously with her forefingers.

  Oh my god, I can’t believe her, she muttered. I am so done with Olivia—it’s like she doesn’t even respect the Dakota rule.

  What?

  When you say Dakota it means you have to keep the conversation a secret, Ava sighed, rolling her eyes as if she were explaining something simple to a much younger child. Cross your heart and hope to die. It’s serious.

  Ava.

  And obviously Olivia knows the rule—she’s known it from day one, when we first said she could hang out with us—but now she keeps going around talking about things she’s not supposed to talk about.

  Ava.

  She’s always so weird though. Yesterday during lunch everyone was trying to make Morgan feel better because her boyfriend from camp broke up with her, and since Olivia didn’t know anything about it and isn’t even really friends with Morgan she literally didn’t know what to do, so she just took out her phone and started taking pictures of herself making funny faces. I mean, who was she even going to send them to? No one, that’s who. Thank god we didn’t let her be part of the sugar baby club—

  Ava!

  What?

  Give me your phone.

  Why?

  That’s part of our agreement.

  What agreement?

  You’re in trouble, remember?

  I thought you said you still loved me.

  I do, but you’re still in trouble. Give me the phone. Now.

  She handed it over, pouting at the injustice. It reminded me of Beau’s look of misery whenever we forced him outside in bad weather, a look that asked what he had done to deserve this torture.

  I’ll turn mine off too, so we’re even, I said, taking out my own phone—this year’s AiOn, with the facial-recognition software—and powering it down. We’ll both be off the grid.

  She rolled her eyes again and leaned back in her seat, turning her face away from me.

  Do you want to get ice cream?

  She shook her head. It’s too fattening, she said.

  Sweetheart.

  I said I don’t want any.

  Okay, let’s just drive then, all right? So you can calm down a little.

  Can we go to the mall?

  No.

  But Daddy—

  Fine. We’ll go to the mall.

  I started the car, and soon we were cruising down the long driveway, under the dappled shadows of the overhanging oaks, leaving the shame and frustration of the morning behind.

  * * *

  —

  We went to the luxury mall named after a famous American poet, where verses about God and the Union dead were carved into imitation marble walls, stanzas about the dignity of the workingman wedged between awnings for Abercrombie and J.Crew. As we made our way through the mall’s airy, palm-lined atria and gleaming corridors, Ava absentmindedly reached for my hand. It was during the school day, so there was no need to fear running into her friends.

  In an expensive department store she paused purposefully by the makeup counter, hand on her cocked hip as she studied the shelves sorted by brand names: some childish and sassy, some elegant and European. Photographs advertised the wares—a woman with her eyelids painted like a toucan’s plumage, a girl with the matte eggshell cheeks of a doll. There were rows of reds and pinks, nudes and darks, liquids, sticks, pots, needles, and other tiny phallic contraptions. There were cases of eye shadow in orderly colored squares like paint swatch samplers.

  No makeup, I said.

  Why?

  You’re too young.

  I’m not too young, she retorted. I shave my legs.

  You do?

  I tried to.

  She pointed to one smooth stripe running up her calf, the fur of her invisible golden hairs cleared away.

  I used Mommy’s razor. In the shower.

  I’m still not buying you any makeup.

  Well, what can I get then?

  Who says you’re allowed to get something?

  Then why are we here?

  We wandered into the celestial white light box of the AiOn store, where Ava walked as if hypnotized toward the long, chrome-legged blondwood tables on which various devices were arrayed, each phone and tablet propped o
n its own Lucite podium, their screens pulsing with Technicolor animations.

  Following in my daughter’s wake, I thought of a homework assignment she’d had once, back in third grade. She’d had to write a poem in the voice of someone or something else—a princess, a whale, anything. Ava had refused all offers of assistance and shut herself in her room to write. Finally, at bedtime, she showed me the finished piece.

  The amazing new thing

  It’s amazing, it does everything

  It’s amazing, you will love it

  I promise

  Oh wait

  It stinks

  See, she’d said triumphantly. I pretended to be you.

  Now I watched her play with the phones, using their camera apps to give herself kitten ears, a halo of butterflies and flowers, a face like a Japanese schoolgirl’s.

  You want to know a secret? I asked.

  Okay, she said, still absorbed in her altered reflection.

  Guess whose campaign I might get to work on.

  She looked up at me, sensing this was privileged information.

  Whose?

  First you have to say Dakota.

  She snorted. Really, Daddy?

  Rules are rules.

  Okay, Dakota, she sighed. Now tell me.

  I cast a meaningful glance around the store, then smiled back at my daughter, my forefinger pressed to my lips.

  Oh my god! she gasped, her eyes wide and alight. Really?

  Really.

  That’s so cool! Will I get a free one?

  Probably not.

  Oh, come on, she said, but she was grinning. What if I’m really, really good?

  We’ll see.

  I bought her a new phone case, something pink and gold and glittery. She was definitely on the upswing now. A day with her father felt special, a break from routine. We didn’t get to spend time together like this very often.

  But as much as I treasured this stolen idyll, I knew that I still needed to talk to my daughter about what she had done. I knew I’d be failing her as a parent if I didn’t try everything in my power to make her understand that she could never do anything like that again.