The Middlesteins(42)

As it turned out, she felt that way because her mother had taught her to feel that way, and she’ll figure that out eventually, in college, in New York, when her freshman-year roommate, a Spanish girl from Barcelona named Agnes, studying film just like she is, asks her why she is always washing up and Emily says, without even thinking, “Men like a clean girl,” and then says quickly, “Oh, God, I sound just like my mother, how terrible,” and the Spanish girl says, “And your mother maybe isn’t even so right about this.” Later Agnes will take her to a party in a loft building in Brooklyn, on the waterfront, and they will stand on the roof together holding hands amid other young, excited people like themselves, sweating, smoking, drinking, smiling, feeling extremely sexy, and they’ll look at the city in the distance, lit up magnificently, the length of it blowing their minds. They will try to figure out which bridge is which, and they will confuse the Manhattan Bridge with the Brooklyn Bridge. There will be a young bearded man playing cover songs on an accordion, and all the girls will want to sleep with him, except for the girls who want to sleep with the other girls. And then Emily will remember a story her aunt had told her about living in Brooklyn a long time ago, and hating it there, the noise, the dirt, the anger, and fleeing the city for home, Chicago, and never looking back, and all Emily can think is: She must have gone to the wrong Brooklyn. Because I never want to go home again.

But at age twelve the most important thing was whatever was right in front of her face, in this case herself, her eyes, the same eyes as her grandmother’s and her aunt’s, the sweet genetic strain tugging her back out the bathroom door and toward her family. Her grandmother and aunt were probably discussing great and important truths that would be relevant to Emily’s being successful in her existence as an older (though not old) and wiser person. She arrived at the table just as Robin was tucking one envelope back into her bag.

“What was that?” Emily said breathlessly.

“Paperwork,” said her grandmother, who, if she had been shaken at all, had quickly recovered.

“Are you guys having, like, a family secret?” said Emily. “Ooh, scary.” There were still two folders left.

“Smart-ass,” said Robin.

“Where does she get it from, I wonder,” said her grandmother, amused. “Do you want anything special?” She handed Emily a menu.

“I only like shrimp dumplings,” said Emily.

“This place is pretty good,” said her grandmother. “You should try more than that just to try it.”

“Why should I eat if I don’t want to?” said Emily.

“For the experience,” said her grandmother firmly.

How’s that experience working for you? Emily thought, and then blushed at her own cruelty, even if it was only internal.

Her aunt must have intercepted her thoughts in some sort of familial shortwave exchange, because she snapped, “She doesn’t have to eat if she doesn’t want to.” Robin drank the rest of her wine in one gulp, and she ran her hands across the tops of the folders. More quietly, she said, “Just get her the dumplings.”

“It’s not a big deal either way,” said Emily. “I’ll eat whatever.”

“Get what you want,” said Robin.

Emily looked at her gratefully. She appreciated the protection, which she had never felt like she needed until that moment, at least not from her grandmother. In a few years, her aunt would again protect her when the shit really started to go down between Emily and her mother; there was screaming and yelling and one hair-pulling incident, and so it was decided that on certain weekends Emily would spend some time with her schoolteacher aunt and her boyfriend in their apartment downtown, because clearly Emily, who was so bright and so creative (and yet so good at math, a fact everyone always ignored), needed a wider cultural perspective, visits to galleries and museums and vintage stores and bookstores and independent movie theaters and so forth, and those visits once a month helped clear everyone’s head, her mother’s, her father’s, Emily’s, and those visits would have continued had her aunt not had the breakdown that one night, too much to drink, too sad, a lost baby in her belly that no one had known about except for her boyfriend, and it had been too much for her aunt to handle, mourning this thing she had known for only a few weeks, not even a baby, just an idea of a baby, and it had devastated her so much, too much, and it had scared Emily, to see someone who couldn’t stop crying for so long into the night and through the next morning until her father could come pick her up, just one urgent phone call away. “You’re welcome back whenever you like, as soon as she gets better,” said Robin’s boyfriend, Daniel, red-faced and sad himself, but by the time she was ready, after the brief hospital stay and the many therapy sessions, and the stopping and starting and stopping again of drinking, Emily was long gone to college.

“The dumplings are delicious,” said her grandmother, embarrassed, staring deeply at the menu. “You can’t go wrong with the dumplings.” Her grandmother ordered a few dishes from a cool-looking waitress who was maybe her aunt’s age but looked younger with her purple-striped hair and high-legged lace-up leather boots and punky miniskirt. “And whatever else you think is good,” she said. “But I wanted my granddaughter to try those dishes.”

“Your granddaughter!” the waitress squealed, and then rushed to Emily’s side, extending her hand, and Emily wondered why the waitress was so happy to see her. “Of course, look at all of you, three peas in a pod. The same eyes,” she said. It was true: They all had the same dark eyes; Emily’s were not damaged yet, though, no wounds burned deep within her, not like with the two women.