Birthday gift idea for girl

When Marry wondered aloud if their baby Beatrice was getting enough breast milk, Lily was insulted and they ended up having a nasty fight. Even after the pediatrician had assured them that Bea was doing just fine, Lily still felt uneasy at the memory of how their child had come between them. But mostly she and Marty were thrilled to have a baby. Lily decided she couldn't bear to leave Bea and go back to work, and Marty joked that if he ever had a mistress, she'd have to also be a wet nurse.

One day Marry brought home a fancy baby brush.

"But she has hardly any hair," Lily gently reminded him, "and by the time she gets some, this brush will be too small." It was from England and looked expensive. "I can return it for you ..."

He seemed preoccupied, the way he got when he was brooding about one of his engineering projects.

"Marty?"

"I want her to have it, I don't want you to return it, please!"

Lily was taken aback.

"Please, allow me this pleasure."

She was touched.

When Bea was a few months old and still had only a few blondish wisps across her scalp, Lily impulsively bought her a frilly dress.

"Doesn't it look a little strange, with her short hair and all?" Marty asked.

"I know, I probably shouldn't have gotten it, actually I don't think I can return it, but doesn't she look sort of adorable?"

Usually Marty was the one who tended to be frugal, so she was surprised when a few hours later and apparently out of the blue he said, "I think we should get rid of that dress." And then, "Throw it out!"

Although she didn't like his tone and secretly vowed to have Bea wear it when he wasn't home, she ended up forgetting about the dress until Bea had pretty much outgrown it.

Still, it seemed strange that Marty had questioned Lily's judgment about clothes, since part of their romance had had to do with what he liked to call her feminine wiles. Before Lily, he hadn't been aware that there were things called spaghetti straps, like the ones on her silky nightgowns--apparently his previous girlfriends had worn only pajamas or tee shirts to bed. Before going out Lily would spray perfume in the air and then walk through it, creating a kind of flowery cloud around herself that he couldn't get enough of. Blonde, she always wore pearl earrings, in various settings but always with a pearl. Marry loved the idea of someone having what she called a "signature."

After she got him to buy his first pair of sandals, he said that she'd given him summer.

When they'd met in their mid-twenties, she had a promising job at an arts foundation but kept wondering if she should be getting a degree in art history, instead. She'd always been a top student, focusing on whatever test was ahead of her, but now she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. Sometimes she'd worry she was one of those people who could never get over having been good at school. "It's only a life!" Marry would say, and she'd be surprised at how this would comfort her. Although he was less sophisticated than her previous boyfriends and the only one whose family didn't have money, he was the first she'd wanted to marry. She'd gotten pregnant sooner than they'd planned, but it hadn't taken them long to decide that they were incredibly lucky. She'd been afraid that she'd obsess about whether she was doing everything she could to ensure a healthy child, as if pregnancy were some new kind of exam, but most of the time she'd felt surprisingly serene. And although Marty later admitted that maybe for a second he'd been disappointed that he didn't have a son, Lily had immediately seen Bea as a gift from her mother, who'd died when Lily was ten. With each passing year Lily's memories of her had faded until only wisps were left, like her shimmering memory of the soft folds of her mother's fragrant, silky nightgowns.

Once a week Marry would come home early to baby-sit and Lily would go out to dinner with her friend Laura. They'd go to a nice restaurant, have several glasses of wine, talk about whomever Laura was dating, her architectural career; sometimes Lily would complain about Marry, usually minor things like that he had no close friend to complain to about Lily. She'd try not to talk too much about Bea, for whom Laura often brought a fancy present--a pink angora sweater, a Swiss toy so beautiful Lily imagined it eventually decorating their apartment. Although she'd scold Laura for spending so much money, she'd also be pleased. People in the restaurant would notice how pretty the young women were--Lily so fair, raven-haired Laura, like Snow White and Rose Red.

Marty would usually wake up when Lily came in, and she'd be eager to show him Bea's latest present. A little tipsy, full of expensive food, she'd urge him to tell her all about what he and Bea had done. "More!" she'd beg, as the homely domestic details became suffused with a kind of hazy glow.

Lily had worried that she'd feel competitive with the other mothers and their babies, but even when she saw children Bea's age who were clearly more advanced, she passionately believed in her child. The problem that did arise, when Bea was about six months old, never would have occurred to Lily, she thought bitterly.

But when she'd come into a room where Marry was doing something with baby like strumming "My Darling Clementine" on his ukulele or quacking like a duck, Bea would shake her head vigorously at Lily or indicate indignantly that she should leave.

Not always, but definitely sometimes.

Although Lily would tell herself it was a good thing that Bea was so attached to her father, tears would spring to her eyes and she'd feet the way she had in high school when two girlfriends would make her feel like the awkward third.

Marry would be quick to hug Lily and tell her how much he and Bea loved her.

He just about ordered Lily's stepmother to stop always saying that Bet certainly seemed to be turning into a little Daddy's girl.

"We're so lucky," he'd tell Lily.

For a while they'd think about the couple in their Lamaze class whose child had been born without an arm.

Most of the time Bet just made them deliriously happy, the fat creamy cheeks, all the deep chuckles and dazzling smiles, the thickening curls slowly becoming brown like Marty's. After Bet's bath Lily was always eager to bring baby, all dewy and powdered, to her smitten Dad, and when Bet would clap her hands and pound her chubby legs with joy when "Da" came home from work, Lily would be happy for him.

Bea was affectionate with her, too, primly offering her cheek for kisses, sobbing as if her heart were broken when Lily left her with a babysitter.

And unlike a lot of other mothers, Lily rarely felt the need to get away from her.

But then suddenly, after mother and daughter had spent many cheerful hours together, as soon as Marty appeared Bea would use her tiny hands to try to push Lily away.

Ostentatiously, Marry would hug Lily first.

She'd try to laugh at the tears that would spring to her eyes.

"We're so lucky," Marty would say.

Lily knew the luckiest thing was that she never held Bea's being a Daddy's girl against her.

Occasionally, though, Marty's delight in Bet's ecstatic shrieks at the sight of him began to annoy Lily.

And occasionally he'd be too preoccupied with giving his darling daughter a bear hug to notice Lily's mood.

Trying to be comforting, Laura would bring up their friend Jane's husband who had to travel so much for work that he rarely saw their child. But Lily found it annoying that Laura--usually so sensitive--didn't seem to realize that she always brought up Jane's husband.

Other mothers of daughters talked about various childrearing problems, but no one else seemed to have a Daddy's girl.

"You think this is bad," a mother of older children told her, "just wait until she doesn't get invited to a birthday party."

Lily immediately felt murderous rage at the very idea that someone wouldn't invite Bea to a party.

Since his remarriage her father never seemed to want to talk about the past, but Lily prodded him to try to remember if she'd ever been a Daddy's girl.

He didn't think so.

When she got up her courage to ask her busy pediatrician about Daddy's girls, he muttered that it was just a stage and then rushed out to his next patient.

"No Mama!" Bea learned to say--more and more often, Lily felt, although Marty insisted that she was exaggerating.

Lily would brood that one day he'd leave her for another woman, a younger woman. Grimly studying her face in the mirror one day, she found a new wrinkle.

Sometimes she'd wonder if in some sneaky way, it was all Marty's fault.