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I thought of the letters I’d read at the War Museum. Love letters. Betty—my darling … my last thoughts were of you … I will love you while there is breath in my body. I thought of how I’d imagined Betty, her face ashen, reading and rereading the words, trying to grasp the awful reality that lay beneath them, trying to break through her numbness.

I understood that. How many times I’ve tried to recast that day the officers came to our house with the news of my father’s death; to put some feeling into it, to cry or be angry, or tell God I hated him. To feel anything but the thick numbness turning me into stone.

I have a theory that women like me, women who had fathers for only a short time, never give up the search to have back what was lost too soon. We look for some trace of the lost father in the faces of our brothers, our sons, our husbands, our lovers. Sometimes even in the forward tilt of a tall man’s head.

Lately, however, I thought I detected a change in my attitude. There were signals coming up from some deep-down place that made me think I might be ready to start letting go of the imaginary father I’d been searching for. That meant, of course, I’d now have to start looking for the real one. But where? To my surprise, it was Dostoyevsky who answered my question. One good memory, he’d written somewhere, especially one from childhood, could give even the hopeless something to hang on to.

Okay, I thought, I’ll start with one good memory of my father. I let my mind go blank and soon enough, just as though I were back on the analyst’s couch instead of sitting on a lawn chair in a London park, I saw us together, my father and me.

We’re in the family Plymouth, just the two of us, taking a ride down a country road, looking at the scenery. It’s a hot day and the windows are down, blowing the smell of fresh-cut hay into the car. We pass some black-and-white cows in a field and my dad leans out the window and goes moo … mooo … moooo. I crack up and lean out my window, imitating my dad imitating the cows. On the way home we stop at an ice-cream stand and have chocolate shakes. I spill most of mine down the front of my sundress. But my dad doesn’t care. He just lifts me up and carries me to the car. I fall asleep.

As I was thinking about this, I saw a man sitting on the grass in the park, next to the lake. I seemed to recognize his face: the brown eyes, the cleft in the chin, the high cheekbones.

I know who he looks like, I thought, standing alone on a summer’s day in a park far from home, and even farther from my childhood: he looks like my dad.

8

LADIES OF SMALL MEANS

Dear Alice,

It was Jane Austen, wasn’t it, who said that everything happens at parties. True enough. But equally as true, at least for me, is the admonition by somebody or another to “Have fun and go home when you’re tired.” I think this is one of the wisest bits of advice I’ve ever heard & I plan to put it into effect immediately in my life. Not just at parties, but in ways more profound and necessary.

Love, Alice

The woman behind the information counter at the Finchley Road Underground was visibly perplexed. “So you’re looking for Maresfield Gardens, are you?” she said, answering my question with a question.

“Yes. The exact number is twenty Maresfield Gardens. I was told to get off at Finchley Road.”

“Twenty Maresfield Gardens, is it? I’ve not heard of it. Is it in Hampstead?” She consulted a map tacked up on the wall. “Wait here, dear. I’ll just go have a talk with someone else and see if he knows of its whereabouts.” She disappeared around the corner of the tiny desk.

I stood waiting, my right foot tapping out my impatience. The trip had taken longer than expected and I was not pleased to find myself lost and, possibly, nowhere near my destination.

“Well, here we are, dear,” said the station attendant, returning with a uniformed man. He proceeded to ask me the same questions. Maresfield Gardens? … Are you sure it’s in Hampstead? As he was talking to me, a light bulb seemed to go on over the woman’s head.

“Are you going to Freud