Lily King - Father of the Rain

Since then I’ve often thought proudly back to those twenty days of pure mind-life. Jonathan and Julie refer to that time as the lock-down, and I freely admit I became a freak, but I liked it. There is a part of me that could live in my head quite happily, a part of me that longs to return there, that doesn’t need or want the body. But now on the sidewalk in Ashing, removed from any intellectual demands and thrown back into my child mind, which senses only the visceral — the smells of my father, low tide, wet dog, and the sounds of seagulls and church bells and station wagons — I feel the need to let my mind wander. Does it know how to wander anymore? Do I know how to think without a book or a notebook or a computer screen? I think of Wordsworth and Coleridge and their walks through the chalk hills. I suppose a walk would be a good start.

The sun has dropped behind the library and the sky has gone lilac white, waiting for night. Most people are home, fixing dinner. The library is closed, Goodale’s too. Only the gas station is open; a man in a loosened tie is filling up his Audi, his gaze unnecessarily fixed on the task. The sub shop has lights on, teenagers in the booths. Then there is a row of dark storefronts, places and awnings that didn’t used to exist: a kitchen store, a pizza parlor, a fancy stationery shop. There is only one light at the end of the street near the railroad tracks. As I get closer I see it is a small wooden sign lit by a bulb above it. LIGHTHOUSE BOOKS.

Concave. The creep.

His store is tiny, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. All the walls are shelves; a freestanding bookcase runs down the center. Books, new and used, are squeezed in tight, their spines carefully aligned with the edges of the shelves. More books are stuffed in horizontally above them, and even though it’s all neatly done it has the chaotic feel of a professor’s office. There seems to be no cash register, no counter, and no owner.

My educated adult self pleads with the adolescent to step out of the shop. Proving to a jerk that you have finally developed breasts — not huge ones, by any means, but proportional — is a stupid reason to be in a bookstore. But then my eye catches on a Penelope Fitzgerald novel and what looks like a new Alice Munro collection, and soon I’m squatting on the floor, trying to find Independent People , which Jonathan is always urging me to read; it’s there, and so is Song of Solomon , which Julie worships and I haven’t read yet. Then I see that there’s actually an anthropology section all on its own, not combined with sociology or general science, and there are both volumes of Lévi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology and The Collected Letters of Franz Boaz . They are not the rarest of finds, but I specialized so early in Zapotec children that I didn’t get a very broad base in my own field. There’s even Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture , my first bible, which I lent to someone once and never got back. I have a tall stack of books in my arms when Neal steps through the door. I completely forgot about him.

“Sorry about that. I meant to leave a note,” he says, not looking, putting a sub wrapped in tinfoil on a little card table in the far corner. “You finding everything okay?”

He has his back to me. I assent with the slightest murmur.

His voice is exactly the same. Why are voices so distinct, so recognizable, when all they are are vibrations against two reeds in the throat? It’s understandable that there can be a few billion variations of the face, given all the variables, but the voice? Neal’s is smooth, like skates on fresh ice. It hasn’t deepened much, though he has grown tall. And there is his hair, the same brown curls Miss Perth used to tease him about. She called him Shirley Temple when he was bad, which he sometimes was. Shirley Temple, go sit on your stool, she used to say without turning from the blackboard. I have eyes in the back of my head, Shirley Temple. In second and third grades we had red math workbooks and we used to race each other to finish one and get the next. We were paired together, pitted against each other. In those lower grades we were sent out of our classroom and into the next grade up for English. In fifth grade we were captains of opposing spelling teams. And then my parents divorced and my grades slipped and Neal’s never did.

He was small and narrow, almost scrawny, when he was younger, with square teeth too big for his face, but now he is long and broad, shirttails hanging out, an overgrown prep-school kid. I know the type and avoided them in college, those guys who never quite adjust to the world that isn’t boarding school, who can’t believe their angelic faces, long bangs, athletic achievements, loose-limbed walk, cow eyes, and quick sardonic responses are no longer enough to impress every teacher or get every girl. They have a knack for sniffing me out, those disillusioned preppies, sensing my background despite all I have done to disguise it, and I run from them as fast as I can. Boys like that turn into men like my father.

I keep my back to him, moving toward poetry at the back. I hear him sink into a cane chair, prop up a book in front of him, unwrap the sub.

“I’m ready to settle up,” I say, after I hear the foil crumple and drop into a trash can.

His head jerks up from his book. I suppose my voice hasn’t changed either. “Jesus. I thought my mother was delusional. Daley Amory’s in town, Neal. That go-getter is a professor at Stanford .” He does a pitch-perfect imitation of his mother. But I don’t like being used as a prod. I didn’t realize she had a cruel streak. She seemed glad to have him home, proud of his store. The brief performance leaves me at loss.

“Berkeley, not Stanford,” I say, finally. And then, looking around, “This is a great store.”

“Yeah, well, I think I should call it Between the Idea and the Reality Falls the Shadow, but maybe everything is like that.” He clears a spot on the card table. “Here, put those down here.”

I slide my stack of books onto the table, nudging off a receipt pad. I bend to pick it up, noticing that the last person has bought The Pickwick Papers for $3.95.

“Your dad okay?” he asks as he writes down my books, his tone already apologizing for the question. How much has he heard? What does the town know?

“Yeah, I think he is.” I want to tell him that my father is at his second AA meeting, that he dresses for them like he’s going to a cocktail party, and who knows who is in there or what they talk about. I want to ask him if he has known anyone who has gone to that meeting in town and if it really might work — no, I don’t want to hear any stories of failure. “How are your parents?”

“They’re all right. They endure.”

His mother was such a presence that I barely remember his dad. A beige windbreaker is all that comes to mind.

I don’t know what to say after that. I watch him write, the handwriting familiar, bunched.

“Congratulations on the job at Berkeley,” he says, handing me my books, the receipt stuck in the middle of the one on top. “That can’t have been easy to get.”

I smile more than I should. “Thanks.” That job is my talisman against all this. “Take care of yourself, Neal.”

I look back before stepping off the stoop, but he’s putting the cash box back on the floor.

I head back toward the church. “Well, that was awkward,” I say to the empty sidewalk. “Not sure he even noticed the boobs.”

And then I hear it, the sound of heavy pieces of metal knocking against one another. I’m flooded with an old feeling, a delicious anticipation. It’s coming from behind me, across the tracks. I turn and, sure enough, the trucks and trailers have just arrived. The true sight and sound of summer in Ashing: the carnival is being set up.