cellulite

Oh no, no no. Not translucent blue thighs. Not 45 year old dimples spilling sideways over the very last seat on the whole damn metro slipping from from cheek to cheek, smacking and melting while you stand there and try to think about big gusts of wind or the dinner your wife is making in the kitchen in just a tshirt, legs out, smacking and melting.

This is summer in the city, Ed, and I don't want to hear you whine about it. You knew it was coming. It was always going to come.

When you get home you hear your wife busy with not dinner, upstairs with your daughter freshly home from college, emptying her bursting teenage closet, draping its contents over her plump little body and frowning. "It's cheese mom, it's cheese all over my legs, oh god oh god oh god." And you weren't thinking about your daughters fat little thighs, or freshman fifteen little belly and she should stop talking because you're busy with not dinner, watching an old movie and look, there is grace kelley, who looks great in her clothes.

Your girls come downstairs and they look at you with their cow eyes.
How was work? (bad AS USUAL) Would you like to go out for dinner? (no) What would you like to eat? (something healthy. something without fat)

A salad is plopped in your face 20 minutes later. Cold lettuce your wife dumped in warm water, radishes no one bothered to chop up, and you watch your daughter nibbling on a meal bar that only has 100 calories in it as she talks about how, really, if she only lost, 10 pounds, everything would be okay. She picks up bar number three.

Mother and daughter leave the table wagging their round tushes behind them and you clean up everybody's plates, letting the hot water turn your knuckles red. scrubbing  oil and vinegar down the sink, scrubbing, scrubbing, hot, hot water. You know your wife thinks this is not clean enough so you put it all in the dishwasher and sit down on the couch. Tomorrow she will yell at you in a tone that makes you feel like a dumb eight year old because you don't understand the dishwasher organizational system she has explained to you a thousand times.

A thousand times, ed. And grace kelly is smirking and holding her knuckles. And you have eaten four of your daughter's diet bars. goddamnit.

The next day you ride the train home with your daughter. She is resting her head on your shoulder and you remember when her hair was a burst of golden brown ringlets and she used to sing duets with you and tell you well, yeah, of course I'll be president daddy. She's locked into her ipod. She offered you an ear; she's listening to music she wants you to like. It's all about dead poets and big drugs and bad parties, but it's kind of literary or something, so she feels cute and smart about liking it. For the most part, she is cute and smart. On the way down the escalator at the station a big man touched her thigh and said, "dang baby i love vanilla." You were standing right there and couldn't do a thing about it. She just kept listening to some song about John Berryman.

Your wife ambushes the two of you at the door. It is time to plan a vacation. The conversation is oppressive.

You tell them that you want to go somewhere cold. You want to go where there are mountains and stones and quiet. Your daughter thinks that's stupid. She says that she will get bored going to the middle of nowhere with just her parents. You're trying to figure out when you became "just her parent" and not her hero, or at least someone she could bear to spend a week with. And you think your daughter should go somewhere cold. She should bundle herself up and look at the sky. But of course, your wife has a voice too. Your wife doesn't want to hike. She doesn't like nature. What does your wife like? You can't even remember.

Your daughter wants to go to a city, and you want to yell at her. You picture a thousand men grabbing at her while she stands obliviously listening to her pretentious music, descending endlessly into the ground. You know what happens in summer cities. She will sweat and complain and buy even more clothes she'll just feel fat in. On the ride back to the hotel, her thighs will just stick to the metro seat. You want to tell her.

Instead you shout that you don't want to go anywhere. You just want to stay put. You bite dramatically into an apple. They leave the kitchen. You eat the rest of her chocolate diet bars.

You walk around the back yard and look at the old tree you planted after your daughter was born. When she was first started walking, you took her to the garden and she was taller than the little twig. When you found out your wife wouldn't be able to have any more children, you told your daughter that this tree could be her sister. That they would grow up together.

Last week an exterminator told you that you'd have to cut the tree down since ants were crawling from the leaves onto the roof and invading the house from the top down. Your daughter found them between her knees and in her oatmeal and shrieked. Later, when you told her about the tree, she asked if you could trim it down instead. That it really shouldn't be killed, and she turned her sad eyes to you hopefully. You told her that you agreed, but that honey, you're no superhero.

But you wish you could be. Sometimes you wonder what your 20 year old self would do if he knew how you let life break down your ideals and ambitions. Maybe he would do things differently. Maybe he would fly.

In 8 months you can retire. You hate your job, but when you think about the future you get languid and you smack and you melt. You can't imagine picking yourself up and going somewhere. Your daughter told you that you can do things differently. That this is your chance, and that if you don't take it, well then maybe you didn't really have it in you to break free anyway.

You hate when she talks down to you like that. She is your /daughter/, and who gave her the right? And you can tell her that, but you still feel like you have something to prove. And the truth is, you do want to go somewhere. You need to go somewhere. You're looking up at the sky through the poor doomed tree leaves, picturing a planet and it's spinning and white and blue and you're trying to pinpoint a place on it you like, but it's just going so fast. In your bed, your wife is waiting for you, with her soft dimpled body and her big white globes laying free, sinking still onto the sheets. She loves you a lot, and she's just going to keep laying there.

Oh Ed. This is a big moment. You can take the world in your hands. And it is full of summer cities, sure, but there are winter cities too, and mountains, and stones and quiet. And well, it's up to you, and you hate that, but you know it. So where are you going to go, old man?