“You did get the birthday presents I sent?” he asked, once we’d reached the choux à la crème. “And the cards? Once you were older—once I was on my feet again?”
“Birthday presents?” I said. “What birthday presents?”
He looked dismayed. “Well, for instance. The bicycle when you were eleven, and that pink angora sweater when you were, what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Your mother said you had your heart set on it.”
“That was from you?” My mother was right: she hadn’t bought it. But I was right, too: she wasn’t the Easter Bunny.
“She said you loved it.” He sighed. “I guess she never told you it came from me. I suspected something like that, because you never sent thank-you notes. She must have thought I’d contaminate you.” He sighed again. “Maybe she was right. She was very protective of you, and she always had strong views.”
I’d like to say that this lunch was the beginning of a warm, close relationship with my father, but it wasn’t. It seemed I wasn’t very good at warm, close relationships at that time. My boyfriends didn’t last, even when they weren’t nixed by my mother. I’d developed a habit of discarding them before they could do the same to me. I said I wanted to meet his other family— especially my two half sisters, who were almost in their teens and had cute blond pigtails in the pictures he showed me—but he wasn’t up to that. He’d never told his second wife about me, and he feared repercussions; he didn’t want to upset the applecart, he said.
He especially didn’t want my mother to encounter his new wife, and I didn’t blame him: who knew what she might get up to? I pictured her bringing a booby-trapped gift, something she’d ground up and put in a jar; or else she might point, and apples would fly off the applecart as if exploding, figuratively speaking. She’d have her reasons for whatever mischief she caused, of course—she’d be acting for the greater good, or for my good, or the Universe would have firm opinions about what was needed—but I no longer trusted her reasons. She wouldn’t really care about the greater good, she’d just be showing off. Gratifying herself. That was my twenty-three-year-old view of her.
So over the next years we kept our distances, my father and I. We had lunch once in a while, furtively, as if we were spies. “Don’t let her get the better of you,” he said once. “Her” always meant my mother.
“Why did you break up?” I asked him.
“Well, as I told you, she basically kicked me out.”
“No, but really. Did you want to go?”
He looked down at the table. “It’s hard living with someone who’s always right. Even when it turned out that she was. It can be . . . alarming.”
“I know,” I said. I felt a wave of sympathy for him; “alarming” was mild. “Did she make you burn your hair?”
“Did she make me what my what?” He laughed a little. “That’s a new one on me. What exactly . . . ?”
“Never mind,” I said. “So why did you marry her? If you found her so difficult and scary?”
“Not scary, exactly. Let’s say complex. She could be very enjoyable at times. Though unpredictable.”
“But why did you?”
“She put something in my drink. Sorry. Bad joke.”
My father died earlier than many. He’d had cancer—he’d told me about it—so at least I had advance warning. Still, it was a loss: now I would no longer have my own unique secret, a corner of my life my mother hadn’t managed to pry open and judge. I’d kept watch on the death notices, since I knew I wouldn’t be notified by the family. The other family. The family that wasn’t secret.
I went to the funeral, which was well attended by many people I didn’t know, and sat at the back, far away from the official mourners. My mother came as well; she was dressed theatrically in black, which by that time nobody wore to funerals anymore. She even had a veil. I was married by then and had two children of my own, both daughters. My mother and I had had a major breach after the birth of the first one: she’d come to the maternity ward while I was in labor, bearing a gift of something orange in a jar for me to rub on my stretch marks, and announced that she wanted to cook the placenta so I could eat it.
“Are you insane?” I’d never heard of such a disgusting thing. It’s old hat by now, of course.
“It’s a traditional practice. It fends off malevolence. Have you been burning your hair combings, my pet—the way I taught you? That nasty old Miss Scace has been lurking around. She’s always wanted to harm you, just to get back at me. I saw her just now outside the preemie window pretending to be a nurse. She’s addicted to disguises. In the old days she’d dress up like a nun.”