Out Of Control

“I was telling Emmy, it’s about time she started dressing up to show off how good-looking she’s getting,” Toby was saying.

And I’ve been telling her just the opposite, Daisy thought. She noticed that Emmy, who flew into a rage at even the mildest criticism of what she was wearing, was carefully avoiding her eye.

Toby, after a few more unsuccessful attempts to engage her in conversation, announced that he’d better get going. He left—cereal bowl filmed with milk and glued-on bits of Cocoa Krispies still on the table. Emmy had retreated to her room.

Daisy carried the bowl to the sink, put the cereal away and wiped off the table. An image came to her of her father at the stove. He’d never slept well, often getting up around dawn to make breakfast, an activity that involved hollering and playing marching music and singing at the top of his voice—just in case she might still be sleeping. None of it had bothered Amalia, who could sleep through anything.

On that particular morning she remembered, he’d been wearing a chef’s hat, brandishing a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton as he’d belted out tunes.

She’d got her camera and snapped off half a dozen shots before he realized what she was doing. After the film was developed, he’d critiqued the pictures. “Not bad, not bad. But notice how the spoon is slightly out of focus and you’ve got all this clutter in the background and, this is just constructive criticism, honey, but see the way the clock on the wall seems to be coming out of my head….”

It had been the same with every picture she’d taken. She’d examine them for hours before she submitted them to him, convinced she’d finally mastered perfection. She’d never even come close. After a while she’d lost interest in photography all together.

Another memory to share with Nicholas Wynne?

The phone rang. She took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.

Nicholas Wynne.

“My God, I was beginning to think you were a figment of my imagination,” he said. “Either that, or you were avoiding me.”

Daisy sat at the kitchen table. This guy sounded a tad too chipper for the mood she was in. “A lot of stuff going on,” she said.

“How is your stepmother, by the way?”

Sober, I hope. And taking her asthma medicine. And staying off the dune buggy. “Improving,” she said.

“I’ve left a couple of messages, but haven’t heard back,” he said.

“You’re kind of batting zero all around.”

“Sorry?” He paused then laughed. “Oh, right. I’ve left one or two with you, too, haven’t I? Anyway, I wondered if we could meet for lunch in the next day or so. I thought perhaps the Ritz Carlton. A favorite of your father’s, I understand.”

“So was Tio Taco’s,” Daisy said.

“Would you like to meet there, then?”

“It burned down ten years ago.”

“Right… That’s out then. Back to the Ritz?”

“The Ritz isn’t my kind of place,” Daisy said. “The Ritz stuff was before my time…before I was born, I mean.”

“Do you have a suggestion?”

Go back to England. “Why my father?” she asked.

“Why do I want to write about him specifically?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as I explained in my letter, I was intrigued by something in his painting. I’m not much of an art enthusiast, I’m the sort who buys a picture because it goes with the couch. But I’d seen your father’s painting and I felt more hopeful somehow.”

“Kind of a lot to take away from a painting,” Daisy said.

“You’ve never felt that way? Moved in a way you can’t explain by a piece of art or music…”

Daisy shrugged although obviously he couldn’t see her. Chopin did that to her, but she wasn’t about to say so. “That was it? You saw the painting and decided to write a book about him?”

“Well, I did some research, of course.”

“How?”

“Newspaper articles, other published works about him.”

“His first wife’s book?”

“Uh…I’m taking all that with a grain of salt,” he said.

Martin had probably told him to take it with a whole saltshaker full. Except a lot of it was actually true. “So, how is a biography different from gossip?” She could hear a tone in her voice that sounded exactly like her father. Not just questioning but truculent, spoiling for a fight. She couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, you read this juicy stuff about him written by an enemy, say. How do you even know it’s true? Who even decides it’s true?” Her voice went up a notch. “Maybe she’s lying through her teeth.”

“That’s entirely possible,” Nicholas said. “Which is why I talk to as many people as I can.”

“Even so. Memories are so…circumstantial. Say I was in a bad mood, maybe some little thing I told you would make him sound dark and gloomy, or not a very nice person. But say I’d just made this incredible pot of salsa, and the smell of it was like a bouquet of flowers and the sun was shining through the door. I could tell you the same story and it would come out completely different.”

“I’ll just have to catch you on a day when the cooking’s going well,” he said.

Daisy gave up. Baba talked about creating false obstacles—reacting to your thoughts instead of to real situations. Maybe this guy would just ask a bunch of puffball questions. She’d give him warm, fuzzy answers and that would be that.

“I own a restaurant in town with my ex-husband,” she said. “Wildfire. I’ll be there tomorrow around five if you want to drop by.”

As soon as she hung up, she wanted to call back to say she’d changed her mind. What if he wanted real information? Could you simultaneously yearn for the truth but be so terrified of looking too closely that you were always averting your eyes?

The phone rang again. It was Amalia.

“Your father came to me in my dream last night, Daisy.” She sounded shrill, almost hysterical. “He is very, very angry about the book.”

“The book? You mean the biography?”

“He said no. No book.”

Daisy walked outside and sat down on the porch steps. The dogs stopped chasing squirrels to join her. Amalia was always having dreams about Frank telling her what to do. “Did he say why?”

“Frank does not explain himself,” Amalia said. “When he says no book, he means no book. He has always been that way. He says terrible things will happen if it is written.”

Daisy imagined tomorrow’s conversation with Nick. “Sorry to disappoint you, but my father said no book.”

“He was very, very angry,” Amalia said. “He doesn’t want this stranger to write about him.”