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One Friday afternoon as I am walking up Broadway
on the way home from work, my cell phone rings.
The voice on the other end is Chloe’s, my
nineteen-year –old daughter, who lives in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. She says she is at Penn
Station. What an unbelievable surprise. I had no
idea she was planning to visit me. She’ll
take the subway up, and meet me outside my building
in about fifteen minutes. I wait for her at the
black metal gate next to potted pink impatiens,
and as Chloe approaches, my heart soars. She is
tall and graceful with a wide smile and long-flowing
blonde hair. Pedestrians turn their heads and make
way for her. I almost expect us all to burst into
song. Chloe and I embrace, and she hands me a large
orange gerbera daisy for the thin glass vase she
knows is upstairs, empty.
I want to take care of Chloe, and I ask her how
she feels. She is shivering and admits she is hungry,
and so I suggest we buy her a sweater and go out
for dinner. After a brief visit to the Gap where
she picks up a rose cardigan, we end up at Brother
Jimmy’s because we want someplace casual,
festive and easy to get to. She still will have
time to meet a college friend she has known since
elementary school in Hawaii. They plan to go to
a concert later in the evening.
While people talk loudly in front of a suspended
television showing a baseball game and the Cold
Play song, “Yellow,” blares on the stereo,
I ask Chloe a string of questions and she answers
accordingly: “How’s life at Rutgers?”
“Okay.” “How’s your roommate?”
“Fine.” “Do you still hear from
Scott?” “Not really.” “Have
you gotten a job?” “Sort of.”
“Do you like your classes?” “Not
so much.”
Our conversation has reached a dead end, and so
we focus on the plates of food the waitress has
just brought us. Chloe scoops up a spoonful of black-eyed
peas and I squirt juice on Chloe’s forehead
as I bite into my corn on the cob. She wipes the
spray, laughing, and I murmur, “Oh my gosh,
Chloe, I’m sorry.” Still smiling, she
begins to cry, “Mom, I’m lonely and
homesick. I miss Hawaii, and my friends.”
Because she still smiles, I can’t be sure
I have heard her. So rarely has she ever expressed
sadness.
I can count on my fingers the times she has shown
momentary unhappiness. Usually, it would involve
her wanting to quit some group activity I had gotten
her into: Girl Scouts, Sunday School, ballet, playing
the French horn in the marching band. Her blue eyes
would turn steely grey whenever she balked at conformity
and routine, and while I wished she wouldn’t
quit dancing and playing music, I nonetheless approved
of her self confidence and determination. I never
had any doubt she would find her own way.
Only now, my heart is breaking. Her fighting spirit
has been replaced by despair. My daughter is sitting
across from me, weeping over her Southern food,
while others her age congregate, laughing and cheering.
Something is terribly wrong, and I gulp down sweet
tea to force down the barbecued pork stuck in my
throat. Chloe is playing with her peas. As she looks
down at her food, I notice the glowing smoothness
of her face is unchanged, and recognize her perfectly
curved forehead – the place I have kissed
her since she was a baby, and I wonder if I could
kiss that same place now.
Chloe was our first child. Her birth was the highest
point of our marriage, and near its beginning. We
were never happier or more in love or more full
of hope for each other. We named her “Chloe
Amelia,” a variation on Charlotte Amalie,
the town in St. Thomas where Bill and I met and
fell in love. Chloe is a Greek name, one that means
“spring grass,” which seemed just right
since she was born in early May, and we were on
our way to Athens, Georgia, or would be after a
six-month stay in Rome for Bill’s Fulbright.
Things began to sour so gradually, I still don’t
understand how or when we drifted apart, all at
our happy child’s expense. I had hoped our
younger daughter’s birth, two years later,
would make things better. But the impact of that
second miracle did not linger. Twenty-four years
later, Bill and I finally gave up.
I try to focus on a happy memory. “Chloe,
remember that afternoon after school, when you asked
me to take you to Kailua Beach?”
“Yeah, we stopped along the way for shave
ice.” Served in paper cones, shave ice was
flavored with colorful fruit syrups. Chloe liked
yellow, red, and blue for banana, strawberry, and
blueberry.
I remember how she jumped into the waves with her
boogey board while, spread out on the white-gold
sand, I watched her proudly. Driving home silently,
we listened to music and watched the sky turn from
bluish orange to orange red, and then maroon darkness
enveloped us.
“Hold on, Chloe,” I want to tell her.
“This too will pass.” But I know that
sounds trite, and I feel responsible for her unhappiness,
and helpless. Although I have tried to shield her
from the long disintegration of my marriage, I know
my bouts of depression and loneliness have scarred
her sunny childhood.
My brown eyes lock into her steely grey eyes, and
I pray that she doesn’t waste as much time
as I have wasted mine. I want to do anything I possibly
can to make sure that she will be confident and
happy, and yet I know that the best gift that I
can give her now is to just let go and trust that
she will find her way, as she has done many times
before. We both are eating hungrily now, and then
Chloe says, “I have to meet Anton. I’ll
be back later, after the concert.” And I look
forward to her early morning call.
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