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I freeze

Withaway, I push my chair back and stand up Nobody see down food and drink

It is the sloalk, it is the longest walk One foot in front of the other, le portrait hidden in the shadows The dining hall suddenly grows quiet; everyone is watching h, hacking up a lungful of phleg, and the portrait loo, in my feverish state, to float toward me And as it does, the darkness around it dissipates like tendrils ofat me with familiar eyes that are kind and authoritative, the sunken cheeks brooding and ray, the crow’s-feet at the corners of each eye more pronounced

My father

Footsteps behind nore the question with my own "Who is he?"

"He is Elder Joseph"

Joseph Joseph I run the name in my mind as if the very incantation will conjure up

"Where is he?" Sissy asks She is standing behind , half sitting at the table, their eyes fixed on the painting

"How do you know himan asks

And I ask the only question that matters, the question that I have asked and wondered for years in unbroken silence and unreravelly and sullen "He’s no longer with us"

"Where is he?" And this ti her words

Krug like a continent "He died In a tragic … incident," Krugman says

I take a step back But I do not feel

A pain shoots into , as if a section of ainst ht that blinks hypnotically My collapse is a ly slow spiral in which I see their faces, white sone empty

16

MY FATHER WOKE me with a shake on the shoulder

"What is it?" I asked I was not afraid; there was a look of excite out," he answered

"We are? Why?"

"Coo out into the sun"

"Just come," he said, and of course I did Dutifully, I put on my shoes, applied lotion over my arms and face, pulled the hat low so that the bris Just in case The daylight, as we opened the door, was like acid pouring into our eyes

We walked the streets without our shades These were the little tricks you learned, over the years Don’t wear shades in the daytiht leave tan lines on your face Don’t wear a watch for the saard But this day, for whatever reason, my father broke an i outside on a cloudless day when the sun shines down unobstructed I stared at