Cold Feet by Amy FitzHenry Page A

from her master’s program and started as a paid staffer at the anti-tobacco lobby. She was able to quit her night shifts at the Italian restaurant on M Street, threw away her red linen apron—stiff from hundreds of washings—and lost the extra ten pounds created by the free pizza and calzones we subsisted on. Thanks to the new boost in income, we traded in the revolving door of temporary rentals and Georgetown apartments owned by friends who let us crash, for a small Cape Cod in Arlington, Virginia. For the first time, we had our own house, with a real backyard, replete with a dogwood tree and a hammock, where I could lie for hours in the shade and read. It was my own personal Glover Park, with fewer flashers.
    This should have been good news, but for some reason as soon as we moved, this was when it seemed my mother morphed from Mom to Caro. All of a sudden she was out of the house all time, somehow even more than when she’d been waitressing, going to school, and passing out “Cough Twice for Philip Morris” flyers on Saturdays. Even though she finally had a salaried job and could presumably take a break from our ever-present money woes, she seemed more irritable than ever. Everything I did annoyed her, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I felt less and less comfortable in my own skin every day. That summer I shot up to five feet, nine inches, getting clumsier by the second, while Caro stayed cool, sleek, and Reese Witherspoon sized.
    A child’s memory is biased, I know, but there are events from that time that stick out to this day, moments that I can point to and say,Look, there it is, there’s proof; my mother couldn’t stand me. One night when we first moved in, our neighbor and the father of three younger boys from down the street, Mike Madigan, came by to welcome us. In only a few days, I’d already become familiar with the Madigan boys, who were always kicking the soccer ball around their front yard or having races in the street. Mr. Madigan worked as a government consultant, had a kind smile, and wore tortoiseshell glasses. He offered to fix loose cabinets and set up our cable box, as generic men in the suburbs are prone to do. I remember how nervous I was when he came over, the first ever visitor to our first ever house, as I chattered to keep him entertained.
    I told him a story about my middle-school gym class, describing the annual line dance instruction, even impersonating the boys choppily attempting to grapevine. Our neighbor chuckled and I glanced at Caroline to see her reaction. She was watching me stonily and all of a sudden I saw her—quickly, imperceptibly—roll her eyes. It’s subtle but powerful what an eye roll can do. Abruptly, I stopped speaking.
    In the years following, when I wasn’t at my new friend Liv’s house, I hid in my room or outside on the hammock. I punished Caro by not telling her anything about my life. I didn’t tell her when I got elected to student government. I didn’t complain that I hated my chemistry teacher with a passion and I didn’t invite her over to take prom pictures with the other parents. Over the years we became more and more distant, until we were basically two strangers living in the same house, reconvening to discuss Chinese food take-out orders.
    Liv’s family, on the other hand, was perfect. I idolized her parents, particularly Mr. Lucci, who in my mind was the perfect dad. He was the ultimate family man. He came home every night at 5:00 P.M. from his job at the State Department and cooked dinner for his family. I remember hearing a story about how he could have taken a job at a law firm and made ten times the salary, but he turned it down because he wouldn’t have been able to make homemade fajitas every Thursday night. Mr. Lucci spent virtually every weekend puttering around the house, drinking decaf coffee, and reading the newspaper, reciting aloud any article he thought Mrs.