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By Root 618 0

as if they are a movie and the clear square window a screen. I watch cows grazing beneath overcast New Mexico skies, endless rows of backyards, pale laundry hanging on lines, rusted toys, bent slides, crooked swing sets, clouds growing darker as the train passes through Santa Fe. There are windmills in fields, which begin to turn faster, and yellow daisies that lie in clumps on the side of wet highways, which tremble as the train hurtles past, and I’m moved to start humming “This Land Is Your Land” to myself, which leads to taking the dress I’m going to wear to my father’s wedding out of the suitcase and laying it out on the small bed and staring at it until the train stops in Albuquerque and I’m immediately reminded of the Partridge Family and a song they sing.

My father tells me about the marriage when he visits Camden in November. He takes me into town and buys me a couple of books, then a tape at the Record Rack. I don’t really want the books or the tape but he seems unusually persistent about buying me something so I oblige and try to seem excited over the Culture Club tape and the three books of poetry. I even introduce him to two girls I run into at the Camden bookshop who live in my house and whom I don’t like much. My father keeps tightening the scarf around my neck and complains about the early snow, the cold, how nice L.A. is, how warm the days are, how comfortable the nights seem, how I still might get into UCLA or USC and if not UCLA or USC maybe Pepperdine. I’m smiling and nodding and not saying too much, suspicious of what his intentions are.

At lunch in a small café on the outskirts of town, my father orders a white-wine spritzer and doesn’t seem to mind when I order a gin and tonic. After we order lunch and he has two more white-wine spritzers he begins to loosen up.

“Hey, how’s my little punk rocker doing?” he asks.

“I’m not a punk rocker,” I say.

“Oh come on, you look a little, um, punk.” He smiles and then, after I don’t say anything, asks, “Don’t you?” his smile slipping.

Suddenly feeling sorry for him, I say, “A little, I guess.”

I finish the drink, chewing on ice, deciding not to let him carry the conversation, so I ask about the studio, about Graham, about California. We eat quickly and I order another gin and tonic and he lights a cigarette.

“You haven’t asked about Cheryl,” he finally says.

“I haven’t?” I ask.

“No.” He takes a drag, exhales.

“Yes. I have.”

“When?”

“On the way into town. Didn’t I?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m pretty sure I did.”

“I don’t remember that, honey.”

“Well, I think I did.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“How’s Cheryl?”

He smiles, looks down, then at me. “I think we’re getting married.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s, um, so, congratulations,” I say. “Great.”

He looks at me quizzically, then asks, “Do you really think that’s great?”

I lift the glass to my mouth and tap the side to get the ice at the bottom.

“Well, it’s, um, slowly dawning on me that you might be serious.”

“Cheryl’s great. You two get along.” He falters again, refrains from lighting another cigarette. “I mean, when you met her.”

“I’m not marrying Cheryl. You are.”

“When you give me that type of response, baby, I know how you really feel,” he says.

I start to touch his hand across the table, then something in me stops myself.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say.

“I’ve been so … lonely,” he says. “I’ve been alone for what seems like forever.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You get to a point where you need someone.”

“Do not explain this to me,” I say quickly, then with less harshness, “because you don’t have to.”

“I want your approval,” he says simply. “That’s all.”

“You don’t need it.”

He sits back in his chair, puts down another cigarette he was about to light. “The wedding is in December.” He pauses.

“When you get home.”

I’m looking out the window at hard, cold snow and gray clouds the color of asphalt.

“Have you told Mom?” I ask.

“No.”

At lunch on the train, the waiter sits me at a table with an old Jewish man who is reading a small, frayed black book and keeps muttering to himself in what must be Hebrew.