The Demonologist Read Online Free PDF Page B

her clenched glass. Her husband and child share some troubling darkness and, among its many side effects, it has left her on the outside. I am standing here—as I have always stood here—but she is alone.
    “Tess in her room?” I ask. Diane nods.
    “Go,” she says, dismissing me. But I’m already gone.
    E VEN R OBERT B URTON ’ S 1,400- PAGE Anatomy of Melancholy DOESN’T state whether the condition is hereditary or not. I suppose Tess and I make as strong a case for the affirmative as any. In just the last year or so she has outwardly shown signs of bluesy distraction, the whittling down of friends, the shift from broad interests to singular obsession, in her case the keeping of a journal I have never attempted to sneak a peek at, in part to respect her privacy, but also in part because I fear what I might find in it. This recent slide is what troubles Diane most. But the truth is I recognized myself in Tess at a much earlier age. A shared distance from the clamor of life that we continually attempt to bridge, only ever with partial success.
    I knock on her door. At her word of medieval permission—“Enter!”—I come in to find her closing her journal and sitting up straight on the edge of her bed. Her long, Riesling-colored hair still in the braid I tied for her this morning. Hair care being a territory I claimed since Tess’s toddlerhood, my patience greater than Diane’s at brushing out the knots or scissoring the dried gum free. An odd task for a dad, perhaps. But the truth is we have some of our bestconversations in the bathroom before eight, the air foggy from a succession of hot showers, the two of us selecting from ponytail, single braid, or “pigs.”
    My Tess. Looking up at me and instantly reading what has transpired in the living room.
    She shifts over. Makes room for me to sit next to her.
    “Is she coming back?” Tess asks, the first part of our exchange passing unspoken between us.
    “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. No.”
    “But I’m staying here? With you?”
    “We haven’t discussed it in detail. But yes, this is still going to be home. For both of us. Because I’m sure as hell not going anywhere without you.”
    Tess nods as though this—me staying here with her—is all she needs to know. It’s really all I need to know, too.
    “We need to do something,” I say after a time.
    “Like family therapy? That kind of something?”
    Too late for that, I think. Too late for the three of us together. But there’s still you and me. There will always be you and me.
    “I’m talking about something fun.”
    “Fun?” She repeats this word as though it belongs to an ancient language, a forgotten term in Old Norse she needs help with.
    “You think you could be packed for the morning? Clothes for three days? Just hop on a plane and get out of here? I’m talking first-class tickets. Four-star hotel. We’ll be rock stars.”
    “Sure,” she says. “This for reals?”
    “Absolutely for reals.”
    “Where we going?”
    “How do you like the sound of Venice?”
    Tess smiles. It’s been so long since I’ve seen my daughter spontaneously show her happiness—and at something I have done, no less—that I cough on a sob that takes me by surprise.
    “Heaven’s purest light,” I say.
    “That old man Milton again?”
    “Yes. But it’s also you.”
    I squeeze her nose. The little thumb-and-forefinger pinch I stopped trying a couple years ago after her irritated protests. I’m expecting another one from her now, but instead she replies the way she did as a child, when this was one of our thousand games.
    “Honk!”
    She laughs. And I laugh with her. For a moment, silliness has been returned to us. Of all the things I thought I’d miss when my child was no longer a child, I had no idea that the permission to act like a child yourself would be at the top of the list.
    I get up and start for the door.
    “Where you going?” she says.
    “To tell Mom.”
    “Tell her in a minute.