the most perfect, amazing, incredible (not to mention only) date of my life, I was actually about to spend the day alone with my dad, something that hadn't happened since we'd lived on a
different coast.
"Lucy, you up?" It was my dad yelling down from the kitchen. I looked at the clock--ten-fifteen.
We were supposed to be on our way to the Guggenheim in thirty minutes.
"I'm up!" I yelled, throwing the covers off myself and leaping out of bed. My dad hates waiting for people.
As I rushed to get ready, I kept the movie of kissing Connor running in my mind. I saw him lean
toward me, perfectly backlit by the streetlight. I felt his hand on my waist, his lips brushing up
against my temple.
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Usually my dad starts pacing around the room like a caged animal, checking his watch and
sighing dramatically as ETD approaches. But this morning when I came upstairs, he was calmly
reading the paper in the living room, and I was the one who was antsy to leave. I couldn't wait to
get in the car and start telling him all about my night.
Well, maybe not all about it.
"Chop-chop, Mister," I said, pointing at my wrist where my watch, if I wore one, would have
been. "You think Patton read the Arts and Leisure section on D-Day?"
My dad looked up. "Well, well, well, aren't we timely," he said. "You look practically ready to walk out the door."
"And you can drop the 'practically.' I'm walkin'." I started toward the door.
"I think Mara's running a little late," my dad said. "We're adjusting ETD by half an hour."
"Mara?" I said it like I'd never heard the name before.
"Don't worry, Sergeant, we'll have her up to our punctuality standards soon," said my dad.
I was glad my back was to him so he couldn't see the expression on my face. I tried to make my
voice neutral. "I just didn't... I mean I didn't realize she was coming," I said. Once I'd managed to work my mouth into some semblance of a smile, I turned around.
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"Sure, she's coming," said my dad. He looked confused. "Why wouldn't she come?"
Well, why would she? "I thought we were, you know, going into the city just the two of us." I tried to remember the actual conversation in which I'd told him about the exhibit. Had he
mentioned Mara's coming? When I said "together" did he think I meant the three of us together?
Now my dad was frowning. He lowered his voice. "Lucy, I think it would really hurt Mara's
feelings if she thought you didn't want her to come with us."
I lowered mine, too. "It's not that I don't want her to come," I began. But then I didn't know how to finish the sentence. Because quite frankly, that's exactly what it was.
"I thought you liked Mara," said my dad. He didn't seem mad anymore, he seemed hurt, like I'd
opened a present he'd been really excited to give me only to see my face fall.
"I do like Mara," I said. "Really." I went over to where he was sitting and dropped to the floor by the side of his chair. He put his hand on my head.
"Honey, we're a family now," he said. "And families do things together."
I was about to say that plenty of the families I know do things separately, but just as I opened my
mouth, Mara came down the stairs.
"Ta-da!" she said, standing in the archway between
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the living room and the foyer. "Only fifteen minutes late. A personal best."
My dad applauded. "And worth every extra second," he said. She came over and kissed the top
of his head, then bent down and kissed the top of mine. My scalp tingled with annoyance where
her lips had touched it.
"Ready?" she asked.
"You betcha," said my dad, standing. He stretched out his hand to help me up from the floor.
"Lucy? You ready?"
I looked up. His face was a mixture of concern and impatience I'd never seen before. "Yeah," I
said, reaching my hand up to take his. "I'm ready."
When we got to the car, I opened the passenger-side door and was about to get in when I saw my
dad looking at me. He frowned and shook his head slightly.
I made a face at him and gestured toward the seat. "Hop in," I said to Mara.
"Now, that's what I call service," she said, slipping into the car. I shut the door and opened the one behind it, sliding across the backseat to sit in the middle. I caught my dad's eye as he looked
into the rearview mirror before backing up.
"You okay back there?" he asked.
But it was more of a statement than a question, so I gave the answer I knew he wanted. "Sure," I said. "Just great."
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"That's what we like to hear," he said, putting the car in reverse.
It certainly is, I thought. It certainly is.
"Thanks to Lucy, we're seeing one of the hottest art shows in New York," my dad said, reaching
across the gearshift and taking Mara's hand. There was no traffic on the parkway, and he was
driving about a thousand miles an hour. "Clemente's huge right now." Lying across the backseat,
I rolled my eyes at the roof of the car.
Mara turned around and smiled at me. "How did you hear about the show?"
I knew she was only talking to me because my dad was there, so I kept my answer as brief as
possible. "From my art teacher."
Mara was still turned around facing me. "It must be nice for you to have a teacher you respect so
much for art class," said Mara.
"Yeah? Why's that?"
Mara's always going on about how important it is that girls have good teachers for math and
science because once they hit high school, they apparently start flunking those subjects. It's
pretty funny to hear her go off on her feminist tirades, considering she's spent her entire adult life
being supported by not just one but two husbands. I think my stepmother's idea of equal
opportunity is women taking every chance they can to charge something to a man's credit card.
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She dropped my dad's hand, reached behind her, and patted my thigh before turning to face
forward again. "Well, I guess I was thinking how important Ms. Daniels must be since your mom
was an artist," she said.
Mara's totally convinced I never talk about my mom because of how traumatized I was by her
death. It's one of the many brilliant theories of human behavior she's concocted from the library
of self-help books she accumulated during her years as a divorcee. I sat up and tried to get my
dad to make eye contact with me by staring in the rearview mirror, but in spite of its being an
overcast day, he had put on his Terminator sunglasses, and I couldn't find his eyes.
"She's okay," I said, and I lay back down again.
The Guggenheim Museum is at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-Ninth Street, directly
across from Central Park. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the strange and beautiful building--a
stack of white circles that expands from the bottom up. Today the museum was packed with
tourists, most of whom looked like they'd just stepped off a cruise ship and couldn't wait to
reboard. As we stood reading the exhibit's introductory panel, Mara, who was leaning up against
my dad, whispered something in his ear, and he laughed and wrapped the arm that wasn't around
her waist across her chest.
Was this what he meant by families doing things together?