It’s still dark when Milly wakes up. I can hear her out there opening cabinets, so I roll out of bed and head to the kitchen.
“Hi,” I say, turning on the overhead light.
“Hi.”
“Want some toast?”
“No.”
“Oatmeal?”
“No.”
“Cereal?”
She sits down and looks at her reflection in the kitchen window. “My hair isn’t long enough.”
“What? I love your hair.”
“It’s ugly, and it won’t stay up.”
“I can braid it. I can French-braid it. Have you ever tried that?” She shakes her head. “Well, if you want, get a hairbrush and a ponytail holder, and I’ll see what I can do.”
My mom and I did not do this sort of thing. She had neither the inclination nor, as far as I know, the skill for hair design, and she was on high alert for vanity’s handmaidens: blow dryers, hot curlers, special bands and accessories. The only exception I can recall was the night before my First Communion, when she told me to take a shower and meet her in her bathroom. She had a vision. I did as I was told and reported to her door. She led me in, sat me on the counter, and for the next fifteen minutes labored over me, slowly dividing my wet hair into sections, twirling the sections into tiny buns, clipping the buns to my head with two silver hairpins crisscrossed. We did not talk, but I knew she was happy because she made the same satisfied working noises she made when she polished silver or pulled flagging leaves off her potted plants, and because I saw her face in the mirror as she wrapped my head under one of her many navy blue/kelly green scarves and she was grinning. In the morning, she slipped out the pins two by two, and then it was time to shake out the curls. Voilà! she said. I put on my flouncy dress and buckled my hard, shiny shoes and stood in front of my mom, who looked at me and nodded. I could have tap-danced all the way to St. Thomas of Villanova, her attention made me so giddy. On the ride to church, I stared at myself in the side-view mirror, going on about my perfect hairdo as I ran my finger in and around the curl closest to my ear, until my mother turned around, her expression firm. Remember, Kelly, today is about the good Lord, so let’s focus our thoughts on Jesus and Mary. She had gotten carried away and she regretted it.
When Milly comes back, I take her to my room, sit her on the floor between my knees, and brush through her shampoo-commercial hair, careful not to pull or rip a single strand, nothing that might make her repeal the privilege. She’s given me a chance to solve a problem, and if I can do it—if I can make her like herself again—we will be closer.
I begin her braid and it builds into the perfect repeating weave of a Goodyear tire. There are no bumps, no sticky-outies. She wants to see. I open my closet door and turn her shoulders so she can admire her reflection in the mirror.
“I like it.”
“I’m glad,” I say, enjoying a rush of whatever hormones make you feel good as I tie it off with a pink rubber band.
“Yeah, I like it,” she says again.
“Good.”
“Can you do it again tomorrow?”
Tomorrow and every day after. “Sure.”
“Okay, good.” And she runs out of my room, touching the braid, looking for someone to show.
I turn around, flush with satisfaction and optimism. I can do this. I can help this girl. I can uncover every way there is to make her happy, to make her say mmm. Buy her pretty barrettes, keep her up late watching movies, have the Emmas over for a three-day party.
But then, on my dresser, I see a box of tampons, and I’m stopped short. Who will tell Milly about periods? That’s no kind of work for a father. But who else will be here all those years from now to steer her through the fun house of puberty? Who will sit Milly down, as my mother did with me, and say, “I want you to know … well, I want to ask you … do you have any questions … about anything?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like,” she said, straightening pens and pencils on her desk, “like … where babies come from.”
“Mom, I’m sixteen!”
“I’m just asking—” She polished a letter opener on her sweater. “So … nothing at all?”
I had noticed something in the Reilly master bathroom the last time I babysat. “Okay …” I hesitated. “Well, yeah, there is one thing.”
“Oh?” She looked uneasy.
“Yeah. What’s a douche?”
“Oh, Kelly!” She shrieked like I’d put a centipede on her leg. “That is dis-GUS-ting!”
“It is? Even Summer’s Eve?” I pictured the pretty lady on the box walking through a bright forest in a very clean sundress.
“Blech.” She lowered her voice. “If you must know, a douche is something you squirt in your privates if they get dirty, which yours won’t, so let’s not get too involved in a discussion about douches. God almighty!” She turned her back to me. “And to think Susan Reilly is Catholic!”
Recalling this tête-à-tête with my mother, I’m inspired to write up a point-blank puberty cheat sheet for Milly. Bras, deodorant, zit management; pads, tampons, rubbers, and—though I was haunted by the image of a product that power-cleaned dirty vaginas—douches. But it’s not my place. I’m a temp. Anyway, you probably can’t get a kid from girlhood to womanhood with a one-page summary. It probably takes years.
Milly has dance class after school; I’m taking her while John blasts the soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof and finishes painting the trim along the back of the house.
“Milly!” I call across the school playground, holding a bag with all her dance stuff. “You ready?” When she reaches me, her cheeks are flushed from running and the hair she thinks is so inadequate has fallen from either side of this morning’s French braid, my big fix undone already.
“I need a hair band,” she says in her queen-mum accent, which sometimes makes me feel crass and poorly educated.
“Do you want me to do another braid?” I take out the hairbrush I brought, and she takes it.
“No.” My access to her has been revoked. This morning was a fluke. “I’m fine.” Milly yanks the brush through her hair while I stand there, resisting the considerable urge to step behind her and untangle her hair, working from the ends up to the roots like my mother made me.
In the lobby of the dance studio, Martin is quiet, lost in a confrontation between a handful of plastic horsemen and foot soldiers—Torture! Kill! Die!—his tone inappropriately cheerful, as usual. A few mothers page through magazines; one does her bills, ripping checks off the pad with terrific purpose.
Through a glass window, I watch Milly turn her feet out in arabesque. She’s short on balance, but she grins as she holds her pose, glancing at friends around the room. Seeing her at ease fills my chest, like I’ve inhaled a hit of her mood. I’ve felt sorry for people before—I spent four years in college dorm rooms, trading sob stories over Domino’s and Diet Coke—but feeling another person’s joy like this is a new kind of empathy.
On the way out of class, I hand Milly her bag, along with her copy of The Seven Wonders of the World, a recent go-to.
“Thank you, Keely,” she says casually, like she doesn’t hate me at all.
“My brother has that book,” says some girl in a tracksuit. “That’s a boy book.”
“What?” Milly asks, looking stung.
“That book—it’s for boys,” the girl says as she heads to the swinging door. “Boy boy boy.”
“She’s crazy,” I say to Milly. “The Seven Wonders? Everyone loves the Seven Wonders.”
Milly doesn’t look at me. “Here, you take it,” she says, shoving the book at Martin and pushing through the other girls to get to the front door.
I grind my teeth as Tracksuit Girl skips (skips!) down the sidewalk in front of us, swinging off her mother’s arm. I want to barrel after them and grab the girl’s shoulders and scream into her snotty face, You know what’s boy boy boy? Tracksuits!
For better or worse, I’ve latched on to Milly’s ecosystem. What happens to her happens—in some weird refracted way that seems slightly dangerous—to me, too. And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.