There was definitely something niggling Ally Gil. It wasn’t her loving husband Ben or her two adorable children that made her feel “verklempt.” A survivor of a miscarriage, an unplanned C-section and a cancer scare, Ally was evermore grateful just to live her life. Yet Ally endured terrible migraines each time she thought about her mother and always stuttered when she spoke the word D-d-d-d-ady.
Ally was a perfect child. She revered her father, Dr. Curt, a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon. Daddy was also a masterful musician but that was no surprise. Daddy was an expert on everything. Ally’s mother, Roberta, worked fulltime as a teacher. Granted she was a bit narcissistic, immersed in a smorgasbord of social activities, or rushing to “emergency pedicures.” With a nanny in the home, Roberta attended to Ally during TV commercials. However, Ally excused her parents from any wrongdoing --- failing to show up at school shows or swim competitions or going to Paris without her when Ally turned sixteen.
Never off script, Ally dutifully followed a strict diet prescribed by her parents. Body shamed at age seven she was “not allowed to eat a donut.” For Valentine’s Daddy presented her with an empty chocolate box. He registered her at Weight Watchers when she turned ten, emphasizing she had “fat genes.” Ally rarely measured up to their unattainable expectations, yet she remained thankful for their “protective presence.”
Unlike brother Jack “who dodged rules” Ally didn’t speak up when hit with a “curveball of criticism.” When Jack was sent away to high school “to neuter his sexual preference,” he liked boys, Ally lost her only sympathetic voice at home. Over time Ally found herself within a cauldron of doubt, tolerating disrespect, feeling inadequate, swallowing Daddy’s “judgment juice.” Ally’s awakening came when her parents began to demean her own precious children and undermine her parenting. She enters therapy yet she continues contact with her parents.
On a visit to her childhood home, Ally unpacks memories, fondly recalling practicing Bach with her father, both sitting on an old walnut piano bench. Suddenly, guilt overwhelms her. She castigates herself, remorseful about her ingratitude towards her parents, ready to forgive them for anything. Confused, blaming herself for the mess she has become, Ally nostalgically flips through familiar music sheets inside the piano bench when she comes across an old letter written by her father and gasps in disbelief.
It Could Be Worse is an immersive, debut novel by Florida author Dara Levan. Levan lays bare the importance of “mindfulness” the bedrock and foundation of family harmony and consequences of its disregard.