in my cage all alone, she began to bawl, which made me bawl, too. After Willie fed me lunch, my mother and sister came home, which made me cry again, this time with relief, because I thought they had left me for good. But my sister’s skin was bluish now and she was even more swelled up, and when I called her name, she didn’t hear me. My mother took her into our bedroom, so I couldn’t see what was going on. My father came home in the middle of the day and he ran, too, from the kitchen to the bedroom. Then Dr. O’Malley arrived with his black bag in his hand. No one paid any attention to me. I sat in my cage and banged and rattled my toys until they were taken away.
Late in the afternoon it got dark in the house, but it was a long time before anyone thought to turn on the lights. My parents stopped running. Everything grew still and silent. They must have taken my sister out through the front door, because I never saw her again. My father walked in and sat down in his leather chair. He sobbed loudly while he drank a big glass of a liquid the same color as his tears. I thought that was what he was doing, drinking his own tears. The tears seemed to refill the glass as fast as he could gulp them down, and as hard as he could cry. And nobody told me, not my father with his glass of tears, not my mother with her hand on her swollen stomach, that in that afternoon I had become an only child.
This is my first memory. I have wondered, from time to time, what Lila’s first memory is. I wonder how early her remembered life began. It is a comfort to me to know it could not have been anything nearly as unpleasant as mine. My daughters have experienced very little death. They grew up in a happy family, with two stable parents. They had all the clothes and food and money they needed and then some. They did not have to deal with alcoholism or child abuse, or any tragic events. I have managed to give my daughters much more than my parents gave me. And I have spared them a lot, too. Any fights Louis and I had while Gracie and Lila lived at home took place after they were asleep. When the girls fought, I steered them away from each other. When they upset me, I told them so, and then we moved on.
I do not understand why, after this placid and pleasant upbringing, my daughters are angry at me. How can they be so unfair? Do they not recognize everything I’ve given them? I’m not asking them to thank me, for God’s sake. I just want them to be something more than civil. I want to know why I am their enemy and their father is their friend. I want them to be my friends, now that I don’t have to parent them anymore. Now that they’ve grown up.
AFTER MY mother’s car accident I called Lila and Gracie, but no one answered the phone. I left a message on Gracie’s machine. It has been three days now and no one has returned my call. This fact is just one more thing that makes a shitty afternoon at work even worse. A little voice in my head says, Just get out of here. So I do, I leave work early. Sarah asks if I am feeling okay, and Giles just stares. God, it makes me feel good, marching out of there with my briefcase, making my own rules. I am the boss, after all. I don’t act like it often enough. I chain myself to my desk because I know I can’t trust anyone to do the work as well as I can.
In the parking lot I close my briefcase in the trunk and put the top down on my BMW. It’s not quite warm out, but the sky is blue and with the heater on I am fine. I decide to take the long way home, winding aimlessly across Ramsey until it occurs to me to visit my daughters. It’s not something I normally do, but I know that my mother used to drop by Gracie’s house and even Lila’s dorm room whenever she felt like it. Maybe I’ve been hanging back too much in my relationship with