After she turned eighteen, I declared that I had given the matter much thought, had taken into consideration the score of sixty-seven she’d received on her latest physics exam, the recent eruption of Franco-Arab unrest in Paris and Lyon, her as-yet-imperfect command of colloquial French. There would be time for her to travel after she had graduated from college, or even, should she choose, during a junior year abroad. She would profit more from the experience having deferred it than she would by pouncing on the opportunity just because it was there. Money wasn’t for the gratification of rash schemes. And anyway I had already arranged for her to repeat her internship at my institute, working for Mr. Shettleworth, the librarian and archivist. He would be delighted to have Clementine back. Of course she knew what a favorite of his she was….
This declaration was sufficient to touch off the fuse. The expression I took at first to be merely the shadow of her disappointment revealed itself to be a blotchy hash-up of disgust and fury.
She began almost inaudibly, “It would be sad—no, funny, really—”
“I’m not sure I see anything funny here, Clem,” I said.
“No,” she continued as though I hadn’t spoken, “it would be funny if it wasn’t merely sick.”
“What is sick?”
“Daniel,” she said. She had never in my hearing called me Daniel, only Dan. “Daniel, do your patients know that you are sick? Is there some kind of disclaimer you give them, something they could sign?”
“Clementine—”
“It’s sick—sick but also sad, pitiful really—how you’ve convinced yourself this—this ploy could work. Is it possible? Have you even managed to convince yourself you aren’t lying?”
“Clementine, I will not stand here—”
“I don’t know. Maybe you just missed it. Maybe you were thinking of something else. Maybe you just didn’t notice that your daughter is now an adult—”
“Eighteen may feel to you like—”
“—or that your precious daughter fucks guys? I see, Daniel, do your shrink thing, go ahead, do your silent listening thing, knock yourself out. It’s worked for you so far. Have you convinced yourself in your twisted, shrinkish way that I’m something you get to keep? Jesus, Daniel, you suck all the air out of the room. You suck the air out of my life! I cannot calculate—no, I cannot conceive—how much more viable my life would have been if you had been the one to kill yourself, not Mom!”
“Clementine—” I said, but now she was waving something at me, a sheet of paper, a photocopy, shoving it toward me across the dead space between us. “It’s obscene! But you know that, or you wouldn’t lie about it—wouldn’t have lied about it for years, Daniel, years!”
And so she was gone—cellphone snatched up, keys abandoned, backpack shouldered, the door slammed open, slammed shut—all, it seemed, before the mimeographed sheet of paper she had thrust at me had floated to the floor, the clipping I could never bear to read again, recounting the facts of Miriam’s suicide.
FOURTEEN
She did not return for supper, or later that night, or the next morning. I walked through a pelting rain to the precinct house to report a missing person.
“And how old is this lost daughter?” the officer asked, with all the sympathy she might have shown someone reporting a lost sense of optimism. “Eighteen? So not a minor. You sure she’s missing, not just somewhere else?”
PEÑA, announced the badge on her uniform. Officer Peña cranked a form into her Selectric.
When had I last seen my daughter? Was she with anyone at the time? Was there reason to think she was in danger?
“Mr. Upend?”
“Was there reason—what?”
“Is there reason, Mr. Upend.”
“For what? It’s Abend.”
“Do you, Mr. Upend, have any reason to suspect—”
“Ah…no. I mean, she didn’t come home….”
“Yes, I know.”
She yanked the form from the Selectric and pushed it toward me to sign. She assured me I would be called.
When would I be called?
When there was something to call about.
From the police station I went directly to the bank, was referred to the trust department. The trust officer who greeted me I had not met before, but he shook my hand enthusiastically and asked after my daughter. Well, it certainly had been a pleasure, he said, to see Miss Abend yesterday. Gracious, what an exciting trip she had planned! He’d been to Paris once, on his honeymoon—
“Paris,” I said.
Yes, sir. Nothing like it.
“Paris.”
They did grow up, kids, didn’t they?
I managed to say that I’d—uh, as it happened—I’d come to withdraw the funds for her trip.
He peered at me and shifted in his seat. My daughter (he cleared his throat) was the sole beneficiary named in the trust instrument. Having reached her majority…He paused and shifted again. In any event, all principal and accrued interest had been disbursed to her yesterday. She hadn’t mentioned that?
Out on the street I hurried home, breaking into a jog at the intersections to make the light, certain that…certain what? I stopped at the door of the building, immobilized. I was certain of nothing. Itzal came out, his concerned gaze sheltered under his bushy brows. Had Docteur Abend lost his keys? He was well? He was not sick, was he?
“No, no, Itzal, thank you. I am fine. I just realized—”
And la petite Clémentine was well, yes?
“Yes, she’s well. You have not seen her today, have you?”
He pursed his lips. Today? No, not today, he had not.
“When you do, just ask her to call me, okay?”
Bien sûr.
“You won’t forget?”
At the suggestion, the brows lifted and a smile broke across his face in a thousand creases. N’ayez crainte, Docteur Abend! Have no fear!
For what, for whom, had I been speeding home? A vast aimlessness engulfed me, deposited me hours later on a park bench, another lost man, eyed sidelong by a pigeon on the
