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didn’t encourage us to “provoke” Daddy. He was hurt, he was in the hospital for eight weeks. His mother told me, they thought he might not live.
    And another time our mother told us, in a lowered voice He has never talked about it with me and it’s best that way.
    In scorn I’d thought: What kind of selfish wife doesn’t even want to know about her husband in the war?
    How easily, Daddy could have crushed me in his embrace. I would not realize until afterward—I mean years afterward—that Daddy may havebeen frightened of me, of the fact of me so suddenly with him, in his car; his laughter was loud, delighted. Possibly it was the laughter of disbelief, wonder, a pang of conscience— My daughter? My daughter I am forbidden to see? She has come to me, this is—her?
    “That’s my good girl. My good— brave —girl.”
    Tenderly my father’s large hands framed my face. My father’s large calloused hands. Once I had seen my father seize my mother’s face in his hands like this—not in love but in fury, exasperation—to make my mother listen, to make my mother see —and the long-ago memory came to me now, with a stab of panic. And yet, how unresisting I was: like a child whose anxiety has at last been quelled, all fear banished even fear of Daddy. Such luxury to be so gripped, so kissed and so loved. I knew that my father would never hurt me. Tears stung my eyes, ran down my face that throbbed with hurt from having been struck by a carelessly thrown basketball within the past hour. I could not have recalled when my mother had last kissed or even hugged me—could not have recalled when I’d last wished to be kissed or hugged by her. Such displays of emotion would have embarrassed us both. We’d have steeled ourselves to hear my brother say—this was one of Ben’s too-frequent household remarks delivered in a droll dry voice of disgust— Cut the crap for Christ’s sake. This ain’t TV.
    This was not TV, I thought. This was improvised, unknown. This had not happened before. Or, if it had happened, it had not happened to me.
    School buses were idling nearby, sending up sprays of exhaust. My classmates were running through the rain and there was much commotion in the parking lot as the buses were loading, preparing to leave. Headlights would have illuminated my father’s and my excited faces which Eddy Diehl would not have wished.
    Is that — Eddy Diehl? The one who —
    Is he with his daughter? What’s-her-name—
    Quickly Daddy put his car in gear, drove out of the parking lot.
    In the rain we drove for some confused yet exhilarant minutes. Not knowing where he was taking us—Edgehill Street, East End Avenue, Union Avenue—lower Main Street, a turn and steeply downhill toDepot-these streets of Sparta so familiar, in truth they lacked names to me—they were but directions, impulses—taking us away from my school where we might be recognized but lacking a destination since there was no longer a common destination in our lives.
    With something of his old pride in such showy purchases my father was telling me about the car he was driving, a 1976 Caddie he’d acquired just in time for this visit. The finish was “Red Canyon” and the interior was “cream-colored leather, genuine.” This “beaut” of a car naturally came with power steering, whitewall tires, V-eight engine, air-conditioning, radio and tape deck, more mileage for the gallon than any other U.S. “luxury car.”
    It was so, Daddy conceded, the Caddie’s chassis had had to be rebuilt after a rear-ending but the engine was in “damned good shape—you can hear it.”
    I listened, I could hear it. Eagerly I nodded Yes yes! I can hear it.
    Stammering with schoolgirl emotion I told my father that this was the most beautiful car of his, ever. The most fantastic car I’d ever ridden in.
    “Well. Pretty close, Puss.”
    Maybe what I said was true. Daddy’s specialty-autos had all been spectacular. But each spectacular