Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You Read Online Free Page A

cut was shallow—a few drops of blood. Soaked up in a wadded tissue and the tissue flushed away in the toilet.
    Not much punishment. But Merissa felt better.

7.
    (THE UNSPOKEN)
    Daddy is moving out for a while. You know that he has not always been happy lately and that he has been away traveling lately, and now he is moving out—for a while. Daddy wanted me to tell you first, because he will be telling you too, but when he tells you, he has requested—oh Merissa, this is important for both of us, for you, and for me, honey—that you do not CRY.
    For Merissa’s daddy, like many daddies—like many men, in fact, and boys—did not like to witness tears.
    Especially, many men—and boys—do not like to witness tears for which they are responsible.
    Tears are blackmail, says Merissa’s daddy.
    And how UGLY even a beautiful girl’s face, contorted by tears! Snot-nose, runny eyes, twisty fish-mouth—Daddy will frown and back away when Merissa—(“The Perfect One”)—tries her tricks.

8.
    â€œNOTHING TO DO WITH YOU”
    â€œMerissa, honey—the important thing is, please don’t think that this has anything to do with you .”
    Â 
    But Merissa did! Merissa knew .
    Back in early September, when it began, Merissa knew .
    (She hadn’t told anyone. Not one of her friends. Not even Tink—and anyway, Tink had abandoned her .)
    Carefully, bravely, Merissa’s mother held Merissa’s limp hand.
    Mother and daughter sitting together at the kitchen table in stark morning sunshine and the household quiet—(Daddy had not returned the night before)—and outside on West Brook Way the dull grinding of the Waste Management truck and a clatter of trash cans like jeering laughter.
    â€œâ€”he says that there is no one else —or if there was, for a while last year, remember when Daddy was working so hard on that Northridge account—” Merissa’s mother stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she was saying too much. The skin around her eyes was puffy and bruised-looking, and there was a sourish smell to her breath that Merissa realized had become a familiar smell evident when her mother drew close to her. (Had to be some medication she was taking, to help her sleep. Or for “anxiety.”) “Your father swears there is not —I want to believe him. ‘Just a trial separation,’ he says. He’ll be living on the other side of town in that new condominium village on the river—he ‘feels confined’ with us, he says—he loves us, he says—but—”
    Merissa saw her mother’s mouth move, but Merissa was not hearing all that her mother said. This was so ridiculous! So embarrassing! Like a scene in Tink’s TV soap opera Gramercy Park —(Tink had played a DVD of an episode for her girlfriends once, from a long-ago time when, in the story line of the saga, Tink had played a little girl of nine and her mother, Veronica, had played a neurotic rich man’s wife, unrelated to Tink—the girls had laughed at the hokey melodrama, underscored by mood music, such sad, silly women whose lives were a tangle of disappointed marriages and love affairs)—except this was Merissa’s real life .
    Hopeless, Merissa thought. Both of us.
    All Merissa’s good news—even the early acceptance at Brown—what did it mean now?
    Not a thing. Not a thing.
    Whatever Daddy said about being proud of his little girl, loving her—not a thing.
    Except, years ago, Merissa was sure he’d felt differently. As he had felt differently about Merissa’s mother, and being married and a father.
    And a long time ago, before she’d become the person she was now, when she’d been smaller, and so cute . When she’d been Daddy’s little girl and he’d stared at her with love—pulling her onto his lap, whispering to her.
    Who’s my little girl? Beautiful baby