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DADDY ISSUES DADDY ISSUES

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For anYonE wHo haS evER feLt unLikEabLe.

YoU arE loVAbLe.

I1’M AWAKENED BY THE SOUND OF A MAN YELLING, “ FUCK! ”

It’s a versatile word, so let me be more specific. It was not the fuck of someone having loud sex. I wouldn’t have minded that. Not that I’m some auditory Peeping Tom, but there’s something hot about a guy with a loud, deep voice losing control. Alas, this was the fuck of a man reacting to sudden physical pain. I know this from context clues, like the litany of curses uttered immediately afterward. The fuck is muffled by the wall, but loud enough that I jerk in fright like I’ve just been shoved off a cliff in a nightmare.

If I were still drawing comics, I’d add some extra consonants to the fuck. Fﬀfuckkkk!

Did you know comics have sound eﬀects? It just requires a little imagination. The reader operates the little Foley artist in

their brain and they’ll feel the right amount of dread or anticipation for the next page.

Thwip: Spider-Man’s web shoots out from his wrist. Fnap: the Joker snaps a playing card down on a table in front of Batman. Snikt: Wolverine unsheathes his adamantium claws. Fﬀucckkk: a guy in the apartment next door to my bedroom wakes me up. You hear it now, right?

Correction: this isn’t my bedroom.

And it’s not my bed. I sleep on a daybed my roommate ordered on clearance from Wayfair when she got tired of me crashing on her couch.

Technically, my roommate is my mother.

The daybed fits a twin mattress meant for a child. I don’t take up much space, and God knows I’m not inviting anyone else in here. A larger bed wouldn’t leave enough room for my mom to spread out her yoga mat or set up her walking pad in front of her standing desk. This room was meant to be her office when she bought this place a few years ago. It was either downsizing or not wanting to stay in the house she shared with my dad for the first half of my life.

My dad had an eye for strange and unusual things—especially strange and unusual things that could be resold at a considerable profit margin on eBay. But sometimes things didn’t sell and our house would overflow with dusty curiosities: vintage arcade games, 1960s conch shell lamps, striped barbershop poles. I played in a Hamburglar jail in our backyard instead of a treehouse.

Everything was temporary. Any item was for sale for the right price. I learned not to get too attached. Things that were there in the morning while I ate my Cinnamon Toast Crunch would disappear by the time I got home from volleyball practice. Including my dad.

I was ten when he started taking long trips to “buy inventory.” When my parents divorced a year later, my mom and I stayed in the house. She wanted to preserve a sense of normalcy and stability, even though it must’ve been hellish to live in a home with so many reminders of a broken marriage. After I left for college, Mom sold it and bought this condo. It was supposed to be a place of her own—two bedrooms, one bathroom. The perfect size for one person. A fresh start.

And I invaded it.

So I’m not going to deny my mom those two extra feet of floor space, even if she practices yoga at a studio down the block and uses the treadmill at the gym downstairs.

For the five years that I’ve stayed (not lived—this is not living) in this room (not “Sam’s room,” but “the office”), I’ve never heard a peep from the neighbor. The owner was in her eighties and she went into an assisted living facility after the holidays. It’s been silent for the last five months.

This morning it sounds like there’s a construction project on the other side of the wall.

Today is Sunday, not that it matters. In my world, weekdays and weekends blur together.

Every night I set an alarm for 6:14 A.M., with additional alarms set to go oﬀ at 6:49 A.M. and 7:23 A.M

I have never gotten out of bed at any of those times.

The alarms serve the singular purpose of alerting me to the fact that other people in the world are waking up, showering, banging on their kids’ doors, shoving untoasted Pop-Tarts into their mouths while grabbing their keys.

I am not doing any of those things.

These are shame alarms. Code Black sloth notifications.

My intentions are good. Every night, as I’m setting all those alarms, I visualize myself rising with the sun, showering imme-

diately, putting on clothes that don’t involve elastic waistbands or drawstrings, and tidying up the office. That’s the best version of me. Sam Pulaski 1.0 exists in an alternate timeline, where the world didn’t collapse in 2020. She’s getting her PhD, doing research in Europe, presenting at conferences, having dramatic love aﬀairs with men named Luca or Henri.

But at least hitting snooze eighteen times forces Sam Pulaski 2.0 into a sort of one-third consciousness, which is kind of like being awake. My brain is active enough to start worrying about all the shit I probably won’t get done today. And worrying about stuﬀ is basically halfway to doing it.

Then, at 9:16 A.M., I masturbate.

It’s an odd time, I know. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but freeloaders can’t be choosers. The apartment is empty for about forty minutes when my mom goes downstairs to the gym. (Her fiancé, Perry, still goes into the office every day and doesn’t believe in the snooze button.)

It’s part of my routine, like a balanced breakfast. I’ve always been told that healthy, consistent habits are the key to making positive life changes.

Two and a half minutes later, I’m done. What can I say? The romance between my bullet vibe and me died a long time ago.

I check my email on my phone, silently praying to a god I only vaguely believe in that the number within the little red bubble is one digit higher than when I passed out last night. Maybe there’s some amazing opportunity being dropped into my lap. A fellowship I applied for last winter has taken another look at my CV and realized they made a horrible mistake? A friend of a family friend has a full-time opening at their foundation and wants to set up a call to discuss the assistant curator position?

After I check email and feel shitty for three minutes, I open

my social media apps and feel shitty for twelve minutes. Doomscroll, doomscroll, doomscroll until I hear the front door open and I feel guilty and ashamed because I’m in bed while my mom has already left the apartment, done cardio, and is now getting ready to show a house to someone with a 401k.

Ten years ago, Mom quit the corporate IT job she hated and decided to sell real estate. It’s good to know that, contrary to what society wants us to believe, you don’t peak in your twenties. Jennifer Schuster (formerly Jennifer Pulaski) is proof that sometimes you peak at fifty-two, which means I have twenty-six whole years to get my shit together.

But how can I pretend to accomplish things with hammering and drilling a foot away from my head? I protest with my own onomatopoeia. Thwack thwack thwack—my open palm pounding against drywall—before venturing out of my hovel in search of coﬀee.

Weird how I always believe a giant cup of coﬀee will imbue me with motivation and a sense of purpose. Once I drink this magical beverage, I will have energy. I will cross items oﬀ the to-do list. I will turn the page on a new, productive chapter of my life.

But over the last fiveish years, I’ve consumed more than sixteen hundred cups of coﬀee and I’m still in the prologue. I do not begin my life; I merely continue existing.

“Hi, honey.” My mom still greets me with a full hug and a smile every morning, exactly the way she did when I came home for winter break during college. It preserves the illusion that I’m just here for a visit. A very long visit. “Sounds like we have a new neighbor,” she says, speaking extra loudly over the noise.

I move my head in vague recognition. I need my magical coﬀee elixir before I can engage in small talk. Perry’s dog, a slow-moving beagle mix improbably named Houdini, follows me into the kitchen to sniﬀ my socks. Perry adopted him after

watching one of those distressing Sarah McLachlan animal commercials during lockdown.

Perry and Houdini moved in about a year ago, which made my mom’s perfect-for-one condo feel even smaller. Not that I’m complaining. I’m the one who shouldn’t be here.

“Say, I heard from my friend Barbara Silverton yesterday.” Anytime my mom begins a sentence with Say, I brace myself for unsolicited advice. “She’d be a good contact for you. Do you think you’d want to email her? She’s some sort of dean now. Dean of faculty? I bet she could put you in touch with someone in the art history department. It’s a great school—one of the SUNYs.”

There aren’t any State University of New York schools that I’ve identified as a great fit for my area of study, but I remind myself that my mother is trying to help.

“That doesn’t mean they have a graduate program in my field, Mom,” I reply. “There aren’t that many tenured professors who focus on outsider art. And I haven’t seen Barbara in ten years. I don’t know what she could do.”

“Well, it’s networking,” Mom says, as if this clarifies it. “You used to call her ‘Auntie Barbara.’ She’ll be at the wedding.”

“She will?” The guest list must have ballooned again. “Perry is going to meet so many new people at their own wedding.”

“It was Perry’s idea not to limit the number of invites. This is their first wedding, remember,” she points out. “Anyway, I’m going to look up Barbara’s school again because I swear I did see a graduate program in the art department.”

Researching is one of my mother’s main coping mechanisms for my current situation. She sends me links, articles, podcasts, job listings—all well meaning, none particularly helpful.

“I’m about to run a load of laundry,” she says. “Unless you’re planning to shower in the next hour?”

When she actively wants me to do something, instead of just making a request or a suggestion, my mother will phrase it in the form of a question like a Jeopardy! contestant. I used to chalk it up to midwestern politeness, but now I wonder if it’s the same technique she used to placate my dad, a man who has not once admitted fault for literally anything.

“Go ahead,” I mumble into the upper cabinet where she keeps the mugs. “I’m going down to the pool. Starting a new book.”

“Is Romily coming over?” My mom hands me a Nespresso pod even though I didn’t ask for one.

“Not today.”

Mom looks relieved. I think she’s worried about one of the nosy old sticklers on the condo board complaining about the way my cousin treats the “shared amenities” at The Bixby as a private health club with no membership fee.

Even though we went to the same high school just a couple of years apart (back when she was still “Emily”), Romily and I weren’t close until the pandemic put everyone’s social lives in a canister, shook them up, and spilled them out in completely different configurations.

Aside from the fact that my dad and her mom are siblings, we had exactly one thing in common: our respective rugs being yanked from beneath our feet just as our lives were supposed to get interesting. We both went away to college . . . and ended up back in Ohio, living with our parents. That was enough of an injustice to yoke us together in shared indignation. We achieved a comfort level of scrolling our own phones in silence, without one of us suggesting that we do something more productive. I believe this is the highest form of companionship: rotting, alone together.

Back in the relative privacy of the office, coﬀee in hand, I

open my laptop to get some Nothing done. Pretending to be vaguely busy is a skill I’ve honed over the last few years.

More drilling, banging, and muﬄ ed male voices from the next apartment. Feet shuﬄ ing on carpeting, heavy objects getting dropped on the fl oor. The daybed shakes with each thummp.

The tall metal shelving unit next to my bed rattles against the vibrations from the drill. I sit up, watching my precariously positioned storage boxes shift closer to falling. Every time there’s a thummp from next door, I brace myself for my dad’s collectible comic books to crash down on the carpet in an explosion of faded newsprint.

Have I not yet mentioned that a full twenty-five cubic feet of this office consists of extralong storage boxes, each containing three hundred comic books? Or that those awkwardly long cardboard boxes are too deep for standard shelves and hang over the edge by roughly ten inches?

I watch the inevitable disaster play out in slow motion: after a few more seconds of drilling into the shared wall, the long boxes on the very top of the unit vibrate right oﬀ the shelf.

They land hard, tumbling end over end, smashing onto the floor. Hundreds of comics, encased in clear plastic bags, spill out.

I dive to the ground, sacrificing my knees to carpet burn, checking the issues for signs of damage. The tiniest crease can aﬀect the value of these books, to the tune of hundreds of dollars. I care more about the condition of this stapled newsprint than my own body.

Some people set up a savings account for their kid’s college fund; my dad found a copy of X-Men #1 in a dead woman’s house while cleaning it out for an estate sale and decided to invest in comics instead.

I don’t draw anymore, but if I still made comics, this is how I would tell my dad’s origin story:

PANEL 1: A pair of hands in weathered work gloves sort through papers in a cardboard box. RECYCLE ? is written on the side.

PANEL 2: Close- up of a piece of sheet music. It’s an “easy piano” version of “Hero,” by Enrique Iglesias. A sliver of bright red color protrudes just above Enrique’s hairline— the top edge of an illustration tucked into the sheet music.

PANEL 3: The gloved hand pulls up the paper to reveal a large red X.

The comic book was already in the recycling bin with the other papers no one wanted. An actual treasure in the trash. I understand now that Dad should have returned it to the family that had contracted him to run the estate sale. He should’ve explained to them that those thirty-two pages with a cover price of twelve cents was worth far more than his Toyota 4Runner. Enrique Iglesias had protected that issue well. Dad seemed to believe it was some kind of miracle, or at least a sign. And he turned that one issue into a massive comic book collection over the next twenty years.

Not that he’s a passionate comic book reader; he’s not getting in any arguments about Marvel versus DC or which Robin is best. His business is buying low and selling high, whether it’s a Tiﬀany lamp or a vintage Barbie doll. For him, the only factor in a comic book’s value is the last sale price. I was the one with the emotional attachment.

PANEL 4: A four-year- old girl sits in front of an audience of stuffed animals, “reading” a comic book in her lap.

GIRL

. . . and Cyclops left his Madelyne and their baby to go back to Jean Grey, but it turned out that Madelyne was Jean’s clone and Jean became the Goblin Queen and . . .

PANEL 5: The girl looks up from the comic.

VOICE (OFF- PANEL)

Did you take that book out of the plastic?

I started drawing my own comics before I could read the hand-lettered dialogue bubbles on the issues Dad would give me. They were like picture books, but more grown-up. And I always strove to be more grown-up. A tiny adult.

All the drawing practice improved my line art skills. I’d proudly show my sketches to my dad. As much as he nodded approvingly at my eﬀorts, there was something else about my newfound hobby that proved useful to him: the more I learned about comics, the more helpful I became. And because I only saw him every other weekend (when he was in town), there was nothing I craved more than his attention and appreciation. Usually that came in the form of accompanying him to tag sales or flea markets in search of valuable comics. He trusted me to identify key issues and keep track of storylines and popular artists. He’d brag about me to the vendors and show them my drawings.

Those are core memories. And the artifacts of those weekends sit in one of those long boxes. Fifteen or so years later, it’s part of a gradually decaying estate and I’m its keeper. I picture myself in twenty years, still sleeping in the office, having become both the Big and Little Edie of comic book inheritance.

My dad’s not dead, by the way—he just lives in Florida now. He moved there when I was sixteen to “expand” his estate sale business and never came back. He left me with the comics because he doesn’t trust the humidity down there—or the flood risk. I suspect the real reason is that his girlfriend (I’ve never met her) won’t let him store twenty unsightly boxes in her house.

For years, my mom has urged me to sell them. But this collection is still the nexus of our father-daughter relationship. Without it, we wouldn’t communicate. Flipping is his greatest talent, and I know he’ll be back for them eventually. If my dad has an emotional attachment to anything, it’s making money as a reseller on auction websites.

The daybed shakes again. I hear the muﬄed voices.

“Nonononono, put it down perpendicular. No. Let me show you, it’s—” Ka-THUMP!

I watch the shelf wobble again and decide to pretend to be vaguely busy somewhere less dangerous.

T2HE BIXBY ISN’T OFFICIALLY A RETIREMENT COMMUNITY, BUT you’d never know it from the number of “active seniors” who congregate at the pool for weekday water aerobics.

Sometimes I wonder if Perry, who’s a few years younger than my mom and exudes eﬀortless cool and good taste, is a bit dissatisfied living in such a generic, beige complex. The apartment they gave up in order to move into The Bixby was one of those aesthetically pleasing converted lofts in the Arena District. I can’t imagine Perry will want to stay here long-term.

The Bixby is Gate 27 at the airport: everyone’s waiting for their next destination. And I’m that person at Gate 27 who’s camped out on the airport terminal floor, using her carry-on as a pillow. Number seventeen on the standby list. Stuck killing time in a bland, liminal space.

On weekends, the pool area gets taken over by the other major demographic of The Bixby: divorced dads who need to entertain their screaming children. All these men have the same styling: beard, slight paunch, sunglasses, AirPods, and the ability to tune out their kids by focusing on their sports betting or dating apps. I’m convinced some divorce lawyer is collecting referral fees from this building by sending all his newly separated clients here to set up their temporary bachelor pads. The pool must be the selling point.

I always bring a book down to the pool. I intend to read, the way I intend to wake up at 6:14 A.M. every morning. I usually end up watching YouTube on my phone, which I carefully prop up inside the open book so I appear to be reading.

I wish I could say that I’m watching documentaries or art history lectures.

Alas, my drug of choice is makeup tutorials.

I upped my cosmetics game during the pandemic. It’s a form of drawing in which my perfectionistic tendencies serve me well. So much of my life feels beyond my control, but an immaculate cat eye is always within reach.

The pool is so noisy that I can barely hear the explanation of “quiet grunge with gothcore colors” over the kids shrieking as they throw themselves into the water. When it’s just me and the elderly, I get a lot of “reading” done. Today, I’m distracted.

I watch an eight- or nine-year-old girl in giant goggles perform wobbly underwater gymnastics. Every time she pops her head up, she shouts to one of the bearded, every-other-weekend dads, “Did you see me do that one? How was it? Was it better?”

The dad in question looks up from his phone, shouting praise and encouragement from his lounge chair. Everything she does is “fantastic, amazing, you’re getting so much better at this.”

Maybe I need a man with a dad bod to cheer for me every

time I proofread an essay for a graduate application or send the world’s most carefully worded email to a faculty member.

“Will you come in, Dad? Puh-lease?”

The girl whines variations on the word please a dozen more times. I brace myself for her dad to lose his cool. How do parents stand this? Are they just mildly aggravated all the time? On something stronger than Zoloft? Have they been inoculated against this specific sound through repeated exposure?

I’d much rather watch the active seniors aqua jog across the shallow end than bear witness to this particular interaction between father and daughter. Is she begging for his attention out of some vague fear that Dad is one skipped weekend away from disappearing?

To my surprise, the whining works. Her father puts his phone away and begins to remove his T-shirt, completely unbothered. Apparently, I’m a terrible lounge chair psychologist.

From behind my sunglasses, I watch him. Not in a lecherous way. I don’t come to this pool for eye candy. I look in the way people absentmindedly stare at interesting strangers across the aisle of a subway car. Or at least I used to do that, when I was in grad school at Columbia. I’d try to decipher something about their lives just from their coat, or their demeanor, or whether they’d oﬀer their seat to an elderly person or a pregnant woman.

In the spirit of fairness, I decide to stare at the other assorted dads. I wonder what they looked like ten years ago. What mistakes they made with their ex-wives. Whether they regret their first marriages. If they need to be reminded about when their kid needs to bring their violin to school. How quickly they can recite their kids’ birthdays or name their orthodontist.

But I find my gaze returning to that specific dad. Maybe I’m nonlecherously observing him because it’s hard for me to believe that divorced fathers sometimes do remove their T-shirts and

jump into the pool so their kids can hang on to them just because the child asked them to.

Or maybe I’m looking because I’m trying to identify the tattoos on his left arm.

I can’t remember my father lowering himself into a cold pool and letting me climb all over him while I pretended to be an acrobat like this guy is doing. I don’t think he said “ow” a lot or got his head dunked underwater repeatedly by his unruly daughter. Apparently, I am an adult woman subconsciously jealous of the attention a little kid is getting from her dad.

I close my eyes and try to return my attention to the video on my phone, but no matter how much I increase the volume, the little girl’s voice cuts through the makeup tutorial. She must operate at a decibel range that’s not covered by the noise-canceling capabilities of my Bose dupe headphones.

“Okay, now you’re the guy with the top hat,” she says.

Then her dad’s deep, distinctive voice: “The top hat?”

“And you have to tell the audience what the next act is.”

“You mean the ringmaster?”

She doesn’t bother to confirm. “First, I’m going to be a lion.” There’s a short pause. “Da-ad. Announce the lion.”

For a moment, I wonder if he’ll balk at making an announcement in front of the other dads. But he clears his throat and uses a slightly theatrical voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. You’re about to be amazed, astonished, astounded at this majestic creature. She may appear to be docile, but make no mistake: the king of the jungle cannot be tamed. I present to you, the lion!”

I open my eyes, curious about the faithfulness of the lion impression.

The little girl splashes up to the surface of the water and lets out a roar and some growls. She throws herself into the roleplay,

without a hint of self-consciousness, while I’m unable to stop my brain from running a predictive embarrassment algorithm on her behalf. I’m afraid she’s almost aged out of pretend play, but I admire her for doing it anyway.

Her dad applauds and does some oohs and aahs, imitating a crowd. No one else at the pool plays along, but maybe this sort of thing is only cute when it’s your own flesh and blood.

“Okay, now I’m a water lion,” she says. “Introduce me.”

“A water lion? Didn’t you just do that?”

“Da-ad. That was a lion. Now I’m going to do a water lion.”

Da-ad catches my eye for a second. I can see his gears turning, trying to determine how to make the water lion introduction distinct from the standard lion.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special treat for you today. An extremely rare animal. In fact, many of you may never have heard of this beast who . . . lives in the water . . . but is covered in fur? Maybe? I’m not sure about the anatomy of this creature. Anyway, I present to you, the water lion!”

The little girl does the exact same burst out of the water, same roar. She takes a bow. Again, her dad dutifully mimics a crowd noise.

To some people, a doting father wouldn’t be noteworthy. To me, their interaction—a dad letting his child oversee the game— is fascinating.

I’m not one of those people who fawns over little kids. Mostly, I find them sticky. Even when I was a kid, I preferred adults. There was no greater point of pride than when a grownup would compliment my behavior or conversational skills.

But I’m a bit indignant that no one else is acknowledging the little girl’s performance. Not the retirees, not the little boys whipping a foam football at each other in the shallow end. Not even the other divorced dads make a sound.

This girl isn’t embarrassed to be pretending in front of strangers, which is, frankly, more impressive to me than any feat of physical strength. I, on the other hand, will endure any discomfort, pay any price, not to embarrass myself in front of other people.

God, grant me the confidence of a child who has not yet known the humiliation of a random Tuesday in seventh grade.

So I clap.

The water lion and the ringmaster look up at me.

T“3HE WATER LION IS MY FAVORITE ANIMAL,” I TELL HER, REMOVing my headphones. “And that was very accurate.”

“My favorite animals are dragons,” the girl says. “And alicorns. And raccoons.”

She submerges to perform another somersault.

“What’s an alicorn?” I ask when she surfaces again.

“A horse with a unicorn horn and wings.” The girl places her elbows on the edge of the pool. “Like a unicorn mixed with a . . .” She tilts her head to the side, water dripping from her hair. “I can’t remember what the horses with wings are.”

“Oh, they’re called . . .” This is my cue. My opening to provide an assist. I’m an adult; I should have this data at the ready in the storage area of my giant grown-up brain.

Fuck, what is a winged horse?

The term is on the tip of my tongue.

We’re both looking at each other, half sounding out words that begin with p under our breath.

Suddenly, it comes to me: “Pegasus!”

“No, that’s not it,” the little girl exclaims. She pushes herself up and climbs onto the pool deck. “Can I use your phone to look it up?”

“Uh . . .” Amazing segue. She takes her shot before I have time to question my command of English vocabulary. “You can’t see my phone because I’m a government agent,” I say. “There’s very sensitive material on here.” This isn’t a lie; there are some nudes recklessly scattered throughout my camera roll that I should hide in a password-protected vault. I’m not prepared for a scenario where a kid would be looking through my phone.

“Okay,” she says with a casual shrug. “Then pretend you’re the horse trainer and I’m a horse.”

“Me?” I glance around in case she’s addressing the potential horse trainer just behind me. “I’m the horse trainer?”

Kids stress me out. I think they can smell my fear.

“You have to stand in the pool because that’s the center of the ring—”

“Oh, I wasn’t planning on getting wet.”

“—and you give the horse commands for diﬀerent tricks.”

There’s no graceful way to get up from this lounge chair, let alone plunge into the pool, but the girl is standing in front of me, waiting.

“You don’t have to do that,” her dad calls out. “I’ll be the horse trainer.”

“No, the horse trainer is a girl,” she says, looking at me pleadingly.

I’m not very susceptible to cuteness; this is something else. I guess it’s her . . . moxie? Spunk?

I take oﬀ my sunglasses, slip them into my tote bag, and haul

myself up, letting my feet hit the hot concrete. “What are the tricks?”

“I’m a swimming horse,” she says, as I lower myself into the cold water. “I’ll swim around you and you tell me what to do.”

The thought of generating swimming horse commands out of thin air is daunting, but it turns out that she does whatever she wants no matter what I say. It’s obvious who’s in charge here, and it’s not the horse trainer.

“Tell me to do a flip,” she shouts. Her dad watches her from the other end of the pool.

“Do a flip!” I yell, waving my hand around in what I assume is a flip motion.

She dives under, feet splashing wildly as she tries to complete an aquatic somersault.

The freezing cold pool water splashes my face. “Ahhh!” I yell, as her head breaks the surface. “I’ve been hit by a rogue water horse.”

“I’m not a water horse, I’m a horse that swims!”

I’m properly chastened. “My mistake. I thought I saw fins.”

“Water horses don’t have fins,” she says, pushing her goggles up on her head. “What are you?”

11/10 question, kid. I wish I knew. “I thought I was the horse trainer.”

“It’s your turn to pick an animal so I can train you.” It all sounds so obvious when she says it. “What are you?”

“Hmmm. Guess.” Classic adult copout. Her eyes narrow. “Orangutan.”

Shit. I can’t remember exactly what orangutans sound like, but I’m sure it’s a noise that would be humiliating to attempt in public. I glance toward her dad, wondering if he’ll volunteer in my place.

He does not. He’s just looking at the two of us, eyebrows slightly raised.

“Incorrect,” I say. “I’m a water orangutan.”

Her nose scrunches. “No you’re not!”

“And as a water orangutan, I can only perform underwater.”

“Nuh-uh. Orangutans don’t like swimming.”

Ignoring this insight, I sink below the surface of the water, doing my best to swim in a circle around her. In general, I avoid the pool when it’s full of little kids—I’m too paranoid about the amount of pee. But this seems like a clever way to play along with minimal embarrassment.

On the other hand, I miscalculated how challenging it is to swim in circles with my eyes closed. Apparently, my aquatic spatial perception sucks. I can feel how dangerously close I am to brushing other bodies with my fingertips.

I need to come up for air. Now.

As I give one strong kick to propel myself out of the water, my hand hits smooth skin that gives just a little bit. My mouth opens to gasp or yell or something as all my pool fears come true at once.

I break the surface coughing up pool water, arms flailing, slapping at a person in front of me who I can’t see because of the chlorine stinging my eyes and my nearsightedness.

A man’s voice asks if I’m okay. After blinking roughly thirty times to focus my vision, I see that the stranger I’ve been accidentally molesting is—of course, obviously, was there ever any doubt?—the girl’s dad.

“I told you,” she says from somewhere behind me. “Orangutans don’t like swimming.”

“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” THE GIRL ASKS ME AFTER SHE FOLLOWS ME back to my lounge chair, where I dry oﬀ and make a valiant attempt to recover my dignity by wiping oﬀ the smeared eye makeup that wound up everywhere but my eyelids.

I’m caught oﬀ guard. Isn’t the adult supposed to ask the child that question? And isn’t the child supposed to get suddenly shy?

“Sam,” I say while rummaging around my tote bag for the sunglasses so I can cover my raccoon eyes. I don’t feel them. “What’s yours?”

“Guess.”

This kid is a master of putting me on edge in very low-stakes ways.

“Hmmm.” I dig into my mental reserves of Old Timey Names That Probably Make Kids Laugh. “Is it Winifred?”

She scoﬀs. “No! Guess again.”

Out of the corner of my still-irritated eye, I see her dad approaching with a pair of towels in his hand.

“Is it . . . Petunia?”

Exasperated sigh. “Do a good guess.”

“I really thought I had it with Petunia.” I shake my head in mock defeat. “You’re gonna have to tell me.”

Her dad sits on the edge of the lounge chair next to me, but I try not to look at him.

I can’t see very well but I can make out a little grin on her face. “You give up?”

“I’m waving a tiny, invisible white flag,” I say, gesturing with one hand.

“Kira,” she says. “K-I-R-A.” I’m sure in a few years she will also oﬀer a firm handshake. “Kira Ro Jensen-Martino.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. What a name.” I allow myself a quick glance at her dad. “Do you want to be in the circus when you grow up?”

“No,” she answers, like this should be obvious. “I’m gonna be a YouTuber.”

“Definitely not,” her dad says.

“YouTuber sounds like a pretty nice job,” I reply, because right now, any job sounds nice.

“What do you wanna do when you grow up?” Kira asks. I’m unsure if she simply can’t tell what age I am or has seen directly into my soul and pulled out the heart of my biggest insecurities.

I open my mouth to make something up (hair stylist, pilot, chiropractor) when her dad chimes in.

“She already told you—she’s a government agent.” I turn my head to look at him, but without my glasses, everything farther than a couple feet in front of me is blurry. “Do you need an extra towel?”

I shake my head and wipe under my eyes again. “Actually, the government agent bit was a lie. I’m a Juilliard-trained actor,” I tell him.

“Really?”

I can’t see his face properly. I stare at the area of his head where I imagine his slightly raised eyebrows might be.

“Yeah, I just hang around local pools hoping to practice my craft.”

“In that case, Kira’s a great scene partner because she likes to be the director, too.”

I’m squinting hard, trying to make out his features. I’m basically conducting a conversation with one of those anonymized witnesses on Dateline. “In addition to my impression of a water orangutan who can’t swim, I can pull oﬀ a super accurate ‘depressed twentysomething woman reading a book.’ I’m available for children’s birthday parties.”

He laughs, and my eyes go straight to his hands, which seems more polite than looking at the other parts of him that I can sort of see.

Hands are my favorite part of the body. Eyes are the window into the soul, but hands contain a lot of information, too. And I don’t mean in the reflexology sense. We explore our immediate world with our hands. Sometimes we explore people with our hands.

His hands are, um, large.

“Da-ad, push me in!”

“Nope,” he says. “It’s time to go.” He tosses a towel at Kira. “Why don’t you dry oﬀ ?”

“Five more minutes,” she declares, letting the towel drop to the concrete. Without waiting for permission, she jumps into the pool, leaving me alone with her dad.

“Your daughter taught me everything I know about water horses,” I say. “You must be very proud.”

“In her spare time, she breeds dragons,” he tells me. “On her tablet.”

“Imagine being this powerful, fearsome fantasy creature that can destroy cities but you’re still subject to the whims of a girl who wants you to have dragon babies with Sunwing because his orange underscales are pretty.”

“It’s very consensual,” he says. My eyes are starting to adjust and I can just make out his face. “Sunwing is into it.”

“I’m sure he is. But he’s not the one giving birth.”

Her dad laughs. I’ve made someone laugh multiple times? “I think they lay eggs, actually.” If I squint, I can almost see the outline of his nose now. It’s wide and has a bit of a bump like it got broken at some point and never healed correctly.

“Da-ad!” Kira pushes herself up out of the pool. “I’m hungry.”

“Okay, so grab your towel and dry oﬀ,” he says. Kira pulls at his arm and starts dragging him back to their lounge chairs. Her dad turns back to me, walking backward. “Do you live in this complex?”

I’m stumped for how to answer that. Yes, but it’s only temporary and only because of the pandemic and I’m trying my best but rent prices are through the roof and I can’t ﬁnd a job in my ﬁeld so I’m trying to get into another graduate program and—“My mom does.”

It’s still the truth, right?

He nods. I’m looking for evidence that he’s a tiny bit disappointed, but I can’t see detail well enough to discern that. “Well, thanks for playing with her.”

I’m tempted to clarify and correct my residency status because . . . how often in my daily existence do I make someone laugh? But he’s already turned around and gathering their stuﬀ.

KIRA AND HER DAD EXIT THROUGH THE GATE, DRIPPING A TRAIL OF water all the way to the entrance to Building 3. The tension in my shoulders eases. I pop my headphones back over my ears and resume ignoring the remaining divorced dads, who are probably counting down the minutes until they can drop their kids oﬀ at their ex-wife’s house.

Here’s the thing: in my own head, I am a baby even though I’m twenty-six. But people don’t truly age until they complete the trifecta: get a “real” job, get married, have a kid.

Since I don’t see myself doing any of those things, I guess I’ll be forever young. Or, at least caught between “wise-beyondher-years child” and “nascent adult.”

I blame my parents.

My dad liked to show me oﬀ as his little wunderkind, while

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Praise for Daddy Issues

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GIRL