onto her. They kiss, finally, and Jane, noticing that my gaze has drifted, cranes her neck to see what I’m looking at. She laughs. The music has grown louder; the guitar comes to a throbbing crescendo, an ache that reaches inside me, takes me by surprise.
“Well,” Jane says softly, below the din, “those two probably won’t last the week, but in fifty years, when we’re in the home, we’ll still have each other.”
“You’ll have to pluck my chin hairs,” I say.
“I will,” she says. “I promise.” She squints at me, stage-whispers, “You have one now.”
The song ends abruptly. The apartment is warm and smells like beans. “Come and get it,” Al calls cheerfully from the dining room table, where he is beginning to scoop the chili into deep blue bowls.
Jane leans her head back onto the edge of the love seat. Her long neck is birdlike, suddenly vulnerable, and I have the urge to pet it. “Let’s go,” she says, but neither of us gets up. Rafael and Amy unclench and quickly separate. Dozens of party guests begin to move en masse toward the food. They drift past us, and it seems for one dreamy moment as if they are under water, or I am.
Chapter Six
In May of my sophomore year of college, my dad drove up to Madison for a visit. It was his fiftieth birthday, so I baked him a cake. I used a Duncan Hines mix and slathered the finished product with frosting from a can, but for me it was a Herculean effort. It was my first year living off campus, and it had taken me a long time to get the hang of things: it was the year my roommates and I didn’t realize our oven was broken until one day in early April when our landlords were being stingy with the heat, and we tried to turn it on to warm the apartment. Even though I put the frosting on when the cake was still too hot and most of the top layer crumbled up into the thick, gloppy icing, and one side of the cake ended up about two inches higher than the other, it still looked and smelled remarkably edible.
We met at A Tale of Two Zitis, the bookstore/Italian restaurant on State Street frequented by students and their visiting parents. At every other table there was a version of us. Dad had brought his girlfriend, a pleasant, petite, leather-skinned woman Seth and I called Tan Lesley. Lesley’s presence neither delighted nor disappointed me. She’d been a part of the scenery since a few months after our parents divorced, and Stan and Lesley had recently gotten engaged. Lesley didn’t speak much. At any given moment you could tell if she agreed or disagreed with my father by whether she placed her tan hand on his upper arm, or rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue at him. Whenever she talked to me, she announced my name first. Willa! It’s lovely to see you. Willa! How are your classes this term?
“Willa! Do you know where the little girls’ room is?” I pointed her in the right direction, and she tottered off on her very high heels.
“Stan!” I said. “Will you guys come back to the apartment after dinner?” I wanted to surprise him with my cake.
My dad nodded happily and took another bite of his fettuccine alfredo. When Lesley came back from the bathroom, he jammed another forkful in, and Lesley said, “This place reminds me of that cute little café in Florence we went to a few years ago. The one with the chairs.” She touched my dad’s shoulder and smiled, then popped a cherry tomato into her mouth.
But my dad returned her sunny gaze with a look of distress. His mouth was still full of pasta, his eyes bugged with alarm. It took me all of five seconds to catch on: Lesley. Florence. She was referring to a trip our family had been planning when I was fourteen, about two years before my parents split up. We had been talking about it for ages. Fran and Stan had always wanted to take us to Europe—when we would be old enough to appreciate it, they said, but before Seth went away to college, before we were too grown up to enjoy a family
“Well,” Jane says softly, below the din, “those two probably won’t last the week, but in fifty years, when we’re in the home, we’ll still have each other.”
“You’ll have to pluck my chin hairs,” I say.
“I will,” she says. “I promise.” She squints at me, stage-whispers, “You have one now.”
The song ends abruptly. The apartment is warm and smells like beans. “Come and get it,” Al calls cheerfully from the dining room table, where he is beginning to scoop the chili into deep blue bowls.
Jane leans her head back onto the edge of the love seat. Her long neck is birdlike, suddenly vulnerable, and I have the urge to pet it. “Let’s go,” she says, but neither of us gets up. Rafael and Amy unclench and quickly separate. Dozens of party guests begin to move en masse toward the food. They drift past us, and it seems for one dreamy moment as if they are under water, or I am.
Chapter Six
In May of my sophomore year of college, my dad drove up to Madison for a visit. It was his fiftieth birthday, so I baked him a cake. I used a Duncan Hines mix and slathered the finished product with frosting from a can, but for me it was a Herculean effort. It was my first year living off campus, and it had taken me a long time to get the hang of things: it was the year my roommates and I didn’t realize our oven was broken until one day in early April when our landlords were being stingy with the heat, and we tried to turn it on to warm the apartment. Even though I put the frosting on when the cake was still too hot and most of the top layer crumbled up into the thick, gloppy icing, and one side of the cake ended up about two inches higher than the other, it still looked and smelled remarkably edible.
We met at A Tale of Two Zitis, the bookstore/Italian restaurant on State Street frequented by students and their visiting parents. At every other table there was a version of us. Dad had brought his girlfriend, a pleasant, petite, leather-skinned woman Seth and I called Tan Lesley. Lesley’s presence neither delighted nor disappointed me. She’d been a part of the scenery since a few months after our parents divorced, and Stan and Lesley had recently gotten engaged. Lesley didn’t speak much. At any given moment you could tell if she agreed or disagreed with my father by whether she placed her tan hand on his upper arm, or rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue at him. Whenever she talked to me, she announced my name first. Willa! It’s lovely to see you. Willa! How are your classes this term?
“Willa! Do you know where the little girls’ room is?” I pointed her in the right direction, and she tottered off on her very high heels.
“Stan!” I said. “Will you guys come back to the apartment after dinner?” I wanted to surprise him with my cake.
My dad nodded happily and took another bite of his fettuccine alfredo. When Lesley came back from the bathroom, he jammed another forkful in, and Lesley said, “This place reminds me of that cute little café in Florence we went to a few years ago. The one with the chairs.” She touched my dad’s shoulder and smiled, then popped a cherry tomato into her mouth.
But my dad returned her sunny gaze with a look of distress. His mouth was still full of pasta, his eyes bugged with alarm. It took me all of five seconds to catch on: Lesley. Florence. She was referring to a trip our family had been planning when I was fourteen, about two years before my parents split up. We had been talking about it for ages. Fran and Stan had always wanted to take us to Europe—when we would be old enough to appreciate it, they said, but before Seth went away to college, before we were too grown up to enjoy a family
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