Long Made Short

BATTERED HEAD

He bangs his head against something when he’s exercising. He sees light, feels blood, goes into the bathroom — all this was done in the dark, just a little moonlight — turns on the light there and sees the cut. “How could I have been so stupid?” he thinks. “Unfamiliar house; we were here last summer for a month but our first night in it this one; why didn’t I turn on the lights?” He was exercising in the dining room, which has the stairway in it, and his daughter was sleeping or falling asleep upstairs with her door open because she was afraid to sleep with it closed and he didn’t want the light to wake her. He already has a paper towel to the cut, looks at it and at the cut in the mirror, still bleeding, presses harder, thinks he should get an ice pack on it to keep down the swelling, goes into the dining room to get to the kitchen but stops to see what he banged his head on. Stands on the spot where he thinks he was exercising. Must have been one of those two spindles or stems or whatever they are — just the top poles of the back of the dinner table chair on his left, that he hit his head on. The exercise was where he puts his hands on his hips — no, clasps them behind his neck and touches his left knee with his left elbow and then his right knee with his right elbow and does that ten times. It’s the first of a series of exercises he devised for himself years ago and has been doing every morning or late evening or sometimes at his office in the afternoon, if he has about ten minutes and the door’s closed and he hasn’t done it that morning and prefers getting it over with rather than doing it that night. He was only doing the first movement of the exercise when he banged his head. The cut seems dry, and he takes off the towel. Still bleeding, and now hurts, and he folds the towel over, presses a clean part to his head and goes to the bathroom for last year’s aspirins. This year’s he hasn’t unpacked yet.

Next morning his daughter says “Where’d you get that?” and he says “If I told you I got it exercising last night, you’d say I must have been drunk.” “Huh?” and he says “What I’m saying is I did get it exercising — doing this, which I won’t be able to do for a while with this head,” and shows her. “Oh Jesus, that hurt, and it’s still bleeding, I see, and I wasn’t drunk when I got it, sweetie. I was just unfamiliar with the terrain — this room, so what I thought was air was a chair, no po-tree intended.” She says “Well it looks ugly and you should put a Band-Aid on it,” and he thinks “She’ll be ashamed of it if I take her to camp as is, and she’ll be right.”

At camp the counselor he leaves her with says “What happened there?” pointing to the Band-Aid and Mercurochrome stain around it, and he says “If I told you I banged up my head exercising, you’d say,” but because his daughter’s there he should change the line, “that I’m either drunk saying that or was drunk when I got it. But I’m not, wasn’t not — either, neither. I got it in the most paradoxical way possible — like jogging, I mean dying of a heart attack jogging, you know what I mean?” and she nods, and he thinks she doesn’t know or has stopped listening. He should know whom he’s talking to, not go over or under or try to ram through their heads. And maybe his head’s been affected by the blow worse than he knows.

Says good-by to his daughter, kisses her lips, says he’ll be here 3:30 promptly or even a quarter hour before, “since all the campers do the last fifteen minutes is hang around in the sun waiting to be picked up. We’ll stop at the Hillside View Diner for a snack on the way home. You’ll have fun here, meet lots of girls. Don’t forget to take sailing, if you want, as your main morning activity for the month. I want her to,” he says to the counselor, “because I want her to teach me everything she learns.” “And we’ll try to teach her everything we know.” His daughter never says a word. Didn’t want to come. Said yesterday during the drive up “I’m not going to camp, just so you know.” Said it a few days ago, weeks ago, in February when he was filling out the application: “You say your money’s so hard-earned? Well I don’t care if you waste it and I won’t be guilty if you don’t get a refund.” She pulls her head away when he tries kissing the top. He says “Well, good-by, my dearie,” and walks to the car, turns around when he gets to it. She’s staring sadly at him, shoulders folded in, face saying “How can you leave me here?” Her glasses make her look even sadder. He knows the feeling. Painfully shy — they said it about him, he says it about her, but she’s even more that way than he was. The counselor sees her staring, puts her arm around her and walks her over to a group of girls, all with eyeglasses, and introduces her. They each say hello to her and resume their hand-slapping counting game. The counselor has a volleyball-size ball under her arm, throws it to one of the girls; the girl catches it, looks around what to do with it and the counselor says “Toss it to Debbie — the new girl.” “Here, Debbie, catch.” Deborah shakes her head, steps back, looks at him. “Play, play,” he mouths, and puts his hands up as if catching the ball, then throwing it forward and then from under his legs. She looks away, at no one now. Doesn’t like to play ball. Thinks she’s an awful athlete and clumsy runner. Likes reading books. Has always been tops in school. Likes to paint, draw, sculpt in clay, write stories and plays, make things. She has one good friend in the city; they don’t even see each other that much. She’s too shy to ask her over; waits till the friend asks if she can come over. He loves it when she’s having fun with another kid, running around with her, laughing, confiding, sitting on the same couch reading, being wild, playing games, but it’s so rare. What have we done to her? What’s he done, he means, since he wanted and got custody of her.

Leaves, works at home, couple of times his head aches and he takes aspirins and rests on the bed, every so often thinks he’s doing the wrong thing by forcing her to go to camp, “but then I want to work during the day so what am I supposed to do?” Intends getting back at 3:15 but wants to finish a page he worked on all day, so doesn’t get there till quarter of, and the roads were clear all the way. “Sorry I’m late; traffic; one Maine driver after the other in front of me. How was it?” “My lunch was almost boiling. You left it in the sun.” “Sweetheart, I left your bag in the shade behind a rock but the sun’s direction must have changed. Put it where you want next time. And sailing?” “We didn’t go out. Water was too choppy. Instead we played these rough games. Like red rover, which you can break your arm doing and which I think lots of them wanted to do, yours and their own. I sat out after a minute. I’m not going to make any friends or have a good time here. They all know one another from school and around. I’m the only one from the city.” “There must be more. Have you checked?” “No, but I’ve heard. I’m not going to camp tomorrow.” “You have to give it a try. I told you: after a week or so, if you still have some major grievances about it, we’ll have a serious discussion about your continuing it.” She sulks in the car. A counselor said good-by. A girl waved to her when they drove off. “Who was that girl who waved before?” he says. “She seemed to like you, and all the counselors too.” “I don’t know. She didn’t swim either, so we sat next to each other at the lake.” “Why didn’t you swim?” “I felt cold. And there are bloodsuckers in the water.” “Don’t worry about those. Chances are one in a thousand one will get on you, and if it does, little touch with a cigarette or sprinkle of salt and it falls off dead.” “Last summer a boy got one on his leg and it bled down to the ground.” “That’s the water mixing with the blood, making it seem like much more. But that girl before. Just by the way she waved, I’d say she wanted to be your friend.” “You can’t tell by one look. And she only talked about stupid TV shows you’d never let me watch and what a fun time next week’s Pirate’s Day is going to be. She’s like most of them here and last year. They’re nice but we don’t like the same things.” “Give them a chance. She might have brought up those shows just to—” But she’s turned away, doesn’t want to hear anything he says.

Next morning she screams when he tells her to get in the car to go to camp, cries when he leaves her, won’t look at him when he picks her up or do anything later but complain to him at home. Same thing the next two days but worse. It’s the freezing lake water, rough games, competitive sports, smelly outhouses, baby stuff they do in arts and crafts, a sort of open shed the girls have to undress in and which the boys are always peeking into, no drinking water anywhere so you have to lug around your heavy thermos everyplace or die of thirst, scavenger hunts that take hours in the woods or hot sun and turn out to mean nothing — either they disqualify half the things you find or the prize is a piece of old bubble gum.

She’s sullen most of the weekend. He works a couple of hours both mornings but they do a few things after that — go to the ocean, eat in a restaurant, climb halfway up a big hill but what the locals call a mountain, pick blueberries that aren’t ready yet, but he can tell that camp on Monday’s usually on her mind. “All right,” he says at dinner Sunday night, “list everything that’s good and bad about camp, but be honest. First of all, from what I can see the girls are darn nice. One of them — Laurie or Lauren, I think — when we got to camp late Friday, ran up to you and said ‘Debbie, where were you? I missed you. I thought you weren’t coming today, and then you’d have missed the field trip to Goose Cove,’ and took your hand and you both walked happily away.” “I wasn’t happy. And except for the rougher boys, it’s not the kids at all.” She enumerates what she hates most about camp. When she gets to “Eight, the mosquitoes, I get so many bites, I itch all day even with the scallion you rub on,” he says “Listen, enough already, will you? You’re just trying to fortify your argument with anything you can think against camp. Next it’ll be horse flies, then poison ivy, then poisonous snakes you hear are around, though I don’t think there are any in all of Maine. I’m sorry, sweetie, but after everything you’ve said so far, I don’t buy your argument.” Tears appear; “I hate you, Daddy,” and she runs outside, minute later the kitchen door slams and she runs to her room. “All I’m asking,” he shouts, “is for you to give it another week and then decide; what the heck’s that?” Then thinks: How’s he supposed to take what she said to him? She was never that harsh before. Well, just a kid her age having a tantrum, not getting what she wants, thinking he’s not being completely fair, and maybe he isn’t, but the hell with it. Later he’ll call her in for dessert, act as if nothing happened, and she’ll be fine, or almost, and probably even apologize without his prompting.

Calls her later and she doesn’t come. Goes to her room. She’s in bed, asleep or pretending. “Deborah, if you want to continue with the numbers where you left off, we can; I won’t butt in till you’re finished. I mean, no butting in; say what you want, and I’ll listen and consider it seriously tonight.” No response. Takes her glasses off, feels around under the covers for a book but doesn’t find any, she didn’t brush her teeth or get in her pajamas but he’s not going to start putting them on her — hasn’t for a couple of years at least — kisses her, turns the night light on and shuts off the overhead.

She gets in his bed around three. “What do you think you’re doing?” “I can’t sleep, and my pillow’s all wet.” “What are you, sweating?” “No.” “Just turn it over.” “Please, Dada.” He doesn’t like her sleeping with him but her voice is so sad, and after what happened before, so he says okay, “Tonight only, now go to sleep without another word.” He gets out of bed. “Where are you going?” “The bathroom,” and he takes his T-shirt and underpants with him and puts them on outside the room.

Morning, she’s snuggled up to him. He gets out of bed, does his exercises in the living room, and later when he wakes her she says “Please don’t send me to camp today.” “Oh come on now.” “Please, I only want to stay home with you, and I promise not to be a bother.” “Okay, today will be the exceptional day off, but you have to leave me the entire morning free, take care of your own needs, all that stuff, and then if I want the afternoon to work to at least the time I would have left to pick you up at camp, that too.” She reads, draws, sets up her easel outside and paints, swings on the swing set, jumps rope, goes down the road several times for mail and when she gets it — he sees all this through his second-floor studio window — knocks on his door. “Want me to leave your mail outside or give it to you by person?” and he says “Just leave it, sweetie, I’m in the middle of something, and thanks.” Makes her lunch and sits opposite her with a coffee and yesterday’s Times, which came in the mail today, and she says “Your cut doesn’t look so ugly anymore; even if it needed a Band-Aid up to last night, you don’t need one now,” and he says “Yeah, seems to be healing nice, and I don’t feel so dopey anymore. That’s what happens when you don’t do anything about it.” After lunch she says “You don’t have to, of course, but if you want can we go to Carter Pond to swim? I’ve been thinking of it all winter,” and he says “Sure, I’ve done enough already, two pages, and I haven’t swum since we got here.”

Swim, diner for fish burgers, play checkers that night. Later: “What do you want for lunch tomorrow?” and she says “When I’m ready to eat it, I’ll tell you.” “I mean for camp.” “Dada, I’m not going to camp.” “You’re going, now don’t give me another argument. We took off one day, it was very nice, but not two.” “You can’t make me,” and he says “Oh, I’ll make you, all right. And I’ll prepare whatever I want you to have for lunch, if you’re not going to help me, now get ready for bed.” When he comes into her room for a mosquito check and to say good night, she says “A story?” He says, looking at something on the wall he thinks is a mosquito but turns out to be the head of a nail, “No story, nothing for you tonight, just go to sleep,” checks some more and turns off the light.

She tries to get in his bed early that morning. “No; you’re not going to camp, you don’t sleep in my bed.” She goes back to her room. Wrong thing to say, he thinks, and wrongly worded. He doesn’t want her in his bed, period. That wouldn’t be how to say it either. How then? “Listen, you sleep in your bed, I sleep in mine, that’s the way life is.” No. Just: “We sleep in our own beds, period.” Maybe he’ll come up with something better later, or maybe he won’t have to, for she might not try again.

At eight he goes to her room to wake her. “Deborah, Deborah dear,” but she pretends to be asleep. He knows she’s pretending. She had plenty of sleep last night, and she’s a light sleeper. Feels her forehead. She’s okay. Raises the shade, opens the window more, “Rise and shine, sweetheart,” shakes her shoulder. She opens her eyes. “I’m not going, you can’t force me.” “Then I’ll have to dress you and drag you there.” No, wrong move and words again, and she’s crying. “Okay, don’t go, what the hell do I care? But don’t bother me till three. You know how to read time?” “You know I do. You don’t have to act sarcastic.” “Good. Then don’t bother me till then.” “Why would I want to?”

She makes herself breakfast and lunch and a snack. He can tell by the sounds in the kitchen, dishes left in the wash pan and food spills on the tablecloth. She reads and plays in the living room and behind the house. They bump into each other a couple of times when he comes downstairs for coffee or to go to the bathroom, and he says “So how’s it going?” and she says “Fine, why?” and he says “I’m glad,” and quickly finishes or does what he came down for and goes upstairs. Later he’s at his desk typing and sees her in her garden, her mother’s sun hat on. His ex-wife left it in one of the houses they rented for the summer around here — last time they were together for a summer and when Deborah was three — and he carried it with him from house to house since, along with her duck boots and garden tools. Hair flows over her shoulders, like her mother’s did and same color, and it’ll be bleached the same color by the sun. She looks so beautiful and busy. Is so beautiful. Really, she doesn’t want to go to camp — seems to be occupying herself okay — he shouldn’t force her. Why break her will or try to? He should be subtly encouraging her to strengthen it. That the right wording? She’s a shy kid, most of the time meek, and he wants her stronger, standing up to people — himself, everyone — when she thinks she’s right and even when she only sort of thinks she is, but to keep an open mind while she’s doing it. That’s so hackneyed, he knows it, but what’s the use of a more original way of saying it? What’s important is what he means. Force her to go, it’ll be like raping her, then, with her will busted, she’ll let herself get raped again and again. Maybe it could turn out like that. And raping her mind, he means, and why that word? Because it’s strong. He has no sexual feelings for her, though feels deeply for her in every other way. Parentally, the rest. Feels like crying. In the throat, a feeling she must have had first day he left her at camp, probably the other days too. His for his love for her, hers for what? Deserted, hurt, and that if he loves her, why’s he doing this? On one knee now, digging, maybe weeding or replanting, garden started for her by the owner before they came up. Hell with his work — he should be spending more time with her here, little to a lot, and giving in to her more. What’s his work mean anyway in comparison to her? Can’t be compared, but he can find time to do it when he wants to. Before she’s up, after she’s asleep, or maybe not, since he doesn’t want to wake her with his typing. Here and there though, silently on a pad, mornings if she lets him, and she will. She understands and actually likes being by herself to play and read, or he thinks she does. Wishes the marriage had worked out. Wasn’t him. And why’d they have a child if it was as bad from the start as she said? Or maybe just was ten to twenty percent him. But of course glad they had her. Ecstatic, everything like that. Nobody could love his kid more, or close to it, even if he isn’t such a great father. He can also work the few weeks a year his ex-wife takes her, though if she doesn’t, as she didn’t last Christmas and won’t the end of this summer, he’s happy to have her. No, he is; he’s not just saying it. Wouldn’t care — might even prefer, though it wouldn’t be good for Deborah — if his ex-wife didn’t spend another sustained period with her.

Look at her. Sun hat off, wiping her brow, maybe to show him how hard she’s working, hair stuck over her face by the wind and just sticks there and she has to brush it away, throw it in back. Doesn’t recall if that’s like her mother and doesn’t care to dig back in his memory to find out.

She looks up at him. He waves, she waves, he yells “Working hard?” “Yeah.” “Anything growing?” “Lots.” “You look so beautiful out there gardening.” “How come? I’m sweating. Sweat is ugly, and I’m dirty too.” “You just do. I was watching you.” “Please don’t. I hate when people stare at me. It makes me you-know-what.” “Hey, I can do it, I’m your daddy. I was staring because your movements make me happy.” “Thank you, even if I don’t know what you mean. Boy, the sun’s hot.” “So come in. What do you want for dinner tonight?” “I can make it.” “You kidding — dinner? You already made breakfast and lunch for yourself. We’ll go out. The Fish and Pizza, or the Lobster Inn. Maybe to the lake first for a swim. All I need is to work another hour.” “What time is it now?” “Quarter to two.” “Work all you want. Till before five. I’ve lots to do. But can you take me to the library before it closes? I read all the books I got when we came.” “We’ll do it now. You’re more important than my work anytime. Or as much as, each in its own slot.” She looks confused. “I’m saying I can do both, have you happy and me happy when I do my work and also happy because you’re happy, and so on. Maybe I’ll even take the whole day off tomorrow so I can have more time with you.” “But you’ve said you’re not happy unless you’re working, and that every day if it’s not a working day is wasted.” “I said that? I must have been lying to myself and through me to you. Anyway, who says I can’t change? For you, anything. You don’t want to go to camp — you don’t, do you?” and she says “No, you know that.” “Well, you tried it out, it’s not for you this summer, so I shouldn’t force you, as you said. But if you later change your mind and want to go, that’s okay too, right? Now let’s go to the library. Or give me a half-hour at the most.”

She knocks on his open door; he jumps. “Sorry if I startled you, Daddy, but it’s been way more than an hour.” “My darling, I’m sorry,” and opens his arms to her and she steps forward a few feet but not into them. “I got so absorbed in my work. But watch. I’ll stop right here, in the middle of a sentence, simply to show you, and prove to myself, I can stop whenever I have to and go back to it when I’m able to and with nothing lost.” He covers the typewriter, gets up, they get in the car, are turning onto the main road from the house road when she says “Oh, gosh, I forgot the ones I’m returning.” “So we’ll go back.” “You’re not mad?” “Why should I be? It’s summer, we got time, plenty of it, and you’re my darling. I might even take out a book for pleasure too.”

They go back, get her books, after they turn onto the main road again, she says “Tell me about my mother. What was she like when you first met? And I bet you were just as much a nice and smart man then too.” “Thanks, but what’s to tell? Eventually she said she was bored stiff with me and our marriage and also of our dull university town. I said those weren’t sufficient grounds for divorce and that, if she insisted on going, I wanted to keep you. Of course I wanted to keep you anyway, but traditionally, as you know, the mama gets the child. But that’s not what you asked. You wanted to know about her. But you know about her. You see her at least two to three weeks a year, plus a few additional days if she happens to be in town or nearby.” “That’s not nice to her. You’re being unfair.” “Am I?” “You don’t like her anymore?” “I don’t mind her. She does what she wants to, and I don’t have to be around it anymore. We grew apart. I was sorry we did, for you and me. What else can I tell you, sweetie? I liked to stay put and she liked to get out and away. I had my work, and, other than for having you, she never knew what she wanted to do. I knew this when I married her, even when I first met her, which sort of answers one of your original questions, though maybe that not-stay-putness and no real direction of hers was one of the things — two — that drew me to her. Haven’t we spoken of this before?” “Not for a long time. When I was younger you once got very sad and said you once loved her very much and maybe still did.” “Was it at night?” “I don’t remember.” “It probably was, and I was probably drinking too much that night, something I’ve stopped doing to avoid those kinds of false feelings drinking brings.” “That’s not at all nice too.” “Well, I don’t love her anymore, if that’s what you’re asking. As to liking her, what’s not to like? as my dad used to say about certain things. But I love you, I love grandma, I love my brothers and sort of their kids, and I have good feelings about a few friends, but no love for them or any woman since your mother. And why should I be nice? What’s she done for me lately? as my dad also liked to say.” “Daddy.” “I’m kidding. Or a little. Your mother, she was a beauty. Probably still is. She had a fine mind, maybe still has. Good heart, plenty of energy, adventurous spirit — restless, that’s the word I’m looking for and what I think did our marriage in, besides what she finally discovered she didn’t see in me. Now she’s married to a much more exciting and interesting man. He’s in TV; he wears gold beads; he has a physique of someone twenty years younger and likes sports and travel as much as she does. They weekend in Tahiti. He knows everyone, or everyone he has to know. He makes oodles and is loaded with love for her. Let’s forget her for now and just enjoy ourselves. Ah, the library. Books, the old bean, simple fish burgers—‘Hold the tartar sauce!’—and handfuls of chips. Later a quick sunset dip in salt water at Sandy Point and then ice cream with jimmies. If I only knew someone who had a daughter around your age or there was a girl you met at camp whom you could pal with, that would even be better for you. Not to pawn you off but to enlarge your landscape.” “Doesn’t matter. It’s nice just being with you.” “Ah, my dearest, I’d hug you so tight if I wasn’t driving.”

That night his ex-wife calls, which she does once a week. “How are you?” and she says “Couldn’t be better, and you?” “I’ll get Deborah.” “How is she?” “She’ll tell you.” “I’m asking you, Harold. Is she having a good time? She said last week she didn’t want to go to camp your whole month there. I know you have your own demands, but think it wise to force her to go?” “You’re giving me advice from three thousand miles away, or six or eight or ten, however far Tahiti is?” “We’re home. And I see nothing wrong in what I said.” “Anyway, I took her out of camp Friday, and since then we’ve been getting along famously, and I hope it’ll last the summer and then into the beyond.” “Good. That’ll be great for you both.” “I’ll get her.” Puts the receiver down, picks it up. “And oh, she asked about you today. No strange coincidence, since I’m sure you’re on her mind a lot, particularly since she won’t be visiting you this summer, and she probably knew you were calling tonight, Monday, your call night.” “I could call other days and more often. I guess the week goes so fast, and I got into a routine.” “Anyway, she asked what I thought of you. Then, not so much now. I told her of now and some of then. My feelings, et cetera—” “What did you say about your feelings?” “Oh, you know, that I loved you then but not now and wondered why in hell you ever married me. That I’d even warned you about what it’d come to.” “Why’d you tell her that? It was unnecessary. She’s too young. You went too far.” “Well, I didn’t exactly say it; I intimated. Also intimated I was glad you thought it better I should have her than you. No, I didn’t say that either or intimate. But it’s what I thought. Glad your restlessness made you a world traveler and first-class self-seeker and not a stay-at-homenik, since that way I got her. That’s all.” “Why’d you bring all that up to me? I’ve no bad feelings to you. There’s a reason I couldn’t have her here this summer. I’m pregnant and I have to stay in bed most of the time and right up to the delivery, since, if you must know, I’ve already had two miscarriages with Tim. But this one’s coming along fine. I’ve passed the critical period but still have to be careful. And I called specifically tonight — I was going to let her tell you this if she wanted — to tell her I’m pregnant and that she’s going to have a very kid sister. We only got all the clinical results last Friday. I was also planning to tell her I’m going to be a much different mother this time around, as well as a vastly changed one to her, and that if she wants, once I have the baby, she can spend whole summers with us. Next one, for instance, and maybe whole years.” “If she wants? Oh no, you’re going to ruin it for me,” and hangs up. She calls back. “Will you let me speak to her?” “She’s asleep.” “Who’s asleep?” his daughter says from the next room. “Please put her on.” Puts her on, watches her as she talks. She’s thrilled, says “That’s fantastic, Mom; it’s great. I’m so happy I can practically cry.” At what, sister or idea of living with her mother? When she gets off, she says “Know what Mommy told me?” “Whatever it is, you can’t. I let you get out of camp, but I’m not going to let you get out of everything.” “What are you talking about?” “What did your mommy say?” “She’s having a baby — a girl. I’ll have a little sister, and I can help name her. She and Tim want me to. She says they’re stuck for good names that aren’t too popular.” “Oh, you’re so lucky. I only had two brothers and from the same parents. They were older and end up beating you up before they get real nice to you. But they were closer in age to me than you two will be, and you’ll be much older, so she can’t beat you up. You’ll be a terrific older sister. I wish I had you as one.” “Then you couldn’t have me as a daughter.” “Hey, that’s true, I didn’t think of that. Too bad.”

She asks him to tell her a story that night. He does every night, or a continuation of one. Tonight he puts the chapter story on hold, he says, and starts a new one called “Two Sisters.” “Sadie and Sally,” he says. “Awful names,” she says. “Not ones I’d give.” “They’re like twins, though they don’t dress alike and are several years apart, maybe even nine. Once Sadie was born they started doing almost everything together, or when she started to walk and talk.” He gives examples. “Then a war came. Their parents had to fight in the army, so Sadie went with an uncle and Sally with an aunt.” He’s silent. “What happens next?” she says. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. The war goes on for five years. Their parents have disappeared. Nobody knows if they were killed in battle or taken prisoner and not returned or got lost somewhere and are in another terrible country trying to get out, or what.” “This is too sad to listen to before I go to sleep, even if everyone finds one another.” “They don’t find each other so fast. The separation goes on longer than the war. The uncle and aunt die of natural causes — heart disease, old age; they’re actually a great-uncle and great-aunt. The sisters live completely separate lives for more than ten years after the war. Their parents are dead.” “Oh Daddy, I’ll have nightmares now.” “I’m sorry. Erase the story.” “You can’t. I already heard it.” “Then I’ll change it.” “How? It already happened. The sisters could meet again but their parents are dead.” “I can change it if I want. I made a mistake. I got the wrong lives into my characters.” “You know you didn’t. Why’d you tell it if you knew it was going to be so scary and sad? Do you want me to have bad dreams?” “Of course not. I just didn’t know what I was telling you. Maybe I’m still suffering a little from some after-bang effects from that accident last week on my head. Or we were talking about you and your future sister, I started telling a story about two other sisters, and then I got carried away or didn’t know I was telling it.” “You had to know. You always do when you tell me a story.” “Sometimes things get in from somewhere deep in you that you’re not aware of. The unconscious, the subconscious — you know, we’ve talked of it. So maybe I did it, though I didn’t realize or intend it, because I want you to live with me till you go to college, and even in college if you want to go to the one I teach at or another one in the area. And I thought, or those deeper things in me I wasn’t aware of thought, that the story would make you stay with me more. Because I fear your mother will take you from me. Rather, that you’ll want to live with her more. That even if you’re legally mine — meaning, that I’ve legal custody of you till you’re of the age of consent…Is that it, age of consent? Till you’re of legal age to say where you want to live — even alone, if you want — and I couldn’t do anything about it, then I could…I could what? I lost my train of thought. You remember what I started out saying?” “No.” “I guess it was that your mother will make life very attractive for you living with her and Tim and the baby. Occasionally in Tahiti and mostly in California and all their trips abroad and with an attitude that’ll probably be more liberal than mine. And that you’ll want to live with them permanently, and I won’t be able to deny you because I’ll want you to be happy so long as it’s safe there and so on, which I’m sure it’ll be. And then I’ll only see you a few days during the regular year if they happen to fly to the East Coast and also a month in the summer, even two if you want, but not enough for me. And maybe you’ll say you’re so happy there, or they’re doing such great things summers, that you won’t want to come East to me, and then what would I do? Maybe I should get married again just to have another child in case you leave. Would you stay with me over your mother if I had another child, even if it was a boy?” “You can’t have a child.” “The woman I married, I mean, but you knew that. Anyway, it’s way off the point. I’ll tell you what I told your mother when she first said she was leaving me — maybe I shouldn’t say this to you.” “Don’t, Daddy, if you don’t think you should.” “No, it’s okay, it’s not bad, and I know what I’m saying here, it’s not coming from somewhere else. You ought to go if you feel you have to, that’s all I said. Oh damn,” because she looks sad, “by your face I can tell I shouldn’t have said it. Blame my poor head. Or just blame me. But don’t cry, okay? Just don’t cry.” “I won’t. I’m not feeling like it. But it’s nice she wants me to live with her after so long, isn’t it?” “Yes it is. Or at least if you think so. That’s the attitude I should take. That’s the one I will. Because it is good she wants you. It’s never too late to change, and you’ve got all those young years left. And now I’m looking for something to end this conversation with, all right, sweetheart?” “Good night, Daddy. I’m tired. See you in the morning.” “First kiss me good night and brush your teeth and go to bed. But you already brushed your teeth and are in bed. Good night, sweetheart,” and kisses her and leaves the room.

Later he thinks of his ex-wife. That scumbag, that wretch, she would, and goes into his daughter’s room, sits on the floor and leans his head on her bed and says “My darling, my dearest, I know you can’t hear me, I don’t know why I’m even talking like this, but please don’t leave me, not at least till you’re of age.” “Daddy, what’s wrong?” and he says “Oh, nothing, go back to sleep, dear. I only came in to see that you’re covered,” and pats her forehead and leaves.

He drinks a little, reads, takes off his clothes and starts exercising vigorously for the first time since he cut his head. The light’s on; he does the same ones he did that night. “So that’s why I didn’t see the chair I hit,” he says. “I close my eyes when I exercise.”