herself anew in a way that all the therapy in the world couldn’t.
I didn’t share any of the dark clouds with Mia, the fear or sorrow. She never saw that face, the alert, frightened one with eyes in the back of her head. She saw the singing face.
I had a clear and ringing voice and sang to her all day long. Singing expressed our joy in each other, it knitted up our frayed edges. At night, just the two of us in the dark, singing created sanctuary, my lullabies were as hymns. It was the closest I ever came to praying.
She still had nightmares of Nick, still acted out what happened. She’d say she wants to kill her dad without even looking up from her fingerpaints. We were sitting in a theater watching a Maya Deren film when I noticed Mia on her back with her dress pulled up, her legs in the air, and no underwear on. I pulled her quickly onto my lap, glancing around the dark for her panties. They were on the floor by the door, where we’d stood waiting in line.
She continued to see a wonderful psychologist named Ella, and her sexualized behavior faded slowly. She grew stronger and happier as I headed for graduation.
I’d formed a friendship with a gentlemanly professor who became a kind of father figure, at a time when fathers weren’t high on my list. He was mortified that I had no intention of ever getting married again. But, Claire, he said, you can’t possibly want to live alone. My marriage has been the best part of my life for forty years. You just need time, he assured me.
I met Paul at a downtown film gala. He was handsome, fair, and dark-haired, with huge dove-colored eyes that turned down at the corners. A talented designer without the artistic personality that usually goes with it, Paul was the kind of Southern gentleman that’s practically extinct. He stood when a woman entered a room and still called his parents ma’am and sir. We dated for six months, until I was certain it was a lasting relationship, before I introduced him to Mia.
At their first meeting she was so possessive of me, she slid off my lap, whacked him in the face with a stuffed animal, and crawled back into my lap, scowling. Still, she agreed to let us take her to the zoo next time. She had a screaming tantrum the entire car ride there. Well, I thought, there goes Paul.
After we parked, she got out, sniffled herself quiet and put her little hand up for me to take. Then she put the other one up for Paul to take and we never looked back.
Paul’s appearance in our lives meant that she got doted on by two. She was the center of our lives and she loved it, loved that she had a kind man who would protect us both from what she now called her “old dad.” She had a new father. But she never called him Daddy, he would always be Paul or, after enough years passed, occasionally “Dad.”
Sometimes it was his arms that held her and walked her back to sleep after nightmares of Nick pulling a long needle out of his jacket and sticking it into her while he laughed in his curly blond wig.
Paul taught her to paint, to pitch like a boy, to skateboard. To fly. Literally. She was so fine-boned and light that he would throw her up in the air high above his head and catch her as she sailed down, squealing with delight.
I took photos of Mia looking like she was falling from heaven. Photos of her making big muscles and ferocious faces, of her galloping, laughing, waving a sparkling magic wand. Of Mia the Powerful.
Mia ruled.
5.
Paul, Mia, and I moved to Los Angeles when she was five so I could pursue a career as a screenwriter. I worked regularly, and in genres women rarely wrote in then—action and futuristic thrillers. But my primary ambition was to be a great mom. I knew these were magic years and reveled in them. So did Mia. She thought it was Herself that magically controlled the TV. She turned it on and off and changed the channels because she had The Power. Mia would swing her arms around, zap the TV with a “Poof!” and it
I didn’t share any of the dark clouds with Mia, the fear or sorrow. She never saw that face, the alert, frightened one with eyes in the back of her head. She saw the singing face.
I had a clear and ringing voice and sang to her all day long. Singing expressed our joy in each other, it knitted up our frayed edges. At night, just the two of us in the dark, singing created sanctuary, my lullabies were as hymns. It was the closest I ever came to praying.
She still had nightmares of Nick, still acted out what happened. She’d say she wants to kill her dad without even looking up from her fingerpaints. We were sitting in a theater watching a Maya Deren film when I noticed Mia on her back with her dress pulled up, her legs in the air, and no underwear on. I pulled her quickly onto my lap, glancing around the dark for her panties. They were on the floor by the door, where we’d stood waiting in line.
She continued to see a wonderful psychologist named Ella, and her sexualized behavior faded slowly. She grew stronger and happier as I headed for graduation.
I’d formed a friendship with a gentlemanly professor who became a kind of father figure, at a time when fathers weren’t high on my list. He was mortified that I had no intention of ever getting married again. But, Claire, he said, you can’t possibly want to live alone. My marriage has been the best part of my life for forty years. You just need time, he assured me.
I met Paul at a downtown film gala. He was handsome, fair, and dark-haired, with huge dove-colored eyes that turned down at the corners. A talented designer without the artistic personality that usually goes with it, Paul was the kind of Southern gentleman that’s practically extinct. He stood when a woman entered a room and still called his parents ma’am and sir. We dated for six months, until I was certain it was a lasting relationship, before I introduced him to Mia.
At their first meeting she was so possessive of me, she slid off my lap, whacked him in the face with a stuffed animal, and crawled back into my lap, scowling. Still, she agreed to let us take her to the zoo next time. She had a screaming tantrum the entire car ride there. Well, I thought, there goes Paul.
After we parked, she got out, sniffled herself quiet and put her little hand up for me to take. Then she put the other one up for Paul to take and we never looked back.
Paul’s appearance in our lives meant that she got doted on by two. She was the center of our lives and she loved it, loved that she had a kind man who would protect us both from what she now called her “old dad.” She had a new father. But she never called him Daddy, he would always be Paul or, after enough years passed, occasionally “Dad.”
Sometimes it was his arms that held her and walked her back to sleep after nightmares of Nick pulling a long needle out of his jacket and sticking it into her while he laughed in his curly blond wig.
Paul taught her to paint, to pitch like a boy, to skateboard. To fly. Literally. She was so fine-boned and light that he would throw her up in the air high above his head and catch her as she sailed down, squealing with delight.
I took photos of Mia looking like she was falling from heaven. Photos of her making big muscles and ferocious faces, of her galloping, laughing, waving a sparkling magic wand. Of Mia the Powerful.
Mia ruled.
5.
Paul, Mia, and I moved to Los Angeles when she was five so I could pursue a career as a screenwriter. I worked regularly, and in genres women rarely wrote in then—action and futuristic thrillers. But my primary ambition was to be a great mom. I knew these were magic years and reveled in them. So did Mia. She thought it was Herself that magically controlled the TV. She turned it on and off and changed the channels because she had The Power. Mia would swing her arms around, zap the TV with a “Poof!” and it
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