“No, none.”
“I thought I might take Gussie for a walk.”
“I don’t know that that’s a good idea.”
“Sure, it is.”
Isaac found Gussie playing jacks on the floor of her room. Her back was to him and her hair shone in the bright light of the morning sun. He watched her count off several attempts before he interrupted.
“Threesies, huh?”
She whipped her head around to find him leaning in the open doorway. “Father!” she said as she jumped up, sending the little red ball and several jacks skittering across the hardwood floor.
Isaac’s throat grew tight as he felt her arms reach around his waist. Eventually, he found his words: “Get your shoes on, Gus-Gus.”
“I’ll come,” said Joseph.
Isaac stifled a laugh. “You will not.”
“Why can’t Papa come?” Gussie asked as she rooted around under the bed for her sandals.
“Because Papa is very busy,” said Isaac, reaching for one sandal, which he had spotted under her bedside table. He tossed it onto the floor, beside her. “Isn’t that right, Papa?”
Gussie scooted back out from under the bed, holding the second sandal up in the air, triumphant.
“I’m not,” said Joseph. “In fact, I’d prefer to come.”
Isaac found it impossible to make eye contact with Joseph, so he simply turned and began walking toward the front of the apartment. He passed Esther and Joseph’s room and then Anna’s. “If you must send someone to mind us, send Anna.”
Isaac called to Gussie over his shoulder and kept walking, out the door and down the stairs to the waiting sidewalk. Gussie followed a few steps behind.
“Should we wait for Anna?” Gussie asked when she was outside. She bent down to finish buckling her sandals.
Isaac looked over his shoulder at the bakery and the little door that led to the building’s upstairs apartment. “She won’t be long.”
“Where are we going?”
“A walk?”
Isaac had thought about where he wanted to take Gussie, about how he wanted to remember her and she him. He pictured her on the Boardwalk, the wind ruffling her hair, but couldn’t think much further ahead than that.
He took Gussie’s small, sweaty hand in his and headed down Virginia Avenue, toward the ocean. By the time they passed the Islesworth Hotel, Anna had caught up with them, although she seemed to instinctively know to keep her distance. He wondered how much Joseph had told her.
“Want a frozen custard?” he asked Gussie as they approached the Boardwalk.
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“Right.” Isaac had grown so unfamiliar with reading his daughter’s cues that he could no longer tell discordance from disinterest. “Shall we get one anyway?”
Gussie shrugged her shoulders, and Isaac led her several more blocks to Kohr Bros., where he exchanged two nickels for a pair of cake cones, piled high with an orange-and-vanilla swirl.
“You forgot Anna,” said Gussie as he handed one to her.
“I don’t think she’s hungry,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Anna, who was pretending to be well occupied with a rack of souvenir postcards, which sat outside the shop next door.
“How do you know? Hey, Anna—”
Isaac poked Gussie’s arm and said, “Knock it off.”
