The Kiss: A Memoir by Kathryn Harrison Read Free Book Online

mother and me, visible between our shoulders, are tongues of flame from the gas log. In certain of the poses the fire looks as if it comes from our clothes themselves, as if the anguished expression we each wear is not the smile we intended but the first rictus of pain. As if what my father caught with his camera was the moment when suddenly we knew we’d begun to burn. from the tube. His scrutiny both excites and exhausts me. How can it be that anyone finds me so interesting? The three of us spend much of our week together at art museums and botanic gardens and other tourist attractions. We are drawn to these places of silent staring and confused, enervated wandering because they make us seem and feel less like freaks as we stare in speechless shock at one another. Rather than increasing the strain, the time we spend with my grandparents is a relief in that it diffuses and refracts our attention, filling a few hours with polite, careful conversation about politics and gardening and books we’ve all read. Each night at my mother’s house we stay up as late as we can, trying to drain sensation from every minute. Whatever I do peel an orange, tie my shoe, pour water from a pitcher into the dry soil of a house plant enthralls my father. I get up to brush my teeth, and he follows me into the bathroom. He leans against the doorjamb to watch as I squeeze the paste “Is that the brand you always use? ” he says.
    “Crest? ” I nod. My teeth, as we’ve observed aloud, match his shape and color. “Did you ever wear braces? ” he asks. “No, ” I say. He nods. I’m as captivated by him. I’ve never really known who my father was, and revelation is inherently seductive. There is, too, the fascination of our likeness, that we resemble each other in ways that transcend … ..
    physical slmllarlues. “You walk like your father, ” my mother used to say to me when I was younger. “As soon as you stood up and put one foot in front of the other, I could see it. “
    “What do you mean? ” I’d say. “How? “
    “I can’t explain it, ” she’d say. And she wouldn’t try. What she said was spoken wistfully sometimes, but mostly it wasn’t a compliment.
    So much of what my mother and her mother seem to regard in me as alien my bookishness, for example, or my killjoy disinterest in fashion and in what they consider the fun of manicures and facials and going out for high tea in a tea shop has always been blamed on the other, rogue half of my genes. What a surprise to find that this judgment, which previously struck me as facile, turns out to be correct. In my father I meet someone not only familial but familiar, like myself. Now, my stubborn streak, my willful, marching walk, and the way I frown when I’m thinking all such traits are not evidence of my separateness but of my belonging. “Pretty is as pretty does. ” My grandfather has said these words to me all my life, and since I’m always doing something wrong I know just how ugly I must be. My grandfather was seventy-one when I was born, and he often took care of me when I was a small child. A tall, remarkably vigorous man, he gardened, he swam, he drove me to school and helped me with my homework. It was my grandfather who taught me how to ride a bicycle, and in his shirt pocket he kept a small pad of paper on which he wrote pretend traffic tickets when I went too fast on the long driveway or ran into one of his flower beds. The penalties he doled out were usually tasks that I had to perform in order to insinuate myself back into his good graces. This game of make-believe crimes and punishments was one of which I never tired. I was a tomboy, I tagged after my grandfather, underfoot so often that my first nickname was Shadow, as in “Me and My. ” He whistled the old music hall tune whenever he heard me coming. Because his patience was greater than theirs, my mother and grandmother turned me over to him at bedtime, and sometimes he had to sing for hours until I