A Bigamist's Daughter by Alice McDermott Page A

slightly amazed that he would ask such a tactless question. But he is looking at her seriously, as if it were important to him.
    “My father,” she says, “could be anywhere. Heaven, hell, purgatory. Wisconsin.”
    He smiles a little. “What did he look like, your father?”
    She brushes back her hair. “Dark hair, like mine. Blue eyes, like mine. My nose exactly, I’m told. But his face was thinner and he had a mustache. A small one, like Clark Gable’s.”
    “Was he tall?”
    “Yes,” she says. “And thin. Why are you so interested?”
    He shrugs, rests his glass on his stomach. “I don’t know; you get kind of defensive when you talk about him. I don’t think you liked him.”
    “I was crazy about him,” she cries. “I lived for the days he came home. Honestly, I think he spoiled me for any other man.”
    “Is that why you’re not married?”
    She laughs. “Could be. He’s as good an excuse as any. If I need an excuse.”
    “There could be a correlation,” he says, seriously. “If your father represented impermanence, then anyone who wanted to marry you would mean permanence, just the opposite.”
    “Very good, Mr. Freud,” she says dryly, although, suddenly, her stomach is dancing, as if she were a child again, playing hide-and-seek, hiding in someone’s dark, cool basement, feeling the searcher come near, stop, turn, walk away, and then walk back. “But not very original.”
    “No,” he says, refusing to joke. “You should think about that. I should think about it too, if I’m going to get involved with you. I always look at a woman’s father; it’s usually a good indication of how she feels about men.”
    “Jesus,” she says, laughing. “Do you want a character reference too? Birth certificate? Fingerprints?” She doesn’t tell him that his basic premise, that they are to get “involved,” is his first mistake.
    “You see,” he says calmly, pointing at her. “You get touchy when you talk about your father, even though you say you liked him. And you called him a bigamist.”
    “I was joking.” Her voice is higher than she wants it to be. Sounds touchy.
    “Yes, but you see,” he says, “if you don’t like your father, then it says something to me about how you feel about men like him.”
    She gets out of bed, goes to her pocketbook for a cigarette. Although she tries not to smoke in her apartment, this gives her something to do, something that might remind him of her professional status. “Perhaps my ‘touchiness,’ ” she tells him, blowing smoke through her nose, “has more to do with my dislike for you, not my father. You are, you know, being totally obnoxious, analyzing me when you know nothing about me, looking into my ancestry to discover my temperament. Jesus.”
    He throws his head back, looks up at the ceiling. “I made you angry,” he says, his voice full of self-disgust.
    She laughs at the ploy. No, you didn’t, she’s supposed to say. It’s okay, really, I don’t mind. At least you’re interested. “Maybe you should go,” she says instead.
    He gets off the bed, stands by her, hands at his sides. Eyes mournful. “I’d like to stay.”
    She shakes her head. “I think you should go.”
    She walks to the closet, puts on her robe, goes to the love seat. “Really, it’s getting late.” She sits down, waiting.
    Slowly, he puts on his jeans, his shirt, his sweater. Then he sits on the edge of the bed, before her, and puts his hand on her knee.
    “Listen,” he says, “I’m sorry. Maybe I was prying, maybe I was being, I don’t know, calculating. But I thought maybe …” He rubs his thumb along her knee. “When you said your father was a bigamist.” He holds up his hand. “I know you were kidding, but you did say he was never home, so I thought maybe he could be a clue for how to end my book. I mean, Bailey has no ending, but your father, well, he might give me a different perspective. Maybe I could use something that happened to him, or even