They went into a small, neat living room. “Won’t you sit down?” said Petal.
Ellis sat down.
“Can I get you something?” she asked.
“Relax,” Ellis told her. “You don’t have to be so polite. I’m your daddy.”
She looked puzzled and uncertain, as if she had been rebuked for something she did not know to be wrong. After a moment she said: “I have to brush my hair. Then we can go. Excuse me.”
“Sure,” said Ellis. She went out. He found her courtesy painful. It was a sign that he was still a stranger. He had not yet succeeded in becoming a normal member of her family.
He had been seeing her at least once a month for the past year, ever since he came back from Paris. Sometimes they would spend a day together, but more often he would just take her out to dinner, as he was going to today. To be with her for that hour, he had to make a five-hour trip with maximum security, but of course she did not know that. His aim was a modest one: without any fuss or drama he wanted to take a small but permanent place in his daughter’s life.
It had meant changing the type of work he did. He had given up fieldwork. His superiors had been highly displeased: there were too few good undercover agents (and hundreds of bad ones). He, too, had been reluctant, feeling that he had a duty to use his talent. But he could not win his daughter’s affection if he had to disappear every year or so to some remote corner of the world, unable to tell her where he was going or why or even for how long. And he could not risk getting himself killed just when she was learning to love him.
He missed the excitement, the danger, the thrill of the chase, and the feeling that he was doing an important job that nobody else could do quite as well. But for too long his only emotional attachments had been fleeting ones, and after he lost Jane he felt the need of at least one person whose love was permanent.
While he was waiting, Gill came into the room. Ellis stood up. His ex-wife was cool and composed in a white summer dress. He kissed her proferred cheek. “How are you?” she said.
“The same as ever. You?”
“I’m incredibly busy.” She started to tell him, in some detail, how much she had to do, and, as always, Ellis tuned out. He was fond of her, although she bored him to death. It was odd to think he had once been married to her. But she had been the prettiest girl in the English Department, and he had been the cleverest boy, and it was 1967, when everyone was stoned and anything could happen, especially in California. They were married in white robes, at the end of their first year, and someone played the “Wedding March” on a sitar. Then Ellis flunked his exams and got thrown out of college and therefore was drafted, and instead of going to Canada or Sweden he went to the draft office, like a lamb to the slaughter, surprising the hell out of everyone except Gill, who knew by then that the marriage was not going to work and was just waiting to see how Ellis would make his escape.
He was in the hospital in Saigon with a bullet wound in his calf—the helicopter pilot’s commonest injury, because his seat is armored but the floor is not—when the divorce became final. Someone dumped the notification on his bed while he was in the john, and he found it when he got back, along with another oak-leaf cluster, his twenty-fifth (they were passing out medals kind of fast in those days). I just got divorced, he had said, and the soldier in the next bed had replied No shit. Want to play a little cards?
She had not told him about the baby. He found out, a few years later, when he became a spy and tracked Gill down as an exercise, and learned that she had a child with the unmistakably late-sixties name of Petal, and a husband called Bernard who was seeing a fertility specialist. Not telling him about Petal was the only truly mean thing Gill had ever done to him, he thought, although she still maintained it had been for his own good.
He had insisted on seeing Petal from time to time, and he had stopped her calling Bernard “Daddy.” But he had not sought to become part of their family life, not until last year.
“Do you want to take my car?” Gill was saying.
“If it’s all right.”
“Sure it is.”
“Thanks.” It was embarrassing having to borrow Gill’s car, but the drive from Washington was too long, and Ellis did not want to rent cars frequently in this area, for then one day his enemies would find out, through the records of the rental agencies or the credit card companies, and then they would be on the way to finding out about Petal. The alternative would be to use a different identity every time he rented a car, but identities were expensive and the Agency would not provide them for a desk man. So he used Gill’s Honda, or hired the local taxi.
Petal came back in, with her blond hair wafting about her shoulders. Ellis stood up. Gill said: “The keys are in the car.”
Ellis said to Petaclass="underline" “Jump in the car. I’ll be right there.” Petal went out. He said to Gilclass="underline" “I’d like to invite her to Washington for a weekend.”
Gill was kind but firm. “If she wants to go, she certainly can, but if she doesn’t, I won’t make her.”
Ellis nodded. “That’s fair. See you later.”
He drove Petal to a Chinese restaurant in Little Neck. She liked Chinese food. She relaxed a little once she was away from the house. She thanked Ellis for sending her a poem on her birthday. “Nobody I know has ever had a poem for their birthday,” she said.
He was not sure whether that was good or bad. “Better than a birthday card with a picture of a cute kitten on the front, I hope.”
“Yeah.” She laughed. “All my friends think you’re so romantic. My English teacher asked me if you had ever had anything published.”
“I’ve never written anything good enough,” he said. “Are you still enjoying English?”
“I like it a lot better than math. I’m terrible at math.”
“What do you study? Any plays?”
“No, but we have poems sometimes.”
“Any you like?”
She thought for a moment. “I like the one about the daffodils.”
Ellis nodded. “I do, too.”
“I forgot who wrote it.”
“William Wordsworth.”
“Oh, right.”
“Any others?”
“Not really. I’m more into music. Do you like Michael Jackson?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve heard his records.”
“He’s really cute.” She giggled. “All my friends are crazy about him.”
It was the second time she had mentioned all my friends. Right now her peer group was the most important thing in her life. “I’d like to meet some of your friends, sometime,” he said.
“Oh, Daddy,” she chided him. “You wouldn’t like that—they’re just girls.”
Feeling mildly rebuffed, Ellis concentrated on his food for a while. He drank a glass of white wine with it: French habits had stayed with him.
When he finished he said: “Listen, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you come to Washington and stay at my place one weekend? It’s only an hour on the plane, and we could have a good time.”
She was quite surprised. “What’s in Washington?”
“Well, we could take a tour of the White House, where the President lives. And Washington has some of the best museums in the whole world. And you’ve never even seen my apartment. I have a spare bedroom . . .” He trailed off. He could see she was not interested.