“Thank you,” we said, so perfectly in unison that it was comical.
Mr. Krammer looked around. “Mason in the bathroom?” he asked.
Mother hesitated, her forehead folding so deeply that the wrinkles looked more like deep slices. “Don’t you have a possible merger with a company in Texas going on?” she asked.
“That fell through last week,” he said. “Why?”
“Mason isn’t here tonight,” she said, without giving any more details.
I saw the way the Krammers looked at each other. To me, it suggested that they already knew a lot more about Daddy and Mother’s strained relationship than they pretended. Daddy’s absence only confirmed what they believed, but, like most people, they chose to ignore something unpleasant.
“Oh, well, he’s so hard at it most of the time that he makes the rest of us look like pikers,” Mr. Krammer said. He forced a smile, but it was clear he didn’t want to linger another moment. “Once again, happy birthday, girls.”
“Yes, happy birthday. We’ll call,” his wife promised, her words as empty as a deflated balloon. She touched Mother’s hand, and they walked off to their table in the rear, both with hoisted shoulders, looking as if they had just stepped out of a walk-in freezer.
Mother stared ahead, the anger rippling through her face from her forehead down and settling in the tightness of her lips.
Where was Daddy? I wondered. Why did he lie about where he was going, especially when he was reminded about our birthday? Haylee was more interested in what she would eat and wasn’t even looking at Mother, nor did she care one iota about the Krammers and their reaction to Daddy’s absence.
Mother’s face seemed to lose the brightness she could generate when talking about us. Her eyes would surge with an energy that normally captured the interest of most people. In fact, Mother would treat our birthdays the way most people treated New Year’s Eve. She would talk about our future, predicting all the good things that were to come and the achievements we would surely enjoy. Inevitably, she would reminisce about our births and early days, bringing up one anecdote after another to emphasize how alike we were.
When Daddy was with us, he would look at her as if he was just learning about us himself. Because she would so dominate the conversation at our birthday celebrations, it was almost as if he wasn’t there anyway. He always appeared worried about what he would say and what gifts he had gotten for us. Because Mother was so in control of it all, he surely felt unnecessary.
He wasn’t unnecessary to me. I could see how hard he was trying to please Mother. Sometimes it seemed she didn’t want to share us with him. We were all hers. I knew she loved it when someone would comment on how much we looked like her, calling us clones. If Daddy was standing by, I would quickly glance at him and see his eyes lower. He stood beside us, wanting to hold our hands, but Mother was always in between us when the four of us went anywhere. He was more like someone going along for the ride. And when we were older and no one had to hold our hands crossing the street or walking on the sidewalk and going into the mall or a store, he looked even more lost.
If he asked either of us a question about school, he had to ask the other. We had set answers for the obvious questions, like how we were doing in some school subject, how we liked attending Betsy Ross, whether we’d made any friends. I could see his displeasure in the recited reactions, but I could also see Mother’s satisfaction. She said “They’re so alike” so many times that Daddy looked as if he wanted to put his hands over his ears and scream.
I read stories about daughters who were “Daddy’s little girls,” but the chances of either Haylee or me ever becoming that were nonexistent. Too often, in fact, he looked at us as if we were strangers. It seemed Mother had made him feel that we were beyond his understanding. Rather than deal with all the psychology she had imposed, he drifted further back and became an observer and not a member of the family.
Now I glanced again at Haylee. I was confident that I missed him at our birthday celebration more than she did. Over the years, it was rare for us to be alone with him, and if we did go somewhere with just him, all of us were subjected to Mother’s vigorous cross-examination about what we had done, where we had gone, and even what we had eaten. No matter how strongly Daddy adhered to her rules for us, there was always something for her to criticize. It was no wonder that he began to do less and less with us alone.
“I’m starving,” Haylee said. She looked at both of us, and I realized she really had no clue about what was happening with Mother and Daddy. And she was the one who thought she was more sophisticated about male-female relationships.
Mother signaled to the waiter. I was sure she had already ordered a special cake for us. For the last two birthdays, she had stopped making two identical cakes and simply had a chocolate line drawn down the middle with Haylee’s name spelled out on one side and mine on the other. She had ordered that for us tonight. It was a big cake, because she had insisted we have fifteen candles on each side. It looked like it was on fire. In fact, someone yelled, “Get the fire department!” And there was lots of laughter.
When it came time for us to blow out the candles, the whole restaurant joined in to sing “Happy Birthday.” Afterward, many of the other customers called out to us as we left. Haylee made sure to give any young man, even if he was with a girlfriend or a wife, a special flirtatious smile. Someone had taught her to lower and raise her eyes when she flirted. Normally, Mother might have noticed, but she was occupied with her own thoughts, dark and red with rage.
It wouldn’t be long before we realized that what Mother had learned from Bryce Krammer was the catalyst for the impending break in our parents’ marriage. So much began to happen between them behind closed doors right after our birthday. Daddy didn’t raise his voice, but I could hear the mumbling, and the tone of it was clearly colored with anger. They hardly looked at each other whenever he was home. Finally, she was on the phone and then visiting with her lawyer. She kept the truth from us as long as she could, and then one night, when Daddy wasn’t home again for dinner, she asked us to go into the great room after dinner and wait for her.
“I have something very important to tell you,” she said.
Haylee’s first worry was naturally that she had done something to upset Mother. I hadn’t really talked with Haylee about the cold war between Mother and Daddy. Every time I suggested that something was happening, she immediately changed the topic, like someone who didn’t want to waste time on something that didn’t have her at the center. She was far too into herself at this point, and other conflicts were developing between us almost daily now, mostly around boys or her girlfriends.
Like anything else that Haylee believed involved competition between us, capturing the interest of many boys in high school was very important to her. Consequently, she wasn’t getting involved with any one boy more than the others. She flitted about as if she was collecting smiles, expressions of romantic interest, and invitations for dates, something Mother was still reluctant to let either of us have and most certainly not one of us without the other. We could attend school parties and parties other girls had, but even then, we had yet to be permitted to stay out until the Cinderella hour. Of all our friends, Haylee’s especially, we had to be home the earliest, which was always before midnight.
Daddy had tried to loosen the strict rules Mother imposed on us, but becau
se she was more often than not the one who drove us places and picked us up, his opinion carried little weight. Telling her that other girls weren’t as restricted did no good. Even reminding her that she was going on dates at our age didn’t change her mind. According to her, other girls, even her, weren’t as “special” as we were. Of course, other girls didn’t live under the same rules. She always stung Daddy with a final comment, like “I’m not surprised you don’t realize it.”
Haylee was smart enough not to complain much more about it than I did. In fact, I had to complain about things that really didn’t matter that much to me, especially how long we could hang out at a friend’s house or where we could go afterward if we went to a movie with friends.
“You’ve got to complain more about not being allowed to go on a date, Kaylee,” she told me. “It’s not that she doesn’t think we’re old enough. She doesn’t think you want to do it as much as I do. You know that’s it, Kaylee. I wish you were more interested in having fun.”
I was, but her ideas for having fun and mine were growing further apart.
“If you don’t start wanting to do the things I want to do, I won’t want to do what you want,” she threatened.
Whenever we were alone, she began to sulk about it. Now that there was real trouble brewing between our parents, I thought she would stop thinking about herself so much. Actually, she was happy that Mother was distracted with her marital problems. She could get away with more. One thing she began doing was hiding an article of clothing in her book bag so that after we were brought to school, she could go into the girls’ room and change. She even brushed her hair differently and began to wear a different shade of lipstick. She restored everything before Mother came to pick us up. Ordinarily, I was sure Mother would learn about it, but she was too distracted or angry about Daddy at this point.