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By Root 979 0

had stayed behind? How was it that I had not even thought of college, of trying something else, of moving to Des Moines or even Mason City? Then there was the image that things always looped back to, those five miscarried children. It was my habit to think that if I could be a certain way, embody a certain attitude, a child would come to me and stay with me. The attitudes I had tried were obvious—receptive to conception, then protective. Now I saw my error, though. Who would stay with a mother who merely waited? Who accepted things so dully, who could say so easily, something will happen, we’ll get another chance. No! It was time to sit up, to reach out, to choose this and not that! Ty’s steadiness was getting us, getting me, nowhere. I shifted in my seat and noticed that we were turning onto Cabot Street Road. Almost home. I spun around and said, “Daddy!”

His eyes had been closed, but now they popped open. He lifted himself in the seat with a grunt. Ty’s head swiveled toward me.

“I know you’re hurt, and I’m sorry you got in an accident, but now’s the time to talk about it. You’re going to be in real trouble pretty soon, when the state troopers come over. You’ve got to take this to heart. You simply can’t drive all over creation, and you especially can’t do it when you’re drinking. It’s not right. You could kill somebody. Or kill yourself, for that matter.”

He looked at me.

“They’re probably going to revoke your license, but even if they don’t, I will, if you do it again. I’ll take away the keys to your truck, and if you do it after that, I’ll sell it. When I was little, you always said that one warning ought to be enough. Well, this is your warning, and I expect you to pay attention to it. And another thing, you’re fully capable of helping around the farm, and I can tell that you’re bored without it. Rose or I will give you your breakfast at the regular time from now on, and you can just go out and work afterwards. We aren’t going to let you sit around. You’re used to working, and there’s no reason why you can’t keep working. Ty and Pete can’t do everything all of a sudden.”

It was exhilarating, talking to my father as if he were my child, more than exhilarating to see him as my child. This laying down the law was a marvelous way of talking. It created a whole orderly future within me, a vista of manageable days clicking past, myself in the foreground, large and purposeful. It wasn’t a way of talking that I was used to—possibly I had never talked that way before—but I knew I could get used to it in a heartbeat, that here I had stumbled on a prerogative of parenthood I hadn’t thought of before (I’d thought only how I would be tender and affectionate and patient and instructive). I eyed the old man. I said, “I mean it about the driving, and Rose will back me up.”

He held my gaze, and said in a low voice, as if to himself, “I got nothing.”

I thought he was just trying to get my sympathy. I said, “There’s enough for everybody, for one thing.” For another, I thought, you gave it away of your own accord. But I didn’t dare say it. It made me too mad.

Ty got him up to bed, but not before I said, “Breakfast at seven, Daddy. Ty will wait for you at our place, and you can work something out about what you want to do tomorrow.”

Back at our place, Ty said, “Maybe he shouldn’t work tomorrow. We don’t know what sort of trauma there’s been.”

“Give him an easy job, for a couple of hours. His life doesn’t have any structure. That’s exactly the problem. Now’s the time to do something about it, when he’s ashamed of himself.”

Ty got out of his pants and sat down to take off his socks. I roamed the room, picking up objects and putting them down. Power pumped through me. I cruised into the bathroom, the two other bedrooms, one used for guests who never came, one for old furniture. I looked out windows in every direction. It was a benign summer night, breezy and thick. Back to our room. Ty was stretched out on his back, his hands behind his head. I said, “I learned something tonight.”

“Take charge?”

“Yes, but more than that. It was