“Whatcha gonna make?” she said.
“How about cold chicken with mixed fruit and whole-wheat biscuits?”
“What could be better,” she said.
“Well, there’s one thing I can think of,” I said. “But there’s so many damn pillows on the bed. . . .”
She grinned.
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
I took out the chicken to allow the refrigerator chill to dissipate, and some fruit salad, and started mixing the biscuits.
“Is her mother going with you when you talk to Missy?” Susan said.
“No,” I said. “Winifred says that she and her daughter are so at odds that she would only make matters worse.”
“At odds over the father?” Susan asked.
“I would say so.”
“Women fighting over a man,” Susan said.
“It’s that simple?” I said.
“Oh, God, no,” Susan said. “I was just sort of musing aloud. Consider the girl. She thinks she has no father, that he’s dead, and she fantasizes the dream father, and then when she’s sixteen years old he appears and he seems to be the dream father she had imagined: handsome, mysterious, charming, and he comes to her. She’s furious with her mother for denying him all these sixteen years. On the other hand, it took him sixteen years to come see her. Who should she love? Who can she trust? How should she feel?”
“Sixteen years is a long time when you’re sixteen,” I said.
“A lifetime,” Susan said. “Do you have a plan?”
“I thought I’d ask her about her relationship with her father and the Herzberg Foundation.”
Susan smiled.
“Subtle,” she said.
I shrugged.
“At the beginning I was walking around saying, ‘What’s going on?’ At least now I’ve narrowed the focus of my general questions.”
“And after you’ve asked?” Susan said.
“I’ll listen,” I said. “You know how that works.”
“I do,” she said. “Though my goal is generally somewhat different.”
“We’re both after the truth,” I said.
“There’s that,” Susan said.
55
I fell in beside Missy Minor as she walked near the student union.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “You have so much you don’t want me to know.”
She stopped walking and turned toward me.
“What’s that mean?” she said.
It had stopped snowing during the night. But it was kind of cold, and the wind tossed the new snow around in small white eddies.
“I’ll explain if we can get out of the cold,” I said. “Buy you breakfast?”
“I had breakfast,” she said.
“No reason you can’t have another one,” I said.
“I’ll have coffee,” she said.
We went into the student union and got a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. At mid-morning, the place was half empty. I had milk and sugar in my coffee. She drank hers black.
“I know that your father is Ariel Herzberg and that you and he see one another,” I said.
“My mother tell you that?”
“I’ve talked with your mother,” I said. “But I actually saw you and him together in the library.”
“You’ve been spying on me,” she said.
“I have.”
“Why,” she said. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
