Page 57 of Dial F for Finance

Mom’s birthday.

DO NOT ANSWER:

You OK?

I stare at his question. During our late-night chats in Tokyo, I revealed just enough about my family to Dominic that he knows it’s difficult terrain. I almost didn’t mean for him to see it—those midnight overshares hung at the edge of sleep deprivation—but of course, he remembers every detail.

Me:

I’m fine. Enjoy the movie tonight.

I immediately drop my phone in my bag and hop on the next bus.

The house is the same as always. Aluminum siding the color of weak coffee, the Virgin Mary in the front window with her faded blue robe, the third porch step that gives a half-inch and has been “on the list” since I was in the first grade. I stand on the sidewalk with my overnight bag and my good coat and I feel it happen the way it always happens—Chicago Jenna evaporating, molecule by molecule, until what’s left on this pavement is a tall girl from 164th Street who never did learn how to fit in.

Hailey opens the door the moment the stoop wobbles—the unofficial doorbell.

“It’s 12:01,” my sister says, taking in the coat, the bag, the blowout that survived four and a half hours of travel. “Ma’s getting hungry—it’s past lunchtime, you know?”

She rolls her eyes and I suppress a smile.

“A whole minute after midday? Whatever will we do?”

Hailey laughs and pulls me into a hug. “You look too good to be coming back to this place, Nenna,” she says, using the name that’s stuck since she was little and couldn’t pronounce her J’s. And she means it as a compliment because she’s proud of all I’ve accomplished. But it still gives me a pang in the center of my stomach because I know my success in Chicago means she’s the one left here dealing with our parents and their . . . personalities.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” She steps back to let me in. She’s got Ma’s dark eyes and our father’s easy way of leaning in a door frame like it was built as scenery for her. There’s flour on her T-shirt, and she looks like home in a way that makes me miss it a little. “She’s been cooking since seven. Doesn’t trust me to get it right. She made the manicotti. So whatever you were planning to not-eat this weekend, cancel it.”

The kitchen smells like tomato and basil and scorched sugar, the radio on the counter doing doo-wop at conversation-defeating volume, and my mother at the stove in the good apron, smaller than she was at Christmas.

“Happy birthday, Ma.”

“Jenna!” She holds my face in two damp hands and looks at me the way she looks at produce she suspects was priced dishonestly. “You look tired. They don’t let you sleep at that company?”

“I sleep fine, Ma.”

“Sure you do.” She pats my cheek twice. For half a second, I’m seven years old again and she’s checking my forehead for fever with the back of her hand. Then she turns back to the pot and drinks straight from the cooking wine. Hailey and I exchange a glance and I mouth, she’s drinking? Hailey shrugs, helpless.

We’re four minutes into the manicotti when it starts.

“So.” Ma doesn’t look up from her plate, which is how I know she probably started drinking in the a.m. “Is there a man?”

Hailey’s fork goes still. Across the table, her eyes flick to mine—incoming—and I perform the lie I’ve been rehearsing since LaGuardia.

“No, Ma. There’s no man.”

“Good.” She says it like a judge passing sentence, and then, warming to her life’s great subject: “GOOD. You know why? Men are good for nothing. Nothing! They eat your years like it’s a buffet and leave the plate for you to wash. Look at your father. Charming as a game show host, that man, everybody’s best friend—ask the whole block, they’ll tell you, Teddy, what a guy. You know who didn’t get the guy? The woman ironing the shirts he wore to see about his business.” The word does a lot of work. It always has. “Twenty years I gave that man my figure and my good knees, and for what? Smart girl, staying alone. Career women have it right. Nobody steals your best years and then fucks off to find something ‘better.’” She scoffs then drinks more wine.

“Speaking of careers,” I say, trying to steer the conversation away from Dad. “I got to fly out to Tokyo a couple of weeks ago.”

“That’s amazing,” Hailey starts. “I’d love to go to Japan.”

“Japan?” Ma huffs. “Why would anyone ever want to go there? All the way on the other side of the world. For what? Fish?”

“Sushi isn’t the only Japanese cultural export,” I say.

“She went for work, Ma,” Hailey says, shooting me an apologetic look. “Big international deal. Fancy.”