He was the one who cleaned up when she cooked the...
He was the one who cleaned up when she cooked the baked ziti, and there was always a lot to clean up"Cooking is fun and cleaning up is not," she confided in him, but that was not his experience when Merry was cookingWhen he heard from a Bloomingdale's buyer that a restaurant on West 49th Street had the best baked ziti in New York, he began to take the family to Vincent's once a monthThey'd go to Radio City or to a Broadway musical, and then to Vincent'sMerry loved Vincent'sAnd a young waiter named Billy loved her, as it turned out, because of a kid brother he had at home who also stutteredHe told Merry about the TV stars and the movie stars who showed up at Vincent's to eat"See where your dad is sitting? See his chair, signorina? Danny Thomas sat in that chair last nightYou know what Danny Thomas says when people come up to his table and introduce themselves to him?"
"I d-d-don't," said the signorina"He says, 'Nice to see you'" And on Monday, at school, she repeated to Patti whatever Billy at Vincent's in New York had told her the day beforeHad there ever been a happier child? A less destructive child? A little signorina any more loved by her mother and father? No
A black woman in tight yellow slacks, a woman colossal as a dray horse through the hindquarters, tottered up to him on her miu miu clutch high-heeled shoes, extending a tiny scrap of paper in one handHer face was badly scarredHe knew she had come to inform him that his daughter was deadThat was what was written on the paperIt was a note from Rita Cohen"Sir," she said, "can you tell me where the Salvation Army is?"
"Is there one?" he askedShe did not look as though she thought there wasBut she replied, "I believe so, yeah She held up the piece of paperDo you know where it is, sir?" Anything beginning with sir or ending with sir usually means "I want money," and so he reached into his pocket, passed her some bills, and she lurched away, disappeared down into the underpass on those ill-fitting shoes, and after that he saw no one
He waited for forty more minutes and would have waited another forty, have waited there until it grew dark, might well have remained long after that, a man in a seven-hundred-dollar custom-made suit with his back against a lamppost like a vagrant in threadbare rags, a man who from all appearances had meetings to attend and business to transact and social obligations to fulfill, selfconsciously loitering on a blighted street near the railroad station, maybe a rich out-of-towner under the mistaken impression that he'd landed in the red-light district, pretending to stare aimlessly into space while his head is full of gucci indy bag secrets and his heart is (as it was) thumping awayOn the chance that, horribly enough, Rita Cohen was telling the truth and always had been, he might well have stood vigil there all night long and through to the next morning, thinking to catch Merry coming to workBut, mercifully, if that is the word, in only forty minutes she appeared, a figure tall and female but one he might never have taken for his daughter had he not been told to look for her there
Again imagination had failed himHe felt as though he had no control over muscles that he'd mastered at the age of two--he wouldn't have been surprised if everything, not excluding his blood, had come gushing from him onto the pavementThis was too much to battle withThis was too much to bring home to Dawn's new faceNot even electrically operated skylights over a modern kitchen whose heart was a state-of-the-art cooking island would enable her to find her way back from thisEighteen hundred nights at the mercy of a murderer's father's imagination still hadn't prepared him for her incognitoIt had not required this to elude the FBIHow she got to this was too horrible for him to contemplateBut to run from his own child? In fear? There was her soul to cherish"Life!" he instructed himself"I cannot let her go! Our life!" And by then Merry had seen him, and had it chanel reporter bag even been possible for him, he did not fall to pieces and run, because it was now too late to run
And to what would he have run anyway? To that Swede who did it all so effortlessly? To that Swede blessedly oblivious of himself and his thoughts? To the Swede Levov who once upon a timeHe might as well turn for help to that hefty black woman with the scarred face, expect to find himself by asking her, "Madam, do you know where it is that I am? Have you any idea where I went?"
Merry had seen himHow could she miss him? How could she have missed him even on a street where there was life and not death, where there was a throng of the striving and the harried and the driven and the decisive and not this malignant void? There was her handsome, utterly recognizable six-foot-three father, the handsomest father a girl could haveShe raced across the street, this frightful creature, and like the carefree child he used to enjoy envisioning back when he was himself a carefree child--the girl running from her swing outside the stone house--she threw herself upon his chest, her arms encircling his neckFrom beneath the veil she wore across the lower half of her face--obscuring her mouth and her chin, a sheer veil that was the ragged foot off an old nylon stocking--she said to the man she had come to detest, chanel classic flap "Daddy! Daddy!" faultlessly, just like any other child, and looking like a person whose tragedy was that she'd never been anyone's child
They are crying intensely, the dependable father whose center is the source of all order, who could not overlook or sanction the smallest sign of chaos--for whom keeping chaos far at bay had been intuition's chosen path to certainty, the rigorous daily given of life--and the daughter who is chaos itselfs, 'he had become a JainHer father didn't know what that meant until, in her unhampered, chantlike speech--the unimpeded speech with which she would have spoken at home had she ever been able to master a stutter while living within her parents' safekeeping--she patiently told himThe Jains were a relatively small Indian religious sect--that he could accept as factBut whether Merry's practices were typical or of her own devising he could not be certain, even if she contended that every last thing she now did was an expression of religious beliefShe wore the veil to do no harm to the microscopic organisms that dwell in the air we breatheShe did not bathe because she revered all life, including the verminShe did not wash, she said, so as "to do no harm to the water She did not walk about after dark, even in her own room, for fear of crushing some living object beneath her prada logos feet