Reading with Daddy

Abstract

WHEN KATIE'S FATHER WENT TO JAIL FOR DROPING A ROCK FROM AN OVERPASS, causing a truck to swerve and hit the buttress of the bridge, it took Katie a long time to reconcile herself to his absence. What a fool he was. That behavior was the reckless act of a delinquent schoolboy, not someone old enough to know better. Katie was not privy to the details of these adult condemnations; his foolishness, whether or not the truck driver lived, how many years he got. She only knew that her father had stopped coming. A big, ill-defined hole had opened up that she could not see the edges of. Flow deep was it? Was there anything at the bottom? Fier schooling began to suffer. You could see her ever so slowly giving up. I couldn't bring myself to tell her how much better off she was. Genes were all very well, but foolishness as a role model was something she could do without. She kept a photo of him by her bed, and in those tired, teary moments before dropping off to sleep she might sometimes say, My daddy has beautiful eyes, before hugging me harder than she needed to.I must admit that I was long over Steve's post-adolescent antics by then. When we split up I saw his personality regressing, more and more seeking solace in the moment. The maturity and confidence fatherhood had given him began to peel away like the shell of a boiled egg. Fie started drinking again, behaving like a teenaged goose in a middle-aged body, so that by the time Katie was six or seven I had had enough. A piece of string is only so long. When I left I didn't leave with much. I started from scratch but what I started with he had no claim to. I was getting myself back together. And yet I did want Steve to have a relationship with Katie. Or rather, the reverse. I wanted Katie to grow up knowing that her father was not a figment of her imagination. Fie was real and also flawed. There was a lesson there somewhere. So I encouraged his phone calls; his sporadic visits where he'd take her to the park or the plaza or, once, to eat fish and chips by the beach. I did not let him know how grateful I was for the reprieve, for perhaps I wasn't grateful, perhaps I resented the fact that he wasn't there all the time to give me a rest when I was tired. To give me back a few moments of my own. The part of me that hated him I set aside for Katie's sake.And then he went to jail. And Katie now wonders where her father with his beautiful eyes has disappeared to. And I am implicit in covering up for him. I want to keep this precarious balance because it is the only equilibrium I have. I couldn't, and can't, bring myself to tell her to forget about him. Imagine the issues she'd have with me in twenty years time if I did that? We've already been through the Why did you drive him away? questions, the scenarios where nothing I say can possibly be right. I supposed that one day I would have to explain to her where he had got to, why he no longer visited. But not yet. Plenty of time for the truth.Then, out of the blue a parcel arrived. On the back of it was printed the address of the prison, also a lavender stamp announcing APPROVED. Inside was a book. Beatrix Potter. Also, wrapped in bubble wrap, a CD.It's from daddy.I sounded more excited than I felt. We sat on the couch and I pressed play. Steve's voice came from the speakers.It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is soporific . . .Katie did not seem too fussed about the meaning of soporific. I understand that language comes before conceptual dawning, so that the ache of missing him, I hoped, was less keen without the words to define it. This is what I told myself, anyway. Wishful thinking. She was simply amazed in a lip-quivering fashion, and then delighted, to hear her father's voice mumbling away. It was a lovely moment to witness. We turned the pages together, following the story. Sometimes in the background of the recording you could hear bells, or a muffled PA announcement, or doors slamming, but they were only in the background. …