"Is Merry okay? She hasn't called or written. I'm worried." My father drummed his fingers on the wooden table in a nervous, rapid beat. "Jesus, Lu, did you come to give me bad news?"

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

I love.

I love who?

I don't know, you tell me!

"It's time to leave Merry alone," I said.

My father shook his head as though my words didn't compute.

"It's time for her to have her life," I said. "You tried to take it away one way. You failed. Then you managed to do it another way."

"This is why you came?" He appeared ready to cry any moment. I snuck a look at the guard closest to us. He was young, African-American, and had so little expression in his face he could pa.s.s for dead. I prayed it was against the rules for prisoners to cry.

"You came to torment me?"

"I came to tell you you're not moving to Boston."

My father's face changed from wounded to challenging. "And you're in charge of where I live now?"

Back in Brooklyn, he'd switch moods that way. Your father could turn in a New York second, Mimi Rubee used to say as she ma.s.saged white balm into her face, flower-sweetened cream promising smooth skin forever. Merry would already be asleep.

After Mimi Rubee and I finished watching TV, we'd get ready for bed, I brushing my teeth, she chasing away wrinkles. Then we'd talk, feeling safe enough to explore for a few minutes because soon sleep would take us away from the nightmare in which we lived.

Watch out for him.

But he's in jail, Mimi Rubee.

Never mind jail. Until he's dead, his hand will reach out. Underneath it all, your father is a weak man, Lulu. He's a failure who even botched killing himself. Weak men are the most dangerous, and failure makes them worse. Stay away from him. I warned your mother, but she never listened.

"I'm not in charge of anything about you," I said. "But since you're getting out early, you'll be on parole. I'm making it my business to learn all the conditions of that parole. Remember the letters you wanted me to write? You move to Boston, and I'll write letters like you wouldn't believe."

"This makes me very sad," he said. "Forgiveness is the most important quality you can have, did you know that? I've taken seminars in here. Forgiving helps you heal, Lulu."

"Are you even partially serious, Dad?" The word slipped out before I could bite it away. The strange flavor from the past tasted harsh on my tongue.

He clasped the edge of the table, leaning in, straining toward me. "Don't mock me. Look at you. You haven't seen me since your grandmother's funeral, and the first thing you say is to stay away from your sister? Your sister is an angel. I know it helps her, the love she gives me. Listen. I memorized this for you."

Dad held his hand up, warding off my protest. He cleared his throat, exactly as he had when he sang to me back in Brooklyn, and began quoting some parable of prison lore. " 'Withholding forgiveness is like being in a prison. The person who will not forgive is the one locked inside the four walls.' Maybe that's not exact, but it's pretty darn close."

The shape of my father's eyes resembled that of Merry's, as did his long lashes. Feminine on him. On Ruby, these same lashes were yet another perfect brushstroke.

The eyes weren't the windows of the soul. I stared into my father's wanting to rip into the backs of them and see what remained. Would it be horrible? Would it look like Merry's doll had when the gla.s.s eye fell out, leaving nothing but a terrifying, dark void?

"How do I forgive what you did?" I asked. "How did you forgive yourself?"

"I try not to think about it anymore. It's a closed chapter. I was drunk. I was a kid. I had no clue what I was doing. I've paid for it with my entire life."

"No. Mama paid."

"Your mother is gone. I can't bring her back."

"Where's your remorse, Dad? Where is your sorrow?"

"Don't presume to know me, Lulu."

"How could I? You ripped yourself away. You tore up our lives."

"It doesn't make anything right, but d.a.m.n it, your mother was no saint," he said. "You haven't come to see me once, Lulu. Not once. You're my daughter."

"Not anymore," I hissed. "Beg G.o.d for forgiveness, not me. It's not mine to give. It never was. It never will be."

"Don't you think if I could I'd turn back the clock? Don't you know your mother haunts me? I loved her, I loved her so." He slumped. "Sorry? The word sorry doesn't cover what I am."

Feeling pity for my father hurt too much, so I held on to my anger. Moreover, for whom was his sorrow? Was he remorseful that he'd killed my mother or was he regretful for himself?

"I want my family. We have so few years left." My father offered his open hands. "Okay. I have no rights, Lulu. I won't move to Boston, not if you don't want me."

Biting my lip until it became numb, I scratched NO, NO, NO into the soft flesh inside my arm. Swallowing, I finally spoke. "I've put fifteen thousand dollars into an account for you. For when you get out. To start your life. I'll make sure you get it."

For you, Grandma. I promised I'd take care of things, and now I have.

"Can I write to you?" he asked.

"Have I ever been able to stop you?" I rose to leave, my stomach hollow.

He folded his hands. My father. A penitent. My curse.

I walked away, then stopped and turned to face my father. "What color were Mama's eyes?"

"The same as yours, Lulu. Just look in the mirror."

32.

Merry April 2003 I'd stopped visiting my father. After years of being his faithful daughter, his good daughter, the daughter on whom he relied, when I received the letter notifying me of his release, I'd stopped cold.

His letter had turned me to stone. Everything that followed-Victor, my troubles with Lulu-had sent me deep into a place from which I'd had to struggle to come back.

Now, here I was. Back in Brooklyn, looking for my father's house.

Forsythia bloomed along the dense bushes lining the street. Benson-hurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood I'd never visited, seemed made of different brick than the Brooklyn of my childhood. I'd grown up surrounded by the dingy pink buildings of Flatbush. Here the bricks looked redder.

I checked the house numbers as I walked. Slowly. Putting off the moment. Twice I reached for my phone. I wanted to hear Lulu say everything would be okay, not to worry, but I pushed away temptation. I had to comfort myself. Lulu didn't know that I'd come to visit, or even that I'd left Boston at six that morning. If she'd known, she'd have convinced me not to make the trip.

My father killed my mother.

It would be thirty-two years in July.

I'd been five and a half.

Lulu had never visited him.

I always had.

Everything would be okay.

Halfway down the block I spotted my father holding on to a chain-link fence. Seeing him free stunned me. No guard-enforced rules were in place to prevent his hugs or kisses. To-the-minute visiting hours wouldn't limit our time together. I tapped my chest repeatedly, giving myself full freedom to trace my scars through my soft spring sweater. No one plucked my fingers from my father's mark.

His smile grew wider. He dipped his head a few times, motioning come on, come on. I dragged myself forward, my steps punctuated by shaky breaths. If my father hadn't been outside waiting for me, I'd have turned and gone back to my rented car.

Finally, appearing impatient, my father unlatched the gate and walked toward me. I looked for signs of prison clinging to him, his gait-did he walk like a man being watched? Did he look nervous, as though too much s.p.a.ce was around? All I saw was a graying man with a still-muscular build walking with the stride of a handsome man. Rectangular wire-rim gla.s.ses had replaced the Clark Kent frames he'd worn in prison, appearing oddly fashionable, as did the white Gap-looking shirt he'd tucked into a pair of beige chinos.

Grandma Zelda always said my father had been a hoo-ha fashion plate.

"Baby doll," Dad said softly. "Tootsie." He pulled me in for a long, hard bear hug. Hug back, hug, I prodded myself. I put an arm around him, forcing him to embrace the lifeless column I'd become. He pressed my rigid arms into my ribs.

"So," he said. "Look at this. Here you are." He kept a hand clasped on my elbow even as he gave up the hug.

"Nice house." I pointed at the ordinary two-family, giving my arm something to do besides not hug him.

He beamed. "I did okay, huh? Come on." He chucked his chin at the bushes. "Forsythia. Brooklyn's official flower."

"I didn't know that." My words felt clumsy, too big for my tongue.

"The apartment I got, it's not bad. Well, you'll see it, of course. It's small. In the bas.e.m.e.nt. An in-law. But, hey, got to start somewhere." He led me down the driveway to a side entrance, opened the screen door, gesturing for me to enter first. "Take the stairs to the left."

A thin carpet runner covered the worn wooden steps leading down.

"Go ahead," he said. "Go in."

I opened the unlocked door to a painfully clean kitchen.

"I rented it furnished, but it's not bad stuff. For now."

"I'm sure everything's fine, Dad." My jaw needed oiling. I'd rusted like the Tin Man.

Black place mats were aligned straight and perfect on a gray-veined Formica tabletop. A chair was tucked underneath the exact middle of each side of the table. Round bra.s.s studs held red leather seats to the chairs' metal frames. White enameled cabinets hung over a cracked porcelain sink. The refrigerator and stove looked as though they'd have blocks of ice inside. I'd fallen into a hole in time.

"Here's the rest." He pointed through a doorway, proud, motioning for me to follow. Low-pile rugs covered most of the scuffed wooden floor in the combination living roombedroom. He'd positioned a tweed daybed and chair at perfect right angles. In the corner, a desk and dresser stood straight with an old trunk between them. Van Gogh's Sunflowers hung framed in yellow plastic.

"It came furnished," he reminded me. "But I bought the picture and the trunk."

"You keep it neat."

"Habit. One thing out of place in my cell drove me nuts." He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Soon I'm going to refinish the floors."

He showed me the small bathroom, which had a faded pink tub and sink and the same linoleum stamped with cabbage roses that covered the kitchen floor. Soap, toothpaste, and a green plastic gla.s.s lined the immaculate sink edge.

I made a show of admiring the small pantry holding Lipton soup mix, Froot Loops, and cans of tuna until we went back to the kitchen.

"Sit," he said. "We have lunch."

I touched the place mat lightly with a fingertip, feeling the newness, feeling positive that I was the first to use it, and that I was my father's first guest. He placed two Corelle plates down, white with a thin blue band, and matching cups and saucers. "Do you drink coffee? I can't have anything stronger in the house. Regulations."

I nodded, as though home regulations were the most normal thing in the world. "Coffee's fine. Great."

"How do you take it?" The gla.s.s creamer and sugar bowl looked out of place in his rough hands, yet he held them with a shy delicacy.

"Just milk." I tried not to cry at realizing my father didn't know how I drank my coffee.

"This is half-and-half; I'll get the milk."

"No, Dad, don't. Half-and-half would be a treat."

"See? That's what I thought." He beamed as he placed the creamer in front of me. "Look at you, not an extra ounce. Perfect as ever." He swung his arm around to indicate the framed gallery on his wall. An a.s.sault of photos hung in collages and individual frames. Every picture I'd given my father, he'd enshrined in wood. Tape marks still showed from where he'd hung them on his cell walls.

I saw my nieces as babies, as toddlers, as six-and ten-year-olds. Ruby in a pink tutu, Ca.s.sandra graduating from nursery school. My college graduation. Lulu's wedding. Some looked as though he'd enlarged them. Hours of work were evident on the wall.

"I made the frames myself," he said. "I set up a little shop in the cellar. I'm only half done. My landlady tells me I have the prettiest family in Brooklyn."

"Except we don't live in Brooklyn, Dad."

"But I do, and didn't you all start with me?" He put down a plate of bagels, enough for us to have half a dozen each. "I didn't know what kind you'd want, so I picked some of each. Look, I bought garlic, plain, poppy, and something called 'everything.' That one I don't remember. I don't think they had it before. You pick first," he insisted, as though we might face a shortage.

He went back to the refrigerator and returned with a platter heaped with lox and a pink tub of TempTee whipped cream cheese.

"I haven't had TempTee since Grandma was alive."

"I still feel like I should pick up the phone and call her," my father said. "She never let me down. G.o.d knows I disappointed her."

What was he expecting from me? No, Dad. You were a good son. "She was good to all of us," I said. "I never relaxed with another adult my entire childhood." I reached for an everything bagel. "Only Grandma."

"Not even me?" he asked.

I held the bagel and knife still. "Are you kidding, Dad?"