Forty Words for Sorrow

"Hi, Kelly. How's school going?" So plain, so flat. Why can't I call her princess or sweetheart, the way fathers do on TV? Why can't I say the place is colder without you? Without Catherine? Why not tell her this tiny house is suddenly the size of an airport?

"I'm working on a humongous project for my painting class, Daddy. Dale's taught me that I work best on a monumental scale, not on the crabbed little canvases I always stuck with before. It's like being set free. I can't tell you how good it feels. My work is a hundred times better."

"Sounds good, Kelly. Sounds like you're enjoying it." That's what he said. What he thought was: God, it moves me so to hear you're happy, to hear that you're growing, that your life is full and good.

Kelly chattered on about learning at last how to wield paint, and normally Cardinal would have basked in her enthusiasm. In the course of his sleepless night he had stood in the doorway of her bedroom and stared at the narrow bed she had slept in for a week, picked up the paperback she had been reading, just to touch something his daughter had touched.

He stood in the doorway now, the cordless phone tucked under his chin. The room was a pretty pale yellow, with a wide window looking out on birch trees, but it had never really been Kelly's room. Cardinal and Catherine had moved to Madonna Road after Kelly had gone to university, and the room was just a place she inhabited when she visited.

A TV father would tell her how he had touched her book just to touch something she had touched, but Cardinal could never say such a thing.

"One thing, though, Daddy. A bunch of us are planning a trip to New York next week. It's the last week of the Francis Bacon exhibition and it's really something I should see. But you know I didn't budget for any trips, and this would cost about two hundred dollars by the time you factor in meals and gas and everything."

"Two hundred American?"

"Um, yeah. Two hundred American. It's too much, isn't it?"

"Well, I don't know. How important is this, Kelly?"

"I won't do it if you think it's too much. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"No, no. That's okay. If it's important."

"I know I'm costing you a fortune. I do try to save money wherever I can, Daddy. I mean, you wouldn't believe all the things I don't do."

"I know. It's okay. I'll wire the money to your account this afternoon."

"You sure it's okay?"

"It's fine. But next year will have to be different, Kelly."

"Oh, next year will be real different. I mean, I'll be done with all my classes- I'll just have my final project: two or three canvases for the group show, depending how much Dale thinks I should do. I'll be able to take a part-time job next year. I'm sorry everything's so expensive, Daddy. Sometimes I wonder how you manage. I hope you know how grateful I am."

"Don't you worry about it."

"I hope one day I make a ton of money off my painting so I can pay some of it back."

"Really, Kelly, don't you even think about that." The phone was slick with sweat in Cardinal's hand, and his heart flapped at his rib cage. Kelly's gratitude had unmanned him. In the core of his being, a door clicked shut, a bolt shot home, and a sign long out of use was hung over the window: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

"You sound a little tense, Daddy. Work driving you crazy?"

"Well, the press is yelling at us. I get the feeling they won't be happy till we bring in the Air Force. I'm not making the progress I should."

"You will."

They closed with an exchange on their separate weathers: hers sunny and warm and measured in Fahrenheit; his bright and cold and measured in centigrade degrees below zero. Cardinal tossed the phone onto the sofa. He stood dead still in the center of the living room like a man who has just received terrible news. There was a noise from outside, and it took him a few moments to realize what it was. Then he rushed through the kitchen and threw open the side door, yelling, "Go on, beat it, you little rodent!"

He saw the raccoon's fat hindquarters wriggle under the house. Normally a raccoon would be hibernating this time of year, but the floor of Cardinal's house was leaking heat- enough heat to confuse this raccoon into thinking there was no winter. The first time Cardinal had caught sight of the masked face, the raccoon had been examining half an apple in its precise black paws. Now, it emerged two or three times a week to topple the garbage cans in his garage and root through the mess for edible scraps.

Shivering furiously, Cardinal scrambled after the bits of plastic wrap, the empty doughnut container, the gnawed chicken bone strewn across the garage floor. He went back inside just in time to hear the phone ringing.

It took him three rings to remember where he had tossed the handset. He snatched it up from among the sofa cushions just as Delorme was about to ring off.

"Oh," she said, "I thought you must be already on your way in."

"I was just leaving. What's up?"