Funny Story(82)

She touches his upper biceps as he’s starting to steer us deeper into the lake. He subdues his smile. “Well,” he says, “it’s a mermaid.”

She nods with wide-eyed intrigue. “And?”

“I liked how it looked,” he says.

“It’s gorgeous.” She gives it a firm pat.

The lake is surprisingly hopping. Over the roar of our motor, we catch snippets of radio hits blasting off the boats we pass: Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” and Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” and Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”

After ten minutes of cruising, wind in our hair, motor rattling in our ears, we find a good spot to stop and relax. Miles turns on our radio, drops anchor, and passes out cans of seltzer and beer from the cooler to the rest of us. Julia and I slather ourselves in sunscreen, but Starfire wastes no time shucking her clothes off and jumping off the back of the boat, a blur of hot-pink one-piece and a whoop!

Dad whistles and applauds when she resurfaces. Julia peels off her shorts and jumps out after her.

“Is it cold?” I call to them.

“Sort of,” Julia shouts back, right as Starfire says joyfully, “It feels like rebirth!”

Within a few minutes of cajoling, Dad’s gotten in too, and then he’s badgering Miles and me from the water, while Starfire backstrokes with impressive grace.

“You getting in?” Miles asks me, shielding his eyes against the sun to peer at me. It makes the moment feel strangely private, intimate.

“How deep is it?” I ask him.

“Don’t be a chicken!” Dad calls, the illusion of privacy shattering.

Starfire makes a hyperrealistic chicken sound. She’s really in her element here.

“What exactly”—I step up to the gate at the back of the boat—“would I be afraid of in this scenario?”

“The fish!” Dad cries, like this should be obvious.

“The fish?” I repeat.

Dad affects a look of disbelief. “Are you kidding? You were terrified of them when you were a kid! Remember? I took you fishing and you had that meltdown?”

I don’t remember ever going fishing in my life, but if I did, I’m guessing the meltdown had less to do with the fish and more with having to pull a metal hook from its mouth. “Are you sure that was me?”

He laughs. “I think I remember my own daughter! I took you fishing, and we forgot sunscreen, and I knew your mom would be mad, so we went to the grocery store and I got you this bright yellow sun hat. Matched your bathing suit. You looked like Tweety Bird,” he says, shaking his head. “You were obsessed with that hat.”

I think about the beanie he sent me, wonder if he conflated it with the hat from this memory.

Honestly, I wonder if it’s even a real memory, or just some scene in a movie he overlaid my face onto after the fact.

“You really don’t remember?” he says.

I shake my head. This clearly bothers him, but I can’t think of anything comforting to say. The fact is, the most memorable parts of my childhood are the ones he missed, his absence exactly what gave them their weight.

“It was a really special day,” he murmurs, treading water in place, mouth turned down in a frown.

I hate that I feel guilt right now. I don’t want to feel like Dad can still trigger that in me. Like all I want is to make him happy, make him proud, earn his shine.

Miles catches my eyes, his smile gone, his hand cupped around his eyes against the sun, creating that illusion of seclusion again.

It’s a look like, You good?

Or maybe like, I’m here.

And I know he won’t be forever, or maybe even very long, but it helps knowing that right now he is. That can be enough.

I turn toward the water, pulling my dress over my shoulders, sun beating against them. “On the bright side,” I say, “since I don’t remember that, I’m definitely not afraid of fish.”

I toss my dress at the bench, step through the open gate, and leap into the water.

The cold rushes over my head, needles through my every pore.

When I come up, when the sun hits the crown of my head and I see Miles standing at the back of the boat, Julia and Starfire and Dad swimming in lazy circles in the sparkling water, I think of what Starfire said.

It does feel like a rebirth.

People can change, I think.

I’m changing.



* * *





?We eat dinner at Jesse’s Table, a farm-to-table spot with a deck overlooking the water. I’m pink-cheeked-and-nosed from the day in the sun, while Dad’s, Julia’s, and Miles’s tans have only deepened. Starfire is bright red but unbothered. “It’ll turn into a tan by tomorrow,” she told me when I offered her aloe back at the apartment, between the boat ride and the restaurant.

As soon as we’re seated, Dad sweet-talks the host into taking an order for a bottle of wine. When the server arrives a minute later, Dad asks for recommendations on appetizers, and she lists six or so. He orders one of each, “for the table.”

I feel my first ping of anxiety in hours, imagining Dad nonchalantly telling our server to split the check evenly at the end of the night. I’m trying to do the math in my head to figure out whether I can cover Julia’s and Miles’s portion of these things they decidedly did not order.