“I was four years old.”
“You said, ‘The wind did it.’ ”
“I know, Daddy. I remember.” This might, in fact, be Paige’s earliest memory. Sun on the stoop, Remsen Street, early spring, forsythia. He’d put his cigarette down on the edge of the brownstone step; it sat there, smoke streaming up from where the ash met the paper. She’d thought it was a clever lie: You sucked air through a cigarette, so why couldn’t the wind have gone through on its own? For a four-year-old, wasn’t this a lie of genius?
She said, “I’m glad you gave up smoking.”
“Well. I’m glad you’re glad.” He coughed.
She checked her mirror: there was a car behind them, so close she couldn’t see its grille.
“I’m just going to let this asshole go by.” She slowed down, pulled over, heard her tires crushing fallen leaves; the car roared past and she gave it the finger.
“Temper temper,” her father said. “We’re not in any hurry. How does it go? ‘We’ll sit here like birds i’ the cage. They’ll talk and we’ll talk with ’em—who’s up, who’s down, and fire us forth like foxes.’ ” Cough. “God, I’m missing whole chunks.”
She shifted to second and pulled back onto the road. “So where are we going?”
“Well, here’s a thought,” he said. “What would you say to Cape Cod? You remember that song? Cape Cod girls they have no bones—or, rather, they have no combs. They comb their hair with codfish bones. You know, it may well be that the Indians actually did that. Must have smelled to high heaven.”
“Well, isn’t the smell the whole point?” Paige said. “Girls and fish smell? Or am I being too feminist?”
“Ah well, see now, there we come to a whole discussion that fathers and daughters probably ought not to be having,” he said. “Even in these enlightened days.”
“Daddy, you need to be back writing.”
“What, keep rearranging the bric-a-brac? No, I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’m perfectly content at this point to leave the field to Mr. Mathers.”
Just before the Thruway entrance, she pulled into a gas station and put the car in neutral. “So?” she said.
“I’m quite serious about the Cape,” he said. “And I do know someone we could impose on.”
“Who’s that?”
He coughed. “Old friend of mine. Former student, actually.”
“Somebody else who used to babysit me?”
“Now, I thought that sounded very plausible. No, you never knew this person.”
“I never knew the other person, Daddy. Ted?”
“Ken,” he said. “As in, beyond our ken. A little more than Ken but less than kind. No, this is actually a real person. Let me get out and see if I can maybe raise her on the phone.”
“Use mine?” Paige said. She reached behind his seat for her backpack.
He held up a hand. “No, we don’t want brain cancer on top of everything else.”
“So who is this real person?”
“Louisa Philips?” he said. “You’ve heard me mention her.”
“An old friend?” This was the one who’d broken up his second marriage. Okay, the one he’d used to break up his second marriage.
“Well, now she is. She’s in North Truro, I believe. With her husband. To whom I gather she’s very happily married.”
“I’m thrilled for her,” Paige said.
“You’re not going to have an attitude, kitten?”
“What attitude would you like me not to have?”
“Look, I promise you, kitten, it will be a mindless good time. Pleasant people? Lovely old house? The ocean? Abigail and I have stayed with them. On a couple of occasions. And it’s never been the least bit.” He opened his door and put one leg out. “You know, we don’t need to do this.”
“All my stuff’s back at the house,” Paige said. “I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
“Nor do I,” he said. “But the Lord has spoken to me of Walmarts in the wilderness.”
He walked to the pay phone and she watched him poking at the numbers as if counting heads. Why had she not understood until now that this had been a done deal?
“Well,” he said as he fastened his seat belt. “She’s there at any rate. He, apparently, is in Tokyo. Telling the boys at the Nikkei what’s what. Or that’s my understanding. She says she’d be delighted to have some company.”
“Won’t I be a third wheel?” Paige said.
“Dear heart,” he said, “you make it possible. So.” He pointed out the window. “Follow the pillar of smoke.”
“Tell me one thing, okay?” she said. “When did you really call her?”
“What do you mean, kitten? Just now.” And anybody would have believed him.
—
The map showed that there was no decent route to Cape Cod. They didn’t even hit Hartford until the sun was glaring and flashing in her rearview mirror, and at Manchester they had to choose between 44 and 6; each seemed hopeless. So 44: this dreary two-lane with the occasional white colonial. The sun went down, the morning bump had long since worn off and now, in the half dark, hearing the white noise of the road, she started having moments where she’d jerk awake realizing that she was driving.
“I need to stop and close my eyes for a minute,” she said. “That or we’re going to die.”
“Stark choices,” her father said. He coughed. “You sure you don’t want me to take over?”
“You said you weren’t used to standard anymore,” she said.
“That was a metaphor.” He coughed. “Don’t we laugh?”
A picnic area appeared: Could she possibly be dreaming it? But he was pointing. She parked under an evergreen, let the seatback down and closed her eyes, feeling her father to her right as a luminous presence.
She woke up to the sound of him snoring. He’d let his seatback down too; they seemed to be side by side in a space capsule. She unfolded the map as quietly as she could. By holding it right up to her face, she saw that at Putnam you could pick up this 395 and go north and then eventually you’d have to end up in, what, New Hampshire probably. The White Mountains. When he came to, she could maybe amuse and mollify him by saying they were now en route to Bretton Woods, for the world conference on what to do about their lives.
—
As they came into Worcester, her father began rolling his head back and forth on the seatback like No no no. He woke up coughing.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Bad dream. Where are we, anyway?”
“I’m really worried about that cough, Daddy.”
“It’s being dealt with,” he said. “I’m going in for more tests next week.”
“Wait—more tests?”
“Too tedious to go into. Abigail, by the by, knows none of this. Now, where are we?”
“We’re sort of taking a detour. Daddy, how long—”
“What detour?” He touched his watch and its face lit up blue. “We should be almost—”
“I just thought this would be a better thing for us,” she said.
He looked over at her. “Kitten,” he said. “You’re not having a psychotic break?”
“I’m not?” she said. “Good to know.”
“Well,” he said. “Hmm. I’ve clearly missed some excitement. Now, we’re where again?”
“I don’t know. Worcester. I’m sorry, Daddy. We could still—”
“Good God. You know, kitten, if this was a problem for you, you might have said so. Instead of—” He stretched forth a palm at the lights of what must be Worcester. “Now what to do. Louisa is probably—Oh well. I guess I won’t be inviting myself back there in a hurry.”