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each other. As my father walks toward me, he wipes his wet mouth with the back of his free hand. The other carries a heavy-looking black case his camera, he explains. “You’re late, ” he says. Even though the plane was delayed, it has been on the ground for some minutes. “I know, ” I say. “I’m sorry.
    The traffic… “
    I lie to protect my mother, so naked in her bra and curlers. I could give her away, let him know how much this visit means to her, enough to warrant a frenzied morning before the mirror, but I don’t. I protect her, as I’ve learned to do from her own example, from the mask, the secret phone number. I cannot remember a time that I was not aware of my mother’s fragility. It’s part of what has convinced me of her surpassing worth, the way only the best teacups break easily. In the terminal, my father leads me out of the flow of passengers and the friends and family who have come to meet them. He finds an empty spot by one of the big plate-glass windows that look out onto the airfields. “Don’t move, ” he says. “Just let me look at ,, you. My father looks at me, then, as no one has ever looked at me before. His hot eyes consume me eyes that I will discover are always just this bloodshot. I almost feel their touch.
    He takes my hands, one in each of his, and turns them over, stares at my palms. He does not actually kiss them, but his look is one that ravishes. “Oh! ” he says. aturn around! ” I fed his gaze as it moves over my neck, my back, and down to my feet. god, ” he says when I face him again. oh God. ” His eyes, now fixed on mine, are bright with tears.
    There there, ” he says. “It’s.
    .
    . it’s longer than I imagined. Than I could have. It was behind your shoulders in the picture you sent. ” I nod. I don’t speak. His eyes rob me of words, they seem to draw the air from my mouth so that I can barely breathe. The girl my father sees has blond hair that falls past her waist, past her hips, it falls to the point at which her fingertips would brush her thighs if her arms were not crossed before her chest.
    I’m no longer very thin away at school I’ve learned to eat but, as if embarrassed to be caught with a body, I hide whatever I can of it. We walk to the baggage claim in silence and wait where the metal plates of the luggage conveyor slide one under the other as the stream of suitcases turns the corner. My father picks up his bag and we walk, still without talking, out of the terminal. Once outside, he takes one of my hands in his. I feel his fingers tremble. “Do you mind? ” he says.
    “Could I? ” I don’t take my hand away. “It isn’t brown, ” I say of his suit as we get in the car.
    “Yes it is, ” he says.
    “Isn’t it more of a tan or a khaki? “
    “It’s brown. “
    The trip home from the airport is mostly silent. I can’t think of anything to say, and I don’t dare do what I want, escape into music on the stereo. Turned sideways in his seat, my father watches me, and his look doesn’t allow my hand to reach for the knob. As I drive I make mistakes I rarely make. My hands, wet from nerves, slip on the steering wheel. As we cross an intersection, my foot loses the clutch and I stall the car in traffic. At home, my mother is wearing the clothes she set out the previous night, black trousers and a cream colored cashmere sweater that sets off her dark shining hair. She’s in high spirits, a is a small gold miraculous medal, rays of light bursting from the Virgin’s open palms. My parents embrace quickly, almost shyly. They kiss each other’s closed mouths with their lips thrust forward in prissy, monkey-like puckers. We try hard to make it work, the three of us together. We sit in the living room and drink iced tea. “At last, ” one of us says, “a family. ” Calling ourselves this, saying the words Who says them? My mother? My father? Do I? it’s meant ironically, but the pain the words bring, the admission of failure, is so