her father in the hospital because she was the daughter. The two of them were marooned alone together as in a lifeboat. Somehow, suddenly this had happened. There had been a family at one time, there were other relatives living now but the father did not wish to see anyone else. The father could not bear complications in his life. He had been an aggressive man in his former life but he had had to surrender his life as a man, now he would endure the life of the body. And so they were a father and a daughter alone together as in a lifeboat in the midst of the ocean. They had to shout at each other to be heard over the rushing winds and the slosh of six-foot waves. The hospital air was teeming with microorganisms poised to devour them. These were sharks too small to be detected by the human eye but obviously they were there. Disinfectant could keep them at bay but not for very long. The smell of disinfectant had seeped into her hair and could not be washed out. The smell of disinfectant had seeped into her clothing, her skin, even her fingernails. Beneath her fingernails, a sharp smell of disinfectant as if she’d been scratching her own skin, or scalp. No one would ever kiss her mouth again. No one would ever draw close to her again. What a joke! The summer was jinxed. The entire year would be jinxed. The preceding year, seen in retrospect, must have been jinxed. Though she had not known then, for she had believed that the not-so-good present was a “phase,” a “stage,” some sort of “transition.” Until the hospital, much can be interpreted as “transition.” She hadn’t known that her father had loved her. That was a surprise! She hadn’t known that her father had taken much notice of her. As a girl she had loved her father but eventually she’d given up, as we do when our love is not returned. Though possibly she’d been mistaken. Oh, it was a bitch! It was a bad joke. She was a bitch to think such thoughts at such a time. Though it was a comfort in this, that she was a bitch who deserved bad luck and not a nice person who deserved better. There had been a previous life involving her but in the hospital at her father’s bedside she could not recall this life very clearly. Perhaps it had involved someone else, in fact. Perhaps her family had been other people. Through a glass darkly came to her. She was envious of those other people she had not known. The nurses on the eighth floor knew her. Some of them, the nice ones, smiled encouragingly. Some of them smiled in pity. Some of them did not smile but glanced quickly away. Some of them ducked into supply closets. The attendants who spoke little English knew her. Everywhere were hospital workers who had no idea who she was yet knew her. Each time she entered the hospital with an eager dread. She shivered with an eager dread. The hospital was refrigerated in summer. You had to wear heavy clothing. You had to wear warm stockings. You had to clench your hands into fists and squeeze them beneath your armpits for warmth. She stepped out of the elevator on the eighth floor with her eager dread. She pushed through the doors of the cardiac unit with her eager dread. She was bringing flowers, or a basket of fruit. She was bringing the local newspaper which she would read to her father. Yet, she entered his room with her eager dread never knowing what she would encounter. For each time, her father was a smaller man in the ever-larger bed. Each time, her father’s eyes were sunk more deeply in their ever-larger sockets. Each time, something was missing from the room. Her father’s wristwatch that had been on the bedside table. Her father’s fuzzy bedroom slippers that had been neatly positioned on the floor beside the bed. Her father’s reading glasses were taken from him, who would want a dying old man’s reading glasses! Her father’s dentures were taken from him, who would want a dying old man’s dentures! Tears glistened on her father’s sunken cheeks. His collapsed mouth was frantic. She was his only hope. Her voice became excited. A nurse warned of calling security. You can’t accuse theft. You had better not accuse theft. You had better have evidence for theft. He was saying, You are my only hope. You will live on. I will live in you, my only hope. My beautiful daughter. Only you. She was terrified by such words. She began to tremble, such words. There was a roaring of wind, a terrible sloshing of waves. She wanted to scream at him, I’m not the one! Don’t count on me. No one had said she was beautiful in a long time. No one had kissed her mouth in a long time. Her father looked at her with love — but what is love, in a dying old man! What is love, in a deranged old man! On the eve of her father’s death, the missing dentures turned up. “Turned up” was the explanation. Yet her father died with a collapsed mouth, for it was too late for dentures. She was wakened from a stuporous sleep by a ringing phone. She who was his daughter who’d been claiming to be insomniac and sleep deprived yet she’d been wakened from a stuporous sleep to be informed by a woman’s voice that her father had passed away and she must come to the hospital as quickly as possible to make arrangements for the disposal of the body and to clear out the room. Now the summer stretched ahead like an asphalt parking lot to the horizon. Through a glass darkly rang in her head. She had no idea why. Though she’d been warned, there was the shock of entering an empty room. There was the shock of the stripped bed, the bare mattress. There was the shock of an overpowering smell of disinfectant. It was her task to clear this room of her father’s things. She was capable of this task, she thought. Her father’s dentures were given to her. Her father’s dentures had “turned up.” Later she might wonder if these dentures were in fact her father’s dentures but at the time she had not doubted that this was a happy ending. Later she would doubt for there was no way of knowing, really. She took care to wrap the dentures in tissue paper, though her hands were trembling. She was terrified of dropping the dentures onto the floor and breaking them. She was her father’s only hope. She believed that she was equal to the task except she was distracted by something murmurous. It sounded like an anxious Is that you, Poppy? But she couldn’t be sure.
You’re wondering how we meet. People like us.
“Excuse me?” — near closing time at the library & suddenly he’s looming over me. His manner is friendly-anxious & his eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses are dark & shining like globules of oil. He smells of wettish wool, something chalky & acrid. He’s a neatly dressed man in his late thirties whom I have seen previously in the library, at a little distance. Or maybe I have seen him elsewhere in Barnegat. His breathing is oddly quickened & shallow as if he’s just run up a steep flight of stairs with a question only Jane Erdley Circulation can answer.
In fact Jane Erdley has been observing this person for the past hour — he’s tall, lanky-limbed & self-conscious — as if he’s ill at ease in his body — there’s a glare in his clean-shaven face, a look of intense excitement, yet dread — for the past hour, or more, he’s been sitting at the long polished-pine table in the periodicals & reference room across the foyer, covertly glancing over at me while reading, or pretending to read, a copy of Scientific American.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes?”
“I have a, a question — ”
“Yes?”
Vaguely I remember — in the way a near-forgotten dream is recalled not by an act of will but unwittingly — that I’d first glimpsed this man shortly after the New Year. He’d worn a dark woolen overcoat — another time, a hooded windbreaker — now it’s late winter he’s wearing a tweed herringbone sport coat frayed at the elbows, black corduroy trousers & white dress shirt open at the throat. He might be as old as fifty, or as young as thirty-five — his thick dark hair is threaded with filaments of gray & receding unevenly from his forehead.
On the previous occasions I’d sighted him in the library, he’d been watching me, too. But not so fixedly that I took note of him.
For others stare at me, often. Mostly men, though not exclusively men. Rarely do I take note, any longer.
When I was younger, yes. When I was a girl. But no longer.
Today has been an odd, ominous day. Icy pelting rain & few people came to the library & abruptly then by late afternoon the sky above the Atlantic Ocean cleared & now at dusk there is an eerily beautiful blue-violet tinge to the eastern sky outside the Barnegat library’s big bay window a quarter-mile from the shore & somehow it has happened, who knows why at this moment, the man in the herringbone coat has decided to break the silence between us.
“There is a writer — ‘Triptree’ — ”
“‘Tiptree.’”
“‘Tiptree.’ That’s the name?”
“‘James Tiptree, Jr.’ — in fact, Tiptree was a woman.”
“A woman! I guess I’d heard that — yes.”
