1

My mother was on the floor, rummaging through the laundry basket. She was wearing only underwear—green cotton panties and a purple athletic bra—with one pink sock draped over her shoulder like a dish towel. She located its mate, examined the two together, and muttering something about destitution, threw both socks aside disgustedly. I could see that my timing wasn’t very good, but then that is the essence of my story. “Ma,” I began.

Without turning, she withdrew her hands from the basket just long enough to flutter them at the sides of her head. “Not … now,” she advised, leaving a gap between the words for emphasis.

I went to my room and dug out a pair of good woolen socks that I’d been saving for winter—a major sacrifice, because when she returned from her Tai Chi class, where they trained in stockinged feet, the socks would be in as bad shape as all of hers. When I came back to the kitchen, the floor was littered with threadbare socks, one of which Surge had begun to chew. “Ma,” I said again.

This time she turned, and I saw that her eyes were moist. It didn’t take much to set her off these days. I held the socks out to her, but it took a moment for her expression to soften. “I’ve never seen those before,” she whispered.

If I told her that Dad had bought them for me, she’d refuse to wear them, so I mumbled something about having inherited them from Jill, Terri’s older sister who had moved to Texas over the summer. Hesitantly, she reached toward my outstretched hand, but just as her fingers were about to make contact, I jerked mine back—not far, just enough to let her know that there was more going on here than a simple act of charity. The brief display of bewilderment that appeared on her face made my heartbeat quicken. “I need to borrow twenty bucks,” I said briskly. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I find a job.”

Her hand withdrew in haste. “No!” she snapped. “If you couldn’t find a job over the summer, how do you expect to find one now?”

“I tried!” I whined.

She was on her feet, tilting toward the basement door. She must have known I’d follow, because she kept right on talking. “You call that trying? What’d you make, three phone calls? Four? If you’d really wanted to find employment, you would have by now. You should be ashamed, a girl your age.”

As we hurried down the stairs and turned toward the washer, I had to bite my lip to keep from reminding her of how long it had taken her to find her job, as a receptionist in a local insurance agency. “This is really important,” I pleaded.

She opened the lid and weeded through the dirty clothes within until she finally came up with the same pair of blue socks that she had worn to Bingo the week before. She held them up and inspected them for holes. “The answer is no. I’m not even going to ask what you want it for,” she said.

That was best, because I wasn’t prepared to tell her. “Well, can you at least drop me at Dad’s on your way out? And pick me up on your way back again? Maybe he can spare a few dollars.”

She lifted the socks to her nose, sniffed, jerked her head back in response, then shrugged and bent to slip them on anyway. She turned from the machine and, having had a second thought, spun back around to pour some powder in and start it up. Then she squared up her shoulders, brought her hands up in front of her face, and crossed them with her palms facing her. Slowly, and with her eyes empty and her lips pursed in concentration, she raised one knee to her chest, then kicked, Tai Chi fashion. I couldn’t be sure whether her imaginary adversary was Dad or me, but whoever it was, she must have imagined a reaction to her assault too, because she smiled. “Sure,” she said, stepping past me. “Just be sure that you’re out by the Dumpsters at eight sharp. I’m not going in to get you.”

At the top of the stairs we ran off in different directions, she towards her bedroom to finish dressing and I towards mine to answer the phone. “Did you get it yet?” Sharon asked.

“I’m still trying,” I confessed and hung up.

Dad’s tiny kitchen smelled of burnt meat. They’d been separated for nearly a year, and he still hadn’t learned to cook. “Ginny! Come in,” he said, even though I’d already closed the door and was standing with my back to it. I knew he’d have preferred me to knock, but if I didn’t have to announce my entries into my mother’s house, I didn’t see why I should when I came to his apartment. I had talked it over with Terri, and we had concluded that it was my duty as their daughter to insure that both the pleasures and the drawbacks of parenting remained equally distributed in spite of their split.

He was smiling his closed-lipped smile, and it occurred to me that almost all the adults I knew smiled that way. It was the kind of smile that could have hidden anything, a formality more than a genuine response to delight. He was sitting at the table. Clustered before him were the tools of his trade: computer, books, paper, pencils, ashtray, smokes, matches, and beer bottle. At the far end was his dinner plate, a blackened steak bone in the middle of it. As there were no other food scraps, I assumed he’d either had a single-serving dinner or literally licked the plate clean. “Can I take that home for Surge?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Sit down. Tell me how your mother’s doing.”

I looked past him, at the gray Formica counter. Except for the microwave, which had come with the apartment, there wasn’t a single thing on it. I thought of the counter space at home, cluttered so tightly with food processors and coffee pots and canisters, so many various trinkets that “space” was hardly the word to define it. “She went out tonight wearing a pair of dirty socks that she took from a load of laundry that had been sitting in the washer for a week,” I said.

His smile elongated. This was the kind of thing he liked to hear. It confirmed that he had used good sense in allowing her to throw him out. I only stooped that low when I wanted something, but he hadn’t caught on to that yet. If she was the bad guy, then he had to be the good guy. It rendered him more inclined to give in to my requests. I might have gone on about her, mentioned that she seldom made her bed anymore or that she hadn’t read a newspaper in over a month, but I didn’t have time to beat around the bush. “How’s your financial situation?” I asked.

He let his eyes drift down to the computer screen, not a favorable indication. “Didn’t your mother get my last check?”

“Yes, but we had to use it all up on school clothes. Then this other thing came up.”

I hesitated. Sharon had called just after dinner to inform me that tomorrow was the day; I hadn’t had time to formulate a decent fabrication. Then something hit me. “I broke a string on my violin,” I said.

He looked up at me. I lifted my chin and smiled his tight smile right back at him. We both knew I practiced the violin as infrequently as possible; in fact, I hadn’t had a lesson in well over a year. Still, it was he who had started me on it, he who had insisted that it would round me out, make me the target of more college solicitations than I could imagine. And it was his lies to my mother that had gotten him thrown out; he was in no position to risk an accusation.

He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled, a trace of smoke from his cigarette emerging with his breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He got up from the table, wiped his hands on his back pockets, and left the room. I leaned over immediately to see what was happening on his computer. He was in his word-processing program, but there was only one line on the screen: She moved across the deck in the dark. Shit! I didn’t know whether the expletive was part of the text or only his reaction to it. Starting was always tough for him. He’d rewrite first chapters for months on end before he got the tone and tempo the way he wanted. Once he got through that though, his books were as good as done. This one was going to be an historical novel about some pirates. I didn’t know much about pirates myself, except that they were a superstitious lot and would rather take their chances swimming with the sharks than to sail with a woman on board. It figured that my father would feel compelled to go against the grain and insert one in there anyway.

He gave me five bucks more than I’d hoped for and offered to make me a cup of tea, which I declined. Then, thinking that I should compensate him for the money, I began to tell him all about my first week of school. I described each of my teachers, exaggerating their eccentricities so as to get him to laugh. But he didn’t; he just smiled and nodded his head.

I looked at the clock, and seeing that it was almost eight, I mumbled something about Mom coming for me and got out of my chair. Uncharacteristically, he got up too, to see me to the door. “So, when will you be coming by again?” he asked.

I stepped halfway out and stared down the catwalk, considering. My eye fell on the woman who had just emerged from the stairs at the end. It was just getting dark, so I couldn’t make out her features very well, but what caught my attention was her size. Being so small myself (one of Bev’s friends had told me that I could pass for an eighth-grader), I had always been interested in people of uncommon stature. This lady was practically a giant. But you could tell by the way she walked—hips swinging, longish hair bouncing from side to side—that she liked herself that way.

My father had been staring at Goliath too, but he dropped his gaze abruptly when I turned to tell him that I’d probably stop by over the weekend. Then he put his hand on my back and said that it had been nice to see me. He didn’t exactly push me out, but there was some pressure in his fingertips, which, in my confusion, I responded to.

I walked some twenty feet and then looked back over my shoulder. Dad was no longer at the door, but the ribbon of light there confirmed that he had left it slightly opened. When I turned back again, the woman was just in front of me. She was wearing faded red leggings and a purple V-necked sweater over a white turtleneck. Her shoulder bag was enormous. “Hello,” she said.

I smiled one of my father’s throw-away smiles and picked up my pace. There were only two apartments after his, and I didn’t remember either of them having their outside lights on. The woman’s footsteps ceased. I listened for voices but heard none. I didn’t hear any knocking either.

When I arrived home, I got my trampoline out from beneath the bed and began to bounce. My father, the way I saw it, had no right to a private life, or at least not one so private that it excluded me. What, I wondered, was in Goliath’s bag? Toiletries and a change of clothes for tomorrow? The phone rang, and I went down on my knees and bounced up again with the receiver. I told Sharon that I had gotten the money and would see her in the morning.

I jumped and reviewed our visit several times over. At first I was inclined to give Dad the benefit of the doubt. Goliath’s arrival might have been a surprise to him, too, in which case his not mentioning it made perfect sense. Then I remembered that he had offered me tea, which, except when I was sick, I never drank. He must have realized that. Had he offered me a soda, which he always had on hand, I would have said yes. Then I might have stayed a little longer, given him more details about my classes. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d let Mom sit in the car and stew.

The light went off in the living room, signaling that Mom was going to bed. “Get your homework finished?” she asked as she passed my door. The question was reflexive and required no response.

I jumped harder to increase my altitude, until I was almost touching the ceiling. Jumping Ginny, my father used to call me, but that was back in the days when he was still computer illiterate, back when he still moved from room to room when he needed something and was, therefore, apt to pass my door and take note of me.

Ironically, Mom bought him his first computer as an anniversary present. She might just as well have introduced him to the sexiest woman she knew. He was seduced immediately, and being an organizer by nature, he spent months on end transferring not only his manuscripts, but all his personal records into tidy, accessible computer files. Mom complained, because he seldom left his home office during this time, but he assured her that once he had completed his task—and, with his documents at his fingertips!—he’d have all the time in the world for her. But then he upgraded and went on-line.

Instead of going to the library, where Mom had often accompanied him, to do his research, he began to do it over the Internet. He stopped reading the newspaper, which he and Mom had liked to share, because he could get the news faster on his modem. Computer forums enabled him to parley with fellow hackers. However, being a private man, he preferred one to one “conversations” via electronic mail. It was in this manner that he met Prissy Walker, the woman with whom he had the affair. Nothing would have come of it, he told Mom later, if it hadn’t turned out that she lived only forty miles away.

We had had a talk some time ago, after the affair had ended, and he had implied that he was just waiting for time to pass, that his long-range objective was to wiggle his way back into my mother’s affection. I had no reason at the time to think he was equivocating.

Surge nosed my door open and came in to lie down on the rug at the foot of my bed. He was old now, slow and cautious. Even the act of settling himself for sleep appeared to take some effort. Watching him, I realized that I had forgotten the bone I’d meant to bring him. I had been ushered out of Dad’s apartment that fast.