Chapter 38 1995
Her daughter’s perfect tiny features, hers for the evening, the lights coming down.
Imprinting something that might matter. She needs this time.
When she looks at her children, Susan is overcome by how quickly they are growing, how far they have to go.
Her love for them arrives fiercely in strange moments, a desire to pin them down, to suspend them in time.
To suspend herself. She knows she is unnatural with them now, that at times she spills over, that it isn’t fair.
And so tonight, she is only trying to create some normalcy. To escape. Just her daughter and her.
They settle into their seats. Her daughter is wearing a black velvet dress and tights, tiny patent leather shoes. When the play begins, she tries to lose herself but instead just feels lost. Disconnected.
She wonders now whether she had been wrong to capitulate about the names.
It’s a silly show, really. Predictable, clean.
Everyone just ends up with who they are supposed to.
It all passes by in a laugh. None of them really see each other at all.
But to be honest, she can hardly focus because she is so smitten with the rapture on her daughter’s face, watching her fall in love with the lights and the drama.
What’s in a name? The magic of being in this space together.
She will remember this forever. Nothing else matters.
“Did you like it?” she asks as they walk back to the train station in the dark. It’s well past Lola’s bedtime, and her daughter is picking at her tights, overtired, her skin itchy.
“Yes,” she says seriously, nodding her head. Trying to stay awake. To act older than she is. “Did you like it?”
“Not really,” she says, because there’s no need to lie. “But I loved getting to go with you.”