HOLLY ANHOLT

Call

ONE DAY HE CALLED. It was strange hearing his voice, after hearing it in my head for so long. The old story of living in shadows and coming out into the light. I listened to the little edges and burrs and almost didn’t hear his words. I told him about Karen. It didn’t surprise him. Nothing ever really surprised him. It was as though he had long ago decided that his life could not afford surprises, that it had enough on its plate with the already revealed.

I didn’t want him to pity me. I wanted to make him laugh about something. So I said, “Why shouldn’t Daddy have cast a few seeds like a proper lord of the manor?”

What a hearty, phony girl I must have sounded like then. I almost apologized. But he did laugh.

He asked me if we looked like each other at all. At first I said no, not really, I’d tried but couldn’t find much, maybe just a hint of my father’s soft chin, of his archy eyebrows that almost converged, and that made him look like he was concentrating even when he was dreaming.

Then I remembered our bunions.

I told Nils what I had done, or really was in the process of doing. My gift of blood and money, two things I didn’t care to mix, it had nothing to do with goodness, he understood that, didn’t he, I said. Just get rid of it, he said.

I was so glad to talk with him.