Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

“Moose is in med school, planning to be a psychiatrist. I read that last time I was here.”

“A psychiatrist? How?”

“Do you mind?” my brother asked. “We’re trying to watch this.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?” he said.

“It’s just squawky people who like to hear themselves talk,” I said.

“Ironic,” said Aaron. Genevieve looked smug.

“Maybe we misjudged Chipmunk and Moose,” I said. “They’re quite accomplished.”

“Well, so are you,” said Lee.

“Hardly.”

“Things are happening for you. You should have written in here about your story.”

“ You should have written in.”

“About being a face ? About wearing clothes and getting my picture taken?”

“Yeah!”

“Next time somebody asks me what I fucking do, I’m just going to say ‘I’m a doctor.’”

It was the first time I’d heard her express dissatisfaction or discomfort with the direction her life had taken. But then, I hadn’t been around to listen much lately.

“What kind of doctor?”

“A radiologist. At Mount Sinai.”

“But what if you meet a radiologist who works at Mount Sinai?”

“That would be kind of perfect in a universe-folding-in-on-itself way.”

I offered up a sad laugh. I believed she didn’t have to do anything in order to be someone. “You’re Lee Parrish,” I wanted to say. But being Lee Parrish was part of the problem. She would always be Jesse and Linda’s daughter, and people would always take an interest in her because of that. She never had to earn it.

“Why don’t you become a doctor?” Genevieve turned to Lee. “If you really want to, what’s keeping you?”

“My defeatist attitude,” said Lee. “And blood. I’m not good with blood.”

“But you could be a radiologist,” said Aaron. “They don’t really deal with blood.” He spoke, not to second Genevieve’s annoyance, but as though he had discovered the loophole that would allow Lee to follow her dreams.

My brother had had a thing for Lee since he was fifteen. He’d tried to impress her with bits from various standup comedy routines. The next year, he’d grown sullen and brooding and didn’t say much of anything. I would catch him looking at her in the way I wished a boy would have looked at me when I was sixteen. He worshiped her, and Lee played it to the hilt. She even kissed his forehead once and told him he was going to be a “real heartbreaker in a year or two.” Aaron must have resented her on some level, found the whole situation humiliating, and now he had Genevieve to throw in her face. The appeal of a girl like Genevieve, as I understood it, was that she did all the work and Aaron just had to show up and be told what books to read, what rallies to attend, and how exactly she could be brought to orgasm.

“Thanks, Aaron,” said Lee.

“No problem. But you’re not going to be a radiologist.”

“I’m not?”

“No,” he said. “You’re Lee fucking Parrish.”

They smiled at each other. Charlie Rose was wrapping things up with a journalist from the Washington Post. Carol Channing was the next guest.

“It’s about time,” I said. Genevieve glared at the screen.

IN THE MIDDLEof the night, when I couldn’t sleep, I slipped out of bed and headed for the living room, stopping on the stairs when I heard voices.

“Look at your sister and her friend,” Genevieve was saying. “Some people are just more directed than others.”

“More directed?”

“People who have beliefs. Who know what they want out of life and go after it. People who care about the state of the world! I’m sorry, but they don’t seem that passionate about anything.”

I wanted to interject: “It’s a holiday. Do we have to be passionate on a holiday?” And why wasn’t my brother defending us?

“You’re brave,” he told her. “It’s hot.”

“Oh yeah?”

They began to honor their sexuality and I crept back to my room.

THANKSGIVING MORNING SHOWEDan autumnal gray sky through cold windowpanes. Weather for blankets and lit fireplaces, green grass fading in the yard below, and a quiet street beyond. Someone was already up brewing coffee.

I found my father leaning against the countertop contemplating a mug with the logo of an old pharmaceutical company on it, as though it would offer up answers if he looked at it deeply enough. The jocular Nordic oil rigger of the day before had disappeared. There was no mantle for him to take up at that moment. He asked me how I’d slept as an opening for him to tell me about his night of tossing and turning. Aside from the usual anxieties that keep a man of his age awake, something was weighing on him. I had always thought of my father as straightforward, but I realized he’d never delivered bad news to me before.

“Do you know what I thought about this morning that I hadn’t thought of in years?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Taking you to the Army Navy surplus store in Kenmore Square. Remember that? You were maybe fifteen. You wanted those fatigue pants.”

“I was fourteen. I loved those pants.”

“I remember thinking, if that’s what you want to wear, that’s what you want to wear. Fine by me. Because I knew that was probably going to be the last time you would ever ask me to do anything like that.”

“They were German. From the West German army, I think. I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me get them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The Holocaust?”

“Well.”

“I can’t believe I asked you to take me shopping for those.”

“I remember that store smelled like camphor and rubber. The music they played was interesting. Some kind of reggae. I was completely wrapped up in watching you. You were nervous, a little timid, not sure you should be there, but still confident, and you found what you wanted without asking for any help. And as I was watching you do this, I had no idea who you were, but I felt incredibly proud.”

I had no idea who you were, I thought.

“It was the Slits,” I said.

“The what?”

“The music in the store.” I remembered everything about that trip, but I hadn’t thought my dad did, too. “What made you think of that?”

He looked, again, to his coffee cup, his hands.

“Something happened with Lee. Last night. She came by my study and asked if I would take a look at an inflamed spot on her back. It seemed pretty harmless. I’m a doctor. There is an irritation there, nothing serious, a topical corticosteroid would take care of it, but she—”

“What? Did she throw herself at you?”

“I wouldn’t say throw, but, yes.”

What I already knew but didn’t want to believe.

Nothing he said would have made that better, so I decided to make it worse.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Dad. You could’ve been anyone, I’m sure. You just happened to be the nearest man with a pulse.”

“Maybe that’s true. But I’m not just anyone. I don’t think Lee is in a very good place. It seems to me like a fairly obvious cry for help. Which is why I’m telling you this.”

“So that I can help her stop hitting on other people’s fathers?”

“ Vivian. ”

As much as I tried, I couldn’t make my father the object of my anger.

“What am I supposed to do with this? Did you tell Mom?”

“I did. We agreed I should tell you. We all care about Lee. But obviously, you’re her friend. We want to leave it up to you to handle however you think best.”

I had no idea what was best.

He walked toward the tiered metal basket of onions that had been hanging from the ceiling for as long as I could remember. I thought he might try to illustrate something with one of them, an object lesson in how many layers there are to a person. But he just reached in. “I told your mother I would get started early on the stuffing.”