Read By the Light of My Father's Smile for Free Online Page B

she’d licked long and suggestively with her rapidly recovering tongue.
    She caught me watching, and laughed. You have a tongue fetish, she said.

Grace
    To love someone over many years is all the opportunity you need to learn how to love them back from anywhere.
    A death in the family? A wonderful chance! Or so it was with us, and with the death of her little brother, Jocko. Why he was called Jocko no one seemed to know, for he was no sportsman. As a child he adopted the persona of Zorro, the mysterious masked man of the Mexican West. According to Langley, he sewed himself a cape and a mask and wore as well a large black hat pulled low over his nearly obscured eyes. He carried a lariat. He rode a fabulous horse, which he constructed out of the sound of pounding hooves.
    So there he’d come, Langley said, prancing and neighing.
    And did he run into things? I asked.
    Never, she said. His horse was well trained. And he kept this up until, nearly, he went away to boarding school. She paused. I wonder who he became there.
    Yes, I said. Who would Zorro turn into at boarding school?
    And, she added thoughtfully, how would he stifle the sounds of his horse?
    Once Jocko came to see us in the mountains. He was tall and thin, with close-cropped hair and a beautiful nose. He smiled easily and often, as if at an inner pleasure. He was vague, however, about his life. All he told us was that he worked “behind the scenes” in Hollywood. Doing stunts, doing hair. Doing whatever. He drove a stylish car, black and shining, and favored black clothing. Except for a pair of silver boots.
    At his funeral Langley wept and held my hand tightly. She had memories that she said suddenly rose around her in the church: memories of being the prized damsel in distress whom Zorro saved and saved. And though he never offered to marry her, as her other brother, who played Tom Mix, often did, he offered friendship, which she imagined—because he offered it and was so dashing in his cape—a much more lasting and final thing.
    Of course, she whispered tearfully, with the trace of a Southern accent that crept into her voice whenever she felt sad, in order to rescue me he had to first place me in distress. Here she wept copiously. Sniffling loudly, she continued. How many times he left me bound and gagged somewhere nobody would even think to look! God, it’s a wonder I’m not the one who’s dead.
    Funerals are an opportunity to grow steadily more capable in one’s protector role. The shoulder to lean on, the ear to whisper into. The calming hand to hold. They are the opportunity to be still and stoic and present for your woman. Responsive to her sighs and moans. And it is not as far as one would think from the gravesite to the bed.
    Jocko left only ashes to be buried, and to Langley he left the silver boots, which fit her perfectly. Inside one of them he’d left a note: Fantasy was the reality of my life. Thank you for enjoying it with me. Of course, wearing the boots, reading the note, tromping about the bedroom feeling the boots on her feet and holdingthe note in her hand, with me helping her to a glass of wine, turning on the electric fan, and helping her to undress, soon Langley stood before me in her slip.
    Tears had made her eyes red. Wiping her nose so much had made it larger; her nostrils flared. Her carefully coifed hair now sprang up and out from her head like a spiky rose. There was the realization, as well, that her powder was all streaked. She’d chewed off her lipstick. She didn’t smell, in the heat, as fresh as when she’d left home.
    Oh, her favorite brother had died and left her! Tromp of boots. Gulp of white wine. Take the roses away, she cannot bear to see them. Where are her bath salts? Oh, she is a wreck. A hag. Look at that run in her stocking! Oh, death. She’ll soon be dead herself!
    But, lucky for me, I am there to witness this trauma, as well I should be. I am there to say, Oh,