At blunk’s, at the melon display, her old father selected a melon that was very soft. When he handed it to her to put in the cart, it dimpled where she touched it. The melon’s musk was strong and to her smelled like garbage.
No, Dad, she said, and returned the melon to the shelf. She picked a hard, taut-skinned, scentless one and held it up for him to admire. This is better, she said.
But instead of praising her good sense, her father looked glum, then turned away.
At home, she opened the melon on the plastic cutting board and filled a bowl with flavorless orange blocks.
Have some, Dad, she said when he came to the kitchen for a glass of milk, but he shook his head and returned to the den, where a program about sunken treasure was on. The woman and her husband and sons drank skim milk, but her father had to have whole. The thick yellow sight of it in his glass made her feel sick. She yanked a length of plastic-cling across the melon bowl and put it in the refrigerator.
After that, her father stayed home when she went to Blunk’s, which suited her—she was a brisk, decisive shopper who liked to steamroll her way up and down the aisles. Her father was slow, ponderous, dreamy. He liked to talk to the cashier, the produce manager, and other shoppers about sweetcorn he’d grown and the disappointment of contemporary eggs.
But then one day he wanted to come along, and again they stood before the melon display and again he picked a soft, heavy, smelly one. It was so far gone they’d stickered it at a deep discount.
She sighed. Dad, she said.
This is what I like, he said and set the melon decisively into the cart.
I want ice cream, too, he said.
While she waited for him in the frozen section, she stood before a gaunt figure with a stricken face, ghastly white, on a cold glass door. Then the apparition disappeared, and in its place were shelves stacked with boxes and bags, each of which concealed something rigid and difficult to identify.
At home, her father ate the fleshy melon in a bowl with melted ice cream on top. When she ate ice cream, she needed it to be very hard and very cold. She wanted to chew it. The entire house smelled sweet—on the verge of rot.
Her father looked happier hunched over his bowl than she’d seen him—ever?
winter came. The woman and her husband and sons liked a low-set thermostat, but her father sat on the couch in the den wearing a wool knit stocking cap, mittens, scarf, and puffer coat—hugging himself.
She thought about the Sunday afternoon in her indentured childhood when, stabbing with a scraper at the ice that entombed the family’s car, as commanded by her mother-master, she’d seen him through a sudden porthole of progress in the rear window: bundled in his houndstooth overcoat, galoshes, and flap-eared fur cap, curled like a cold dog on the back seat.
Sometimes it was her mother-master who’d found him—in the garage, basement, tool shed, and guest-room closet; at Bob’s Tap, Rocket Park, Langerman’s, and Colonial Lanes; on Fred Horton’s front porch; and waiting, ticket in hand, on a bench at the bus station downtown. But her mother-master was dead and had been for years.
one morning, the woman’s old father was gone when she woke up. She shopped at Blunk’s and watched the clock. She drove through town like mapping a maze. On the news they were portending an overnight burial by snow.
He returned to the house after dark, a bulky figure stamping his boots on the welcome mat.
She stood with crossed arms. Where were you, she said.
He removed his wet things and hung them on the coat-rack.
I was worried, she said, but her face was hot and red, and her eyes were bright and hard.
He moved past her into the living room.
I made pot roast, but now it’s cold, she said.
She followed him through the house.
What are you—a ghost? she said. She laughed in a sharp dog-bark way.
He turned a corner, and she was alone in the long hallway.
At the kitchen table, under the low-hanging lamp, her father leaned over a sheet of paper, making marks. He had on a clean white undershirt, and his hair fell forward boyishly. He smiled to himself like a farmer who sits and waits and plots his plans for spring.
A boiling feeling rolled through her. The woman’s heart was like a heavy fist pounding on a flimsy door. Was it her mother-master knocking?
Answer me! the woman said.
A strong wind shook the house and broke its power line. The lights went out. The sounds of refrigerator, dishwasher, dryer, deep-freeze, ice-maker, television, and furnace stopped. From an upstairs bedroom, one son shouted—Shit!
Far away, the woman could hear her husband calling her name.
At the kitchen table, the figure sighed.
In the dark, the woman reached with her hands to grasp, grip, hold, or hit—but she couldn’t find anything.