Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(59)

At dinner, over oysters, The Couple asks me about a boyfriend. Is he handsome? Is he Jewish? Is his mother still alive? Does he eat meat?

A girlfriend, I say. Hannah.

Oh.

But you’re pretty, says The Couple.

You’ve done so much for yourself. So much going your way.

I’m in love. That’s all I ever did.

No children for you then, says The Couple. No child should be fatherless. No man will ever love a fatherless girl. She won’t know how to treat him right. How to rub a man’s feet.

In the car ride home, my father apologizes on behalf of The Couple, his oldest friends.

No friends of mine, he says. Not anymore. Out.

Why? I ask. Don’t you feel the same about her?

If anyone is ever going to make my daughter cry, he says, It’d ought to be me.

XI.

I’m twenty-seven when it happens: my mother clasps my father’s gold-chain necklace around his wrist wrappings—the necklace my grandfather once gave him. The chain feels cold to the touch, heavy, like a fistful of snow. When the doctor removes the tubes from his trach, my mother and I lift the blanket all the way up to his chin, pulling his arms out and over it. With his new shave, no snakes of plastic, he looks honorable, handsome even. Like he’s been napping all this time. I hold the seashell of his hand, and my brothers, mother, and I plead with him, Let go. You’re safe. We watch the colors—lips parting indigo, the rush of grays and blues through the square patches of visible skin, red eyelids of a pigeon. And then it happens. It happens as quiet as that. The doctor, a flash in the eye. A nod. That.

My brothers clear the room, and I hold my father’s body like a child, like he needs me, wrapping his slumped arms around my shoulders. Here and here and here you are, mine, you were something that was mine. My mother unclasps the necklace.

XII.

In grief, I try to become my father. My own body is not enough. I am too small for my sadness. I wear my father’s striped Tshirts, his socks, even his underwear, rolled up at the yellowed elastic. I scrub my gums with his toothbrush. Spit blood. I take shots off his inhaler and wait for the rush of life. I even watch action films—karate movies, explosions, skull splatters in Italian restaurants—and replay the most violent parts.

My mother charges his cell phone every night. She uses it to call me sometimes, and swears this is a mistake. Whenever his name appears on my screen, I am hopeful. He could be on the other line this time; he could be getting through.

Hi, Daddy, I say.

I’m sorry, she says, hanging up.

Ghosts are better than nothing. Ghosts move. They want things. To haunt each other, then, is a way for my mother and I to keep him. He is more than a voice in the walls, a Ouija board movement, an iridescent cloud in the dark; he can exist here, inside us, through possession. We do our best to play the roles. Our own bodies are not big enough.

Falling in love with someone, I think, is at least like that.

XIII.

I’m seventeen, unpacking in my dorm room in New York City. I’ve moved here to be closer to my dad. I want to walk his streets, eat his favorite pastrami, try on a new relationship with him.

Well, he says, let’s start with a movie. Ten thirty tomorrow morning?

Ten thirty? I ask. On a Saturday?

Better seats this way, he says.

Okay, it’s a date.

My father is thirty minutes early to the movie. I am ten minutes early, and he tells me I am late. I’m gonna teach you two things about life, he says. You better listen, he says.

1. Early is On Time.

2. Always be early.

We share popcorn, wedge it between our cushions. We watch Little Miss Sunshine. I keep my legs propped up on my seat, bend them until they’re numb. People in Florida have told me rats run around the theater floors here, gnawing on your shoelaces, your leftover snacks. My father shakes his legs incessantly, taps his loafers. He chews and clicks his teeth in loud smacks. I tell him to keep it down, and he elbows me, reminds me that there’s nobody else in the theater. In the dark, with the light on his face, he looks the happiest he’s ever looked. His face is relaxed, his mouth slightly open in awe. He gives my hand three quick squeezes.

I walk him home after the movie. Years from now, this is the part I will miss most. It’s never about the movies themselves—I don’t even remember them—it’s about the credits rolling, our eyes adjusting to the world outside, his leather jacket leaning against the ticket booth, the walk. We pick up drooping slices of pizza and let the oil run down our chins as we make our way to Second Avenue. Soon, so soon, my father will not be able to use his legs like this. He’ll take a car to meet me those few blocks away, and then to go home. But right now he does, he makes it, and I do, too. We make our Saturday morning movie for nine more years. We are always on time.



PART III

TELL THE WOMEN I’M LONELY



KULEANA

The past is never where you think you left it.

—Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools



WINTER, 2016

PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE

What we do is burn things. A Chinese New Year family tradition since before I was born—we write lists of burdens, toxins, enemies, vices, we place the strips of paper in a bowl, and we burn them. We watch our words shrivel and dissolve like a slug under salt. We burn things for luck. We burn things to move on. We burn things just to watch them burn.