Chapter 2
The Bixby isn’t officially a retirement community, but you’d never know it from the number of “active seniors” who congregate at the pool for weekday water aerobics.
Sometimes I wonder if Perry, who’s a few years younger than my mom and exudes effortless cool and good taste, is a bit dissatisfied living in such a generic, beige complex.
The apartment they gave up in order to move into The Bixby was one of those aesthetically pleasing converted lofts in the Arena District.
I can’t imagine Perry will want to stay here long-term.
On weekends, the pool area gets taken over by the other major demographic of The Bixby: divorced dads who need to entertain their screaming children.
All these men have the same styling: beard, slight paunch, sunglasses, AirPods, and the ability to tune out their kids by focusing on their sports betting or dating apps.
I’m convinced some divorce lawyer is collecting referral fees from this building by sending all his newly separated clients here to set up their temporary bachelor pads. The pool must be the selling point.
I wish I could say that I’m watching documentaries or art history lectures.
Alas, my drug of choice is makeup tutorials.
I upped my cosmetics game during the pandemic. It’s a form of drawing in which my perfectionistic tendencies serve me well. So much of my life feels beyond my control, but an immaculate cat eye is always within reach.
The pool is so noisy that I can barely hear the explanation of “quiet grunge with gothcore colors” over the kids shrieking as they throw themselves into the water. When it’s just me and the elderly, I get a lot of “reading” done. Today, I’m distracted.
I watch an eight- or nine-year-old girl in giant goggles perform wobbly underwater gymnastics. Every time she pops her head up, she shouts to one of the bearded, every-other-weekend dads, “Did you see me do that one? How was it? Was it better?”
The dad in question looks up from his phone, shouting praise and encouragement from his lounge chair. Everything she does is “fantastic, amazing, you’re getting so much better at this.”
Maybe I need a man with a dad bod to cheer for me every time I proofread an essay for a graduate application or send the world’s most carefully worded email to a faculty member.
“Will you come in, Dad? Puh-lease?”
The girl whines variations on the word please a dozen more times. I brace myself for her dad to lose his cool. How do parents stand this? Are they just mildly aggravated all the time? On something stronger than Zoloft? Have they been inoculated against this specific sound through repeated exposure?
I’d much rather watch the active seniors aqua jog across the shallow end than bear witness to this particular interaction between father and daughter. Is she begging for his attention out of some vague fear that Dad is one skipped weekend away from disappearing?
To my surprise, the whining works. Her father puts his phone away and begins to remove his T-shirt, completely unbothered. Apparently, I’m a terrible lounge chair psychologist.
From behind my sunglasses, I watch him. Not in a lecherous way.
I don’t come to this pool for eye candy.
I look in the way people absentmindedly stare at interesting strangers across the aisle of a subway car.
Or at least I used to do that, when I was in grad school at Columbia.
I’d try to decipher something about their lives just from their coat, or their demeanor, or whether they’d offer their seat to an elderly person or a pregnant woman.
In the spirit of fairness, I decide to stare at the other assorted dads.
I wonder what they looked like ten years ago.
What mistakes they made with their ex-wives.
Whether they regret their first marriages.
If they need to be reminded about when their kid needs to bring their violin to school.
How quickly they can recite their kids’ birthdays or name their orthodontist.
But I find my gaze returning to that specific dad. Maybe I’m nonlecherously observing him because it’s hard for me to believe that divorced fathers sometimes do remove their T-shirts and jump into the pool so their kids can hang on to them just because the child asked them to.
Or maybe I’m looking because I’m trying to identify the tattoos on his left arm.
I can’t remember my father lowering himself into a cold pool and letting me climb all over him while I pretended to be an acrobat like this guy is doing.
I don’t think he said “ow” a lot or got his head dunked underwater repeatedly by his unruly daughter.
Apparently, I am an adult woman subconsciously jealous of the attention a little kid is getting from her dad.
I close my eyes and try to return my attention to the video on my phone, but no matter how much I increase the volume, the little girl’s voice cuts through the makeup tutorial. She must operate at a decibel range that’s not covered by the noise-canceling capabilities of my Bose dupe headphones.
“Okay, now you’re the guy with the top hat,” she says.
Then her dad’s deep, distinctive voice: “The top hat?”
“And you have to tell the audience what the next act is.”
“You mean the ringmaster?”
She doesn’t bother to confirm. “First, I’m going to be a lion.” There’s a short pause. “Da-ad. Announce the lion.”
For a moment, I wonder if he’ll balk at making an announcement in front of the other dads.
But he clears his throat and uses a slightly theatrical voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. You’re about to be amazed, astonished, astounded at this majestic creature.
She may appear to be docile, but make no mistake: the king of the jungle cannot be tamed. I present to you, the lion!”
I open my eyes, curious about the faithfulness of the lion impression.
The little girl splashes up to the surface of the water and lets out a roar and some growls.
She throws herself into the roleplay, without a hint of self-consciousness, while I’m unable to stop my brain from running a predictive embarrassment algorithm on her behalf.
I’m afraid she’s almost aged out of pretend play, but I admire her for doing it anyway.
Her dad applauds and does some oohs and aahs, imitating a crowd. No one else at the pool plays along, but maybe this sort of thing is only cute when it’s your own flesh and blood.
“Okay, now I’m a water lion,” she says. “Introduce me.”
“A water lion? Didn’t you just do that?”
“Da-ad. That was a lion. Now I’m going to do a water lion.”
Da-ad catches my eye for a second. I can see his gears turning, trying to determine how to make the water lion introduction distinct from the standard lion.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special treat for you today. An extremely rare animal. In fact, many of you may never have heard of this beast who…lives in the water…but is covered in fur? Maybe? I’m not sure about the anatomy of this creature. Anyway, I present to you, the water lion!”
The little girl does the exact same burst out of the water, same roar. She takes a bow. Again, her dad dutifully mimics a crowd noise.
To some people, a doting father wouldn’t be noteworthy. To me, their interaction—a dad letting his child oversee the game—is fascinating.
I’m not one of those people who fawns over little kids. Mostly, I find them sticky. Even when I was a kid, I preferred adults. There was no greater point of pride than when a grown-up would compliment my behavior or conversational skills.
But I’m a bit indignant that no one else is acknowledging the little girl’s performance. Not the retirees, not the little boys whipping a foam football at each other in the shallow end. Not even the other divorced dads make a sound.
This girl isn’t embarrassed to be pretending in front of strangers, which is, frankly, more impressive to me than any feat of physical strength. I, on the other hand, will endure any discomfort, pay any price, not to embarrass myself in front of other people.
God, grant me the confidence of a child who has not yet known the humiliation of a random Tuesday in seventh grade.
So I clap.
The water lion and the ringmaster look up at me.