Still, I stayed the night. And in the morning when I waked he was dressed and sitting on a chair reading the newspaper and I said, Hey, and he said nothing and I said, What are you doing today, and he lowered the newspaper and said, What, and I said, Today, and he said, I don't understand.
I don't know why they put my mother on the lawn.
But at least it was summer.
There was a day I ran into the field of brown grass and wildflowers, my brother's butterflies still alive in a plastic bag.
I wish I could say I let them go and that they flew far from the field so my brother could never recatch them.
Yes, I thought they would fly.
But I turned the bag over to let them go and they fell to the ground in circles, sunk in the tall brown grass and flowers.
I went home once after my mother died. I thought to visit the girls. But I didn't know where any of them lived. So many years had passed. And I never liked them, besides. And they never liked me.
When we got back from my father's convention one year, the girls had, together, ganged up on me for reasons having to do with my calling too much.
When I told my father, he said, Those bitches, and I laughed so hard I thought I would crumble to the ground.
I collected my mother's things into tote bags. There wasn't much I wanted.
My father's girlfriend lay on the couch, watching TV and smoking. She wore my mother's robe.
It wasn't a beachrobe but some other old thing my mother wore around the house.
My brother was putting things he wanted of my mother's into boxes.
It wasn't worth fighting over the things.
When my father's girlfriend stood, I noticed she was very tall and the robe stopped just above her knees.
I let her hug me.
Then I went into the field behind the house, more overgrown than ever, brown grass taller than I was.
It looked like rain, so I stayed just for a moment.
In the fitting room the salesgirl said, Let's see you.
I admit I was afraid, at first, to part the curtain. I didn't want the salesgirl looking at my body, for — and I admit this, too, hard as it is — I didn't exactly feel like the body's owner. As an owner with any sort of choice in the matter — and this isn't a joke — I believe I would have chosen another model.
But I parted the curtain.
I waited as the salesgirl looked.
My father took us to a diner in a part of town I had never seen. My brother and I rode in the back seat. The windshield wipers made a sound like something — I'll just say it — a sound like crying. At the diner I ordered toast.
The girlfriend said, Your mom was nice.
They all ordered quite a lot to eat and ate like horses.
My father told a story about something the girlfriend did. Something stupid. She stuck a fork in a plugged-in toaster. Or she dropped the phone into the tub. Or she left the iron face-down, hot, on the ironing board. He pretended to be angry when she didn't laugh. The girlfriend smacked him on the arm and called him awful.
He told her she needed new dresses.
He said, She'll send me to the poorhouse yet.
I can't explain why this bothers me still. I mean, the girlfriend's gone. The day he threw her out of the house, my father called and told my machine, I threw the bitch out.
The man at the pool held my arm. He said, I've got a good one.
He said, This girl, see, is walking through a field…
Okay.
And she's lost and scared, so she keeps on walking and, lucky for her, she sees a house with lights on, so she knocks on the door of the house and a man answers, and she says, I'm hoping you can help…
Okay.
So the man says to the girl, I'd love to help you out, and invites her inside and says she can spend the night at his house and promises he'll take her home in the morning if she…
Stop, I said.
He said, What.
I covered my ears.
Just stop, I said.
I sat in the waiting room with a magazine. A girl waited, too, on a chair near mine. She looked at me. I must have been looking at her.
I read an article on how to be more assertive. It suggested a firm handshake, eye to eye.
I heard my shrink open her door down the hall. I felt ready to talk.
First of my father throwing his girlfriend out. We would laugh our heads off over that.
And there was still the matter of my swimsuit.
And the matter, too, of the beachrobe.
My shrink came into the waiting room. I stood and said hello. This always made me feel like a kid. Like a shy kid hiding behind my mother's legs in a crowd.
The girl stood, too, and said hello.
My shrink said my name.
She said, Come with me.
We walked partway down the hall to her office.
She said, It's Tuesday.
She said, You're Wednesday.
She said, I'll see you tomorrow.
She walked me back to the waiting room.
She said to the girl waiting, I'm sorry.
The girl looked at me and went with my shrink down the hall.
She was taller than I was. Better looking.
I didn't return to see my shrink. I was tired of talking. And she would send me to the poorhouse, besides.
My father and brother once managed to pinch.
My mother laughed as I stood on the sand.
The ocean meant me and the fishes.
The hotel room meant me on the phone.
And I just stood there, frozen.
My mother said, Just tell her you're sorry.
My brother ran into the ocean.
My father said, What's got two hands and flies.
It hurt where he pinched. So I ran to the room. No, I kept on running. There was a mall nearby, and I ran into the mall in my swimsuit. I was barefoot. It was freezing in there.
I could have sunk into the field behind the house, the field just wild with tall brown grass.
The air smelled like rain. I looked at the house's black windows.
I imagined the poorhouse as looking like our house.
I once said to my shrink, How do you feel about that.
My shrink said, I feel with my hands, Ha ha.
There was a night I watched my mother fall asleep sitting up on the hotel bed, her mouth wide open, the TV flashing on her gray face. And I poked her in the arm to wake her, and she didn't move, and I poked her in the ribs, and I jumped on the bed screaming, Wake up, and my brother, building a plane on the floor, looked up, said, Quit it, and I said, Baby, and he said, I'll kill you, and went back to his plane. And I jumped on the bed wildly, screaming, Wake up, Wake up, until my father walked in, smelling of smoke and drinks and perfume and who knows what else and said, Don't jump on the bed, and my mother waked and said, Where have you been, and reached for the pen on the table beside the bed and threw the pen at my father.
I started to say to the operator, I'm disconnecting, but instead I said, I've got a good one.
This girl's walking along the beach and she's thinking…
My shrink's machine picked up.
The operator said, I'm sorry.
How she works in an office doing who knows what…
The operator said, Machine.
She disconnected.
So this girl's running along the road, and she's running from her father who has just pinched her in a place I can't divulge, and she's running from her brother who has also just pinched her and now laughs his head off in the shallowest part of the ocean, and she's running from her mother who looks gray and sick and no one's doing a damn thing about it because no one knows for sure what's wrong, and she sees a mall and decides to run inside, and there's a store in the mall that sells women's clothing, large, warm sweaters and such, and the girl, who's wearing a swimsuit — did I forget to say this — two piece, blue — and is freezing and wants nothing more at this point than to feel warm, runs into the clothing store, and a man says, Can I help you, and she says, No, and pushes her body through the tightly packed clothing hanging on a round rack and sits within the rack, yes, like in a cave, shivering, warming, imagining her mother's face, flushed, alive, in the crowd in the mall screaming her name, and the man says…