"Mom, why are their heads so shiny and their backs so scratchy?" Angela whispered to me as she giggled with the straw of her apple juice box lodged in the space between her two new front teeth.
En route New York to Washington Club Car. Robert Frank. 1955-56.
"Not nice, honey," I said, kissing her head. What do you say? I wanted to tell her mostly that I'm just in awe at her curiosity. Has a child ever wondered so much? That fascination comes - without any curiosity on my part - from her father. Alexander was in love with the world. And so, not me. But if it took that disaster to give the world Angela, then thank God for Alexander.
I have to say that sometimes, for a rare fleeting moment, I miss him. Those are always the longest moments. And so big. When snowflakes get caught in the corner of Angela's lashes. Alexander. When I smell lemons and feel the feel of acrylic paint. Alexander. When it's totally, eerily quiet in Brooklyn. Alexander.
Those moments are always longer than these trips back and forth from New York so Angela can see him. I don't want our inadequacies to deprive her of a father, or even of Alexander's good traits - however entirely absent they may be from our relationship now. I can't even look him in the eye. I think the him I miss isn't even him any more. His increasingly gorgeous body just vessel for a stranger. The only parts of him I still know are probably different now too; I'm just not invited to find out. The smell between his neck and his clavicle. The double-blink when he's trying to decide if his cooking or painting or rearranging of furniture is complete.
This guy's jacket is like the great-grandchild of the chair Alexander had in his apartment when we met. That was it. Just the chair, a lamp, one pot and all his many nations of painting tools. I hate that jacket.
My arm is falling asleep because Angela's asleep on it now. I hope the look of a houndstooth jacket will one day mean so much to her. I hope he would have thought me if he saw this jacket. I hope he doesn't know I wanted him to ask us to stay.