The Adults (28 page)

On the subway, she told me what it had felt like to be married.

“You know,” she said, “the only way I can describe it is that I could walk through our kitchen at home and, when it was clean and organized, feel nothing but depressed. Everything was so clean, and the Tupperware was back in the cabinets and the sauce had been picked off the stove and here I thought that was what the problem was, but standing in the middle of the kitchen, everything felt clean and wrong. I had all the answers to all the questions I ever had and everything still felt wrong. I knew everything about my husband and he knew everything about me. I knew that when he woke up in the morning it took him ten minutes to brush his teeth, five minutes to yell at me for leaving a scarf on the stairs, even if he didn’t fall or trip on it or anything, it was always the
principle
of the matter that mattered.”

“That’s what my father used to say when I left a sock on the floor,” I said. “I’d say, ‘Dad, it’s just one sock, it barely takes up any room.’ And he’d say, ‘Emily, it’s the principle of the matter.’”

Ester said that when you were married, there was no sense of urgency anymore. “Like when one of us was leaving on a trip, we wouldn’t even have sex. I would say, ‘You didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘You’re on your period.’ And I would say, ‘You wouldn’t even know that because you didn’t even try,’ and he would say, ‘Ester, I can see the garbage can.’”

“Sheesh,” was my only response.

“Anyways,” she said, “that’s what it’s like to be married.”

“It’s like having tampons in a can and somebody you love noticing?”

“It’s like putting up a giant scoreboard in your living room.”

“Then why would you want to get married again?” I asked.

“Because,” she said. “Sometimes, you win.”

ODKUD JSTE?
This was what the teacher wrote on the board in big white letters during our fourth class. “Like,
Where are you from?
”

“
Jsem z Ameriky
,” I said to the class.

“
Jaké je vaše povolani?
” she asked. “Like,
What do you do?
”

“
Jsem obchodník
,” I said.

Like,
I am a businessperson
.

“That’s just so not true,” Jonathan whispered in my ear.
“Jste. Lhář.”

Like,
You are a liar
.

“
Jste jen člověk
,” he said.

You are only a person
.

“
Jste jen
the Little Mole.”

The Little Mole
was a Czech book of cartoons that Jonathan and I stumbled upon in Shakespeare and Sons one day, two weeks into his trip, about a mole who never spoke but traveled around town solving crimes in the spirit of socialism.

“He’s so cute,” Jonathan had said. “He reminds me of you.”

Then we overheard some Frenchwoman yelling at her son, who was peering under books, making them fall to the ground. “You are just like
le
Little Mole!” she screamed. The boy cried.

Afterward, on the street, Jonathan pretended he was yelling at me, a little child, “that was mute and inquisitive and politically active!” Jonathan said. This made us laugh so hard, Jonathan started calling me
le
Little Mole.

And when I opened the door to my father’s apartment to let Jonathan inside, Jonathan said, “
Le
Little Mole!” I had thought the nickname was just a joke that bonded me and Jonathan until my father approached, stuck out his hand, and said, “Please don’t refer to my daughter as a mole.”

This should have made me feel better but it felt the same way when my father and I used to sit around making fun of our noses, and my mother would say, “Victor, her nose is fine.” It only confirmed everything that was wrong with my nose: long, lumpy at the top, overall much too eager. And when my father had said, “Don’t call my daughter a mole,” it confirmed it: there was something inherently mole-like about me that needed defending.

I had convinced Jonathan to come over and babysit Laura with me while Ester and my father went to the opera. “I don’t want to meet your father,” he had protested at the hotel. “It’s too weird. I’m nine years older than you.”

“He won’t care,” I had said. “His fiancée is almost twenty years younger than him.” But as soon as I said this aloud, I knew it didn’t matter. I knew I was wrong, the same way I had been wrong when I brought my Barbies to Mark’s house as a child, and Mark asked, “Won’t my dad think it’s strange that I’m playing with Barbies?” to which I said, “No, he won’t care. I promise.”

“I’m Jonathan,” he said, and stuck out his hand to greet my father.

“I’m Emily’s father,” my father said as he shook his hand slowly. It occurred to me then that my father had never met a man I dated before. It occurred to me that neither of us knew what to do. My father looked strangely at Jonathan and did not let go of his hand.

“We’ve done this before,” my father said.

“Pardon?” Jonathan said.

“We’ve shaken hands before. I know you. I’ve done this with you before.”

“I apologize, sir, I don’t quite recall.”

My father let go of his hand.

“You are a teacher at Webb High,” my father said. “I remember you from the graduation. You were talking to Emily. We shook hands.”

And the most surprising thing about this was that I was pleased; my father remembered my life.

“Oh,” Jonathan said. “I was, yes. But I’m a lawyer now.”

“But you were Emily’s teacher, no?”

I chimed in. “No. We didn’t know each other until I was in college.”

We were silent. It was an obvious lie. Ester walked into the room with Laura.

“All right, Victor,” Ester said. “The opera waits for no one except Pavarotti, and even then . . .”

She stood in front of the door and eyed Jonathan, who I realized was about her age, and this was humiliating for some reason, perhaps mostly for Jonathan, the two people in their thirties, one off to the opera and the other the babysitter.

“Wait,” my father said, grabbing his coat and hat.

“Don’t go, Dad!” Laura shouted all of a sudden. She fell at his feet with a rubber cheeseburger and banana in her hand. “Let’s play Eat!”

Laura was obsessed with pretend. My father had gotten her a pretend kitchen, and she tugged on his arm and asked if we would all play Eat with her.

“I already ate, sweetheart,” my father said, trying to peel her off of him.

“That’s why we won’t eat too much,” Laura said.

My father looked at me for help.

But I stood there with my arms crossed, angry that my father called us out.
Laura is your responsibility
, I thought.
You had her.

“What are we going to eat?” I asked as I scooped up Laura from the floor.

“You can eat the banana,” she said, and stuck out her hand that held the rubber banana. “I’ll have the cheeseburger.”

“How come I get the banana?”

“Because I’m the princess and you are just the Bunny Friend.”

The logic of eight-year-olds. I put her down on the couch.

“Bunny Friend?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

She put on a tiara. She handed me a headband with rabbit ears. I put it on my head.

“Bye, girls,” my father said.

“Wait! Want to see my skeleton?” Laura asked, and lifted up her shirt, sucking in so hard her ribs hung carelessly over her hipbones. “Look at my skeleton!”

My father walked over, swooped her up, and hung her upside down by her feet until the vein in the middle of her forehead popped out from laughing so hard. “I’m going to shake your bones out,” he said. My father was a different father around Laura. He was like a loving big brother, whereas sometimes, I felt like my father’s business associate. I remember when I was younger, and my father and I were at one end of the dinner table, a bamboo plant between us, and we were making up lists of words that rhymed with our last name. Midol, I had said. He laughed. That’s not a real word, he said. Then what is it? I asked. If it’s not a word, what is it?

You got me there, he said, and we both took sips of his bitter coffee.

My father put Laura down. “Good night, girls.” He looked at me and then at Jonathan. “You all be safe now,” he said, closing the door.

To play Eat, you sit on a floor and you hold your head over plastic dishes with plastic carrot slices on them, then after, you throw the plastic carrot sticks behind your head and shout out, “All done!” only so you can ask for more plastic food to throw behind you, so you can ask for more plastic food to throw behind you, etc.

“This is getting silly,” I said to Laura, chucking a stalk of plastic broccoli behind my head.

“You’re right,” she said. She sat down next to Jonathan. “I’ll feed you pudding.”

Jonathan opened his mouth. He was her prince, and princes, Laura said, should always be spoon-fed.

Jonathan seemed to like this idea. He smiled and said, “The best damn pudding I ever had.”

Raisinet trotted happily into the room. Laura glared at him. “Go away!” she shouted. “Ruffski!”

“Laura,” I scolded. “Be nice to the dog.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Laura snapped.

“And why not?” I asked.

“Because you are the Bunny Friend,” she said. “Which is basically the same thing as the maid. Get us some tea, please, Bunny Friend!”

There were moments when Laura looked at me like she was trying to tell me how much she hated me. When she didn’t understand quite who I was, when she admired and despised me all at the same time, and wrapped her arms around me and put her cheek to my chest just to feel the cold spots in my heart.

“Laura, go get washed up for bed,” I said. “It’s already nine.”

“Oh, come on, Emily,” Jonathan said. “I was just about to get more pudding.”

“Come on, Emily,” Laura mimicked. “It’s time for more pudding. Don’t be a bore.”

Sometimes, she looked at me like she was already disappointed in what I could be. Children can make you feel like such a fraud in this way.

“All right,” I said. “Eat the pudding.” I looked at Jonathan. “But you’ll have to put her to bed when she can’t sleep.”

Jonathan opened his mouth wide for pretend pudding, while I pretend smiled and, after, Laura rolled on the floor actually flipping up her skirt.

At ten, Jonathan put her to bed. He laid her body down on the mattress as though he had done such a thing before, his hand behind her head. “I love you,” Laura said to him. “Not as much as Peter Pan, but I still do love you, very very much.”

When Jonathan came out, he said, “Wow.”

“What?” I asked.

“She is a spitting image of Mark,” he said. “Her gestures, her smile.”

“She’s my sister too,” I said, suddenly possessive of Laura.

“I know that, sweetheart,” he said, and kissed me softly on the lips.

Later, when we heard Laura snoring, Jonathan and I climbed into the master bedroom, and Jonathan broke out a warm bottle of wine and I consented to the wall. Nothing ever really changed, I thought. Me in the master bedroom, Laura next door, and the wine was always warm. So I said, “No,” to Jonathan. “Turn me around, I want to see the whole room. I want to see the room.”

We were face-to-face. “I’m going to put my cock inside you,” he said in my ear, and I pressed my nose into his shoulder. He put my arms against the wall, and as much as things might have looked the same, everything was different, like a discussion, upright as humans who had to carry their own weight.

“I am in loveski with you,” he said after, under my father’s silver sheets.

“How do you know that you loveski me?” I asked.

We tumbled over each other, thrilled to be in the master bedroom.

“I just know,” he said. “I know like I know there are hairs growing out of my head.”

“So when you’re bald, I’ll know it’s over.”

“Exactly.”

J
onathan and I were going to meet at nine in Staré Město. He was leaving in a few days, and my skin already felt cold and dry as though he had gone. I was listening to one of Ester’s CDs and thickening my lashes.

Laura was on the floor watching me apply makeup. Ever since Jonathan’s comment about her face, I couldn’t stop thinking of her as Mark. Like Mark was behind me, staring up from the ground, asking, “Why are you putting tar on your eyes?”

“Makes my eyes stand out more,” I said.

“That makes
no
sense,” she said.

Ester was behind me as well, watching from the table. I got the feeling that Ester wanted to come with me, as though watching me apply mascara was reminding her of a certain kind of happiness. Then she looked at my father, as if she were saying, Oh, I’d better not, I’m dating someone who is so responsible he’ll probably wear his tie to bed. But then she went into her room and came back in a puffy blue dress.

“How do I look?” she asked. It occurred to me that she wanted to look attractive. That she could very well find Jonathan attractive. They were, after all, closer in age than any of us.

“Like you’re about to blast off to the moon,” Laura said, and I laughed. “Ester the astronaut, blasts off to Planet Snot!”

Ester grabbed her purse.

“Oh, you guys,” Ester said. “
Please
don’t hate me.”

Ester and I went to Staré Město and sat on wicker chairs, waiting for Jonathan. Ester was crossing her legs and telling me her opinion on the most upsetting births of 2002. I wore black velvet stretch boots that I borrowed from my mother before I left, a black chiffon dress that bunched at the breastbone, and my mother’s red paisley scarf, and I was so overdressed I felt like I was somebody’s grandmother trying to get laid for the last time. I was so overdressed that when my father came into the apartment, he saw me standing at the fridge with my back toward him and accidentally said to me, “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

“When is he coming?” Ester asked, looking at her watch. Sometimes, when I felt dry and worn-out, old and useless, I focused on the differences between me and Ester. Ester sprayed herself with too much perfume and wore a watch, while I just looked at the sun for guidance, and shrugged my shoulders and mumbled, “Soonish.”