awkward, “Unfaithfulness on my mother’s part.”
“She doesn’t look like your dad at all, but I suppose that’s hardly proof. I don’t look like my dad, the bloomin’ sod, thank my lucky stars.” She winks at me. Emme’s dad was some sort of con man from what I can gather. He wandered off after Joe was born and apparently no one looked very hard to find him. “Anyway, anything else you remember?”
“Not really,” I frown. “Everything is fuzzy, I was only four. The next thing I knew I was in Italy two hundred years earlier. Mother killed herself and Dad started drinking. Not exactly the best part of my life.”
“Well, it’s probably good you don’t remember,” Emme says, kindly. “I bet your dad remembers enough for both of you. No wonder he stays drunk.”
“I suppose.”
“Talk to him? If it is Rose, he should be told. Might sober him up.”
Trust Emme to find the bright side of things.
********************
Dad lounges at his usual spot, in his nylon lawn chair he brings to set up next to Prue’s food cart. By the time I arrive, it’s lunch hour for the business men from down the street and I warily keep an eye on Prue’s behavior as she dishes out buttery rolls stuffed with savory meat and onions.
“You know what this needs?” Asks a portly gentleman in a suit that looks entirely too hot for the weather.
Prue narrows her eyes. Dear man, please shut up, I think to myself.
“A side of potatoes!” He looks for the entire world as if is pleased with his insightfulness and looks to Prue for her approval. Instead, he gets a sharp whack with the silver tongs she has in her hands and a glare that could melt a glacier.
“Potatoes?” she barks, “You ever hear of a little sumpin’ called The Potato Famine, you ignorant child? Why would I want to even look at a potato again, never mind cook ‘em up for the likes of you? You get out o’ here, you windbag! And give me back that roll, you don’t deserve it.” She snatches the roll out of his chubby hands and in spite of it having a large bite taken out of it, plops it unceremoniously into the next customer’s fingers. The portly man turns purple and stalks away, while the young woman who has suddenly gotten custody of a meat and onion lunch opens her mouth, closes it, and orders a soda with a squeaky voice. Prue smacks a can of cola on the cart and demands five dollars. She has raised her prices by two dollars just in the three minutes I’ve been standing here.
“Dad? Come for a walk with me?” I whisper conspiratorially.
He smiles as much as I’ve ever seen him, which is to say, briefly and with only the smallest bit of mirth, and nods. He unfolds his long, gangly legs out of his chair and together we leave Prue’s little lunch area, heading for the small sidewalk that follows along the river. Dad hunches when he walks, the way he always does, and our long strides match each other’s perfectly. We eat up the sidewalk.
“What is it, dear?” He asks, but I know it’s only a formal request, not a burning desire to know what is actually going on with me. I don’t believe it’s that he doesn’t want to know, he simply hasn’t thought enough about it to develop any curiosity about me or my life. I wonder if I ever cross his mind in more than a vague, forgetful way.
There is no way to gently break what I’m going to say to him and so I dive right in to the heart of the matter.
“I think Rose may be Lost. I think she is traveling and she’s here. Now.” Here means nothing to the Lost; now means everything. It’s the place in time we pay attention to, not the location.
I am surprised when he doesn’t break stride and when his face shows no emotion. I suspected shock, disbelief, a roll of his eyes, or an unbelieving laugh, but not this. No reaction at all.
“Did you hear me, Dad? I’ve seen Rose.”
“Where?” He asks, and it sounds as though he is choosing his words carefully. His voice remains neutral.
“At the coffee shop. And she was at the fair last week; I have pictures of her to prove it.” I pull them out of my cover-all pocket where I had folded them and placed them. There’s a crease through her pretty red