406
PARTISAN REVIEW
"You girls," the husband says, shaking his head as though
struck by his own powers of tolerance. "I can't take you anywhere."
"Don't be stupid, Daddy," Sheila says, giggling. "I
love
travel–
ing. "
I look over to the front desk, where a thickly mustached
man - the same desk manager who has to be called out from some
inner sanctum whenever I forget my room key-with whom my
father has been in head-to-head conversation for the past ten
minutes, suddenly lifts his hands, his shoulders thrust upward and
elbows bent. There are dark ovals under the arms of his light blue
shirt, and his gesture seems like a dramatization of defeat or frustra–
tion. But when he brings his hands back down, something has been
decided, for my father pumps his hand like a victor. The deal has
been decided in everyone's favor, which is conveniently his .
"Don't be stupid, Daddy, I
love
traveling." I practice saying this
to myself as my father strides back toward me .
"All settled," he says.
What a wonderful purring tone it has: "Don't be stupid,
Daddy . . .." I could be - Sally Field with her smile that stretched
like a rubber band, or pert-nosed Hayley Mills, a daughter in the
movies or on TV.
•
•
•
If
I had said anything along these lines to my father, he
wouldn't have known what to make of it, there being no precedent
for this sort of exchange between us . In later years I will connect a
recurring feeling of futility in myself to the recognition, while still a
little girl, that my father was not seducible - that he took me in
without being in any way stirred by the proposition that I existed.
The fact that he was not in love with Lily or Rachel, either, should
have been a source of consolation , but it wasn't.
My father is my mother's: it is that simple. What, I wonder
over the years, would it be like to have a father who is in love with
me?
Once, for his birthday, I wrote a poem, which I read aloud . "My
father is the midnight owl," it began and moved on from there to talk
of his love of bananas and how he rummaged for them late at night.
Everyone was gathered around the dining room table at the
beach house and listened with what seemed to be an air of incredulity.
Or maybe I only imagined this response, out of my own unyielding
embarrassment. My father sat in one of his sultanlike paisley dress-
