Free Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett Page A

me; but I can’t be comforted. I am crying as if I am at a funeral. It is a feeling I can’t shake.
    I keep waiting for the phone to ring that night. Surely Dad will call. Surely he’ll want to make contact, at least to say goodbye before he leaves. But the phone is silent.
    The next morning, I have to fly to Sydney to run some workshops. I am standing in the domestic section of the airport when I realise with a sudden shiver that this is also the time that my father’s flight back to America is due to depart. He, Lily and David must be standing right now just a few hundred metresaway in the international lounge. If I walked just a few minutes to the right, I would run into him. I am torn in two. Should I go there? Maybe I can fix it? Maybe I can make it alright? But the other part of me recoils. I can’t cross that space. I can’t bear to see him as he was yesterday. I am too hurt. I can’t stand another replay.
    And so we stay there, separated, the two of us. Unbearably close. Unbearably far apart.
    Two weeks go by and I hear nothing from my father. I can’t stand the silence. Dad, I know, won’t make the first move. I do it now. I write telling him that I love him and I don’t want this alienation. He responds in his usual fashion, as if nothing has happened, and makes no mention of the scene at my house. We continue to correspond and speak on the phone in our familiar way, but I can’t shake off the sadness; a sense of mourning that feels as if something unutterably precious has been lost.
    My father and I have always shared a tight bond. I loved my mother dearly and we were very close, but I was a Daddy’s girl. Every Saturday, for decades, even after I left home, we would go into the city together. It was our weekly ritual. We would pick up library books and visit the shops. Bookshops were high on the list. Dad and I were the readers in our family. He had a passion for hard-boiled detective stories, while I read anything that didn’t move. I adored him. He was a jovial bear of a father who loved food, fun and would do anything for anybody.
    In the last handful of years though, since he has livedin New York, our relationship has changed. The signs are subtle at first—a slight coolness, a distance that is more than just physical distance. I tell myself that I am imagining this. It’s so unlike our usual comfortable closeness. I am getting over-sensitive, I decide, seeing shadows where there aren’t any.
    But the unnerving signals continue. And then, finally, something I can’t ignore. Martin and I are going to the States. We have arranged to meet Dad in Washington. It’s only a half-hour’s flight from New York, where he lives now, and he and Dorka will come up to spend a few days with us. I’ve booked tickets for the FBI tour knowing that Dad, a crime fiction fan, will be entranced.
    It’s been a year since I’ve seen him and I’m really looking forward to making contact with him again. A few weeks before our departure date, Dad sends me a fax. Our Washington stay coincides with a Jewish holiday and he’s decided not to come up. I’m flabbergasted. Dad is not religious. In fact he decries religion. I’ve never seen him change his plans for a religious holiday. By this time, Martin and I are locked into our flight and accommodation schedules. It seems crazy to think of being so close to each other geographically and not seeing each other. I get out my calendar and find that the holiday covers only a small portion of our Washington stay. ‘Why not come up for the three days that aren’t religious holidays?’ I say to Dad.
    â€˜No,’ he says. ‘We’ll just have to catch up with each other by phone.’
    I am hurt and bewildered. He obviously isn’t interested in seeing me. There’s no point in bringing itup either. Dad doesn’t like to deal with emotional issues. He would pooh-pooh