Chanel Bonfire by Wendy Lawless

asked.
    She started taking off her jewelry as she kicked off her shoes. “Well, you’re not going this summer. Your father’s getting remarried and he’s too busy to take care of you.”
    “Did he say that?” I asked, suddenly worried and trying to puzzle it out.
    “How come he doesn’t want to see us?” Robbie asked.
    “He has a new family now, I guess. New wife, a new son, and two daughters, from what I hear.” Mother shrugged her shoulders as if it were just too bad. Robbie and I stood watching her get undressed. She put on a peach-colored silk robe and went into her bathroom. I heard the faucets turn on and water running into the tub. I felt as if we were on a speeding train that was going so fast we couldn’t see the scenery hurtling by—it was just a blur and any second we would jump the rails. A hundred questions raced through my mind and yet I couldn’t think of what to say.
    The water stopped running and Mother reentered the room. She lit a cigarette and paced up and down on the white carpet for a moment, regarding us forlornly.
    “I can see that you’re both upset.” She stamped the cigarette out in the hotel ashtray by her bed. “I can’t think of any other way to tell you this.”
    “Tell us what?” For a second I thought that maybe Daddy was dead.
    Then she opened her arms and gathered us to her. Shesighed, hugging us tight. “I know it’s hard,” she whispered. “But you girls are just going to have to accept the fact that your father doesn’t really care about you.” She loosened her grip and looked in our eyes.
    “That’s not true,” Robbie said, chin trembling.
    I looked at her, surprised, not sure if this was defiance or disbelief. She may have felt, like me, as if it all couldn’t be happening. But unlike me, she had voiced it.
    Mother, her mind halfway across the Atlantic already, took it in stride. “I’m afraid it is true, and I love you both too much to lie to you anymore.” She shook her head slowly while she said this to us, as if she had to tell us that the cookie jar was empty and there wasn’t anything left for us. “One day, when you’re older, you’ll see that I’m doing what’s best. We’ll go far away where he can’t hurt us anymore.”
    “But we don’t want to go far away,” I said.
    “How far away?” Robbie asked. “Can we call him on the telephone and say good-bye?”
    “Yes, I want to say good-bye to Daddy, too,” I pleaded.
    Mother’s shoulders drooped slightly and she looked back and forth between me and Robbie, clearly weighing something in her mind. She sighed deeply, then said, “I had hoped to wait until you were older, but maybe it’s best this way.”
    She went to her vanity table, removed her wallet from her purse, and unzipped it. She pulled out a black-and-white photograph of herself with a strange man. We stared at the picture in her hand. The man was slim and darkly handsome,dressed in a suit. His hair was slicked back like a crooner’s. I could tell from Mother’s dress and hairdo that the picture had been taken some time ago. In the photo, they were looking at each other with one arm around each other’s waist like they were the only two people in the world.
    “Who is that?” Robbie’s brow furrowed as she peered at the snapshot.
    Mother looked hard at my sister and said to her, “That’s your father, your real father.” We both looked at the picture for another moment, then Mother put it back in her wallet. She told us his name was Nick and he was an old boyfriend of hers. He was Greek. “Your father was gone so much and I was lonely. I warned him that something might happen. But he didn’t care.” She said this as if it were all Daddy’s fault. My sister started to whimper and my mother smiled at her and knelt in front of her, shushing her. “You know,” Mother said, stroking my sister’s hair, “you shouldn’t be sad, because you were truly a child of love.”
    These were her words of comfort to my