Girl Through Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

thrown in a deep wishing fountain.

IRRECONCILABLE
DIFFERENCES
CHAPTER 6
OCTOBER 1977
    It’s over a month since her father left. In her red kimono, her mother plays game after game of solitaire at the table in the parlor. “He isn’t coming back,” she says. She doesn’t take her eyes off the cards. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.” Then she says some other words meant for Mira not to understand: irreconcilable differences, separation by consent . In response, Mira has her own words. “You said you loved him! You lied!” Rachel’s face is set in stone. “This really has nothing to do with love.”
    Her mother reaches out and grabs Mira’s arm. “The only reason we got married,” she says, “is that we were in love.” She turns back to her game of solitaire. Slap, slap . The cards continue.
    Mira feels a jab of hate for her mother. She thinks about that loose snapshot in her parents’ wedding album. How many times has she stopped when leafing through this album to stare at this snapshot, which is a different size and shape than the official wedding photos? Her mother, in her long white dress, is standing on top of a table full of young men. She’s striking a pose, her head thrown back wildly, and she’s laughing. The men have their bow ties loosened and the table is littered with corsages. It’s late in the evening. Mira’sfather also sits at the table. Unlike the other men, her father is not laughing. His arms hang at his sides. He stares up at his wife, gaping, as if he is caught in a fire, burning alive.
    â€œMy mom is totally destroyed,” she says to her friends who stand around her in the dressing room. “She wails all day and night. You can’t even go near her. She wears this kimono and doesn’t take it off. And she doesn’t shower.” Only the part about the kimono is true.
    There is a part of Mira that has floated free with her father. The part that is left cares less about what others think and whether what she says is true or not. She often feels like laughing suddenly, for no reason.
    â€œMaybe you should call Social Services,” says Meaghan.
    â€œOh, come on,” says Val, gnawing on her fingers. “You’re exaggerating.” Val’s parents split when she was five and her sister was seven. When they’d met, Val was the one with tough luck, without a father, and with a shitty childhood. Mira, with her two parents, with her big house, couldn’t understand, didn’t know . Now Val is afraid of losing her trump card.
    â€œAre you saying I’m lying?” says Mira, staring hard at Val. She never used to be able to stare at anyone without looking away before.
    â€œYes,” says Val. She turns to Delia and whispers something in her ear. Meaghan titters, then whispers something to Delia.
    â€œWhat?” says Mira. “What?”
    When she gets off the train in Manhattan, she walks slowly down the streets, looking at each window of each apartment. A million people hiding behind curtains, her father in one of them. That you could lose your father in a city. That he can disappear into the streets, leaving only cuff links behind. It makes her stomach feel funny.
    â€œHurry up,” says Val. “I’m sick of always waiting for you.” Val rushes on ahead.
    Mira goes up to a doorman standing in front of the giant apartment building on Fifty-sixth. It could be this very building. “Is Carl Able staying here?” she says to the doorman in his livery. “He’s my dad.”
    The doorman steps inside and pulls out a clipboard from behind his desk. His chin doubles over as he pursues his list. “Sometimes they forget to update me. Did he just move in?” If a doorman, whose job it is to keep track of residents, can lose count, how would she ever find her father?
    October turns cold. The old shutters knock against windowsills