I’m not strong enough, he says, to reel in. I’m an old man but I’m no Santiago.
I take him to the swimming pool instead. The two of us dip our legs in the water, sit on the lip of the pool. When I think of my father, I think of my heart breaking in stages. A dull pain, then piercing. Electric. Still, somehow, gradual. The way his legs look in this swimming pool today—that’s the first stage of my grief. Even the blue bloat of water doesn’t make them look any stronger, or more capable, than a child’s.
One thing I’d change, he says, is that I never did teach my daughter to swim.
IX.
I am twenty-one, and David and I have broken up for good this time, for real, I promise, swear it, no take backs. In Vegas, I help my father work the shoe booth in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This’ll take your mind off that asshole, he says, but I excuse myself to cry in the convention center bathroom at least once an hour.
On the final day of the show, when it closes at six P.M., my father hands me a wad of cash. Go out tonight, he says. Treat yourself to a date. Give yourself a time.
My cousin Tanya rides in the cab with me.
Why do you need a babysitter? she says.
I just don’t want to be alone.
Why has nobody gotten that yet?
I ask the cab driver to take us to the best of the best. The women. He knows what I mean. Tanya smokes a Marlboro out the window, says, You’re crazy, you know.
The doormen at the Spearmint Rhino are not used to women. They want to know where our men are, who’s paying. The bouncer scoots us into a small room near the entrance. You sisters? Cousins. Asian Act? Cousins. You coming to take our business? You women are always Take Take Take Take, and I shake my head, I say, No, I say, I am here for the women I am here for the show. We’re sending security near you, he says, to watch you because if you Solicit our fucking Men if you Take them if you are here for our Men there is going to be a Problem do you understand?
We are not here for your men.
We are here for the women.
A security guard leads us to two seats in the front row. We order vodka and orange juice, on the rocks. Clank our glasses. Green lights dart across the stage, the walls.
Is this what you want? asks Tanya, because you are so fucking funny you know you are so fucking weird how are we related you are so fucking funny this is so gay, you know that?
Pick one, says Tanya. Pick a girl. I know you want to.
I can’t choose. Instead, I pull my father’s wad from the pocket of my purse. I lean back in my chair, bend my pointer finger to say, Come here, Come. The women—they grind on my lap and say, You’re cute which man are you with, and I say, Tell me about you, what’s your real name, who are you? I want them to tell the truth, but I want to give them a story.
How much?
This much, I say, shaking my father’s cash. I make bills disappear in my left hand and reappear in my right. Oh you got tricks, they say, and I nod.
The next morning, my father asks me for change.
I gave you more than I’d meant to, he says. All that money.
I gave it to the women, I say.
Have I taught you nothing? he says. Women. Those kinds of women. Don’t ever look them in the eyes.
X.
I am twenty-six, visiting my father in Boca. Tonight, he wants us to join his childhood friends for dinner. We used to party together, he says. Me, your mom, and The Couple. They’re my wildest friends; the greatest.
At dinner, over oysters, The Couple asks me about a boyfriend. Is he handsome? Is he Jewish? Is his mother still alive? Does he eat meat?
A girlfriend, I say. Hannah.
Oh.
But you’re pretty, says The Couple.
You’ve done so much for yourself. So much going your way.
I’m in love. That’s all I ever did.
No children for you then, says The Couple. No child should be fatherless. No man will ever love a fatherless girl. She won’t know how to treat him right. How to rub a man’s feet.
In the car ride home, my father apologizes on behalf of The Couple, his oldest friends.
No friends of mine, he says. Not anymore. Out.
Why? I ask. Don’t you feel the same about her?
If anyone is ever going to make my daughter cry, he says, It’d ought to be me.
XI.
I’m twenty-seven when it happens: my mother clasps my father’s gold-chain necklace around his wrist wrappings—the necklace my grandfather once gave him. The chain feels cold to the touch, heavy, like a fistful of snow. When the doctor removes the tubes from his trach, my mother and I lift the blanket all the way up to his chin, pulling his arms out and over it. With his new shave, no snakes of plastic, he looks honorable, handsome even. Like he’s been napping all this time. I hold the seashell of his hand, and my brothers, mother, and I plead with him, Let go. You’re safe. We watch the colors—lips parting indigo, the rush of grays and blues through the square patches of visible skin, red eyelids of a pigeon. And then it happens. It happens as quiet as that. The doctor, a flash in the eye. A nod. That.
My brothers clear the room, and I hold my father’s body like a child, like he needs me, wrapping his slumped arms around my shoulders. Here and here and here you are, mine, you were something that was mine. My mother unclasps the necklace.
XII.
In grief, I try to become my father. My own body is not enough. I am too small for my sadness. I wear my father’s striped T-shirts, his socks, even his underwear, rolled up at the yellowed elastic. I scrub my gums with his toothbrush. Spit blood. I take shots off his inhaler and wait for the rush of life. I even watch action films—karate movies, explosions, skull splatters in Italian restaurants—and replay the most violent parts.
My mother charges his cell phone every night. She uses it to call me sometimes, and swears this is a mistake. Whenever his name appears on my screen, I am hopeful. He could be on the other line this time; he could be getting through.
Hi, Daddy, I say.
I’m sorry, she says, hanging up.
Ghosts are better than nothing. Ghosts move. They want things. To haunt each other, then, is a way for my mother and I to keep him. He is more than a voice in the walls, a Ouija board movement, an iridescent cloud in the dark; he can exist here, inside us, through possession. We do our best to play the roles. Our own bodies are not big enough.
Falling in love with someone, I think, is at least like that.
XIII.
I’m seventeen, unpacking in my dorm room in New York City. I’ve moved here to be closer to my dad. I want to walk his streets, eat his favorite pastrami, try on a new relationship with him.
Well, he says, let’s start with a movie. Ten thirty tomorrow morning?
Ten thirty? I ask. On a Saturday?
Better seats this way, he says.
Okay, it’s a date.
My father is thirty minutes early to the movie. I am ten minutes early, and he tells me I am late. I’m gonna teach you two things about life, he says. You better listen, he says.
1. Early is On Time.
2. Always be early.