Keepsake

by Linda Barlow

  He turned his head. “Hey,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Kinda late, isn’t it? Tomorrow’s a school day. Did you finish your homework?”

  “Yes.” She went over and leaned her hip against the side of his desk. His screen was full of numbers, as usual—some sort of spreadsheet. He had some neat accounting software—Kate had seen it advertised in her computing magazines.

  “When’s your next math test?”

  “I don’t know. Next week. I’ll ace it, as usual.”

  “Don’t get too confident.”

  “Why not?” Kate was the best student in the whole seventh grade in math, everybody knew that. She didn’t even have to study—math just came naturally to her. English was harder, especially since they were doing all this stupid grammar this year. If they’d just let her write, she’d be happy, but no, they had to waste all this time figuring out whether sentences contain adjectival or adverbial clauses.

  “Just because something comes easy to you doesn’t mean you should neglect it.”

  “I don’t neglect it.” As usual, he didn’t even know how much time she spent on math… or anything else. Of course, it was just as well that he didn’t know how much time she spent writing. “I’m doing my homework,” she’d say, then go into her room and shut the door. The homework itself she polished off in an hour or so. The rest of the time she was spinning stories, sometimes in her head, sometimes on a diskette.

  “Dad?”

  “Mmm?” He was looking at his screen again.

  “You know April? The one they were saying murdered Gran?”

  He turned his head. “That’s nonsense, Kate. Who was saying that?”

  “I thought everybody was saying it.” Chill, Dad, she was thinking. “It’s not true, I know. But people say a lot of things that aren’t true.”

  He looked at her in silence for several seconds, then said, “Are your friends at school giving you a hard time about your grandmother’s death? If so, I hope you’re not letting it bother you. If there’s any unpleasantness I can come in and have a talk with the principal.”

  Daddy to the rescue, she thought, unimpressed. It was a little late. A couple of kids had given her a hard time, yeah. So she’d given them a hard time, and that had been the end of that. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody. “It’s not a problem.”

  He looked relieved. “Good.”

  If it was a problem, she thought sadly, he would really hate to be bothered by it. “Actually, it’s about April.”

  “What about her?”

  “I was wondering if we could, like, invite her over to dinner this weekend? I don’t think she knows anybody. And besides, she’s family, sort of.”

  Now she had his attention. “You want me to invite April Harrington to dinner?”

  He said it as if it were the stupidest idea he’d ever heard. Kate felt her face begin to turn. But she raised her chin defiantly.

  “Yes,” she said. “In fact, I want to invite her over on Saturday afternoon to do something with us first, and then to dinner. I want to take her to the Museum. She told me she likes art.”

  “Kate, you hardly know April Harrington. And I don’t know her at all.”

  “Well, she can be my guest, not yours. But I think you’d like her, too. She’s pretty, Daddy. And I guess she isn’t married.”

  His eyes narrowed, and Kate realized she’d made a mistake. She didn’t mean to blurt it out like that, but he made her nervous when he looked at her with those cold eyes that seemed to see right through her. He made her forget that she was going to be subtle and slip underneath his defenses and not let him know that she thought he and April Harrington would be a perfect couple, and that maybe they’d fall in love and maybe even get married, and then she’d have a mother again.

  “Actually, Kate, my friend Daisy is coming this weekend. I know she’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

  “She couldn’t care less about me.”

  “What nonsense. She always asks about you.”

  “Well, I don’t like her. And I don’t see why you have to invite her here all the time.”

  “I invite her here because she’s the most important woman in my life right now. You’re old enough, I think, to understand such things.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand.” She paused, looking right at him. “You’re not screwing her, right? I mean, you can’t be.”

  “You’re out of line, Kate,” he said in that clipped, controlled tone she hated.

  “I don’t care! I hate Daisy Tulane and I hate you.”

  Kate ran from the room, trying to reach the privacy of her bedroom before bursting into tears. She made it, but only just.

  Great, just great, she thought when she was able to get control of herself again. She wasn’t being smart about this at all. That was one of the reasons she hated Daisy—because Daisy was smart about how to handle Dad. She knew how to tease and jolly him into a good mood; she knew how to twist him around her fingers. Daisy was one of those females who instinctively ran circles around men. Which was pretty weird, when you stopped to think about it.

  There were a couple of girls in her class like that—well not in Daisy’s league of course. A smart girl— and Kate knew she was smart—ought to be able to learn something about it, though. It really made her mad that she hadn’t succeeded in learning it!

  Mom would have taught her, she knew.

  She punched her pillow, hard.

  Everything would have been so different if only Mom hadn’t died.

  Christian cursed and saved the file he’d been trying to work on. His concentration was shot. He was worried about how to downsize. At least his father seemed to have dropped his pigheadedness and come around to a realistic point of view. But now that he’d admitted the problem, he seemed to expect Christian to be able to solve it, which wasn’t at all assured…

  The last thing he could afford to waste his time on was how to deal with a hormonal adolescent. And yet suddenly that was the only thing on his mind.

  He rose and poured himself a brandy from the crystal decanter on the sideboard in the corner. Sipping it slowly, he brooded about his daughter.

  God knows he wasn’t a very good father. Miranda had taken care of most of the heavy-duty parenting stuff.

  It had been a helluva lot easier a few years ago when Kate had still loved toys and enjoyed playing rough-house games. He had many happy memories of rolling around on the living room floor with her, throwing her up into the air, bouncing her on his knees, listening to her delighted squeals and her laughter. Pleasing her had been easy then. She’d loved it, and so had he.

  He’d noticed both with his own child and with the children of various couples that he and Miranda knew that the fathers seemed to take care of the activities—the fun stuff like toys and games and excursions to children’s museums and amusement parks, while the mothers handled the serious stuff like doctor’s appointments and elementary school parent-teacher conferences. His wife used to complain about having all the responsibility and none of the fun.

  And it had been fun. In those days, Kate had loved him unconditionally. She was the only person ever in his life who gave him her entire heart and asked for nothing in return. And so, of course, he’d given her everything. With her he’d been able to laugh, to play, to be affectionate and emotional. She was his child, and she had complete faith and trust in him. She never judged him and she could not reject him.

  That is, until the divorce. And the custody battle. And her mother’s death.

  He took a bigger swallow of brandy.

  Kate had taken it very hard. She’d changed from a carefree, irrepressible child to a puzzling and dreamy adolescent. And all the rules had changed as well, because she was suddenly too old to roll around on the living room floor and scathingly disinterested in toys, games, and amusement parks.

  She’d seemed to get along with Rina, though. And Rina, who had never struck him as the type who
would be the least bit interested in budding adolescents, had turned out to be wonderful with Kate.

  Now she was dead, as well.

  And once again, Kate was grieving.

  He took the last sip of brandy to fortify himself and went upstairs to her room.

  He found her hunched over her desk, furiously typing on a laptop computer. “Hey.”

  She slammed the top down and rested her elbows upon it. “Don’t you know?”

  For an instant Christian was reminded of his former wife. Miranda closing doors, shutting him out, seeking privacy to communicate with what he later discovered was a series of lovers. And not even ordinary lovers—no, the leather-and-chain variety. Christ! What a poisonous relationship they had had.

  “What are you writing? A homework assignment?”

  She glared at him and didn’t answer. Her diary, he thought. Did she keep a diary? What would it reveal about her, he wondered, if he confiscated it and read it?

  “I’ve been giving some thought to your suggestion about April Harrington. If you’d like to invite her over to dinner on Saturday, you can. Daisy’s not coming until Sunday.”

  Kate’s expression brightened immediately, reminding him that it really didn’t take much to please her. He would have to remember that. It wasn’t as if she was a naturally difficult child.

  “Can I invite her to the Met first, in the afternoon?”

  “If you like. But you and she will have to do that alone. I’m planning to work on Saturday afternoon.”

  “Okay. You don’t like being dragged around the museum anyhow.”

  Hiking through a crowded art museum was certainly not his favorite leisure activity. “Kate, I want to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you like Daisy?”

  She made a face. “I told you. She’s a phony. I hate people like that.”

  “What exactly do you mean—a phony? Daisy’s a very warm and charming lady. Most people would say she’s engagingly genuine, very much herself. In fact, if she can’t get elected it’ll probably be because she says what she thinks a little more often than she ought to. Politicians are supposed to say what everybody wants them to say, and Daisy doesn’t do that.”

  “Are you in love with her?” Kate demanded.

  “This isn’t about my feelings, I’m asking about yours. I want to know why you persist in this irrational notion that Daisy Tulane is a phony.”

  “It’s not irrational. You always say I’m irrational when you don’t agree with me. You used to say that to Mommy, too!”

  Great, he thought. This wasn’t helping.

  But Kate plunged on: “She’s a phony because she’s not what she pretends to be. She’s supposedly so sweet, so nice. She even goes to church on Sunday.”

  “So what’s wrong with that? People do go to church, you know. Most Americans do, in fact. And many of the ones who don’t still believe in God anyway.” He felt a little over his head. One responsibility Miranda hadn’t undertaken was to provide their daughter with some sort of religious education. At twelve, Kate was old enough to be confirmed. But he wasn’t even sure she’d been baptized.

  “I thought if you went to church you had to be a good person, without sin.”

  “Daisy is a good person.”

  Kate gave a short laugh. “But is she without sin?”

  He cleared his throat. Without sin? “Are you upset because she and I are having a relationship?”

  “Oh, Daddy, please. I don’t care who you go out with! And I don’t want to talk about this anymore!”

  This wasn’t working, Christian thought. He seemed to have lost whatever good will he’d created by telling her she could invite April Harrington to dinner. He decided to revert to that subject.

  “I’ll speak to April and invite her for this Saturday evening. I’ll tell her about the art museum as well, and if she’s interested you and she can talk to each other and set it up.”

  “Okay,” Kate said.

  “Finish your homework.”

  “I will.”

  When her father left the room, Kate opened her file to the page where she’d left off. She considered for a moment, then wrote, “I almost told my father what I know about Daisy Tulane. But I can’t prove it and she’ll deny it and no one will ever believe me, anyhow.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I love this place,” Kate said to April as they put on their colored buttons and ascended the Grand Staircase to the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum. “It’s got all sorts of neat stuff. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it before.”

  “Well, I’ve never spent very much time in New York.”

  “Have you ever been to, you know, all the touristy places like the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building and all?”

  “Nope. Someday you’ll have to take me to see them.”

  “Okay. That’ll be fun.”

  She’s so pretty and stylish, Kate was thinking, staring openly at April, who was dressed casually in white china pants and a buttercup yellow blouse with a gold and white polka dot scarf around her neck. She had on white sandals that looked comfy yet showed her small feet, the toenails painted with the same salmon polish she wore on her fingernails. Her long auburn hair was loose today on her shoulders. The first time they’d met she’d worn it up in a French twist.

  April had one of those perfect oval faces like the models in the fashion magazines. Her nose was straight (unlike Kate’s, which curved up at the tip in what she thought was a ditzy manner) and her lips were full and juicy-looking (Kate’s were thin—she hated them). She had these light, clear blue eyes with a tiny rim of dark cornflower around the outside of the irises. Kate wished she could trade her own muddy hazel eyes for April’s perfect blue ones.

  She’s so pretty, in fact, that I ought to hate her, Kate thought. But instead she’d liked her from the start.

  “So what do you want to see—pictures, sculpture, ancient ruins, Western art, Eastern art, furniture and china— what do you like best? They’ve got some unusual collections here, too—things you don’t see in other art museums like suits of armor and neat old musical instruments. I know where everything is, so you can, you know, like, take your pick.”

  “I’m interested in all of it. So why don’t you show me your favorite places in the museum? If I see something I particularly want to stop for, I’ll let you know. You can be my tour guide, okay?”

  “Okay.” Kate quickly reviewed what she thought were the most important facts. She loved the museum—not only had she visited it countless times, she’d explored every corner and just about memorized every room. She’d also read a lot of books about its history, and most of the guards knew her because she was always asking them questions. She wasn’t sure why she was so fond of the place—she liked it even better than the public library, which seemed odd because she loved books. Maybe she was a reincarnated curator from the turn of the century of something.

  “The Met’s huge—it covers four city blocks from Eightieth to Eighty-Fourth Street. Like, think about it—a building that’s four whole blocks long.”

  “What I’m thinking is that this is a good way to get some exercise,” April said with a grin.

  “Nah,” said Kate. “You want exercise, come rollerblading with me in Central Park.” She laughed at the thought of teaching an adult to rollerblade. When she’d tried to teach Dad, he’d cursed and sworn and moved stiffleggedly and slowly and finally fallen right on his butt.

  “’Course I’ll leave you in my dust, but if you’re nice to me I’ll come back for you.”

  “Listen, kid, I used to rollerblade in Boston. I’ve just bought a fine new pair of skates and I’m ready to take you on any time you’re ready. Ten bucks says I’ll leave you in my dust.”

  Wow, Kate thought, April was even cooler than she’d thought. “It’s a deal!”

  Kate took her first to the European paintings, especially the Impressionists, because
that was usually what everybody wanted to see. Then they did the musical instruments and the Asian art, and then Kate took her to one of her favorite places, the Chinese Garden Court.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” April said as she took in the beauty of the artfully arranged rocks and trees and curving roof of the Chinese pagoda.

  “I like to sit down on the floor here and listen to the sound of the trickling water,” Kate said in a whisper. “Like when stuff’s really worrying me, this is a nice place to be.”

  “What kind of stuff bothers you, Kate?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, you know. The usual.”

  April took her hand as they peered at the fish in the rock-ringed pool. “Is anything bothering you right now?”

  Kate found herself remembering a moment just a few months ago when she had brought Gran here. She and Gran had sat in the same spot, watching the fish, listening to the tinkle of water playing on stone.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to squeeze them back, but more kept coming and soon they were spilling down her cheeks. Trembling, she brought up her free arm and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  April took her promptly into her arms and hugged her. This made Kate cry all the harder. Not even Gran would have done that. Gran would have pretended not to notice, or maybe patted her awkwardly. As for Daddy, he’d have gotten embarrassed and not known what to do.

  April just held her, and stroked her hair, and let her cry. The last person who’d done that, Kate remembered, had been Mom. It was so unfair! At least Gran had lived to be kinda old, but Mom hadn’t even…

  Don’t think of that, don’t think of that, don’t think of that. Kate struggled to get control of herself. Thinking about Mom was pointless. Besides, she didn’t want April to think she was a crybaby, even if she was understanding and nice.

  “I hate to cry,” she muttered.

  “Don’t hate it,” April said gently. “Crying is good. Crying relieves the pain in the heart, the pressure on the soul. Never be ashamed of feeling your emotions.”