“I remember,” Daddy said.

“Well, why didn’t you come and see me?” Barney said. “Why didn’t you send me a postcard in that fine handwriting of yours? Or call me on the ‘phone?”

There was silence for a while. Daddy’s figure, for a moment, seemed to shimmer as Mother’s had done when she had begun to change her form. But Daddy did not change. “Nothing to say,” he said, finally.

Barney stared at him. To his surprise, he found himself crying. “Anything,” he said. “You could have said anything.”

Daddy shimmered again. “Silly,” he said. “Childish.”

“Daddy!” Barney cried. “I needed you.”

Daddy shimmered more seriously. Then he turned and looked at Barney. He was younger than before, slightly less gray. “You were a Mama’s boy,” he said. “There was nothing for me to say to you.”

It took an effort for Barney to speak. “You could have said ‘Hi.’ You could have mailed me a card that said ‘Get Well Soon.’” Saying this, he felt a pain in his stomach, like a stitch. It grew and became a hot wire beneath his diaphragm. He began to sob, silently. He had been standing at the French doors; now, he seated himself in one of the director’s chairs, arms around his middle, and squinted his eyes shut until the sobbing ended.

“You always were a crybaby, too,” Daddy said, as if stating the weather report.

Barney opened his eyes but could not speak. He stared at his father, who was younger now—definitely younger. Daddy was no longer wearing his serge suit. He wore a white sport shirt with an open collar and white flannel pants. He looked like Don Budge, ready for a set. His hair had lost almost all its gray. His socks were white; his shoes, black and white.

It was early afternoon and hot; there was sweat at the back of Barney’s neck. He was wearing Levi’s; they were too heavy for this June afternoon. He began taking his shoes off to cool his feet. “I had a lot to cry about,” he said.

Daddy looked at him a moment. “Who doesn’t?” There was contempt in his voice. His eyes were pale blue. His face had lost twenty years while they were talking but the expression on the face had not changed: Daddy was angry, as he had always been. “My father beat me with his walking stick and I didn’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Barney said. “I’m sorry the son of a bitch beat you.” He sighed. There had been no relief in saying it. Maybe he wasn’t sorry at all.

“I never finished high school,” Daddy was saying, looking toward Central Park again. There was a hint of suntan on his normally pale face, and the flesh of his jaw was tight, strong-looking. His hair was black and slick. “My first job was unloading sacks of Portland cement for eighty cents a day. I saved money and bought the Encyclopedia Americana so I could know where the Suez Canal was and what the names of the chemical elements were. I lived on cheap food and slept on the floor. After five years I bought my first car, a black Model A, and I was cheated on it; the differential was bent and when I drove it fast the axle broke and broke my left leg with it. When I married Anna—your mother—in nineteen twenty-four, I still walked with a limp and was still paying for that goddamned wrecked Ford.” He grimaced. “I never even told anybody this before.”