Lillian on Life by Alison Jean Lester Page B

wanted to show them what a big girl I was, and I wasn’t sure how to work it all out. Then it hit me like my own private earthquake that Mother and I were wearing the same shade of dark red nail polish. I put out my half-smoked cigarette and tucked my hands under my thighs.
    â€œSo,” I said in my high school voice, “what do you want to do today?” They visibly relaxed. It’s unfortunate how we have to cripple ourselves for love, but it’s a fact. We have to. Poppa did that more elegantly than any human I’ve ever met, keeping his thoughts to himself on Mother’s complaints and desires, giving the impression that he had gained rather than lost something as a result.
    I can’t remember where I took them that day. Probably the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées. That would have made sense. I know we had beautiful weather. I remember our nail polish flashing in the sun. For dinner with my parents and Willis, I changed shades. He wouldhave remarked upon the matching fingernails.
The clotheshorse doesn’t fall far from the tree, now, does it?
he’d have hooted. I took off the red and put on an extremely dark plum after my bath, knowing it would look as good with the black-and-white satin dress as the red, and sat naked on the edge of the bed waiting for it to dry. Willis took a photo. When he couldn’t keep his hands to himself any longer, he pushed me onto my back and took me. I kept my hands in the air, away from our bodies. That was fun. It was fun to think of when we walked into the hotel bar and greeted Mother. Less fun to think of when I hugged Poppa, though, and when I introduced him to Willis.
    Willis ordered drinks and commandeered the conversation. He was just back from Naples, where he believed not only that every other person he met was a Mafioso but also that they were now his best friends. I drank and cringed and watched my parents’ reactions. Mother smoked and accepted another drink and asked Willis about his people in Texas. Willis was succinct for once. Poppa stuck with two drinks and nodded. Willis turned to Poppa and said, “You saw some of the first war here in France, Lil tells me.”
    â€œWell, yes, I suppose I did,” Poppa answered.
    â€œYou suppose, huh?” Willis said, ready to laugh, but he caught my look. “Well,” he said, and took a swig of his gin.“Paris has a brand-new face on these days anyway. It’s not the same town you liberated, George. No, sir. You’ll see that. We’re back to flowers and smooches in the street now, aren’t we, Lil?”
    â€œHallelujah,” I said, and raised my glass. Willis and Poppa and then Mother followed suit.
    â€œTo smooches,” Willis said.
    Mother and Poppa hesitated—it wasn’t their sort of word—so I said it, “To smooches,” and we drank.
    At dinner, Mother talked about the trip she and Poppa had taken to Florida two months before to visit her sister Celia, and how Celia’s husband had spent so much time tending his hunting dogs that she wondered why Celia didn’t come back to Missouri, and Poppa said he supposed she enjoyed the beautiful sunsets over the lake. Mother said, “Celia?” but I knew Poppa was saying that he had been touched by that evening light.
    For all Willis’s brutal directness, I knew that he would have loved the Florida sunsets too. I also knew that it would be hard to convince anyone that this was true. People say it shouldn’t matter, that you shouldn’t worry about whether or not other people see your lover the way you do, but when are things ever that simple? Have the people who say that lived at
all
?
    I spent a lot of money telling all this to Alma years later in New York, when the strain of loving Ted, and waiting for Ted, and enduring the disapproval of the family got too great. Alma smoked while I talked and cried. It’s a shame shrinks can’t smoke in their