Carthage

He was trying to explain to her. She was making her silly-little-girl face rolling her eyes and batting away his words as she’d have batted away badminton birdies with both her balled-up fists.

Saying Bullshit Daddy, except for her face Juliet is O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y.

Zeno took exception to this. Zeno was angered when his bright unruly younger daughter mocked his sweetly-serene and beautiful elder daughter.

And anyway it wasn’t true. Or it was a partial truth. For Juliet’s beauty wasn’t exclusively her face.

The exchange between the father and Cressida was a dream. Yet, the exchange had taken place more or less in this way, years before.

The Mayfield girls were like the daughters of a fairy-tale king.

Bitterly the younger daughter resented the fact—(if it was a fact, it was unprovable)—that the father loved the elder, more beautiful daughter more than he loved her, whose twisty little heart he couldn’t master.

I love both our girls. I love them for different reasons. But equally.

And Arlette said I hope you do. And if you don’t, or can’t—I hope you can disguise it.

All parents know: there are children who are easy to love, and children who are a challenge to love.

There are radiant children like Juliet Mayfield. Guileless, shadowless, happy.

There are difficult children like Cressida. Steeped in the ink of irony as if in the womb.

The bright happy children are grateful for your love. The dark twisty children must test your love.

Maybe Cressida was “autistic”—in grade school, the possibility had been raised.

Later, in high school the fancier epithet “Asperger’s” was suggested—with no more validation.

If Cressida had known she’d have said, airily—Who cares? People are such idiots.

Zeno supposed that in secret, Cressida cared very much.

It was clear that Cressida resented how in Carthage, among people who knew the Mayfields, she was likely to be described as the smart one while her sister Juliet was the pretty one.

How much would an adolescent girl rather be pretty, than smart!

For of course, Cressida was invariably judged too smart.

As in too smart for her own good.

As in too smart for a girl her age.

When she’d first started school, she’d complained: “Nobody else is named ‘Cressida.’ ”

It was a difficult name to pronounce. It was a name that fitted awkwardly in the mouth.

Her parents had said of course no one else was named “Cressida” because “Cressida” was her own special name.

Cressida had considered this. She did think of herself as different from other children—more restless, more impatient, more easily vexed, smarter—(at least usually)—quicker to laugh and quicker to tears. But she wasn’t sure if having a special name was a good idea, for it allowed others to know what might be better kept secret.

“I hate it when people laugh at me. I hate it if they call me ‘Cress’—‘Cressie.’ ”

She was one of those individuals, less frequently female than male, whose names couldn’t be appropriated—like a Richard who refuses to be diminished to “Dick,” or a Robert who will not be “Bob.”

When she was older and may have felt a little (secret) pride in her unusual name, still she sometimes complained that other people asked her about it; for other people, including teachers, were likely to be over-curious, or just rude: “ ‘Cressida’ makes me feel self-conscious, sometimes.”

Or, with a downward tug of her mouth, as if an invisible hook had snagged her there, “ ‘Cressida’ makes me feel accursed.”

Accursed! This was not so remarkable a word for Cressida, as a girl of twelve who loved to read in the adult section of the Carthage Public Library, particularly novels designated as dark fantasy, romance.

Of course, Cressida had looked up her name online.

Reporting to her parents, incensed: “ ‘Cressida’—or ‘Criseyde’—isn’t nice at all. She’s ‘faithless’—that’s how people thought of her in the Middle Ages. Chaucer wrote about her, and then Shakespeare. First she was in love with a soldier named Troilus—then she was in love with another man—and when that ended, she had no one. And no one loved her, or cared about her—that was Cressida’s fate.”

“Oh, honey, come on. We don’t believe in ‘fate’ in the U.S. of A. in 1996—this ain’t the Middle Ages.”

It was the father’s prerogative to make jokes. The daughter twisted her mouth in a wounded little smile.

The previous fall when Cressida was a freshman at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, she reported back that one of her professors had remarked upon her name, saying she was the “first Cressida” he’d ever encountered. He’d seemed impressed, she said. He’d asked if she’d been named for the medieval Cressida and she’d said, “Oh you’ll have to ask my father, he’s the one in our family with delusions of grandeur.”

Delusions of grandeur! Zeno had laughed but the remark carelessly flung out by his young daughter had stung.

AND ALL THIS while his daughter is awaiting him.

His daughter with black-shining eyes. His daughter who (he believes) adores him and would never deceive him.

“Maybe she’s returned to Canton. Without telling us.”

“Maybe she’s hiding in the Preserve. In one of her ‘moods’ . . .”

“Maybe someone got her to drink—got her drunk. Maybe she’s ashamed . . .”

“Maybe it’s a game they’re playing. Cressida and Brett.”

“A game?”

“ . . . to make Juliet jealous. To make Juliet regret she broke the engagement.”

“Canton. What on earth are you saying?”

They looked at each other in dismay. Madness swirled in the air between them palpable as the electricity before a storm.

“Jesus. No. Of course she hasn’t ‘returned’ to Canton—she was deeply unhappy in Canton. She doesn’t have a residence in Canton. That’s insane.” Zeno wiped his face with the damp cloth Arlette had brought him earlier, that he’d flung aside onto the bed.

Arlette said: “And she and Brett wouldn’t be ‘playing a game’ together—that’s ridiculous. They scarcely know each other. And I don’t think that Juliet was the one to break the engagement.”

Zeno stared at his wife. “You think it was Brett? He broke the engagement?”