Around this time, a girl in your class named Alex says hi when you get placed in a special group of kids who can already read. Another girl named Liz is also in this group, and the three of you become fast friends, having playdates at each other’s houses. We don’t do this at our house often. Because why? Because I can’t deal with it. That’s just the truth. I can handle one friend over at a time, if you play quietly in your room. So you go to the other girl’s houses, where you’re free to get more rambunctious (though you’re not what I’d call rambunctious anyway), where there are siblings, where there are toys and games and snacks other than celery and cream cheese. Alex and Liz are both nice, bright girls, much more outgoing than you, and one day at Alex’s house you and Alex and Liz are playing psychologist, which is what Alex’s mother does for a living. Alex is usually the psychologist in this game, since she knows the most about it, and Liz volunteers to be the first patient; you’re undecided at this point, so at first you just watch and learn. Alex sits in an armchair in the living room and directs Liz to sit on the sofa. Wait! Alex says I forgot something, reaches for a box of tissues to put in front of Liz. I don’t have a runny nose, Liz says, a little defensively, and Alex says It’s for if you have to cry, and Liz says I don’t have to cry, and Alex says You might feel like crying soon, and Liz says I won’t! although she does feel a tiny bit like crying already just because she doesn’t understand what Alex is talking about, and even Alex doesn’t exactly understand why there is crying in psychology. Alex herself has briefly been to a child psychologist, when she was four, doesn’t remember it so well, only remembers playing with some blocks and puppets. What Alex knows about adult psychology she has learned from her mother’s gentle explanation that sometimes people need to talk about their feelings, and also from what she picked up walking past her mother’s office door and hearing occasional loud sobs and complaints about husbands and not feeling understood by anyone.
So tell me about your feelings today, Alex says. My feelings are fine, Liz says. No, you can’t be fine, it’s boring if you’re fine, Alex explains. Okay, I’m feeling mad! Liz says. Great! Alex says. What are you feeling mad about? Liz doesn’t know what to say now, because of course she isn’t really mad. Are you mad because your parents are divorced? No. It’s okay if you are. My mom says it’s normal to be mad or sad about your parents being divorced. Well, I’m not. Are you sad? No! Okay, fine! What are you mad or sad about then? I’m not mad or sad. Have you ever been mad or sad?
At this point, you think about when you’ve been mad or sad, and if you’ve ever been mad or sad because your parents are divorced (you have for sure been sad), and what to call the other feelings you’ve had that aren’t quite mad or sad. Is confused a feeling?
I was sad last week when I stayed over at my dad’s and I had to leave to go back to my mom’s. Good! Very good! But then I was also sad when I had to leave Mom’s to go back to Dad’s.
Wait, you get to see them both? you say. Sure, silly, everyone does, Liz says. You say No! I don’t! Liz says You don’t what? You say I don’t get to see my dad anymore. Not even every other Wednesday? No. Liz gets to see her dad every other Wednesday? What does Wednesday have to do with it? That doesn’t make any sense — but it still sounds way better than seeing your dad on no day. Alex can tell by your silence and the slight downturn of a frown that something isn’t right here. Oh no, Alex says, you better take a turn getting some psychology now. Liz, you get up now and give Betsy that seat. You and Liz trade places and Alex says So what are those feelings like, not to see your dad? Alex has the idea that the word “feel” or “feeling” should be in just about every question she asks. Bad, you say. You’ve only last week stopped having round-the-clock bad feelings about this, and you are not in any hurry to get them back. Bad, yes, very good, Alex says. Why is that good? you ask, it doesn’t seem good at all, bad and good aren’t the same, how does she not understand that? Alex doesn’t know. Well, it just is, that’s all.
Your plan for when you get home is to ask me why can’t you see Daddy every other Wednesday, but when you get back, I am crying. So you table the question for the time being and bring me a box of tissues and ask me if I want to talk about my feelings.
Funny Little Girl
When I’m not traveling, I take you to as many Broadway musicals as I can scrape together the cash for, which isn’t many, so instead I bring home records: Carousel, Oklahoma!, Godspell, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof. In 1969, in heaviest rotation, by a lot, is Funny Girl.
Of course, you listen to these records mostly when I am not home, when no one besides you is home, which, yes, is often. There is usually a stretch of time — say, if I am out for a voice lesson — that is long enough for you to play an album at least twice or to play your favorite songs: “People,” “My Man,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star” (“I’m the greatest star by far but no one knows it”). You save your allowance money for a set of fake nails from Woolworth’s, finding that a sailor shirt alone won’t quite complete the experience. You have seen A Happening in Central Park on TV, studied it. You borrow one of my falls, which is not even a little bit close to your own hair color. You spend a good amount of time setting up the fan to blow your dress around dramatically. And by “your dress” I mean one of my dresses, a peach chiffon mini with bell sleeves, chosen because it will blow the best and because it has a bow in the back like Barbra’s.
Always, you sing facing into the big mirror over the living room sofa. Before the song begins you hum the overture because you feel the overture. There is no fake microphone; you don’t need one. You are the greatest star by far that no one knows of. It has been raining on your parade for years now. Oh your man, you love him so, he’ll never know. You have no man (or boy) right now, there isn’t even an object of your affection at the moment, but this resonates no less on that front. You are utterly certain in the deepest part of your eight-year-old soul that he is in the universe somewhere, that you are tragically separated by forces you don’t fully understand but are no less real and true: he goes to another school, he lives in another city, he’s one of those boys from Tiger Beat, he lives in another country, his mother is mean and keeps him locked in his room (and he knows he should be with you too, which makes it all the more tragic). You don’t know which, but it’s for sure one of these.