30 Pieces of a Novel

Accidents and Mishaps

SHE’S ALMOST TWO years old, on her back on their double bed while he’s changing her diaper; as he bends over to unpin the diaper, several coins, three pennies and a dime, drop out of his T-shirt pocket. He pushes them to the edge of the bed, doesn’t want her handling them and then putting her hands to her mouth or sucking on one of the coins and maybe swallowing it. He unpins the diaper, lifts her rear, pulls the diaper out and wipes her with it and folds it up and says, “Stay here a minute, Daddy’s going to clean this,” and presses down on her chest a little, a signal between them she seems to understand that she stay lying on her back where she is while he’s gone. He goes into the bathroom — doesn’t know why he has to wash the diaper out immediately but he almost always does, something about the smell and that there’s feces in it and wanting to get the job over with as soon as possible and not have to think about it later — and empties the diaper into the toilet bowl, flushes the toilet, and after the shit’s gone he continues flushing, which he can do with this toilet because it has a flushometer instead of a water tank, while he rinses the diaper out several times. “You okay, dear?” he yells between flushes, and she doesn’t answer, and he yells, “Fanny … you all right? Say you’re okay, Daddy wants to know,” and she says, “Yes,” and he drops the diaper into the diaper pail, washes his hands, and comes back with a washrag rinsed in warm water, cleans and dries her and is about to poof some cornstarch around her anus when he notices the coins aren’t on the bed. “Hey, where’d they go, the coins, the pennies, where?” and she just looks at him, and he says, “Did you knock them off the bed?” and she shakes her head and he quickly looks on the floor and under the bed and lifts her rear up by her ankles and they’re not under her or the towel she’s on and when he sets her down he sees her eyes bulging out at him and he says, “What’s wrong — Fanny — you didn’t swallow them, did you — in your mouth?” and she looks scared and coughs but can’t expel any air and he says, “Oh, no, what do I do?” and still has his hands around her ankles from when he’d lifted her and jerks her up and holds her upside down in the air and slaps her back and continues slapping it while bobbing her up and down, up and down, and she spits some coins out and starts crying, and he says, “Is that all? You still got something in your mouth or throat? Goddamn, I’m saying are there any more coins inside you?” but can’t make out what her expression says because she’s crying and is upside down and he looks at the coins on the bed, two pennies and a dime, and then hears a coin hit the floor on the other side of the bed, and he sets her down on her back, jumps onto the bed on his stomach, head hanging off the side so he can see what coin it is, a penny, and he says, “Thank God!” and stands up and sits her up and says, “You all right, coins all gone, no more pennies in you?” and she’s crying but breathing normally again, and he grabs the two pennies and dime off the bed and sticks them into his pants pocket and says, “Open your mouth,” and nothing else is in it, and he says, “Never stick coins in your mouth, never, nothing but food, you hear?” and she’s still crying, and he says, “It was my fault too, Daddy’s fault, bad Daddy, leaving them there, but never again will I leave around any pennies or small things like that; you can swallow them and die, just so you know,” and she’s crying more hysterically now, and he says, “Oh, gee, I’m sorry,” and picks her up and holds her to his chest and cheek and pats her back and says, “I’ll tell you this another time, when you’re old enough to understand.”

IN THE CAR, family heading to D.C. to go to the East Wing of the National Gallery, he’s driving, wife beside him, Fanny in her kid’s car seat in back, winter, freezing out, but inside it’s warm, radio playing what the announcer said was a song cycle by Ravel, something with the word Exotiques in it, he thinks, and which he wants to hear to the end to find out exactly what it’s called and who’s singing it and on what label so he can look into buying it this week, he likes it so much, when the car in front of his on the ramp leading to New York Avenue, or maybe they’re already on New York, starts to slow, and he applies his brake a few quick times, the tap-tap-tap he knows to do so the brakes won’t lock, and his car suddenly spins and he doesn’t know what to do, turn the steering wheel into the spin, which he’s heard you’re supposed to do but it seems unnatural, or away from it, which his instincts tell him to do, so he just grips the wheel tight and yells, “Hold on, I can’t control it!” and the car spins all the way around and continues spinning a second round to the ramp railing and his wife’s screaming and the baby’s shrieking and the car slams into the railing on his side and stops, now facing cars from behind that are now coming toward him, the nearest one in his lane managing to stop two feet away, maybe one. It was ice he didn’t see, thought it was a shadow, didn’t even see that, just didn’t see anything on the pavement, maybe wasn’t paying attention because he was absorbed in the music, but later when he gets out to see what caused the spin and how bad the car’s damaged he sees that’s it, ice, big patch of it, five feet by five or almost, his door smashed so hard he couldn’t open it and had to climb over his wife to go out her side, and he thinks, Thank God we’re all right and everything was working for us once we started to spin, that the railing was near to stop us, that we didn’t spin the other way into oncoming traffic, that I did just hold on to the wheel tight and not try to correct the spin one way or the other, that the cars behind us were far enough away not to crash into us once we started spinning and then, when we were facing them, that they didn’t spin out of control when they braked, and so on, and says some of this through the window to calm his wife and daughter, but she’s just staring straight ahead, oblivious to everything, it seems, who knows what the hell she’s thinking, and Fanny’s gone from shrieking to crying.

HIS WIFE SAYS, “You know, Fanny’s standing in her crib and talking kind of funny and doing weird things as if she’s high,” and he goes in with her to look, and Fanny’s laughing but at nothing, it seems, and reaches out to pull his nose, and when he pushes her hand away she laughs giddily again, and he says, “Fanny, everything okay? What’s wrong, you feeling all right? I mean, you look all right and seem to be having a good time, much better than you did last night,” and his wife yells, “The aspirins!” and he says, “What?” and she yells, “The bottle!” and he looks where she’s pointing and sees an opened bottle under the crib and gets it and says, “Oh, my goodness, you think she took some? I must’ve left it here last night when I—” and she says, “How many were there last?” and he looks at the bottle and says, “I don’t know, I think a lot more than this,” and she says, “What do we do? She’s probably swallowed a whole bunch of them,” and he calls the pediatrician and her office says, “Take her to Emergency, but in the minute or two before or in the car try to make her throw up,” and gives several ways of doing it, and he tries and his wife tries and Fanny throws up, but nothing like chewed-up or dissolved aspirins comes out, and they get her in the car, in the backseat with his wife, Fanny still crying now because of the throwing up and what they did to make her do it, he driving with the flashers on and horn blaring most of the time so he can go through red lights, and he carries her into the hospital, nurses and aides put her on a gurney and rush her into the emergency room to pump out her stomach, and while they’re waiting outside the room he says things like “How could I have left the bottle there like that? I mean, I know why it happened and how. We had no children’s aspirins or Tylenol and we both thought it too late for me to drive around looking for a store open to buy some, or I thought so more than you though we both knew she needed something to bring down her fever, so I cut a regular aspirin in half, or even a little less than half, and pulverized it, and gave it to her on a spoon with sugar and water … but leaving the bottle there? On her dresser so close to the crib and no safety cap on it? I don’t even know if I screwed it closed, for Christ’s sake. How could I have been so thoughtless, so stupid, so everything?” and she says, “Shut up, shut up already, it’ll be all right, we got here in time. And if she really took too many she would have been sick to her stomach and thrown up long before she got so delirious, I’m sure of that,” and he says, “You don’t know,” and she says, “I know, I don’t know where but from someplace,” and a doctor comes out of the room and he says to him, “How is it, she’ll be all right, right?” and the doctor says, “What I don’t understand is why’d you ever leave aspirins around like that, and not even the children’s kind,” and he says, “I’m sorry, it was my fault, I was the one who suggested she take half an adult aspirin, gave it, and left the bottle there … but how’s she doing?” and the doctor says, “I don’t know if you realize this or not but she can die,” and his wife screams, and he says, “What are you talking about — you mean if we didn’t get here in time or had her vomit most of it up?” and the doctor says, “No, I’m sorry, but I mean now,” and goes back into the room, and he tries to follow and someone in the room stops him and says, “Please, we’re busy, this is crucial, you’re in the way,” and he makes a complete sweep of the room for Fanny but doesn’t see her past the three or four people working on her with their backs to him, and he goes outside and his wife’s in a chair weeping and he sits beside her and holds her hands and says, “If anything terrible happens I’ll die, I’ll die.” About fifteen minutes later the same doctor comes out and says, “Everything will be fine, parents. We got everything out and in fact there wasn’t that much in there that could have done too much damage. Probably the most painful and traumatic thing for her was having the tube stuck down her throat into her belly, but kids bounce back quickly with things like this though her throat will be sore, and you can take her home in an hour”—he looks at his watch—“yes, possibly even less,” and he says, “Thank you, thanks, but honestly, why the heck did you scare us like that, saying she could die?” and the doctor says, “At the time, based on the information you gave us, or the lack of accurate information, I thought it was the truth and I was angry, people like you — smart people, supposedly — leaving toxic substances around as if they were simply last night’s dried jellied toast,” and he says, “But it was an accident, a very stupid one but an accident,” and the doctor says, “Still — but all right, perhaps I went overboard in my reaction,” and walks away.

THEY BUY HER a sled for Christmas, take it to New York with them just in case it snows; they get about six to eight inches of it that morning and he goes to Riverside Drive and 116th Street with his two daughters to test the sled out and says to Fanny at the top of the fairly steep hill, “I think for the first couple of rides you should go on top of me to see how the steering works and other things,” and Josephine, his younger daughter, says, “I want to go too, but just with Daddy,” and Fanny says, “But it’s mine and I know how to do it — I’ve been on the same kind on an even bigger hill in Baltimore,” and he says, “You went down alone, last winter? Because up till today, perhaps, we haven’t had any snow there this year,” and she says, “With a friend. And I did it well and all the steering,” and he says, demonstrating, “So you know to turn it left if you want to go this way and right to go this way?” and she’s nodding, and he says, “It still feels tight, because it’s so new, so you’ll have to turn the bar hard … and there’s one big tree at the bottom, so that, of course, isn’t the direction you want to go,” and she says, “Of course not, Daddy, and I’ll never get that far anyway,” and he says, “You never know; most of the snow seems flattened down by all the other sleds and disks and cardboard people are using,” and she says, “I’m not going to steer to that tree. I’m only going where there are no trees, and straight,” and he says, “If you run into any trouble—” and she says, “I know, I know,” and he says, “Just listen; if a sled’s stopped right in front of you and you can’t steer out of the way in time, roll off, just roll off,” and she says, “How do you do that?” and he says, “By letting go of the steering bar and rolling off into the snow and making sure the rope’s not caught around any part of you and letting the sled go on without you,” and she says, “Suppose there’s a sled behind coming right at me after I roll off?” and he says, “There shouldn’t be; there should be lots of spacing between the sleds going downhill,” and she says, “Just suppose,” and he says, “Then you’re in trouble if you can’t jump out of the way,” and she says, “What if I jump out of the way in front of another fast sled?” and he says, “The chances of that also happening? Well …” and Josephine says, “Can’t I go with you?” and Fanny says, “No, first time I want it alone,” and he says, “So, have we worked everything out? Staying away, when you’re sledding down, from the people walking back up the hill with their sleds?” and she nods and he jiggles the steering bar back and forth to loosen it a little but it seems to stay the same, good enough for steering but not sudden sharp turns, puts the sled down and points the front of it to the clearing at the bottom of the hill; she says, “You still don’t have it going far enough away from that tree,” and points it even more to the left and gets on the sled on her stomach, says, “Don’t push me, I might be not ready and I don’t need any help; I can do it with my boots,” and he says, “My, you’re the professional sledder,” and she says, “I told you, I’ve done it before,” and Josephine says, “Have a nice ride,” and he says, “Maybe I should go to the bottom of the hill first, just in case,” and Fanny says, “Why?” and he says, “You might go faster than you think, past the clearing and into the little sidewalk, or walkway, or whatever it is there, and there’s a lamppost by it,” and she says, “Nobody so far has gone that far, and if I do go all the way to the lamppost I’ll be all slowed down,” and he says, “So, you might as well get going, for I want to have a chance too with Josephine. And remember—” and she says, “I know, bring the sled up myself and on the side, out of the way of sleds going down,” and he says, “Right,” and she says, “Goodbye,” and he says, “Wait’ll that man goes,” and the man to their right on his sled goes, and he says, “Give him about ten seconds … in fact, almost till he’s at the bottom … now it’s clear, he’ll be nowhere near you, and nobody else is going, so go on,” and she pushes herself off with her feet and starts down and picks up speed and is aimed straight for the clearing, nothing in her way, sled going faster than he thought it would with her forty to fifty pounds on it — must be a good sled, runners never used, so like ice sliding down ice — when it starts veering right and he yells, “Turn it slowly to the left, Fanny, turn it left!” but it continues going right and now it’s heading for that tree, as if being pulled to it, and he yells, “Fanny, turn the sled left or roll off — roll off, Fanny, roll, roll!” and she goes into the tree — he’s sure her head hit it first — and is thrown off, and he screams and runs down the hill and keeps yelling, “Oh, no, oh, my God, no!” and Josephine’s somewhere behind him shouting, “Fanny! Daddy!” and he reaches the tree, she’s on her back, doesn’t seem to be moving, he thinks, Oh, Jesus, her fucking head, her head! and gets on his knees, her eyes are open, looking at the sky, not at him, and he says, “Fanny, my darling, Fanny, it’s Daddy,” and lifts her head up softly, she’s bleeding a little from just above her eye, and he says, “Oh, my poor dear,” and her eyes move to him and she says, “I couldn’t roll off; I was too afraid to; I didn’t know how; I’m sorry,” and he says, “We got to get you up the hill; a doctor, a hospital,” and she says, “No, I think I’ll be okay,” and he says, “I’ll carry you, or get some people to help me,” and puts his arms under her shoulders and knees, and she says, “Are you picking me up? No, don’t, Daddy, I just need to rest here; all I feel is dizzy,” and he says, “You’re really not feeling worse than that? No big headaches, pressure, something hurting terribly? Because I should do something,” and she says, “I didn’t hit the tree that hard, or didn’t feel I did,” and he says, “Let me at least do this for you, to keep down the swelling,” because a welt’s forming around her eye, and wipes the cut with his hanky, no new blood comes out, and puts snow around her eye and on the cut, and she screams and says, “Snow’s cold and I’m getting wet, my face!” and he says, “Just stay with it a minute, that’s all it’ll take,” and a few people are around them now, and every so often a sled zips past or stops with a sudden directional shift just a few feet from them, and he says, “This damn tree, I don’t know how it happened. It’s as if there was a magnet or some other kind of powerful attractor that pulled her right to it from the opposite direction or whatever she was trying to do to get away from it. I feel like chopping it down,” and a man says, “She looks okay, talking, lucid, no bleeding from the nose or ears; those are good signs. Want me to help you carry her out of the park?” and she says, “I can walk by myself, but my sled—” and he says, “The back’s bashed, I don’t know why, you hit it from the front, but we’ll get it fixed,” and she says, “When?” and tries to get up, and he and the man help her stand and she starts walking and he’s holding snow to her eye till she pushes his hand away; has the sled under his other arm and says, “Jesus, what a trooper — I’d sure let someone carry me if I’d just been hurt, but no, not her,” and they trudge up the hill where Josephine, near the top, hands over her mouth, seems to be staring at them harriedly. “It’s gonna be all right,” he yells out, “she’s gonna be okay. She’s a big brave girl, hurt but in much better shape than your careless lunkhead daddy first thought.”

IN THE CAR, heading for kindergarten, Fanny seated beside him with her lunch box and a tiny flexible Disney character on her lap, “Now we’re on the peaks of Tunisia, making for the wee seaweed-green beach,” and she says, “What do you mean? It’s freezing today,” and he says, “Imagination, you gotta try using it,” and she says, “Are we late for school?” and he says, “We’re going down a big hill, that’s all, and on time, and after coasting on the crest of it, or cresting on the coast of it — okay, the first one, you like accuracy, one tap for the brake, two taps for a little squeeze,” and taps her shoulder twice, a private signal between them, and she smiles and squeezes his arm, and he says, “What a babe,” when he realizes the brake tap didn’t slow the car any, and he taps it again, thinking maybe the first tap was too light, and it’s not slowing but going faster, and he jams his foot down and nothing happens, and he says, “Oh, shit, the brakes, they’re not working, what do I do?” and she screams and he yells, “Put your foot down — your voice — shut up!” and thinks, Emergency brake, and puts his foot on it and the car screeches and starts stopping, and he thinks, Curb, and steers the car right and goes over the curb — when he hoped it might stop the front wheels — and into the bushes and through about twenty feet of them, car slowing all the time, before a thin tree stops it. He looks at her. She’s crying but all right, no cuts or blood, window’s intact, no broken glass, and he says, “You didn’t bang your head or any part when we were stopping, did you?” and she shakes her head, and he says, “Oh, God, now I can cry too,” and starts crying and continues to for a minute or more, hands over his face, when she taps his shoulder and he doesn’t respond and she squeezes his arm twice and he thinks, The signal? and looks up, thinking what a crazy time for her to want to play their game, for when she squeezes him first he’s supposed to tap his foot on something twice as many times as she squeezed him — he doesn’t know how they came to that ratio, maybe their heights — and she says, “It’s over, Daddy, car’s stopped. If it won’t work now, can you walk me to school? I’ll be late,” and he says, “The engine,” and turns it off and has her come out his door because hers is blocked by bushes.

HIS WIFE’S GIVING her a bath, he takes pictures of the two of them in the tub; then she says, “I’d like to shampoo but not in the tub with her; can you look after her till I come back or, if she wants to, just get her out and dry her?” and he puts down the camera, sits on the tub ledge, and his wife steps out, dries herself, and goes down the hallway to the other bathroom, and he says to Fanny, “Mommy wash you good or are you just in here for playing?” and she says, “Come in to play with me,” and he says, “I’d have to take off my clothes and I don’t want to. Anyway, I don’t like going into dirty water. I like for my water to start out clean and then for me to dirty it. Or if I’m giving you a bath but am in the tub with you from the beginning, then for us to make it dirty and soapy together,” when the phone rings, he yells “Sally, you in the shower yet?” and she says, “I’m on the toilet; let it ring,” and he thinks how he hates to let a phone ring — who knows who it can be, something about his mother or something important concerning work? — when there’s a big splash behind him — he’s been facing the door since the phone rang — and he turns around and she’s under the water, only her feet above it, and he shoves his hands in, water’s murky, he can’t see her, and quickly feels around and gets her under the arms and jerks her out and holds her up so he can see her face, and her head’s slumped and her face has the look of a drowned person, or what he’d think would be one, water running out of her mouth and nose, the eyes looking lifeless, and he holds her upside down over his shoulder and slaps her back and she coughs and he slaps it again and says, “Cough, cough some more,” and she chokes and he holds her right-end-up in front of him again and she spits more water out and he says, “You okay? Speak to me,” and the shower in the other bathroom’s going and she starts screaming and he says, “Jesus, you gave me a scare, what were you doing? Shh, shh, it’s all right, you’ll be okay now,” and hugs her to his chest till she’s only sobbing quietly. “And please, sweetheart, don’t tell your mother”—sitting her on the toilet seat cover and drying her body with a towel—“if you do she’ll never want to leave you alone with me anymore; you hear me, you hear?” and she nods, and he dries as much of her hair as he can and powders her and puts her bathrobe on her, she sobbing all the time. “What’s the matter?” his wife says, standing at the door, hair wrapped in a towel. “And how’d you get your clothes so wet?” and he says, “Splashing … Fanny. And boy, that was a speedy shampoo. How’d you do it so fast?” and she says, “Was it faster than usual? Didn’t realize. I guess I didn’t think you’d want to be left with her so long; it can be boring if you’re not in there splashing with her. Why’s she crying? What’s wrong, dearest?” and he says, “Maybe she was in there too long and the water got cold, or the air was when she got out,” and lifts the rubber disk off the tub drain — regular stopper doesn’t work — and the water goes. “I fell in,” Fanny says to her, and he says, “Oh, just a little, and maybe that’s what the crying is, but I always had her hand.”

HE’S WAITING FOR the light to change on Amsterdam, cars roaring north past him, on his way to see his mother, got off the bus on Broadway, unfolded the stroller, and strapped Fanny in; now she’s sleeping peacefully, head to one side, hair spilled over her face and both hands holding a shaggy stuffed animal, when a sudden breeze moves the stroller a little and he grabs the right cane-shaped handle with one hand and then a terrific wind and he’s about to grab the other handle when the stroller’s lifted a few inches off the ground and he lunges at it and misses and it’s blown into the avenue and lands on its wheels a few feet away and starts rolling farther into the avenue as he runs after it and he grabs one of the handles and looks around, he’s about ten feet into the avenue and no cars are near him and he pulls the stroller back to the sidewalk, cars and trucks going past fast and a couple of them honking at him no doubt, stupid man, taking a kid’s life in his hands like that, why doesn’t he wait till the light’s green before crossing? He clutches the handles with both hands, backs up to a store window, can’t believe it, where’d such a wind come from, how could it be so strong to lift a stroller with a kid in it? It means he can’t let go of the stroller for a second when he’s outside, or not till he’s absolutely sure the air’s calm and only when she’s about ten to fifteen pounds heavier, but never on the street no matter how heavy she is, never. It could have rolled farther and would certainly have been hit by a car or truck and that would have been it, she would have been mangled and crushed, all her bones broken, the worst that he could think of and then some, head split open, limbs torn off and carried a few hundred feet, or maybe the stroller, with her strapped in it, carried or dragged a block before the car stopped if it stopped, and then other cars running over it and maybe even dragging the torn-off parts. Light’s green but he stands there clutching the handles, shaking; wind’s died down to nothing, or nothing he can feel, maybe it’s because of where he’s standing, up against a building, but maybe he’s become numb, maybe that’s it, from what just happened, but get off this damn Amsterdam, he thinks, it’s a wind tunnel here, calm now, you think you’re free of it and can push your stroller where you please, when it can suddenly pick up with even worse force than before, and he starts to cross but an approaching truck gives him the long horn and when he looks across the street at the traffic light he sees he’s walking against it, “And with your kid,” the driver yells out the window, “you fucking idiot!” He gets back to the sidewalk and waits till the light’s green, always holding the handles tight. Then he starts across, eyes on the light and street, freezes when a car enters the avenue from the side street, but it’s going to let him pass, he can make out a hand inside waving him on, and he mouths his thanks and runs across to the sidewalk and up the curb cut and looks at her, but she’s slept through the whole thing, same position, hair blown over her forehead a different way, but not a peep.

SITTING AT HIS desk and looking out the bedroom window, just really staring into space to help him think how he wants to word something he’s writing, when he sees her riding her bike onto the road from their driveway, and he yells, “Fanny! Fanny!”—regular windows and storm ones are closed but he yelled so loud she still might have heard him — and stands, and she keeps riding and now he can’t see her because of the bushes and trees, and a car honks and then tires screech and he runs out of the bedroom for the door — it could have been one car honking and another coming the other way or behind it, screeching — and the living room door, not the kitchen one he usually uses because it opens onto the carport and is closest to the driveway — but no bang, he thinks, didn’t hear one or a crash or scream so maybe she’s okay — and gets out of the house and runs down the few feet of grass and across the little footbridge separating the road from their property and a woman’s standing in front of a car in the middle of the far lane of the road, only car there and bike’s not, and he yells, “Where is she?” from about thirty feet away, thinking, Was she hit clear into the bushes or the creek? or she could be under the car or back wheels, bike too, though the woman’s expression isn’t troubled or horrified enough for that, and the woman says, “The poor dear, I nearly hit her. She came out of nowhere — I was lucky to have good brakes — and she got so frightened she ran her bike up that hill”—pointing to his driveway—“didn’t even jump back on it. You know her?” and he says, “She’s my goddamn accident-prone daughter — she knows never to bike onto Charrenton alone, she knows it … so where are you, you damn brat?”—looking around — and the woman says, “Please don’t blame her. I’m sure after that scare she’ll never do it again,” and he says, “Oh, you don’t know her — she’s always taking chances, thinks she knows better, always getting into near misses. Fanny! Fanny, goddammit, come back here! You’ve caused this woman and me some great grief, so I want you to apologize,” and the woman says, “Really, it isn’t necessary for me. And it wouldn’t be the right time for it. She’s probably cowering in seclusion like a scared rabbit. Just see to her, sir, I’m fine.” She left her bike leaning against a carport post; she’s not in the house and doesn’t come home for two hours. He goes out looking for her in the car a couple of times: nearby market, which he’s biked or walked to with her, homes of her best friends in the area. When she walks through the door he says, “Jesus, where the hell you been? And do you know what you did to that lady this afternoon?” and she says, “What lady? The one whose car almost hit me because I biked in front of her? I’m sorry,” and he says, “A heart attack you almost gave her — no warning — not to say why you did it, riding alone there, and so dangerously, when you knew you shouldn’t. But okay, I don’t think I have to say any more about it, you know not to do it again,” and she says yes. “Can I be excused now?” and he says, “Sure, go on,” and she starts for her room, and he says, “Wait a second, where were you the last two hours?” and she says, “Walking around — at the drugstore for a while — I was safe and dressed warm,” and he says, “Anyway, I don’t think you should be let off so easily, so I’m going to dock your allowance this week,” and she says, “What’s that mean: I won’t get it?” and he says, “That’s right,” and she says, “You’re not being fair, and I don’t care,” and storms into her room and slams the door. “Fanny, come back here. I’m not kidding, you either come back and apologize for what you just said and did or it’s going to be two weeks you’re docked, even three, and no bike riding for that time either,” but she doesn’t come. “All right, if you hear me, that’s it. The bike riding, I don’t know about, if you stay off Charrenton, but I’m not changing my mind about the allowance — three weeks.” Later he talks it over with his wife, how frightened he was. “Honestly, when I saw her biking onto the road and heard those car honks and tires, I thought she was going to get creamed,” and she says, “You were right the way you first approached it — the scare punished her plenty — so don’t make any more demands on her for it and without any fuss Saturday give her her regular allowance,” and he says, “No way, absolutely not, maybe a two weeks’ docking instead of three, but that’s as far as I’m giving in or else my word will mean nothing,” but on Saturday, when he’s driving her to a swimming lesson and she’s in the front seat, she says, “Excuse me, but can I have my allowance now?” and he says, “In the car, while I’m driving?” and she says, “Sorry, then when we get there?” and he says, “No, I can get it,” and presses the catch to open the compartment under the dashboard, gets three dollars out of it, and gives them to her, though all the time remembering what he swore to her the other day and also later told his wife he absolutely wouldn’t do.

POPSICLE STICKS to her tongue; she gags, points to it; he says, “You can’t get it off?” and she shakes her head, and he says, “Pull gently, not hard, you don’t want to rip something,” and she tries but it doesn’t come off, and he says, “Wiggle it a little,” and she shakes her head and tears are welling and she looks panicky and is gagging again, and he says, “Jesus, what do I do?” and, to the vendor who sold it from a cart in the park, “What do you do in a situation like this?” and the man looks as if he doesn’t understand, and Gould points to her and says, “Her tongue, the Popsicle’s stuck to her tongue and she can’t get it off,” and the man says, “Dry ice, the dry ice,” and raises his arms as if he doesn’t know what to do either; then, after pointing to his own tongue and then inside his mouth, speaks a foreign language Gould’s never heard before or can’t place, and he says, “Speak English, English, she’s gagging … choking,” and makes choking sounds and points to her, and the man says, “No can, don’t know, first time, ice cream, that’s all … police, maybe police, go to police,” and Fanny’s gagging and crying and looks at him as if to say, Do something, Daddy, or I’ll die, and he thinks she could choke to death if he doesn’t get it off her tongue in the next minute, and the only way he can think of is to pull if not rip it off and that’ll hurt like hell for her, and puts his fingers on her hand that’s holding the stick; she screams in pain, and he says, “Oh, God, what else can I do, sweetheart?” and slides her fingers off the stick, grabs the Popsicle part, and pulls it off her tongue and quickly throws it on the grass. Part of the skin or whatever it is of the tongue came off with it, and she’s screaming loud as he’s ever heard her, and he gets on his knees and holds her and says, “It’s all right now, darling, it’s off, it’s off,” and pats her lips with his hanky where some blood’s dribbling out, and a woman passing by says, “What happened to the little darling, she fall?” and he says, “She got a Popsicle stuck to her tongue — the dry ice, it must’ve been — but was gagging and I had to pull it off and some skin came with it,” pointing to where he threw it, and the woman says, “You should have put warm water on the Popsicle, that would have dissolved the ice,” and he says, “Where would I get the water? I’d have to walk her out of the park to Columbus, and that’s a good ten minutes from here and she could’ve choked in that time. But now what do I do about the skin and her tongue?” patting her lips again, and the woman says, “There’s a refreshment gazebo right down this path; they sell coffee, so they must have warm water. But the best thing for it now — and you’ll think me mad but it’s what I’d do for one of mine; after all, what you first want to do is get rid of her pain — is have her lick a Popsicle or frozen fruit bar, but one free of dry ice. That’ll anesthetize it,” and he says, “Which is better?” and she says, “Either, though plain ice, if he has it, would be simpler and, probably for her sake, best,” and he asks the man, “You have any regular ice?” and the man shakes his head he doesn’t understand, and he says, “Ice, like in a drink,” and curls his hand as if he’s holding a glass and then makes as if he’s drinking from it, “Ice, ice, as in a glass with soda,” and the man says, “No that ice, only dry,” and he asks him for a fruit bar, and the man says, “What kind?” and he says, “Any,” looks at the pictures of the flavors on the stand and says, “Lemon,” and pulls out his wallet to pay for it — the man waves no with his hands — wipes the fruit bar on his shirt till all the white icelike part is off, blows on it till the side he’s blowing on and wants her to put her tongue to looks wet, and says to her, “Here, touch this to the sore part of your tongue, sweetheart…. Fanny, calm down a moment, you have to stop crying — I know how much it hurts but both this woman and I and the man here think it’ll make your tongue feel better and take away the pain,” and holds it up to her mouth and she knocks it out of his hand and resumes screaming.

HE’S LET INTO his in-laws’ apartment (always the same way: one of them looks through the peephole, then unlocks three or four locks and unfastens the bolt and chain), says, “So, how’d it go?” and his father-in-law says, “We had a terrific time together, didn’t we? … Fanny? Where is she? She was just behind me, wanted to greet you at the door. Fanny, come, please, your father’s here.… Well, this is a mystery,” and Gould looks around and down the narrow side hall to the kitchen and sees the window’s half open and says, “Excuse me, but are all the windows opened high like that? I thought I asked you only to open them on top and out of her reach and close them at the bottom to a few inches,” and his father-in-law says, “Oh, well,” and looks sheepish about it, “from now on we will; I can understand your concern,” and Gould runs around the apartment; his mother-in-law’s office window is open a foot, bedroom window’s closed, but the dining room windows are open at the bottom a foot and a half. “Fanny, no jokes on me now, will you please come out?” and his father-in-law says, “Don’t worry, she didn’t fall out; she’s a smart girl, I’m sure she’s only hiding,” and Gould runs to the living room, only room left in the apartment — except for the two bathrooms and there the windows are small, tough to raise, and pretty high, though she could step on the toilet seats to reach them — and sees her behind the sheer floor-length curtain climbing up to a window opened about two feet, one knee on the sill, other foot tangled in the end of the curtain but leaving the floor, and he thinks, I’ll never reach her in time, and doesn’t know if this’ll stop her or scare her where she’ll fall forward instead of back but shouts, “Fanny, come down!” and she stops in mid-position and turns her head to him and smiles, and he says, walking to her, “The window’s open, my darling, don’t you see that? You know what Daddy’s said about that. To stay away from open windows, never climb up to them, and if you see one in an apartment or house you’re in, to ask an older person to shut it. So come away from it immediately — get down, right now!” and she steps down, seems as if she’s about to cry, and he says, “No, don’t cry, it isn’t your fault and I’m not angry,” and takes her hands, kisses them, and presses her face to his belly, and says to his father-in-law, “Jesus, Phil, why do I even bother? Listen, please, and no offense — but you got to, you got to, for you saw what she can do,” and Phil says, “I’m truly sorry, it got hot; I thought it was too early in the spring to use the air conditioners and we hadn’t had them serviced yet this year…. I didn’t think what I was doing, that’s all — never again,” and she looks up at Gould and says, “Are you mad at Grandpa?” and he says, “No, why would I be? You don’t get mad at people older than you — no, that’s not true — but your grandpa’s the nicest guy in the world, much nicer than me, so I’d never get mad at him,” and squeezes Phil’s shoulder.

SWIVELS AROUND, SHE’S not there, looks around and there are hundreds of people, kids and adults, woman carrying two small dogs, walking all around him, but he doesn’t see her, scans the area again; where the hell could she be? “Dammit,” he says, “doesn’t she know better?” Dashes into the store they just came out of and quickly looks around—“Anything I can do for you, sir?”—and he says, “My girl, this high,” and puts out his hand to show how tall, “blondish hair … well, blond, almost bright blond, and I was just in here with her and thought she came out with me,” and the man says, “Oh, they can get away from you very fast, can’t they,” and he says, “Yes, but did you see her, long hair hanging past her shoulders — combed down, kind of wavy — and about that high”—his hand out again—“and very pretty?” and the man says, “I don’t remember you from before, did I take care of you?” and he says, “No, we were just browsing; in fact, she dragged me in,” and looks around the store again, man’s saying something to him, but he runs out and stands about twenty feet in front of the store and starting from the last store to his left before the escalators makes a complete sweep of the area and then, a little faster, sweeps back again, then turns around and does the same kind of sweep of all the stores there and the little public rest section, thinking, What the fuck, where is she? Goddamn kid, why’s she always running off like this? Man, when I find her I’ll really let her have it! and goes inside the first store to the left of the one he was just in, a pipe and cigar shop, though he doesn’t think she’d ever go there — the tobacco smells, but he’s being thorough — looks quickly around and then goes into the next three stores to the left and then the stores to the right of the one they were in, five of them — in a large one, with lots of aisles, dresses, and displays concealing most of the place, he says loudly, “Fanny, are you there? Fanny?”—and then outside in the public walking area he thinks, How far could she have wandered off? Maybe some guy grabbed or enticed her and is putting her into his car now, or just now taking her out of one of the ground-floor doors and walking with her to his car in the lot, or just approaching one of those doors and walking her somewhere, maybe to some out-of-the-way spot like where the garbage trucks pick up most of the refuse here, when he remembers the large square pool they passed in the center of the mall under the glass rotunda at the end of the long corridor they came in; she wanted to stop there and look at the fish in it, and he said, “Later, I came in for something, first we do the shopping; then if we have time we do the snacking and fun,” and runs to it, about three hundred feet away, keeping an eye out for her as he runs, and she’s sitting on a little wall around the pool and looking at the water, probably the fish inside, and walks the rest of the way to her. Jesus, does she ever get to me sometimes, he thinks, and says, “Fanny,” and she continues looking at the pool, hands folded on top of her purse on her lap — he forgot the purse, which he also would have mentioned to the man in his description of her — and he says, “Fanny, listen,” and she turns her head to him and says, “The fishies are so big here, can we take one of them home?” “From here? To home?” He sits beside her; what’s he going to do, teach her another lesson? He can talk about it in the car. “Don’t wander off. You wander off and it scares me. You don’t understand what can happen to you. You can be stolen. I hate telling you that, but you can. You’re beautiful, and little girls and boys are sometimes stolen by horrible men, and the more beautiful ones the most.” He said that to her once and she said, “By women too. At school I learned that,” and he said, “Your teacher told you?” and she said, “A policeman at assembly came in,” and he said, “So, he’s right,” and she said, “The policeman was a woman with a gun,” and he said, “Then she’s a policewoman, and she was right, but kids are stolen mostly by men.” So he sits with her and says, “Not that we can take one — the mall owns them all and we’d get stopped by a guard and maybe fined lots of money and perhaps even barred for life; the last thing I said’s an exaggeration — but which fish do you like best and would take home if you could?” and she says, “A big orange and black one with stripes; it was here before but now it’s gone.”

SITTING IN THE enclosed patio of a restaurant in New York having lunch with a friend. Fanny’s in her stroller beside him, was sleeping while he and the friend ordered, but now stretches her arms up to him, wants to be unstrapped, maybe changed or just held, but taken out. Hears a noise from the street, something rumbling, getting louder, sounding as if it’s rolling around loose inside the container of a truck. His friend’s sipping a beer, eyes closed dreamily. “What’s that?” and his friend opens his eyes and says, “Wha’? Talking to me?” and he says, “That noise, don’t you hear it?” and his friend shuts his eyes and makes a pretense of listening a couple of seconds and says, “Noise?” People on the sidewalk by the patio are now looking up Columbus where the noise and traffic are coming from. Then one of them points and shouts, and they all run in different directions on the sidewalk; one man makes a move to bolt into the street and then jumps behind a car, and Gould stands and sees in the street about a hundred feet away a wooden cable spool, must be six to seven feet high, rolling down the street at an angle straight for the cars parked adjacent to the patio. Must have fallen off the back of a truck and landed upright and started rolling and picked up momentum, and now it’s heading for the one free parking space, between two cars, and their window table. He glances at Fanny — she’s still sitting up with her arms out, looking as though she’s hearing the noise and is wondering what it is — and he yells to his friend, who’s back to sipping his beer with his eyes closed, “Watch out — duck!” and throws himself on Fanny, knocking her stroller over but covering her, and listens for glass to smash but is later told by his friend — who said, “I never moved, didn’t budge, figured if I’m about to die, I’ll die, so no use fighting it, though I did keep my eyes open to see my own death, if that’s what happened”—that the spool jumped the curb and hit dead center a thin parking signpost on the sidewalk and somehow didn’t knock it down or roll over it and keep coming but dropped flat on its side and wobbled, the way an ordinary thread spool would, before stopping. How come nothing like this ever happened to Josephine? Why always Fanny? There was also the time she was in her car seat in back of their car and his wife didn’t engage the emergency brake far enough when she parked, and the car started rolling backward after his wife got out of the driver’s seat, and she screamed and he looked out the living room window of the house they were living in at the time and the car started down the steep hill and could have gone maybe all the way down till it crashed but was stopped about twenty feet away by the front bumper of the one car parked anywhere near their home on that side of the street. Josephine’s fallen on thin ice she was skating on but didn’t crack it, ran into a door or a wall a few times and bumped her head and saw stars but never cut it, fell off a chair arm she was sitting on and sprained her hand, if it was even that; he took her to Emergency (didn’t want to, since didn’t think it serious enough, and only did it because his wife and a doctor friend over the phone thought it the safest thing to do), and they waited for four hours and her hand was x-rayed and he was told it wasn’t broken and probably not even sprained and she was given a sling to wear a day or two but, because she liked the attention she was getting, wore it for more than a week; when she was around five and had only till then swum by herself a few feet at a time she suddenly started swimming to the deep end of the pool, and he yelled, “Josie, stop right there!” but she kept swimming and he thought, Maybe she can do it, and swam beside her and she did the doggy paddle all the way and when she reached the other end and held on to the edge of the pool and was panting he said, “Fantastic, who knew you were such a great swimmer, the entire length of a long pool, congratulations, but from now on—” and she started to swim back to the shallow end, and he said, “Stop, that’s enough, both lengths are too much, you’re exhausted from the first one; I was just going to say that from now on you wait for Mommy or me before you try another swim like that,” but she kept swimming and he swam beside her and she made it without any help from him. But that’s about as close as it got to a real accident or mishap with her in her first eight years, and nothing he or his wife did ever put her in danger. He doesn’t understand it.