Dad's New Girlfriend

2024

When I first met Kate, I hated her. My freshly divorced father now had a shiny new girlfriend, a young assistant professor of statistics at a local college who was thirteen years his junior. I hated how pretty she was, hated her high-pitched whiny voice, hated that she was not my mother. 

He presented Kate to me at a show put on by the traditional Chinese dance company owned by his friend. I sat between them in the dark of the theater, a sad lump of flaccid bologna sandwiched between two passionately burning pieces of bread. Way too passionate.

Only five minutes into the show, they reached over me to hold hands. Disgusting! I wriggled and squirmed like an ant colony had taken residence in my underwear. At last, I successfully severed their bond. But then, they just relinked hands behind my back! What the frick! I re-initiated the squirming maneuver, this time rocking back and engaging my neck and shoulders. Their fingers unlaced, then re-clasped across my belly like a seat belt. So it went: in front, behind, in front, behind. I barely saw the willowy dancers adorned in brilliant silks who leapt and soared across the stage – there was a war raging in Row 102 J that I had to attend to. 

Kate stuck around, and there was nothing I could do to repel her. But when it became clear that this might be a Forever thing, and that she made my dad happy, I began to thaw. I tolerated her. Then liked her. Then loved her.

Together, we ate swirly frozen yogurt piled high with toppings; we experimented with heat-free hair curlers and leave-in conditioner spray; we competed with each other on Candy Crush Saga (she was so cool – she made it past Level 200!). She answered my questions about whether women keep their bras on during sex; she let me get both the dino nuggets and the mini sliders at Rainforest Cafe; she allayed my fears and convinced me that another sibling would not in fact be the end of the world, and even managed to recruit me in picking out baby names.

Once, Kate and my dad got into a massive fight – she accused him of still loving my mom – and they teetered on the precipice of calling it quits. I was terrified I might lose her. I convinced my dad to drive an hour to her apartment in Brighton, where I handed her a drawing of a pink cartoon fish adorned with plump lips and long eyelashes from Fish with Attitude, the iPhone game we played together. Eyes wide as I presented my artistic offering, I begged her to take him back. So she did.

Within a year she was pregnant, and then they were married, and then they bought a brand-new big house on a secluded cul-de-sac. And then she began to drift away. She stopped taking me to froyo, stopped coming to my room to chat atop my memory foam mattress, even stopped playing Candy Crush Saga. And then came the baby. Joshua, they named him, ignoring my opinion that “Jake” was the superior J-name. And then Kate was gone. 

When I approached her, she would turn her back and walk away. When we passed each other by, she would stare right through me like I was transparent. When I tried to talk to her, she would mumble one-word replies, or pretend not to have heard me whatsoever.

My older brother was the first person I told about what was happening. He didn’t believe me. Kate had always been nice to him; she would never do something like that. Plus, ever since he got sick, Jamie had stopped accompanying me to the every-other-weekend stays at Dad’s house, because the whole ordeal was too hard on his body. He couldn’t help me. I was on my own.

After months of my little nine-year-old heart eroding to pieces by attrition, I finally confessed what was happening to my dad. You’re exaggerating, he said. You’re being overdramatic, he said. But eventually it became too glaring for him to continue feigning blindness, so he drummed up reason after reason to exonerate his wife’s behavior:

“It’s because you’re too needy.”

“It’s because you’re not outgoing enough.”

“It’s because you ask her to buy you too many things.”

“It’s because you always forget to turn off the air conditioner in your room.”

I told my mom what was happening, and she believed me immediately.

“Oh baby,” she whispered, stroking my hair. I wrapped myself in her warmth, sobbing into her shoulder on the living room couch. She held me as I trembled and trembled. “Shhh, it’s okay. Shhh, shhh.” 

As I sniffled and hiccupped, I felt her body harden with rage, watched her eyes narrow, as she seethed at the woman who hurt her child and the man who did nothing to stop her.

“How dare she.”