She'd told Marcus on Monday with the administrative authority of someone who had checked the calendar and found it acceptable. Thursday, tell Emily 6:00. I'm making the salad. Marcus had relayed this information to Emily verbatim. Her response, she's making the salad, Marcus.
Apparently, Emily, I'll be there at 6. She arrived at 5:58, which Marcus noted and appreciated. Not early enough to catch anyone unprepared. Not late enough to cause Amara to check the clock, which she had been doing since 5:45. She brought flowers, which surprised him, and a small wrapped thing for Amara, which surprised him more.
He didn't ask. Amara tore into the wrapping at the kitchen table and found a photography book pictures of ocean animals, vivid and large format with a note inside the front cover in Emily's handwriting that said, "For Amara and Gerald and the rest of the tank, Emily." Amara read the note twice. Then she looked up at Emily with an expression Marcus could only describe as formal approval. "Gerald is going to like this," she said. "I hope so," Emily said.
He's shy, but he's intelligent," Amara said. He responds to quality. Emily pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Marcus turned back to the stove. Dinner was pasta and garlic bread and Amara's salad, which was aggressively dressed and contained cherry tomatoes and what appeared to be every green thing in the refrigerator, and which both Marcus and Emily ate without comment or complaint.
Amara talked through most of the meal about school, about the book club, about a disagreement she'd had with a classmate over whether dolphins or octopuses were smarter, a debate she had clearly not let go of despite it apparently occurring the previous week. What's your position? Emily asked. Amara pointed her fork. Octopuses.
Three hearts, nine brains. They can open jars. The dolphin people are not being rigorous. Three hearts? Emily looked at Marcus.
Don't look at me, he said. She did her own research. She has sources, Emily asked Amara. I have three sources, Amara confirmed. I can send them to you.
Please do. Emily said with total seriousness. I want to be rigorous. Amara nodded and returned to her pasta, apparently satisfied that the adults at the table were operating at an acceptable intellectual level. Marcus watched Emily across the table.
Watch the way she listened to Amara. Not with the polite half attention that adults gave children, the performance of interest, but actually listening, tracking, responding to the real content of what his daughter was saying. He watched Amara noticed the difference. He watched his daughter, who had inherited Rene's gift for reading a room, decide something. After dinner, while Marcus was cleaning up, Amara appeared beside Emily at the living room bookshelf and said, "Without buildup, did my dad tell you about my mom?" Emily went still, then turned to look at Amara carefully.
"A little," she said. "Not everything, just that she was someone very important." Amara considered this. "She was the best person," she said. "I only remember some things. But the things I remember are really good." "What do you remember most?" Emily asked.
Marcus had stopped moving in the kitchen. He was standing at the sink, not washing anything, just listening. Amara thought about it. Her voice, she said when she sang. She wasn't actually that good at singing, but she didn't care.
And that made it better somehow. She paused. And the way she looked at my dad, like he was the funniest person she'd ever met. Even when he wasn't saying anything funny, she tilted her head. You kind of look at him like that sometimes.
The kitchen was very quiet, Emily said softly. He is pretty funny sometimes. He thinks he's funnier than he is, Amara said. But the effort is charming. Marcus put down the dish towel.
I can hear both of you, he said. We know, Amara said, and exchanged a look with Emily that was so precisely conspiratorial, so completely Reneean miniature that Marcus had to turn back to the sink for a moment and do something with his face. After Amara went to bed after the fish had been checked, the book had been read, the light had been turned off, and Amara had delivered her final verdict on the evening. She's good, Daddy. She's actually good.
Marcus found Emily standing at the window in the living room, looking out at the street below. He stood behind her for a moment. "You okay?" she turned. Her eyes were bright but steady. "She asked me about Renee," she said.
"I know. I heard. She's extraordinary, Marcus. I knew she was from everything you'd said." But she shook her head. She's more than that.
She's like she's a complete person. At 8, she just lives fully inside herself and she looks at the world and she decides what she thinks about it. She gets that from her mother, he said. She gets it from you, too, Emily said. She gets the steadiness from you, the staying power.
She paused. She said, I look at you the way Renee did. Marcus met her eyes. I know, Emily said. I know what that means, and I know what it cost you, and I'm not I'm not trying to be anything other than what I am.
She was choosing words carefully the way she always did when something mattered. I'm just telling you that what she saw, she saw it right. Whatever this is, whatever we are, it's real for me. Completely real. He crossed to her, stopped close, close enough that she had to tilt her head to keep his gaze.
He put both hands on her face gently. The way you hold something that you understand the value of Emily, he said. Yeah, I know it's real. He held her gaze. It's the realest thing that's happened to me in 3 years, and I am done being careful with it.