Allie would then explore the bathrooms, where she would tap-dance on the tile, line up the little soaps, and sit on a lounge chair with her legs crossed, pretending to smoke a cigarette. There were things for her to do in these hotel bathrooms, it was true, even if she did get lonely. But she knew that later she and her parents would snuggle on the couch in front of the TV, her parents peaceful and cheery with liquor, and Allie herself would be happy to be sitting between them, her lids half-closed, on the verge of sleep.
The last time they did anything together was their day trip to Atlantic City to ride in the diving bell. Her father had said beneath the Atlantic was a magical place where sea serpents glided in the waves and where the tentacle of an octopus might wrap around you as a school of stingrays and porpoises swam by. Allie nodded, not quite believing all of it, but liking the part about the stingrays. “Stingrays,” she whispered.
“Remember the diving bell from the days of the Steel Pier?” her mother added. “The diving horse? Mr. Salty Peanuts? Oh, those were the days!”
So on a limp, gray day in the spring the three of them climbed into the car and headed for Atlantic City. A fine mist covered them on their walk to the pier, where the diving bell sat bloated and crusted with barnacles. They were the only ones in line. An old man with a hacking cough opened the oval door and said, “Hop in.”
Inside smelled unpleasant, like a worn, sweaty shoe. The three of them knelt on the plastic seats with their faces pressed close to the window. Slowly the diving bell was lowered off the pier. They hovered over the water’s edge and then with a jolt plunged into the water. Surrounded by a cascade of bubbles, they descended to the bottom of the ocean.
When the bubbles cleared, there was nothing but green murk as far as Allie could see. She waited expectantly for a squid or a shark with many rows of teeth to come gliding by. Kneeling on the bench, Allie waited until her sweaty knees grew stiff, then she crouched on the seat with her forehead against the glass. She imagined that at any moment they would be pulled back to the pier, but they remained in the pulsating, murky water for a very long time, the diving bell making a low hum. “This isn’t really the sea,” Allie said finally. Her parents continued to stare out the windows, their jaws slack and their skin pasty white.
“Why won’t they lift us?” her father asked, unsteadily, licking his lips.
“I don’t know,” her mother said quietly, opening and snapping shut her purse. Allie’s mother’s makeup seemed to have melted. Lipstick extended past the border of her lip, and her eyeglasses sat crookedly on her nose.
“I feel sick. You think there’s enough air here?” her father asked.
“Stop frightening us,” her mother snapped. “Can’t we do something?”
“Stop talking.” Her father sat very still and moved only his eyes.
“How do you think we get it to go up?” her mother asked in a small, hollow voice.
Allie looked out the window, willing something to happen out there, willing her body to make something happen. Her damp breath steamed up the window.
“Maybe there’s a lever or a buzzer or an intercom,” her mother nearly shrieked as she turned in a circle inside the diving bell. “Maybe we can find it here, somewhere!”
Her father slumped against the bench, clutching his heart. “Don’t use up all the oxygen. Goddamnit,” he said.
Allie’s mother glared at Allie’s father.
Allie took shallow breaths of steamy air. As she looked out the window at the murk, she felt like she’d been had, and the disappointment brought tears to her eyes.
“You’re a terrible person in a crisis. Why I married you I’ll never know,” her mother hissed into her father’s ear. She adjusted her glasses on her sweaty face.
“You should have had a martini with lunch,” Allie’s father said in a booming voice. “You’re an awful traveling companion when you haven’t had a martini with lunch.” He stood up, clutched his chest and then sat back down.
“I don’t need a martini,” her mother said, sadly. “Not now, not ever.”
“You do! You do! We all do.”
Shaking her head, Allie’s mother took off a shoe, stood on the bench, and tapped the top of the diving bell with it.
Huddled together, they were pulled lopsided to the pier. They later learned one of the cables had broken. The local news was there with a camera when the three of them climbed out of the bell, but her parents yanked Allie to the car, and silently they drove home.
Allie bounds down the stairs. Tonight the front and back doors are open, and the house is like a wind tunnel. Her hair blows crazily across her face. It’s almost two a.m. She climbs up onto the kitchen counter, but she doesn’t see her father in the yard. Then she spots him next door in the Allens’ yard, sleeping on a chaise longue. The phone rings.
“Hello.”
“Hello, you,” the woman says. “Do you feel like blabbing? How would you like to hear about one of the greatest love stories in history? Should I tell you? Let me ask the eight ball.” Allie hears a soft glug. “Should I tell the kid my stories? ‘It is decidedly so.’ All right.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your father’s flame. Your father’s a very attractive man but you might not know it by looking at him. We have the kind of love affair where we can’t keep our mitts off each other.”
“You don’t really know my father,” Allie says.
“Look, kid—”
“What’s your name?” Allie asks.
“Why?” the woman asks. “What’s yours?”
Allie stares at her reflection in the oven window. She looks afraid and this frightens her.
“Tell me something. Who do you look like, your mother or father?”
Allie regards her colorless reflection. “I have brown hair, long hair.” She inspects her crooked teeth. “I’m in my nightgown. What do you look like?”
“Tell me what you think I look like.”
“Ugly.”
“Don’t get saucy with me, béarnaise.” The woman hangs up.
Allie wanders outside. Her nightgown fills with air, making it balloon. The ground is moist beneath her feet. Barefoot, she crosses the street and walks into the Beckers’ backyard and touches the roses, which are all in rows by color. The petals are velvety and moist. She picks up a pair of hedge clippers and clips flowers off three of the tallest stems. They fall to her feet.
On a table by the Beckers’ pool is a stack of books. One is called Correct Behavior for All Occasions. She likes the cover; it pictures a large house filled with silhouettes of delighted-looking people, all with good hairdos, all of them leaning close to one another in cozy, gold-lit rooms.
She wants the book. She wonders if Mrs. Becker will fall to her knees and scream when she sees her beheaded roses. Will Mrs. Becker miss her book?
The sky is filled with bright stars. The wind is crisp. It swishes under Allie’s hair onto her bare scalp, filling her with a vibrancy that makes her feel disconnected from the earth, disconnected from the life around her. Crossing the street, Allie hugs the book to her chest.
The next afternoon her father searches for his tooth beneath the recliner—his face is bright red with the strain of bending. Allie reaches her own small hand onto the carpet beneath the chair as she feels for the tooth. Did he have it when he went to sleep last night, she wants to know. He sits back on his heels, cocks his head and smiles sadly at her. “I believe I had a full set then,” he says. The dark gap where his front tooth should be makes him look like a stranger to her.