Novel Excerpt

There she was, Amy Gerstein, over by the pool, kissing my father. She must have just climbed out of the pool in that tiny white string bikini because her Groucho Marx eyebrows were dripping water like two caterpillars stuck clinging to a leaf during a rainstorm. All I kept thinking was that either the carpet didn’t match the drapes, or there was no carpet. The white bottom was truly white, not a shadow of pubic hair in sight.

            Grooming aside, Amy Gerstein presented a problem as a 20-year-old kissing my nearly 57-year-old father. The problem was whether or not I should tell mom about Amy. For all I knew, this had happened before with Dad. For all I knew, it was a part of their marriage agreement, a little underage action on the side: Eyebrows mandatory, pubic hair optional. My parents were both attractive and fit 50-somethings. Who was I to tell them how to make a relationship work for the long haul? But, there was still another problem, I didn’t want to see my father kissing Amy Gerstein.

            In a public place, I felt comfortable that the kissing would stabilize as such. I toyed with the idea of making my presence known to them. How would my father react if his eldest daughter suddenly appeared at her father’s side while he was ignobly making out with a girl ten years his daughter’s junior? I couldn’t even begin to imagine. All I could see in the movie theatre inside my head was the girl’s caterpillar brows jumping to the middle of her forehead. I saw it zoomed in and played on repeat like a clip of an eyeball from Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou.

            So, I hovered behind the white-painted wooden pool house, so old now that the paint was beginning to chip away. I looked across the sparkling, chlorine-scented blue pool to the shiny new gray and white laminate building. At least no one was getting splinters, but the building was sterile, like a place kids would go to get a vaccine rather than their place for kicking splashes across the baby pool and challenging each other to breath holding contests in the deep end. Sterile, like the white coat draped over Amy Gerstein’s bikini, the white coat that said, “Dr. Georges,” so clearly on the right breast pocket.

            I realized I was conflating memories. Amy was not wearing my father’s doctor’s coat by the pool that afternoon, but I knew that she had worn my father’s coat. I knew that was where this whole thing had gotten started.