Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self Part 8

She flinched at her own lack of social grace and continued, "I'm sorry, Daddy. I didn't mean-What were you saying?"

But her father was saying nothing now. He looked at her, confused, and they let the awkward silence sit until the waiter came to rescue them.

"So," her father asked, once they had ordered, "how are things? You look lovely, by the way. That's a beautiful dress."

It was unfair of him to ask how she was doing. William knew more than he let on. He knew, for example, that she could probably use extra money. Eva had put on one gallery show, in a deliberately spare gallery on a side street in Chelsea. The art paid infrequently; she worked other jobs to support herself. She did paperwork for an art museum. Weekends, she worked in a store that sold s.e.x toys. When Debra told him this, he thought she was kidding, but it was true. It's also a bookstore, Debra said, by way of consolation. He went to the store once, to see it for himself. The windows were papered in red and when he opened the door he was confronted with a table full of vibrators. He shut it quickly. Sometimes he thought her whole life was an elaborate series of barricades against him. of him to ask how she was doing. William knew more than he let on. He knew, for example, that she could probably use extra money. Eva had put on one gallery show, in a deliberately spare gallery on a side street in Chelsea. The art paid infrequently; she worked other jobs to support herself. She did paperwork for an art museum. Weekends, she worked in a store that sold s.e.x toys. When Debra told him this, he thought she was kidding, but it was true. It's also a bookstore, Debra said, by way of consolation. He went to the store once, to see it for himself. The windows were papered in red and when he opened the door he was confronted with a table full of vibrators. He shut it quickly. Sometimes he thought her whole life was an elaborate series of barricades against him.

He knew about the girlfriend, though even Debra seemed uncertain about the current status of this relationship. They were not "roommates" anymore, but he was not sure what this meant, considering they were hardly roommates to begin with. He knew that Eva had been living in her own small studio for the past month, though a few years ago when he'd asked why she couldn't just get a bigger place instead of paying rent in two places, neither especially nice, she'd insisted that she couldn't sleep where she worked. She'd been living with her boyfriend at the time. When he'd brought this up with Debra, Debra said, She just didn't want to tell you that Cheese isn't making her pay rent. She just didn't want to tell you that Cheese isn't making her pay rent. He had laughed at the absurdity of this deception. His daughter was dating a white boy with three earrings and a tattoo he said was symbolic of the Great Gatsby, a boy who insisted on going by his high school nickname of "Cheese" when his parents had given him the perfectly sensible name of Charles, and what Eva found most embarra.s.sing was that she wasn't paying any rent to live with him. He had laughed at the absurdity of this deception. His daughter was dating a white boy with three earrings and a tattoo he said was symbolic of the Great Gatsby, a boy who insisted on going by his high school nickname of "Cheese" when his parents had given him the perfectly sensible name of Charles, and what Eva found most embarra.s.sing was that she wasn't paying any rent to live with him.

He wondered if Eva really thought he didn't know these things, whether the charade was for his benefit or hers. Aside from being her father, he dealt with liars for a living, and Eva was no actress. He was not certain whether Eva had fully come to terms with her mother's inability to keep secrets. Most likely, she just didn't imagine that they still talked as often as they did. It made him sad sometimes to think that Eva maybe couldn't understand this, the kind of bond you never lose. It was true, he had blamed Debra for things. He had plans, rules, which were disrupted in the first place by Debra leaving him, and in the second place by Eva herself. He'd had speeches and punishments prepared for the normal things: dating, drugs, slacking in school. Eva never seemed to get in trouble for the normal things. In high school she'd been arrested at a protest for standing too close to a group of kids throwing eggs at the cops. He didn't have a speech for that. Only once had he gotten a call from the school. Debra was away at a conference and he had taken his vacation time to stay with Eva for the week. Could someone come get Eva? Could someone come get Eva? the secretary had said. She'd been suspended for biting another student. the secretary had said. She'd been suspended for biting another student.

"Biting?" he'd asked. Eva was a soph.o.m.ore in high school. He hadn't known fifteen-year-olds bit people.

"Biting," the secretary had confirmed, so he'd gone to the school to sort things out. There wasn't much sorting. Eva confessed to the biting and could offer no better reason than that the boy had been getting on her nerves.

"I value silence," she'd said, "and he wouldn't shut up."

He'd had no choice but to take her back to the house and wait for Debra to get back that evening. Debra had gone to the school the next day, the first day of Eva's suspension, and demanded further questioning of the boy. He eventually admitted to having grabbed Eva's behind earlier in the day. Debra threatened the boy, the school, and the parents, and Eva's suspension was reversed.

"Why didn't you tell me he touched you?" William asked Eva later.

"Didn't matter," she'd said. "That wasn't why I bit him."

The arrival of her salad saved Eva from further strained conversation about the state of her life. She'd already claimed, "I like living in the studio," and "I'm getting so much work done." She crunched on a crouton. her salad saved Eva from further strained conversation about the state of her life. She'd already claimed, "I like living in the studio," and "I'm getting so much work done." She crunched on a crouton.

"I'm glad to see you eating," her father said.

Eva sighed. "Daddy I've been eating for years. We eat together sometimes."

"I know," he said. "I'm just saying. You look good. Healthy."

She was certain that her mother had encouraged him to say this sort of thing. Eva wished there were a Bat-Signal for the waiter, something to invite him to disrupt them. She hated the inexplicable things between them, the secrets her mother had given away, even though they weren't hers to keep. She remembered all those school picture days and holidays and recitals, and she liked it better when her father thought of her that way. These days she couldn't be around him without feeling that, without thinking he was waiting for her to win something and smile pretty.

She stabbed a tomato. She'd been eating normally since junior year of college, since she'd broken up with the last boyfriend her father had actually liked, the charming premed who'd told her she had cellulite and pretended not to hear when she threw up in his bathroom. He'd asked about that boyfriend all the time she was with Cheese, and twice as often when she was with Maya, until one day she'd said without explaining, Do you want me to hate myself? Do you want me to hate myself? after which he'd never asked again. after which he'd never asked again.

When she was being honest with herself, which was more often than she was honest with other people, she admitted that Cheese was the first boy who'd ever made her feel beautiful, the first man in her life she was sure was never going anywhere no matter what she did, not that it kept her from testing him. When she talked to Lenny on the phone, or replied to Kim's sporadic e-mails, or met Irene for drinks, dinner, and conversations that felt increasingly obligatory, she gave them a host of quite rational reasons for why she and Cheese would never really get back together. He was twenty-eight years old and seemed content to be a barista forever; he claimed to love her art but resented the time she spent on it; she had been the first of what was now a line of four artsy ethnic girlfriends in a row, making her feel a bit like he was collecting them the way her old ceramics instructor collected dolls of the world. But the truth was there was something about his availability that unsettled her, that made her want to know what it would finally take for him not to be there when she showed up unannounced.

She'd done it a month ago, the night she and Maya had broken up-thought maybe this time he would finally tell her she couldn't do this to him anymore, that they both had to move on-but he'd opened the door and let her in. The girlfriend was still living in the apartment then, but she'd been gone for the weekend, meaning Eva got to curl herself into the corner of the saggy orange sofa she and Cheese had gotten for free off of craigslist two years earlier, and drink the cheap bourbon he poured her a shot of, and tell him what had happened.

What had happened, first, was that she and Maya had redecorated, taken to painting the walls in brightly contrasting colors, and then hanging brightly printed fabrics on the wall: red against the kitchen's deep purple, orange against the green of the bedroom. What had happened a few days after the apartment's transformation was Eva thought of the stark, yellowing walls of her father's cramped apartment, the faintly moldy smell of them, the way he shrugged off her gentle suggestions that there were plenty of nicer places he could afford to move; he didn't even have to leave the neighborhood. He would offer some excuse about the ha.s.sle of getting the couch down the narrow stairwell without ruining it, as if he couldn't afford new furniture these days, or about liking his landlord, as if Phil would hold it against him if he moved out of a building that Phil himself had left years ago. But she never pressed, because under the flimsy excuses she guessed her father's reasoning was something along the lines of Why bother? Why bother? He saw most of the people he wanted to see at work, had built a network of friends who spent more time at the office than at their own homes anyway. The only person who came to see him on a semi-regular basis was Eva, and although there were only thirty blocks between them-eight subway stops, counting the back-tracking, but walkable, if you were in the mood for walking-it had been over a month since she'd last been to visit, and she almost never invited him to visit her. He saw most of the people he wanted to see at work, had built a network of friends who spent more time at the office than at their own homes anyway. The only person who came to see him on a semi-regular basis was Eva, and although there were only thirty blocks between them-eight subway stops, counting the back-tracking, but walkable, if you were in the mood for walking-it had been over a month since she'd last been to visit, and she almost never invited him to visit her.

When Maya floated in from work, click-clicking click-clicking against the floors, smelling vaguely honeyed from her shampoo and mildly sweaty from her bike ride home from the after-school center where she was a social worker, Eva had already been shopping, planned a menu, bought decent wine instead of the cheap stuff she and Maya usually drank, and was a minute away from inviting her father over for dinner the next night, giving him time to get home before she called. against the floors, smelling vaguely honeyed from her shampoo and mildly sweaty from her bike ride home from the after-school center where she was a social worker, Eva had already been shopping, planned a menu, bought decent wine instead of the cheap stuff she and Maya usually drank, and was a minute away from inviting her father over for dinner the next night, giving him time to get home before she called.

"What's the occasion?" Maya asked. She dropped her shoulder bag on the kitchen counter and held Eva around the waist, planting a soft kiss on the side of her neck.

"I'm inviting my dad over for dinner tomorrow," said Eva. She could feel Maya's arms stiffen, then drop from around her.

"Great," said Maya. Her shoes clicked backward, away from Eva. Eva turned to face her, watched her arms fold across her body. "Does that mean I have to make plans elsewhere?"

"Who said that?"

"Your father hates me."

"He doesn't. He just doesn't understand-us."

"Maybe he'd understand better if you stopped introducing me as your roommate. He knows you're bulls.h.i.tting him."

"Maya-I'm trying. Everybody's parents aren't so awful that they can tell them to go f.u.c.k themselves and move on with their lives, and everybody doesn't have a foster mom who owns a berry farm upstate and makes her own tie-dye skirts and is thrilled to meet her daughter's girlfriend. He's lonely, and he's my father, and he's never done anything bad bad to you. To me, either, for that matter." to you. To me, either, for that matter."

"Is that the standard for parenting these days?"

"Maya, don't. I don't need you to fix this. I'm not one of your kids at the center."

"No, you're not. For one thing, my kids at the center can admit to themselves that it doesn't matter what they do, their parents will never love them the way they are. But you sit there and make garlic bread like a moron if you want to-he's still going to look at you like the last time you did anything right, you were eleven years old. You will never be what he wants."

It didn't matter how many times Maya apologized, or how much she'd cried when Eva came with Cheese to move the handful of things in the apartment that actually belonged to her. It didn't matter that Eva admitted, when pressed, that she'd been out of line bringing Maya's parents into it. There were moments when you knew things about what was inside of people you didn't want to, knew how deeply they could disappoint you. There was love, and then there was suicide-and then there was whatever it was she had with Cheese. A place to go whenever she needed it, but where she'd never feel good about being. They'd spent the night she left Maya, and most of the following morning, in bed together, until there was the sound of the phone ringing, and with a glance at the caller ID, Cheese took the call and headed into the living room with the phone. Eva had been ignoring the new girlfriend all morning, but the bedroom suddenly seemed full of things that belonged to her: a woman's belt, a paint-splattered T-shirt, a bottle of orange nail polish on the dresser. She turned the sound up on the television. On CNN, green bombs were falling somewhere, and Eva felt more chastened by the blurred night vision carnage than she had by the token reminders that another woman lived here now.

Cheese came back into the room a few minutes later. "Kate," he said. "She's upset about something. She was visiting her parents for the weekend, and I guess they had a fight. Eva-"

Eva exhaled. "If you're going to console distraught women all day, you're going to have to be more gentle about getting rid of them."

"Look, she won't be back tonight. But tomorrow-"

"So I can stay until the replacement gets here?"

"Eva-"

"No, fair is fair. But you might have at least been more original. Really, another artistic brown girl? It's like-"

"It's not like. It's not like anything."

"Right, she's a painter. And a different kind of brown. Watch, though, Arab is the new black."

"Now you're just being ridiculous."

Now? Eva thought. She could not remember the last time things had not been ridiculous. Eva thought. She could not remember the last time things had not been ridiculous.

"I'm sorry. I'll go."

She could have stayed, she knew that. She was Cheese's first Meaningful Girl, and she had left him. She could have stayed the night and been sitting there eating breakfast when the new girlfriend came back if she'd wanted to. When she'd left, she'd thought of it as a grand gesture toward Kate, the kind of supercilious magnanimity that was usually out of her reach. She came back again a week later. The silence of her spa.r.s.e Washington Heights studio had been driving her crazy, and the noisy parade of life outside was no relief. She'd been expecting Cheese to awkwardly ask her to leave, or worse yet, to awkwardly invite her in and expect her to awkwardly socialize with Kate without letting on that anything had changed. Eva was surprised by the intensity of the relief she felt when Cheese told her Kate had gone to California for a few weeks to think about their relationship. to think about their relationship. She preferred not to focus on what it meant. She preferred not to focus on what it meant.

William wondered if there was a way to tell Eva how badly she needed him without insulting her. He worried that the best years of her life were going to look like the last few decades of his, that she'd be too proud to admit she needed him now, needed someone to let her put herself together, get a real job, go back to school maybe, find a decent boyfriend she could present in public, one who didn't leave her looking so disoriented all the time. While he was phrasing and rephrasing the invitation in his head, the waiter appeared with their food. He leaned over Eva a little too closely when putting her pasta in front of her, and gave her an overly friendly smile. there was a way to tell Eva how badly she needed him without insulting her. He worried that the best years of her life were going to look like the last few decades of his, that she'd be too proud to admit she needed him now, needed someone to let her put herself together, get a real job, go back to school maybe, find a decent boyfriend she could present in public, one who didn't leave her looking so disoriented all the time. While he was phrasing and rephrasing the invitation in his head, the waiter appeared with their food. He leaned over Eva a little too closely when putting her pasta in front of her, and gave her an overly friendly smile. Watch it, that's my daughter, Watch it, that's my daughter, William wanted to say, but he had never been able to say that about Eva. He didn't know what to protect her from, and anyway, she seemed to have taken her protection into her own hands some time ago. William wanted to say, but he had never been able to say that about Eva. He didn't know what to protect her from, and anyway, she seemed to have taken her protection into her own hands some time ago.

He thought maybe he would show her a picture of the new place, though from the outside it didn't look like much. He'd been skeptical when the broker showed him the listing, not to mention skeptical of Brooklyn in general. As a child in the Bronx, he'd hated Brooklyn on principle-too much boasting on the part of its inhabitants, too low to the ground, too many trains involved in visiting anyone who lived there. But the apartment, the converted upper half of a Fort Greene brownstone, had won him over. There were two levels, and three bedrooms, and windows everywhere you looked. He had taken to walking around the neighborhood in the evenings. He ate roti one day and giant hamburgers the next. He was becoming a fan of Brooklyn's parks. He had once seen a young man in a T-shirt that read BROOKYLN. YOU KNOW BETTER. He wondered if this was the sort of person Eva would know.

The apartment had cost him the better portion of his savings, but it was a good investment, and good for him, after all these years of living a life he pretended he could leave at any minute, even as he got more and more settled, to own something, to put down roots. Besides, he had been making, for almost a decade, far more than he'd been spending, what with his ascetic lifestyle. He needed a place-and this was a good one, a place where they could rebuild things, a place where he could see Eva living, her art in one room, her in another, until she was on her feet, until whatever sad thing that surrounded her had been lifted.

"Listen," he said. "I've moved to Brooklyn. I got a real place to live. It's beautiful. Lots of room."

He did not mention the lack of furniture. He would get new furniture. He was fifty years old and he had never bought a piece of his own furniture. Even in the middle of the divorce, he had let Debra pick out what later sat in his old apartment for twenty years, and make arrangements for its delivery. This time he and Eva could find things they both liked, make sure she would be happy there. He'd thought of her in the big bedroom over the garden, sleeping safely, putting what she wanted on the walls. He'd remembered her racing through the small apartment he and Debra had shared so long ago, running down the hall with the light behind her. He'd remembered her stumbling into the kitchen sleepy-eyed on Sunday mornings, crawling into his lap and helping him grate cheese for the omelets Debra was making. He remembered what it was like to be at home in a place.

"Look," he said. "There's room for you. Two rooms. You must be so crowded in your studio. Your mother says there's not even room for real furniture. You shouldn't be living that way. Come with me. We'll get whatever you need. Stay as long as you need to stay."

"Daddy," Eva said, pushing away the half-full plate of pasta. "Oh, Daddy. That's wonderful for you, and wonderful for you to think of me. But I think we'd just get in each other's way. Besides, I like living in my studio, and you need your own s.p.a.ce. Everybody needs their own s.p.a.ce." pushing away the half-full plate of pasta. "Oh, Daddy. That's wonderful for you, and wonderful for you to think of me. But I think we'd just get in each other's way. Besides, I like living in my studio, and you need your own s.p.a.ce. Everybody needs their own s.p.a.ce."

Eva saw the look on her father's face and fought the urge to take back what she'd said. He looked almost the way he had looked when she and her mother had first left him. She closed her eyes and could remember nothing but that morning years ago, dull sky, October leaves on the ground. He had taken her to get a last slice of New York pizza while her mother watched the moving men put the last of their things on the truck.

"It's not so far away," he'd said. "Remember how much Daddy loves you?"

"The whole world much and then some," she'd remembered. She'd thought of love being like tentacles, reaching from wherever he was to wherever she was. She'd giggled.

"Is that funny?" he'd asked.

"I am thinking of you like a jellyfish," she'd said, but he hadn't understood.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

I need you to take Chrissie for a little bit," Aunt Edie says, because apparently I pa.s.s for a role model these days. It's Thursday night, and they're standing on the doorstep, unannounced. Aunt Edie doesn't bother coming in. She looks exhausted, her eyes puffy from crying, her usually impeccably braided white hair hanging loose and disheveled. Her last living sibling, Chrissie's grandfather, has been in the hospital all summer, and odds are he isn't coming out again. I tell Aunt Edie that I'm going out of town tomorrow-which is true, there's a half-packed suitcase on my bed to prove it. She tells me I can take Chrissie with me, which more or less settles it. Chrissie breezes past me. Her footsteps on the creaking wood floor of my father's house swallow her h.e.l.lo. I have a long list of reasons why Chrissie shouldn't come on this trip, but few of them I'll admit to myself, let alone to my great-aunt. In any case, she isn't leaving much room for argument. need you to take Chrissie for a little bit," Aunt Edie says, because apparently I pa.s.s for a role model these days. It's Thursday night, and they're standing on the doorstep, unannounced. Aunt Edie doesn't bother coming in. She looks exhausted, her eyes puffy from crying, her usually impeccably braided white hair hanging loose and disheveled. Her last living sibling, Chrissie's grandfather, has been in the hospital all summer, and odds are he isn't coming out again. I tell Aunt Edie that I'm going out of town tomorrow-which is true, there's a half-packed suitcase on my bed to prove it. She tells me I can take Chrissie with me, which more or less settles it. Chrissie breezes past me. Her footsteps on the creaking wood floor of my father's house swallow her h.e.l.lo. I have a long list of reasons why Chrissie shouldn't come on this trip, but few of them I'll admit to myself, let alone to my great-aunt. In any case, she isn't leaving much room for argument.

"I'm tired," says Aunt Edie. "She needs someone to look out for her, and I've got other things on my mind right now." She reaches into her purse and stretches out her hand to give me Chrissie's cell phone, which Chrissie is apparently banned from using. "Her father's not leaving Bobby's bedside," Aunt Edie goes on, "and Tia can't take her because she's too busy with nursing school, so that leaves you."

I stop myself from asking who it is Tia's supposed to be nursing. Tia is Aunt Edie's granddaughter, my cousin-Chrissie's, too-but she is not a nurse or a nursing student. She may possibly own a nursing uniform, but if she does, it has breakaway snaps and she's generally wearing a G-string under it. I don't know where Aunt Edie got nurse from, but no one's allowed to say Tia's a stripper. Tia's job bothers Aunt Edie for reasons involving h.e.l.lfire and eternal d.a.m.nation. It bothers me because even though Tia's twenty-five like I am, she looks thirteen. I love her, don't get me wrong, but she's got chicken legs, and nothing in the way of hips or b.o.o.bs, and a big head with wide almond eyes and a long blond weave, and while I can imagine many reasons why men might pay good money to see a real live woman, there's something unsettling about so many of them paying to see a real live Bratz doll.

In fairness, there isn't much else to do in Waterton, Delaware. It's close to everything else in Delaware without actually being part of any of it-about an hour away from the noisy hedonism of Rehoboth Beach's and Ocean City's boardwalks, about an hour from the suburban sprawl subdivisions that might as well be North Maryland or South Jersey. It's not quite the Delaware that's mostly pig and tobacco farms, though there are farms in Waterton, and a fresh fruit and vegetable stand every mile or so, and the world's largest sc.r.a.pple factory. When you approach the city limits from the highway, there's a painted wooden sign that says WELCOME TO WATERTON: WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE. It doesn't tell you that where you are is a city that gets seventy percent of its annual revenue from ticketing speeding tourists who got lost on their way to the beach. It's mostly a town that still exists because no one's gotten around to telling it that it can't anymore. The highlight of most people's weekends is losing money down at the Seahorse Casino, which is forty minutes away and not even a fun casino. It's just a big room full of slot machines and fluorescent light, and the only drinks they serve are s.h.i.tty beer and something called Delaware Punch, which tastes less like punch and more like the Seahorse Casino is determined to single-handedly use up the nation's entire supply of banana schnapps. Considering the options, it makes sense that Tia does good business here.

I live here because right now I have no place else to be. The house I'm staying in is my father's, and was my grandfather's before that. It was either come here and be alone for a while, or move in with my mother, which would have felt like an admission of failure on both of our parts. The house is on the back corner of a parcel of land that was once large enough that it meant something for black people to own it back in the day, but it's been divided and subdivided through the years-split between children in wills, sold off piecemeal to developers, whittled down so that, between the fifteen of us, everyone in my generation probably owns about a square inch of it. My father moved into the house twenty years ago, after my parents' divorce, looking for a place to get his head together. Or at least, my father's furniture moved into the house; my father himself got into the antiques market and seems perpetually on a plane to some faraway place in pursuit of a stamp, a coin, a rare baseball card, anything of more-than-obvious value.

Now that I'm here again, I can hardly blame him for leaving so often; I am learning the hard way that it's not a good place to get over anything. In every room of the house, fighting with my father's coin chests and signed sports posters and ceramic knickknacks, there's a reminder of what people are supposed to mean to each other. The set of initials carved into the handmade frame of the front door. A sepia-toned photograph of my grandparents, who died within weeks of each other, months after their forty-fifth anniversary. The lavender corsage my grandmother wore at her wedding; my uncle Bobby found it pressed into my grandfather's Bible decades later and had it framed on the wall of the master bedroom. The wooden archway leading to the dining room, the one that had been knocked down and rebuilt by my father at Uncle Bobby's request, the year a foot amputation confined his late wife to a wheelchair too big to fit through the original doorway. The wedding quilt on the living room wall, the one thing besides their life savings that my grandparents had salvaged from the house they fled in Georgia, hours before a mob torched it on a trumped-up theft charge. As a child, I'd taken comfort in the house's memorabilia-I imagined this was the sort of unconditional love that all adults had eventually-but now, fresh off the end of my last relationship, the house feels like a museum of lack: here is the sort of love you never saw up close, here are souvenirs from all the places your father was when he was not with you, here is something whole that one day you will own a fraction of.

Chrissie's sprawled out on the bed I've been sleeping in since I got here a few months ago. It's the same bed I slept in when I visited here as a kid, with the same Strawberry Shortcake sheets I never had the heart to tell my father I outgrew, and lying on them Chrissie looks like a little kid herself. Her hair is tied up in a silk headscarf, which means she must have spent half a day blow-drying and flat-ironing it movie-star straight, humidity be d.a.m.ned. She's wearing cut-offs and ratty sneakers and smells like a bottle of tamarind perfume I remember her borrowing from me the last time she was over here.

Chrissie's parents are splitting and she's spending the summer in Waterton, Delaware, with her father because that's supposed to make her OK with it, except her father's been coc.o.o.ning himself in the hospital all summer, and Chrissie's spent most of her time so far playing hearts with Aunt Edie and the two widows next door, and the rest of it mysteriously unaccounted for, though Tia's filled me in on some rumors.

"Where are you going?" Chrissie asks me, nudging my suitcase with her elbow.

"We're going to North Carolina, I guess. Aunt Edie wants you to come with me."

"What's in North Carolina?"

I consider the question. "A friend" would be a lie of omission; "an ex" would put Brian in the same category as Jay, who I came here to get away from. Jay, who still lives in the apartment with my name on the lease and is probably f.u.c.king another girl on my sofa right now. Jay, who earlier this week sent me an e-mail that seemed to presume I would take time off from not speaking to him, and working on my own dissertation ("She Real Cool: The Art and Activism of Gwendolyn Brooks"), in order to proofread his ("Retroactive Intentionality: [Re]Reading Radical Artists' Self-a.s.sessments").

"A friend," I say. "Brian. He's in a band. He wants me to see his show."

"A friend you're meeting in your underwear?" Chrissie asks, sitting up and gesturing toward my suitcase, which for the time being contains nothing but toiletries and underwear. She arches her eyebrows at me and giggles. "What kind of show does he want you to see?"

"I haven't thought about the clothes yet. Underwear is the easy part of packing. There's no deciding. You can't go wrong with underwear."

"So the only panties you own are black lace?" she asks, smirking into the suitcase.

"Shut up," I say. "You shouldn't be looking through other people's underwear. And what do you know about lace underwear, anyway?"

Chrissie blushes so red I'm sorry I asked, and then just as quickly starts singing, "I see London, I see France, Brian's gonna see Carla's s.l.u.tty underpants . . ."

Given my history with Brian, this is too close to true. Every item of non-underwear clothing I've considered packing I've rejected because it would seem like a deliberate provocation. I don't own much that Brian hasn't ripped off of me at some point in the past, even when he was seeing other women, even when he was with the fiancee before the one I'm ostensibly going down there to meet. I shush Chrissie off to bed while I finish packing, but I hear her in the next room, tossing and turning, riffling through the pages of a magazine. When I finally zip my suitcase shut, I go back into the bedroom to check on her. I haven't seen too much of Chrissie since I've been in town, and she thinks I've been avoiding her. She's probably right: lately watching Chrissie has been like watching a taped recording of my own adolescence, which is nothing I want to revisit.

Though the lights are off in the bedroom when I go to check on her, I can tell Chrissie's only pretending to be asleep.

"Night, Chris," I say.

"Night," she mumbles.

"Hey," she calls as I start to leave. "Can Tia come with us tomorrow? It'd be fun. Like a girls' road trip."

I consider the many reasons why this would not be fun. Tia never liked Brian. Once he made the mistake of telling her he understood oppression because he was half Irish and one-eighth Native American. After that, Tia always called him he-who-has-metal-in-his-face, because of his eyebrow piercing. Brian never liked Tia, except for that one time in college he drunkenly asked me if I thought she'd be into a threesome, and I stopped speaking to him for a month.

"Tia's working," I say. "And anyway, she needs to be around in case anything happens with Uncle Bobby. Aunt Edie's going to need her."

"People are going to need us too," Chrissie protests. "He's my grandfather."

"Of course they will," I say. "We'll come back if anything happens."

The truth is, I'm not sure who needs me. My father paid an obligatory visit to Uncle Bobby, and then did what he does: he's spending the summer in India looking at death statues. We are all walking around on eggsh.e.l.ls, waiting for a death the way people wait on rain-storms when the sky promises bad weather, but so far n.o.body has talked to me about it, and n.o.body has asked me to do anything more difficult than make potato salad.

It's afternoon by the time we get on the road the next day, and we spend hours stuck in beach traffic. Chrissie's awake enough to resent that I've confined her cell phone to the glove compartment. It's beeping because someone's left her a message, and between the beeping and her whining, I'm thinking of opening the glove compartment myself. My cigarettes are in there, but n.o.body, especially Chrissie, is supposed to know I smoke when I'm stressed. the time we get on the road the next day, and we spend hours stuck in beach traffic. Chrissie's awake enough to resent that I've confined her cell phone to the glove compartment. It's beeping because someone's left her a message, and between the beeping and her whining, I'm thinking of opening the glove compartment myself. My cigarettes are in there, but n.o.body, especially Chrissie, is supposed to know I smoke when I'm stressed.

"It could be my parents," she says. I ignore this.

"We might as well not even be driving," Chrissie says. "And I'm hungry."

"Well, then you should have eaten when we stopped for brunch," I say. Chrissie has been doing this thing where whenever we eat out together, she orders whatever I order, then suddenly remembers she can't eat it because she's on a diet, and has two bites and three gla.s.ses of water instead. At the diner on the way out of town, she had three french fries and a mouse-sized nibble of her grilled cheese.

"I wasn't hungry when we stopped," she says.

"Then you can wait until we get to Richmond for dinner."

The traffic picks up around the Bay Bridge. In the glove compartment Chrissie's phone is still beeping something insistent.

"You should let me get it," she says. "What if my grandfather died?"

"Then someone would have called me," I say.

Both pleas for her phone having failed, Chrissie sulks, actively. Her sulking takes the form of rummaging through her miniature beaded purse in search of beauty product after beauty product. When she is done with the glitter lotion and the lip gloss and the eye shadow, it's true her skin has a glow to it, but her hands are covered in sparkles, like a kid who's just finished an art project.