Father's Day Read Online Free Page B

the best years of her father’s life had only been the beginning of hers.

VI
    T HE NIGHT BEFORE her father’s arrival, Harvey had a bad dream. Everything she cared about in life was gone.
    In the shower Harvey pieced together what she could remember of the dream: She had somehow slept through her alarm, then arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport hours late to find it completely abandoned. Taped to the walls in baggage claim (the way she taped things above her desk at work) were photos of her as a child with her father. They were doing things she had forgotten about. But in the dream it was all happening for the first time.
    Then, at the empty airport, Harvey remembered that the airplane her father was on had crashed into the sea, or had never taken off, or never existed—and when she looked outside, realized the airport had been closed for years. A runway cracked and overgrown with weeds. Birds circling the control tower.
    In the dream she had lived always there . Had never been born in the same way she would never die—and the details of her life conjured from emptiness and longing—her father’s death as much a fantasy as his life.
    Then she was in the hospital.
    A child is being born.
    First a head. Then a glistening shoulder. A film of blood across the body. A clear, sticky liquid over the mouth wiped hurriedly by a nurse.
    Inhalation, then screaming.
    The baby is weighed. Her limbs flap because she doesn’t know what they’re for. She is alive but sees nothing and will remember nothing. This is a world we call the world.
    B Y THE TIME Harvey was out of the shower, the remaining fragments of her dream had come apart like tissue in water. She stood in its wake at the kitchen window, taking mouthfuls of cereal.
    Across the courtyard, figures moved between parted curtains. The white corner of a nightgown. The gleam of a pan. A single hand turning, then steam from a tap.
    If Harvey wanted coffee before six A.M. , she had to hold a blanket over the espresso machine to muffle what sounded like a heavy truck passing through her kitchen. She had learned early on that otherwise affable Parisian neighbors were intolerant of any noise not made by the human voice.
    She drank her coffee standing up. Then she rinsed the cup out.
    The closet in Harvey’s bedroom had a sliding door with a mirror. She dressed carefully, then looked at herself. She had a pair of new ballet flats that some friends had helped her pick out at Galeries Lafayette. She took them from the black shoebox and removed tissue stuffed in the toes.
    The taxi stand near her apartment on the rue Caulaincourt had only one car waiting. The bald driver was reading a newspaper over the steering wheel. He opened the window and asked where she was going.
    Taped to the dashboard was a tiny calendar with certain days circled. Also, the photograph of a boy. It was early for aSunday, and Harvey asked the driver if his son would still be in bed. The driver replied that he’d most likely be up playing video games. His wife worked in a factory making in-flight meals but had weekends off. Sunday-morning traffic was always easy, he said, except in August, when everyone was going on holiday. Then he drove with one hand on the wheel and didn’t speak until they were almost at the airport.
    The photograph of the boy made Harvey think of Isobel, sitting at the table with her crayon, listening to her father’s instruction, as people learned to read and write.
    Harvey enjoyed the moments of their family life that coincided with her weekly lesson. Last month a doll shoe had been lost and was not between the cushions of the sofa nor in the transparent case of the handheld vacuum. Harvey heard Leon tell his daughter to wait until the lesson was finished before turning the apartment over. Another time Isobel’s bedroom was so untidy that her father just stood there shaking his head. “It’s like we’ve been robbed,” he said,