Father's Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

“except they brought toys.”
    Weeks earlier, Leon had found mouse droppings in a kitchen cupboard. Isobel spent the afternoon looking for the mouse hole, which she told Harvey would probably be a small, arched opening somewhere in the wall. A week later, their lesson was interrupted by screams of horror when Isobel discovered a box of mousetraps in the weekly groceries.
    The echoes of play, and the rituals of their domestic life, made Harvey remember things about her own childhood on Long Island.
    It was not difficult now for her to recall when her father was the same age as Leon. But somehow her father had seemedalways older—or never quite so young as he must have been to himself.
    As her taxi neared the terminal where her father’s airplane would soon land, Harvey closed her eyes and pictured her room growing up. It came with the pale darkness of summer nights, the muffled voices from television, and the occasional rising laugh of her father, sitting alone in the next room.
    Then she was able to smell the garage in winter and even brush the damp sides of a box of Christmas things kept under the counter below her father’s tools. These sleeping objects, now less than shadow, all conjured unintentionally by association, were not like most memories—these Harvey felt in her body, a longing without pain.

VII
    O NCE INSIDE THE airport, Harvey found an empty row of molded seats near the revolving doors and settled into the stillness of someone with nothing to do.
    Her father’s flight would be edging the polar regions of Canada. He might be asleep, or eating, or leafing through an in-flight magazine.
    She looked at her phone and scrolled through the text messages. Then she checked her in-box, though the studio where she worked was never open on Sunday.
    When an orange bus pulled up outside, revolving doors sifted people into the terminal two or three at a time. Some were in a hurry, and frantically scanned their passports at self-check-in kiosks.
    Occasionally a tour group came through like a slow-moving school of fish. Someone at the front held up a paddle for the others to follow. Most of the tourists were Asian, and some were beginning the journey of old age.
    When the cafés in Terminal 2F began serving lunch, Harvey bought a magazine and something to eat. When she returned to her seat, the row had been taken over by a Senegalese family repacking their cases. Harvey went outside and watched people smoke last cigarettes. Then she strolled over to Terminal 2E and found somewhere to sit near the lost-baggage kiosk. The woman on duty wore an old-fashionedhat with an Air France badge on the side. Harvey could see a little behind her desk. The woman had taken off her shoes and was talking on the phone. When other airport staff appeared at her counter, she kissed them on both cheeks but kept one hand cupped over the receiver.
    By the time Harvey had finished her baguette sandwich, Terminal 2E had filled up. There was now a line outside the ladies’ toilets, and an English woman complaining loudly about having to pay a euro to go in.
    A boisterous queue had formed at the lost-baggage kiosk, and the woman in the Air France hat who had taken off her shoes was now handing out forms and pens.
    Then the fragrance of a girl with only a handbag on her shoulder. She must be here to meet someone too, Harvey thought—and wished she had remembered to put on a little perfume herself. She pictured the bottle at home on her dresser, admiring itself in the mirror. Next to the perfume were hairpins in a saucer. There was also a photograph of Harvey with her father. They were in front of the house. It was sunny. Her father crouched so their heads were even. You could see the yellow siding and the house number in black script. Harvey couldn’t recall who’d taken the photo. Maybe a neighbor, or Wanda from Social Services.
    Harvey had not seen her father in almost two years. They wrote to each other a few