412
PARTISAN REVIEW
in his white Shabbos shirt with one button opened at the neck, tie–
less, singing bits and pieces of American tunes. I could almost see
him then as a harmless progenitor, safely consigned to caricature, a
slightly tipsy but amiable fellow : Eliza Doolittle's father as played by
Stanley Holloway in
My Fair Lady.
What strikes me as odd in retrospect is not that there were
things I liked about my father - the sandy feel of his cheeks after
Shabbos , for instance, when he hadn't been able to shave for a day–
but that they were highlighted so inordinately. Sitting on his lap, in
my velvet jumper, I delighted in running my fingers across the grain
of his grown-in bristles , his skin the texture of an emery board.
When I am older and no longer invited to sit on his lap or so readily
intrigued by analogous incidentals - something that looks or feels
like something else, like Eric's velvet skating jacket reminding me of
artichokes - there are even fewer means of contact. Throughout the
years of my adolescence, I recall my father taking note of me only
when I get a haircut, as though each successive one were further
demonstration of the erratic nature he suspects me of harboring–
the demons of Beatrice come to haunt the next generation . "I see
you've cut your hair again," he says on a Tuesday night somewhere
in my past. It is winter, the window sills are bejeweled with snow.
We have bumped into each other in the kitchen : my father is scav–
enging for a banana and I am looking for a snack, a reprieve from
my schoolwork. His tone is subtly preening, as though he prides
himself on his unlikely but keen visual sense: he is a man who
notices haircuts .
"Yes," I say . "Do you think it looks better than before?"
I am always trying to improve on "before"; before is never good
enough . There is magic in "after," the same magic that will draw me
in later years to lovers who don't like me as I am, who see in me a
redoubtable object. In the land of "after," I will be unconditionally
loved; I have only to find the entry to it, the inspiring aureole.
"I don't know," my father says. "I liked it longer. You look dif–
ferent."
"Really?" I say . "Don't you think I look better?"
My father unpeels a banana, dividing and conquering the
yellow skin around the white fruit. I wonder for a moment how he
f
would fare in a blizzard, bereft of warm clothes - I have just been ly-
ing upstairs on my bed, reading the second half of
King Lear
for an
l
advanced English class the next day. Exposed to the elements , with
Eric as his faithful Fool, would my father finally recognize he has
