says Richie.
How am I supposed to respond?
As long as we’re just pals it doesn’t matter.
But now, the way his eyes
land on me stirs me up.
Is he flirting?
Do I want him to flirt?
Or am I simply confusing him
with what Molly Bloom has made me feel?
When I look again, he’s changed back
into my comfortable-as-a-worn-slipper
neighbor and pal. And I’m glad.
BOOKWORM
Without my dad’s protective presence,
I have to be exquisitely wise, on alert,
to keep Judith from lashing out.
I pretend my classes are incredibly compelling.
I make sure she knows that ninth grade
in a new school’s a lot to deal with.
When I foresee Judith’s nostrils flaring,
eyebrows hooded, a storm brewing,
I fashion myself into a serious,
hunkered-down bookworm.
I even offer to read aloud to her
from our first novel assignment,
Animal Farm.
I garble phrases explaining the parable
of Marx and Stalin and the Russian Revolution
until my mother’s eyes glaze over.
I study French verbs out loud,
je vais, il va, nous allons,
jump ahead just to confuse her:
the difference between
the imperfect, j’allais,
and the past perfect, j’etais aller.
She never learned any languages.
I talk about algebraic equations
as if “X equals what?”
were the three most
fascinating words in the world.
GLAD TO BE HOME
Two weeks later, while we’re eating
liver and burned onions,
(my mother resents cooking),
my Paul Newman–handsome dad—
dressed in a fancy three-piece
Hart Schaffner Marx suit, silk tie, handkerchief,
slick hair, heavy aftershave—wafts inside,
as if he learned how to enter a room
from Frank Sinatra.
So smooth.
I expect him to open his mouth and croon.
Instead he sits next to me
while my mother gets a plate from the kitchen.
“Did you know in Italy,
men take mistresses?” he whispers,
as if we were in the middle of talking about movers,
shakers, and jet-setters,
which, I suppose technically,
my father is.
(He had his photo taken with Catherine Deneuve!
“She’s the face of my new perfume,”
he explained.)
I shake my head.
“How would I know about mistresses?”
“It keeps the family together in the long run,”
he says enthusiastically.
“Are you telling me
about the long run of our family?”
“I’m just telling you how Europeans are, Maisie.
I thought you aspired to be sophisticated!
Europe’s been around a long time,” he says.
He’s thinking ahead, into the future.
But I don’t want to go there.
PEACHY KEEN
I only want to go backward,
or sideways into a TV show,
where everything is peachy keen,
where dads are not ladies’ men
or playboys and never were.
Or if they were, it’s in the distant past,
before they became adults with
bills and mortgages.
That’s what I think about
when my too-good-looking dad,
reeking of aftershave,
returns from Italy.
At least, he says Italy is where he was.
“I’m glad to be home,” he announces,
“but the plane ride was no fun;
storms over the Atlantic lasted for hours!”
He’s taking off his coat, draping it on a chair
instead of hanging it up,
which, right off the bat, frosts Judith.
MADE IN ROME
But she controls herself and hangs it up.
From his upbeat conversation,
my dad has no idea
what it’s like for us when he’s gone.
What it’s like for me.
This isn’t the time to tell him,
so I sit on the plastic hassock
on the flokati rug as he unpacks.
He hands me an intricate
beaded black purse.
A masterpiece. To die for.
MADE IN ROME, the label says.
So maybe he did go to Italy.
“I wish you could have come with me,
kids,” he says.
“The cities, oh, you’d love them.
The beauty! You, Maisie, as an artist,
you’d be even more transfixed
than I was and more knowledgeable.”
I wonder, was he there with his mistress?
Why do I think he has a mistress?
“I bet you and Maisie would have a blast,”
says Davy,
“without me or Mother along.”
“I wouldn’t have a blast without you,
son,” says my dad.
But my brother stomps off, muttering unintelligibly.
“The David, the frescoes, the architecture, the bridges!
Those famous hills outside of Florence,
the Ponte Vecchio, Roma, the Colosseum.
Not to mention the little local restaurants,
the piccolo negozi; street life’s everywhere.
I have to take you back there
just to watch you go out of your mind!”
I wonder why, when he left,
he never mentioned this trip.
He’s good at his business.
My mother never gives him any credit.
I don’t understand that.
He has his own fragrance company!
His products are in all the stores!
Actresses say they love the scents.
He says his goal is to make enough money
to move us to Manhattan!
When he’s right in front of me,
I want to tell him about Rachel,
Richie, Yossarian from Catch-22,
French class, art class.
Everything, I guess, about high school.
He says he wants to talk, too, but later.
Mother hates it when he wants to be with me,
so now there’s deadly silence.
I smile. Dad smiles, too.
It’s awful.
ITALIAN PERFUME
He hands me a postcard of the Uffizi Gallery.
He describes the art he saw.
He says he thinks I have talent!
And that I should see great paintings,
the masterpieces.
I feel close to him when he speaks like this
because, from his lively green eyes,
I believe he really means it.
But my skin prickles:
He probably should be saying
some of this to my mother.
I want to brag to her,
“See, Mom? Dad thinks of me, not you!
Why? Because you’re a shrew!
Which is why he loves to talk to me.
Why he invites me places!”
Then I notice her face: incredibly downhearted.
I get an unusual pang for her.
I don’t say my truth.
That never works out.
PLAYBOY
Instead, I slip my hand inside my new purse
to feel the fine silk lining.
Such luxury!
My fingers pull out a delicate lace hankie