Page 213
“In some ways. He could make a whole table laugh. He sang in the car, badly, and did not care who heard.”
She slides the book half an inch away.
“We only came here for his job, right? I was three. And he left when I was six.”
“Yes.”
“So you stayed because of me.”
“Partly.”
“What was the other part?”
“Because I still wanted this. My work. Your school. Our life here.”
She looks down at the page.
“Did you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think he was going to leave?”
“I knew things were wrong. I did not know he was going to leave.”
“Did he ask you?”
“No.”
She presses the pencil to the page until the point darkens a small circle.
“Ask if you wanted him to go?”
“No.”
“If you wanted to go with him?”
“No.”
The point presses harder.
“Tova.”
She lifts it before the paper tears. Then she writes a six in the margin and scribbles over it until it is gone. It is not part of the problem.
She has asked me more questions in ten minutes than she asked me in the whole year after her father stopped coming. She learned not to ask, and she learned it from me. Now she has decided to stop.
“Did he love me?”
“Yes.”
Her head comes up. She did not expect that one to be easy.
“I watched him. The day you were born he held you for an hour and would not give you to anybody, not even me.”
“Then why did he go?”
Her hand is tight around the pencil.
