Linda started to cry. She got up and went to the bathroom and came back a minute later with the rice pot and another bottle of wine. Phil cut off the foil and opened it, and told us how he got beaten up by black kids when he was growing up poor in the Bronx in the thirties. “You ever been hit in the head with a baseball bat?” he asked me. I tried to think of something: When I was eleven, I fell down the stairs. “I guess not,” I said. He told us about fighting in Korea; he mentioned his first night on national news, in 1962; he told us how he hung out with Cronkite; he described Bobby Kennedy’s funeral procession down Fifth Avenue. He said hookers used to come through the newsroom to see the network bigshots; a lot of these guys were ruined by money, he said.

He poured more wine. “Linda,” he said, “I discussed a deal with my lawyers.” He paused. I didn’t know what would come next; I pictured him throwing us out of this house, taking everything, boarding it up. “I made an investment that worked out the way I hoped it would, and I’m transferring the funds to you and Jeannine.” We both said thanks. “It’s done,” he said. “It’s a nice sum.” Linda said, “Thank you, Daddy.” He said, “Close to eight hundred thousand dollars apiece.” I felt a wild pain shoot into my rectum, and I picked up my glass, staring at it as if there was some incredible thing dancing around in the wine. Linda said, “God, that’s a lot of money.” Her expression didn’t change.

“I’ve spoken to your mother a number of times,” he said. “I’ve seen her twice this year.” He said he liked the way she had redecorated the old house. “We’ve made up,” he said. “We’re O.K. now. I don’t know whether that matters to you or not.” Linda shrugged her shoulders and smiled, and wiped her eyes with her napkin. “It’s not the end of the world,” he said.

“No,” Linda said. Her voice broke.

It was midnight before we got up. We’d drunk four bottles of wine. Linda went and hugged her father, and he took her by the arm and led her outside to the patio. Barbara and I cleared off the table. She said, “He’s a wonderful, wonderful man.”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said, “He treats me as good as he treats them.” We were drunk as hell. We kept banging into each other. Outside, I saw Linda nodding to Phil as he spoke—it seemed like a huge relief. We ran hot water on the big pots and left them, and everybody went to bed.