Nell Zink - Mislaid

“Thanks!” Karen said.

“Yes, our brains are like Swiss cheese,” he added, sort of undermining his compliment after the fact. “So what do you plan to do with your newfound freedom, besides follow Temple around?”

“Just be myself. I like having a new identity. It’s like being in witness protection. I can drop everything and start a new life like Mom.”

“Ooh, and what does Temple say to being dropped?”

“He doesn’t care about my identity. He’s been calling me Blondi, like Hitler’s dog.”

“You should make him stop that.”

“No, it’s just since this morning. I think it might be his art. Nicknames are a major art form in the black community. Mom’s girlfriend is a scholar of black culture. She’s been collecting them. It’s so aggravating. Temple’s meeting her halfway, and then some. He started calling Mom Hal, like the insane computer in 2001 .”

Lee said, “Priceless. So back to my question. Is there anything else you might want or need, as part of your new life? I’m here to help!”

“I think a new life is plenty enough on its own. It’s confusing but exciting. I mean, I’m glad I grew up black, because it’s cooler, but it’s white people who run the place, obviously.”

“Not all white people.”

“Well, some of them. Like Byrdie at his trial, telling the judge what to do. That was cool. I want to be white like that.”

“So your goal in life is to be white? Isn’t that a tad, uh, minimal?”

“What do I need a life goal for?”

“You refuse to be pinned down.”

“What do you mean? With a pin like a bug, or somebody holding my arms?”

“You’re your mother’s child.”

“Well, if you really want to know, I was thinking I could go to law school like Uncle Trip. I could help Byrdie. His housing projects are a really horrible idea, because what’s cool is when poor people get to move into rich-people neighborhoods. The houses they build for poor people are not nice. Houses should be for rich people only, but shouldn’t discriminate by income. Let people live in them even after they lose all their money.”

Lee sighed. “Listen, kiddo. That’s cute, and insightful, but there’s something imperialist — something third world — something profoundly Southern and just wrong about the way you and your brother both approach thinking on this issue. Neither of you has ever seen money being invested, just harvested, and you think it grows in the ground. It’s what the structuralists call a homology, like people believing in the trickle-down effect after they spend their lives waiting for their inheritance to trickle down. Byrdie’s my son, I raised him, but more than that he’s a child of his generation. And his generation can kiss my ass. Freelance city planner. My God. He’s going to wake up fifty years old in a squat on Church Hill. And Temple is worse. Temple ought to be at West Point, learning discipline, with a job when he gets out and a place to stay. But no, it’s got to be comp fucking lit. Those pretty-boy parasites are going to bankrupt both of us. I won’t be around to see it, but I can see you already. Picking up the pieces, paying their bills. The levelheaded little woman, keeping things in line. Darling, take my advice and major in accounting. Get your CPA.”

To this outburst, Karen replied evenly, “That’s why I’m glad we might move to New York. Mom says the wife needs to keep control over the purse strings and be the chatelaine. In New York they have an aboveground economy, so I can practice. This cake is so great. Mmm. It’s the first real buttercream I ever ate.”

As he finished his Death by Chocolate, Lee pondered how he might steer the conversation around to a survivable second date. He wanted to get to know his daughter, he really did. Yet drawing her out was possibly not the most rewarding exercise, while doing the talking himself was evidently also a piss-poor idea.

Ever quick on his feet, he concocted a fallback strategy: See her in action, preferably doing something that would endear him to her if not vice versa. That is, get her to have fun at his expense while looking pretty and not getting sticky or irritable. She might not inspire his love, but he could command hers.

“Mireille,” he began, “the truth is, when I said goals, I meant stuff you might need or want, like fall clothes for school. I’m well aware you’re a teenage girl. I’m lucky you didn’t ask for world peace and a cure for cancer.” He paused, made a mental note that errant and rueful was not the aesthetic to go for, and continued. “You need a winter coat and some clothes that fit you a little better. How about a shopping trip to New York? You need everything, and I think it would be nice to go on a father-daughter excursion before school starts up again. You should let me spoil you a little. See the world. Your experience thus far has been rather circumscribed.”

“A shopping trip?” Karen said.

“We can hit the highlights,” Lee said. “Stay at the Plaza. Go to shows. Art museums. Get you a haircut. Eat some sushi.”

“But I’m going to New York anyway,” Karen said. “That’s where Luke lives.”

“If you don’t want to go there, we can go anywhere. London, Paris, you name it. All you need is a passport. We could have lots of fun.”

“Anywhere at all?”

“Anywhere.”

She hesitated. “Anywhere?”

Lee rolled his eyes and said firmly, “Yes.”

“Well, there is one place I always wanted to go.”

“If it’s Disney and Epcot, summer is out of the question.”

“Dad. I can call you Dad, right?”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever read Kaputt ?”

Lee did not answer, so she went on. “It’s my favorite book. It’s a memoir of World War II by a guy named Curzio Malaparte. He starts out by visiting his friend Axel Munthe on the Isle of Capri, and he thinks his friend Axel is, like, dumb, for caring a lot about birds. But before that, he visits his other friend, King Bernadotte, whose hobby is embroidery.” She pronounced the names “Mallaparty,” “Monthy,” and “Burnadotty,” but Lee did not smile. “He’s the king of Sweden, but what he does all day is embroider, like, napkins! And then Malaparte goes to the war. And he realizes that people really are exactly like birds. They’re innocent bystanders only an asshole would kill”—here Karen developed fierce-looking tears in her eyes—“and embroidery is symbolic of the very best part about them. He goes all around the war, seeing beautiful people and animals suffer and die for no reason, but he never looks away. He writes it all down. And in the end he goes back to Capri to build himself this house. .”

Her voice slowed as she saw his eyes, which had turned glassy, being squeezed shut. “Dad, why are you crying? Do you think he’s a fascist? Temple says he’s a fascist.”

She lowered her eyes to her empty plate. She saw that to a sophisticate like Lee, reading Malaparte was equal in puerility to eating scabs, and that she would soon be in New York, acquiring modish things to make herself less of a rube.

Lee said, “Don’t mind me. It’s just my life flashing before my eyes. You were raised under a rock, yet your life’s dream is to see the Villa Malaparte. And now I realize I must have passed something down to you in my semen after all. The divine spark. It’s the first time in my life I ever felt like a man.”

The hush in the room was punctuated by a creaking of chair legs as interested parties leaned closer. The hush deepened, and a quiet stillness fell. A girl begging for something to do with fascism, a man in spandex moved to tears by semen: Everyone present felt that something significant was happening. Awed silence is the universe’s clutch. Which it now released, propelling Karen and Lee from lives of neutral idling into a world of irreversible events and irreplaceable objects. She had a parent. He had a child. A busybody approached their table and whispered, “Sir—”