The Break(26)

“It’s nice to meet you,” says my new roommate, and then he disappears inside his apartment with my box and my dad.

“Cool place,” I hear my dad say from inside. My mom gives me a look like she might bolt, but she doesn’t. She follows me inside, and if I just saw my mother through other New Yorkers’ eyes, I’m now seeing my apartment through hers. The kitchen tiles are dirty, and the sink is filled with dishes. The wall that separates my bedroom looks cheaper than it did that night I was here: almost flimsy, as if it could fall down at any moment. It makes me sure Sean put it up himself, and then I entertain a morbid fantasy that Sean put it up while we were going on all those pseudo dates so that he could eventually trick me into moving in here. My heart pounds and I try to smile at my parents, but suddenly everything seems wrong.

My dad glances around and says, “This place reminds me of an apartment I had in college.” My dad is the kindest person I know, and he’s trying to make Sean feel at ease, like they’re bonding. But it has the opposite effect on Sean, who seems to take what my dad has said as an insult.

“Did you go to college in New York?” Sean asks snottily, like that’s the only way my dad could possibly have ever had an apartment like this.

“Oh no,” my dad says with a chuckle. “I went to community college in Albany. My buddy and I shared an apartment just like this. But then we got a bearded dragon named Stanley, and we had to feed him live crickets, and the crickets kept escaping into the building, and eventually we got kicked out.” He laughs again, nostalgia on his face. Sean smiles at him like it’s dawned on him that my dad isn’t the enemy.

My mom is standing extremely still, surveying the place. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I know it’s not good.

“Hey, is that a mechanics magazine you have right there?” my dad asks, gesturing to a magazine resting on a flowered sofa.



“Well, it’s Popular Mechanics,” Sean says, but there’s no trace of snobbery left in his voice. “But sure, I mean, it’s about how things work. I love stuff like that.”

“I’m a mechanic,” my dad says.

“That’s impressive,” Sean says, nodding. “The inner workings of machinery is something I’ve loved since I was young,” he adds. He’s never told me that before, and it makes me smile despite my mother standing there with her beautiful scowl.

“My dad can fix anything,” I say, not caring that I sound six.

“Actually, me too,” says Sean. “That’s why I got into computers. It’s similar, the inner workings of something, the back end that no one else sees. I thought about being a surgeon for a hot second there. I think I’d love slicing into someone and seeing how it all works.”

No one says anything. “Oh, wow,” I finally manage. If my father is concerned for my well-being after what Sean just said, he doesn’t let on.

My mother exhales; she’s clearly over this conversation. “Is that June’s room?” she asks, gesturing toward the flimsy wall. “May I see it?”

Sean turns and seems to see my mother for the first time. My mother is insanely gorgeous, but as she’s gotten older it’s the kind of beauty that sneaks up on you. It wasn’t like that when I was little, when her beauty grabbed people by the throat, back when she was the queen of SlimFast and Everything Else in Harbor Falls, New York. She did that diet shake way past its prime, and the same with the Jane Fonda videos, but it never mattered that her vibe was a little out of date, or that her house was tiny, or that in the winter, when her garden was dead and the sun set at four, she often shut her bedroom door and wept. Out on our lawn she held court over all the other mothers—and even some of our male neighbors—who surrounded her like she was the arbiter of how to be incredible. Because she was. I used to stand there, age five or six or whatever ages little girls are, waiting for the bus at the end of our driveway in the tangerine morning light; and my mom would be there in the driveway, too, an inch too far away and sipping tea that smelled like mint gum. Every once in a blue moon she’d get close enough to run her hand over my hair, and I could never tell if it was meant to be affectionate, or if she was smoothing away an imperfection on my blond head. I think she was trying to give me space and let me do my own thing with the other kids, but space was the very last thing I wanted from her. And then the space started to feel impenetrable, and that’s when I knew we were in trouble, and that it would take an act of God to break through to her, to make her love me like I needed her to. My brother, Jed, had it worse. He didn’t even try to win her back from the deep depressive episodes she fell into; and that made her give up on him entirely.

“Sure, Joan,” Sean says now, staring at my mother. Her name sounds odd on his lips. “Silly me. I should have given you a tour right away,” he adds, as if there’s really anything of note to see.

We follow Sean into my room. The four of us can barely fit inside together it’s so small, and the shape is odd: it’s like an obtuse triangle. “Well, I can’t say I’ve been in a room shaped like this one ever before,” my father says. Jed and I used to call him Captain Obvious when we were little. I miss Jed and our camaraderie; he comes back east for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sometimes we talk on the phone, but he’s five years older than me and we don’t have much in common.