![]() ![]() ![]() Then my father said, "Let's go," meaning, We are going now. Jack did, and my mother said a small, "Oh." He'd lost his blubber and added muscles where once there had been none about once a day I'd put my hand around his bicep, and he'd flex it for me. "How is it possible for a person to outgrow a suit in a matter of weeks?" she wondered aloud, as though we had an unsolvable mystery or a miracle before us, instead of the result of Jack lifting weights and running all summer. If it was, I didn't see it, but my mother had already worked herself up into what she called a tizzy. She turned to Jack now and said, "Is your jacket small?" I said, "They'll look great with tights." Maybe tights would help, she said did I have tights? "No," I said, and my face added, Why would I bring tights to the seashore? When she said that we could pick some up on the way to Chappaqua, I reminded her that the only shoes I had with me were the sandals I had on. She said the dress looked "peasanty," which was what I liked about it. She despaired at the light cotton, no longer seeing the tiny, hand-embroidered blue flowers she'd been so charmed by in the store. My mother had weeks ago gone over exactly what my brothers and I would wear now, suddenly, she worried that my dress, bought particularly for this event, wasn't dressed-up enough. You could tell it was going to be a perfect beach day, maybe the best one all summer, maybe the last one of our vacation, and we were going to spend it at my cousin's bat mitzvah in Chappaqua, New York. In this novel, recommended by book critic Alan Cheuse on All Things Considered, Melissa Bank charts one woman's search for identity and love over 25 years.
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