oven, which was covered almost entirely with black-and-white snapshots of scowling old women in aprons. My mother once remarked that it was disgusting how many people in New York City-in the whole of America, really-were getting so fat. My father retorted that obesity sometimes wasn’t someone’s fault. What about genetics? What about depression? And my mother sighed and said, ‘Honestly, Richard, what would you do without me? You can’t go telling Summer being fat is okay!’
I wanted to call my mother right now and tell her that I would never, ever believe being fat was okay. And if only she’d seen me doling out coffees to the French class girls in the courtyard this morning-there were such grateful smiles on their faces, and we’d all walked to French class together in a happy, laughing clump. She could’ve dropped by the school; other parents did it all the time. That’s my daughter, she would’ve thought, if she’d have seen me. And maybe her mind would’ve changed about us-about everything-just like that.
When I came home from school the next day, my brother was sitting at the kitchen table. He was always parked at the table doing math, even though he could’ve used NYU’s facilities instead. His glasses made his eyes look enormous.
‘Did anyone call?’ I asked.
‘Nope.’ He didn’t raise his head.
My smile drooped a little. I continued to stare at Steven until he finally looked up. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then go somewhere else!’ Steven had my mother’s angular face, but we both shared my dad’s oversized nose. When we were little-when Steven and I were sort of friends-we started a secret club called The Schnoz. Our father mystified us both back then, with his brilliant white lab coat and all his tics-the specific pastries for breakfast, the long runs often at night, the dark, dreary moods that would come over him like a thick wool blanket. We decided that he was secretly a superhero, a mix between a mad scientist and a stealthy GI Joe-Steven was obsessed with the military. Our club mostly consisted of spying on my father while he watched television in the den, looking for superhero clues. But then, Steven turned ten and announced that if he didn’t win a Nobel Prize by the age of 20, he was going to enlist in the Special Forces. My father laughed and reminded Steven how clumsy he was-he’d probably shoot himself in the hand while trying to clean his gun. The Schnoz disbanded pretty much after that.
When he got older, Steven went to Stuyvesant High, the smart math and science school in the city. My mother didn’t ask if I wanted to take the test to go to Stuyvesant. My parents had a huge argument about it-my father said Stuyvesant was the best place for me, but my mother insisted that Peninsula was better because it encouraged the liberal arts. ‘But she’s not interested in liberal arts!’ my father bellowed. ‘She likes science! She won three elementary and middle school science fairs at St Martha’s!’ My mother rolled her eyes. ‘We should let Summer choose for herself,’ my father bargained. ‘She’s going to Peninsula,’ my mother said. ‘End of story.’
Even though my father was right-I wasn’t that into art or history or English-I liked Peninsula fine. And anyway, girls who went to Stuyvesant were nerds who never got boyfriends. Everyone knew that.
‘Do you want a soda?’ I asked Steven, turning for the fridge.
‘No.’
‘We still have the orange stuff Mom bought for you.’
‘Mmm.’ His pencil made soft scratching sounds against the paper.
‘It looks like you’re running out, though. But Mom will probably be back in time to buy a new case.’
He kept writing. Steven had hardly said a word about her since she’d left, so I didn’t know what I thought I was going to achieve, fishing. Steven had hardly spoken to her anyway, except to ask if she could wash a load of his whites. He probably didn’t even care that she was gone. Although, was that possible? Yes, she and Steven were very different-she was so glamorous-but Steven had to have some thoughts about it. Just one teensy feeling, somewhere.
‘Summer, there you are.’ My father appeared in the doorway. ‘I have a favor to ask you.’
He led me to the living room, and we sat down on the couch. ‘Mrs Ryan just called. She wanted to know if I could tutor Claire in biology.’
I stiffened, surprised. I’d looked for Claire at school today but hadn’t seen her anywhere. ‘You said no, right?’
‘I said I was too busy.’
I tried not to laugh. Lately, my father’s version of busy was piling magazines for recycling and watching the home shopping channels-he liked the old people that called in. He probably hadn’t even gone to the lab all week.
My father picked up one of the little plastic figurines from the toy ski slope he’d bought on a trip to Switzerland. It came with four little Swiss skiers, each with a blanked-out, stoic Swiss expression. Steven had been obsessed with the ski slope when my parents brought it home, but it had become more of a Christmas decoration. Last night, on the walk home from dinner, there were suddenly fairy lights on our neighbors’ banisters and Christmas trees in their front windows. It made our naked, untended-to tree in the living room seem so obviously neglected, so I went down to our basement storage space, found the Christmas box, and brought everything up myself-the ornaments, the Santa knick-knacks, the ski slope, even old holiday photos of all of us unwrapping Christmas gifts, my father inevitably wearing a gift-wrap bow on the top of his head. The stuff wasn’t that heavy. And it was sort of fun to decorate on my own.
‘Perhaps you’d like to tutor Claire instead,’ my father suggested.
I shook my head. ‘I’m kind of busy, too.’
He rubbed his hand over his smooth chin. ‘Busy with what?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Well, I’ve already set it up,’ he breezed on. ‘She’s coming over in ten minutes.’
‘Dad.’
He placed the plastic skier at the top of the hill and let go. The skier zipped down. My father caught him at the bottom, tweezed his little plastic head between his thumb and pointer finger, and guided him back up the side of the slope, simulating a chairlift. He made a brrr sound with his lips, impersonating a motor.
When I was down in the basement getting all the ornaments and stuff, an invitation fluttered out from a box. It was for a Christmas party at Claire’s house from that first year I’d attended Peninsula. The night of the party, my mother asked why I wasn’t getting ready. When I said I’d rather watch the Christmas marathon on TV-they were playing Rudolph, Frosty, and The Year Without a Santa Claus back-to-back, a stellar lineup-my mother blew her bangs off her face. ‘It’s not a crime Claire has other friends,’ she chided. ‘It wouldn’t kill you to be friends with them, too.’
As if it had been my decision. As if I’d orchestrated things that way.
The doorbell rang. Mrs Ryan stood in the hall. ‘Claire’s down at the deli,’ she said, walking right in. ‘Thank you so much for doing this, sweetie. It’s a huge help.’
I grumbled tonelessly.
‘Is your dad home?’ She looked around. ‘He invited me over for coffee, but I wasn’t sure if he was mixed up, since it’s so early. I didn’t think he’d be back from work yet.’
I felt a flush of embarrassment. ‘He had a half-day.’
Mrs Ryan walked into the foyer, smiling at our family pictures on the wall, many of them over ten years old. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a disposable camera. It was covered in green paper, and there was a picture of a woman and a little kid, probably meant to be her daughter, sitting on the edge of a motorboat, smiling so blissfully that their teeth gleamed blue-white. ‘Fun Saver’, the camera was called.
I pointed at it. ‘My mother uses those, too. But she also has a Nikon. That’s probably what she’s using for her trip.’