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Show me. I remember so clearly the feeling of letting go, the peace of the day filling my body, causing my eyelids to close. When I turned nine, my parents hired a babysitter for my brothers and took me out for dinner to the restaurant at the top of the Seattle Space Needle. I wore a long green dress my grandmother had sewed for me, with a transparent white pinafore and a broad velvet belt that was as deep a green as the forests on Mt. Rainier. By then, my Dorothy Hamill had grown to a shoulder-length bob, and I tried not to wear the glasses that allowed me to see. It would be the last year I felt pretty. That night we ate on a merry-go-round, the city spinning far beneath us, lights blinking in yellows and whites, my parents across from me and all mine. What do you want to eat? My father asked. Order anything. I don't know. What do they have? My mother looked at the menu, her eyes made more blue by her blue eyeshadow, pearls at her neck, beautiful in the candlelight. How about a hamburger? She asked. It didn't matter what I ate. I was in a restaurant long after dark, my legs unable to touch the ground, across from both my parents who smiled easily. A cherry coke, I said, with no ice. When it came I let the cherry soak in its lukewarm bath. Looking out the window, for once not streaked with rain, I imagined that we had broken free of the Space Needle and now wheeled through the sky and hoped that we might never touch down. That night my parents didn't ask me if my grandpa ever touched me, didn't ask me to show them 109 |
