Habit of Fear Read Online Free PDF

apply to your father or not, but I remember her saying to me once, ‘I’m such a pushover for literary types.’”
    “I thought he was a diplomat type,” Julie said.
    “Do you want me to make inquiries with the Irish UN Mission?”
    “No!”
    “Sorry.”
    “Thank you,” she added softly. “I did that myself years ago.”
    And so she had, having since all but blocked it out. No one there or at the Irish Consulate in New York could remember him, and at the time of Julie’s conception and birth the Republic of Ireland had not yet been admitted to the United Nations.
    T HE CLACK OF HER HEELS on the bare floors echoed through the apartment as she went from room to room to see that she had left nothing that was hers. The rugs had already been rolled for storage, and someone had covered the furniture with sheets she did not recognize. She gathered perhaps twenty objects from almost as many countries—sculptures, glass figurines, scarves, jewelry—all Jeff’s gifts from his many journeys on faraway assignments. The only thing to do with them when she got them to Forty-fourth Street would be to hold a sidewalk sale as soon as possible. Or donate them to an Actors’ Forum benefit.
    Jeff had had her trunk brought down from the attic. She packed the marital souvenirs in cartons, bagged her clothes, and left the trunk till last. She knew very well what was buried at the bottom underneath her ski clothes, college gown and gym suit: her father’s picture—if it was her father—and her birth certificate, something she never wanted to look at unless she had to—when she’d gotten her passport, for example. Dr. Callahan was right: she was curious about everything except herself. Not entirely so; it was more that she was afraid of what she might find out. She removed the winter woolens, her gown and gym suit, exploding the smell of camphor. Not only was there the picture of her father in its gilt frame, but one also of her grandfather on her mother’s side, whom she could just remember, a man so sick at the time, she could now understand, that when he had put out his hand to touch her, he had let it fall before he could reach her face. She could remember forcing herself not to pull away from him. He had turned his face to the wall, releasing her. Beneath his picture was one of her mother, a handsome, sensual-looking woman whom Julie did not resemble. Except in name. She took her father’s photograph to the mirror over the mantel in the living room. There was a resemblance, she would swear. It was in the wide separation of the deep-set gray eyes, the long, straight nose and the large, sad mouth. She smiled at herself, and her whole expression changed. She became, she thought, someone a stranger might want to know. If only the face alongside her image could also change, would their smiles be alike?
    She went back to the trunk telling herself that she had to hurry. But that wasn’t so. The movers weren’t due for two hours. With neither joy nor fear, with no emotion she was aware of, she reached for the manila envelope. It contained, besides the expected birth certificate, her baptism papers and her and Jeff’s marriage certificate. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Her sponsors at baptism were Jane and Allan Burlingame. They were UN friends of her mother’s, and theirs was the only large family within Julie’s intimate experience. One of the girls, Janice, had gone to Miss Page’s School with her. She had loved to go to their home, a very large apartment on the West Side—full of noise and boys and laughter. But the Burlingames had been recalled by their government, and the last she had heard from them was on her twenty-first birthday, when they had sent her an Indian sari and a bank draft for a hundred dollars. She made herself look at the marriage scroll. Very fancy. And it, too, called on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. She and Jeff hadn’t promised to obey, she remembered, only to love,