“Listen,” Sparky said, getting to his feet abruptly and turning off the television set, “you mind if we continue this in the mornin’? I’m really whacked out.” He turned to Joanna. “Where you want us, Joanna?”
“Well... I guess one of you can use the couch here,” she said, “and...”
“There’s a guest room, isn’t there?” Lissie said at once.
“Well, yes, but...”
“I think it’ll be okay if they use the guest room,” Jamie said.
Joanna looked at him.
Lissie smiled.
Sparky went to where he’d dropped the duffel just inside the front door, hefted it by its strap onto his shoulder and said, “Just lead the way.”
“It’s upstairs,” Jamie said.
Joanna was still looking at him.
“G’night, Joanna,” Sparky said over his shoulder.
“Good night, Joanna,” Lissie said.
“Good night,” Joanna said. She picked up the glass Lissie had left on the floor, and then watched them as they went up the stairs behind Jamie. As she carried the glass into the kitchen, she saw Lissie and Sparky down the hall, just outside the guest-room door. Lissie peeked in, and then whispered something to Sparky. Sparky giggled. Together, they went into the room.
“Good night, Dad,” Lissie said, and closed the door.
“Good night,” Jamie said, and turned to see Joanna standing just outside the entrance to the kitchen. He went to her and said, “You okay, honey?”
“Sure,” Joanna said.
In bed again, she was silent for a long time. Then, at last, she said, “How long will they be staying?”
“I don’t know.”
“You did ask her to call first, didn’t you? In your letter, I mean.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I mean, you didn’t tell her it would be okay to just...”
“Honey, she’s here.”
“... barge in at midnight, did you? Most people are asleep at midnight, unless they’re...”
“Honey, I haven’t seen her since June...”
“... night watchmen or...”
“Joanna,” he said. “Please.”
The bedroom went silent.
“She’s my daughter,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other or talked to each other in four months. She’s here now. I’m glad she’s here, and I hope this’ll be the start of a better... a better relationship between the two of us.”
“I hate that fucking word relationship.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it,” he said.
“What are we supposed to do about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
Tomorrow — or rather today, since it was already ten minutes to one on Sunday morning — was the tenth of October, and Joanna’s grandmother had invited them to her house in Great Neck to be with the family on Yom Kippur. Joanna wasn’t religious, and had no intention of spending any time at all in the synagogue with her relatives, listening to the cantor intoning “Kol Nidre,” and then fidgeting through the subsequent prayers and the Confession with its fifty-six categories of sin (all of which she was certain she’d committed at one time or another) and its attendant breast-beating. But sundown and the call of the shofar signaled — at her grandmother’s house, anyway — the start of a feast of enormous proportions, the end of a long day of fasting, prayer and introspection. If there was one day in the Jewish calendar that spoke most strongly to the Jewish conscience and sensibility, it was Yom Kippur. They had planned to leave the apartment sometime around four tomorrow afternoon. But now Lissie and Sparky were here.
“Damn it, I wish she’d called first,” Joanna said.
“I don’t see any problem,” Jamie said. “We’ll spend the day with them, and then just...”
“Just what?”
“Well, she can just run over to her mother’s,” Jamie said.
“No, her mother’s in Europe, you heard her say her mother’s in Europe. You also heard her say they felt like spending a few days in New York. Suppose they want to spend them here?”
“I still don’t see any problem.”
“The problem is I don’t want to leave them here alone.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t want to.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“Sparky isn’t.”
“Well, then I’ll... I’ll just have to tell Lissie we’ve made other plans, and we’re sorry, but we’ll have to leave.”
“And they’ll have to leave when we do.”
“Yes,” he said, and hesitated. “That’s what I’ll have to tell her.”
Oddly, he thought immediately of Lissie’s restriction to campus when she was still a student at the Henderson School, and Connie’s refusal to cancel her plans for the weekend.
“You sound uncertain,” Joanna said.
“No, no, I’ll tell her, don’t worry,” Jamie said.
Joanna hugged him close.
“Maybe I married a mensh,” she said.
At nine the next morning, Jamie knocked on the guest bedroom door.
“Mm?” Lissie said.
“Honey, it’s Dad.”
“What is it, Dad?” she asked sleepily.
“Time to get up,” he said.
“What?”
“Time to get up.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“That’s the crack of dawn, Dad.”
“I know it’s early, but we’ve got a busy day planned, and I’d like you to get up now, okay?”
“What kind of busy day?”
“Lissie, honey, just get up, please, we’ll discuss it over breakfast.”
“Well... okay,” she said. He waited outside the closed door. “Sparky,” she said gently. “Honey. We have to get up.”
“Whut the fuck for?” Sparky mumbled.
“They’ve got plans for us.”
“I got plans for us, too, baby,” he said, and began laughing. “No, not now, honey, really, we have to get up.”
“Whyn’t you just bring that sweet l’il mouth down here?” he whispered.
“Sparky,” she whispered, “we really have to...”
“Come on down here,” he whispered.
Jamie turned away from the door and walked back down the hallway to the kitchen. The coffee was perking. The toaster popped up two slices of bread as he came through the door.
“Did you wake them?” Joanna asked.
“Yeah,” Jamie said, and nodded.
“Better tell them this coffee’s ready.”
“Well... not just now,” Jamie said.
She looked at him.
He nodded.
They did not come out of the bedroom until a quarter past ten. Jamie and Joanna were still sitting at the kitchen table, finishing their second cups of coffee.
“Good morning,” Lissie said. “Mm, that coffee smells good.”
“Got any orange juice?” Sparky asked, pulling out a chair and sitting beside Joanna.
“In the refrigerator,” Joanna said.
“Liss?”
Lissie opened the refrigerator, took out the container of orange juice, and poured some into two glasses. She carried them to the table and then sat down beside Sparky.
“Some eggs would really hit the spot, Joanna,” she said.
“We’re just having a light breakfast,” Jamie said. “You see, what I thought we’d do...”
“Yeah, what are all these big plans you’ve made for us, Dad?”
“Well, I thought we’d all go out to an early lunch together, twelve-thirty, something like that, and then go over to the Modern, if you like...”