Just Like Other Daughters Read online

  She loves me and I love her. That’s why I put my sweater on when she tells me. Because I love her mostest in the world.

  2

  “Alicia.” He half-stands, then, maybe thinking better of it, sits again. Before I reach the table he’s picked by the window, he pops up again.

  “David.” I feel awkward. He obviously does. I wonder if it was a mistake to ask him to meet me for coffee. Too forward? Too early in the relationship? Maybe I misinterpreted and there isn’t a relationship. When you’re fifty, time isn’t on your side.

  I switch my coat to my left arm, which is already holding my briefcase, so I can hug him with my right arm. We touch cheeks, but we don’t kiss. Again, awkward. We kissed last week at the end of our date. On my doorstep, like I was sixteen again. It was a real kiss that, while it hadn’t set me on fire, had warmed my toes.

  Has David decided he isn’t attracted to me? Am I a bad kisser? Has he agreed to meet me for coffee only because he couldn’t figure out how to politely turn me down? It’s all I can do not to groan out loud the way Chloe does when she becomes frustrated.

  “How was your new class?”

  “Fine.” I drop my coat over the back of the chair, set my briefcase on the floor, and sit across from him, not next to him. The shop smells delicious, like coffee and caramel. And maleness. David smells as good as the coffee. It’s been a while since I’ve dated. I’ve forgotten what it feels like. The nervousness. The excitement. I’ve forgotten how good a man can smell whom you haven’t been pissed off at for twenty-five years. “Good,” I add, nodding. Like an idiot.

  “I ordered you a cappuccino.” He looks around. It’s a nice café on Main Street. The kind you expect to see in a college town. Quaint. The owners, Steve and Michele, use real china. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line two walls; patrons are urged to bring in books they’ve read. Borrow books they haven’t. “Decaf,” he says. “I got you decaf because . . . you know. It’s late in the day. I drink decaf this late in the day.”

  David Collins is an attractive man somewhere in his fifties; tall, slender, with a clean-shaven face and a full head of barely graying hair. His skin is pockmarked, probably from teenage acne, but it doesn’t bother me. I like his smile. And the fact that the day we met a month ago, at a cocktail party, he had acted as if I fascinated him. We talked about the Brontë sisters and the Orioles and sourdough bread.

  “Great.” I smile, settling myself in the chair, feeling flustered and insecure. Wishing I didn’t. We’ve been on two dates: first coffee, then dinner and a movie. He hasn’t met Chloe yet. Chloe doesn’t like anything new: food, clothes, or people. It’s not that I’m trying to hide Chloe from David. It’s more the other way around. What would be the point of getting around to him meeting Chloe if nothing came of this? Which is probably how this will play out.

  It always does.

  “I’ve taught the class before,” I say, fiddling with the paper menu on the table between us.

  “I just ordered coffee, but are you hungry?” David rests his fingertips on the menu. Close to mine, but not touching. He has nice hands: clean fingernails, no wedding ring indentation. Of course, men don’t always tell the truth about their marital status. I learned that the hard way.

  “We could order something,” he says.

  I’m too nervous to eat. I’ll stuff some leftover spaghetti into my mouth later, when I get home. “Just the cappuccino,” I say.

  It’s his turn to bob his head. We’re bobbleheads having coffee.

  I don’t know why this is so hard. I like this guy. He’s interesting. . . . No, actually, he’s a little boring.

  A CPA. Good with numbers, I assume, but a little dull in the conversation department. But what am I expecting? What do I want? What’s wrong with a little boring? Randall was exciting and look where that got me. David probably thinks I’m boring, too. If there were a contest, which one of us would win, me or David? I mean, honestly, what’s duller, a CPA or a literature professor at a small, private, liberal arts college?

  I scoot forward in my chair. If I’m going to do this, I tell myself, I’m going to do it right. I invited him for coffee. I wanted to see him. I should act like it. “So, how was your day?” I smile. Make eye contact. I engage.

  He smiles back. “Um . . .”

  I push my thoughts and worries of the day aside and I listen, I really listen, and I enjoy the hour we spend together. He promises to call me later in the week and I head home, happy. Feeling appreciated. Actually feeling as if something might come of this, of David and me. Like my life might really be changing.

  Turns out I’m right on one count. Wrong on the other.

  “Mom!”

  I hear Chloe’s voice the minute the front door opens. I’m in the kitchen, eating the leftover spaghetti.

  “Mom!” comes my daughter’s voice again, this time with a little panic in her tone.

  I swallow a lump of cold noodles. “In the kitchen. Coming.” I grab a hand towel off the kitchen island as I go by. I wipe my mouth and toss the towel back on the counter.

  “Mom!”

  I walk down the hall in my sheepskin slippers. It’s barely eight o’clock, and I’ve already changed into my sweatpants and taken my contacts out. I push my rimless glasses up the bridge of my nose. “I’m coming, Chloe. Hold your horses.”

  When she sees me, she runs across the foyer and hurls herself into my arms. When she lets go, she grabs both of my hands. Her chubby hands are much smaller than mine; her bitten-down fingernails are painted blue with sparkles. She and the other girls at Miss Minnie’s have been playing beauty salon again.

  She sounds breathless. She’s excited about something, which makes me smile. She doesn’t often come home excited from visits with her father. “Did you have fun?” I ask. “With your dad? Let me guess, you had a chicken sandwich, waffle fries, and a diet lemonade?”

  “Minnie’s. I had fun at Miss Minnie’s.”

  “Slow down,” I advise. She’s difficult to understand when she gets excited or emotional.

  “Miss Min-nie’s,” she repeats carefully, enunciating each syllable.

  I drop a kiss on her forehead. She needs a shower; her hair has that musky smell of three or four days without shampooing. She still wears her hair in a ponytail the way she did when she was a little girl. I’ve been told I should cut her hair short to make it more manageable for Chloe, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Her red-blond hair is just too pretty; besides, when dirty (more often than not) it looks better long than short.

  I shut the door behind her, catching a glimpse through the outer door in the vestibule of Randall pulling away from the curb in Stupid Car. I don’t know why I hate the car so much. Maybe because it represents him in my mind. It’s all fake: the caring professor persona he presents at work, his concern for the environment, his love for his daughter. He drives that yellow car because he likes to draw attention to himself, all the while pretending he doesn’t. I lock the door. “What happened at Miss Minnie’s?”

  “A boy,” Chloe gushes.

  There’s something in the tone of her voice that makes me turn around and look at her. I realize then that her cheeks are rosy. From the cold? Or is it something else?

  “A boy?” I echo.

  Chloe starts to fight her way out of her coat. “His name is Thomas!” She puts too much emphasis on the first syllable of his name. “He’s new.”

  “Thomas is new at Miss Minnie’s?” I pronounce the name correctly. I have to tuck my hands behind my back to keep from helping Chloe with her coat. Our therapist has given me the task of allowing her to be more independent, of helping her realize what a capable young woman she is. It’s hard. So hard. “Did he just move to town?”

  “He goes to Miss Minnie’s different days. Different days,” Chloe tells me, sounding more like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man than I care to admit. But Raymond was autistic. Chloe is not. Unlike the character in the movie, Chloe has no problem with emotion. In fact, one of her proble
ms is that she often feels too deeply.

  She’s got both arms behind her back now, as if she’s wearing a North Face straitjacket. “Different days,” she repeats as if the information is critical.

  “Ah. So he’s been going to Miss Minnie’s, but you just haven’t met him? Because you haven’t been going Tuesday afternoons.” I stand by the coatrack, knowing that eventually she’ll get her coat off. There’s nothing wrong with hanging it up for her, I reason. I’d do the same for Jin if she were standing here. “Is Thomas nice?” I ask.

  “Apple juice,” she cries excitedly. Her right arm pops out of her sleeve and she looks triumphant as she finally manages to get out of her coat. “He likes apple juice. I like apple juice. I love apple juice.” She draws out the word apple, making it sound like aaa-pull.

  I smile as I take her coat. “You do love apple juice, don’t you? Did Miss Minnie have juice in cups today or in juice boxes?”

  Again, the grin that melts my heart. I would do anything for my child who isn’t a child anymore. I’d throw myself in front of a bus to save her. I’d lie on the backs of crocodiles to build her a bridge. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help her climb a mountain.

  “Juice boxes,” she says.

  “Come help me load the dishwasher.” I hang her coat up next to mine on the rack and head for the kitchen.

  “Mom! Listen to me! I have to tell you!” She balls her hands into fists. She’s annoyed with me. She’s easily annoyed and prone to temper tantrums. We’re working on that, too.

  “Tell me? Tell me what? I heard you. A boy named Thomas came to Minnie’s and you had apple juice.”

  “No, Mom.”

  I stop in the hallway and turn back to look at her. She’s standing in the same place, her fists at her sides. Her chin is jutted out and her eyes, with her Mongolian eye folds, are narrow. Whatever’s going on, Chloe means business. “What, Chloe?”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” she insists.

  I cross my arms over my chest and wait.

  “He loves apple juice and me and Thomas . . . we’re gonna get married.”

  I smile. “You can’t marry Thomas. You don’t even know him. Come on.” I wave to her. “Help me load the dishwasher.”

  “I’m gonna marry Thomas,” Chloe repeats. This time with a foot stomp. She has tiny feet. She wears a size five, compared to my boat-sized nine-and-a-halfs.

  “Marry Thomas, and leave me?” I chuckle. “No way, Chloe.” I turn for the kitchen.

  “I love him,” Chloe insists.

  “You don’t love him. You love me,” I call over my shoulder. “And your dad,” I add as an afterthought. Divorced mothers are supposed to say things like that. “Come on. Dishes, then a shower and then a movie. You can pick the DVD.”

  “But, Mom, I love him!” Chloe cries passionately. She still hasn’t budged.

  Maybe I should have been concerned at that point, but I wasn’t. Chloe is passionate about everything: the order of her DVDs, her fear of crickets, her love of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks . . . and apple juice.

  “Beauty and the Beast? Aladdin? Or maybe The Princess and the Frog?” I tempt. Chloe loves Disney movies. She can’t remember that her father’s wife’s name is Kelly, but she remembers that the monkey in Aladdin is called Abu.

  “Moooom, you’re not listening to me.” Chloe shuffles down the hall.

  It’s funny how things are said, things happen, and you have no idea at the moment just how significant they are. What’s the saying? Ignorance is bliss? That evening I was in pure bliss.

  After I watch Aladdin, when I brush my teeth, I look at my face in the mirror. I feel different, but I don’t look different. I look the same. Thomas says he loves me and we can get married, but I still look the same.

  Mom doesn’t understand about me and Thomas. She doesn’t understand about apple juice. I love apple juice and I love Thomas. Thomas loves Thomas the Tank Engine. He has a shirt and backpack and Thomas the Tank Engine stuff at his house.

  He says I’m pretty.

  I look different than other girls. Not pretty like my mom. My mom is pretty.

  My eyes are squinty and I don’t always speak good. People look at me when we go to the grocery store. Because I look different. Because I have Down’s.

  Thomas doesn’t have Down’s. He’s not a dummy head. He’s smart. Really smart.

  Thomas says I’m his girl.

  I spit toothpaste into my sink and put water in my cup to swish.

  I was Mom’s girl, but now I’m Thomas’s girl.

  I like to be Thomas’s girl. I want to be his girl on Wednesday.

  That’s why we have to get married.

  “She said she loves him?” Jin is smiling. “You think it’s serious?”

  I eye Jin across the breakfast table, closing my fingers around my warm coffee mug. “She met him once. Chloe’s never been interested in boys. Or girls,” I add for Jin’s benefit.

  Jin’s all the things I’m not: gorgeous, confident, athletic. She’s also a lesbian, which on certain days, when I’m finding my relationship with Randall particularly difficult, sounds awfully appealing.

  “She’s twenty-five years old, Ally.” Jin is the only one who calls me Ally, the only one who has ever called me Ally. I’m not an Ally. I’m too uptight, too controlled to be an Ally. But I like that she calls me it anyway.

  “She doesn’t like boys. Not in that way.”

  Jin sips from her coffee mug. She’s Chinese, first-generation American. She has amazing dark hair, perfect skin, and dark eyes that turn both men’s and women’s heads. She’s been my best friend for twelve years, ever since she and her partner, Abby, moved in next door with their eight-year-old son. She and Abby split up almost five years ago. Abby took a position with a law firm in Baltimore, but Jin stayed on at Stone. Jin is an art professor and a very talented sculptor and painter. I don’t understand her modern paintings or the creations she forms out of clay and metal in her studio/garage behind the house. But I see their beauty.

  Chloe, on the other hand, sees things in Jin’s work that astound me. Chloe knows nothing of art or artists. She can’t draw a stick person or a box. But she gets Jin’s work. Jin thinks Chloe picks up on the emotion of the piece. I think they’re both full of shit. I don’t get how a piece of artwork made of canvas and oil paint or clay and iron washers can have emotion.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do?” I eye the Pop-Tart Jin is munching. She nabbed it from the cabinet when she came in the house. They’re one of Chloe’s favorites, so I buy them for her. It has white sugary frosting with sprinkles, and when Jin bites into it I see the number-something red-dyed strawberry filling. I tell myself it looks disgusting, but it looks delicious. I’ve had a hard-boiled egg this morning. Started a new diet. I lick the tip of my finger and touch the crumbs Jin has dropped on the round oak kitchen table. We have a dining room, but I use the table in there as a desk. We haven’t used the dining room as a dining room since Randall and I divorced. I press the crumbs to my tongue. “About what?”

  Jin lifts a perfect, dark eyebrow. She has them waxed. She has her lady-parts waxed, too. I try not to think about that.

  “About the boyfriend.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” I whisper.

  “A fiancé, then?” Jin takes another big bite of the Pop-Tart.

  Now she’s just baiting me. I want to snatch the Pop-Tart out of her hand and cram it in my mouth. I take a big gulp of black coffee. “Chloe does not have a boyfriend,” I repeat. “They drank apple juice together.”

  “I’ve had some damned good relationships based on less.”

  I sit back in my chair, thinking. I look up. “You don’t think . . . she would let a boy take advantage of her, do you?”

  “He’s not a boy if he’s her age. He’s a man.”

  I frown. I’ve always made certain Chloe was protected. She’s never left alone, not even in our own house. Besides not being able to make g
ood choices about stoves and candles, she’s too sweet, too trusting. She’s also an affectionate girl. Physically affectionate. It’s taken years for me to get her to not hug strangers. I’ve always had a fear that if a predator were to tell her she was pretty, or offer her Gummy Lifesavers, she’d get in a car with him.

  I look at Jin. Her new haircut is cute. It’s chin-length and asymmetrical in the front. Very hip for a fifty-year-old woman. Self-consciously, I tug at my ponytail. My hair is the same color as Chloe’s. Or hers as mine, I suppose. Pale red. Thick, a little wiry. I’ve always envied Jin, with her shiny black China-doll hair.

  “Maybe I should talk to Minnie,” I say.

  “And say what?” Jin crumples the silvery Pop-Tart wrapper. She’s still chewing. “But you could check him out, I guess. Do a little recon.”

  I hear Chloe clomping down the steps.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  “In the kitchen,” I call. I look at Jin. “You think I should check him out?”

  She shrugs as she gets up. She has a nine-thirty watercolor class. “Why not? I still check out Huan’s female friends on Facebook. When he was in high school, I checked his cell phone messages and listened in on his phone calls,” she says, seeming unashamed of her lack of respect for her son’s privacy.

  “He’s not her boyfriend,” I say, louder than I mean to. He’s not her boyfriend, I repeat to myself as Jin goes out the back door and Chloe walks into the kitchen with pink bunny slippers on her feet.

  3

  I have no intention of checking Thomas out. Really, I don’t. I think Jin ought to be ashamed of herself. What would Huan think if he knew his mother was Facebook stalking his friends?

  I manage to get myself on a high horse for a few minutes, but I don’t stay there long. The truth is, Huan probably wouldn’t be all that surprised by his mother’s behavior. Or upset. Jin was a Tiger Mom long before Amy Chua coined the phrase. I don’t completely understand the phenomenon, but I understand it’s more common than not with Asian Americans, this drive to see their children succeed at almost any cost to the child’s psyche. Her child rearing techniques had been a constant bone of contention between her and Abby.