Could she pray with him a bit?
You good with that, Daddy? she whispered aloud. Should we maybe pray a little?
(He tried to say he’d be happy to pray. But nothing came out.)
Hearing nothing, she charged ahead.
Thank you, Lord, for the gift of this man, she prayed. Through his mighty efforts, the world has been much changed. He traveled far and wide, over every continent. Praise that. Worked with so many different kinds of folks. Amen. Was just terrific at, uh, taking a unit or division and, um, as she understood it, making it more efficient, or profitable? By trimming things back, kind of ruthlessly, and, uh, getting rid of the, like, dead wood? Which, come to think of it, was another group of enemies he might consider forgiving: those two hundred numbnuts he’d fired just before Christmas that one super-cold winter, who’d formed a sad little club and sometimes came over together, all wearing parkas, to picket their dang house.
She remembered that nice one, Wanda, who used to sneak little waves over at her and had once pulled her aside to slip her a Perfume Patty.
Lord, forgive him. For any and all mistakes he’d made. Like when he was gone overseas for three straight months her senior year. Or the way he’d kept snapping at Randy, her earlier-mentioned prom date, just because Randy had done his science fair project on electric cars and was sort of fired up about it. Randy had beenseventeen,Daddy. Was it so important that he be proven wrong? On the night of her prom? Necessary for you to drag Randy over to the whiteboard in the kitchen and throw all those numbers at him and mock him out as he stood there sweating, nervously pressing her corsage so tightly against his rented ruffled shirt that he ended up crushing it, and then he’d slid that ugly flat thing on her wrist and they’d had a miserable time all night because he kept defending his original calculations?
Forgive him for all of that, Lord.
Also?
For all those questionable things he’d supposedly possibly done.
Per that stupid documentary.
That Fran had made her watch.
Daddy, remember Fran? From grad school? Super-nervous gal? Owned a big old lake house? Or, used to? Up in Minnesota? But then: two straight months of rain, in July, and here came the lake, rising, rising, and pretty soon: no lake house. Or, less of one. After that, Fran had gone a little eco-wacky. And had done this sort of intervention. On her (!). In Vegas. On a trip that was supposed to be fun (!). Fran had tricked her. Into watching that video. Fran’d sat there watching her watch it.After, Fran had said that maybe she, Julia, might want to issue some kind of public statement. Or post an apology on Instagram or whatever? Or donate to an environmental charity? In her dad’s name?
As if.
As if, bitcharoo.
She’d broken with Fran. Fran was dead to her.
There was no way.
No. Flipping. Way.
That he’d done those things.
Or, if he had done them that he’d known they were bad.
Or, if he had known they were bad—
God, why did everyone have to be someanabout everything, anyhow?
Hello, he was in theoil business,Fran, dunce. Thebusinessofoil.Okay? Finding it, getting it out of the ground or wherever, selling it. How did you, Fran, physically get to the Minnesota lake house, when you still had it, dimwit? How did you make your way out of Minnesota and across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts that one autumn to see the Magritte show in Boston you ended up being so crazy about? How did you get to that bat mitzvah in Palm Springs that was so “transcendent” it made you “rethink your ideas regarding the value of ceremony” or that wedding in Maui that had the fire jugglers, one of whom, supposedly, you made out with?
You drove, you flew, you kombucha-making hypocrite.
And yet.
And yet.
Daddy, she whispered. Do you have any idea? What people are saying? About you? On TV and the internet and in so manyarticles and books and podcasts lately? Is it true? All of it? Any of it? If so, maybe you were a darker, trickier bastard than I ever—
Not “bastard.”
Guy.
Not “darker.”
