Paullina Simons: The Girl in Times Square

Some hours later, Allison stumbled out of her room. Lily was watching TV.

“You’re here,” she said, holding on to the railing that led down two steps from the hallway to the sunken living-room.

Lily stood up. “Mom, you were supposed to pick me up from the airport.”

“I didn’t know you were coming today,” said her mother. “I thought you were coming tomorrow.” She spoke slowly. She was wearing a house robe and her short hair was gray—she had stopped coloring it. Her face was puffy, her eyes nearly swollen closed.

Lily was going to raise her voice, say a few stern things, but her mother looked terrible. She wasn’t used to that. Her mother was usually perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, perfect. Lily turned her frustrated gaze back to the TV. Allison stood for a moment, then squared her shoulders and left the living room. Soon Lily got up and went to bed in her father’s room. Of course Grandma was right—something needed fixing. But Lily was the child, and Allison was the mother. The child wasn’t supposed to fix the mother. The mother was supposed to fix the child. That was the natural order of things in the universe.

The next morning Allison came out, all showered and fresh, with mascara and lipstick on her face. Her hair was brushed, pulled back, her eyebrows were tweezed. There was even polish on the nails. She apologized for yesterday’s mishap, and made Lily eggs and coffee as they talked about Lily’s life a little bit, and it was then that Lily broke the bad news that she didn’t think she would be graduating this year because she didn’t think she had enough credits.

“How many credits are you short?” asked Allison.

“A few.”

“Wait till your father finds out.”

“Mom, you can’t still be threatening me with my father. I’m twenty-four.”

“Have you noticed by the way that your father isn’t here?”

Lily coughed. “I’ve noticed. Andrew told me he’s in D.C.”

Now Allison coughed. “Yes, whatever. He said he was going on freelance business. He said Andrew asked him for help in preparation for the fall campaign. It’s all lies. That’s all they both do, is lie.” Turning away, she got up and went away into her bedroom. When Lily knocked to ask if she was coming to the beach, Allison said she wasn’t feeling up to going.

The Mauian beach couldn’t help but erase some of the bad taste in Lily’s mouth. She imagined being here with Joshua, having money, a car, snorkeling, whale watching, biking at dawn to volcanoes, hiking in rainforests, swimming in water that in her great enthusiasm felt like liquid gold. It was enough to get her good and properly depressed about her own situation and to forget her mother and what more could one want from paradise, but to forget your mother’s troubles and remember your own?

Strangely, Hawaii was able to overcome even romantic disillusionments, for it looked and smelled and felt as if God were watching from up close. She had never seen water so green or the sky so blue, or the rhododendrons so red. She had never seen anyone happier than a guy who was swinging on a hammock in his backyard on the ocean and reading his book. Lily didn’t know how he could be reading. You couldn’t look away from that ocean. She was not hot, and when she walked into the water she was not cold. The water and the air were the same temperature. When she finished swimming and came out, she did not feel wet. She thought she could not get a suntan in weather that felt so mild, yet when she pulled away the strap of her bathing suit, she saw white underneath it, and next to it skin that was decidedly not white. That made her incredulous and happy and when she returned she was ready for rapprochement .

But in the darkened condo, Allison was still lying down, and Lily, not wanting to disturb her mother, went into her own room. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon.

She had a nap, and at six when she came out, her mother, her hair all done, and her make-up on, was ironing a skirt in the living room. “Come on, do you have anything nice to wear? Or do you want me to lend you something? I’ll take you to a wonderful oceanside café your father and I go to sometimes. It’s dressy, though, can’t go there in that little bikini you’re wearing.”

“I have a dress.”

“Well, let’s go. They have great lobster.”

All dressed and perfumed they went. Watching her mother walk in so elegant, so slim, so tall in her high-heeled shoes, smile at the host and be escorted on his arm to their beachside table, Lily thought that her father was right—when Allison was on, there was no woman in the room, regardless of age, more beautiful. Anne, Amanda, Lily, they inherited some of their mother’s remarkable physical traits, but parceled out, not in total, whereas their mother had all her remarkable physical traits to herself. The thick, wavy, auburn hair, the wide apart, slightly slanted gray eyes, the regal nose, the high cheekbones, the perfect mouth, elegant and slender like the rest of her. Amanda got the hair and the nose, Anne got the height and the cheekbones and the slimness. Anne got a lot. Lily got no height, no cheekbones, no hair, and no gray eyes. She got the slant of the eyes and a certain fluid grace of the mouth and the neck and the arms.

Before the water was poured, Allison said, “I’m not feeling well, Lil. This medicine I’m taking for my stomach is making me feel awful. I don’t know why I’m taking it.”

“Why are you?”

“Why, why. Because the doctor told me to, that’s why. I have a great problem with my stomach. You know how sick I am.”

Lily stared straight ahead. Ten years ago, Allison had an emergency operation for a perforated ulcer.

Ten years ago!

“You didn’t ask about Joshua, Mom.”

“How is that Joshua?”

“We broke up. Rather, he broke up with me.”

“He did? Why? I thought you got along so well.” She managed to inflect but just barely.

“Not really. I wasn’t a good enough listener for him, I think. All he wanted to do was talk about himself.”

“Ah, well. You’ll find somebody else. You’re still so young.” She sighed operatically. “Not like me. I’m so depressed, Lily.”

Of course you are. “Mom, how can you be depressed in a place like this? Look all around you.” Where depression was loss of color, Hawaii was color’s surfeit.

“Oh, what’s Hawaii to me? I’m so unhappy. Don’t you know you carry what’s inside you wherever you go?”

Lily supposed. For Hemingway, Paris was a moveable feast. For her grandmother it was Poland—one word synonymous with apocalypse and kielbasa. Lily’s mother’s moveable feast was misery.

Not this conversation again . “Why are you unhappy?” she said, trying to inflect, trying and failing, trying not to let lifelong impatience creep into her voice. “Why are you unhappy? You have a beautiful life. You don’t have to work. You don’t have to worry about money. You can travel, you can read, you can swim, fish, snorkel. You have all your faculties, plus a husband who loves you.”

Allison sighed again.

“Mom, Papi loves you.”

“Oh, Lily, you’re so naïve.” She shook her head and looked into her food. “What is this love you talk about? Once, your father and I, true, we had love. But that was a long time ago.” Allison gnashed on her teeth. “Your father is very cruel. You don’t even know.”

Their lobster was brought. Lily tried to remember her first sixteen years of life with her mother and father. “Papi’s not cruel.” Papi was too passive to be cruel, she wanted to say.

“This is what I mean about naïve! How can I even talk to you about this if you won’t listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” said Lily, but wished she weren’t. She kept picking at her lobster with a fork. Her mother stopped eating completely.