How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) by Ann Hood

to either of these people. “Do you really think that Daddy just sits around while we’re here? He has a life, you know.”
    Even as I said it, I was wondering if my father and Ava and Baby Zoe were scrunched together on their couch watching old movies and eating popcorn made on top of the stove and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.
    â€œHe’s busy with his assignments,” I said, because I had to say something or else I might start to cry. I didn’t like thinking about Dad doing all those family things without me. “He’s flying around the world and writing about important things that really matter to the planet—and humanity.”
    I glanced at my mother. Surely even she knew that column of hers was stupid, a waste of time to write and to read. Surely she knew that my father did something worthwhile with his lengthy articles about rain forest destruction and the commercialization of the environment. On my bedroom wall, nestled between a shrine to Saint Teresa and another to Mary Magdalene, my own patron saint, I hung the cover of the Sunday New York Times Magazine with his article about the death of Yellowstone from over-tourism, framed and even autographed. The father of a saint should be doing good for the world.
    â€œOh, yeah?” Cody said, close to tears. “Well, I think what he writes about is stupid and I wish he had disappeared in that dumb avalanche. I really do.”
    â€œOh, honey, I know you’re mad at him but you don’t wish that. You love Daddy,” Mom said.
    â€œNo, I don’t!” Cody yelled, and he ran from the bathroom and up the stairs, slamming his bedroom door loud.
    â€œI hope you’re happy now, Madeline,” my mother said, following Cody.
    â€œHave a nice date,” I said, in a fake sweet voice.
    Her date was a man who made expensive drinking glasses.A glass sculptor, he called himself. His name was Jamie and he had silver hair that was way too long, hanging almost to his collarbone in dramatic waves. It was their third date. To me, his glasses looked warped, the way the windows on our house looked. They were rimmed in vivid colors and sat on different colored stems. On their first date, he had brought my mother two champagne glasses; one was deep orange and ruby, the other emerald green and cerulean. That’s what he called the colors. To me, they seemed like ordinary colors.
    â€œThe idea of it! Melting glass!” my mother had gushed, grinning all stupid while I thought about how ugly those glasses were. “Once,” she had babbled, “my ex-husband and I visited the Big Island of Hawaii and hiked through Volcano National Park to watch hot lava flow out of the volcano and into the ocean below. Of course, I realize now that one of the things fundamentally wrong with our marriage was that Scott enjoys such things: trekking in Nepal, rock climbing in the West, scuba diving, while I don’t like any of it.”
    Even though it was true, I couldn’t believe she was spilling all of this personal stuff before they’d even left the house. Although my mother could ski, she avoided expert trails and stuck to bunny slopes. She did not like to swim to pointstoo distant from the shore or venture any place too high above the ground. Like Cody, she was afraid of most things. I had thought for sure this guy wouldn’t stick around. But now they were going on their third date. Maybe he was even going to be my mother’s boyfriend.
    When Mom returned to the bathroom, I was practicing putting on mascara. Every time the wand came near my eyes, I blinked them shut or poked myself so that now I had eyes like a raccoon with black mascara circles around them. “Who could kiss a guy with long stupid hair like that?” I asked
    â€œDo you have a comment about every single thing?” Mom said. She was doing something weird with her hair, plopping globs of wax on it and making it stick up all over her head.