touché. I don’t like hairy or harried or married heavy Harrys or anything like them and never did. Always with their oh-poo-poo-poo polite warnings and words to the wise and bigshot goodbyes and put-downs, and this is what I do about these I’m-better-than-you attitudes and noses in the air, plain as simple, simple as plain peach pie,” driver behind him laughing like mad and walloping the steering wheel with his hand. Later — years later — couple of years at least, he thought what could Julie have been thinking of at that particular time and a short time before? Margo he could always find out, and did ask her about a year after he thought this and she said “I think I was thinking — no, I don’t want to talk about it, the whole subject is too sad.” “Please, just a little, if it gets too terrible for you or even starts to, stop. But I really think it’ll help me get over everything somewhat. For maybe with the complete picture of what everybody was thinking and saying in the car that time or as close to it as I can get, it’ll just be too much for my head, filling it way beyond where it can hold that much till it all just blows up and then blows away, or at least what’s left I can live with. No, that doesn’t make any sense, does it? or just some.” “Not that I can see,” she said. “But I think I was thinking, and naturally I’m unclear about it since everything then seemed to fly out of me because of the screaming and shots and our car quickly stopping and my being thrown against the front seat and then the shock of after. But that the man was all of a sudden acting strange after he’d been kind of nice and funny, and his smiling face changing with it, which I liked up till then and I think Julie did too—” and he said “Why, how could you tell?” and she said “She gave me a look that she thought him funny because of the things he was saying, like ‘hairy Harry’ and ‘homely hippie’—” and he said “I didn’t hear any ‘homely hippie,’” and she said “I did, almost all H’s, but for those things I thought she gave me a look for and also his funny face, which like me I bet she thought he was making just for us. But when the sudden change came I got scared, for his face also went from funny to ugly.” “So you immediately knew something horrible was about to happen, that it, and you think Julie did too?” and she said “For me, not till he took out the gun. And even then for a few seconds, till I saw how scared you suddenly got, I thought the gun was fake and he might still only be having some fun with us but now with a scary mean face.” “And Julie, our dear little Julie…you know, it’s still difficult, after three years is it? — did I mention this to you before?” and she said “What?” and he said “Talking or even thinking of her without crying — yes, I’m sure I did, or might have, and I think I even remember asking you another time about a year back if I’d mentioned this before — but what do you think she was thinking right before the guy showed the gun and after he stopped acting kind of funny and started acting very strange?” and she said “Probably the same as me if she was looking and catching everything I was,” and he said “Do you think she was?” and she said “I can’t remember — for a while, like I said, she did have the look that she was; but then my eyes got drawn only to the man, so it’s not possible to say for sure for her and that’s the way it’ll always be.” “Try a little harder to remember, sweetie,” and she said “Oh, all right,” and shut her eyes and seemed to try and then said “I can’t, that’s all, I can’t see anything after that but the man and the gun and your being scared of it and lots of shouting and shrieking and the car swerving and then us pulling over to the side and you yelling for us to duck, or maybe that was before or both before and after we stopped, and the shots.” Julie might have been thinking, he thought, “The man was funny, but now Daddy doesn’t seem all right. He seems worried and the man doesn’t seem funny anymore either. He seems crazy and angry, shouting like he did so loud and now some more. And he cursed. Bad words too. The f one; I think I also heard the p one. Daddy hates when people curse in front of Margo and me, even if he does it sometimes when we’re around and he’s mad at something or us, which he gets a lot, and even curses at us sometimes too, and once the f word.” She had a little memo book in which she jotted things down: pictures, thoughts, math problems she made up, poems. Once: “What day is it, Daddy?” “You mean today’s date? April twelfth.” “Well, I wrote down here ‘Daddy used the s word, twice, April twelfth.’” Other times when he thought about what she might have been thinking at a particular time, incidents or moments that for some reason stand out. Like when he went into her room to say goodnight, lights in it were out, and got on his knees by her bed, thought she might be sleeping, a little light was on her face from the hallway and eyes closed and expression quiescent, and then her eyes flipped open and he said “Oh hi, I came in to say goodnight, thought you were asleep,” and she sat up and slowly moved her face to his and then just stared deadpan at him a few seconds, so close he was looking at her cross-eyed, and after he pulled back, for his eyes were hurting, and said goodnight, she did and turned around, patted her pillow and rested her doll on it and covered it up to its neck and lay down and put her arm around it and he said “No kiss?” and she said “Not tonight,” and he said “How come?” and she said nothing. So what was on her mind when she stuck her face next to his, he’d thought at first to kiss his lips, and those few seconds she stared at him and also when she hugged the doll while facing the wall and he said a couple of times “You’re not going to say anything?” Time they were sitting in a movie theater, just the two of them and her only time in one, picture kind of loud and fast like a toy commercial, and she nudged him, he looked at her and she just stared up at him and he whispered “What? What is it?” and she stared for what must have been a minute and then turned back to the screen. He never asked her again what it was; should have, later. Time he was serving the kids dinner and she said “Can I have something to drink?” and he said “This isn’t a restaurant. You know where the juice is and how to pour it and your pouring arm isn’t lame, so go in and get it yourself,” and she said “I only wish it was,” and he said “Wish what was?” and she said “This was a restaurant. Then we could get another waiter.” “Oh ho ho ho, so sophisticated untongue-in-cheek siss-boom-bah ridiculing humor,” and she put her fork down, elbow on the table and palm holding up her chin and she seemed to be studying him and he said “So what’s so interesting, tell me — my stupid rejoinder, saying words and phrases way over your head?” and Margo said “Yeah, tell Daddy,” and she shook her head and continued to stare. That he was crazy to make these requests, use those words, that he’s always getting excited or irritated over nothing, that he can ask nicely for once if he wants her to do something—“Please isn’t a dirty word, you know,” as she once said and he said then “I know, I’m sorry, I’m setting a bad example, adults should be, well, role models when it comes to behavior in front of children, and for other things, so please, please, and I mean it, triple and quadruplicate please — no, that doesn’t seem as if I mean it, so just