Not a bird.
Not a plane.
“Get that thing out of here,” my father said, grabbing at it.
The bird began to flap its white wings.
“Get your goddamn paws off my canary,” she said, slapping his hands away. “I’ll wear whatever the hell I want.”
On my father’s face, there was a puzzled expression, cheeks pulled in, a puffy pucker, as if he’d eaten a spoonful of something, and now it was moving around, still alive, in his mouth.
“ARE YOU FUCKING HIM?” SHE ASKED, STANDING IN THE doorway. I was on my back in bed, under the covers, in the dark.
“Jesus Christ,” I hissed in a low whisper, and rolled onto my side, turning my back to her. “Get out of here.”
“No,” she said, stepping into my bedroom and shutting the door behind her. It became pitch black in the room. I closed my eyes. From all the way in the basement, I could hear that canary screeching. Two days earlier, it had learned to warble, then the warbling had turned to horrible shrieking all day and night. We’d put the bird’s cage in the basement to escape it. “Well?” she said. “Is Phil good in bed?”
I said nothing, pulled the covers a little higher. I was naked and cool in my sheets. As a baby, I’d worn zip-up sleepers with feet. As a little girl, she’d dressed me in Victorian nightgowns. Now, whatever I was wearing when I got in bed, I took it off and threw it on the floor. I liked the feeling of nothing but my skin between the sheets and me.
“Well?” she said again. “Is Phil a good fuck?”
“What do you know about fucking?” I said. I could hear her inhale when I said it, as if the words had shocked her, though to me they’d sounded flat, rehearsed, as if I’d read them from a piece of paper someone offstage had just handed me. I didn’t even really know what I meant. For a split second I’d considered saying something about that book in her drawer, the one about achieving orgasms, but I had no idea what to say.
Suddenly, my mother flipped the light switch, and the whole room was exposed. She came to the edge of my bed, yanking the sheets and blankets off. I rolled onto my back, and grabbed them, struggling to pull them up again, but she kept them in her fists.
“What is this?” My mother was screaming. “What is this?” She tore the covers off completely, and they fell at the foot of my bed in a pile. “Why aren’t you dressed?”
I put my arms across my breasts, sat up, pulled my legs up to my chest, scrambling away from her. Her face was as white as a window shade. My heart was beating hard, and I was crying, shaking. “I was hot.” I said. “What do you care? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference to me that my daughter has become a slut.” She spat at me. Hands scratching in my direction, but missing me.
I was gasping. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Mom.” I sobbed it. “Stop it. Stop.”
But she pummeled my shoulders with her fists—softly. Her fists felt soft. I tried to grab her wrists. Finally, she stopped, but she was panting hard with a dry and hollow sound.
“I know about fucking,” she said—faraway, defeated—before she backed away from my bed.
“What is the matter with you?” I screamed at her back as she left.
WE ATE IN HUMMING SILENCE. MY FATHER MASTICATING, Phil nodding and mmm-ing at my mother as I slid a piece of parsley around and around on my plate.
She’d made crabmeat thermidor over toasted Holland rusk, and the garnish of blanched almonds looked like fingernails burnt to a crisp.
Afterward, I went upstairs to change clothes. Phil and I were going to a movie. My father was on the toilet—his first stop every night right after he ate. He’d get up from the dining room table, say, “Excuse me,” and go directly to the bathroom to eliminate: The king upon his throne, my mother called it.
Phil was helping her clear the table.
He’d taken his sweatshirt off for dinner, as if dinner were a relay race or a basketball scrimmage, as if there were a trophy to win, and eating so much so fast made him sweat. The T-shirt he wore was tight, and his muscles were under it, right there, impossible not to notice. There was blond hair on his arms. You could even see his stomach muscles, how they rode all the way down into his pants.
My mother was wearing jeans, a wine-red sweater, and lipstick to match. She could hear water rush in the toilet, dragging my father’s waste away.
He was pulling up his pants, all done.
She could hear me bump around upstairs.
Phil had a stack of plates and greasy knives.
She blocked his path in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, and said, “Either I made too much, or you didn’t eat enough.”
He laughed, but he was nervous.
“Half of this is going to end up in Tupperware,” she said, taking the plate of crabmeat thermidor out of his hands.
When I came downstairs, they looked at me. I saw a napkin in my mother’s hand with her lipstick on it. My mother’s smile smeared off and crumpled up.
A ruined fist of it between them. Phil cleared his throat.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
Many years before, my mother had been invited to a neighborhood Tupperware party, where she’d bought a whole set of it. The hostess of the party was the wife of one of my father’s golf buddies—a jowly, middle-aged man with the high shine of an alcoholic: rosy nose, buffed cheeks. He was away on business when his wife invited the other wives over to buy stackable plastic, but the smell of the man was all over the house—Listerine and whiskey and cigars. The hostess greeted her guests at the door of her Garden Heights home wearing a black dress and pearls—though she looked exhausted, worried. Her face was as unlined as a mask, skin pulled tight over her skull—the result of too much plastic surgery. As the wives filed in, the hostess ushered them one by one into the kitchen and opened the counters over her sink.
“I guess it’s pretty obvious I love Tupperware,” she said, grinning, painfully it seemed, showing off her perfect teeth along with five shelves of labeled containers brimming with Quaker Oats, white chocolate chips, sugar. “There’s not much I don’t have,” she said.
The guests sat on her floral divan, side by side, as the hostess wheeled out a demonstration for them. She pushed the lid of a clear plastic bowl down, then pulled up the side and let her audience listen to the burp. “Completely airtight,” she said.
At one end of the living room, she’d set out a silver tray of Brie, strawberries, grapes, and water biscuits. On the other, there was a basket filled with crudites, including three colors of bell pepper. But no one touched the food. Indeed, it was never offered. Instead, she gave each of the women a huge brandy snifter, then filled it again and again with white wine.
By the end of the evening, they were sloshed, throwing their arms around each other on the couch, flushed, snorting with laughter. The hostess stayed sober, but led the guests in a few songs. “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Old Man River,” and a round of “Row Row Row Your Boat.” Then, they took out their checkbooks and bought Tupperware, carrying it out into the snow to their cars, stumbling and giggling.
My mother came home from that Tupperware party—the only one she was ever invited to, as far as I know—happier than she had ever been.
“You’re drunk!” my father said, and my mother put a white plastic bowl on her head. She danced barefoot on the living room carpet for him.
He seemed pleased, too.
He liked the plastic items she’d picked out, and didn’t ask how much they cost.
Then, my mother wore the plastic bowl on her head upstairs, and came into my bedroom.