家破何归

He put on socks and shoes, and a jacket, and went out. She watched Gaston trying to find out what to do next. Gaston wandered around the plate, but everything seemed wrong and he didn’t know what to do or where to go.

The telephone rang and her mother said she was sending the chauffeur to pick her up because there was a little party for somebody’s daughter who was also six, and then tomorrow they would fly back to New York.

“Let me speak to your father,” she said.

“He’s gone to get a peach.”

“One peach?”

“One with people.”

“You haven’t been with your father two days and already you sound like him.”

“There are peaches with people in them. I know. I saw one of them come out.”

“A bug?”

“Not a bug. Gaston.”

“Who?”

“Gaston the grand something.”

“Somebody get a peach with a bug in it, and throws it away, but not him. He makes up a lot of foolishness about it.”

“It’s not foolishness.”

“All right, all right, don’t get angry at me about a horrible peach bug of some kind.”

“Gaston is right here, just outside his broken house, and I’m not angry at you.”

“You’ll have a lot of fun at the party.”

“OK.”

“We’ll have fun flying back to New York, too.”

“OK.”

“Are you glad you saw your father?”

“Of course I am.”

“Is he funny?”

“Yes.”

“Is he crazy?”

“Yes. I mean, no. He just doesn’t holler when he sees a bug crawling out of a peach seed or anything. He just looks at it carefully. But it is just a bug, isn’t it, really?”

“That’s all it is.”

“And we have to squash it?”

“That’s right. I can’t wait to see you, darling. These two days have been like two years to me. Good-bye.”

The girl watched Gaston on the plate, and she actually didn’t like him. He was all ugh, as he had been in the first place. He didn’t have a home anymore and he was wandering around on the white plate and he was silly and wrong and ridiculous and useless and all sorts of other things. She cried a little, but only inside, because long ago she had decided she didn’t like crying because if you ever started to cry it seemed as if there was so much to cry about you almost couldn’t stop, and she didn’t like that at all. The open halves of the peach seed were wrong, too. They were ugly or something. They weren’t clean.

The man bought a kilo of peaches but found no flawed peaches among them, so he bought another kilo at another store, and this time his luck was better, and there were two that were flawed. He hurried back to his flat and let himself in.

His daughter was in her room, in her best dress.

“My mother phoned,” she said, “and she’s sending the chauffeur for me because there’s another birthday party.”

“Another?”

“I mean, there’s always a lot of them in New York.”

“Will the chauffeur bring you back?”

“No. We’re flying back to New York tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“I liked being in your house.”

“I liked having you here.”

“Why do you live here?”

“This is my home.”

“It’s nice, but it’s a lot different from our home.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“It’s kind of like Gaston’s house.”

“Where is Gaston?”

“I squashed him.”

“Really? Why?”

“Everybody squashes bugs and worms.”

“Oh. Well. I found you a peach.”

“I don’t want a peach anymore.”

“OK.”

He got her dressed, and he was packing her stuff when the chauffeur arrived. He went down the three flights of stairs with his daughter and the chauffeur, and in the street he was about to hug the girl when he decided he had better not. They shook hands instead, as if they were strangers.

He watched the huge car drive off, and then he went around the corner where he took his coffee every morning, feeling a little, he thought, like Gaston on the white plate.