“Sid, it’s your mother, it’s Mommy.”
I felt her soften for a moment and take in my face. “Oh Mommy,” she said, but instead of releasing me she pulled me into a tighter embrace.
Our nighttime sprinklers went off, spritzing her, and she recoiled out of instinct. Still gripping me, she tripped on the hose that was attached to the sprinkler, and, in trying to regain her footing she veered us to the right. I told her to watch out, but she and I collided with the outdoor trunk in which we kept the cushions and the pool toys. Then, like a physical comedian from an old movie, she dragged us away from the trunk and, in doing so, put her foot inside the inner tube Phee had used that was still sitting inflated by the side of the pool. In her attempt to shake it off—it seemed she mistook it for an animal—she, now with one strong arm hooked around my waist, hopped and kicked her leg wildly, hysterically. Knowing there was only one thing that could possibly help I struggled against her, dragging her closer and closer to the edge of the deep end of the pool until I used all my strength to jump into the frigid water, bringing her, who held me as tightly as a raccoon holds a piece of foil in a trap, with me.
It had been cool the past week, so the water was a terrific and icy shock. Sidney let go of me immediately and waved her arms wildly to get to the surface. Before I rose to help her, I allowed myself one gorgeous contemplative moment underwater. Even though she was drunk, and it was very dark, it was still true that my own daughter had mistaken me for a student.
* * *
I climbed out of the pool immediately, but Sidney stayed in, whipping her head back and forth, shaking off the water.
“Mommy,” she wailed.
“Get out of the pool, honey.”
“Mommy, I need you.”
“Okay, my sweetheart, just get out of the pool. Use the shallow end. That’s it.”
She climbed out and lay her body down on the concrete next to the pool and stared up into the sky. Cold to the point of pain but unwilling to leave her, I stripped my drenched clothes and underwear and wrapped myself in a leftover towel that hung on one of the pool chairs and hadn’t been taken in from the weekend. It might even had been Vladimir’s towel, I let myself think, as I wrapped it around my naked, goose-pimpled body.
I shimmied beneath her and rested her head in my lap. She turned to the side, snuggling against me.
Her clothes sagged and weighed on her. She was wearing her out-of-work uniform, her standard apparel of a dark hooded sweatshirt over her white oxford shirt, under which she wore both a white T-shirt and tank to minimize her already small breasts, dark selvage jeans, and boots that looked like they belonged to a naturalist in the early twentieth century. She would regret getting the boots wet in the morning—she was as persnickety about the neatness of her clothes as any man （it is my experience that while women love clothes and fashion, there is no one as interested in the preservation of the like-new state of their vestments as a preening man）。 She made a decent salary, she lived with her partner, and I paid her student loans, and so though she dressed simply, she had a weakness for expensive boutiques that specialized in hand-crafted apparel with clean lines and high-quality materials.
“Mommy, Alexis kicked me out.”
Sidney’s voice had the forlorn neediness that she had as a child, when she would wake up in the middle of the night with a bad dream, or itching from bug bites, or in pain from a mysterious fever. It was so easy for me to comfort her in those moments, to pull her to my chest and soothe her and let her sleep on me all night. She was never a clinging child, independent and sensitive and usually interested in shrugging me off, and so I cherished those moments, when hurt made her needy, and she clung to me as though I was the only one who could help.
I stroked her wet hair. Like many gay young women, she had the undersides of her head shaved up past the ears, and her light reddish bob flopped a little past her chin when dry. I ran my fingers along the shaved part, the bristles smooth on the way down and textured the way up. It was barely 60 degrees, we would both be shivering in a moment, but I felt a poetic charge in the tableau of us, soaked, our hearts as open and seeping as popped blisters—a sordid and suburban pietà. It reminded me of twenty years ago, when my colleague David didn’t show up at our meeting place, and I realized that he’d decided he wouldn’t run away with me to Berlin after all, and I lay down on the bare, cold earth of the graveyard （our ridiculous choice for our rendezvous） and let a stray cat sniff, and then walk over, my body.
“She left me, Mommy,” she repeated.
“My sweet girl, I’m so sorry.”
“I thought you were one of Dad’s—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“It’s okay, sweetness. But you shouldn’t get so drunk, at least not when you’re by yourself.”
“I took a bottle of rum on the train with me.”
“That’ll do it.”
“Then we were delayed in Albany for an extra hour so I got some beer.”
“How’d you get here?”
“I walked.”
“Oh my sweetheart. You’re safe at home now.”
“I think I fucked a man in the train bathroom.”
“You think?”
“No, I did.”
“Willingly?”
“Basically.”
“Basically?”
“Yes. Willingly.”
“God, Sid, how do you feel about that?”
“Oh, fine. I wanted to. It was fine.”
She was fully shivering now, and I took my towel off and wrapped her in it and helped her to stand.
“Let’s get you warm and talk about it inside, okay? I want to hear.”
“I don’t want to talk. Can you make me some food?”
“Yes.”
“Can I stay here tonight?”
“It’s your home.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“I was never mad at you. You were mad at me.”
“Look at those stars.”
It was clear out, and they were so dense they seemed connected at the tips.
“I was just thinking about how when you were a little girl you told us that nature was so boring, because all anyone did in nature was tell other people to look at things.”
“Were you smoking?”
I didn’t answer. She and I took a hot shower together in the big shower, like when she was little. I dressed her in John’s sweats and sat her on the couch with a large glass of water, then put on a robe and started in the kitchen. I decided to make her stovetop spaghetti carbonara pie, an old specialty of mine she loved—a sauce made of bacon, tomato, olive, and anchovy （I add olives and anchovies to all tomato sauce because tomato sauce is always better with olives and anchovies） simmered on the stove, to which one adds al dente spaghetti, then cracks eggs into little craters in the mixture, cooking them until they are just set, after which an obscene amount of parmesan is grated over the entire thing and the skillet （oven safe） is put under the broiler for three minutes to crisp the top. The dish is an ambush of calories; it would be good for all that alcohol sloshing around her insides.
I was about to strain the pasta and add it to the sauce that was simmering on the stove when I heard Sidney staggering toward the downstairs bathroom. I turned off the burners, ran into the bathroom, held her hair from her face and rubbed her back as she vomited torrents. After several rounds, in which she alternated vomiting with lying on the cold tile floor, she seemed to have nothing left in her. She brushed her teeth and I tucked her into the guest bedroom, pulling the covers up to her chin and kissing her hair. Next I cleaned up the vomit that had escaped her before she had reached the toilet, a line from the couch to the bathroom, and put the sauce in a storage container. I threw out the pasta, which had been sitting unstrained in the hot water and now looked like a pot of floating dandelion wisps. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, performed my skin regimen of toner, retinol serum, massage, under-eye cream, and moisturizer. I would sleep with Sidney to keep watch over her during the night.