Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby continued making their way to the Melanoff mansion. Henry Willoughby was squinting and peering at street signs, complaining again about his lost bifocals, trying to see which street they were to take next; beside him, his wife was shuffling, trying not to put pressure on her blistered foot. “Are we almost there yet?” she kept asking. “I’m hungry.” It reminded her husband of trips they had once taken occasionally with their children in the car, his wife in the passenger seat beside him and the four youngsters squabbling in the back seat and asking that same question over and over.
Youngsters, he mused, thinking about his own offspring. If only his four children still were! He would be nicer to them, he thought. He would not shortchange them on their allowances the way he had in the past. He would cheerfully read them bedtime stories. Occasionally, perhaps, he would take them to the zoo. They had always wanted to go to the zoo, he remembered, and he had always said no.
He thought of something, suddenly. “What was the date on the paper?” he asked his wife.
She gave a bitter laugh. “Thirty years later than we thought it was,” she said. “Thirty years later than when we went off on that ridiculous vacation in the Alps.”
“No, not the year. I mean what day is it?”
“Thursday, June seventeenth,” Mrs. Willoughby told him.
“What day is Father’s Day?1 Remember Father’s Day?”
“We never celebrated that, Henry. You always said it was a stupid holiday invited by greeting card manufacturers. One year the children all made you cards with their crayons and colored pencils and you told them they had wasted valuable paper and should crumple the cards and throw them away. I remember the girl cried.”
“Jane,” he said softly.
“Such a crybaby.”
“I liked Jane,” Mr. Willoughby said, and brushed at his eyes because they were beginning to tear up. “What day is Father’s Day?”
His wife sighed. “Third Sunday in June,” she told him. “So silly.”
“Wasn’t there a bookstore back on the last corner?” he asked.
“Yes, but we don’t like books, Henry. Remember the children always wanted us to read stories to them at bedtime but we told them no? You said they should read informational material. You bought them a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.”
“Let’s go back there,” he told her, “to where that bookstore was. They’ll have greeting cards. I want to look at the Father’s Day cards. It’s not the third Sunday yet.”
“Henry,” his wife said, “you have it backwards. Children give cards to their father. Not the other way around.”
But he had already turned and was heading back to the small store they had passed.
“And in any case,” Mrs. Willoughby went on, as she hurried, with a painful limp, to keep up with him, “you just told me that they aren’t children anymore. They’re all grown up. Why are you—?”
But he gestured to her to shush. He was already on the front step of the small bookstore, which had, in fact, a display of books about fathers2 in its window, along with a sign saying FATHER’S DAY: NEXT SUNDAY! So his wife followed him into the store.
“May I help you find something?” a young saleswoman asked.
But Henry Willoughby ignored her because several racks at the front of the shop were clearly marked FATHER’S DAY CARDS. He headed there.
“Not one with a dog or a cat,” he muttered. “Flowers . . . maybe.” He began to look through the display.
The saleswoman had remained nearby. Finally he turned to her. “I need one that isn’t to the father, but from the father,” he explained.
Mrs. Willoughby leaned forward. “We’re about to be reunited with our children after many years,” she confided.
“My goodness,” the store clerk said. “Isn’t that lovely? So you need a kind of reverse card. Let me think. Of course, we have lovely blank cards. One of those might work, and you could write your own message. Or perhaps a card that says thank you?”
“What would we be thanking them for? Waiting for us? Not spending all our money?” Mrs. Willoughby asked. “Let us hope!”
“Do you have any that say sorry?” her husband asked the clerk. He was still feeling sad about Jane.
“Let me look,” the clerk replied.
“Also, do you by any chance have anything edible here? I’m very hungry,” his wife said. “What about a box of candy?”
The clerk looked startled. She straightened up and held her finger to her lips. “Shhhh,” she said. “Not aloud.”
“Not allowed? Hunger is not allowed?”
“No,” said the clerk, “I meant not aloud. That last word you said.”
“Here,” said Mr. Willoughby, handing her a card with a picture of a horse on it. “This one will do. What are you talking about? My wife said ‘candy.’”
“Shhhh,” the clerk whispered. “You know it’s against the law. I wouldn’t say it aloud if I were you.”
“Say candy? Saying the word candy’s against the law?”
The clerk winced at the word and gestured with her head toward the counter where the cash register was. “We used to keep it there. People get hungry when they’re shopping. You-know-what was a great impulse item. We sold ever so many Milk Duds and Whoppers. But now we’re trying to figure out what to offer in that space. Grapes, maybe. Or beef jerky?”
Mrs. Willoughby began to moan and wring her hands. “Milk Duds are illegal? Oh, Henry,” she said, “we should have stayed in Switzerland!”
“Shhhh,” the clerk whispered nervously. “Please don’t let anyone hear you say Oh Henry!”3