a towering appearance. When he walked, he always kept his five-foot-ten-inch body firm, his posture nearly as perfect as that of the guard at Buckingham Palace with his meticulous stride, even though my father never had military training. He was truly our personal Richard Cory, “a gentleman from sole to crown,” just like the man in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem. And that wasn’t simply because of the similarity of his surname. Even on Saturdays and Sundays, he would put on a white shirt and a solid blue, gray, or black tie, no matter how warm the weather. When I asked my mother about it once, she said he simply felt underdressed without his tie. Then she leaned in to add in a whisper, “It’s like his shield. He’s a knight in shining ties.”
He didn’t care that so many men his age dressed quite casually most of the time, even at work. But I’d have to admit that when he stood among them, he looked like someone in charge, someone very successful and very self-confident. He did everything with what my mother called “a banker’s precision.” He shaved every morning with a straight razor, making the exact same strokes the exact same way, and never missed a spot. Sometimes I would watch him make his smooth, careful motions as if he was another Michelangelo, carving his face out of marble. He had his black hair cut or trimmed more often than other men, and he wouldn’t step out of the house wearing shoes unless they were shined almost to the point where you could see your face in them. He always carried an umbrella, the same one he had since our mother and he married.
“He brought it on our honeymoon,” she said.
But I gathered that he didn’t keep it and care for it for romantic reasons. It would have been a waste to do otherwise. He felt justified carrying it no matter what the weather.
“The biggest unintended liar in the U.K. is the weatherman or woman,” he would say. He used the umbrella like a walking stick on sunny and partly sunny days, but he was always poised, like an American western cowboy gunman, ready to snap it open on the first drop that touched his face and defeat the rain that dared soil his clothes.
Other people saw him this way, too, as Mr. Correct or Mr. Perfect. Those who couldn’t get any bank money from him called him Mr. Scrooge, but everyone would agree that he lived strictly according to his rules.
“Your husband moves like a Swiss timepiece,” Mrs. Taylor, our closest neighbor, told my mother once. She was fifteen years older than my mother and had thinning gray hair. In the sunlight she looked bald. Her face had become a dried prune, but her eyes still had a youthful glint, especially when she was being a little playful. “I’d bet my last penny that he takes the same number of steps to work every morning, maybe even the same number of breaths.”
“Oh, most probably,” my mother replied, not in the least offended. No one could tell when she was, anyway. She was that good at keeping her feelings under lock and key when it came to anyone who wasn’t part of our immediate family. Like my father, she believed that your emotions and true feelings were not anyone else’s business. “Arthur believes ‘Waste not, want not. A penny saved is a penny earned.’ He knows just how many dips in the hot water one tea bag will go, and he won’t tolerate waste. He always says any man who watches his pennies can be as rich as a king.” She did sound a little proud.
Mrs. Taylor pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. “He’s like a doctor of finances,” she admitted. “When my accounts are a bit sick, he always has a remedy to suggest, and it always works.” She laughed. “I’ve gotten so I try not to waste my energy when I’m walking, even from one room to another. I’m afraid Arthur will see and take me to task.”
One day when I was accompanying my father to the greengrocer, I actually counted his steps, and the next day when I watched him go off to work, I realized that he did take the same number to the corner. For a while, everywhere I went with my mother and sister, I counted mine. I watched other people, too, but no one on our street paced their gait with