Free Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff

Daddy? You don’t mean to Ithaca, do you?”
    “The car’s in the garage,” said Walter. “Tank’s almost full. We could go a fair piece down the road before we even had to stop. And we could talk, just you and me, about anything you want. My ‘nervous breakdown,’ for instance.”
    “Daddy . . .”
    “I mean it. Back at breakfast I wasn’t too clear-headed, but I’m feeling better. I might like to rest a little bit more before we take off, but I will drive you. Really.”
    “But . . . well, what about Brian?”
    “Let him drive his own damn car,” Walter replied, and Aurora would have laughed at this if it were not for the fact that he was dead serious.
    “Daddy,” she said again, “Daddy, you’ve got to realize how silly this is.” Walter lowered his eyes, nodding.

    “It is pretty silly, isn’t it? Pretty damn silly, yes . . .” He looked up again. “But what do you say?”
    For the briefest instant—only an instant, mind you—Aurora considered accepting his offer, leting him drive her all the way to Ithaca if it was that important to him. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t only for his sake that she considered it.
    “Let’s go, Aurora!” Brian called, breaking the spell.
    “I love you, Daddy,” Aurora said, kissing Walter on the cheek. Then she was hurrying to the station wagon, pausing to yell back over her shoulder: “I’ll call as soon as we get there, all right? . . . I promise.”
    Walter nodded again, and had to fight hard to keep his fists from clenching. He felt worn out, beaten.
    “You take care now,” Walter said.
    Aurora opened her mouth to speak, but Brian Garroway said: “We’ll be fine, Mr. Smith. Don’t worry yourself.”
    The two climbed into the station wagon, slammed the doors. “Seat belts,” Brian said automatically, even as Aurora was reaching for hers. He turned on the engine, put the station wagon in reverse, and began to back gingerly down the driveway. Walter waved from the house and Aurora waved back . . . and as they approached the end of the driveway, she reached over to the steering wheel and honked the horn twice.
    “Cripes!” Brian said, startled. His nervous system did a few quick jumping jacks. “What’d you do that for?”
    “Just saying good-bye,” she told him.
    “Well please do it some other way. I’m in a very edgy mood about this car right now.”
    Aurora made no response to this and waved to her father one last time. Then the station wagon was moving down the road, leaving home and parents behind. There was silence in the car for the next few minutes.
    “This is going to be a good year,” Brian finally said. He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Maybe the best year so far.”
    “I hope so,” Aurora said. She smiled back, and Brian never even noticed how forced it looked. “I really hope so.”
    She suddenly wished very badly that she’d taken her father’s offer.
    IV.
    As for Walter Smith, his morning ended in prayer. Not the orthodox, “Lord we beseech thee” style of prayer, but something much closer to true conversation. Walter. had not been to church in some years—though Prudence still went regularly, and Brian Garroway frequently urged him to do thesame—but he still retained a fair amount of faith; surely the world could not have become so wonderfully mixed-up without a guiding, jester’s hand.
    When the station wagon was out of sight, Walter sat down on his front porch and stared at the stretch of driveway where Brian had been parked.
    “Listen,” he began. “I need a really big favor, I think. . . .”

. . . AND LADY CALLIOPE
    Day ran on into night again, and that evening, in Delaware, the most beautiful woman in the world left the capital city of Dover and walked north on U.S. 13. Her name was Calliope, and on the long road behind her she left a string of carefully broken hearts, like diamonds cut to a finer shape by a master lapidary.
    Cut to a finer shape . . . she too was finely shaped, custom-made in a sense.