6

THE ease OF MY BREAKFAST TASK gave me hope for my church task, which at the time seemed significant but not really threatening.

My father was easily offended, but normally he was easily mollified, too, if you spoke your prescribed part with a proper appearance of remorse. This was a ritual that hardly bothered me, I was so used to it. For all her remarks and eye rolling, Rose could perform her part, and after the fact, could even get our father to laugh about some things. Caroline, though, was perennially innocent, or stubborn, or maybe just plain dumb about this sort of thing. She was always looking for the rights and wrongs of every argument, trying to figure out who should apologize for what, who should go first, what the exact wording of an apology should be. It was one of those things about her that you could say came from being a lawyer, except that she'd always been that way, and being a lawyer only formalized it and, I suppose, proved to her that blame could indeed be divvied up.

Henry Dodge, our minister, gave his yearly sermon about all worldly riches having their source in the tilling of the soil, which was guaranteed to appeal both to the farmers' self-regard and to their sense of injury at the hands of the rest of society, so I thought Daddy, who was there, sitting in the back pew with Marv, might be in a good mood.

After church, I said to Caroline, "Come along, he around, go up and give him a kiss on the cheek and a hug, and just say, 'Sorry, Daddy."

You can do that. That hardly even amounts to an apology."

"But I spent the night at Rose 5.

"Ignore that part."

"He won't. That's the insult added to the injury."

"If he mentions it, say, 'I was afraid you were mad at me, Daddy."

Her lips thinned. "I hate that little girl stuff."

"Well, weren't you afraid he was angry with you?"

"No. I was furious with him! All I did was express a little-" "He's touchy. He was drunk. Can't you just make allowances-" "Ginny! It's time we stopped making allowances-" Her voice was rising, and I could see Rose and Pete and Henry Dodge glancing in our direction. I stepped between Caroline and the church and sort of backed her down the walk toward Rose's car. I did my best to speak softly and seriously.

"We'll stop making allowances tomorrow. This is important. He's handing over his whole life, don't you understand that? We have to receive it in the right spirit. And Rose and Pete and even Ty are ready to receive it. Just do it this once.

Last time, I promise."

"That's another thing. I'm not ready to receive it. I think it's a bad idea for him, and it's certainly a bad idea for me. Frank was appalled when I told him. In fact, he called Ken LaSalle at home last night, and Ken told him he's been advising Daddy in no uncertain terms not to do this. If he were in bad health, that would be one thing, but he doesn't have to worry about estate taxes all of a sudden right this minute. You know when Daddy came up with this idea?

Wednesday! He decided to change his whole life on Wednesday!

Objectively, this is an absurdity. He knows it, and he knows I know it, and that's why he's so pissed at me. If I knuckle under to this sort of bullshit, I'll never forgive myself."

"Are you going to stop him? No! You'll just goad him on!" I tried another tack. "He'll cut you out! This is it. If you don't calm him down, it will be like you were never born. Doesn't that scare you?

It scares me! This is just like the Stanley brothers over north of town.

When Newt Stanley died, his last words to Bob were, 'Goddamn Larry Cook. You get that farm from him if it's the last thing you do."" "You're kidding."

"Eileen Dahl said Bob Stanley told her that himself."

"Amazing!"

"It isn't amazing! The county is full of old grievances like that. If you let this happen, people are going to talk about it for fifty years.

Longer." I made myself wheedle. "Just this once." By now we were in the street. I looked down and saw that my feet were apart, and I was kind of leaning over Caroline. I glanced toward the church.

I couldn't see Rose, but Henry Dodge was trying, or not trying, not to look at us. I smiled and pretended to relax. Caroline looked down the street toward the elementary school and the playground.

I could tell that the inquisitive souls in front of the church hadn't even entered her mind. I was annoyed, I have to admit. I said impatiently, "You're making up your mind about right and wrong, aren't you? This isn't a question of right and wrong, it's a question of what he wants to do."

"I don't see that, Ginny, but I'll think about it, okay? I'll come along and hang around, and we'll see, okay? Don't be mad at me.

"Why can you say that to me and not to Daddy?"

She looked at me quizzically, then, after a moment, she laughed and said, "Sweetie, you deserve to be mollified and he doesn't, I guess.

Deserving was an interesting concept, applied to my father. His own motto was, what you get is what you deserve.

Caroline got into Rose and Pete's Dodge. I turned and walked down Boone Street toward our GM pickup, imagining, as always, the padded bar of a child's car seat arcing across the center of the back window.

Strolees were the best, I'd heard. A five-year-old child could still fit into a Strolee. If there was anything I hated, it was the sight of a toddler in a pickup, standing, swaying, between father and mother, set for disaster. I opened the passenger door and sat up on the bench seat, the way you do in a pickup, framed on all sides by the fresh spring light. I was pretty pleased with the morning's work, on the whole, and I was inclined after all to agree with those who thought maybe my father's impulse had been the right one, if not for him, then for us.