Alice marched past her mother. “I have to go,” she said. She was being petulant, immature, but that familiar tightness had intensified in her chest, making her feel closed in despite the cool ocean air.
“Alice, stop,” Bobby said, scurrying to keep up. Alice had inherited her height from her father, and her legs were a good deal longer than her mother’s. “Let me finish. You need to hear this.”
“It’s fine. I just, I have to go.” Alice walked faster, and Bobby ran to keep up until she blocked Alice’s path.
“Look, I’m sorry to upset you. You need to hear the truth. I loved your father. He was the greatest love of my life. Nothing will change that. But romanticizing our relationship wasn’t helping me. And it’s not helping you either.”
Bobby stood her ground, forbidding Alice to pass her. Mother and daughter stared at each other until Bobby said, “Come on, let’s get some breakfast.”
Bobby did not give her daughter time to agree, just started lugging her the short distance back to Linden Avenue toward Ruby’s Diner where Alice used to go for egg creams with her father. She’d forgotten that she and her mother went there sporadically through the years too.
Inside Alice shuddered as she recognized the metal napkin dispensers on the table, the coral uniforms. A waitress escorted them to a table in the back, then offered each of them a laminated menu.
Bobby hummed softly as she surveyed the menu.
Alice shuddered. “This place is so creepy. It hasn’t changed since I was a kid.”
“I would think you’d find that reassuring,” Bobby said, not looking up from her menu.
“Maybe, if it wasn’t connected to a gruesome murder.”
Bobby glanced at her daughter perplexed.
“The Woman Lost to the Sea?” Alice added.
“Right,” Bobby said neutrally. “I forgot how obsessed you and Gabby were with that story. It was just an urban legend.”
“It wasn’t,” Alice pressed, the emotions the story stirred rising again. “She was murdered by her husband in the name of love.” Love, Alice scoffed. Who could dare to call it that? No, it was hate disguised as ardor, a reminder of what could happen when the wrong people were paired together. “It’s terrifying.”
Bobby closed her menu and fixed her gaze on her daughter trying to infer everything Alice hadn’t said aloud. “I’m sorry I upset you earlier. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for years now, and until recently, until I talked it over with Mark, I haven’t known how.”
“Please don’t bring Mark into this,” Alice said.
The waitress arrived at their table. “What’ll it be?” she asked, without looking up from her pad.
“Nothing for me,” Alice said, handing her menu back to the waitress.
“I’ll have a coffee and the veggie scramble, and she’ll take an egg cream and a corn muffin,” Bobby said, ordering for them both. After the waitress left, Bobby frowned at Alice. “Like I would let you come here and not get an egg cream. I’m not asking you to forget him or let go of any traditions, I just—you’re old enough that you need to see the past clearly. Your father and I loved each other very much, but there were times when it wasn’t pretty. Like me going to med school.”
The waitress returned to their table with a steaming mug of coffee for Bobby and a frothy egg cream for Alice. The fizzy sweetness hit Alice all at once. She hated how good it tasted, how much it evoked those afternoons with her father.
“I assumed he’d be supportive,” her mother continued, “so I didn’t tell him when I applied. I figured I’d wait to see if I got in first. I couldn’t imagine the idea of his disappointment in addition to my own if I got rejected.”
Paul had come home early that day, Bobby could not recall why, and checked the mail even though that was usually her job. When she got home, she saw the large envelope on the hall table.
“It was so strange,” she said. “When I saw it there, it didn’t even occur to me that a big envelope meant I got in. I was panicked that he’d seen it. I expected him to be angry that I’d applied in secret, that I hadn’t let him share that moment with me. Instead he was in disbelief that I still wanted to be a doctor. A job was fine, necessary even, but a medical degree? For one thing there was the cost, and then there was the undeniable fact that I would outearn him, which challenged the values he was raised with.
“He came around in the end. And you know better than anyone how well he took to being your primary caretaker. I will always love him for that. It strained our relationship though, me being the breadwinner, the fact that he always felt I owed him something for allowing me to follow my dream.”
Alice’s face grew hot. That was not how it happened. It was one of her favorite stories, the way her father encouraged her mother to go to medical school. “Where is this coming from? Dad was always supportive of you. He brought you the applications. He practically filled them out for you.”
“No, Alice. That’s what I mean about glorifying him. I applied on my own. He always wanted to be supportive. It was hard for him sometimes. He had dreams too, dreams that never quite came to fruition.”
Alice jiggled her straw up and down in the egg cream, unable to take another sip. During her mother’s story, the waitress had dropped off her corn muffin, cut in half and toasted, butter melting on each side. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me all of this now.”
“Maybe it’s being with Mark or just that I always get a bit retrospective around the holidays, but I realized how much this has all been holding me back. You helped me break free of how tightly I was latching on to your father’s memory, and I realized that’s what you’ve been doing too. You’ve constructed this image of him that no other man can live up to.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
