Various Positions (10 page)

“It’s really unusual that they get along,” Sixty said.

“Is it?”

She flipped to face me. “My mom remarried three years ago. My dad can’t even say the guy’s name. I saw him try once,
Robert
, and it was like he’d filled his mouth with lemon juice.” She puckered her lips to demonstrate. “He says divorcing my mom is the biggest tragedy of his forty-six years on the planet.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my lap. “My family’s not like that.”

“I’m really close with my dad, though,” she added. “We talk on the phone all the time.” She bounced onto her stomach, kicked up a bare foot. “I guess you don’t talk to your dad much. With him always on call.”

“No. Not much.”

“Does it bug your mom?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said she was really emotional.”

“Oh.” I turned my head, bit the corner of my lip. “That’s just her personality.”

*   *   *

Isabel called Sixty and me down for dinner. I felt immense relief at the sound of her voice, warm and normal, carrying up the stairs. Isabel would make my family seem okay. I led Sixty out of my bedroom.

“Isabel’s twenty-two. She speaks Spanish and French perfectly. She just started her master’s.”

“That’s cool.”

“It’s a part of English literature called critical theory. It’s pretty complicated.”

Isabel was standing at the foot of the stairs, gripping the banister as she leaned away from it so that her body curved like a bow. I introduced her to Sixty and watched them shake hands. Isabel looked as nice as I had hoped she would. She was wearing a short dress the color of a camel with little black buttons down its front. We started along the hallway but she hooked her arm around me from behind, pulled me toward her.

“How’s everything?” she whispered.

“Fine.”

“You like your new school?”

“Yeah. It’s good.”

“And has Dad been around … have things been okay?”

I looked at Sixty’s back as she moved down the hallway, a couple of feet in front. I didn’t want her to hear. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Good.” She squeezed me in closer. “Remember to
call
me, G. Anytime.”

Isabel stepped in front of Sixty and we followed her into the dining room. I heard the two gold bangles clang on her wrist. The table was set, someone had even laid a tablecloth, and my dad was sitting at the head, BlackBerry still in hand. I pointed to the chair where Sixty should sit and took the one beside her. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted my dad to look up and acknowledge us, or if it was best as is. There was a bottle of wine in front of him, a waiter-style corkscrew at its side. Isabel picked it up and had the wine uncorked in three swift motions. She filled my dad’s glass first, twisting sharply at the end to clear the rim of drips, then moved around the table to where Sixty and I had sat down.

“Would you girls like a drop?”

I pushed my water glass forward even though I didn’t normally drink wine.

“Thank you,” Sixty said, pushing hers forward too.

My mom came in from the kitchen carrying a giant bowl, two ocher ribbons painted on the ceramic.

“Pesto pasta.” She placed the bowl on the table. It made a thud through the tablecloth.

Isabel and I locked eyes. Her cheeks lifted to stifle the smile that leaped to her lips and she raised her hand, covered her mouth thoughtfully. Pesto was my mom’s protest meal when she was forced to cook without notice. She kept bushels of basil in the freezer, separated into meal-portioned Ziploc bags.

My mom wiped her forehead. “I made a salad too.”

“I’ll get it.” Isabel stood up and left the room.

My mom sat down. She took a sip of wine and paused, brought the glass to her lips again and gulped. Isabel came back holding a wooden bowl, a well of romaine lettuce, sunflower seeds sprinkled on top. We passed the bowls around and started to eat. The pesto tasted like it always did, which was a good taste, a nutty taste, alternately velvety and rocky on my tongue. My mom bought Parmesan cheese in big geological chunks from St. Lawrence Market, and it melted into the sauce, made lumps of salty oldness. I wrapped the linguine around my fork and tried not to be bothered by how quiet it was. When I focused carefully from the middle of my ear, I could hear Sixty chewing beside me, a wet kissy noise inside her cheeks. I looked up at my mom. She was staring at her plate without blinking. I hated when she didn’t blink.

“This is really good,” Sixty said. “Thanks again for having me.”

My mom lifted her head, perplexed a bit, called back to the world despite herself. “Oh, it’s nothing. Sorry it’s all been a little improvised.”

“So.” My dad replaced his wineglass on the table, rubbed the stem between thumb and finger. “What did you want to talk about, Isabel?”

“Oh.” Isabel looked from my dad to my mom. “I just … I have a little news.”

“News?” My dad’s chin retreated, turtlelike, toward his neck. “What is it?”

“It’s not such a big deal or anything. I’m having a paper published in an academic journal.”

“Wow.” My mom leaned forward, her voice stretching through the word. “That’s fantastic. Which journal?”

“
The Journal of Popular Culture
. It’s based out of Michigan State University. I didn’t know anything about it, but my mom sent my essay in and, yeah, I guess they liked it.”

“That’s great, Isabel.” My mom glanced at my dad. “Really impressive. It’s early in your career to be publishing already.”

I turned to Sixty, wondered if she was impressed too.

“What do you think, Dad?” Isabel asked.

His forehead rippled in three thick folds. “I think it’s excellent. You should publish as much as possible.”

“Yeah, well. I guess I’ll try now.”

“So what’s the topic?”

“It’s called ‘The Abject on MTV.’”

My dad made a show of turning his ear toward her, as though he hadn’t heard. “Come again?”

“‘The Abject on MTV.’”

He rubbed the side of his face. “I think you’ll have to expound on that.”

“It takes Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection and applies it to portrayals of young women in all those really popular reality TV shows. You know, the ones that are half-scripted and have twenty-year-olds lounging around in bathing suits?”

“Like
The Hills
?” Sixty asked.

“Exactly.”

My dad stabbed a piece of lettuce. “Interesting.”

I recognized the tone and I knew Isabel did too, a sound knotted with disapproval.

“So explain this to me,” he continued. “This … sorry, what was the term again?”

“Abjection?”

“
Abjection
. Yes.” He took a sip of wine. “What exactly does that mean?”

Isabel wet her lips. “Kristeva is a literary theorist who writes a lot about the body and how, historically, the body is associated with the female and then written off as weak, immoral, dirty. She thinks that in a patriarchal society, a person has to
abject
the female body—you know, turn
against
it—in order to achieve selfhood. It’s kind of like Freud’s Oedipal thing, but earlier, because we all come from a female body so that body is the first threat to a person’s independence in a patriarchal world. But if you’re a woman, it gets really complicated because, well, you’re basically rejecting yourself.”

My dad narrowed his eyes, turned his head a few degrees. “Okay.”

“So in my paper, I guess I deal with the issue of complicity. Why are these women on TV complicit with their own objectification? And I look to Kristeva’s theory for possible answers.”

Isabel moved her hands when she talked, not a lot, but in a delicate way, almost balletic, enhancing her ideas with little flutters of her wrist. I would never be able to talk this way, but I loved listening to her. The problem was my dad’s reaction. He saw invisible things, tiny wrinkles in her argument. I was amazed by his ability to locate them, run his fingers along the seams of her ideas and dig out the strings, instantly split them open. It was miserable for Isabel, though. The impact of my dad’s action would seize hold of her, shake off all the poise I admired. A heat would rush her cheeks and her mannerisms would go a little clownish.

“Cool.” My dad turned his attention to his pasta.

“Well, what do you think?”

“This gender-theory stuff is all pretty much beyond me, Isabel. I don’t think I’m a qualified critic.”

“It’s not
gender
theory.” Isabel’s eyes flashed to my mom. “It’s just an idea. An interpretive idea. And I mean it’s like an extrapolation of Freud, Dad. It’s right up your alley.”

“I’m a neuropsychiatrist, Isabel. I don’t do psychoanalysis.”

“I think it’s a very clever application,” my mom said. “I look forward to reading your paper, Isabel.”

“Thanks, Lena.” Isabel reached for the bottle of wine, refilled her glass.

“Me too.” I said it quietly. Maybe my dad wouldn’t hear. I often found myself stuck in these quandaries, captivated by the melodies of Isabel’s ideas and then forced to reconsider once my dad had intervened. It went quiet around the table again. I hoped this was the end. The salad traveled from my mom to Sixty to me. I didn’t want any more but I took some, bought time as I clamped down on leaf after leaf. The longer my dad waited, the better. Maybe he’d forget what he’d been saying and the air would be cleared for something new. I passed the bowl to my dad. He took it without looking at me.

“So when will this journal be out?”

“Not till Christmas. But Mom’s colleague is chairing a conference and she wants me to present it then.”

My dad’s expression changed. “What sort of conference?”

“A regular conference. A few grad students and faculty from other schools. Her colleague’s been researching postmodern representations of the body, so Mom figured that my paper would fit right in.”

“Well, that’s…” My dad glanced around the table. “This paper of yours must be something. Your mother’s standards are high.”

Isabel shrugged.

“Well, we’ll go.” He opened his hands, grinned at my mom across the table. “We’ll all go. When is it?”

“It’s the first week of November. The Saturday.”

“Great.”

“Aren’t you in Boston that weekend, Larry?” my mom asked.

“Oh, right.” He paused. “Well, I’ll move a few things around. I think I can reschedule.”

“I thought you were speaking at the American Medical Association.”

“No.” My dad hesitated. “That’s not till the end of the month.”

“You told me you were in Boston that weekend.” My mom’s voice stuck to the sides of her throat. Sixty was staring at her now, and this just about killed me.

“You’ve got your dates wrong, Lena.”

“It’s really not a big deal,” Isabel said. “Really, no one needs to come.”

“Of course we’ll come. It’s your first academic honor.”

My mom stood up. Her arms hung at her sides, stupid and unmoving. “What the fuck were you planning on doing that weekend if Boston was just a lie?”

The room went still as we stared at her. I had no idea what to do and in my head I heard
oh god oh god oh god
. She looked shocked by her own outburst and in a moment she had knocked back her chair so that she could step away from the table. She walked out of the room.

It was worse than anything I’d imagined. She’d never done anything like it before, at least not in front of a guest, and the word
fuck
rang in my ears. Normal moms didn’t talk that way. What would Sixty think? She was working on a piece of lettuce, cutting it meticulously into quarters. I did this too, focused on the eating, even though it felt like my stomach might collapse. I forced my fork into a clump of noodles, twisted from the stem. Isabel placed her napkin on the table and stood up.

“I’ll be right back.” She walked out, following my mom.

I wouldn’t look at my dad. I brought a perfect coil of linguine to my mouth and chewed through it silently. I prayed he’d say something to make the situation seem more ordinary. He would feel it and tell a joke, do something poised and adult, smooth out the catastrophe as best he could. I tightened every muscle in my body and willed it to happen. He lifted his wineglass and drained it in one gulp. Then he got up and left the room too.

*   *   *

Isabel took a taxi home and dropped Sixty off at her residence on the way. I waited for my parents to go to bed, crept down the staircase to the living room. My mom had put the books back on the shelf, and I searched for the burgundy one I’d seen her writing in, the flash of gold emblazoned on its spine. I found it on the second-to-bottom shelf,
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy. The yellowing pages smelled of firewood and postal stamps. I flipped to the title page. There was my mom’s name in the top right-hand corner, Lena Omsky, in her tall, clear hand. I ran my finger over the ink as though it might be fresh enough to smudge. I opened more books, chose the older ones in hardcover, things I knew she liked. There was her name again and again. Was she worried someone would steal them? It seemed like such a weird fear, and the fact that she indulged it made me angry. This was just how she saw the world, as though her body were more delicate than other bodies and invisible winds conspired to knock it down. I imagined her at the end of the dinner table again, the terrible look in her eye as she stood up and said
fuck
in front of Sixty. She never cared if she embarrassed me, never cared about much but the tiny drama of the moment and how it might make her feel. I was getting so mad that I could have taken all her books and thrown them against the wall. But instead I was careful to straighten each one and put them all back on the bookshelf until the room was just as I had found it.

I lay down on the carpet and watched the slick black window where streetlights blurred to make gold stars. Isabel would be home by now, and I pictured her on the stool in her kitchen, one bare foot propped on the water-stained wall and the noises that her house was flush with, warbling pop music from someone’s bedroom, the murmur of a reality show on someone’s computer. She’d call her mom and tell her about her day, and Pilar would be sitting in her living room, ready to offer advice. I tried to imagine Pilar’s face in a close-up. I wanted to see what she looked like, not her features, but the appearance of her compassion, how it revealed itself on her face. Something about it seemed heartbreaking, the hugeness of a good mother’s love, and imagining it I felt the clamp in my chest that I get at the saddest part of a movie, a squeezing that reaches all the way up my throat.