Free Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

table of seventy-year-old men playing cards over by the window were all wearing hearing aids, so I was pretty sure they were listening in.
    â€œWell, don’t call her your classmate, then,” Dad said. “That makes her sound like a teenager. And that girl is not a teenager.”
    â€œShe’s, like, a few years older than Arizona.”
    â€œShe’s hot.”
    I sighed, because hot should be banned the way the word bra is banned, but my dad cannot be stopped, especially when he’s all hopped up on a soup-bowl-size cup of cappuccino.
    With his third wife, Natasha, he always used to say, “Now that’s an ass!” whenever she walked away from him in her tight black jeans. When he was with his second wife, Janie, I would catch them making out, his hand either up her shirt or down her pants. I was, like, eight. I don’t remember much about him being with my mother. I was only five when she left us for the West Coast and then India and communism or Buddhism or one of those, but I’m sure he didn’t hold back with her either. He gave her liposuction and a new nose, but, as she tells me once a year on my birthday, she regrets both of them and hopes I don’t take that route.
    The point being, my dad can be exceedingly gross about women.
    Even then, at Reggio, he was doodling on one of the postcards on the table. It was a Renoir, I think. A painting I’d seen a million times of a woman in a red hat with a little girl. My father drew lines on the woman’s face, places he could fix, if she were his client. He did it absently, not knowing it was happening. The doodles are all overthe house, too—on magazine covers and friends’ Christmas cards. He can’t leave work, not ever. His mind looks for flaws to fix, always.
    â€œHer name is Karissa,” I said. “She’s the best in the class. Do you want to split the prosciutto sandwich?” I held the menu in front of his face so that he would forget everything about Karissa. It did not work. She had green eyes after all. And a dozen silver bracelets on her right hand that clanked against one another if she moved at all, making everyone hyperaware of her movements. She had long eyelashes and red lips and that cool combination of camisole with leather vest that means she’s good in bed, I think.
    She wasn’t perfect. But that’s why she was so goddamn beautiful. My dad has never understood that. He sees a field of wildflowers, thinks it’s really great, but also thinks pulling out all the weeds and manicuring it into a perfect garden will make it better. Then he’s disappointed at the result.
    With her freckles and softly frizzing brown hair and crazy outfits, Karissa is totally a field of wildflowers.
    â€œDo you like her?” he said.
    â€œShe’s talented.” I added more sugar to my latte. After one day in her presence I wanted her to be my friend. Or my new sister. “She smokes.”
    â€œPeople give up smoking,” Dad said.
    And I guess maybe I should have known then what was coming.

nine
    Natasha is the wife who taught me about gratitude.
    She is the wife I wish was still our mom. More than I wish our actual mom was still our mom, because our actual mom chose to leave us, whereas Natasha chose to make things right with me a year after she left.
    She taught me about writing the List of Things to Be Grateful For. She writes ten a day. I try for three.
    I work really effing hard to find things to be grateful for on days like today.
    For instance, I am grateful for the stoop and the perfect temperature of the evening and the fact that I can pretend planes flying up above are stars in the sky.
    Arizona comes home from dinner to find me on the stoop and shoves takeout pasta into my hands like it’s a grenade. Orecchiette. Little ears. My favorite, only because of the name.
    â€œI needed you there,” she says. I almost forget about her boobs, her face is that